04.13.07
Posted in news, politics at 7:49 pm by danvk
A&L Daily linked to an interesting article in The Boston Globe that attempts to examine the logic behind President Bush’s position on stem cells.
The article makes some good points, most notably that there’s no inherent logical contradiction in the president’s position. This is one of the reasons that stem cell arguments are so maddening. There’s a consistent position to be found on both sides of the issue, it’s just that most people don’t find the President’s side very compelling.
Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
04.12.07
Posted in politics, tv at 11:55 pm by danvk
I watched the Daily Show for the first time in months today. Did it have a noticeable “jumping the shark” moment? It’s not what it used to be. It’s entirely driven by news clips. Play a funny clip, Jon Stewart makes a face and says something sarcastic. Jon laughs at his correspondent being absurd. Jon does an uninteresting interview.
America: The Book was a highlight, but the Crossfire Interview was undoubtedly The Daily Show’s high point. In retrospect, I first remember having my doubts about the Daily Show shortly after the Colbert Report started. I still enjoy Colbert. Somehow their two styles clash in a way that’s very unflattering to Jon. Whatever edge Jon used to have, Stephen’s got it now.
I just watched the Crossfire segment again, and it still brilliant after 18 months. Where’s that Jon Stewart? I wish he’d just talk on his show, instead of falling back on all the news clips and “correspondents”. Maybe then I’d start watching again.
Permalink
04.10.07
Posted in personal at 9:07 pm by danvk
I noticed my wallet was missing after racquetball this afternoon, and despite some semi-concerted efforts searching, I wasn’t able to find it. In retrospect, I should have checked my bank account immediately…
04-10 *DEBIT AUTHORIZATION
AT 23:02 ALMADEN CINEMA SAN JOSE CA $ 25.50
04-10 *DEBIT AUTHORIZATION
AT 22:38 Jack in the Box 34 San Jose $ 8.19
04-10 *DEBIT AUTHORIZATION
AT 16:03 SUNNYVALE SUNNYVALE CA $ 49.00
04-10 *DEBIT AUTHORIZATION
AT 15:31 TARGET SUNNYVALE CA $ 8.64
04-10 *DEBIT AUTHORIZATION
AT 15:15 SUNNYVALE SUNNYVALE CA $ 68.00
So the good news is he only got $200 (including ~$40 cash in the wallet) before I canceled the card. It gives me some peace of mind that his last purchase was movie tickets, since he won’t be doing too much purchasing inside the Almaden Cinema.
I’m OK considering this a $200 lesson learned. What’s most annoying is that now I need to go get my debit card and driver’s license replaced.
On the off chance that whoever’s got my “DANIEL H VANDERKAM” Mastercard is reading this, you’ve got the address to send my DL. Be a nice person. It only costs you 37 cents…
Permalink
04.06.07
Posted in programming, science, wikipedia at 11:50 pm by danvk
While reading Wikipedia’s Mandelbrot set article, I stumbled upon the exceedingly cool Buddhabrot, and the even cooler Nebulabrot:
I’ll write more about the math later, but what I find most interesting about it is how it naturally fills in the “boring space” inside the Mandelbrot set:
The interior of the Nebulabrot is also a fractal, as a zoom shows:
Those little buds are all Mandelbrots.
Being a CS-type, once I saw the definition, I immediately set out to render the most detailed Nebulabrot ever seen. It’s 10240×7680 and gorgeous. Here are some zooms (click for full-res versions):
The most “nebular” part
“Island universes” along the negative x-axis
Here’s a link to the full JPEG (4.3MB) and the full PNG (44 MB).
If you zoom all the way in, you’ll see some graininess, even in the PNG. This isn’t a compression artifact. It’s a hint of further structure. If I’d cranked up the dwell limit in my rendering, the noise would have been even more miniature Mandelbrot sets!
Update: MarkCC over at Good Math, Bad Math has a post about MapReduce that discusses the way I generated this at length.
Permalink
04.04.07
Posted in news, tv at 11:23 pm by danvk
I saw something incredibly strange on the online NewsHour tonight, at the 6:26 mark:
Why is PBS using a TiVo to record their own show? I just can’t fathom any way in which this makes sense. At least they gave it two thumbs up.
On a somewhat related note, I watch the NewsHour in QuickTime Player, since VLC’s streaming support isn’t quite there yet. QT Player is a terrible program. In order to go full-screen, you have to fork over $25 to Apple to upgrade to the “Pro version”. This has always struck me as idiotic, so I found this workaround hilarious. Apple forgot to seal this feature off from AppleScript, so if you run this…
tell application “QuickTime Player”
present front movie
end tell
… you’ll go fullscreen without upgrading!
Permalink
« Previous Page — « Previous entries
Next entries » — Next Page »
