How to Downsize

Having a blog means you can post links to articles that interest you.

Here's a guy that built a house out of sticks and hay:
http://www.simondale.net/house/index.htm

I find this far cooler than the latest skyscraper in Dubai.

Economics Makes Sense

The team over at EPI have come up with this analysis of how effective different measures are at stimulating the economy. Not surprisingly, consumption subsidies (food stamps, extending unemployment benefits) have more effect than making the rich richer (dividend tax cuts, corporate tax cuts, etc.) This is because the less money you have, the larger percentage of your income turns into consumption. Those who qualify for food stamps spend just about everything. So by giving them a subsidy, it gets turned into economy, whereas people who get more money from a dividend tax cut will probably not spend as much of it. Thanks, marginal propensity to consume!
http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snapshots_20081022/

Wordle Word Clouds

There is a cool site called Wordle. Wordle makes word clouds out of text. The more often a word appears in the text, the larger it is in the cloud. I've made some interesting ones with large source texts.

The first exercise was to compare word use by various presidents. I input collections of speeches from George Washington (11 speeches), Thomas Jefferson (12 speeches), Abraham Lincoln (9 speeches), Richard Nixon (10 speeches), George W. Bush (12 speeches), and Barack Obama (10 speeches). They are mostly state of the union addresses, inauguration speeches, and nomination acceptance speeches. For Obama, I used a lot of campaign speeches, so keep that in mind when you look at the word cloud. (This explains, for instance, why "McCain" is one of the larger words.)

I would be interested to hear your observations. Here are some of mine. Presidents in the past called it "United States," while more recent presidents call it "America." Jefferson used neither. Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln were fond of the word "may," whereas Nixon used "let," and Bush and Obama use "must." The word "government" appears more in pre-Bush speeches as well. Here are the word clouds (click for larger):



Next, I wanted to see how large of a text the system could handle. I tried the entire Bible, and couldn't get it to work. After I broke it down into the Old and New Testaments, it found those chunks digestible. The program is supposed to ignore common words, such as "the," "a," "but," and so on, but the common words in King James-style English (an old-fashioned style of speech even when written, by the way) are different, so we see a lot of "thy," and "hast." (click for larger)


I tried a novel next, Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn." I picked Finn because it is noted for being written in a vernacular style, the opposite of the Bible. What words was Twain fond of? (What word were Twain fond of?) (click for larger)


I next did Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species," in honor of his 200th birthday. (click for larger)

I showed my results to some friends, and one of them replied that he'd imagine a word cloud of Noam Chomsky talks would consist mainly of

"East Timor"

"Uncontroversial"

hand motions

"I hate America"

To test this hypothesis, I input 28 Chomsky talks, totaling over 200 pages (found at chomsky.info), and got this result (click for larger):


So word clouds are a neat way to display information.

All You Need To Know About Crawford v. Nashville

The latest Wikipedia article I've contributed to is Crawford v. Nashville. Go there to learn about an exciting Supreme Court case. Isn't employment law fun?

Abandoned Blog Syndrome

I haven't updated this in a while because I haven't felt like it. This is called abandoned blog syndrome. Perhaps I shall post more shortly.

Oil Can Guitar, Part 2

Part 1 here.
I have now assembled all of the ingredients for my guitar. The Singer oil can I ordered, which I thought was from a defunct oil company called Singer turns out to be machine oil for Singer sewing machines. A gallon of it. I imagine the average consumer wouldn't use a gallon of oil in a lifetime, so it would have to be for repairmen or factories.
Here's the plan: Screw the neck into a piece of hardwood. (While guitar nomenclature calls these "bolts," they are technically screws.) Stick the neck+wood into the can (cutting a hole to fit). Screw the neck into the can. Drill holes for the bridge. Add the bridge, wire the pickup, and we have ourselves a guitar.
I went with one P-90 pickup in the bridge position, like an LP Junior*. However, I don't like tone knobs, so it just has a volume control. (Note on volume knobs: Single coils typical use a 250k ohm volume control, and humbuckers usually use 500k. The LP Junior, however, uses 500k. But I don't have a tone control**, so I worry the 500k would be too bright. I talked to the folks down at Ye Olde Guitar Shoppe and they decided it wouldn't make a difference, and if it didn't like it I can exchange it. I went with 500k because that's what they had in stock.)
I have a feeling putting this together will be easier said than done. Stay tuned for updates.
(click for larger)

*Introduced in 1954, the Les Paul Junior was meant as an "entry level" Gibson. (It cost $50 at the time, $380 in today's money.) It had one P-90 pickup, as opposed to the full Les Paul, which had two. (Humbuckers would be introduced in 1957.) Like most Gibsons, the LP Junior had a 24 3/4 inch scale length. The neck I have for this guitar is a 25 1/2 inch scale length, which is what most Fender guitars use.
**Why don't I like tone knobs? All a passive tone knob does is add a capacitor into the circuit that bleeds off high frequencies. The more you turn the knob, the more highs are bled off. But even when the tone knob is turned all the way up, the signal is still degraded by the capacitor. Taking the tone out of the circuit really opens up the sound and makes it sound full and less strangled. Oddly, someone who agrees with me is the guitar player for Blink-182. He's not exactly a musical hero of mine, but his signature model Fender doesn't have a tone knob and he gave basically the same reasoning I did. So I have it set up for a "wide open" sound, and if I need to adjust the tone, I can do it on the amp.

Japanese Honey Bees Do It Together

At the risk of seeming like I'm on an insect fix, I want to share with you the story of the Japanese honey bee and the hornet.
In Japan there are native honey bees and imported European honey bees. There are also hornets that like to kill entire bee colonies. The largest hornets in the world, in fact.
If the hornets (Vespa mandarinia) descend on a European honey bee colony, they will lay it to waste. But if they attack a colony of Japanese honey bees (Apis cerana japonica), they will use a unique adaptation to protect the colony.
Watch this to learn more



It seems the Japanese honey bees can survive temperatures a few degrees higher than the hornet, and use this to their advantage.

Insects That Really Hurt

It seems entomologist Justin Schmidt devised a four-point pain scale to rate the pain caused by various stinging insects. Down at the bottom are sweat bees and fire ants, working up to tarantula hawks, and, finally, bullet ants.
Now, the tarantula hawk (a kind of wasp) and bullet ant stings are considered the two most painful of any insect, but they are of a very different character. One researcher described the tarantula hawk sting as:

"To me, the pain is like an electric wand that hits you, inducing an immediate, excruciating pain that simply shuts down one’s ability to do anything, except, perhaps, scream. Mental discipline simply does not work in these situations. The pain for me lasted only about three minutes, during which time the sting area was insensitive to touch, i.e., a pencil point poked near the sting resulted only in a dull deep pressure pain."

Schmidt himself said of the tarantual hawk: "Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath."

And the bullet ant, you see, is described as "Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel."

However, here is the most interesting distinction: While the tarantula hawk sting hurts for about three minutes, a bullet ant sting throbs for up to 24 hours. I once planned to get stung by a tarantula hawk, because I figured someone can stand anything for three minutes, but then I saw this video about bullet ants and decided it would be pointless.

All You Need to Know About Pedicularis furbishiae

By now you've probably read the Wikipedia article I wrote on the Saharan silver ant. But you find yourself wondering: Are there any plants I've written articles about? Read here about Furbish's lousewort. This rare specimen is only found along the banks of one river. And it has a really silly name.

Four Notable Bank Heists

Bank heists have always captured the imagination. Think about it: that's where all the money is. And most of it is insured, so you're not really ripping off the depositors. Many have planned the perfect heist, and most have been caught. These four bank heists give you some idea of the possible outcomes.

Air France Heist
Location: New York City, New York, USA
Year: 1967
Take: $420,000 ($2.6 million in today's money)

Lowdown: Air France carried large amounts of US currency into New York from France, where it had been exchanged by tourists and members of the US military for French currency. From the plane, it was taken in duffle bags to a strong room in a warehouse at the airport, before it was taken to its final destination. There was easy access to the warehouse, but the guard to the strong room kept the key on him at all times.

The thieves brought an expensive escort in on the operation to seduce the guard. (The escort operating, of course, out of Wildwood, New Jersey.) While he was otherwise occupied, the keys were stolen, copied, and returned.

On the appointed day, they walked into the warehouse, opened the door to the strong room and walked out with the money. There was no alarm, and the guard didn't notice. And they were never caught.

Dunbar Armored Heist
Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
Year: 1997
Take: $18.9 million (24.7 million in today's money)

Lowdown: This job was done with the precision that is usually associated with inside jobs. Because it was an inside job. A safety inspector learned the layout, security procedures, and timing of security cameras. He recruited a gang of his childhood friends and walked in, subduing one guard after another. They loaded the dough (and the security camera tapes) into a U-Haul and went off into the night. Most of the bills were non-sequential, but an accomplice accidentally let an associate see a stack of cash with the strap still around it. He was picked up and rolled on the others. While the gang is in the can on a 25-year ticket, $10 million is still unaccounted for.

Banco Central Heist
Location: Fortaleza, Ceará , Brazil
Year: 2005
Take: 164,775,150 reais ($69.8 million)

Lowdown: Some bank jobs just require two guys, some Richard Nixon masks, and a fast getaway car. This is not one of those. The Brazilian authorities have so far identified 43 suspects.

In this heist, the gang rented a house across the street from the bank. They turned the house into a business front. A landscaping business. Perhaps you can see where this is going. They tunneled 256 feet, under the road, to the vault of Banco Central. How did they hide almost 1400 cubic feet of dirt? They trucked it away in their landscaping vehicles. Once they reached the vault, they broke through 3.6 feet of steel-reinforced concrete and absconded with the loot. On top of the audacious criminality, I appreciate the logistics. They moved 7,700 pounds of money in a weekend. And the bank didn't notice until they opened on Monday. The story does not end well, as a surprising number of suspects have been found dead. However, $61 million still remains unaccounted for. Also, in this case the bank had not insured the money.

Agricultural Bank of China Heist
Location: Handan, Hebai, China
Year: 2007
Take: 51 million yuan ($6.7 million approx.)

Lowdown: The previous October, a bank manager, with the help of two guards, stole 200,000 yuan. Being the criminal mastermind he was, his plan was to invest in the money, and return the original 200,000 to the bank before anyone noticed. He then proceeded to buy 200,000 yuan worth of lottery tickets. Against he odds, his diabolical plan worked.

Being a criminal, however, he couldn't just be satisfied with his modest ill gotten gains. Teaming up with another manager, the two stole 33 million yuan over the course of two months the following spring. This time, lady luck was not in their corner. Having struck out at the lottery, and needing to come up with the money, they stole an additional 18 million. Learning from their mistakes, they spent it all on lottery tickets. This time they won. All of 98,000 yuan. 50,902,000 short of what they needed. Two days later, bank authorities noticed the missing money.

Our Chinese Butch and Sundance used their 98,000 bankroll to hit the trails, buying fake Ids and cars. (How hard can it be to disappear in a country of a billion people?) After being put on the Most Wanted list, one was picked up in Beijing, and the other was pinched in Lianyungang. Being China, they were sentenced to death. The only winners were three informants in Lianyungang who split a 200,000 yuan reward.

Bonus heist: NOKAS Heist
Year: 2004
Location: Stavanger, Jæren, Norway
Take: 57.4 million krone ($9.3 million)

Lowdown: Much is made of the differences between the US and Norway. This story illustrates this as much as any. Thirteen men stormed the NOKAS (Norsk Kontantservice) bank in Stavanger, commando-style. They had masks, body armor, and military rifles. To slow down the police they put a flaming truck outside the police parking garage. In the course of their heist, they killed a police officer who was on duty. He was the first Norwegian police officer killed in the line of duty in over six years, and only the seventh to die in the line of duty in the post-war period. When the gang was finally brought to justice, the thirteen received a total of 181 years in prison, although none received the Norwegian maximum, twenty-one years.

What do we learn from all this? That crime doesn't pay, especially in China. And don't enter into a criminal conspiracy with 43 other guys, some of whom would rather have you dead than turn state's evidence.

(All factual information courtesy of Wikipedia.)