Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Baby update

So it turns out that my baby really likes a booming male voice. In one of Lydia's classes her professor has such a voice and she sits out front. It is in this class that the baby enjoys a good jazzercise. I find this really exciting. My baby's hair is sprouting now on the head. If its a boy he better enjoy it while it lasts. We are having trouble with boy's names right now. Last I knew a list comprising of Malcolm, Pascal, Jude, & Ari were on the table (at least my side of the table). Looking at my baby site they have some strange suggestions for unique names: Banana, Boston (i actually like this one), Hamilton, Espn (you've got to be kidding me! at least Nesn would be better :P), and Sprout. One of their weird names, Cyprus, is actually pretty bad ass. Oh my baby is 6" head to butt and the arms and legs are in proportion. Doing some "idealized" segmenting that means my baby's head is about 1.5" and the body is the remaining 4.5" meaning the arms are about 5". Cool. 5" pythons, or delicate branches, in there. Using my body as a proportionate measure my baby has a 1" fist! So if my baby could hit as hard as i can it would have roughly 4.5 times the impact.... AWESOME.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Research

I decided to write a little about my current research. I'm working on this neat thing called Cultural Consensus modeling. Essentially I create culturally biased answer keys for surveys based on the responses and assumed dynamical processes involved in survey taking. Recently I've been improving an existing technique by making it more stable and i've been trying to construct non a priori ways of identifying two cultures present in a sample. It's neat, I may post some pretty pictures tomorrow.

Friday, September 25, 2009

So TINY

Wow, you have to check this out. i can't believe the texture on her backed goods miniatures.

Rofl

So I was watching some very nasty cyst videos on utube, got pretty nautious and then turned to lol cats and discovered My First Fail. Lols ensued.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

And thus the closet doors swung

My biggest fear as a father is that my kid will grow up gay. Nah, just fucking with you. Had you scared for a moment huh? No, instead this is my address to the people that apparently I'm a hero. A hero who is subjecting himself to the trial, nay the epic struggle, against homosexuality brought about by the internalization of sexual desire through pornography. Well, that is what Mike Schwartz would say. Apparently, homosexuality is so insidious that, much like the devil, it has been hiding under an unrecognizable guise, boobies. We breeders, that is heterosexuals for those unfamiliar with the vernacular, are looking at porn that will turn us gay. And if you tell an 11 year old that looking at naked ladies will turn him gay then "... do you think he’s going to want to go out and get a copy of Playboy? I’m pretty sure he’ll lose interest. That’s the last thing he wants.”

This man is clearly a little crazy, but I think that his misinformation is a classic example of chicken-or-the-egg style conundrums. He sites the pre-adolesent ridicule of being gay and that because they are not-so-against gays later in life is because they were exposed to pornography. But which came first the child's dislike of gays or their parent's? Seems pretty simple to me.

The internalization of sexuality arguement seems a little baseless to me. When you consider the "porn makes you gay" arguement you have to wonder why people look at porn. To get aroused. We all don't get off by being a voyer, we internalize, we put ourselves there. And sure, some probably put themseleves there servicing the well built man in the scene, and they are probably gay, but others want the woman. The straight guys. I think I'm meandering and I'm not making a good point aside from this dude is full of turd.

So remember kids, even though you have "the right to commit buggery" "homosexuality is inflicted" on you... sigh

Worries

Ever find yourself sitting at a table with friends sharing stories about how hurt you've gotten via some crazy accident or general stupidity? This has lead me to the obvious conclusion "Holy crap! My baby is going to get hurt!" And also lead me to the obvious rationalization that "This must have been what Rapunzel's parents were thinking." So I believe an adequately appointed and padded fortress is in my near future, I'll have to become BFF with someone who works at Home Depot.

All seriousness, yes seriousness, aside I guess if I survived then my baby can. I make no sense.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Formation

It is pretty spectacular how deformed a fetus is while growing and how everything still just comes together and falls in place. This week my baby's ears have achieved their final position but stick out a little. For some reason I have a vision of Will Smith-like ears on a baby in momma's belly. That is some special kind of silly.

The baby site reports that my baby is the length of a green pepper, roughly 5.5 inches long. I prefer to think of the BL 5.5 inch medium gun. For those that don't know the measurement on artillery such as this, i.e. the 5.5 inches, is the caliber or diameter of the projectile it fired. So while it will be roughly 10 years until my baby weighs as much as one of the projectiles fired by said gun it is as long as they were wide.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Connundrums in the Clouds.

So why do clouds have flat bottoms? I noticed this while I was landing in PHX today. The National Weather Forecasting Somethingorother so apparently it has to do with condensation an the temperature being just right when you get high enough. Cool. A mammatus type cloud, like that to the left, can form when the droplets on the bottom become too heavy and the bottom gets a puffy shape. Usually high humidity and very little wind is required.



So I flew into PHX today from Kansas City, MO and Lydia is flying to Corvallis with a stop in PHX on the way. Our flights are like 3 hours apart so we asked the guy if he could bump either of us. Sure enoug he could for the penance of a pittance $190, merely 90.47% of the cost of the original ticket. I felt like pointing out which of his extremities could be inserted into which of his orifices. So, now I'm waiting in a pretty mediocre resteraunt for Lydia to arrive in due time. What happened to customer service? I'm paying 210 for a ticket somewhere and then $20 for my checked bag EACH WAY!

Turn out, according to the 2009 JD Power and Associates survey I just got off a plane that received the WORST rating out of all airlines ina year that saw a severe decline in satisfaction with airlines nearly across the board (only Southwest improved). I think that next time Alaska Airlines or Jetblue (the two most approved of) will be my choice when it comes to flight.

There is something that is bugging me though. A very special sensation went through me when this guy told me I couldn't fly with my pregnant girlfriend. I think the airline industry has forgotten about the journey. Traditionally part of the trip was the trip to the destination itself. Even though this flight was only a few hours, imagine walking somewhere in a mob of people you do not know for two hours. Now imagine that your best friend is walking beside you. Much different right?

So here is my thought: put the JOY back in JOurneY... terrible I know. How about this: Take the fucking train. Granted finding how to go from where to where on Amtrack is a fucking chore at first, when you know where to look it easy. AND coverage aint quite up to par, but it hits alot of major hubs. Sooo if I book a train on tuesday from Tuscon to Albany, OR I'd pay $174 for coach on a train and $ 378 for coach on a plane (I used Bing!) and if I max out my accomidations on the train I'd pay about $530 and an average of about $950 for first class in the air. I gues you pay for speed, but you pay for it with comfort... and alot of money.

Friday, September 18, 2009

No sox!!

So I'm in Kansas City, Missouri to visit Lydia and I wanted to catch a baseball game.  So I go to the Royal's website.  Turns out they are AWAY every day I am here.  To make matters worse the day after I leave Red Sox are playing at Kauffman Stadium, home of the Royals, for 4 days in a row!  Ouch.  I will write more in a few days.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Missed Yesterday

Ready to go skiing at the airport? I know I am now. I have been seeing these placards for like a year now and I had no idea what they were. A blue square surrounds the cut out form of a dude in slightly baggy clothes with a ball cap and a suitcase leaning against him. the sign proclaims that this is what a casual traveler looks like and further that he is knowledgable with TSA regulations but wishes not to be rushed. I had always thought to myself who the frig do they think they are profiling me as not wanting to be rushed. Hurry my ass through the line! Turns out this is a new sort of line thing that I haven't had the opportunity to exploit, but I really want to. It seems that the TSA are doing what ski resorts have done all along allow us to pace ourselves. If this works I envision families pizza-frenchfrying all the way through security while most people with sort of be coasting their way through. I intend on full on mogul slaloming, not sure if that phrase is a proper verb, down the backs of the weaker and slower as I sprint through security flipping off the meek wearing nothing but one of those speed skater suits. ROFL just coming up with that made me laugh.

On a completely different note I think it would be awesome if Obama called Kanye a Jackass. I mean what kind of world is it where you get an apology from someone you shoot in the face and you can't call a hyper active, self absorbed entertainer what he is?

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

There should be a different word

for when a recession is over, i.e. the economy strengthens, and when 6-pack Joe will notice, i.e. when employment actually increases. Bernanke says that the recession is likely over and that the economy will be experiencing growth, ergo the end of the recession. What does that even mean? Does that mean our GDP will increase? I would suppose not because that is usually indicative of lower unemployment and those numbers are projected to increase. Maybe some production centers are being "reactivated" with no new work force. I guess that could happen.
But if that is not what he is talking about, or if production is increasing without an increase in work force, then there should be another term. Like unemployment. I say unemployment and not unemployment rate because the statistic is not a rate. A rate confers some dependence on time. As it stands those figures, like the 10% quoted to Bernanke, are essentially (# of Unemployed)/(# of People who comprise the work force), of coarse times 100 to make it a percent. If you want to talk about unemployment rate you could talk about the (change in unemployment)/(the change in recorded times). For instance looking at Wikipedia unemployment data between each year from 2003 to 2008 we have the following rates: -.5, -.4, -.4, 0, 1.2 and assuming a 2009 unemployment of 10% a rate from 2008 to 2009 of 4.2. The reason I would draw a major distinction between saying Unemployment and Unemployment rate, besides the correctness, is that I think what is really hurting us right now is not that 10% are unemployed but that this is a jump of 4.2% from last year. Thus, the systems that are set in place to handle unemployment which could conceivably handle the 10% are actually being overworked in handling the sharpness of the increase. Oddly, providing more people with jobs to handle the massive FLUX of unemployed individuals would fix both problems.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Parasitoid

So I just had an interesting and lively conversation about parasitoids. I got home cracked open my laptop and did some google searches. Turns out, yep they're still nasty. The botfly is a ridiculously gross one. You can Youtube a video of these friends pulling a few larvae from a guy's back. Soooo gross. This made me question how I've been so nonchalant I've been about my kid playing in the dirt with bugs and crap. Well I found this and this. Both essentially say what I had been holding to: kids who eat dirt have stronger immune systems. So I guess as long and I keep a vigil on bug bites and "rashes" for larvae then it is okay to pay in the dirt.

17 weeks...

My baby is now 17 weeks old. I love the rediculousness of baby sites. My baby weighs 5 oz. and according to Baby Center that means my baby weighs as much as a turnip... A TURNIP?! How is that supposed to connect to me? I'm not the prince-archbishop of Salzburg! Incidentally my baby weighs the same as a box of Digiorno: Pepperoni Garlic Bread Pizza does on the moon. See that would be how you connect to the average dad about the weight of their baby. Compare it to something that tastes good and put it in a cool place.
(EDIT: In case you're wondering the apparent conversion from earth weight to moon weight is roughly 1/6)

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Re:

You'd be surprised how hard it is to find out the level of education each senator, representative, etc... has under their belt. According to politico.com
There are currently 16 physicians in Congress: 14 in the House (plus two dentists) and two in the Senate. That adds up to more members with medical degrees than at any time during the decades-long modern health care debate.
So we've got Medical doctors there, but no list of names. A rather disapointing stub on Wikipedia lists a handful of politicians with doctorates. One in particular, Gerald "Jerry" McNerney, has a PhD in Mathematics who wrote a thesis titled A (1,1) tensor generalization of the Laplace-Beltrami operator. While I'm no Differential Geometert I have a feeling this was really hard. He currently serves on the subcommittees for Energy and Environment & Communications, Technology, and the Interwebz. According to this site the fact that McNerney is so involved in wind technology that his work has roughly the equivalence of 30 million barrels of oil, 8.3 million tons of cabon monoxide. For those that care that is roughly 276 666 tons of carbon monoxide per barrel. Two of his children are also scientists: Biophysics and Cognitive Neural Science.

What got me on this kick was the death of Norman Borlaug. Who turns out is probably one of the greatest unsung scientists of our time. What he did wasn't flashy, he made wheat make more of itself, but the effects include a quadrupling of India's flour production in a short period of time. His scientific achievements asside what he did that caught my eye was attempt to take an active role in the making of policy. I think that the modern scientist should take this model with the topic of global warming. Rather than pleading with our politicians to consider the situation more seriously they themselves should work with the politicians, as I'm sure some are, and write the policy that can ensure that my little kid has a place to live.

Stats...

After reading a couple posts at Open Mind I am left wondering what sorts of degrees do politicians get. I checked around via a cursory google search and I found a few wanna be elected officials without any for of higher education bitching that it isn't necessary and citing a list of Presidents that didn't have their college education and not a single one of whom did not surround themselves with men of thought. I found this link from a Western Australia university which strongly suggests a degree that would confer "Knowledge of law, economics and business...". Sot then I got to asking if these are the people that are passing laws influenced by science, why is it that they are not employing scientists? If they are, then I know nothing about it. I propose a new branch of government one composed of scientists who are in control of the actual policies affected by scientific reasoning. Apparently I'm not the first to think about this.
And on that note:


Saturday, September 12, 2009

Number 1

So they say you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and it seems I can't spell omelet without 5 tries, and as such this will probably my 5th attempt at blogging with some form of consistency. Previous attempts have died off because I eventually run out of ideas or I get terribly bored (the now defunked and deleted Cape and Cowl). But on my horizon is a very fascinating event: I'm going to be a father.

This stirs all sorts of fear, anxiety, joy and pants wetting from my very core. My situation is interesting, but not unique; the mom and I live states apart from one another. I cannot watch the growth. I cannot be there for her. I will not feel her belly the first clearly identifiable time the baby decides to kung fu fight from within. This disconnection was magnified by a recent text I got from mommy. The text was a profile picture of her belly. I cried. It was probably the coolest thing in the world I've ever been part of and I currently have nothing to do with it.

In December mommy will be moving down here with me and I can try to make up for lost time during the 2 months before the little bugger is born. So to fill in the time I want to write about myself, my day, and situationally throw in some baby stuff as I go.