My last Political Post, I promise!

INVESTING IN AMERICA’S FUTURE
BARACK OBAMA AND JOE BIDEN’S PLAN FOR SCIENCE AND INNOVATION

Obama and Biden released a plan for improving the United States standing in the sciences. As avid readers of my various blogs know, I was somewhat hesitant about supporting Obama back in the primaries due to his statement of cutting funding to NASA(he has since rescinded this position). America is not producing scientists or engineers of world class quality, rather those people are coming here. But that will not always be the case, as demonstrated by the Hadron Collidor that was constructed in Europe. There will be a time in the future when other countries are more attractive to the science community. That is why I find education, and in particular, science education, to be the most important issue of this or any political race.

The released plan is summarised as such:

• Restoring integrity to U.S. science policy to ensure that decisions that can be informed by science are made on the basis of the strongest possible evidence.

• Doubling over a 10 year period the federal investment in basic research by key science agencies, with a special emphasis on supporting young researchers at the beginning of their careers, and backing high-risk, high-return research.

• Making a national commitment to science education and training by recruiting some of America’s best minds to teach K-12 math and science and by tripling the number of the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowships.

• Encouraging American innovation to flourish by making the R&D tax credit permanent, streamlining our patent system, eliminating the capital gains tax on start-ups and small businesses, and promoting the deployment of next-generation broadband networks.

• Addressing the “grand challenges” of the 21st century through accelerating the transition to a lowcarbon, oil-free economy, enabling all Americans to live longer and healthier lives, and protecting our country from emerging threats to our national security.
--Taken from the introduction to the linked article

I recommend everyone go read it, it only makes me feel better about the upcoming vote on Nov. 4th.

McCain hates planetariums

Watching last night's "Town Hall" style debate, I was struck by McCain's distaste for providing city children an updated solar system project for the Chicago Planetarium.

As America falls further and further behind the rest of the world in math and science, do we want a president that is willing to spend billions of dollars a year on a war with no end, but is going to withhold the splendor of the universe to inner city kids? Kids that probably can't even see the stars in the city?

Crazy.

Sesame Street was an amazing show.

I thought I would share some of these old Sesame Street songs with everyone. They are not all about Math/Science, but the first one is!

Born To Add

Listen to the Bells

Rebel L

Kids Just Love to Brush (I love the squeaks she makes in this song)

Angle Dance from Square One (Credit goes entirely to Noel, I forgot about this one)

I miss being a kid and watching these.

What is the output of the following C program?

Just thought I would share a little piece of hell with all of you. What does the following program print?

---

#include 
void main()
{
     char *c[] = {"ENTER","NEW","POINT","FIRST"};
     char **cp[] = { c+3, c+2, c+1, c };
     char ***cpp = cp;
     printf("%s", **++cpp );
     printf("%s ", *--*++cpp+3);
     printf("%s", *cpp[-2]+3);
     printf("%s\n", cpp[-1][-1]+1);
}

---

Highlight below this line to see the answer.
Pointerstew

Interview with a medium, the tough questions...

For some reason I read this interview with a psychic(oops, I mean medium...) and I am struck by the inanity of the questions. So here are questions I would like to put to this lady if I ever meet her. Feel free to add to these questions.

1. You say that the dead have memories of life, but also they do not have physical form. How is this possible, when the storing of memory appears to be linked to the physical structure of the brain? An example would be brain damage leading to memory loss. Wouldn't death be the ultimate brain damage?

2. You say that the dead have no physical form, yet also say they have tried to have sex with you(seriously?). How is this possible when sex is a physical act?

3. Do you see them with your eyes or hear them with your ears? If not, why do you say they appear to you in clothes?

4. If the dead don't have the 5 senses(as you claim) how can a dimensional choice(whatever that means), involve something like wonderful music or beautiful scenery?

Ultimately it seems like this sort of reality is exceptionally complex and improbable. What seems far more likely is people like this lady are so full of shit, they can't help having it come out of their mouths.

"Now we are all sons of bitches."

The quote above was spoken by Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge, on July 16, 1945, sixty-three years ago today, after the detonation of the first atomic bomb.

I advocate scientific research and education nearly above all else, but we need to remember all advances must walk hand in hand with responsibility and maturity. By learning about the structure of matter, we also gained the ability to extinguish hundreds of thousands of lives in a matter of milliseconds.

Research cannot and should not operate in a vacuum. I would never advocate halting advances, but they must happen with the knowledge of the consequences. I ask that everyone, including myself, think about what happened 63 years ago and how it changed the world.

Easy day, Let's make fun of Creationists!

Should Evolutionists be allowed to vote?

"The facts warrent the violent expulsion of
all evolutionists from civilized society. I am quite serious that
their danger to society is so great that, in a sane society, they
would be, at a minimum, denied a vote in the administration of
the society, as well as any job where they might influence immature
humans, e.g., scout, or youth, leader, teacher and, obviously,
professor."

Donald in Mathmagic Land

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:


Special thanks to Felicia Chávez for the suggestion.

Ernst Haeckel: Art Forms in Nature

Last week, I took a trip down to San Francisco to visit my brother. While there we tried to see the major sights of the area, and this included a trip to the Monte Ray Aquarium. It was fun, and there were lots of neat animals, but in the gift shop I picked up a book by Ernst Haeckel, called "Art Forms in Nature". I had heard of the scientist before, he is frequently used in those poorly made creationist arguments, so I was intrigued to see his work.

I thought it was beautiful and amazing. Not only is it a great scientific cataloging of marine life, but the pictures are wonderful works of art in their own right. He manages to combine organic details with an almost mathematical attention to symmetry and form. I found it fascinating, and have included some plates from the book for you to look at:

Circles

Zombie Crabs!

Today I would like to bring your attention to a pretty amazing, cool, and disgusting creature. I am talking about the fascinating Sacculina Carcini.

The female creature inserts itself into a host crab and grows throughout the body and parts of itself emerge underneath the crab(See picture on the right)

When a male Sacculina Carcini mates with it(through an opening the female creates in the hosts body) the host crabs body is filled with million of eggs. The crab itself is still alive, and in fact, somehow, it's behavior is altered, where it cares for the eggs as if they were it's own young!

Somehow this parasitic creature makes the host behave how it desires! Not only does it change it's behavior, but if the host crab is a male crab, it alters it's host physically to appear as a female crab, to help it care for it's own young.

Neat stuff, here are some links if you want to read up on it.

• Do Parasites Rule the World?
• Information from the University of Hong Kong
  

Superstitious Garbage

A Girl with no face.

My name is Ofelia Heras. Im 16 yearsold. Im a murderer. I have no face.When you look at me youll dieimmediately.You have 900 seconds torepost this or I will visit you tonight.

All misspellings and grammatical errors preserved.

I really dislike this stuff. I know it's stupid, and everyone knows it's stupid, but then why do I see it so often? Do people really rationally think it's dumb, but repost it, "Just in case"? Personally I have invited the retribution of the girl with no face(unless this post counts), Clowns with bloody knives, Old Women with sharp teeth, as well as countless curses to my love life. Nothing has ever come of it. I have recited bloody mary to the bathroom mirror, Broken mirrors, and personally invited the wrath of god. Oh, let's not forget, I point out rainbows every time I see them.

So I would like to declare myself the tester of superstitions. If anyone wants to test a curse, have someone spend a night in a haunted house, or anything that they might be a little cautious about doing themselves, but is not something to be rationally worried about, I am happy to try! I would love to show nothing happens, and if it does happen, I would be happy just to find that out(no matter how horrible it was).

Would anyone like to buy a paper declaring my soul is sold to them for five bucks?

Giant Squid being dissected today.

The largest giant squid carcass ever found will be examined and dissected today! You can read about it at National Geographic and even watch it live via web cam here! Isn't the internet great!

As for myself, I cannot watch it live from work, but I might check it out later. I have the feeling I won't get much from it, perhaps I will read the summary after they have figured it all out.

Powers of Ten

Collision Detection Lessons

Excellent Book!

Yesterday I picked up the book: "Real Time Collision Detection", by Christopher Ericson at Borders. It is amazingly detailed. Pretty much every primitive collision algorithm is detailed. In addition it covers fun concepts like BSP trees, grids,hierarchical grids, closest point problems, and optimizations. Also of great help were the sections on discrete movement vs continuous movement in games.

It might be something of an overkill for Just Another Story, but it's nice to have a detailed reference for these things. Also I already found a few issues with how I was addressing the problem of general collision detection in that project. I am going to read through this book a few times, and come up with a design for the phyics component of the game.