Author: smartpeopleiknow

Cool crowdsourcing from Zooniverse: now Old Weather

Zooniverse does some cool crowdsourcing work. You can do amateur astronomomy work — they have alot of projects for this — and now they have Old Weather – Our Weather’s Past, the Climate’s Future as well. (found via Kottke.) Interesting for anyone, I think this would be a great thing for teachers to get students involved in. Also a great hobby for folks that has a great benefit.

Why Happy Meals Don’t Get Moldy and Decompose

There’s a number of web sites, like this one: Happy Meal Project – Artist Sally Davies Photographs McDonald’s Happy Meal For 137 Days and this one: Year-old Happy Meal hasn’t decomposed (photos) – Knoxville healthy food | Examiner.com, where people expose Happy Meals for many many days and despite that, the Happy Meals don’t decompose. Why is that?

The answer you get from alot of people is:  Happy Meals are bad for you! Which is an answer, but not a very scientific one.

It’s more likely the case, as one of the commentators noted, that:

The reason the Happy Meal appears not to change during the extended time on the table is the fact that the bread, beef and fried potatoes have VERY LITTLE MOISTURE in them. Dried meat keeps for years. The fries were basket fried in hot oil causing most of the moisture to evaporate as steam while they cooled. The Beef patty is fried on a flat grill causing much the same condition. The bread is stable and dry but would (and does) mold in less dessicated climates. Anyone familiar with food dehydration will find nothing odd or disquieting about that fact that dry food tends to stay decomposition free in dry climates. In fact, organic meats and potatoes prepared the way McDonald’s prepares its food would have stayed just as changeless for the same period of time. 

The photographer obviously knows this as she clearly asked for the burger without ketchup, mustard, pickles or diced onions – something McDonald’s only does on request – to keep the burger dry. This is a mean spirited trick perpetrated on a public who should know better.

Now I don’t know if this is a mean spirited trick or not, but it is a fact that Happy Meals are very dry, and dryness is a key condition as to whether or not something gets moldy.

There are other things besides dryness, too. The burgers and french fries are high in fat and salt which can add to the preservative nature of the food. As well as.. well, McDonald’s use preservatives in their food! And McDonald’s strives to keep their establishments clean, which decreases the chance of mold landing on your food. (Indeed, in one of these experiments, some mold did appear on a Happy Meal hamburger next to a very moldy hamburger that was not McDonald’s but likely contaminated the other.)

If you want more nutritional information on McDonald’s Happy Meals, you can go here. If your child is eating Happy Meals, try to aim for combos lower on the list. According to this site, children 1 to 3 years old should only have 800 mg of sodium a day, yet some Happy Meals exceed that. Not to mention that they have alot of fat and saturated fat. A hamburger, apple slices and either milk or apple juice will reduce the amount of salt and fat and boost the number of other vitamins and minerals in the meal.

Happy Meals are not the most nutritional meal you can put together for your child. If you can offer them a more nutritional meal that they will like and eat, then by all means, that’s your best choice. But make your choice based on facts, not on sensational photos and articles.

(Photo from the first article. I’ve included it to illustrate the comment that the burger is obviously very dry. McDonald’s food is dry generally, but you may not notice this because they also give you large drinks.)

Rick Mercer’s Rant on Bullying

Rick Mercer Rants are always good. This one is especially good, given the focus on the It Gets Better campaign. I’m proud to post this here, and as someone who fell into the geek camp and was on the receiving end of alot of bullying, I’d like to add that I agree with Rick and others, that it gets better and it will get better for you is without a doubt. That must seem impossibly hard to imagine as a kid, but it’s true. I know the focus is on gay kids and others belonging to the GLBTQ community, and I think that is especially important. For all those kids out there who are not a member of that group, but are still the subject of abuse, you still need to hear that it will get better. And it will. But Rick says it better than me. Here he is:

Never let them get you down.

YouTube – RMR: Rick’s Rant – Bullying – It Gets Better

Taking it up a notch with your spaghetti and meatballs

I love spaghetti and meatballs (with tomato sauce, of course), but I am really looking forward to making this version. They’ve done a nice job of adding new ingredients (ground lamb to the pork and beef is one thing, lots of garlic and some balsamic vinegar to the tomato sauce). And it looks like this:

Nice! Check out this recipe: Totally Tender Meatballs in Tomato Sauce from the Apartment Therapy / The Kitchn blog.

The word for the economic outlook of the United States? Bleak

This man, Jan Hatzius, is the highly respected chief economist at Goldman Sachs, and not likely one to get his predictions wrong. So when he writes a client and states:

We see two main scenarios for the economy over the next 6-9 months — a fairly bad one in which the economy grows at a 1½%-2 percent rate through the middle of next year and the unemployment rate rises moderately to 10 percent, and a very bad one in which the economy returns to an outright recession.

Then I am thinking things are looking bleak for the U.S., which will not be good for Canada or many other nations in the world. Worse, in the U.S., political leaders are planning to assume Hooverite positions when it comes to the economy. And we all know how well that went.

If you can stomach it, you can get the rest of the article here: ‘Fairly Bad’ or ‘Very Bad’ Economic Scenarios – Goldman’s Jan Hatzius Forecasts – NYTimes.com.

(Photo: Michael Falco for the New York Times)

Friday Night Music: THE best song of 2010: Cee-Lo Green – “F— You” (NSFW)

If this song was Frig You, it would get alot less attention. And that would be a shame, for it is a brilliant song, with lots of reworking of classic pop/motown/soul/etc. remixed as only someone as talented as Cee-lo can do. He’s been doing this for some time now, but unlike hip hop, Cee-lo samples music from previous decades and incorporates them flawlessly into his vocals. He’s a great talent, and on this song, he continues to demonstrate that.

While there are a number of versions of this going around the Internet, this version is particularly great. He’s got the Robert Palmer thing going with the backup band, and he’s riffing on David Byrne with the pink suit. It doesn’t get better than this.

Here’s Cee-Lo Green – “Fuck You” from (Later with Jools Holland)

Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt vs Lucille Ball and Jimmy Stewart

Watching Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt dance to Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?, one of the first things I was reminded of was how she reminds me of Lucille Ball and he reminds me of Jimmy Stewart

and then I thought: these comparisons don’t mean much, other than as a “hook” into getting you to watch them. Still, there is that great quality to these performers, just like there is that great quality to Lucille Ball and Jimmy Stewart, that makes you think: I should pay attention and watch this. Whatever you think, I hope you think it is enjoyable.

Very expensive Chuck Taylors

I don’t even want to know how much these Damien Hirst x Converse (PRODUCT)RED Chuck Taylor All Star Sneaker cost. There were only 400 of them, and anything associated with him equals big bucks. Still, I am somewhat surprised at people taking Chuck Taylors, originally a low cost shoe, and turning them into something anything but low cost. Besides these, found at Highsnobiety.com

I also found these for with Peanuts cartoons on them for €200+.

Thanks to @solangenoir on twitter for the pointer to the D Hirst’s.

If you want to get organized, head over to vertex42.com for their templates

I have been very impressed by the Free Microsoft Excel Templates and Spreadsheets as well as other documents found there. They have a good blog as well. And they aren’t just for Microsoft Excel: if you don’t have or can’t afford it, you can download Lotus Symphony free here at the IBM Lotus Symphony web page. (Disclosure: I am an IBM employee, but I would promote Lotus Symphony regardless.) Either way, you can use the templates to help record and track your goals and your activities.

Good luck!

Some thoughts on working along time in IT

Punch it. You really had to “punch” the buttons of thes old 2401s if you wanted them to move.

When I first started working in IT, 27 years ago, my first role was mainly to operate things like these 2401s. I only did it for a few months, but I can still feel every aspect of those tape drives. The sound of the door slamming, the way the vacuums sucked the tape down so it could move, the feel of those buttons, the whirring of tape moving back and forth. I got to the point I could tell which type of program was using the tape based on the behavior of the tape (barely moving, spinning like mad, constantly going back and forth). Data made visible.

Those were 2401s. Then there 3330s and 3350 DASD. I can tell someone has been around along time when they refer to DASD instead of hard drives. And there were the mainframes, the 3033s and the 3081s, and the midsize 4300 series that were more like giant freezers. Everything had a four digit number and we got to learn them all and had to if you were going to be taken seriously. It was a lot of fun learning to operate these machines. It wasn’t what I aspired to, but I came to love it, and the ability to control and be responsible for these computers felt like a great privilege. I even got to operate vintage machines like an old 360 (model 145) that was an MVT OS and basically ran a few simple programs. I got to sit in front of the console of flashing lights, and when a job was finished I sat in front of a teletype device and punched in the command to run jobs like DICKEREP and JANEEREP. When I wasn’t doing that, I got to operate a bank of modems, each the size of a small suitcase. A clients modem would call, and I would vary on (“v on”) our modem and connect them via the console so they could sing their modem songs together at 1200 baud.

Months later, I worked as a VM system operator, running a number of Canadian mainframes that were part of a worldwide network of over a thousand mainframes worldwide. We had a list of all the systems, and one night another operator and I wrote a program to say hello to every one of them as a way of reaching out to everyone. To our surprise, hundreds replied back. Not knowing what to do, we furiously tried to chat with them all. This was mostly a failure, but we ended up becoming friends with some of them. There were no Instant Messaging Dummies guides back then.

When I first started, everyone at work was given access to a 3277 or a 3278 console so we could access something called PROFS, an email system. Not long after, 3 part memorandums were permanently shelved. I remember in the 90s people started saying “I have email now, here’s my address”, but I was lucky to have had it all ready for some 10 years. I even got to see one of the first viruses that way, the dreaded Christma exec. And even in the 80s, inbox zero was an unachievable goal.

A lot has changed in all this time, and a lot hasn’t. For people who have been working in IT along time, you will likely have your own memories come to mind as you read this. For people new to IT, I won’t bore you with any more war stories. I would say this, though: be mindful of the technology you use today, for it will have an impact on the world in ways you can’t even imagine yet. And when it does, you will look back and say: I worked on that in it’s infancy! And technology will become a touchstone of your life as you look back.

When I started, access to IT was rare. What has been the most significant change in all these years is not the PC or the Internet or Java or mobile devices or the WorldWideWeb (as it used to be called). The biggest change has been how more and more people have access to IT. It is becoming commonplace, ubiquitous. That to me is the greatest thing that has happened in all this time I have been working in IT. I started working on mainframes in a glasshouse environment writing PL/1 programs to run on MVS systems, and to most people then and now, that means little if anything. But right now I am typing this on a Blackberry and it is going to be crossposted on my blog, twitter and Facebook, and lots of people know what that means and indeed, can do the same thing themselves. That is the main difference, to me, in what has changed in all these years.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. And now off we go, into the future. Punch it. 🙂
—————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Handheld.

Germany end World War One reparations after 92 years with final payment


This is an incredible story. I had thought that German reparations for the First World War had been shelved, but according to both the
Daily Mail Online and SPIEGEL ONLINE, they had not. There were a number of reasons why they had stopped, and why they started again, but now it is finally complete.

It is interesting to read the Daily Mail’s version of events. They make the Treaty of Versailles sound like someone everyone agreed to, when in fact it was something the Germans bitterly felt they were forced to sign. It’s also interesting to see them associate ‘quantitative easing’ with Germany’s hyperinflation. That’s ridiculous, since in it’s current use, quantitative easing is being used or considered because the central banks are up against the zero bound and inflation is too low. The central banks are considering it to deal with deflation, not hyperinflation.

(Treaty of Versailles image from Wikipedia).

Quote of the day

In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.’ I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

– Stephen Jay Gould

What is Stuxnet?

Stuxnet appears to be a very sophisticated piece of software that attacks industrial control systems, like those found in nuclear facilities. In particular, Iran’s nuclear facilities.

It’s always difficult to get to the root – pun intended – of these stories. However, this article, Who’s Behind Stuxnet? The Americans? The Israelis? – Security Watch, and this oneIranian nuclear facilities under “massive attack” by Stuxnet worm – Boing Boing both provide more detail than you might find in places like the NYTimes.com or Huffington Post. (Make sure you read the comments: there’s alot of useful information there.)

I am always suspicious of IT security stories. There is alot of secrecy and hype associated with them, and then journalists wade in and only acerbate that. It’s entirely possible it was written by some very smart engineer somewhere: indeed, I am more likely to go with that rather than believe it is “cyberwar”.  Let’s see how this progresses.

What’s hot in men’s fashion – 2010

GQ has a rundown of the fall trends for men in 2010. There’s something for everyone, from the high end three piece suit to the blue collar plaid shirt. Me, I like the lace-up boots and the black on black watches. Other things, like biker jackets, never go out of style, so get one this year and wear it/keep it for many more. See: The GQ Fall 2010 Trend Report, by Jim Moore: How to Build Your Perfect Fall Wardrobe: Wear It Now: GQ

(Three piece Dolce & Gabbana Suit, $1,995; vest, $425, available at Dolce & Gabbana boutique, NYC.)

Catching (fruit) flies with vinegar

The old expression, “you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar” may not be true when it comes to fruit flies. To see what I mean, check out this experiment at Lifehacker Labs: Capture Fruit Flies with a Cup and Apple Cider Vinegar. It turns out that the apple cider vinegar is just what you need. And now that it is harvest time, you may start having fresh fruit and fresh fruit flies appearing in your kitchen. Now you know how to banish them. Good luck!

(discovered via the Cool Tools section of Kevin Kelly’s site.)

New York at Night

If you are fortunate, you will have the chance to land in NYC at night. I have, and the view is stunning.

This shrunken image does it an injustice. If you want to see it and other gorgeous shots of the Big Apple at night, head over to this: Aerial views of New York | World news | guardian.co.uk.

If you fall in love with these photos, you are in luck: there is a book by Jason Hawkes called “New York at Night” that you can purchase. For more details, go here: merrellpublishers.com

Lady Gaga support for Servicemembers Legal Defense Network for the repeal of DADT

I see Lady Gaga trashed for a wide variety of things. I confess I was dismissive of her at first. However I am impressed by her theatricality and I am starting to be won over by her (even if I am not a big fan of her songs, but maybe that too will change).

What I am really impressed by, howrever, is this Public Service Announcement that she made in support of  the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network for the repeal of DADT.  Here it is:

She clearly explains what DADT and how it affects service men and women. Moreover, I thought how she ends it, with getting lost in phone mail hell, was great. It makes her Senators look bad, for one thing, but it also shows in a way the difficulty in getting through, even if you are Lady Gaga and you are one of the biggest names in music and show business.

YouTube – A message from Lady Gaga to the Senate Sept 16 2010