The Book of Bart

How God makes pie out of mincemeat

2012-02-12T19:56:00.000-08:00

How God makes pie out of mincemeat: 342 snow geese died that day. They landed on the lake, the former site of the copper mine which in the 1920's had produced 1/3 of all the copper in the US, and died that night from internal bleeding as the toxic water ate away their insides. Rainwater, iron pyrite and oxygen created strong concentrations of sulfuric acid in the water, which just leached more metals from the ground, making the lake even more toxic.

Meanwhile, the local university unplugged the fridge of the Stierles (see Andrea Stierle and Donald Stierle), a local scientist couple with Ph.D.'s in Chemistry, while the couple was on a year-long sabbatical. This destroyed all their samples of the Bermudan sponge that they were studying. Stuck with no samples, no money to buy or get more, and anxious to continue work, they started looking at molds from the lake, discovering hundreds of compounds which actively kill viruses and different types of cancer.

Then they found a thick black goo which absorbs the metals in the pit water. Many organisms are used commercially to clean up such toxic concentrations, but they only clean 10%-15% of the metals. This organism absorbed 85%-90% of the metals in the water. So they took some samples and sent them off for further analysis. It turned out that the yeast had only been seen before in one place in the entire world, although its significance hadn't been discovered then -- in rectal swabs of geese.

And that's one way that God makes pies out of mincemeat.

Feel free to listen for yourself, it's just over eleven minutes long:

From http://www.radiolab.org/2010/jun/28/even-the-worst-laid-plans/

$25 Billion to help homeowners with foreclosure abuse, average person gets $2k

2012-02-12T04:12:00.000-08:00

$25 Billion to Help Homeowners With Foreclosure Abuse. Whoopity-do, $2,000 apiece. Sure, some will get a lot more, but 2k for the average person is chump change compared to losing your home.

Why Facebook is better than Google Plus

2012-02-12T01:44:00.000-08:00

Why Facebook is better than Google+. I've been a fan of Google for years -- I've tried to love Google Plus, I really have, but it just lacks basic functionality that Facebook has. For instance:

I cannot go to a friend's page and send them a message. I've gone to friends' pages and for the life of me I cannot figure out how to send them an individual message. I suppose I could set up a circle with nobody but them in it, but honestly I just can't be bothered, since we're already on Facebook and Facebook just works nicely like that.
I cannot stop Google+ messages about a particular game. Let's say that I have several friends who like to play SocialCityGame while I happen to prefer TheCityGame. When I look at my game stream, all of the SocialCityGame messages from friends are mixed in with my TheCityGame messages from other friends. Unlike Facebook, there's no way to just block all SocialCityGame messages. Seriously, I'm not interested in starting a new city from scratch, I'm sticking with TheCityGame, not SocialCityGame. (The names of the games here are, hopefully, made up.)
Messages on Google+ go out in all sorts of places -- did I really see them all? Can't I just have them go to one place so that I can read one page and get all my messages? For instance, when I want TheCityGame messages, some will come as a Notification in the top right corner, some will come to my full game stream, some will come to the game's Google+ message page, I'm not even sure if there are other places -- it took me a couple weeks just to happen to stumble across those.
As I noted in #1, everyone I know is already on Facebook. As far as I can tell, we're already invested in a system that works fine, so why switch?

Google vs Facebook, who will win?

2012-02-05T19:43:00.000-08:00

Google challenged Facebook, built Google+. Facebook offers @facebook.com email. Who will win?

This is the clash of titans. Companies with more money and clout than most countries in the world have stepped up to the line and are trying to smash each other "upside the head". The first company to step away from the line (or to fall away from the line) loses. And by "lose" I mean they lose everything. The next year or two is going to be very interesting.

Ancient Archeologists

2012-02-03T20:40:00.001-08:00

Watching Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark -- archaeologists seem cooler back then. ;)

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - The Atlantic

2012-02-03T04:21:00.000-08:00

For America's schools to be like Finland, we have to close all private schools. Then we should upgrade teacher standards, the requirements for what's required to be able to teach, raising our teacher's pay commensurately.

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - The Atlantic

Google -- more and more like Microsoft every day

2012-02-02T19:20:00.000-08:00

In 2008, I posted how I preferred the thought of an Android phone over an iPhone, but no more. I've championed 'Droids for years now, but I'm going to reverse my stance. Having had the opportunity to use several different Android phones and several versions of the iPhone, I'm going to have to say that for the vast majority of people (myself included), the iPhone is simply better, simply because it's cleaner.

Buying an Android phone is like buying a house, except that house comes with this really rubbish sofa that doesn't match any of your other furniture and you just hate it, but the terms of the contract say that you can't ever get rid of it. Sure, you can move it into some other room, it doesn't have to sit in your living room, but you can only move it to another room if you want to first move all your furniture into another room then move everything but the sofa back out to where it was before, which is a serious pain (install a custom home setup that only displays the apps you want displayed). And the sofa is somehow tied to your door key -- moving everything to a bedroom then moving everything but the sofa back to the living room might somehow, inexplicably, and without any warning, lock you out of your house (if the app is ever broken by a software upgrade). Sure, you can call a locksmith, but that's also a pain.

The only way to get rid of that seriously ugly sofa is to tear up your contract with the Housing Authorities and sneak the couch off in the dead of night, although this might just get you banned from ever entering your house again if the Housing Authority finds out... and believe me, they're making every effort to prevent people from even trying this.

Seriously, Google, I know you're getting big, but this is like Microsoft. I thought you were better than this.

I need 3-4 used backpacks

2012-01-30T21:41:00.000-08:00

I need 3-4 used backpacks (ripped straps etc. is ok as long as one strap is still whole). Contact me at bart.humphries@gmail.com

My motorcycle broke down - miraculous ride home

2012-01-26T01:25:00.000-08:00

It is my belief that I am helped by stopping to help other people, asking if there's anything that I can do to help. Even if I wasn't helped, I would still help other people, but it seems to me that what goes around comes around.

For instance, the time I stopped to help someone (who needed a push to get started on a flat road), only to try to move my motorcycle out of the way and discover that I'd just run out of gas (the bike was new, I thought the "low on gas" light was a different light). The time I ran out of gas down by San Diego as I was passing through a canyon section of freeway that had no gas stations nearby -- someone pulled up next to me, gave me some gas, led me to a nearby (hidden) gas station, then drove away. The times that stopping to help someone has enabled me to miss something that I wanted to miss (like an accident ahead), etc. These things keep happening.

That's not to say that sometimes I don't get frustrated stopping and helping people. Of course I do, I'm human. And the times that I've been helped by stopping are in the minority, as far as numbers go. But every time I've needed help, I've been helped.

Tonight, I was driving up the mountain, just in front of an aggressive group of cars, when I saw a car in a turnout ahead with its hazard lights blinking. I pulled over at the next turnout and went back. It turned out that the car was deserted and I couldn't find anyone around, so I headed back up the mountain. In the time that I spent looking for someone nearby, several more packs of cars drove past -- it seems like I just managed to wait out until the tail end of rush hour traffic, because not a single pack of cars drove past me again (only occasional single cars). Up by the old CalTrans corner (where the CalTrans building used to be), something happened with my chain and I lost all power. I coasted to the side, turned around and dismounted at a nearby turnout, then started walking back up the mountain, holding out my thumb to hitchhike.

Nobody stopped to pick me up and I started to wonder whether something was going to happen when I noticed a call box ahead. I opened it up and started making a call, when a car drove up and stopped about 30' away from me. You can imagine my surprise when I noticed that it was my dad! I ran up and opened the door, startling him. He hadn't seen my black-leather clad form standing in the shadows on a mostly moonless night, he'd stopped because his open bottle of soda had started to top on the old Caltrans corner and he was putting the lid back on it.

Personally, I regard that as a miracle. Some might call it coincidence -- I call it God taking an interest in my life. Thanks. I'll see if I can't pay it forward.

Victimhood has its privileges - Washington Times

2012-01-21T09:00:00.000-08:00

I could travel from precinct to precinct in South Carolina and keep revoting with no ID required? Something is wrong with the Obama administration. They shot down a law requiring ID to vote?

Use Apple's free publishing, can't publish that anywhere again

2012-01-20T21:18:00.000-08:00

If you use Apple's new free publishing tools, you can never again publish that anywhere else, even after 50 years. A little clause in Apple's new free e-publishing tools says that once you publish with Apple, they own you -- you can never go publish that with anyone else ever again.

Lightsquare and GPS

2012-01-19T00:52:00.000-08:00

Julius Genachowski, I shouldn't have to check for a neighbors building permit requests to prevent them building on my property. That's your job.

The GPS consortium (an incredibly useful group) shouldn't have to check whether adjacent frequencies are being built up in preparation for something that'll override GPS frequencies -- that sort of interference checking is Lightsquare's job, but when you back Lightsquare and the resulting interference instead of being a neutral third party which adjudicates disputes and enforces existing rules, it becomes your responsibility.

The Harbinger/Skyterra license-transfer proceeding was pending at the Commission for nearly a year, you say? In a dark room down in the cellar, on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard", you say?

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

2012-01-17T09:48:00.000-08:00

Wikipedia is going to black itself out for a day to protest the SOPA bill. I actually wanted a banner up top, not a full blackout, but apparently I was outvoted. I do agree that the SOPA bill would be a bad thing -- I just posted about how amendment #36 requires that all the other methods that countries use to block and filter the internet be examined and written up within two years of the bill becoming law, including China's methods. I think we can all agree, China's internet filtering methods are a bad thing to even think about implementing here in the US. Forget 1984, SOPA will throw us back into the 1994 internet -- remember AOL's "Walled Garden"? SOPA is not a good idea.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia_anti-SOPA_blackout

SOPA amendment #36 we have to examine how China censors the internet

2012-01-16T02:10:00.000-08:00

Amend #36 (passed), within two years the Secretary of State must publish how China censors the internet and how we can do the same.

This Stop Online Piracy Act, and especially the amendment introduced by Mr. Polis, is a bad idea. Our internet really doesn't need to become more like China's internet. Even now, when people search for the Chinese characters that mean "Egypt" the search results are banned so as to stop people from reading about the 2011 popular revolution in Egypt. China has an incredibly well maintained set of internet filters -- we do not need or want something like that in the United States, it is not a good idea.

California purposefully budgets based on expected business IPO's

2012-01-12T16:28:00.000-08:00

California made its current budget based on hoped-for capital gains when private businesses go public. This year, for instance, if Facebook doesn't go public, CA's budget will be end up even more in the hole. That's just wrong. That's like a regular family budgeting how much they can spend to buy a new TV on the hope that Grandma will finally die this year leaving us money. Maybe it'll happen this year, maybe it'll happen next year, but that's not a sound basis for fiscal solvency.

'Facebook Effect' could boost California budget - San Jose Mercury News

"Time Cloak" Created; Can Make Events Disappear

2012-01-10T16:56:00.000-08:00

"Time Cloak" created. The war between immovable objects (armor, castle walls, etc.) and unstoppable forces (bullets, cannon balls) has been going on for millennia, with each side getting the upper hand in turn, prompting the development of even tougher immovable objects and even stronger unstoppable forces in an attempt to regain the upper hand. Fiber optic cables have so far been an unassailable method of delivering encrypted information, since tapping the cable to listen in requires that the cable be spliced. With a continuous stream of information, such a break would be noticed, the location of the break could be computed, and countermeasures could be undertaken. The science behind this time cloak, regardless of its eventual 3D aspects (which may or may not materialize, pun intended) suggests that somebody might someday be able to tap a fiber optic cable just as easily as they're able to tap an electronic phone line today, without either the sending or receiving party being at all aware of the break.

In the war of secrets between governments, this is an earthshaking, monumental discovery that could change everything. It once again gives the upper hand to unstoppable forces. No form of communication in this eventual world could be completely safe and secure -- everything would potentially be open. We've come a long way from when James Bond commandeered a car to travel to the nearest post office to ask the operator to ring up London for him. If this discovery were put into practical use, you could never be quite certain that SPECTRE wasn't listening in.

"Time Cloak" Created; Can Make Events Disappear

New Sherlock Holmes movie: A Game of Shadows

2012-01-09T11:35:00.000-08:00

New Sherlock Holmes movie: A Game of Shadows. Warning, spoilers...

Did you expect the auctioneer to say, "Lot 665 -- A papier mache musical box in the shape of a barrel organ. Attached, the figure of a monkey in Persian robes, playing the cymbals." Granted, I haven't heard Phantom of the Opera for some time now, but it sounded like the same pitch and intonation.

So that's how the Joker came to be wearing that particular makeup. :P

Do we really need a slow closeup of every bullet fired in the forest? This isn't the Matrix. Also, the brief run through of every fight before the fight occurs--I realized they were setting up for some sort of "surprise" at the end, which turned out to be the pugilistic encounter played out mentally between the two men after the immediate foreshadowing of the mental chess finish, but still it was sort of getting a bit tiresome by the time they were running in the forest.

All in all, I really enjoyed the movie.

Once Upon a Time

2012-01-05T13:54:00.000-08:00

A TV show called Once Upon a Time on the basic ABC Broadcasting channel (and at Hulu) has been incredible, but I don't know how much longer I can keep watching it. Every episode seems to build you up in the middle, then tear you down and literally rip your heart out at the end of each episode. There are quite literally no happy endings and although it's an incredible show, I'm starting to question why I'm watching it.

Type 2 Diabetes is reversible?

2012-01-04T21:17:00.000-08:00

"In an early stage clinical trial of 11 people, funded by Diabetes UK, all reversed their diabetes by drastically cutting their food intake to just 600 calories a day for two months. And three months later, seven remained free of diabetes." according to http://www.ncl.ac.uk/biomedicine/news/newsitem.htm?id=diet-reverses-type-2-diabetes

Mel Gibson and the Maccabees

2012-01-02T23:05:00.000-08:00

I think, with his choice of a movie about the Maccabees, Mel Gibson is trying his best to apologize to Jewish people without actually having to apologize (which would mean admitting guilt).

Jews begin acting like Palestinians?

2011-12-27T09:41:00.000-08:00

Some Jewish people were acting like Palestinians recently: @YahooNews http://news.yahoo.com/jewish-gender-segregation-campaign-turns-violent-135056846.html

Doctor Who Christmas episode 2011

2011-12-26T13:33:00.000-08:00

#Doctor Who Christmas 2011, bedrooms were cool, most of the time led up to a giant pun, the sonic doesn't work on wood

Calendars, or the lack thereof

2011-12-18T09:54:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has no 2012 calendar templates in Word or Excel. Google Calendar has the same problem that Outlook has -- when you look at the calendar in Month mode you can't see the details of the events that you want to see -- no point in trying to print one of them out.

Epic Fail on Microsoft and Google's part. I ended up making my own calendar.

Asperger's, info dumps, everyone does it?

2011-12-17T22:45:00.000-08:00

I was reading an Isaac Asimov anthology earlier today and realized that his characters tended to appear to have Asperger's (a mental disorder characterized by a difficulty with nonverbal communication, demonstrated limited empathy with their peers, and some element of physical clumsiness, has greatly increased in the past few years). More especially, when talking to another person, people with Asperger's tend to focus on one particular subject and to verbally "dump" a load of information when talking. To see this in action, take a look at this spoof video:

Asperger's High	UCBcomedy.com

Watch more comedy videos from the twisted minds of the UCB Theatre at UCBcomedy.com

For instance, in Isaac Asimov's short story Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter, published under the pseudonym Paul French in 1957, one character comments that Jupiter looks a little squished, not quite round, then asked whether that was an optical illusion. Here's the resulting dialogue (mainly from the titular lead of the story, Lucky Starr himself) -- there's no need to actually read this quote, feel free to skip it, I'm just putting it here for emphasis so that its length and supposed "spontaneous" complexity can be referenced:

"Not at all," said Lucky. "Jupiter really isn't round. It's flattened at the poles. You've heard that Earth is flattened at the poles, haven't you?"
"Sure. But not enough to notice."
"Of course not. Consider! Earth is twenty-five thousand miles about its equator and rotates in twenty-four hours, so that a spot on its equator moves just over a thousand miles an hour. The resulting centrifugul force bulges the equator outward so that the diameter of the Earth across its middle is about twenty-seven miles more than the diameter from North Pole to South Pole. The difference in the two diameters is only about a third of one percent, so that from space Earth looks like a perfect sphere."
"Oh."
"Now take Jupiter. It is about two hundred and seventy-six thousand miles about its equator, eleven times the circumference of Earth, yet it rotates about its axis in only ten hour; five minutes less than that, to be exact. A point on its equator is moving at a speed of almost twenty-eight thousand miles an hour; or twenty-eight times as fast as any point on Earth. There's a great deal more centrifugal force and a much larger equatorial bulge, especially since the material in Jupiter's outer layers is much lighter than that in the Earth's crust. Jupiter's diameter across its equator is nearly six thousand miles more than its diameter from North Pole to South Pole. The difference is the diameters is a full fifteen percent, and that's an easy thing to see."
Bigman stared at the flattened circle of light that was Jupiter and muttered, "Sands of Mars!"

I read that and immediately thought to myself, "Good heavens, that's a metric ton of data for a person to rattle off the top of their head." There was a fair amount of math that was either worked on the fly or the whole thing was memorized previously.

And I realized that this was how most of the characters in most of the books that I read tend to communicate. Infodumps with nary a chance to interact with the character other than to follow along the flow of the story. In fact, most videogames are also like this. Sure, you might have dialogue options as in the critically acclaimed Mass Effect videogame, but the cutscenes that actually advance the plot and deliver critical information are all infodumps. Television newscasters, basically anything on the Science and Discovery channels, etc.

The more asynchronous communication is, the more it tends towards infodumps. Take internet bulletin boards, for example, where people can wax rhapsodic about all sorts of things that only tangentially touch on the subject at hand. When you read a blog post and then are invited to comment, the post is already over and done, there's been an infodump.

About the only thing that doesn't fit this mold is some (and only some) talk radio stations that actively invite listener comments during the shows. Perhaps, since Asperger's has been linked as a variant of high-functioning autism (or at least this is how the upcoming new version of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders will apparently classify it), this might explain the growing prevalence of autism-like behaviors in the general public. People are acting the way they've been trained to act by both scholastic and leisure activities. There's no use waiting for the input of another because, in so many activities, there cannot be synchronous input.

Perhaps the growing rise of instant synchronous texting (the sense that texts must be answered "immediately" will help quell the growing rise of asynchronous communication. Perhaps the growing ability of people to stare into a machine while they text the person sitting right next to them about unimportant trivial minutia, essentially composing hundreds of mini-infodumps in a day, will speed this phenomena on its way.

Whatever happens, please know that I would love for you to comment. Although the blog post is done, feel free to respond. ;)

Why Leave No Trace (LNT), can it work well with Bushcraft?

2011-11-14T09:25:00.001-08:00

Can Bushcraft and Leave No Trace work together well? Yes. Why LNT?

One commentator said

"The trouble with LNT is that it takes a narrow, synchronic view. An LNTer may scoff at cooking dinner over a fire because of the impact of gathering wood and potentially leaving some mark or scar on the area. In that immediate situation, cooking dinner on a canister stove surely leaves less of a trace than the fire. But what about the whole life cycle of the product? What impact did the manufacturing of the stove and fuel have? What impact will the disposal of the fuel canister have? When you widen the lens, bushcraft activities tend to have a much smaller impact.

As Jack Mountain Bushcraft says, it's all about minimal impact vs. displaced impact.

I agree, it is about minimal impact vs displaced impact. But first let me share some of the reasons for Leave No Trace.

Backpacking really became big in the 60's. But for every bootprint placed in the 60's, there were three bootprints being placed in the 80's and that number has greatly increased ever since. I live near San Gorgonio and it's not that uncommon of an occurrence to have a thousand people camping in one of its canyons. Granted, those canyons are the size of super huge miles-long parks (it's quite a large mountain), but that's still a lot of people. From 1974 to 1985, the number of visitor days in National Parks across the US increased from 7 million to 20 million. Last year, 2010, there were approximately 51 million visitor days (based on 1,239,426,181 reported visitor hours).

Lots of people visit Mount Whitney every year. It's the tallest mountain in the contiguous 48 US states.

One author said, In the year 2007 alone according to my bosses here over 6330 pounds of feces were packed out of the Whitney zone. If that were to be stacked in the poop barrels which they use to truck the waste to a facility, it would be taller than the Statue of Liberty.

That's a lot of people. It only takes 4-5 camping nights from a visiting group to kill off almost 90% of a campsite's native ground vegetation in the places where they walk. It takes a few years for that vegetation to come back. Back in the late 70's, some land managers tried to shut down campsites so they could recover while they opened new ones -- because land degrades so quickly and it takes so long for land to come back (especially when you start getting only a few thousand feet above see level and the air thins making plants grow slower), they essentially doubled the amount of heavily impacted campsites in their areas.

As the "frontcountry" becomes increasingly visited and heavily impacted, Leave No Trace becomes more and more important simply to preserve what we already have, and to prevent the backcountry from turning into more frontcountry. That being said, bushcraft does have a place. If you do something foolish/stupid or a bad accident occurs, you need to know how to survive.

Scouting is where this all comes together. With its increasing focus on Leave No Trace while maintaining its cultural heritage of bushcraft, Scouting solidly straddles the two theories and shows how they can harmonize well.