Jan 24, 2016
My Robot, or Announcing DC Closings
I always know when it's about to snow. I get a lot of new Twitter followers. Well, not really. Another account I have, @opmdcstatus gets new followers. A long time ago, way…
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Archive page 42 of 73
Jan 21, 2016
Circling the Drain
On Tuesday night, the Howard County Council heard testimony for a proposal to eliminate the Stormwater Management Fee. I have stayed out of this debate, which has now raged on for a…
Jan 19, 2016
An Inconvenient Poop!
There's a magnificently titled master's thesis out of East Carolina University, "Flood Vulnerability of Hog Farms in Eastern North Carolina: An Inconvenient Poop." Here's the abstract: In the late 1990’s, eastern North…
Jan 14, 2016
Euler Method in R for the Initial Value Problem
During differentiation, the value of whatever vertical shift is present is lost as a result of the elimination of the constant term, which has a derivative of 0. We normally acknowledge this…
Jan 13, 2016
Don't Take the Annuity
The New York Times is wrong. Don't take the annuity. ::embed{href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/upshot/dear-powerball-winner-take-our-advice-and-take-the-annuity.html"} There are several gaping flaws in the logic here. If you win the Powerball, don't take the annuity. There are several…
Jan 12, 2016
Notes on Radon Mitigation
I heard an advertisement for radon kits while driving. I remember when I was about 5-6, there was a lot of worry about radon. Like, newscast interstitials saying, "An invisible gas in…
Jan 11, 2016
Iceland on Mars
Last summer, when I spoke at the Mars Society Convention, I used Iceland as one of three comparison points for the expected evolution of self-governance on Mars. Today, the Mars Society posted…
Jan 9, 2016
Phonics 0.6.1 Released
I just posted a new version of Phonics to GitHub and submitted v0.6.1 to CRAN, where it should appear shortly. This new release includes two new phonetic algorithms. First, this release includes…
Jan 8, 2016
Opening Transpolar Shipping Lanes
Russian company Росатомфлот is planning to build an enormous ice breaker to open polar shipping routes. The ship will be nuclear powered with a deadweight of at least 55,000 tons. For comparison,…
Jan 7, 2016
Talking SMACK
In recent days, a study has surfaced on the practice of maternal kissing of minor injuries of childhood (boo-boos), by the Study of Maternal and Child Kissing (SMACK) Working Group. The study,…
Jan 6, 2016
Funny Money in Canada
Fast Company has an oddish story about the emergency of a new local currency in Canada. Local currencies, a kind of scrip, have existed where local merchants agree to accept the alternative.…