Archive for January, 2008

Nanoblahblah, borne forth from the blagoblag

Posted: 31 January 2008 in Uncategorized
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It’s a morning of fun new words! First I hear greenwashing on the Today Show, which Donna likes to watch while she eats brekkie. Then, Language Log delights me with nanoblahblah, henchgoon, and celebufreak. Erin McKean, the Dictionary Evangelist, twitters words of the day so I also got a nice infusion when I examined her twitter feed for the past week or so. A few selections I particularly like that she found: paracosm, yostelumpet, and anthroponymy. And now for the definitions!

  • anthroponymy – the study of the names of human beings [emckean@twitter]
  • celebufreak – a freak with fame (e.g. Kim Kardashian) [Wordlustitude]
  • greenwashing – marketing a product as green when it’s really not [Today show]
  • henchgoon – alternate term for administrative assistant or “assistant of doom” [Wordlustitude]
  • nanoblahblah – very, very tiny nonsense (nanotechnobabble) [Wordlustitude]
  • paracosm – a private imaginary world, esp. made by children to escape harsh circumstances (think Pan’s Labyrinth) [emckean@twitter]
  • yodelumpet – a singing style that combines yodeling and Louis-Armstrong-style trumpet-like sounds [emckean@twitter]

Please note that the twitter links are stable in terms of link permanence, but are unstable in twitter’s ability to serve up the page. So if at first you get a bizarre message with birds, try again. This has also led to the re-discovery of the most excellent Wordlustitude site. I had seen a while ago but for whatever reason didn’t subscribe to it. This has been remedied, and if you like neologisms, I recommend you do the same.

Flow my tears, the Coral Reef said

Posted: 30 January 2008 in Uncategorized
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I felt like this was too important not to mention.  Four common ingredients in sunscreen are the cause of coral reef death according to a recent study.  The chemicals wash off of swimmers’ bodies and activate dormant viruses in symbiotic algae that live on the reefs.  This symbiotic algae provides reefs with food.  It also adds to their color, so when the algae dies due to the virus, the reefs become bleached.  About 10% of the world’s reefs are in danger.

Here are the chemicals you should avoid in sunscreen:

  • paraben
  • cinnamate
  • benzophenone
  • camphor derivative

So before you head to the beach, make sure that what you pick up doesn’t have those ingredients.  According to Roberto Danovaro, who headed the study, you should use sunscreens with physical filters that reflect UV rays and eco-friendly chemical sunscreens.

The Crowd Thins

Posted: 30 January 2008 in Uncategorized
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Well, Edwards is all set to announce he is dropping out of the democratic race and Ghouliani has withdrawn from the republican side. Of the mainstream democrat candidates, Edwards was the least likely to become corporate lapdog of the year. He had some unfortunate things against him, which made me less than meh about his bid, but I would have preferred him to Clinton or Obama. My prediction is Obama will take it. As for the Republicans, I was terribly wrong about McCain’s prospects. Which evil would be worse? McCain or Romney in the White House? I must say, though, I am so, so glad that Ghouliani was a miserable failure. If he had been made president, the world would have been a much darker place.

Rudy Giuliani (Ghouliani) - EPIC FAIL

At this point, no one is heading to the White House that I support. I refuse to support the lesser of two evils and so will almost certainly be voting Green as a protest.

Help Science Funding

Posted: 30 January 2008 in Uncategorized
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The current omnibus package for 2008 does not provide funding for many of the science programs that were promised in the America COMPETES Act passed last August. If something doesn’t happen, it will mean less funding for the NSF, NIST, and DOE Office of Science for this fiscal year. In turn, innovation in science in America will continue to slip compared to the rest of the world at a crucial time. So if you support science funding, please take 30 seconds to fill out this letter to your representatives in government (senate, house, president) urging them to increase funding for these agencies this year.

Please help keep me in a job! :) [hat tip]

What’s in a CS degree?

Posted: 28 January 2008 in Uncategorized
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Just what value is there in getting a degree in Computer Science (CS)? Are new graduates competent programmers? Is that the purpose of a CS degree? Should companies be spending money to train new hires out of college in the programming languages and practices that they use?

Robert Dewar is a professor emeritus at NYU in computer science, and he believes that the status of software engineers in America is in danger due to general incompetence of new graduates. The long and the short of it is that after the dot-com bubble burst, and computer science enrollment at universities plummeted, schools restructured their programs to be more fun. Essentially, they were dumbed down. Specifically, the focus has shifted away from math and the theory of computation. Students are not taught a wide range of programming practices, but instead are trained to rely on large software libraries in a sort of “cookbook” approach. That is, students can assemble a solution to a known problem (in Java), but they are woefully undertrained for solving actual problems in the wild with “more practical” programming skills.

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Moon in the Clouds

Posted: 28 January 2008 in Uncategorized
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I can stare at the moon on a clear night for quite a while. When I was very young, I felt like I could reach out and touch it. When I first got into model rockets (around 8 years old), I thought I could build one big enough one day to send it to the moon. My stepfather at the time (Greg) dispelled that notion, but not unkindly. Anyhow, I was looking at the moon tonight and thought it looked cool through the clouds. I took this picture with the flash on, so the shutter speed was fast. I tried taking several other shots with very slow shutter speeds, but the clouds blurred and the moon was overexposed. I used a tripod, but unfortunately when I snap the shot I cause a slight jitter. You can see there is a double-image effect going on here, which is the result of my movement after clicking the button.

The moon in the clouds

Dogs of Winter

Posted: 27 January 2008 in Uncategorized
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It has been snowing here all day, so I’m in a wintry mood. I’ve taken a few pictures over the past couple weeks with my new camera. I particularly like this picture of Willow in the mirror with a snowy tree visible in the window.

My australian shepherd Willow in the mirror with a snowy tree in the background

A couple weeks ago at Frick Park, one of the trails iced over completely. Walking on it was pretty hazardous and I was slipping a lot, but there were joggers running by who didn’t seem to have a problem. Maybe I have bad snow shoes. Daedal didn’t seem to have a problem with it, either.

Daedalus on the ice road at Frick Park

Willow loved the ice road more than Daedalus. You can probably see that she is a filthy mess in this picture. There was an area where the ground wasn’t frozen and it was insanely muddy. If she likes anything better than a hole in ice where she can lie in the water, it’s a hole in ice where she can lie in mud.

My australian shepherd Willow on the ice road at Frick Park

And here is Willow at Schenley Park last Wednesday. She looks kinda wolf-like to me. Like she is about to chase down a ball and hamstring it.

My australian shepherd Willow at Schenley Park in the snow

Netflix Friends

Posted: 26 January 2008 in Uncategorized
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Become my friend on Netflix.  I think it helps that you are actually already on Netflix.  :P

Cognate Identification: Orthographic Methods

Posted: 26 January 2008 in Uncategorized
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In previous posts on cognate identification, I discussed the difference between strict and loose cognates. Loose cognates are words in two languages that have the same or similar written forms. I also described how approaches to cognate identification tend to differ based on whether the data being used is plain text or phonetic transcriptions. The type of data informs the methods. With plain text data, it is difficult to extract phonological information about the language so approaches in the past have largely been about string matching. I will discuss some of the approaches that have been taken below the jump.  In my next posting, when I get around to it, I will begin looking at some of the phonetic methods that have been applied to the task. (more…)

Mein Führer, die Cowboys haben verloren…

Posted: 26 January 2008 in Uncategorized
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I’m not at all a sports fan, but even I can appreciate this humor. Sorry if you’ve already seen it (I actually saw it last week and was just reminded of it). My favorite line: “It’s ok, he can afford one, don’t worry.”

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