http://301south.net (an exercise for the reader) Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:15:20 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I was reading an article on California's Proposition 65 in a journal called "Environment." I'm now wondering whether I dare cite an article that appears alongside the following ad: (The citation is William S. Pease (1991). "Chemical Hazards and the Public's Right to Know: How effective is California's Proposition ... http://301south.net/2010/07/credibility-index-dropping/ After skulking around nytimes.com message forums and reading exasperating commenters on The Atlantic, I decided to enter the "argument-by-comment" war on climate change by posting a comment on a Jim Manzi's current meta-discussion of the climate debate. Typically, when I read these things the particular discussion is either so ... http://301south.net/2010/07/into-the-fray/ Bank stocks soar on financial regulation agreement (google / AP) NEW YORK — Bank stocks shot higher Friday after an agreement on a financial regulation bill reassured investors that new rules won't devastate financial companies' profits. Banks outdistanced the rest of the market after congressional negotiators agreed on a bill that increases ... http://301south.net/2010/06/regulation-ur-doin-it-wrong/ Just reading the Amazon listing for "Principles of Combustion" by Kenneth K Kuo and found that Amazon features "Statistically improbable phrases" for books it's digitized. It displays unlikely phrases in order of their "improbability score" (Douglas Adams could not have done better himself). Anyway, the SIPs for "Principles ... http://301south.net/2010/05/probably-just-coincidences/ My first industrial ecology paper has just been accepted for publication in "Resources, Conservation, and Recycling," titled "Material Flow Analysis of polyethylene terephthalate in the US, 1996-2007." Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is the "#1" plastic material used to make bottles for soda and bottled water, as well as a steadily increasing ... http://301south.net/2010/04/mfa-of-pet/ ocean.301south.net is a low-volume mail server. 95% of my logs are spam rejected by postgrey.  The other 5% are evenly divided between spam which gets screened out by SpamAssassin and actual legitimate messages, which probably number 25 a day coming in and fewer than 10 a day going out. ... http://301south.net/2010/02/domainkeys-are-easy/ With the unending avalanche of embarrassments in climate science recently, global warming "deniers" are becoming ever more strident in their triumphalism over defeat of the "warmists." I must admit that I have not familiarized myself with the science behind the IPCC report.  But there is a simple, irrefutable fact that ... http://301south.net/2010/02/drawing-a-line-for-the-denialists/ Say you are measuring some signal, which you expect to show an exponential decay, but you are unsure of the zero-point on your measuring device. If you want to measure the time constant of the decay you need to know what it's decaying to. For a signal s, $latex ... http://301south.net/2010/02/curve-fit-with-zero-offset/ Finishing up a report for DTSC on "Alternatives Analysis".. switched from writing to layout on Thursday and now it's almost done.  Here are some figures I created for the work (in pstricks, of course). TeX source Figure [above] shows how hazards, risks, and costs are considered together in an alternatives analysis.  A ... http://301south.net/2010/01/alternatives-analysis/ Abbie and I are down visiting my folks in San Diego -- My mom's partner has been struggling with the transfer of 7 years' work from his old XP machine to a new one running Windows 7; He's been struggling with poor compatibility for literally months, with the new computer ... http://301south.net/2009/12/a-good-day-for-oss/