A Curious Statistical Anomaly

I’ve been rushing to finish up the second sock that I’ve been knitting. Well, actually I want to finish up a number of projects that have just a bit left to go  because I want to start several new ones. So, I thought I’ll finish this sock then the sweater, then the next three things and then start the new stuff.

But on the very last row of the after-thought heel as I was turning it inside out to do the 3-needle bindoff — I dropped a stitch. It’s a stripped sock on number 2 needles and the stripe at the end was black… I’m sure you know where I’m going. At the moment, I’m unknitting down to where the stitch ran but it keeps running so I think I’m going to end up at the start of the heel again.

My grandmother had a saying for times like these — “the faster I go the behinder I get.” That’s how I feel right now. This whole day has been like that. Maybe knitting is sort of a metaphor for life. You run along great and then unlike real life you get an opportunity for do-overs. Well, I suppose you get opportunities for do-overs in real life too but they’re much more painful than with knitting. I can unravel knitting and just start over but with life there’s all the other connections with events and people and those can’t be just unraveled as if they never were to start from scratch again.

Yarn might be a bit kinked from being unraveled but basically it’s very forgiving — people, well, not so much. So, I guess I’m lucky that it’s only the stocking’s heel that’s giving me problems. So, I guess I’ve now talked myself into a better state of mind about the bungled heel and the dropped stitch. This is just another of knitting’s do-overs.

I usually keep my eye on global warming related reports and spotted these articles (Google News’s “Sea Rise from Antarctic Ice Melt Overestimated“, Christian Science Monitor’s “If W. Antarctic Ice Sheet melts, how high will sea levels rise?”, and Science’s “Ocean Science: Ice Sheet Stability and Sea Level” (link takes you to the abstract, you can’t read the full paper unless you pay) on the new figures for sea rise if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) melts.

Originally, it was thought that if the WAIS melted that sea levels would rise between 5-7 meters. However, that was based on models that just don’t seem to stand up in comparison to reality. So, once they started looking at the real world and comparing with the models they found that it was more likely that the sea level rise if the WAIS melted would be closer to 3.2 to 3.3 meters (depending on which report you read). So things aren’t as dire as scientists originally thought, although 10.5+ feet is still pretty dire. That’s still going to make drastic changes to the east and west coasts of the United States as well as some other countries.

You see sea level just doesn’t rise; it also runs horizontally. Most people hear that the sea level will go up a foot and they think that won’t bother me I’m above that level. Right, it won’t bother you directly if you’re above that level and not close enough to be bother with storm surges which can be much higher than normal high tides when pushed by a storm. But those people near rivers, streams, and in areas between the current sea level and the new one — even if they are inland — might find themselves having problems with rising water tables, water levels in streams and rivers, and now they sit in a flood plain.

If you look at a map with topographic markings you can see that areas that currently don’t connect with the sea, if the level rises a foot or a yard would suddenly be underwater. That’s the part of sea level rise that most people don’t think about and don’t seem to care about.

It’s the intellectual blindness that caused people to buy houses on the Mississippi between the river and the levees and never consider that the levees were there for a reason and maybe living between a levee and the river wasn’t a good idea. When the flooding occurred a few years back, I was really upset that so many people had lost their homes. Then I saw a live broadcast where they were talking to the homeowners trying to salvage whatever they could from the wreckage of their homes. The camera pans and there are the homes with the river on one side and the high levees on the other. Really, it was a matter of when not if they would lose their homes. I still felt sympathy that they had to go through this terrible experience but couldn’t stop thinking why didn’t they think about their situation logically before buying the home in the first place. People ignore what they don’t want to face. If there’s a levee and your home is between it and the river, that should be a “duh” moment and a no sale.

People have been ignoring global warming for years and now it is not just a nice little hypothetical thought experiment but is changing the face of the world. Still people hear about scientists discussing sea level rise and the possible factors that will effect the eventual change and what the numbers might be and they shrug and go on. Well, I won’t be buying any sea front property anytime soon but if I was I’d certainly be checking out topographical maps. Just maybe that house on the hill with lots of acres will turn out to be a nice private island in a hundred years or so.

The past three weeks have been one big blur. I find that stress for me almost immediately translates into a need for comfort food and sleep. While my insomnia is still a problem, about every three days or so I sleep nearly the clock round. On the other hand, work doesn’t go away just because you’re worried about something. The zines still need to be kept on track. Books entered into the databases. Books sent to the reviewers. Reviews proofed. Reviews sent back to reviewers for revisions. Books read. Reviews and other materials written. Then there’s the added problem that some slimball spammer has forged the identity of one of our domains and is blanketing the world with spam seemingly from us. We’ve checked with the tech support gurus and found we’re not sending the spam out, our servers have not been hacked, our email addresses haven’t been compromised, because so far the complaints from receivers of this spam have not even been in our email database. The worst thing is that we can’t do anything about it except suffer the consequences. Until the spammer moves on to trash another victim’s reputation, we can only suffer and cringe and do our best to continue to protect our databases and accounts. Adding to the frustration is knowing that we did protect our readers and subscribers and our software but that doesn’t stop anyone from pretending to be you… So, if you’ve gotten any of this spammer’s spam, we’re sorry and we truly do feel your pain because it’s nothing to the pain we feel. I just don’t understand the mindset of people who would do this. If they believe they must forge headers to get in under the spam filters, then they have to know they are doing wrong. They must all have faulty morality circuits in their heads and/or hearts. Anyway, in my muddle headed-way I’m trying to cope with getting the next issues of Gumshoe Review, SFRevu, and TechRevu ready to go. Did I mention we’re in the midst of moving to a new host? We are, in fact, one of the zines was locked today, and no work can be done online until the DNS transfer is complete. Hopefully, this will allow me to catch up on the reading part of my job which has fallen a bit behind this month as I occasionally realize that quite a bit of time has past and I haven’t turned the page yet. I think stress also steals time — I’m thinking of putting together a study on that and seeing if I can get funding. However, I’ve been informed that an N of 1 is not sufficient for a good study. Don’t see why not since I notice there’s a lot of funded studies out there with Ns as low as 6 (particulary in medical studies). I think that’s why getting access to the actual research reports is so difficult in many cases (but that’s a long post for another day when I have more concrete time in my days).

Anyway, I’m curious about how others deal with stress — other than to run screaming in the other direction if there is a directional component to stress.

I’ve been keeping my eye out for articles about windmills and Low-Tech Magazine had a great article, “Small Windmills Put To The Test”, with links to information that I haven’t found in other places — such as how many of these small windmills would you need to power your house. Granted I’ve seen articles with pages and pages of step-by-step instructions on the bazillion bits of information you need to collect in order to figure out what your home’s power usage is and how to match that to the output of a windmill…but mostly what I’ve been looking for is a ballpark figure for gross economic calculations. Of course, in our case we have too many trees and no clear space to put a windmill so this is mostly an exercise to satisfy my curiosity…I just like to know about things.

Anyway, in this test twelve windmills of various designs and sizes were tested in an open plain by the Dutch in the province of Zeeland (reportedly a very windy area) and their output measured over a year. The article then lists how many windmills of each type it would take to generate the energy for a typical Dutch household. Depending on the design and rotor dimension it could take anywhere from 47 windmills to 2 windmills. Two is not bad but 47 seems a bit extreme, might as well get a ginormous windmill and get it over with. Anyway, I thought others might be interested in the results of this test.

I’ve also been keeping my eye on the Broadstar Wind Systems, these seem to me to have some very interesting applications since they can go in parking lots and on rooftops. I’m waiting to see how it turns out as they actually put out the systems for use. If they work as advertised small towns could purchase systems to add to their generating capacity or as backup…don’t see why not.

Here in the US there seems to be an all or nothing attitude. Personally, I think that having multiple methods of gathering/generating energy means less chance of everything going off-line for extended period of time — as happens so often around here. (We lost our power today for five minutes. Clear skies, no storms…a puzzlement.) Every alternative method of generating power lowers the cost on the environment and makes us less depending on oil and that’s a good thing.

War, Inc. Drected by Joshua Seftel. Actors: John Cusack, Hilary Duff, Marisa Tomei, Joan Cusack, Dan Aykroyd, and others. DVD Release Date: October 14, 2008. It’s hard to know what to say about this film. War, Inc. is definitely anti-war and is listed as such on Amazon. But it’s much more than that, which is usual with any film that John Cusack has a part in. Over the years, it’s gotten so that if Cusack is in a film we put it on our list, because while it may not always be to our taste it will definitely be worth watching and thought provoking. To give you a flavor of War, Inc., here’s the movie trailer:

War, Inc. has some similarities to Grosse Pointe Blank in that Cusack plays an assassin that’s just not getting the job satisfaction that he used to from the job. But Hauser (Cusack) has got a job to do so it’s off to Turaqistan to put an end to Omar Sharif, the politician, not the actor. Hauser, who has been wrestling with doubts and insecurities, is training himself to use hot sauce to quell his concerns. The film is, like Grosse Pointe Blank, a mix of philosophy, political comments, and believe it or not, the concerns most of us face every day. Sometimes surreal and at others laugh out loud funny, it nonetheless manages to highlight the ravages and absurdity of the war. It pokes fun at the way wars have been so sanitized that they are outsourced and used as corporate beachheads in the economics of greed. But it also deals with the people that get chewed up and spit out as they try to live their lives amidst the surrealistic landscape of war for money and profit. It’s definitely worth watching and thinking about. I’m sure the resonances with a current war that the US entered a while back and can’t seem to get out is just coincidence — or maybe not a coincidence, just taken to the inevitable extreme.

I’ve been going through my spam again and I started to wonder about the world as spam sees it:

• No one will respect me if I don’t have the perfect watch to match my ensemble. Heck, I don’t even match my ensemble — well, maybe I do … everything works with jeans. Besides I don’t wear a watch … there’s one in my phone.
• Evidently, bank fraud isn’t a crime in the UK or Nigeria since that’s where most of the email urging me to launder money comes from.
• I can lose weight and eat everything in sight if I just use one of the 100’s of products that claim to work. If any of these products worked they wouldn’t need to advertise, word-of-mouth would sell them.
• Somehow my work experience and my college degrees are going to expire … what, the wind of forgetfulness will waft through my skull and remove my memory?
• Drugs of all kinds are available online without a prescription — so why find a dealer in your local area????
• You can make millions of dollars by sending other people money… the mind boggles.
• This week alone I’ve won at least 4 billion dollars with my email address. So send me the check already.
• I’m not going to get into the spam reportedly from women who want my body or to thank me for the wonderful night we spent together (couldn’t have been too great since I don’t remember them any of them and you’d think I’d remember at least one of the 10-30 per night.)

Personally, I find it hard to believe that Congress thinks that trying to control spam is a bad idea because it interferes with legitimate businesses. I don’t get any spam from legitimate businesses, they only send me information that I specifically sign up to get. Since a good chunk of the spam I receive every day is sexual in content, I’d think the government would more than happy to Can Spam since they’re so verbal and vocal about protecting children from sex and sexual content on the internet.  Of course these are the same people who won’t authorize a XXX domain so we can just ignore all mail or sites with that extension.

Do people really fall for this stuff? They must or it wouldn’t be so prevalent. But, I have to wonder who reads those notes about “I’m from such and such bank and we have a customer who just died with no heirs and lots of money so how about you claim to be the heir and we split the money?” Yeah, I can imagine that lots of people read that and think, “Gee, what a great idea. I must help that poor bank manager embezzle that money.”

If the world according to spam was real, it would be a shallow sad place to live.

If you’re a bit like me, the vegetable bins in the fridge have been renamed the ‘rotter drawers’.  Can’t really deny it.  Things that go in those drawers are out of sight and out of mind.  I’ve pretty much solved that problem by putting only things that keep well in the drawers — like cheese and pepperoni and other hearty survivors.  The veggies? Well they now go on the shelves where I can see them.

But the things that get moved to the back of the bottom two shelves still have a tendency to rot.  I’ve got a bad back and to really get into those shelves I need to drag a chair out to the kitchen and sit to look.  We intend to solve that issue with a ‘freezer on the bottom’ fridge but that’s going to be a bit down the lists of things to do for the house because the current one (which came with the house) works fine except for my inability to bend over and dig into the hidden areas.  So, wait I must, until we get some other needed issues taken care of.

But, I always thought that I used the freezer fairly well.  I mean a bit of freezer burn here and there and a series of compensatory cooking to take care of it and not lose food — so, I thought I was doing good.  But then I saw this article in the NY Times, “The Minimalist: Freeze that Thought” (free to read but you must make an account and login). This article had lots of ideas on how to use the freezer more efficiently to save leftovers or overabundances, to plan ahead for later meals, and how to avoid freezer burn.

My freezer is tiny so I won’t be able to do much with these ideas just now (waiting for the dream fridge) but some of them will be applicable immediately. I hope that some of you reading this blog will find these ideas helpful. Or if you have other ideas for economical and efficient use of freezers (particularly small ones) feel free to leave a comment.

Today was a work day — of sorts. I entered books into the database and tried to catch up on email. Drooled over the new Kindle DX and its special features — sigh. Then it was housework, clearing up, doing the wash, pulling old books off the reviewer lists, and finally getting a chance to read some from my pile of books. Mostly a clean up loose ends kind of day in a nutshell.

We’ve been watching Primeval. So far we’ve seen Season One, disks 1 and 2. We’re doing it through Netflix so we’ll get the rest of the season over time. The cast seems to be coming together and the shows are getting a bit better. The best special effect is the anomaly, but the creatures have improved over the two disks so far. Practice making perfect, I guess. So, we’ll finish out the season because it does show a lot of promise.