Ambiguity forever and ever
I found today an article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's web site about the North Carolina ice storm. The headline read: "Residents of North Carolina face up to life without power after ice and snow storm", and was by Emery P. Dalesio. The headline is ambiguous, and the other meaning of the headline is simply horrendous! It says that North Carolina residents have lost their electrical power for good; that they will never, ever again have electricity; and that furthermore, there is an implication that this was due to some wrongdoing. Convicted criminals "face up to life". North Carolina residents "face up to life". Perhaps whoever wrote the headline could have said "Residents of North Carolina adjust to life". He should have checked the meaning of his headlines before he published.
A Journey through Blogrealm
Blogtrek
Blogtrek
2002/12/05
Snow, ice and birds
Yesterday we had a snowstorm, followed by an ice storm that produced a crusty snow surface on the ground. I went out early in the morning and restocked the bird feeder and scattered bird seed on the ground. This produced results fairly quickly. A whole bunch of birds came to our feeder, including seven blue jays. Snowbirds and several other species came as well, and it was interesting to see how these react to each other, or to squirrels. There were a dozen or more small birds there if there were no blue jays, but if there were blue jays there, there were no more than six small birds. These birds behaved in a domineering manner, as demonstrated when one blue jay arrived at the ground filled with small birds and squawked, "skaaaaa…". Half of the small birds left. There were five blue jays on the ground near the feeder when a red-headed woodpecker, considerably smaller than the jays, swooped down on the feeder area and caused all the blue jays to fly away. That is something to see a bird scare away five substantially larger, more aggressive birds. We saw eight species in our backyard today:
Blue jay
Tufted titmouse
Slate-colored junco (snowbird)
Carolina Chickadee
White-Throated Sparrow
Cardinal (female)
Song Sparrow
Red-headed woodpecker
Yesterday we had a snowstorm, followed by an ice storm that produced a crusty snow surface on the ground. I went out early in the morning and restocked the bird feeder and scattered bird seed on the ground. This produced results fairly quickly. A whole bunch of birds came to our feeder, including seven blue jays. Snowbirds and several other species came as well, and it was interesting to see how these react to each other, or to squirrels. There were a dozen or more small birds there if there were no blue jays, but if there were blue jays there, there were no more than six small birds. These birds behaved in a domineering manner, as demonstrated when one blue jay arrived at the ground filled with small birds and squawked, "skaaaaa…". Half of the small birds left. There were five blue jays on the ground near the feeder when a red-headed woodpecker, considerably smaller than the jays, swooped down on the feeder area and caused all the blue jays to fly away. That is something to see a bird scare away five substantially larger, more aggressive birds. We saw eight species in our backyard today:
Blue jay
Tufted titmouse
Slate-colored junco (snowbird)
Carolina Chickadee
White-Throated Sparrow
Cardinal (female)
Song Sparrow
Red-headed woodpecker
2002/12/03
Metric System and the Kilofoot
I saw a review of a book "The Measure of All Things", by Ken Alder, about how the meter was first defined. The review was entitled "The Meter is a Crock". The book was about two Frenchmen who surveyed in a triangulated form stretches of land all across Europe, to estimate the distance between the North Pole and the Equator. The meter was then defined to be one ten-millionth of this distance. The review showed how mistakes were made in the surveying, and that the Frenchmen assumed that the Earth was a sphere when actually it is slightly oblate. However, neither the book nor the review offers an alternative to the meter; if it supposed to be a "crock", then what's better?
Here is my answer: the foot. Yes, the foot. This is English measure, but we are used to feet in measuring things. What I would change the definition of the foot. Right now it is 12 inches, and an inch is defined to be 2.54 centimeters. I would define it as the distance that light travels in a nanosecond, one billionth of a second. Then the speed of light would be a gigafoot per second. I would not use miles, yards, or inches, but rather metric versions of the foot: kilofoot, decafoot, millifoot, decifoot (the new inch), and so forth. So I can talk about traveling 2800 kilofeet or 2.8 megafeet to drive somewhere in a day rather than 530 miles. Further, this would be useful in dealing with computers. If there is a billion operations per second (1 GHz), then one operation can take place only within a foot, since nothing can travel faster than light. Most importantly, the foot would be defined on a natural measure, in terms of the speed of light and in terms of time - a second is 1/86400 of a day.
I saw a review of a book "The Measure of All Things", by Ken Alder, about how the meter was first defined. The review was entitled "The Meter is a Crock". The book was about two Frenchmen who surveyed in a triangulated form stretches of land all across Europe, to estimate the distance between the North Pole and the Equator. The meter was then defined to be one ten-millionth of this distance. The review showed how mistakes were made in the surveying, and that the Frenchmen assumed that the Earth was a sphere when actually it is slightly oblate. However, neither the book nor the review offers an alternative to the meter; if it supposed to be a "crock", then what's better?
Here is my answer: the foot. Yes, the foot. This is English measure, but we are used to feet in measuring things. What I would change the definition of the foot. Right now it is 12 inches, and an inch is defined to be 2.54 centimeters. I would define it as the distance that light travels in a nanosecond, one billionth of a second. Then the speed of light would be a gigafoot per second. I would not use miles, yards, or inches, but rather metric versions of the foot: kilofoot, decafoot, millifoot, decifoot (the new inch), and so forth. So I can talk about traveling 2800 kilofeet or 2.8 megafeet to drive somewhere in a day rather than 530 miles. Further, this would be useful in dealing with computers. If there is a billion operations per second (1 GHz), then one operation can take place only within a foot, since nothing can travel faster than light. Most importantly, the foot would be defined on a natural measure, in terms of the speed of light and in terms of time - a second is 1/86400 of a day.
Null
Microsoft has done a lot to infuriate computer users and programmers, but one of the worst is Null, most prevalent in his database package, Access. This is a quantity that supposedly fills a slot where there supposedly is no value; it isn't zero, it isn't "" (a word with zero letters in it), it isn't 0.0, and it isn't False. It is Null, and any operation that uses Null is Null. 3 + Null = Null. "This is a good string" concatenated with Null is Null, and so forth. The most unreasonable at one time was saying that True or Null is Null. No matter what the truth value of the second argument is, the expression is going to be True; that is a property of "or". Later versions of Access set True or Null to True.
The other way in which Null infuriates programmers is that you can't use it in certain applications without causing an error message that terminates the entire application. That's like A-bombing a street because it has a pothole. When this thing can happen, it can take a long time to see what is happening, and it causes you to have to program around it. I don't know how many programmer hours have been lost because of Null, but it must be a lot.
Microsoft has done a lot to infuriate computer users and programmers, but one of the worst is Null, most prevalent in his database package, Access. This is a quantity that supposedly fills a slot where there supposedly is no value; it isn't zero, it isn't "" (a word with zero letters in it), it isn't 0.0, and it isn't False. It is Null, and any operation that uses Null is Null. 3 + Null = Null. "This is a good string" concatenated with Null is Null, and so forth. The most unreasonable at one time was saying that True or Null is Null. No matter what the truth value of the second argument is, the expression is going to be True; that is a property of "or". Later versions of Access set True or Null to True.
The other way in which Null infuriates programmers is that you can't use it in certain applications without causing an error message that terminates the entire application. That's like A-bombing a street because it has a pothole. When this thing can happen, it can take a long time to see what is happening, and it causes you to have to program around it. I don't know how many programmer hours have been lost because of Null, but it must be a lot.
A day that shall live in infamy
It is interesting that Saddam Hussein picked December 7 to offer his report to the United Nations on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. According to President Roosevelt, that is a day that shall live in infamy, because of a catastrophic event that happened 61 years ago. Will Saddam continue that infamy?
It is interesting that Saddam Hussein picked December 7 to offer his report to the United Nations on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. According to President Roosevelt, that is a day that shall live in infamy, because of a catastrophic event that happened 61 years ago. Will Saddam continue that infamy?
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