New Look

The old blog theme seemed kinda stale, a bit 2005-y, shall we say. Plus, blogger has some fancy new templates and features, so it seemed like time for an upgrade. What do you think?

Nicaragua

So we have one of those big, life change-type announcements - which is that we'll be moving to Nicaragua in August to live and work there for a few years. (Not that its been that much of a secret, but I haven't mentioned it on the blog before.)

Living abroad has been a long-term goal of ours for many years and a great opportunity knocked so we decided to take it. We'll be working down there through the auspices of Global Ministries, which is the joint overseas division of the UCC and the DOC (Laura Jean's denomination).

Our local partner in Nicaragua will be the Christian Mission Church of Nicaragua. Laura Jean will be working with them to set up a kind of traveling seminary for the church's ministers and doing other forms of theological education. I'll be working on whatever environmental/development projects the community has in mind as well as teaching something math/science/environment-y at the Universidad Evangelica Nicaragüense (UENIC).

Or something! The situation may look different once we get down there. At any rate, we're pretty excited and are frantically learning Spanish and figuring out how to move ourselves and toddler down to Managua in just a few months. It is going to be a crazy adjustment so wish us luck, and please do let us know if you know anyone down there we should get in touch with (we've been continually amazed by the number of connections we've made already...)

And -- as this is an imminently blog-worthy topic -- I'm sure we'll have a lot more to say as the day draws near. Stay tuned.

The Mathematics of Music

OK, here's something I've always wondered about: why 12? That is to say, I've played music for many years now and I've never understood why, exactly, our musical scale is composed of twelve semitones. Probably my music teachers explained this to me at some point, but it must have not sunk in.

As any guitar player will tell you, the concept of an octave is intuitive and grounded in physics. An octave is what you get when you shorten the length of a plucked string by half thus doubling the frequency of the sound. But in principle you should be able to divide up the frequency space in an octave into any number of intervals, not just twelve.

(As it happens, there are two recent articles on the math of music that are worth reading: a Physics Today article about Richard Feynman's interest in piano tuning (pdf) and this one from Slate.)

The historical meaning of 12 is that the Greek philosopher Pythagoras had some strong religious beliefs about pure numbers and constructed the early version of our musical scale out of 3/2 intervals (i.e. out of the next simplest whole number fraction after the octave). As the Slate article explains, constructing a twelve-note scale out of 3/2 intervals doesn't quite bring you back round to an octave. The Pythagorean system works because the quantity (3/2)^12 * (1/2)^6 = 2.0273 is approximately equal to two -- a quantity known as the Pythagorean comma.

But this caused some problems for musicians. For example, the octave sounded perceptibly out of tune and you had to re-tune your instrument in order to play songs in different keys. So during the Renaissance, musicians came up with the concept of equal temperament, where the octave was divided into twelve logarithmically equal intervals of 2^(1/12) and each Pythagorean interval was thus re-tuned by a tiny amount. Bach was so psyched by this innovation that he went out and wrote the Well-Tempered Clavier in celebration.

So far, so good, but this still doesn't quite answer the question of why twelve? Clearly you can create equal tempered scales with any number of intervals, but is it possible to create a Pythagorean system with different numbers of intervals?

The algorithm to find out is pretty simple.

1. Start with a base frequency of A=440 Hz.
2. Step upwards by factors of 3/2 ... so 440, 660, 990, etc.
3. If we go above an octave (880) then we need to divide by 2 to bring it back into the same octave range. So 990 becomes 495, and then we step upwards again by 3/2.
4. The goal is to get as close as possible (either high or low) to 880 and then stop.
   

Twelve steps gets us to a frequency of 892.006 Hz, but it is easy to extend the series. Here's a plot out to N=100, with the red line representing 880 Hz.

So for most N, it is not really possible to craft a Pythagorean scale - either you don't land close enough to an octave or else you have oddly spaced intervals - but for a few N, the formula seems to work. N=5 (pentatonic scale) is not too bad and old, familiar N=12 works better.

But the winner is definitely N=53 which falls almost exactly on the red line - much more exactly than the familiar twelve tone scale. This scale, with 53 (barely distinguishable) intervals, is virtually equal tempered to begin with. Apparently this very bizarre musical system was first discovered by the Chinese mathematician Ching Fang thousands of years ago and was later rediscovered by various westerners (including Newton). And people have allegedly written music for it! Go figure.

So: a fairly interesting answer to the question posed. And if you're interested in spending time on wikipedia be warned that there are a truly ridiculous number of baroque music theory articles lurking there.

Disaster Capitalism

This interesting Mother Jones article takes a look at how global warming is already changing the business climate, both by pushing some businesses to the brink and by creating new opportunities for others. The author also praises the 'bracing' clarity that a bottom line tends to bring to political debates:

If a firm's bottom line is going to be affected by a changing climate—say, when its supply chains dry up because of drought, or its real estate gets swamped by sea-level rise—then it doesn't particularly matter whether or not the executives want to believe in climate change. Railing at scientists for massaging tree-ring statistics won't stop the globe from warming if the globe is actually, you know, warming.

The article focuses on three fairly intuitive examples--arctic shipping, the ski industry and disaster insurance--but it seems likely that there will be others in the future.

The obvious corollary to this is that there are big investment opportunities here for climate skeptics. I mean, if you really thought that climate change is a hoax (as does Sen. Inhofe) and that everyone else is simply over-reacting, then there is clearly a lot of money to be made selling things like beachfront property or cheap storm insurance.

Cool Logo

This graphic - apparently designed for the recent May Day immigration rights/anti-SB1070 demonstrations - is a really fantastic design. (Photo from this photoset.)
I'm not entirely sure who designed or distributed the signs, but I saw the image recently on the side of a building while driving and immediately knew what they were conveying. Tells a story, communicates a strong emotion, catches the eye -- nicely done.

Building A Better City

Spring is here in DC and the city has seen fit to build a fantastic new bike path--called the Metropolitan Branch Trail--that runs about 2 miles, virtually from our house to downtown DC. It's lined with spiffy solar-powered street lights and they have grand plans to extend it all the way from Union Station to Silver Spring. The path has made my bike commute immeasurably more pleasant, not just because the trail avoids busy streets and buses and taxis, but also because it seems to have avoided all the steep hills.

I should back up. Our current house is nestled among a clutch of modest sized hills (DC is surprisingly hilly!) meaning that any reasonable path to work inevitably involved a sweaty uphill slog. (Yes, I'm lazy. But in my defense I'm usually biking before having coffee.) I even went so far as to consult topographic maps to find some sort of minimally vertical route to work, but it turned out that the optimal path actually ran right along the train tracks that snake through Northeast DC leading into Union Station. But then, cleverly, the city decided to route the new bike trail right alongside those tracks. Nice job DC!

Bike trails are one of those things that aren't super-expensive but that you can imagine stressed-out budget cutters eying skeptically. So yay for DC deciding to invest in a small thing that makes the city better, greener, safer, healthier, friendlier. (OK, obviously I'm selfishly invested in this one, but little by little the path is getting more and more use. You can see it from the metro tracks and I bet a lot of people crushed into a 9am train are thinking about buying a bike now.)

In that same vein, I should probably say something about the new gay marriage law. DC has now joined 5 states (and one Indian tribe!) in granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Our church scheduled its first such ceremony for the first available Sunday after the law went into effect. The two grooms in question were both pillars of the church community who had been together for three decades, and they chose a Sunday service to make it 'official.'

Church was packed and everyone was extremely psyched for the couple -- the pastor quipped that the turnout was even higher than Easter. In addition to wedding joyfulness I also remember feeling a distinct (and quite spring/Easter-like) sense of possibility. After all the struggle and frustration and gridlock of modern life, it is in fact possible for progress to happen. Usually change is so slow that it seems like it will never happen, but then all of a sudden, it is there. We can do things.

UCS on CSI

In which UCS pops up on an episode of CSI -- here's our nine (awesome) seconds of pop culture fame. You bet I'm concerned!

DC Metro Ads, Cont

I've blogged about the DC Metro's unusual advertising before, but I was still pretty amazed to see this specimen (click for picture) -- spotted by middle-east expert Andrew Exum in the Capitol South Metro stop.

I am, like, 98% sure this is a picture of the southern suburbs of Beirut during or immediately after the July War of 2006. [...] Should the destruction of civilian infrastructure -- civilian housing, civilian businesses, etc. -- really be something we should be slapping each other's backs about, even when the military necessity of such operations is 100% clear? I think you all know the answer is no. [...] But because this is a neighborhood populated by Shia Muslim Arabs it's somehow okay for Northrop Grumman to take pride in its destruction. Gross.

Again, maybe this sort of imagery really appeals to the 0.001% of Metro riders who are their target audience, but it seems pretty remarkably insensitive to me.

Quinn on the Piano

Here's a video of Quinn singing and playing on the piano (split into two parts)... cute! Am I right?

Random Thoughts

Ezra Klein has a righteous rant about the universal crappiness of the "grilled vegetable plate" vegetarian option.

"No. The grilled vegetable plate is not acceptable. Do you have pasta? Or pizza? Or salads? Or an employee trained in the art of putting different kinds of foods together on a plate in order to create a satisfying dining experience for customers? Because if not, my party and I will go elsewhere."

Seriously amen to that! We are always joking bitterly about how meat-eaters at catered events get roast chicken with a side of undercooked squash and zucchini and we get ... a plate-full of that same squash and zucchini with the chicken scraped off. Yum!

Elsewhere: this week's xkcd makes a joke about twitter and earthquakes.


Which reminds me of watching the 1989 World Series between the A's and the Giants and seeing the earthquake hit San Francisco on the TV screen and then feeling it in Fresno several minutes later. I suppose it is only a matter of time before the evil geniuses think of using these twitter feeds to trigger giant piledrivers (or something) that use wave interference to cancel out (or augment) the earthquake.

Dance up on them Haters

I'm totally loving this Janelle Monae video.
Alyssa Rosenberg has an interesting essay about how Monae is a kind of hip-hop Ziggy Stardust, with her James Brown pompadour and her Michael Jackson dance moves. But the thing I love about the video is her unusual screen presence and how she bugs her eyes out when she starts singing. Very unusual, but fun to watch.

10K

Laura Jean, Jamie and I ran in a 10K (6.2 mile) race this morning. The race was down at Hain's Point, which is a public park jutting out into the Potomac River, right near the Tidal Basin. This meant that the entire race course was lined by cherry trees in full blossom - in many places the branches met in the middle and formed a tunnel of flowers and green leaves. (Today is actually the end of the Cherry Blossom Festival and so there were tons of people milling around and taking pictures). At any rate, a totally gorgeous place for a run.

The race was totally fun too -- a small, informal affair (about 300 runners, no t-shirt) put on by these guys. Jamie was nice enough to slow down and run with me for the first few miles before zooming off. I kept up a decent 8:30 pace and finished in 53:20. Laura Jean posted a totally awesome time as well.

[Results here.]

Reading Joyce 2

With Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, stage two in my evil plan to read all of James Joyce is complete! My review cross-posted from goodreads. I should also add that you can read this for free on Google Books.

---
There are some books that really ought to be read in the context of a literature class, with a professor to provide context and interpretation and the fear of a final paper to instill motivation. For me at least, Portrait was that kind of a book. It rewards intense study much more so than casual reading, and the somewhat irritating character of Stephen Dedalus becomes far more interesting when seen in a broader context. So it was slow going for me, especially the beginning, but several extended sections were simply fantastic (the priest's description of hell, the beach scene, the final conversation with Cranly).

Portrait is clearly the work of an older writer looking back on his youth with a bit of embarrassment and a lot of brutal honesty. We see Stephen caught in that universal phase of adolescence marked by pretentiousness, self-righteousness and snobbery. So he's a bit of a jerk, but also clearly idealistic, perceptive and sensitive to others. Definitely relatable, and not entirely unlikeable.

The arc of Stephen's story involves him casting off every piece of received wisdom or cultural expectation he encounters -- the lifestyle of his father, English imperialism, Irish nationalism, the Irish cultural revival, Roman Catholicism, his college friends, his country and even his hope for love and companionship -- in a quest for artistic freedom. Mirroring this journey, Joyce places Stephen in the midst of a blizzard of quotations and obscure references (the endnotes in my version were essential in deciphering these) until the final six pages where Stephen finally cuts through the noise and speaks in a first-person voice as he makes his choice.

Stephen's struggle should be instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever tried to create something (be it a story, a piece of music, a scientific argument) -- namely the sinking feeling that it has all been said before and that your contribution is only a derivation, a minor rearrangement of the obvious. It won't truly be original, so why bother?

Unfortunately, his solution to this dilemma is literally exile and isolation. It all seems a bit harsh and more than a little melodramatic, although Joyce himself left Ireland as a young man and never returned. And perhaps it is true that great artists are in some ways outsiders to their community, never hewing to any party line.

The Immediate Benefits of HCR

Here's a list of the top 10 health care reforms that kick in this year with Obama's signature--no waiting until 2014 or whatnot. (Via.)

1. Adult children may remain as dependents on their parents’ policy until their 27th birthday
2. Children under age 19 may not be excluded for pre-existing conditions
3. No more lifetime or annual caps on coverage
4. Free preventative care for all
5. Adults with pre-existing conditions may buy into a national high-risk pool until the exchanges come online. While these will not be cheap, they’re still better than total exclusion and get some benefit from a wider pool of insureds.
6. Small businesses will be entitled to a tax credit for 2009 and 2010, which could be as much as 50% of what they pay for employees’ health insurance.
7. The “donut hole” closes for Medicare patients, making prescription medications more affordable for seniors.
8. Requirement that all insurers must post their balance sheets on the Internet and fully disclose administrative costs, executive compensation packages, and benefit payments.
9. Authorizes early funding of community health centers in all 50 states (Bernie Sanders’ amendment). Community health centers provide primary, dental and vision services to people in the community, based on a sliding scale for payment according to ability to pay.
10. AND no more rescissions. Effective immediately, you can't lose your insurance because you get sick.

To toss out a few additional thoughts on HCR, I think Jon Chait makes a good case that ObamaCare is actually based on a bunch of moderate-to-conservative ideas that Republicans would probably support if it had been proposed by their side.

Obama's plan closely mirrors three proposals that have attracted the support of Republicans who reside within their party's mainstream: The first is the 1993 Senate Republican health plan, which is compared with Obama's plan here, with the similarity endorsed by former Republican Senator Dave Durenberger here. The second is the Bipartisan Policy Center plan, endorsed by Bob Dole, Howard Baker, George Mitchell and Tom Daschle, which is compared to Obama's plan here. And the third, of course, is Mitt Romney's Massachusetts plan, which was crafted by the same economist who helped create Obama's plan, and which is rhetorically indistinguishable from Obama's.

Socialism!

And finally, a lot has been written in the past few days about how instrumental Obama and Nancy Pelosi were in getting this passed, but I think big credit is due to Harry Reid also. When I first came to DC, I remember hearing some crusty old political reporter talk about how the Senate Majority Leader is by far the hardest and most under-appreciated job in town because they are responsible for dealing with the 100 biggest egos in the country. As a result most Majority Leaders come off as slightly bumbling and Reid is no exception. But still. Dude got 60 votes on health care reform. Not to shabby.

HCR FTW

Well the Democrats managed to pass comprehensive health care reform, and I have to say I am pleasantly surprised. I basically figured they were going to screw it up somehow, but they managed to snatch victory from the jaws of the defeat which had been previously snatched from victory's jaws. Or something like that.

Anyway, I'm glad to see Congress take a few baby steps toward a truly workable health care system. The truly important thing here is that Congress established the principle that everyone should have access to affordable health insurance. That is the new status quo and once people learn about it they won't want to give it up. The moving parts will be tinkered with and strengthened by politicians of both parties for years to come, but I don't think that core principle will ever be revoked.

I would personally prefer a more comprehensive "Medicare-for-all" system, but this is a decent step forward. My rough understanding is that the health insurance industry is a kind of natural monopoly, making it hard for small mom-and-pop companies to enter the market. Insurance companies don't really compete on the basis of service or quality of product so much as on the respective magnitude of the medical "risk" they carry. Without proper regulation, this leads to inhumane practices where the sick are excluded up front or dropped after paying premiums for years.

But once you make those practices illegal (as this law does) it makes more sense to pool medical risk as broadly as possible, to have everyone pay into the system when we're healthy and pay out when we (inevitably) get sick. And that starts to look at lot like Medicare-for-all. And perhaps we will evolve toward that system over sooner rather than later -- a public option would certainly speed up that process.

Beyond the policy, yesterday's vote signaled that Washington can actually do things and address big problems that seem impossible. People are already talking about how the HCR vote may actually revive the climate change discussions. If it had gone the other way the media narrative of failure, gridlock and impotence would have become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

33.3 repeating

Apparently at 6:08 pm today I will be one-third of a century old -- 33 and 1/3 years. That doesn't happen every day, you know, and on St. Pats to boot. Old!

Visualize

Here is a really cool video that takes crowd-sourced data about the movement of dollar bills around the country and deduces some interesting things about communities of people (apparently no embedding but click here). I thought the bit about how geographical boundaries (and even "straight-line" political boundaries) actually divide groups of people was totally fascinating.

Anyway, I saw this video in Science magazine's annual Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge 2009, which collects nifty visualizations of science concepts and subjects (link requires registration). Their winners are typically pretty neat, like this winner from last year that graphed every cross-reference in the Bible (there are a lot).

Visual and information design seems to be a field that has really flourished in recent years -- visually appealing information seems to be popping up a lot on the web. Some of my recent favorites include:

• This really useful widget that lets you focus your attention on only one level of giant hierarchical tree structures.
• Global Warming Art, which collects (naturally) images and graphics about climate change (some better than others).
• This map of the White House visitor logs, which lets you see who the POTUS (and others) is meeting with.
• These simple line graphs that show the actual size of many of the world's subway systems all at the same scale (nice job Berlin, London, NYC and Seoul!)
• A map of the (approximate) travel-time to every point on the globe.

AND this awesome mash-up of time-travel plotlines from TV and movies -- apparently Marty McFly, the Star Trek crew and the Terminator all met (will meet?) sometime in 1985. (From the always interesting visual-blog Information is Beautiful.)

Cool stuff!

No More Princesses

Elise tagged this blog post about how after a dozen (uniformly excellent) films Pixar is finally making one with a young girl protagonist ... who is unfortunately a princess.

Dear Pixar,

This is not an angry letter. It is especially not an angry letter about Up, which I adored. I could have sat in the theater and watched it two more times in a row. I cried, but I also laughed so hard in places that it wore me out.

So I'm not complaining; I'm asking. I'm asking because I think so highly of you.

Please make a movie about a girl who is not a princess.

Amen. The rest of the post is totally on target too. This is not to discount the attraction of a frouffy pink ball gown every once in a while, but I definitely agree it would be great to have more movies based around characters like Up's Ellie.

In fairness, while Pixar is unabashedly boyish and the trad Disney movies have bought into the "Princess" marketing juggernaut, basically every single Miyazaki film is centered around a tough and awesome girl hero, knee band-aids and all. So not to let Pixar off the hook, but there is good stuff out there -- Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service, Nausicaa, etc.

Anyway, after becoming a father I have definitely become more attuned to portrayals of girls and women in the (small number of) shows that Quinn watches. We're big fans of the Dora the Explorer episode where Dora saves the prince trapped in the tall tower and I cheer inwardly every time she pretends to be a scary monster.

So the "Princess" hegemony is pretty irritating. I know we won't be able to filter it out of Quinn's cultural intake forever and undoubtedly she'll go through a princess phase and we'll roll with it. Still, every time I see one of the Disney princesses I get a lyric from my favorite Coup song -- Wear Clean Draws -- going through my head:

You know you're my cookie baby and you're too smart
I can see it in the lines of your school art
True heart, I mean courage, expressed with care
Go on draw them superheroes with the curly hair.

You're my daughter, my love, more than kin to me
This for you and the woman that you finna be
Tell that boy he's wrong, girls are strong
Next time at show and tell play him our song.
Tell your teacher I said princesses are evil
How they got all they money was they killed people.

If somebody hits you, hit 'em back
Then negotiate a peace contract.
Life is a challenge and you gotta team up
If you play house pretend that the man clean up.
You too busy with the other things you gotta do
If you start something, now, remember, follow through.

Buses are Bosons

Dan over at Cosmic Variance has a fun post explaining the mechanism for why, when buses are running late they tend to cluster (much to everyone's irritation). I confess that I once worked out the exact same problem while waiting for a bus in the freezing cold in Chicago -- although in my case it was the #55, not the #6. I distinctly remember waiting about an hour for a bus that was supposed to come every 15 minutes, and when it finally arrived there were 4 in a row.

The mechanism for bunching is pretty intuitive, but I wonder if there might be solutions to prevent the problem. Someone suggested faster loading of passengers, but it also seems like having the (empty, faster) trailing bus simply pass the (full, slower) front bus would help a little. The full bus could also start skipping stops (assuming no one wants to get off) knowing there was an empty bus right behind.

Obligatory OK Go Post

So this music video is the raging viral internet thing du jour, but it's still pretty awesome.
I don't even care if they faked the timing or edited multiple takes together, I'm just happy that it exists. They also have a marching-band video version of this song which is somehow even cooler.

[Check out this interview to learn a bit about how they did it. Apparently they did several full takes, but none was perfect so there is one splice in the video. Also apparently the timing wasn't faked, although they did speed up and slow down the video by small amounts in places.]