houghtonlib:

The women’s petition against coffee : representing to publick consideration the grand inconveniencies accruing to their sex from the excessive use of that drying, enfeebling liquor, 1674.

*EC65.A100.674w

"Our men, who in former Ages were justly esteemed the Ablest Performers in Christendome; But to our unspeakable Grief, we find of late a very sensible Decay of that true Old English Vigor; our Gallants being every way so Frenchified, that they are become meer Cock-sparrows, fluttering things that come on Sa sa, with a world of Fury, but are not able to stand to it, and in the very first Charge fall down flat before us. Never did Men wear greater breeches, or carry less in them of any Mettle whatsoever."

The mens answer to the womens petition against coffee : vindicating their own performances, and the vertues of that liquor, from the undeserved aspersions lately cast upon them, by their scandalous pamphlet, 1674.

*EC65.A100.674m

Houghton Library, Harvard University

From this interview:

"Oh, yes. I’m very proud of not having a Ph.D. I think the Ph.D. system is an abomination. It was invented as a system for educating German professors in the 19th century, and it works well under those conditions. It’s good for a very small number of people who are going to spend their lives being professors. But it has become now a kind of union card that you have to have in order to have a job, whether it’s being a professor or other things, and it’s quite inappropriate for that. It forces people to waste years and years of their lives sort of pretending to do research for which they’re not at all well-suited. In the end, they have this piece of paper which says they’re qualified, but it really doesn’t mean anything. The Ph.D. takes far too long and discourages women from becoming scientists, which I consider a great tragedy. So I have opposed it all my life without any success at all. . ."

Polka-Geist

Harry Mathews devised this Möbius equivoque. Write this stanza on one side of a strip of paper:

I’d just as soon lose my mind
If your fondness for me lasts
I’d abandon all female charms
As long as I stay dear to you
One could seed one’s petunias
Among humdrum city flowerbeds
Igniting ice is likelier than
Our remaining snugly together

Turn the strip over lengthwise and write this stanza on the other side:

if your desire turns elsewhere
my dream of love might come true,
if you say I’m past caring for,
my deepest wish will be granted.
in distant regions of the skies,
the stars could make their way –
separating, whatever the pretext,
alone can keep my world intact.

Give the strip a half twist and glue the ends together. Now the poem reads:

I’d just as soon lose my mind if your desire turns elsewhere
If your fondness for me lasts my dream of love might come true,
I’d abandon all female charms if you say I’m past caring for,
As long as I stay dear to you my deepest wish will be granted.
One could seed one’s petunias in distant regions of the skies,
Among humdrum city flowerbeds the stars could make their way–
Igniting ice is likelier than separating, whatever the pretext,
Our remaining snugly together alone can keep my world intact.

See Another Equivoque.

O say can you see … that this line begins with an “O” and not an “Oh”? “O” may seem like just an old fashioned way to write “Oh,” but it actually has a slightly different meaning. Consider some other famous O’s: O Captain, my captain, O Pioneers, O Come All Ye Faithful, O Canada, O Brother Where Art Thou, O ye of little faith, O Christmas Tree. These are all examples of what’s known as the vocative O—it indicates that someone or something is being directly addressed. When you say “O Christmas tree” the “O” means you are talking right to the Christmas tree. The rest of the song bears this out. (Your branches are lovely! You’re always wearing that dress of green!) Same for “O Canada” and pretty much any anthem. The words to your school song probably go something like “O [alma mater], your campus is beautiful, and we think you’re great.”

“Oh” has a wider range. It can indicate pain, surprise, disappointment, or really any emotional state. While “oh, man!” could mean a number of things, “O man!” means “hey, you there … you man over there.”

The convention now is that while “oh” can be lower case, and is usually followed by a comma, “O” is always uppercase and without a comma. But there hasn’t always been a strict separation between the two forms. “Oh” and “O” were used interchangeably for a long time. The meanings often overlap too. When Juliet says, “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” is she addressing him in her imagination or sighing with emotion? A little of both. It’s not hard to see why it’s so difficult to keep a firm border around vocative O in English. These days it looks pretty rarefied and archaic and is usually only seen in old poem and song titles...

...ya, rly. Thanks to LOLspeak, "O" has found a way to adapt and survive, but there it's not limited to the vocative sense. The versatile, nimble "O" rolls on its merry way, picking up new meanings, and trying to stay relevant however it can.

Pyramid Energy

What took more energy, the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Apollo Mission? If we could convert the energy to build the Great Pyramid, would it be enough to send a rocket to the Moon and back?

Michael Marmol

No.

A Saturn V's fuel contains enough stored energy to lift up and stack about 20 pyramids worth of rock from the surface.

That's the simple physicist-style answer, based on calculating the energy required to lift idealized blocks of stone against the Earth's gravity.[1]Assume a spherical pyramid in a vacuum ... In practice, pyramid construction wasn't so simple. Thanks to friction, the Egyptians probably expended more energy dragging the stones across the ground than lifting them upward—and the "lifting upward" involved a lot of friction, too.

Most of the energy they expended was lost to the heat of friction, but about 10¹² joules of it remains in the Great Pyramid, stored as gravitational potential energy. If all this energy were liberated and—somehow—used to accelerate an Apollo spacecraft ...

... it wouldn't be enough to launch it to the Moon.

On the other hand, the reverse probably wouldn't work, either.

But maybe we're making the wrong kind of comparison. Why did Michael—like many others—compare the pyramids to the Apollo program in the first place? Perhaps it's simply that they both look like they took a huge amount of work—and maybe that's the best way to compare them.

The Great Pyramid, according to one analysis, took an average of 13,200 people 10 years to construct. The Apollo project took an average of about 200,000 people, working over a similar period of time, to launch six Moon landings and another 6-10 missions using the same equipment before and after—which, if you divided it up equally,[2]Which is a bit of a stretch, since launching a second Apollo mission probably lets you reuse a lot more of your work on the first one than building a second pyramid. is about 15,000 hours each. In other words, each Apollo mission took about the same amount of work as each pyramid.[3]The Apollo program was unpopular at the time; people thought it was a waste of money. While it's easy to remember only the excited children gathered around TVs to watch the first Moon landing, the truth is, spending public money on space exploration has never been all that popular with the general public. For all we know, the pyramids were just as unpopular with the Egyptian public in their time. They probably weren't built by slaves, but that doesn't mean everyone was happy about them.

There are all kinds of ways we could measure the energy that went into various megaprojects, but we end up making a lot of subjective judgment calls about what counts as part of the project. Instead, let's go back to the simple idea of gravitational potential energy, and see how the Great Pyramid compares to other structures by that measure.

The gravitational energy locked up in the Great Pyramid—on the order of 10¹² joules—is more than in even the biggest modern skyscrapers. The Burj Khalifa may be huge, but it's mostly empty space. Egyptian pyramids, on the other hand, are solid rock nearly all the way through.

However, the Great Pyramid isn't the human structure with the highest "gravitational potential energy" score. The Three Gorges Dam, built across the Yangtze River in China, is both taller and heavier than the Great Pyramid. It contains an order of magnitude more potential energy than the pyramid in its concrete and steel alone—without even considering the far larger potential energy of the water behind it.

The Great Pyramid has a few other big competitors. The former Fresh Kills Landfill probably had more gravitational potential energy, as do various other giant dams. The Great Pyramid of Cholula in Mexico has a larger volume than the pyramid at Giza, though probably weighs slightly less and has less potential energy.

But these are all dwarfed by our biggest rock-and-dirt-lifting projects: mines. Mining involves lifting even more matter against gravity than building concrete dams, pyramids, or landfills. Humans have put a huge amount of industrial power into digging mines, so it's no surprise that the biggest mines involve 10¹⁴ to 10¹⁵ joules of gravitational energy—orders of magnitude more than the biggest aboveground structures. After all, open-pit mines are basically reverse pyramids:

These projects are pretty big. However, the Dutch have envisioned something bigger.

In 2011, a Dutch writer launched Die berg komt er, a semi-serious plan to build an artificial mountain in the Netherlands. Some versions of the plan would involve moving far more material than in even the largest mines, and the immense weight would probably cause the Dutch countryside to sink—which isn't really something they need more of.[4]For this reason, most serious proposals involve a hollow mountain. I mean, serious compared to the other ones.

This plan is obviously impractical. Fortunately, someone else has come up with a better one.

A group of Germans, led by architect Jakob Tigges, have decided that Berlin already has an artificial mountain. Built on the site of the former Tempelhof Airport, "The Berg" towers 1,071 meters above the surrounding landscape, edging out the Burj Khalifa as the tallest manmade structure on Earth. It has a website, a Facebook group, photos, testimonials, and tourism information.

Now, nobody can see this mountain. But supporters insist that it's there.

If only the Egyptians had thought of that one.

Mr. T wrestles alligator. 

Readers — I loved everything about this column except its perhaps inevitable conclusion. It’s by Alan Newland, a former teacher and headteacher in London who now lectures on teaching and runs the site newteacherstalk. He’s recalling being a brand new teacher taking his Year 6 kids (10 year olds) on a field trip to the dinosaurs 20 years ago (boldface mine):

THE DAY I LOST A CHILD ON THE TUBE by Alan Newland

…I had 30 kids. I was on my own (except for a mum who worked part-time at the school – known in those days as “a Lady Helper”). The kids are excited. It’s a day out. All they care about is comparing their sandwich fillings. We are on the platform and I see the first train coming is not going our way. So I’m trying to make myself heard above the melee of commuters, dancing up and down the platform trying to keep the kids back: “This is not our train everybody! Stand back! Stand back! It’s not our train!” I think I’ve got the situation under control.

I haven’t.

There’s always one isn’t there?

It’s Maxine. She’s a lovely kid but she’s not taking a blind bit of notice of me. The train comes in, the doors open and she jumps on thinking everyone is going to follow her. The kids see her and shout: “Maxine! Get off, it’s not our train!” But it’s too late, before she can, the doors close.

I will never forget her face.

It’s a bit like that painting by Munch – you know the one – it’s called “The Scream”. Only this time it’s with a black girl wearing horn-rimmed glasses and her face is pressed against the door of the tube train as it passes me.

Now… just pause for a minute and think how the other kids reacted to this?

Maybe with horror? Shock? Panic? Perhaps even a little nervous laughter? Well, if you think laughter, you’re only half right.

It was raucous, uncontrolled hilarity. Those kids were laughing hysterically. “Maxine! You idiot!” they screamed, pointing at her and bouncing down the platform, chasing the train for as long as possible before it disappears in to the darkened tunnels of the London Underground.

I am the one in a state of horror, shock and panic – because I don’t even know where the train is going.

These days when you use the London Underground it has announcers, information boards, help points, CCTV, friendly people in blue uniforms everywhere. Then, there was nothing. You would have to go back up to street level to find someone to help.

I set about trying to organise my “Lady Helper” to manage the kids while I set off for some real help. I am running back and forth trying to find where the train has gone and what to do. The kids are still falling about laughing. They think this is great. Even the “Lady Helper” thinks it’s funny.

Within a couple of minutes, someone walks round the corner and I get a real shock….

It was Maxine.

How did that happen? Well, the next stop is Euston Square, only 50 seconds away. She had obviously jumped off the train there, run over the footbridge and there was a train coming back in the opposite direction. I kid you not – she was back with us within three minutes. Ok. Four. Tops. In fact, it was so quick, the kids were still laughing when she walked round the corner.

But boy, was I relieved. Phew!

So off we went to the Natural History Museum. When I got the kids back to school I asked them to write all about dinosaurs and what do you think they wrote about? Yeah,  you’ve guessed it.

But I’ll tell you this. It didn’t even occur to me to report that incident to the head teacher. I’ve often wondered why. But I think over the years I’ve concluded that, in a funny sort of way, nothing really happened.

Yes, I know I lost a child on the London Underground… but there was no real incident to report. Maxine wasn’t hurt, she wasn’t even upset. Maybe she was a little embarrassed because the other kids were laughing at her, but other than that there was no crisis, not even an issue. I didn’t even think of mentioning it to Maxine’s mum.

Fast-forward 20 years.

I am now the head teacher of a primary school in Hackney and my Year 6 teacher wants to take her 24 kids to the Natural History Museum. How many adults do you think she has going on the trip this time? Four? Five? Six? Actually it’s seven. This includes two parents who won’t agree to let their children go on the trip unless they are in attendance too.

The teacher, a great girl who has bags of energy and ideas, has already spent her weekend doing a reconnaissance visit. She’s done a risk assessment, insurance forms, permission slips and planned the educational outcomes brilliantly. Off they go to the Natural History Museum with 24 kids and six other adults. It’s still a bus down to Kings Cross and the tube round to South Kensington. They get to the platform of Kings Cross Underground. Guess what happens?

No, it’s not the teacher who gets on the wrong train this time.

No, Maxine has not grown up to be the Station Manager of Kings Cross.

Believe it or not, exactly the same thing happens. Only this time, it’s not one girl, it’s four!

The train pulls in and the teacher is calling out: “It’s not our train everybody! Stand back! Stand back!” But in spite of the fact that there’s a group of girls with an adult stood right next to them, they are so excited they are not listening to anyone. As the train doors open, they jump on. Everyone is shouting for them to get off. But before they do, in the melee of the crowded train, the doors close and the train moves off.

What’s the reaction of the other kids this time?

Laughter?

Wrong. (But you probably knew that already.)

Shock. Panic. Screaming. Crying. This time it’s all of those and more – not just from the four on the train, but the other 20 still left on the platform, plus some of the adults too.

And the four girls on the train didn’t do what Maxine did and jump off at the next stop. No, they were so freaked out by this they stayed on the train to the end of the line. It was the Metropolitan Line. It finishes in Amersham in Buckinghamshire.

Back at school I get a phone call from the station manager there saying to me “I’ve got four of your girls here. What do you want me to do with them?” So I send a teacher out in a taxi to bring them back. There was no harm done. But the next day I get those 24 kids together and I ask them: “How many of you have been on the London Underground before?” Out of 24 Hackney born and bred kids, only eight had ever previously been on the tube.

Now there’s a change of life-style for you. Twenty years previously, Maxine, as a ten-year old girl had taken herself off to school everyday using buses and tube trains without the slightest care. She had built up knowledge, a sense of direction, common sense and most importantly the confidence to deal with a situation if something went slightly awry.

These kids — and it’s not their fault – but they don’t have what Maxine had. Most live within three hundred yards of the school but their parents drive them to school every day. Most don’t have the confidence and the ability to assess risk and deal with it in the way Maxine did.

But the reason I tell you this story is not because of the reaction of the children that day, but the reaction of parents. I said earlier I didn’t even mention the first incident to Maxine’s mum though I think if I had told her, her likely reaction would have been to give Maxine a roasting for “not listening to her teacher!”

But with these parents it was different. Within hours of the class getting back, I had over twenty parents outside my office demanding to know why this, that and the other had not been done, why hadn’t we organised a coach [that is, a bus], why hadn’t we “protected their children from the hazards of London transport?” All questions we could well answer, and did….

Here’s the end, which basically says that now that the fear level is higher, schools must accommodate it.  Of course, I think, “No, we must work to bring that level back to reality — which is where it was 20 years ago!” But I don’t run a school, so that’s easy for me to say.

So I’m saying it. – L.

Pleasures.

Pleasure one: Bird sniffing

Readers — Some day, sooner rather than later, I would like the idea of not trusting men around kids to be considered as repulsive as racism. At that time, opinion pieces like this one will seem completely wild and disgusting by all but the lunatic fringe. – L.

I Don’t Want My Kids Sitting Next to a Man on a  Plane, by Tracey Spicer

I know it’s sexist. But I don’t want my kids sitting next to a man on a plane.

Sure, almost 90 per cent of child sexual abuse is committed by someone in, or known to, the family, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

However, stranger danger is a risk and women are perpetrators in only about 8 per cent of cases, says the ABS data.

In 2001, Northwest Airlines paid a US family half a million dollars after a 10-year-old girl was molested by a 28-year-old man on a flight from Kansas to Detroit.

…My nine-year-old Taj and seven-year-old Grace flew as unaccompanied minors, for the first time, on Virgin last year. They were put in the last row with a bunch of other kids where doting staff plied them with treats.

It was a relief to see their smiling faces at the end but I was disappointed I had no choice about where they’d be sitting.

Read the rest here. You may need an airsickness bag.  - L.

There’s nowhere to sit. All the spots are taken by rhinoceroses.

“It is disconcerting to reflect on the number of students we have flunked in chemistry for not knowing what we later found to be untrue.” — Attributed to Deming by B.R. Bertramson, in Robert L. Weber, Science with a Smile, 1992

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April 16th, 2014: Adventure Time #27 is out today! IT INVOLVES: Finn and Jake being ghosts BMO and Ice King on a date EVEN MORE, AS IF THAT WASN'T ENOUGH?? You can read a preview by clicking on this page! You can get it locally, online, or digitally. One year ago today: the trick here is that it is ensconced in law that people can have different opinions about plays – Ryan

This poem takes a pretty dark view of marriage — unless you read only the alternate lines:

That man must lead a happy life
Who’s free from matrimonial chains,
Who is directed by a wife
Is sure to suffer for his pains.
Adam could find no solid peace
When Eve was given for a mate;
Until he saw a woman’s face
Adam was in a happy state.
In all the female race appear
Hypocrisy, deceit, and pride;
Truth, darling of a heart sincere,
In woman never did reside.
What tongue is able to unfold
The failings that in woman dwell;
The worths in woman we behold
Are almost imperceptible.
Confusion take the man, I say,
Who changes from his singleness,
Who will not yield to woman’s sway,
Is sure of earthly blessedness.

– W.S. Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1892

A look at what today’s traditions owe to evil spirits, dental hygiene, and Queen Victoria.

BBQ Potato Chips

1 cup apple wood chips

1 tablespoon smoked paprika

 1 tablespoon dark brown sugar

1 teaspoon onion powder

1 teaspoon kosher salt

½ teaspoon garlic powder 

¼ teaspoon chili powder, optional

2 pounds russet potatoes, scrubbed and rinsed

2 quarts peanut oil

 

Procedure

NOTE: If you have not built a Steel Lotus - you can simply ‘smoke’ the potatoes in three batches on a single folding steamer basket for 10 minutes per batch.

Soak the wood chip in water for 30 minutes.

Slice the potatoes width wise into 1/8 inch thick rounds. Arrange the potatoes on the Steel Lotus dividing them into thirds and staggering any overlapping pieces.

Line an 8-quart stockpot with aluminum foil and set the drained wood chips in the bottom. Set the Steel Lotus in the pot over the wooden chips, cover, and set over high heat. “Smoke” the potato slices for 20 minutes (you may want to turn on your fan or hood vent) then remove the pot from the heat.

While the potatoes smoke, combine the paprika, brown sugar, onion powder, salt, chili powder, and garlic powder in a food processor or a small coffee grinder reserved for spices. Pulse to combine and form a fine powder. Set aside.

Remove the Steel Lotus from the pot and remove the potato slices to clean paper towels (this wicks away any residual moisture to prevent splattering oil later).

Heat the peanut oil in a 4-quart cast iron Dutch oven, over medium-high heat, to 300˚ F.

While the oil heats, line a large mixing bowl with paper towels. Carefully add the potato slices one at a time to the hot oil. Using a spider , fry 6 to 8 slices at a time in the hot oil for 3 to 4 minutes or until golden brown and crisp. Remove the chips with the spider and hold over the oil to drain as much excess oil as possible. Move the finished chips to the lined bowl and shake to remove additional oil. Adjust the heat as necessary to maintain 300˚ F and frying the potatoes in small batches.

When the final batch has finished frying, move the chips to a large brown paper bag. Sprinkle the chips with the spice mixture, fold the top of the bag over to seal and shake. Serve immediately.

Yield: 8 servings

Looking for an Independence Day tipple that says "No hard feelings about that revolution business" to our British chums? Grab the star of the colonial British medicine cabinet!

Readers — This story is headlined, “Attempted kidnapping caught on tape!” but…was it? I’m glad the girl is safe but does a slowing car really equal = “kidnap threat”?

Unless there’s more to this story than what we see here, it strikes me as bizarre that everyone is acting as if the girl somehow only barely slipped the clutches of a demon. – L

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

 

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

http://t.co/ElQxamGFnJ

mckelvie:

popculturebrain:

Leading Men Age, Leading Women Don’t | Vulture

There are more charts if you click through.

It took me a long time to realise why the male age line isn’t straight, but it’s because the years along the bottom axis aren’t equally spaced. Good visualisation of a depressing point, otherwise.

Y-axes are misleading as well since they start so close to the lowest value. Similar to the Fox News graphs on Obamacare enrollment http://s3.amazonaws.com/dk-production/images/75745/large/obamacareenrollment-fncchart.jpg?1396284158

Dear Diary,

I am just a lowly battle pet. My days are filled with endless slaughter; both my own, and that of my enemies. Mine is a world of war, death, and remarkable pain. The worst part is that I thought I was alone. Most of the gladiatorial critters I face seem to enjoy their lot in life. They're fierce and dedicated to the adrenaline of battle. They do not seem to suffer the burdens I carry.

And then I saw the Sad Battle Pet Diary by the machinimist Ninth Batter. In this movie, he reads the angst-ridden stories of other pets like me. It was a soothing balm to my soul, and I thank him for it.

---

Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.

---

Filed under: WoW Moviewatch

WoW Moviewatch: Sad Battle Pet Diary originally appeared on WoW Insider on Mon, 07 Apr 2014 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

We [Einstein and Ernst Straus] had finished the preparation of a paper and were looking for a paper clip. After opening a lot of drawers we finally found one which turned out to be too badly bent for use. So we were looking for a tool to straighten it. Opening a lot more drawers we came upon a whole box of unused paper clips. Einstein immediately started to shape one of them into a tool to straighten the bent one. When asked what he was doing, he said, ‘Once I am set on a goal, it becomes difficult to deflect me.’

– Ernst Straus, “Memoir,” in A.P. French, ed., Einstein: A Centenary Volume, 1979

(Einstein said to an assistant at Princeton that this was the most characteristic anecdote that could be told of him.)

Posted by Aaron Rothman, Product Manager

Promotional mail has a lot of images, from pictures of snazzy new shoes to photos of that rock-climbing gym you’ve been wanting to try. But right now, those images are buried inside your messages—and with only subject lines to go on, it can be a challenge to quickly pick out the deals and offers that interest you most. To help you find what you’re looking for faster, you can now sign up for a new field trial for Gmail that lets you view the Promotions tab in a more visual way.

To take part in this field trial, you can sign up at g.co/gmailfieldtrial and if you’re selected, a new grid view will bring to the top of your inbox key images from deals, offers, and other marketing emails if you have the Promotions tab enabled. Grid view also comes with infinite scrolling, making it easy to quickly scan through your messages and find the ones that look interesting.
You’ll be able to toggle between the new visual grid view and the standard list view by clicking a button at the top of the tab. We’re just experimenting for now, but we hope this view will make it a little bit easier for you to get things done. Sign up at g.co/gmailfieldtrial and if you're selected, we’ll follow up for your feedback!

Note: If you send promotional emails, check out the Gmail Developers site to learn how you can give your readers a better experience in Gmail using this feature.

Some of you may remember the "Google Flu" effort, where the company was going to try to track outbreaks of influenza in the US by mining Google queries. There was never much clarification about what terms, exactly, they were going to flag as being indicative of someone coming down with the flu, but the hype (or hope) at the time was pretty strong:

Because the relative frequency of certain queries is highly correlated with the percentage of physician visits in which a patient presents with influenza-like symptoms, we can accurately estimate the current level of weekly influenza activity in each region of the United States, with a reporting lag of about one day. . .

So how'd that work out? Not so well. Despite a 2011 paper that seemed to suggest things were going well, the 2013 epidemic wrong-footed the Google Flu Trends (GFT) algorithms pretty thoroughly.

This article in Science finds that the real-world predictive power has been pretty unimpressive. And the reasons behind this failure are not hard to understand, nor were they hard to predict. Anyone who's ever worked with clinical trial data will see this one coming:

The initial version of GFT was a particularly problematic marriage of big and small data. Essentially, the methodology was to find the best matches among 50 million search terms to fit 1152 data points. The odds of finding search terms that match the propensity of the flu but are structurally unrelated, and so do not predict the future, were quite high. GFT developers, in fact, report weeding out seasonal search terms unrelated to the flu but strongly correlated to the CDC data, such as those regarding high school basketball. This should have been a warning that the big data were overfitting the small number of cases—a standard concern in data analysis. This ad hoc method of throwing out peculiar search terms failed when GFT completely missed the nonseasonal 2009 influenza A–H1N1 pandemic.

The Science authors have a larger point to make as well:

“Big data hubris” is the often implicit assumption that big data are a substitute for, rather than a supplement to, traditional data collection and analysis. Elsewhere, we have asserted that there are enormous scientific possibilities in big data. However, quantity of data does not mean that one can ignore foundational issues of measurement and construct validity and reliability and dependencies among data. The core challenge is that most big data that have received popular attention are not the output of instruments designed to produce valid and reliable data amenable for scientific analysis.

The quality of the data matters very, very, much, and quantity is no substitute. You can make a very large and complex structure out of toothpicks and scraps of wood, because those units are well-defined and solid. You cannot do the same with a pile of cotton balls and dryer lint, not even if you have an entire warehouse full of the stuff. If the individual data points are squishy, adding more of them will not fix your analysis problem; it will make it worse.

Since 2011, GFT has missed (almost invariably on the high side) for 108 out of 111 weeks. As the authors show, even low-tech extrapolation from three-week-lagging CDC data would have done a better job. But then, the CDC data are a lot closer to being real numbers. Something to think about next time someone's trying to sell you on a BIg Data project. Only trust the big data when the little data are trustworthy in turn.

Update: a glass-half-full response in the comments.

Achewood strip for Friday, March 21, 2014

In today's Robot News, "CubeStormer 3" has set a new world record for solving a Rubik's Cube—just 3.253 seconds. This is a field known as "speedcubing," and the human record is just over 5.5 seconds. I, for one, welcome our new robot speedcubing overlords.

CubeStormer 3 breaks the old world record held by—wait for it—CubeStormer 2, which took 5.27 seconds to solve a randomized cube. Here's video; the action starts about nine seconds in, and it goes very quickly, of course.

And here's an overhead look at the process with less hype at the beginning and end:

The CubeStormer systems use LEGO Mindstorms robotics controlled by smartphones to manipulate the cubes. (The phones use cameras to observe the layout of the cube, then figure out the next move, and command the LEGO robot arms to do it.) It's easier to see what's going on by looking at the slightly slower CubeStormer 2, shown here:

And if you've got time, parts, and patience aplenty, here's a time-lapse video showing the creation of a (non-CubeStormer) LEGO speedcubing machine:

We first covered this beautiful madness when the original CubeStormer debuted back in 2010. (We also have a video roundup including some human speedcubers.)

(Via CNN.)

Ever wanted to compare the relative speed of 2 or more PCs? Or maybe you're about to replace your laptop hard disk with an SSD and you want to be able to tell whether the new device really is faster? If so, you need some sort of PC benchmarking program, and they don't come much smaller or simpler than this free program.


http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/really-simple-pc-benchmarking-utility.htm

Cheers Roleplaying Game, (a character sheet example)

I’d really like this to be a real game.