Jarvis on the Cloud

Perhaps there is nothing like a volcanic eruption, except maybe a thunderstorm/tornado/hurricane, to remind people that the word "cloud" has another meaning, one not related at all to computers and the internet. Jeff Jarvis has some interesting reflections on his narrow escape from Europe ahead of the famous cloud, with thoughts on how the media (and governments, too) are failing to really address the event in real time.

My favorite quote.

What’s failing us, all in all, is our power structures, which aren’t built to think big and fast at the same time. ... They are treating this is a short-term, one-time event. It may well not be.

Update:
Here, by way of Matt Yglesias, is an interesting description of just why this cloud of ash causes all this trouble.

Required Reading

Roger Ebert has an excellent blog post discussing the recent controversy on Texas school books. (Strange; when I saw him on "At The Movies," I thought he was kind of a pompous ass, and now he seems to be one of the better thinkers of our time!) My favorite quote:

Does it make me a liberal if I believe Jefferson has been more central to American history than Calvin? That Lincoln was our greatest president, and Davis not our President at all? That the Theory of Evolution towers with majesty above those who, in some cases, believe the earth may be 10,000 years old, and that men walked the earth with dinosaurs? No, it doesn't make me a liberal. It makes me an educated, rational being.

His solution:

I have a simple proposal. More enlightened states should refuse to play along. Their State Boards could require generally-accepted educational standards, and vote against purchasing the corrupted Texas texts. This would have the result of limiting the influence of the Texas religious right over the rest of the country. And it would allow publishers to cling to a certain degree of self-respect.

Unfortunately, I don't think it will work out quite that way.

Psychic Beheading

Saudi Arabia is going to behead a psychic. My first reaction is that he should have seen it coming. When you think about it, though, it makes you wonder just who are the Saudis and why do we really want to deal with them when they do what they do? Warning: there is a picture at the second link.

Extraordinary Thief

A very interesting story about an extraordinary thief, courtesy of Bruce Schneier

The Census: 2010

I finally filled in my census form and sent it in. I have to say, it was quite painless; I don't know why I waited so long.

One thing I find briefly amusing is that apparently many right-wing birthers, tea-partiers, and other wingnuts are rebelling and not sending in the form. I want to enjoy thinking about how all these nuts are shooting themselves in the feet, reducing their federal aid and congressional representation; but then I realize that, since the Census Bureau can't use statistical methods to improve the count, they are required to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to send canvassers out to try and correct the undercount. (For every one percentage point increase in the national participation rate by mail, taxpayers can help the Census Bureau save about $85 million in operational costs.) These guys spend so much energy decrying wasteful government spending, and then force the government to spend all this money to overcome their petulance.

Come on guys, just fill out the damn form!

The "Earth" in Earthquakes, Revisited

So apparently, when NASA told us how the Chilean earthquake altered the rotation of the earth, they didn't actually measure this, it was computer modeling. Now, someone has actually tried to measure it, and found ... nothing. Apparently, the Sumatra earthquake in 2004 packed a little more punch.

This evaluation differs from those obtained using theoretical models of the planet (such as the one produced by the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California) which can estimate the extent of a shift on the basis of geophysical and seismological data. This is the type of calculation used in meteorological forecasts, which are based on data observed before a particular date and on theoretical models of how atmospheric phenomena develop.

What Privacy Problem?

I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords.