Aug 19, 2015
Old Michigan Steams Like a Young Man's Dreams
There's been a battle raging in Wisconsin for a few years as the city of Waukesha asks for access to Lake Michigan for drinking water. The Great Lakes, surrounded by ten states…
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Archive page 50 of 73
Aug 18, 2015
Criticize Mars One, but Don't Stand in Their Way
I couldn't make it to the Mars One feasability debate at the Mars Society Convention, but IEEE Spectrum has a nice summary. While I still won't step into the question of feasibility,…
Aug 17, 2015
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Egg
Over the weekend, I watched "The KGB, the Computer, and Me," a NOVA dramatization of Cliff Stoll's experience chasing down a 75 cent accounting error. I read the book, The Cuckoo's Egg,…
Aug 15, 2015
Syllabus for Public Administration and Public Finance
This morning, ChaseKBH and I are going down to the 18th Mars Society Convention. But back here on Earth, I have classes to prepare and problems to solve. I have posted the…
Aug 14, 2015
Slides for the Mars Society Convention
In about an hour, I will be giving my talk on governing a Mars colony. The slides are up on Slideshare for your perusal. Planning for Martian Polity from James Howard
Aug 12, 2015
Stop Making 3D Plots
FlowingData gave a list of charting rules to follow. I disagree with one, in that pie charts are never acceptable because it is difficult to perceive the differences in size between one…
Aug 11, 2015
Speed Cameras of the Future
When I was a kid, there was a moderately okay to eventually very bad TV show called seaQuest DSV on some network that I can no longer recall. It's premise was basically…
Aug 10, 2015
Bitcoin Mining Pools and Income Smoothing
Bitcoin's public awareness has dropped off, but there are interesting questions still to be resolved. Bitcoin consists of a single network-wide database, called the blockchain, that contains verified transactions. Transactions are recorded…
Aug 8, 2015
New Swedish Resources
I have put together a brief list of Swedish language, similar to the Danish list. Nothing serious yet, but will probably add more as time goes on. Image by Håkan Dahlström /…
Aug 5, 2015
Virtual Bumblebees at MathFest 2015
If everything is going according to plan, and then just as I posted this, I started my MathFest presentation. You can see a static rendition of the slides here: Virtual Bumblebees de…
Aug 4, 2015
Odder than a Month of Sundays
On Monday night, I saw this math myth on "Pockets Full of Silver" showing that this August is special in that it has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays, and 5 Sundays, a phenomenon…