Randy’s Blog

A few weeks ago I took Wendy's car in for scheduled maintenance. To pass the time, I brought my tablet along so I could read a back issue of the JSE. One of the articles was about a class taught at the University of Colorado in 2010 called Edges of Science.

As part of the class, students took part in an experiment to test practical uses of remote viewing, which is a form of ESP. Basically, every week researchers said to the students: "In two days, you will be shown a picture. Please draw that picture now." The students would do their best to draw the picture, having no idea what it might be.

The researchers had an independent person pick two pictures from a pool of photographs, and randomly assign one to mean "the stock market went up" and the other to mean "the stock market went down". Then a team of judges looked at each of the students' drawings and rated which of the two pictures it most closely resembled. The ratings were tallied up to see which picture (market-going-up or market-going-down) got the most votes. The next day researchers would buy and sell options depending on which picture was selected.

Finally, and this was the most crucial step, two days after students drew their pictures, they were shown the picture corresponding to what the market actually did. They called this the feedback loop. Since the students were trying to predict a future event (being shown a picture), it was critical that the event actually happen, and that the picture matched the actual performance of the stock market.

They did this for 7 weeks, and every week the students correctly predicted how the market would perform. The researchers started off with $10,000 and ended with $26,000. They also pointed out that one week there was a timing delay with their market order, which cost them $12,000. Without that delay, they would have nearly quadrupled their money, from $10K to $38K.

The experiment was limited to 7 weeks because it occurred during the latter part of the semester. Researchers wondered whether such a high success rate could be maintained in the long run. Apparently a number of psychic studies have had good success in the short term, but in the long term have declined in performance until reaching what would be expected from random chance.

I'm curious what they did with the money; the article didn't mention it. I also wonder what other topics the class covered. It sounds like a lot of fun.

Grave of the Fireflies

I finally worked up the courage to watch Grave of the Fireflies, a Japanese animated movie from 1988. I've known about it for a few years, but have put off watching it because, although it's widely considered to be a masterpiece, many people say it's the saddest movie they've ever seen.

The movie takes place in Japan towards the end of World War II. It follows a 14-year-old boy and his 4-year-old sister as they struggle to survive after their mother is killed in a bombing. The first scene of the movie tells you the end: they don't survive.

Yes, it is a very sad movie, and also very good.

Roger Ebert listed it as one of the "Great Movies", and had this to say:

“Grave of the Fireflies” is an emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation. Since the earliest days, most animated films have been “cartoons” for children and families. Recent animated features such as “The Lion King,” “Princess Mononoke” and “The Iron Giant” have touched on more serious themes, and the “Toy Story” movies and classics like “Bambi” have had moments that moved some audience members to tears. But these films exist within safe confines; they inspire tears, but not grief. “Grave of the Fireflies” is a powerful dramatic film that happens to be animated, and I know what the critic Ernest Rister means when he compares it to “Schindler’s List” and says, “It is the most profoundly human animated film I’ve ever seen.”

My Neighbor Totoro

I was surprised to learn that Grave of the Fireflies was released as a double-feature with My Neighbor Totoro, another Japanese animated film. I watched that movie for the first time last year, and it's the complete opposite of Grave of the Fireflies. It's a lighthearted, fun movie about two young girls interacting with friendly wood spirits that live near their house in the country. There's almost no plot in the movie; it's just about the experiences the young girls have.

Although the theatrical double-feature was a flop (people were turned off by the seriousness of Fireflies), both movies became classics. My Neighbor Totoro also made Ebert's list of "Great Movies", and apparently Totoro is as popular in Japan as Winnie the Pooh is in Britain, or Mickey Mouse is in the U.S.

MovieLens

Finally, last year I discovered movielens.org, an excellent movie recommendation site. It's run by the University of Minnesota, and is basically their research laboratory for testing recommendation algorithms. It's free for anyone to use. Once you create an account, you start rating a bunch of movies, and it will then give you predictions of movies you might like. It even predicts what you'll rate a movie. There are lots of other cool features, too.

I've found its predictions are really good, almost always within half a star of my rating (it uses a 5 star rating system). In fact, I decided to watch My Neighbor Totoro based on movielens' prediction. It predicted I'd rate it 4.5 stars; I gave it 4. It predicted I'd rate Grave of the Fireflies 4.5 stars, and that's exactly what I gave it.

Notes:

• We've gotten a lot of rain this spring and summer. It's led to mushrooms sprouting up in a few spots in our yard.
  
• One day last week I looked out the window and saw a squirrel eating a mushroom. He'd picked it up off the ground, and was nibbling all along the edges. I'd never seen a squirrel eat a mushroom before; it was somewhat comical.
• One evening during the spring we saw a raccoon eating a squirrel. Sort of. We heard a strange cry from the front yard that repeated several more times. Wendy looked out the door and saw a raccoon walking headfirst down a tree, with a squirrel in its mouth. We were hearing the last cries of a desperate squirrel. That led to us learning (via Wikipedia) that raccoons can rotate their hind legs 180 degrees, which allows them to descend trees headfirst.

Links:

• China and the new Transformers movie. I had no idea the target demographic for the new Transformers movie was basically China. It was co-produced by a Chinese company, has Chinese product placements, and is intentionally flattering towards the Chinese government.
  
• Alaskan bear cams are surprisingly dramatic.
• An overview of studies that show when the homeless are given money, they spend it wisely.
• The Politics of Housework. A 1970 essay arguing men should help with household chores. "He's losing some leisure and you're gaining it. The measure of your oppression is his resistance."

12.37 miles south along the Prairie Trail

Riding time: 1 hour 7 minutes

Season total: 84 miles

On the first half of the ride, there was a guy mowing the side of the trail. He was driving a small tractor that was pulling a mower. On the last half, there was a different guy driving a small buggy. He had an air blower on wheels hitched to the back; it was blowing the grass clippings off the trail.

StarDate is an astronomy magazine published by the McDonald Observatory, which is owned by the University of Texas. I've read it for years. It does a decent job of being interesting without being too technical. They also have a daily radio program you may have heard before.

A few months ago I got the May/June issue in the mail. It was the observatory's 75th anniversary, and the feature story was about how the McDonald Observatory was created. I didn't read it because, frankly, it looked boring. It wasn't about astronomy. So I skipped it.

However, a month or two later, I found myself sitting down and reading the article. Turns out, it was way more interesting than I thought, and it even had a Chicago connection! I was quite glad I took time to read it.

So here's the scoop:

In the 1920's, there was a Texas millionaire, William McDonald, who died and bequeathed all his money to the University of Texas to build an astronomy observatory. His relatives, though, were aghast that they wouldn't receive any of his money, so they sued, claiming he was of unsound mind when he made the will. The verdict went one way, the appeal went the other way, and after round three ended in a tie, a settlement was reached: the relatives got some of the money, but the university got most of it.

But, there was another problem: the university had the money for an observatory, but not the manpower. It had no astronomy program, and on the entire campus there was only one astronomer: the president. Their best plan was to invest the money until it grew large enough to hire a staff. This is where the Chicago connection came into play, thanks to Otto Struve, a fourth generation Russian astronomer. 

Struve was the head of the University of Chicago's astronomy department, and also the head of the Yerkes Observatory in southern Wisconsin. (The observatory is still there, by the way; Wendy and I toured it several years ago after I learned about it in the footnotes of an old science fiction novel.) Struve had the opposite problem that Texas did: he had a large staff and faculty, but his observatory was becoming obsolete, and was in a poor location for viewing the stars. So when he heard of Texas' situation, he offered a deal: if they built the observatory, he would provide the staff and funds to operate it. Apparently such collaboration was unheard of at that time, but it solved a problem for both universities, so Texas eagerly accepted, and in May of 1939, the McDonald Observatory was opened.

Those were the most interesting parts of the article. It was fun to make the connection between the Yerkes observatory, the StarDate magazine I read, and the McDonald observatory. I've never been to McDonald; it's located near Fort Davis, TX, deep in the southwest corner of the state. Someday I hope to take a trip down there to see it.

Six or seven years ago I came across a blog post talking about the best contemporary science fiction books. One thing it said was if you want to see what life will be like in 2025, read Rainbows End, the new book by Vernor Vinge. Part of the plot deals with a man who suffered from Alzheimer's for 20 years, but is brought back to reality when a cure is discovered in the 2020s. He tries to cope with dizzying technological changes as he integrates back into society.

I've been amazed how many times, in the years since reading the book, I've heard about some new bit of technology, and thought "yup, that was in Rainbows End." Here are a few of those things I can remember:

Driver-less cars

It amazes me how real these are getting. Google has test driven self-driving cars thousands of miles in major cities in California, and laws are being worked on in several states to allow them for normal use.

Computerized contact lenses

In the book, contact lenses can overlay information on your field of vision, or, more spectacularly, alter what you see in real-time. For example, instead of looking at cars driving down the road, you can see dragons flying in formation. This is still a long way off, but I've seen news stories every so often about research into computerized contact lenses, and Google Glass is a step in this direction.

Wearable computers

In the book, clothes are wired into your contact lens computers. Shrugging a shoulder, or some other subtle movement, allows you to manipulate the data shown by your lenses. These days, smart-watches, which are linked to your smartphone, are a step in this direction.

Friends of Privacy

Lastly, in the book there was an organization called Friends of Privacy that allowed information to be deleted from the internet. The past few weeks, this very topic has been in the news, with Google removing search results from its index due to the European "right to be forgotten" law.

There were many, many other technological predictions in the book, some of which I only vaguely understood, and some I'm sure I've forgotten. Overall, the book's plot was good, not great. The best parts by far were the descriptions of near-future technology.

And I should point out that Vernor Vinge has a history of accurate predictions. In the late 1970's, he wrote a short story called True Names, which foresaw the rise of the internet and virtual reality. It became a cult classic, influencing many computer scientists and programmers. It's one of the best stories I've ever read.

Recently I read this article about "The Hum", a mysterious, persistent, dull noise some people claim to hear in certain parts of the world. The third paragraph caught my attention:

Exasperated, MacPherson turned his focus to scientific literature and pored over reports of the mysterious noise before coming across an article by University of Oklahoma geophysicist David Deming in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, a peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to exploring topics outside of mainstream science. "I almost dropped my laptop," says MacPherson. "I was sure that I was hearing the Hum."

My first thought was "Hey, an OU professor!" My second thought was "How have I never heard of this journal before?!?" It sounds exactly like the kind of thing I'm interested in! I quickly found the journal's website, and a few minutes of looking around confirmed it. It's basically scientific research into "X-Files"-like topics. So I mentally filed it away and decided to take an even closer look sometime later.

The very next day, on an unrelated website, I read an article about researchers trying to find time travelers:

What Happened When We Tried To Publish a Real Paper Investigating Time Travel

They searched the web looking for people mentioning Pope Francis before he became Pope, or comet ISON before it was discovered. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, they found nothing. As the title implies, most of the article was actually about how the researcher couldn't get his paper published in any academic journals (although he was easily able to sell movie rights). However, the very first comment was from someone saying the Journal of Scientific Exploration was created for exactly this type of paper!

That made two references in two days, and pretty much sealed the deal. I signed up for an Associate Membership, paid my dues, setup an account, and now I'm in. I just wish I'd known about this journal years ago!

On Wednesday we had an HVAC company come by for a routine inspection of our air conditioner. When he was done, the guy (who was by far the friendliest maintenance person I've encountered) went over all the operating stats about our unit: pressure levels, temperatures, airflow, fan speed, system BTU, percent efficiency, amps, capacitors, etc. The takeaway was that our unit is operating almost perfectly across the board. He said he was impressed with how well it was running. Sweet. 

He also convinced me to sign up for their club membership. Normally I decline, but rates went up and the membership now saves a decent chunk of money, rather than the small fraction it used to be. He left, and I felt good about our A/C and fairly pleased that I was now saving money.

Then, Saturday night, the A/C stopped working. And it was just in time for a heat wave: this weekend was the first in nearly 2 years to have back-to-back predicted highs in the 90s. The temp in our house was in the low 80s and only going up. So at 8pm on Saturday I called the HVAC company again. I explained the A/C had just gotten a clean bill of health, and that I was a member of "the club." Fourty-five minutes later a different repair guy was at our house, working in the dark to find the problem.

And within a half hour, he had found it: a bug. Specifically, an earwig. It had the gall to crawl into an electrical switch in our perfectly fine A/C, and was crushed when the unit tried to turn on. Its body then acted as an insulator that prevented electricity from flowing. Once it was removed, the A/C started up just fine. This was the first time such a thing had happened to us, but he said it has happened many times in his 20+ years on the job.

In the end, the dead earwig cost us $100.

A few days ago, while thinking about the awesome-ness of grand slams in baseball, I wondered if a player had ever hit two in a single game. A quick search pulled up an entire Wikipedia page devoted to the topic:

List of Major League Baseball hitters with two grand slams in one game

Here are a few highlights:

• 13 players have accomplished the feat.
• No one has ever hit more than two in a game.
• A St. Louis player hit two grand slams in the same inning! ('99, Fernando Tatis). He set a record for most RBIs in an inning (8).
• One pitcher has done it. He only hit two grand slams in his career, and they happened in the same game.
• One player hit grand slams on consecutive pitches, in the 5th and 6th innings.
• One player hit an additional home run in the game, finishing with 11 RBIs, an American League record.
• One player hit his grand slams from both sides of the plate.

The website baseball-almanac.com points out that this feat is really a team effort:

"One man may end up with all the glory (and RBIs), but without his teammates getting on, he just has two solo home runs."

Dave Winer is the guy who basically invented blogging. He's been writing his blog at scripting.com since the mid-90s. He also helped create RSS, which is possibly the greatest invention of the internet era (at the very least, it's my favorite). A few months back he suggested that people stopped blogging the past few years because blogging tools haven't gotten any better.

That thought has stuck with me ever since. I've been thinking about blogging again, but blogger.com just felt outdated. When Google shut down their RSS reader last year, some people suggested that blogger.com might be next, given how little it's been updated over the years, and how heavily Google+ is being promoted. That hasn't happened so far, but it gave me another reason to look elsewhere.

So I've been looking at blogging platforms recently, and I've discovered there are a lot out there. A few I've looked at include:

• Ghost
• Postagon
• Silvrback
• Roon
• Posthaven

I thought I would use Ghost, because it seems to be the up-and-coming blog software with the most traction. But, it's still in the very early stages, and it looks like themes need to be tweaked and re-tweaked with each new release. So I kept looking, and eventually settled on Posthaven. It's also a work-in-progress, but seems to be further along in some respects. It's simple and clean, and I like that comments are built-in, so I don't have to use a third-party comment system. And, it's a paid service ($5/month), which (I hope) gives it a slightly better chance of succeeding in the long run.

One other neat feature is that email subscriptions are also built-in. So if you want to get notified about new posts, look in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page for a sign-up feature.

Cheers!