A Video of Anamorphs

Stuffed and Sad

Via Boing Boing, mostly from Uproxx (and all from Google), none of these appear to be Chuck Testa quality. They are ... Bad Taxidermy. See also here, here, and here. Also here.

The False Positive Paradox

I've posted before about my affection for Randall Monroe's webcomic xkcd and his related work, humor, and insight, and tonight (via Neatorama) I learned that it's been two years since his fiance was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer.  She's beating it so far.  He's noted the stats, and had a webcomic on this, but it also reminded me of something separate: the false positive paradox. (Well, that sounds like a downer, but it's not.)

The false positive paradox arises when a fairly reliable test yields fewer correct positive results than incorrect positive because the incidence of whatever is being tested is so low in the population. For example, imagine 1% of a population has a disease and a test for the disease is 95% accurate. That means if one gets a positive result there is, in fact, only about a 16% chance that one actually has the disease (specifically, the chance of a correct positive result is 1% x 95% = .95%; the chance for a false positive result is 99% x 5% = 4.95%; the chance of having the condition with a positive result is then .95 / (.95 + 4.95) ≈ 16%).

The Lemperle House, La Jolla, California

Via The Contemporist, the Lemperle House, La Jolla, California, was designed by architect Jonathan Segal (not this -- poor guy's probably lived with this bad pun his whole life). Its interior and exterior spaces flow beautifully together through glass and shifting walls.

A few photos:

Today in Computer P0rn: Charles Babbage's Difference Engine in High Res

Click here for the photos (then click through). At xRez Studio (which does cool stuff) who took the photos for the Computer History Museum (also a cool site), via Boing Boing (very cool, generally).

Hello Wildcats!

Tonight we inaugurate the cooking category here at Galileo Feynman, just so that we have covered every single category known to mankind. If there's anything I love, it's a great recipe for chili cheese nachos. Yum! This may be a little tough for beginners, so take it slow.

Jermain Wesley Loguen Writes His Former Owner

Jermain Wesley Loguen was a slave who escaped his Tennessee captors in 1834 and eventually learned to read and write, opened schools for African American children, became a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and operated a stop on the Underground Railroad. The blog Letters of Note -- a blog which, by the way, is awesome -- has a letter the wife of his former captor (or "owner" or "master" if one prefers those terms) wrote him in 1860 demanding he pay $1,000 to cover the damage he supposedly caused by running away. Specifically, she want him to pay so she can recover land she had to sell after he escaped. His response is a classic.

Scales on the Wings of a Butterfly

Via (above break) Fresh Photons from Infinity Imagined (a cool tumblr by James Tyrwhitt-Drake of the University of Victoria).

Cheetahs Running, Shown in Slo-mo

Trust me, watching cheetahs running in slow motion s worth five and a half minutes of your life. Stay after to watch all that went into the setup to get this footage. A National Geographic video via Boing Boing.

Night Sky, France, Leonid Meteor, Beautiful

Via Colossal. Best viewed full screen

Well, you only know it's France due to the music. French videos are evidently required to have this music.

Ashokan Farewell on Cello

I had never known what the haunting there from The Civil War is called -- it is the Ashokan Farewell.
David Nielsen on cello:

Here's the original, by the way, played by Jay Ungar, who wrote it, playing with the Jay Ungar and Molly Mason Family Band (Molly (on guitar) is Jay's wife, Ruth Ungar (on violin) is Jay's Daughter, and Michael Merenda (on banjo) is Ruth's husband).

Images Related to the Selection of China's New President

On November 15 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (the "CPC") selected Xi Jiping (習近平) to be General Secretary of the CPC and Chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission. That makes him, for all intents and purposes, the leader of China. Xi is married to Peng Liyuan (彭丽媛), a Chinese folk singer. Their daughter is enrolled at Harvard University. Xi has promoted market reforms and spoken against corruption. He is the son of a Chinese revolutionary hero, and his extended family is reported as having holdings in the hundreds of millions. The Big Picture has a selection of images of his ascension and the party congress -- here's a few:

Comparative Brain Anatomy in Different Animals -- Some Elementary Observations

From The Evolutionary Layers of the Human Brain at The Brain from 
Top to Bottom, a site of the Canadian Institutes for Health  

It is not uncommon for people to believe that among animals the human brain is functionally unique and is the largest, the most complex, has the most neurons, and has the greatest density of neurons. None of these beliefs is true. A number of animals have larger brains. Many other animals' brains have the same fundamental structure. The number of neurons in the human brain is often overstated, and their density is consistent with other primates.

I thought a couple of images plucked from various biological sites might prove an interesting survey of the field.

Lumen Type

Via Explore.

Snowball's Tribute to Michael Jackson

Vietnam Photos

Via Kottke who came to the link through Colossal, this LiveJournal post has one of the best collections of Vietnam War photos I've seen. I've reposted some of the best or most interesting below (many more at the LiveJournal link) -- and, incidentally, on this day 66 years ago (i.e. November 23, 1946) the French opened fire on the city of Haiphong in Vietnam killing 6,000 Vietnamese; this incident was an attempt by the French to reassert control over all over their former colony although the popular vote in the north had been for the Viet Mihn -- the refusal to cede control led to rioting, the shelling, and the Indochina and Vietnam war(s).

Turns Out There was No Battle Tech Marauder Present at the Winter Palace

As explained at Nothing to Do with Arborath, and a number of other sites, too, students were given the above picture to identify the conflict. It's the Storming of the Winter Palace during the Russian Revolution. Unfortunately, someone simply downloaded a copy from the internet without looking at it closely. There's a Battle Tech Maurader in the background.  Ooops. People are saying that is inaccurate.

Your Bedtime Herzog: Werner Talks to Stephen Colbert about Porn, Radioactive Albino Crocodiles, and the Phone Book as Literature

Dream Anatomy Redux

I previously posted a series of images from an exhibit at the U.S. National Library of Medicine named Dream Anatomy and, well, they were so awesome I thought I'd post some more. The Dream Anatomy site has background detail and dates for the images.

Glorantha Being Revived and Wants Your Money

Okay, I don't know anything about Glorantha, the role playing world used in the famous, if possibly dated, games RuneQuest and HeroQuest, though its world looks cool and it is getting ready, supposedly, for a big revival through Kickstarter. It reminds me of old times, though, 30 some years ago when the Thanksgiving holiday was the time to play Dungeons and Dragons with old friends from high school and my brother. Well, it wasn't really Dungeons and Dragons -- even the old version -- but our (okay, my) version, a form of the game purified from some of its more adolescent aspects. Well, it was still pretty adolescent. Ah, the smell of turkey and the sounds of late '70s album oriented rock bring it all back. In the next few weeks, to the inevitable dismay of everyone, I'll be posting some materials from the world and role playing system.

Oh Boy! Oh Boy! It's Time for the Macy's Parade!

Fact: Franklin Roosevelt tried to move Thanksgiving up one week to
create more time to shop before Christmas, and for awhile some
Republicans and some Democrats didn't celebrate Thanksgiving on
the same day,

Everybody loves Thanksgiving in the U.S. where we all gorge on turkey and thank our living stars we're not everybody else in the world. I don't even know what "living stars" means. But the average U.S. citizen has more access to delicious turkey and stuffin' and mince pie than your average Bangladeshi, and we're happy about that.  I mean we're not happy they don't have pie and stuff because it would be good if they did, but we're glad we do. Then we sit around and wish the balloons in the parade were filled with helium and would bash into each other and explode in huge fireballs, then we watch American football and thank our lucky stars it's not soccer.

We are so like the Pilgrims.

The Management Hereby Disclaims Any Responsibility for Any Injury or Damages Caused by this Post

We Now Resume Our Regular Bedtime Herzog: You Just Don't Do It

I previously mentioned Herzog's integrity, and so, tracking away from the humerous tone of my prior posts, just this:

Animal Cruelty or Better Bacon?

According to China Daily a farmer in Ningxiang (宁乡) county, Hunan (湖南) province, in the People's Republic of China has believes that his pigs' immunity and quality of pork is improved from diving from a high dive into water. So he's built a ramp to facilitate their diving. I remain a skeptic. But here you go:

Via Nothing to Do with Arborath.

Due to the Looming Hostess Bankruptcy, the Twinkies are Unharvested and Growing Out of Control

Actually, this is an excellent example of inertia in action (or inaction).

And I Said a Manned Space Ship will Never Go to Another World (in our lifetimes)

National treasure Randall Monroe has drawn a sketch -- a huge sketch -- of the Saturn V rocket with Apollo module attached and posted it on his website xkcd. The drawing is based on blueprints of drawings of the Saturn V from the web site found at the web site up-ship.com except that Monroe translates the engineering-ese into cool and funny plain-people-ese.

But I'm still sad about the stars.

We Take a Break from Our Regular Werner Herzog to Bring You this Bedtime Mash-up

We've been negligent about not posting the mash-ups that we know you, the world public, demand. This one is actually live and has a ton of energy. (Please note the casual use of mass-energy equivalence -- well, okay, a ton is a force not a mass; whatever.) If you are having withdrawals from a lack of Herzog or Herzog imposters -- a common problem -- please fell free to go to our prior posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

The Hostess Bankruptcy: America in Crisis (A Galileo Feynman Special Report)

Twinkies were served to the Indians at the first Thanksgiving

(IRVING, TEXAS) America's leading snack cake provider, Hostess Brands, Inc., announced Friday (November 16) that it was seeking to liquidate its business in response to a strike by workers. In liquidating Hostess would fire about 18,300 workers. The strike arose after union rejection (by over 95% of its members) of reductions in wages as well as benefits, pension, and retirement obligations.

Hostess or its predecessor companies have been in and out of bankruptcy and receivership since 2004. The cuts were trustee ordered, but the problem has been exacerbated since the Hostess CEO was given a $1.5 million compensation package the prior year (with $2 million more to follow), and a few executives had been given raises of up to 80%. The Hostess CEO has been replaced and the executives involved who remain with the company are working for $1 under court order.

Events are unfolding rapidly, with President Obama considering a TARP style bailout and Governor Christie now personally consuming as many Ding Dongs as possible to keep Hostesses afloat. Hostess executives, however, have exacerbated the situation saying "let them eat cake" while themselves having their cake and eating it too. (I deeply regret that last sentence.) Twinkies are now being rapidly loaded into Fort Knox to replace less valuable gold bars, and Ron Paul is insisting that our economy be placed on the "new gold" standard. Rush Limbaugh has asserted the crisis is due to President Obama (really he said this), while middle America is experiencing extreme Twinkie hoarding (okay, it's cubical stuffing, but whatever). This, people, is yet another sign that the world will end in 2012.

Stone Balancing by Michael Grab

Stone balancing is an incredible art form involving beautiful zen like structures created through great practice and skill. There are a surprising numbers of people devoted to its practice. Here's some photos of work by one, Michael Grab, taken from his website, Gravity Glue.

A Farm Tractor with a Volvo 240 Engine

Well, This Development Caught Me By Surprise

According to journalists at Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, or "Cal," has changed its logo to consist of wingdings. I am heartened that regional schools like these do not let their rivalry get in the way of learning about each other. I understand both have excellent husbandry programs for women who were not able to find a suitable spouse in high school.

Playing Poker with Trillions

From an interesting, if a bit overstated, article in Der Spiegel (English version), via MetaFilter, which analyzes the enormous amount of debt the U.S. and Europe have incurred:

The attempt by countries to bolster the faltering financial system has in fact increased their dependency on the financial markets to such an extent that their policies are now shaped by two sovereigns: the people and creditors. Creditors and investors demand debt reduction and the prospect of growth, while the people, who want work and prosperity, are noticing that their politicians are now paying more attention to creditors. The power of the street is no match for the power of interest. As a result, the financial crisis has turned into a crisis of democracy, one that can become much more existential than any financial crisis.

Few would doubt that the amount of debt westernized countries have incurred must be reduced. The only options here are to reduce spending or raise revenue through taxes or a "juiced" economy. In real terms U.S. Republicans oppose serious corrections to any of those. We'll see what happens over the next four years. 

Werner Herzog Gets Shot in the Leg During an Interview (Really)

Two Excellent Sources on Copyright Law

Copyright is an inevitable issue for blogs since they link to and sometimes republish other sources. It's a critical issue for my art work as well (not that I've graced these posts with it ...), since no work is without sources. Here, for future reference, are two excellent general references sources on copyright law:

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation
• The Copyright Advisory Office of Columbia University

That is all.

Werner Herzog: "Do Not Avert Your Eyes (from Wrestlemania and Anna Nicole Smith)"

112 Years of U.S. Elections as Shown in Voting Maps

Since 1900 there have been 28 presidential elections in the U.S. At the website The Blaze they have county by county maps for each of the elections and a video transitioning one to the next. Since the dixie South stop going block democrat sometime ago, there are no long term national party trends (that I detect not having done a mathematical study). There are party trends that are short term, and there are strong long term value trends if one knows which party was representing which positions. Anyway, I love this kind of stuff.

Statistic Brain

Statistic Brain is a website that provides statistics on issues its authors consider interesting; it doesn't provide analysis of the stats it provides. It's related to the interesting blog One Fifty What which describes cultural and news events on an occasional basis in 150 words or less. (The idea behind One Fifty What is good, but the execution not so much. Why would one want to go to a site of 150 word summaries that only publishes once in a while? To make it work it needs to 10 to 20 posts a day.) Oh well. Statistics Brain is still a good site for general interesting stat poking around.

Tonight's Werner Herzog: Herzog Rescues Joaquin Phoenix from a Deadly Car Crash (Really, He Did This)

PonPonPon

There has been, frankly, a deplorable lack of Jpop and Kpop around here lately, and since I am baffled by what's going on here -- a general comment on my life -- I felt I must post this:

Nation Horrified To Learn About War In Afghanistan While Reading Up On Petraeus Sex Scandal

Per The Onion (via Cynical C):

WASHINGTON—As they scoured the Internet for more juicy details about former CIA director David Petraeus’ affair with biographer Paula Broadwell, Americans were reportedly horrified today upon learning that a protracted, bloody war involving U.S. forces is currently raging in the nation of Afghanistan. “Oh my God, this is terrible,” Allie Lipscomb, 29, said after accidentally stumbling on an article about the war while she tried to ascertain details about what specific sexual acts Petraeus and Broadwell might have engaged in. “According to this, 2,000 American troops have died, 18,000 have been wounded, and more than 20,000 civilians have been killed. Jesus Christ. And it’s been happening for, like, 11 years.” Sources confirmed that after reading a few paragraphs about the brutal war, the nation quickly became distracted by a headline about Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash’s alleged sexual abuse of a 16-year-old boy.

Well, I thought we were "in" Afghanistan on a peacekeeping mission. This is very disturbing.

Also recently from The Onion:

• Kim Jong unnamed as the sexiest man alive for 2012. Whoops, I may have misread that. It was Kim Jong-Un named as the sexiest man alive for 2012. Sorry. Of course he was named sexiest man alive.
• "Elmo Admits He's Uncomfortable Working With Gay Puppeteer."
• "Widening Petraeus Scandal Reveals Human Race Has Been Having Sex For 200,000 Years."

Photos from the Australian Rainforest

At Austrailian Geographic in July there was a beautiful set of photographs in July of the Australian outback taken by Stanley and Kaisa Breeden. A few favorites below (or go to the site -- Australian Geo is a great trove of interesting stuff). Via Neatorama.

Harlequin Bug

Duolingo

Duolingo is a website that teaches languages (Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese) on the web for free by having its students translate webpages. The concept is simple, involves intuitive learning, uses relevant material, and, if I did not mention it, free. My son has started learning Spanish on the site and says it's awesome.

Married Women Think About the Children

Today in History

Today is the anniversary of the death of William Franklin, the last loyalist governor of New Jersey, who fled to England after the American Revolutionary War.  His principal claim to fame, though, was that he was the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin. Bill and Ben did not get on in their later years, and according to at least one historian, who tells a tale of dubious provenance, Bill had an early brush with death:

There's another controversial retelling of history here, a follow-up on the life of Ben Franklin, with is definitely NSFW due to language.

Let's Start the Day with a Local Morning Talk Show

Tonight's Bedtime Story with Werner Herzog

Tonight Werner Herzog reads from the Dvergatal ("Catalog of the Dwarfs") of the Poetic Edda, one of the two most important sources of Norse literature. It's a book that's inspired many dreams, perhaps most germane -- given that the cinematic premiere is but four short weeks way -- is The Hobbit. Listen closely and you'll hear the names of all of the dwarves from J.R.R. Tolkien's classic, as well as Gandalf. Tolkien, of course, was a world recognized expert on Norse and Anglo-Saxon literature.

I also post it since, other than its somnolent effect (this is, after all, a bedtime story for us), it shows that the person who brilliantly imitated Herzog reading Curious George, Madeline, Mike Mulligan and his Steamshovel, and Where's Waldo wasn't too far from the mark.

Surely Herzog must be aware of Tolkein's work, though he may think it pablum 

Your One Stop Wood Identification Resource

Western Red Cedar

With the U.S. election over one's thoughts naturally turn to how do I identify wood? Fortunately, via MetaFilter we now are able to identify wood from the safety of our bedrooms using The Wood Database. While identifying wood is often considered a male dominated activity, it is now known that many women are quite skilled at identifying their own wood. For my own part I can say there is nothing like a woman who knows her wood, though I am sure there are many women who love men who know what wood please women. Wood identification, frankly, is all about pleasure, and that's nothing to be ashamed about. There simply is no one best kind of wood, and wood identification, when done well, should take awhile. Which brings us back to the internet. I don't think anybody could doubt that the internet has been a boon to wood identification.

First Teleportation Over a Large Distance

MIT's image that shows an axis
being rotated. Like, whoa Dude, no way.

According to MIT's blog The Physcis arXiv:

Physicists have teleported quantum information from one ensemble of atoms to another 150 metres away, a demonstration that paves the way towards quantum routers and a quantum Internet

The thing is, measuring qbits destroys them and they only last a 100 microseconds. According to MIT, "[n]one of those challenges seem like showstoppers." Also, there's been short distance teleportation of information before, just not over a long distance like 150 meters (164 yards). There's no indication as to when we get to beam down to planets.

In other news, scientists are seeking a "grand unified theory of flocking" using "laser powered micro sailboats," and "Europe" (by which arXiv means a scientist in Austria) wants to build a quantum optics link to the International Space Station to test the relationship between gravity and quantum mechanics at gravitational scales and to help build a global quantum internet. Saying you're helping a quantum internet apparently gets you big funding.

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe

This shoe eating incident apparently occurred because he had told Errol Morris he would eat his shoe of Morris ever made one of the movies he was talking about. I had no idea that this existed or that Herzog and Morris even knew each other when I compared and praised the two of them a few days ago. And in this 23 second video Herzog tells, ever so briefly, how he believes Morris made his first film.

There's also a four part video series of the two of them chatting. Stay tuned! But now it's time for bed.

In Ovum Learning by Superb Fairywrens

Male breeding plumage. Superb Fairywrens are usually gray brown. 

As reported in Discover, an article in Current Biology (behind a paywall) involves a study suggesting that Superb Fairywren chicks learn their familial feeding call while they are still in their eggs. Each family has a unique call passed from mother to chicks, and, given its uniqueness for each mother and chicks, appears to be learned. The mother sings it to her eggs, and the chicks emerge apparently knowing the song. The clear implication is that the chicks can learn before they hatch.

The article speculates that the learned song allows the mother to distinguish her chicks from impostor cuckoo chicks that are lain in her nest. Apparently it's not too effective, and only works about 40% of the time.  Cuckoo chicks, by the way, usually hatch before other chicks and grow faster, and when the other chicks emerge they kick them out of the nest. That behavior is not learned -- there's no cuckoo mother to teach it -- and so must be innate.

Samantha Gordon, Football Wunderkind

Sam Gordon is a nine year old little girl who weighs less than 60 pounds (27 kg) and plays "gremlins" level tackle football in the U.S. I am one of "those people" who worry about any kids doing this given the serious injuries that can occur. But, since she is, I am glad she is so awesome. Really awesome. Girls in the U.S. (or anywhere, for that matter) don't usually get to do this kind of thing -- they supposedly can't keep up or something. Well ...

Your Guide to Obama's Conspiracies

I am not saying that all of these aren't true, but I am also not saying that people who believe these things don't have heads filled with jello. Okay, I am saying that all of these things aren't true.

Stolen shamelessly from Mother Jones; you probably should read this there.

Obama is a secret Muslim: This one began right after he took the stage at the 2004 Democratic convention, with chain emails alleging his "true" religious affiliation. The rumor soon found its way onto the popular conservative online forum Free Republic, and took on a whole new life in the years to come. Related: Obama secretly speaks Arabic, attended a madrassa as a kid in Indonesia, referred to "my Muslim faith" in an interview, and was sworn in on a Koran. 
Obama's bringing 100 million Muslims to America: Avi Lipkin and his PR outfit Special Guests claimed to have evidence of a scheme to bring roughly 100 million Muslims from the Middle East into the United States, converting the country into an Islamic nation by the end of Obama's second term and making it easier to obliterate Israel.
Obama once aided the mujahideen: Harlem pastor and professional race-baiter James David Manning contended that in his younger days, Obama went undercover as a CIA agent to facilitate the transfer of cash and weapons to the Afghan mujahideen in the '80s, thereby aiding what would become the Taliban.

No Soup for You!

So, I've been travelling and almost had to miss a day of posts. God may have intervened on behalf of decent society, if only there was a God. Also, if you want bread with your posts, it's now three dollars.

Tonight's Werner Herzog -- A Few Words on Chickens

I, for one, feel superior to chickens. There, I owned up to it. I feel better, somehow.

Max Raabe and Palast Orchestra: Dream a Little Dream of Me

On The Late Show with David Letterman musicologist and legendary band leader Paul Shaffer did not know who the German bandleader Max Raabe is; so, here ya go:

It seems an appropriate lead-in to tonight's bedtime reading with Werner Herzog.

The Faces of War?

At My Modern Met, and picked up numerous places, are the photographs of Lalage Snow, who shot pictures of color photos of British soldiers before, during, and after deployment in Afghanistan. They are, it must be noted first, very similar to a project in black and white by Dutch photographer Claire Felice, who, naturally, photographed Dutch soldiers.

It is a great idea, but also one easily subject to propaganda. I suspect three photos of anyone, judiciously chosen from a broad enough sample, could show any development one wanted. I equally suspect that the emotional damage of serving in the military or a war, when such damage occurs, is often not readily apparent on the face. Ah well. It's still a strong, imitable idea.

The Infinite Jukebox

The Infinite Jukebox is a web app that allows songs to branch to other similar "beats" in the song creating new loops and allowing the song to continue indefinitely. It was created by Paul Lamere at a periodic music hacking conference called Music Hackday; Lamere is the Director of Developer Platform for The Echo Nest, which is a primary sponsor for Music Hackday, and he has a pretty cool blog called Music Machinery.

You can run your own music, should, for example, you be either a teen girl or particularly tone deaf and want to hear One Direction over and over, or you can listen to my favorite (here), Superstition. I mean here.

OR, if you're really a masochist, you can list to Gangnam Style looping in and out over and over and over. This was the predecessor of The Infinite Jukebox. Evidently, Lamere was so pleased with that he created this current project. Please direct all complaints to him.

Via Kottke.

The Cardboard Uprising is Coming

Scheming boxes. That is all.

Via Kottke.

Tonight's Werner Herzog -- Is There Such a Thing as Insanity Among Penguins?

I actually like Werner Herzog tremendously. There is such sincerity and integrity in what he does, a curiosity about the world and about people. He and Errol Morris seem very similar that way. But I digress ...

Motion in Slit Scan Videos, Photos, and Cinematography.

timeRemapExportHD from Adrien M / Claire B on Vimeo.

This video -- a sort of dance using a slit scan technique -- was filmed using a Canon 7D SLR camera shooting at 60fps and then is played in slow motion. It is just really awesome. Yes, that is an English sentence.

While We're on Electoral Maps, um ... China?

The Atlantic published an article a couple of days ago on an issue apparently now trending in China inspired by the U.S. election: what if there were a popular election in China between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)? To quote The Atlantic:

The "election" began in earnest on November 8 when a popular wit with the handle "Pretending to be in New York" (@假装在纽约) asked what might happen if China had a democratic election. He wrote to his 200,000-plus followers, "If China also had a national election, Zhejiang, Chiang Kai-shek's birthplace, Fujian, and Taiwan would for sure go deep blue [for the KMT], while other southeast coastal provinces would also be a huge blue heartland; northern, northeast China and other revolutionary bases for the CCP would certainly go red; mid- and south-western China would be the dead-heat swing states. Ready to be phone-banked and canvassed!"

 Many are apparently criticizing "Pretending to be in New York," though, because they think he or she has over designated CCP areas. Of course, no one can know that one way or the other. The question, though, of where the political divisions lie in relation to geography is an interesting one (well, interesting to me ...).

Flawed Symmetry of Prediction

Be patient -- this can take time to load (depending on the time of day):

Flawed Symmetry of Prediction from Jeff Frost on Vimeo. Via Laughing Squid.

Tonight's Bedtime Story

Wir suchen Waldo suchen, weil er gefunden werden kann. Es ist ein Proxy für Bedeutung etwas, das nie gefunden werden kann. Denn das Leben ist sinnlos, Kinder. Nun, süße Träume.

We Defeated the Germans for This?

There is so much wrong with that post title. But on the other hand -- well, that's completely a non sequitur, but, anyway, on the other hand -- the English version of Gummibear has almost 260 million views on YouTube. Jolly Jebus how did I not know about this?

Alas, We did not save the French:

Brooklyn Castle, Rochelle Ballantyne, and Chess Excellence

Via Cynical C:

And about one of the stars of the movie, per the New York Daily News:

Rochelle Ballantyne is getting ready to the chess world in check.

The 17 year-old Brooklyn high school senior and graduate of I.S. 318, a middle school famous for churning out chess champs, is working toward becoming the first African-American female chess master.

Ballantyne, who is the lone female star of the recent documentary Brooklyn Castle,™ which sheds light on the Williamsburg middle school’s chess program and its impact on its students.

Filmmakers spent the 2009-2010 school year following the kids at I.S. 318 where 70% of the students live below the poverty line.

I wish it wasn't news that Rochelle Ballantyne's triumph is special because of skin color or ethnicity. It is.  So perhaps in time our society will improve to where it won't be news, to where the incredible act of a kid becoming a chess master is big news in itself.

The U.S. 2012 Elections County by County

2012 Presidential results by county for 48 contiguous states; blue = Obama, red = Romney, purple = percentages of each

The final U.S. electoral map doesn't reflect the U.S. popular vote with precision, though it is a crude guide to which parts of the country are more liberal and which more conservative. A more refined approach, if one cares about the demographics of voters, is to select hue by percentage of vote and look at outcomes at the county rather than state level. One then gets a fairly clear geographic view of trends.

And even more precise approach is then to weight the counties by population. The size of a county in the U.S. is a somewhat arbitrary measure, so weighting by population seems clearer. The problem is that it so distorts geography that the trends are not particularly sensible. And even better approach, not that I've done it, would be to show population weight by color intensity (tinting areas by lower population). Anyway, Mark Newman, the Paul Dirac Professor of Physics and the University of Michigan, has generated the county-by-county population weighted cartograms and a host of related maps.

As above, weighted by population

Tonight's Bedtime Story

Ins Bett, ins Bett, du schläfrig Lieben! Du Munter bleiben zu spät!

C215

C215 (given name Christian Guémy) is a French street artist (some call him the French Bansky, though I hate that, and he probably does, too) who layers stenciled images with sprayed and brushed paint. His is simply awesome. I thought about writing about why -- in fact, I've erased a lot of words on that, something about his work being an advertisement for humanity and life, with great technique and eye, etc. etc. -- but I should just let his work speak for itself.

Below the break, many more examples of his work. There's an extensive collection of his work at his Flickr page, as well as a set of images at Colossal (which reminded me of C215's extensive work). [N.B. this brings up the interesting question of why I would post images of work when they can be found on other sites. Early in the history of this blog I didn't. The images I post, though, show the ones I like or am interested in and, most importantly, help prevent losing them through link rot.]

So anyway ...

Smalltown Boy -- Bronski Boy

What the World has been Up To Lately

At Foreign Policy there's a good summary of significant recent world events (still with a U.S. spin): in Syria 32,000 have been killed since the uprising began in March 2011, and Islamic fundamentalists are trying to hijack the opposition; in China Xi Jinping is taking control, it seems, from Hu Jintao (Xi, by the way, has doctorate degrees in chemical engineering and political science, his extended family may have billions, and his daughter attends Harvard -- imagine the fallout if one of Obama's daughters attended college in China!); the European Union is still having problems with employment at 11.5 percent and Britain talking about leaving;  in Mali Islamic extremists have seized an area the size of France, are imposing sharia, and 300,000 have fled; and in Yemen the U.S. is very aggressively using drones with the blessing of Yemen's president; in Israel elections will be held soon but Netanyahu has merged Likud with an ultra-nationalist, pro-settlement party, which looks really bad for peace; in North Korea Kim Jong Un, benevolent leader and gift from God, may have executed one or more military leaders by having mortars rounds fired directly into them at close range; in Bahrain, an ally of the U.S. and the liberal corner of Arabia, political protests have been banned; in Russia, which I want to mention has one hell of a national anthem, Putin may or may not be ailing and there's been a crackdown on opposition groups and two members of Pussy Riot have been sent to brutal prison camps; and in Cuba a new open door policy of accepting expatriots back has been implemented. 

See also Harper's Weekly Review.

Tonight's Bedtime Story

Der Affe ist lustig, weil er erinnert daß das Dasein sinnlos ist.

Illustrations for a New Edition of El Manifiesto Comunista

At the blog Brain Pickings last week there was a great post of images by Fernando Vicente (link to his post of the same at Behance) that illustrate a new Spanish edition of the Communist Manifesto. Now, I am not a communist -- indeed, I think some of its assumptions are absurd (I also think it's absurd to have to point out I am not a communist, but in the USA that's necessary) -- but that has nothing to do with whether these are great graphic art. And they are.

After the break, I've put a few of my favorites.

Helvetia's Dream

Via Neatorama:

Helvetia's Dream from Alessandro Della Bella on Vimeo.

There are just so many great shots in this.

The GOP and Me

The blogger Rany, who normally writes about his strained relations with his former hometown baseball team, the Kansas City Royals, took time out to describe in detail why Muslims in the U.S., who used to be overwhelming Republicans, are now overwhelmingly Democrats. Muslims, although their extreme fundamentalists are an aberration, still tend to be conservative. What gives? The short answer is intolerance:

[W]hen the PATRIOT Act was signed into law, Muslims were taken aback by the far-reaching implications. Citizens could have their phones or computers tapped with neither their knowledge nor any recourse. Muslims in Indiana found themselves on the No-Fly List because they had the misfortune of sharing the same name with a terrorist suspect in India - and there was essentially no way to clear their name from the list. Thousands of Muslims, many of whom had lived and worked in America for decades, were arrested on flimsy immigration violations and deported back to their countries of birth.

Rany goes on to describe one insult after another, one injustice after another. Republicans are in disarray right now trying to figure out what they did wrong. (They have a lot of theories, such as the electorate is stupid and disappointed them; I'll post on that soon when I can collect them.) One crazy ass thing the Republicans might try is not being intolerant of those who do not have purely European ancestry. Just shooting in the dark here. It is sad, though, when those who are rejected by a group still hang on to the group, as American Muslims did so long with the Republicans. Via Meta Filter.

Tonight's Bedtime Story

Und now to bett meine kleine Kinder. France kann immer überfallen morgen.

Dream Anatomy

Dream Anatomy was an exhibit at the U.S. National Library of Medicine in 2003 to 2004 -- I've had this link for awhile -- which had an incredible set of historical anatomical images. The images below (click to enlarge) are selected from a much larger set, each one of which is fascinating and wonderful for one reason or another. Go to the site (first link above) not only to get those but also to get the background detail on the images which the National Library provides -- all of it is not only interesting but necessary to put the somewhat random collection of images below (after the break) in historical context.

A Seasonal Ingredient List

At the blog Epicurious (affiliated with the Conde Nast food magazines) I found an interactive map of the United States and the produce that is seasonally available each month from each State. Of course, in grocery stores around the States carry produce from everywhere, nonetheless to cook fresh produce the best way to do that is cook what's locally grown. What would be really cool from a geographic standpoint is to see a worldwide seasonal produce map.

Geometry Unbound

Illustration of Desargues' theorem

Yesterday I posted on The Jewish Coffin Problems of Moscow State University. Part of that post included links to two sets of simple to describe but extremely difficult to solve math problems -- so called "coffin problems" -- that were given to Jewish applicants and students and other "undesirables" to try to keep them out of the prestigious program. There were hints and solutions included in the problem sets, but, you know, those only go so far and don't provide a general methodology. So, today here's an open source book that was originally written for Mathematics Olympiad students: Geometry Unbound. This version, by the way, has no diagrams (you get what you pay for), but it's still very accessible.

Bach Cello Suite No.1 in G -- Mischa Maisky

This is extraordinarily beautiful:

Mischa Maisky's style is a bit more robust (or bombastic, take your pick) than Yo Yo Ma's subtle flawless style (compare it here -- it's only the prelude, the most famous part) but for some things, like this, I like Maisky's style better. Via Meta Filter.

Election Coverage Burnout Post

Man, Leonardo was supposed to get this posted two days ago. That is the last time we let him do anything around here that's important ... what, you gave him your rent check? [BTW -- of course I don't think it's all bullshit.]

The video, of course, of from The Oinion.

A Grenade that Used to Hold on My Hair

This works in an odd but nice way:

The Jewish Coffin Problems of Moscow State University Math Department

In a paper published last year, Tanya Khovanova,(her blog) a Russian mathematician who now works at MIT, described the "special test" of solvable but seemingly impossible problems Moscow State University gave to Jewish students and other "undesirables" to try to keep them out:

These problems were designed to prevent Jewish people and other undesirables from getting a passing grade. Among problems that were used by the department to blackball unwanted candidate students, these problems are distinguished by having a simple solution that is  difficult to find. Using problems with a simple solution protected the administration from extra complaints and appeals.

The problems were called "coffins" for what I think are obvious reasons. (I'll leave the solution for that, if in doubt, as an exercise by the reader.) Khovanova goes the extra step of including 21 of the solvable problems in her paper and also includes hints and solutions. They look easy; they're damn hard. Damn hard, that is, unless you guess on some easy short cut (often a substitution or drawing trick).

A number of others have written about the discrimination at Moscow State University in the math department, and in Russia and the Soviet Union generally. Edward Frenkel, now a mathematician, describes the discrimination he faced in an article in October in The New Criterion. Shen described the same discrimination in great detail in a 1994 article in The Mathematical Intelligencer. There's a similar article here, and a good article by Mark Saul in the Notices of the American Mathematical society here. Discrimination against Jews in the Soviet university system -- and the apparent murder of Bella Abramovna Subbotovskaya by the KGB to protect the system -- is discussed in a really interesting article here.

Shen's also provided some of the problems with his article -- a mostly different set than Knovanova -- and Ilan Vardi now of the Ecole Polytechnique wrote them up with solutions, here via Khovanova as a pdf. So, you should click on the problems and start trying to solve them. Really, they look easy.