probability.earthquake <- probability of coding success?

Over the past couple of weeks I've been learning how to use a new program called Splus. Well, actually, I mostly feel like I'm bashing my head against concrete. It's a statistical software package and I'm trying to code up some nice analyses. Which would be fine if I had any coding skills. I have to say that the help files are spectacularly unhelpful to a beginner.

Anyway, because I'm all new at this Splus thing, I've been reading the "useful tips" that pop up each time I start a new session.

Today's tip said:

"When an earthquake strikes, take cover under a desk or doorway. Try to avoid areas near windows or heavy objects that might topple, and above all, do not panic".

This seems like odd advice to include with a statistical software package. I can only conclude that I'll just feel like there's an earthquake happening in the event that I actually ever get some useful code together.

Media savvy

Erm, so if you pop a few pills your probability of dying is 75%???
And we thought we had an ageing population NOW.

Must confess: I got this from planet procrastination

It is believed that... I'm a delinquent

Ah, my poor sushi-night, I have been neglecting you. Partly, I've ben on a bit of a steep learning curve with my new postoctoral work, but mostly, I confess, I've just been azy.

Today someone actually commented on a previous post despite the site's inactivity... and someone else commented to ME that I hadn't been blogging much.

So here's hoping that I can get my groove back. It's appropriate that it's a Friday - tonight is ALWAYS sushi night! (for clarification, wander back through the archives to the first post ever).

It's also appropriate that I nobody strain their brain on a Friday afternoon. So Let's have some fun instead. Here's the "Dictionary Of Research Phrases", which I pulled from someone's science humour website. And may I say... "This Dictionary has long been known... to exist"

"It has long been known..."

I didn't look up the original references.

"A reasonable trend is evident..."

These data are practically meaningless.

"Of great theoretical and practical importance..."

It is interesting to me.

"While it has not been possible to provide definite anwers to these questions..."

An unsuccessful experiment, but I still hope to get it published.

"Three of the data sets were chosen for detailed study..."

The results of the others didn't match my conclusions.

"Typical results are shown..."

The best results are shown.

"These results will be shown in a subsequent report..."

Haven't gotten around to it.

"The most reliable results are those obtained by Jones..."

He was my graduate student.

"It is believed that..."

I think...

"It is generally believed that..."

A couple of other guys think so, too.

"Much more work is needed before a complete understanding of the phenomenon can be reached."

I don't understand it.

"This result is correct within an order of magnitude..."

It is wrong.

Kvetch

I love that word. Kevtch. KvetchKvetchKvetchKvetchKvetchKvetchKvetch....

Anyway - last night I got to be a part of Canada's first- ever "Complaints choir". The CBC Radio show As it Happens solicited complaints from their listeners, and had them set to music. It just aired.

hehehe.

I could tell you more, but I'll just send you here for the video, and here for the audio (End of Part 1).

(Wrt the video: Click on "Complaints Choir" ... who knows how long it will be linked to this page. After that you'll have to hunt us down on YouTube or something) .

Me, me, me!

Al Gore, who seems to have been transmogrified from boring political guy-in-a-tie to celebrity environmentalist since the release of his famous documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, is dabbling in even more hollywood hype.

His doc is already nominated for an Oscar (and so is Melissa Etheridge for her song "I Need to Wake Up", which was featured in the film), but he's already moving on. He's become a concert-organizer.

He's putting together a series of global concerts set to play (and air) over a 24-hour period on July 7th. Sort of like the Live 8 thing that happened a couple of summers ago.

This concert's called Live Earth. Good title.

It's part of a broader campaign called "Save our Selves". I'm hating that title.

It sounds a little too inward-focused and way too cheesy. Sort of like, "I'm only doing this because I'd just hate it if the sea levels rose and the carpet in my beachfront mansion got damaged".

I mean, yeah, I don't want to be personally affected by climate change either, but I'm also a little concerned about those folks living in the low-lying areas of Bangladesh who have no voice whatsoever.

Apparently the concerts will happen in Shanghai, Johannesburg, Sydney, London and cities to be announced in Japan, Brazil and the United States. The countries with the cash. And a lot of the CO2 emissions. And the political clout. Nice for us that we can "Save Our Selves" if we decide to.

I'm being cynical - lots of people are concerned about global effects - but this title implies that we would only want to address climate change if it might hurt us personally - as opposed to harming other people, or the community at large. Thank goodness that any actions people in the West take to save themselves can't be reserved for the West alone - by definition, they'll have global effects.

Proceeds from the concert will go to fight climate change. Whatever works I guess.

World's Coolest Online Magazine

I've mentioned Inkycircus before - the bestest girl-nerd blog ever. I mean, where else will you find posts about people who acted out mitosis in a swimming people (and videotaped themselves!), or how insecticide might be the secret ingredient in Stradivarius violins. I mean, neato.

Well now there's a MAGAZINE!! Hurrah. It's called Inkling Magazine. Click on over, people, it's way cool.

And watch the upcoming articles carefully ;) You never know who might be contributing...

I've got worms

I love Christmas carols and hymn - I really do. They remind me of how excited I used to feel around this time of year when I was a kid: just about bursting with anticipation. There's something really nice about just knowing all the words and being able to sing them with alomst anyone - a very "community" kind of experience.

But. For almost a week now I have had a fragment of some Christmas tune I don't really know stuck in my head:

..Willie, play your fife and drum, Robin [something, something hum a bit here];Tu-ra-lu-ra-lu, Pat-a-pat-a-pan...

And that's all I know. And it's not even a great song. Heck, it's not even a traditional carol. And it's driving me crazy!

This type of thing is called an earworm. It's a great name for a REALLY IRRITATING THING.

Fun with words, meet climate change

Yesterday I heard a radio announcer attribute a quote to "Don Quixoto". I'm not sure if it was him or my ears, since I'm pretty sure the dude in question is actually called Don Quixote. Whose "real name in the book" (if that makes sense) was Alonso Quixano. And really, the author is Cervantes. I mean, who do you actually cite when the words were spoken by a fictional character who adopts a new name?

Anyway, so I'm listening to the radio and thinking, ...huh? ... "Don Kyoto" ????

I'm thinking this might be a character who does not see wind power as the solution to our greenhouse gas emissions woes.

Or, a guy who thinks it's possible to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions but he doesn't really have the right tools for the job and most people think he's completely mad.

Either way, here in Canada, Don Kyoto is definitely a fictional character.

Science Sentence Structure

Scientists have discovered a way to synthesize a bunch of new antibacterial agents by treating the compounds as if they were sentences and rearranging the components according to basic rules of grammar.

When researchers look at these kinds of molecules - which are basically strings of amino acids - they write them down on paper (or, OK, probably on a computer screen) using a letter to represent each individual amino acid.

When they started looking at compounds that were naturally antibacterial they realized that there were patterns in the order of the letters - just like there are with words and sentence structures in spoken or written language.

So THEN, they used a bunch of real grammar rules to reorder the letters - thereby designing new compounds, which they then synthesized in the lab. And they found that lots of those compounds had antibacterial activity too.

Oh, I think I've died and gone to heaven. The disciplines of Science and Language have merged.

Plain English

I've been reading journal articles again. Still. Whatever. And sometimes, the language is so obscure. It's as if the authors think they'll look smarter by using long words and the most convoluted phrasing possible.

But: it seems that someone has heard my prayers to the Gods of Language: it's The Plain English Campaign !!

Ta daaaah! Based in the UK, they are at my rescue, with a mission to make sure that information is expressed is clearly as possible. They've helped all sorts of organizations, including UK government departments make sure that their public info can be understood by, uh, the public.

I think my favorite parts of the website are the gobbldygook generator, which lets you create "empty, meaningless phrases" with the click of a mouse, and the Golden Bull archive, which lists winners of an annual award presented for the worst examples of real gobbledygook.
An example to whet your appetite:

Central Manchester and Manchester Children’s University Hospitals NHS Trust for an Agenda for Change document

'Where the combined value of the above payments before actual assimilation remains greater than the combined value of the payments after assimilation, the former level of pay will be protected. These protection arrangements apply to the combined value of payments before and after assimilation, not to individual pay components, excepting the provision relating to retention of existing on-call arrangements.

Huh?!

Fun with words VII

So according to some random website I came across today (OK, actually, it's a column from the Hindustan Times), there's a new "longest word in the English language". It's

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

It’s 45 letters long. It’s a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust, mostly found in volcanoes. I'm wondering if this is common among volcanologists - mostly because if it qualifies as an occupational disease then I might be able to included it in one of the lectures I have to give next week.

The author listed a bunch of really long words - some that don't really count as words in the English language because they aren't really used, like

Bababadal­gharagh­takammin­arronn­konn­bronn­tonn­erronn­tuonn­thunn­trovarrhoun­awnskawn­toohoo­hoordenen­thurnuk,

(representing the thunderclap when Adam and Eve were thrown out off Eden. Honestly now. Who could ever be tenacious enough to figure out how to say that without looking at it?)

Then we have:

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia (fear of long words... Ihehe)

floccinaucinihilipilification (the art of estimating something to be worthless)

Oh, and antidisestablishmentarianism - the long word we usually think of first? Apparently, since the church was not disestablished (i.e, the disestablishmentarians weren't too fond of the church of England in the mid-1800s.. but clearly, the church is still, uh established), the word is no longer in use.