I think that what The Office has been doing recently is kind of interesting. The show started off with the typical office humor point of view where there's a normal person or two, the boss is incompetent and each coworker has their own bit of insanity. Pretty much the Dilbert formula. I'm not saying there wasn't anything original about The Office (well, ok there was nothing original about the American version), but the perspective was pretty standard. Over the past couple of seasons as Jim has taken on more responsibilities we've seen hints about the transition to come. And now that Jim is a co-manager they've really flipped the situation around. We learn that while Michael is a weirdo and somewhat incompetent, some of the insanity is on purpose and Jim who is expected to know better is actually needing direction from Michael.
Nothing that extraordinary, but if office fans are the Dilbert crowd who go through their day convinced they know better than their boss then the show is in some way now making fun of their fans (or at least correcting them). Seems like a bit of a strange move. Luckily Michael still comes off insane so it is not a complete reversal of views.
This sentence is acting as a transition between topics.
When news and talk shows have Jenny McCarthy on to talk about vaccines I scream "WTF IS GOING ON? WHO'S BEEN HANDING OUT THE STUPID PILLS?". Oh, that's not where I was going with that. Let's try again. When news and talk shows have Jenny McCarthy on to talk about vaccines it might seem appropriate to have another guest who is a vaccine specialist at the CDC or some university explain why vaccines are actually good and talk about the extensive studies that show they don't cause autism.
However, that's not the counterpoint that should follow her appearance. The guest after Jenny McCarthy should be a vaccine specialist at the CDC or some university and should be wearing a sport coat with chalk dust on it over a t-shirt with Maxwell's equations, too loose pants and pure white tennis shoes, also acceptable is a free t-shirt from a career fair plus jeans that were purchased in the early 80s and birkenstocks with white socks, bonus points for taped glasses and extra bonus points for soldered glasses. The scientist should be there to provide a counterpoint to Jenny McCarthy's choice of outfit.
If McCarthy cries foul because she went to the "university of google", the scientist can explain that he went to the university library and read all the books on fashion he could find, most of which happen to be from previous centuries, but hey he read a bunch of stuff so he's just as qualified to discuss fashion as she is to discuss vaccines.
The weird thing is I don't even watch the shows that have McCarthy on, but it generates so much buzz that I hear about it on NPR and news websites. Hm, I just admitted that I'm complaining about interviews I've never even seen. Well I guess I should go ahead and dedicate this post to everyone attending the "university of google" where poorly informed rants like this post count as reading assignments. Remember that anytime a claim from this blog is cited it can be proceed by, "My source, who has a graduate degree from MIT, says...".
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Mind Reading Showers
First off for all the Stars Wars fans there's this.
Ok, now for the overly thought out terrible idea.
I want a hat that I wear when I take a shower that reads my EEG. Over time I would train it to learn when I'm feeling too hot and too cold. Once it has caught on to what pattern indicates my feeling about temperature it could take over control of the shower temperature. If you think having an EEG learn when I feel hot vs cold is the most impractical part of this idea, I think you'd be surprised - this is when a link to an article about one of those devices that let people move a mouse cursor with their mind would be helpful, but it's too late at night to bother. Might be able to make the problem easier by also looking at something like rates of nerves firing on the skin, especially for an early indicator if the temperature is too high or low. Of course the feedback system would have to be carefully designed so that it wouldn't make changes too rapidly or overshoot the goal by too much, but that's not terribly difficult (basically just need to make it an over-damped system or critically damped if a little overshoot is acceptable).
This might sound super lazy and it is, but I am annoyed when I have to keep adjusting the knob up and down to maintain what feels like a comfortable temperature. There should also be a shutoff button that both electronically and mechanically shuts off water to the shower in case the system went haywire and cranked up the temperature. If the EEG was connected to the shower by wires that would get in the way, but all of this could be done wirelessly, especially if the hat did some of the data processing. Hm, I guess the hat would get in the way of washing my hair, but do you really have to wash hair since after a while you cut it off and grow new hair anyway? Well, I guess clean hair is nice so instead of a hat for EEG the shower could be built inside a fMRI. I'd have to keep perfectly still, but if I'm spending a million dollars on a shower I could probably have it wash me without it needing me to move.
Somewhat more seriously I'm surprised that I've never seen a digitally controlled shower. I wouldn't expect it most places, but maybe fancy hotels - well maybe fancier hotels than I go to.
Ok, now for the overly thought out terrible idea.
I want a hat that I wear when I take a shower that reads my EEG. Over time I would train it to learn when I'm feeling too hot and too cold. Once it has caught on to what pattern indicates my feeling about temperature it could take over control of the shower temperature. If you think having an EEG learn when I feel hot vs cold is the most impractical part of this idea, I think you'd be surprised - this is when a link to an article about one of those devices that let people move a mouse cursor with their mind would be helpful, but it's too late at night to bother. Might be able to make the problem easier by also looking at something like rates of nerves firing on the skin, especially for an early indicator if the temperature is too high or low. Of course the feedback system would have to be carefully designed so that it wouldn't make changes too rapidly or overshoot the goal by too much, but that's not terribly difficult (basically just need to make it an over-damped system or critically damped if a little overshoot is acceptable).
This might sound super lazy and it is, but I am annoyed when I have to keep adjusting the knob up and down to maintain what feels like a comfortable temperature. There should also be a shutoff button that both electronically and mechanically shuts off water to the shower in case the system went haywire and cranked up the temperature. If the EEG was connected to the shower by wires that would get in the way, but all of this could be done wirelessly, especially if the hat did some of the data processing. Hm, I guess the hat would get in the way of washing my hair, but do you really have to wash hair since after a while you cut it off and grow new hair anyway? Well, I guess clean hair is nice so instead of a hat for EEG the shower could be built inside a fMRI. I'd have to keep perfectly still, but if I'm spending a million dollars on a shower I could probably have it wash me without it needing me to move.
Somewhat more seriously I'm surprised that I've never seen a digitally controlled shower. I wouldn't expect it most places, but maybe fancy hotels - well maybe fancier hotels than I go to.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
802.11 Wireless Networks
About a year and a half ago I bought 802.11 Wireless Networks The Definitive Guide and I've been slowly making my way through it since then. I finally finished.
I got a lot out of reading the book since it answered a lot of my questions about how the circuits I design at work are used, what is going on around them, and why certain features are required. But for anyone else I think you either know you want to read a book about WiFi or you don't. Although if I was going to get a book about WiFi I would look for something more recent, especially since 802.11n was still poorly defined when the book came out in 2005.
I'm trying to think of any interesting details to share. But a lot of the user stuff really only applies to large networks, not setting up a single access point in a home.
I got a lot out of reading the book since it answered a lot of my questions about how the circuits I design at work are used, what is going on around them, and why certain features are required. But for anyone else I think you either know you want to read a book about WiFi or you don't. Although if I was going to get a book about WiFi I would look for something more recent, especially since 802.11n was still poorly defined when the book came out in 2005.
I'm trying to think of any interesting details to share. But a lot of the user stuff really only applies to large networks, not setting up a single access point in a home.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Holy Water
I'm going to a baptism on Saturday. I'm kind of worried. Is this one of those events with holy water? If I get some holy water splashed on me how badly will it burn? Would it be wrong to bring a plastic tarp like the first few rows at a Gallagher show? I think my only hope is if god made a coding error and wrote holy water burns if Jew XOR atheist instead of Jew OR atheist.
Stuff and Things
2nd patent application has been submitted. But because of how it was filed it won't show up on the uspto site till it is approved.
Dollhouse has been canceled :'(. I guess not showing any episodes during sweeps was a bit of a sign (not to mention airing it on Friday night). At least we get a few more episodes. It's kind of odd that I'm more upset about them canceling firefly even though I didn't even know the show existed when they canceled it.
Day man
Fighter of the Night man
Champion of the sun
You’re a master of karate and friendship…for everyone
Day man, day man
Uhh ahhahh
Fighter of the Night man
Uhh ahhahh
Champion of the sun
Uhh ahhahh
Master of karate and friendship…for everyone
Day man, day man
Uhh ahhahh
Fighter of the Night man
Champion of the sun
That one is for the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia fans. It's strange, when I watch that show I alternate between not laughing, but thinking, oh that's a funny concept and laughing like crazy. Actually I think it is just a matter of how much Charlie ranting time the episode has. I also think it shares the aqua teen hunger force effect - the later at night it is the funnier the show is. (Hm, that paragraph isn't a strong endorsement for the show, but I actually think it is really funny).
On Castle Mal squared off against the bad guy from the second to last episode of firefly. It was way better when it happened in firefly.
I do actually have more going on in my life right now than TV, really, there's other stuff and even things.
Dollhouse has been canceled :'(. I guess not showing any episodes during sweeps was a bit of a sign (not to mention airing it on Friday night). At least we get a few more episodes. It's kind of odd that I'm more upset about them canceling firefly even though I didn't even know the show existed when they canceled it.
Day man
Fighter of the Night man
Champion of the sun
You’re a master of karate and friendship…for everyone
Day man, day man
Uhh ahhahh
Fighter of the Night man
Uhh ahhahh
Champion of the sun
Uhh ahhahh
Master of karate and friendship…for everyone
Day man, day man
Uhh ahhahh
Fighter of the Night man
Champion of the sun
That one is for the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia fans. It's strange, when I watch that show I alternate between not laughing, but thinking, oh that's a funny concept and laughing like crazy. Actually I think it is just a matter of how much Charlie ranting time the episode has. I also think it shares the aqua teen hunger force effect - the later at night it is the funnier the show is. (Hm, that paragraph isn't a strong endorsement for the show, but I actually think it is really funny).
On Castle Mal squared off against the bad guy from the second to last episode of firefly. It was way better when it happened in firefly.
I do actually have more going on in my life right now than TV, really, there's other stuff and even things.
RSS Ads
There's a blog on EDN I occasionally read (unfortunately it's way too focused on digital). As with all blogs that I read I follow the RSS feed. I was just fooled into clicking on an ad because the blog's RSS feed incorporated links to ads as if they were links to posts (ok, I wasn't paying much attention because all the ads start with "Sponsored Link"). Not sure how common that is, but it is the first time I've seen it. Putting ads as posts in an RSS feed - LAME.
Hm, I guess the only thing lamer than that is a link that goes to a blog post that talks about ads in RSS feeds and even worse then tries to make it ok by using a self-referential joke...
Hm, I guess the only thing lamer than that is a link that goes to a blog post that talks about ads in RSS feeds and even worse then tries to make it ok by using a self-referential joke...
Row 14
All life on Earth, including humans, is carbon based.
Carbon is in the 14th row of the periodic table of elements and thus has 4 valence bonds (it's outer ring of electrons has 4 spots filled and the other 4 spots open).
Semiconductors are typically made out of silicon which is also in the 14th row and thus has similar chemical properties to carbon. Other semiconductor materials such as gallium arsenide and indium phosphide are made up of elements in other rows that combine to act like row 14 elements (the two examples are combinations of rows 13 and 15). Sometimes germanium is added to silicon which works out since germanium is also in row 14. There are plenty of other crazy combinations of elements used in semiconductors, but those are the major ones used for integrated circuits.
So both life and semiconductors are based on row 14 elements and thus are both based on similar chemistry. Kinda cool.
Yes, I realize that lots of people have proposed the idea that we could find silicon based life on other planets, although that usually refers to finding something animal like, just based on silicon chains rather than carbon chains. What struck me was the similarity between semiconductors and humans. But that's about as far as I've gotten with that thought.
Carbon is in the 14th row of the periodic table of elements and thus has 4 valence bonds (it's outer ring of electrons has 4 spots filled and the other 4 spots open).
Semiconductors are typically made out of silicon which is also in the 14th row and thus has similar chemical properties to carbon. Other semiconductor materials such as gallium arsenide and indium phosphide are made up of elements in other rows that combine to act like row 14 elements (the two examples are combinations of rows 13 and 15). Sometimes germanium is added to silicon which works out since germanium is also in row 14. There are plenty of other crazy combinations of elements used in semiconductors, but those are the major ones used for integrated circuits.
So both life and semiconductors are based on row 14 elements and thus are both based on similar chemistry. Kinda cool.
Yes, I realize that lots of people have proposed the idea that we could find silicon based life on other planets, although that usually refers to finding something animal like, just based on silicon chains rather than carbon chains. What struck me was the similarity between semiconductors and humans. But that's about as far as I've gotten with that thought.
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Repeated Dilemmas
On TV there's a reasonably common scenario in which a decision has to be made about trading off risk to an individual vs a group (in fact if you leave on the Syfy channel you'll probably see this multiple times a day). Often there will be two characters who disagree, the one who takes up the "greater good" argument is typically a scientist or other logic driven character and the one who pushes "leave no man behind" or "this is the morally correct way to go" or "how could we live with ourselves" is typically a member of the military or some other hero type character. The scientist argument can sometimes be a mask for "do whatever is least risky for me" which is typically the jerk scientist, but I'll ignore this side of the argument for this post.
I imagine that just about everyone sides with the character who supports saving the individual and so do I (I always side with Helo and almost never side with Baltar).
First I'd like to defend the scientist a little. While I overall disagree, I will say that often "leave no man behind" will pose significant risk to the entire group, and if TV shows didn't care about keeping main characters or audiences then we'd probably see a more balanced set of outcomes which may call the hero choice into question. I think that more movies like The Watchmen would do a lot of good for all other stories since the audience would believe something bad could actually happen (of course that thought is part of the justification for Wash's death so maybe I'll take that back).
However, I would claim that simplistic logic leads to the "greater good" argument and that the scientist character should be far too smart for it. The major downfall of the greater good argument is that on these shows it is almost never a one time event that is being dealt with. But rather something that happens about once a week (ok in the course of the show it may be less often, but is still a repeating occurrence). So they are not in a single game, but a repeated game. (If you're getting bored, just think prisoner's dilemma vs repeated prisoner's dilemma and you've basically got my point).
Yes, in a truly isolated incident maybe it does make sense to loosen your morals for a moment and let one guy die to save the group. However, if this decision is going to be faced repeatedly there are several consequences. For one thing the person out doing something dangerous is probably the person who would do other dangerous things in the future. If an important marine/viper pilot/away team member dies every time there is a threat to the group they're going to have a shortage of these important people. In addition after this happens once or twice that could do some serious damage to moral and reduce the risks team members are willing to take on. Both of these concerns are especially significant if they are a group on say one or more space ships and have no connection with other humans or there are no other humans. Also in situations involving the military it is always going to be a repeated dilemma since at some point the military will face another dangerous situation and its policies and reputation from past decisions will matter.
I think that this logic is somewhat built into human emotions and societal norms/morality. This is why the hero type will know the right answer from a gut feel or moral standpoint. However, writers seem to think that the scientist is applying logic to only the single situation. Seems like they think the scientist showed up for the psychology or economics lecture where the prisoners dilemma was covered, but skipped the next week when the repeated version was discussed.
I think I just took down Spock using logic! Which makes me wonder if Spock and Kurk had the opposite positions would the situation also be reversed in all the scifi shows since then.
I imagine that just about everyone sides with the character who supports saving the individual and so do I (I always side with Helo and almost never side with Baltar).
First I'd like to defend the scientist a little. While I overall disagree, I will say that often "leave no man behind" will pose significant risk to the entire group, and if TV shows didn't care about keeping main characters or audiences then we'd probably see a more balanced set of outcomes which may call the hero choice into question. I think that more movies like The Watchmen would do a lot of good for all other stories since the audience would believe something bad could actually happen (of course that thought is part of the justification for Wash's death so maybe I'll take that back).
However, I would claim that simplistic logic leads to the "greater good" argument and that the scientist character should be far too smart for it. The major downfall of the greater good argument is that on these shows it is almost never a one time event that is being dealt with. But rather something that happens about once a week (ok in the course of the show it may be less often, but is still a repeating occurrence). So they are not in a single game, but a repeated game. (If you're getting bored, just think prisoner's dilemma vs repeated prisoner's dilemma and you've basically got my point).
Yes, in a truly isolated incident maybe it does make sense to loosen your morals for a moment and let one guy die to save the group. However, if this decision is going to be faced repeatedly there are several consequences. For one thing the person out doing something dangerous is probably the person who would do other dangerous things in the future. If an important marine/viper pilot/away team member dies every time there is a threat to the group they're going to have a shortage of these important people. In addition after this happens once or twice that could do some serious damage to moral and reduce the risks team members are willing to take on. Both of these concerns are especially significant if they are a group on say one or more space ships and have no connection with other humans or there are no other humans. Also in situations involving the military it is always going to be a repeated dilemma since at some point the military will face another dangerous situation and its policies and reputation from past decisions will matter.
I think that this logic is somewhat built into human emotions and societal norms/morality. This is why the hero type will know the right answer from a gut feel or moral standpoint. However, writers seem to think that the scientist is applying logic to only the single situation. Seems like they think the scientist showed up for the psychology or economics lecture where the prisoners dilemma was covered, but skipped the next week when the repeated version was discussed.
I think I just took down Spock using logic! Which makes me wonder if Spock and Kurk had the opposite positions would the situation also be reversed in all the scifi shows since then.
Driver's Test and Probability
Today at lunch a coworker mentioned this story about a woman who took 950 tries to pass the written part of the driver's test and started asking about the probability of passing by guessing each answer.
Our guess is that the test contains 20 questions and that each one has 4 or 5 choices. Let's go with 4 choices for now. The article says she only needed 60% to pass. Well, to figure out the chances of getting 12 or more right by chance just sum the probability of getting 12 to 20 right answers. For a set number of right answers n the probability is (1/4)^n*(3/4)^(20-n)*(20 choose n) since you need n right answers, 20-n wrong answers and you have to account for all the ways of arranging them (they aren't unique so it is choose rather than permutations). So then the probability of getting 12 or more right in one sitting is sum (1/4)^(n)*(3/4)^(20-n)*(20 choose n) from 12 to 20 = 0.000935392 or 1 in 1069. Not very likely that someone would pass by blind guessing once.
However, what are the odds of passing at least once in 950 tries? This could be solved in basically the same way as the last question, but there is a faster way. This is the same as asking what is 1 minus the chances of failing 950 times which is simply 1-(1-0.000935392)^950 = 0.588949 which is approximately 59%. So even if she was purely blind guessing she was actually slightly unlucky it took that many tries to pass.
However, if there were actually 5 choices per question then she actually only had a 9% chance of passing in 950 tries. If that was the case she was lucky, but still not terribly far from the realm of blind guessing.
Remember how excited I was about wolfram alpha? This may be the first time I've used it since a few weeks after posting about it. I guess a combo of google calculator and matlab tend to keep me satisfied. Actually wolfram alpha is in a weird in between spot. It is not as immediately available as google calculator due to the firefox search box. On the other side it doesn't allow for scripting (at least it is not immediately obvious to me how to do it) or even have an obvious way to feed one answer into the next calculation so it's not that great for anything serious. I guess it fills in when I need to do some math at home.
Our guess is that the test contains 20 questions and that each one has 4 or 5 choices. Let's go with 4 choices for now. The article says she only needed 60% to pass. Well, to figure out the chances of getting 12 or more right by chance just sum the probability of getting 12 to 20 right answers. For a set number of right answers n the probability is (1/4)^n*(3/4)^(20-n)*(20 choose n) since you need n right answers, 20-n wrong answers and you have to account for all the ways of arranging them (they aren't unique so it is choose rather than permutations). So then the probability of getting 12 or more right in one sitting is sum (1/4)^(n)*(3/4)^(20-n)*(20 choose n) from 12 to 20 = 0.000935392 or 1 in 1069. Not very likely that someone would pass by blind guessing once.
However, what are the odds of passing at least once in 950 tries? This could be solved in basically the same way as the last question, but there is a faster way. This is the same as asking what is 1 minus the chances of failing 950 times which is simply 1-(1-0.000935392)^950 = 0.588949 which is approximately 59%. So even if she was purely blind guessing she was actually slightly unlucky it took that many tries to pass.
However, if there were actually 5 choices per question then she actually only had a 9% chance of passing in 950 tries. If that was the case she was lucky, but still not terribly far from the realm of blind guessing.
Remember how excited I was about wolfram alpha? This may be the first time I've used it since a few weeks after posting about it. I guess a combo of google calculator and matlab tend to keep me satisfied. Actually wolfram alpha is in a weird in between spot. It is not as immediately available as google calculator due to the firefox search box. On the other side it doesn't allow for scripting (at least it is not immediately obvious to me how to do it) or even have an obvious way to feed one answer into the next calculation so it's not that great for anything serious. I guess it fills in when I need to do some math at home.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)