Ten Hundred Words

One of my friends from Boeing sent my this article:

Science in Ten Hundred Words: The `Up-Goer Five' challenge.

By Chris Rowan | Scientific American – Sun, Jan 27, 2013

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A central question of communicating science to a wider audience often boils down to this: can you take a complex scientific topic and explain it in a way that someone unfamiliar with the field can understand? The commonly-cited techniques for meeting this challenge, such as cutting out jargon and using relatable analogies, sound easy in principle but are often quite tough in practice.

Thus is born the Up-Goer Five Text Editor and its younger sibling,  the Up-Goer Six Text Editor.

I loved (and hated) the Up Goer Five xkcd comic.

 

Any good trainer/teacher knows that you gotta do something like this to help students understand the basic concept of a thing. (Why I love it.)

 

But, then you need to move them on to a broader vocabulary (which is why I hate it). 

 

My old girlfriend used to upbraid me when I'd use a 'big' word to answer a question posed by the Swedish au pair.  I was trying to stretch her vocabulary. 

As far as lawyers..., if you think legal documents are wordy now, try doing with only ten hundred words.  The point of a broader/specialized vocabulary is to say something in as few words as possible.

 

We've gone from fairly literate newspapers, to USA Today, to infographics.  A "ten hundred" word vocabulary would be a serious handicap to anyone. 

 

Kind of reminds me of many of my ITT students...

 

And, yes, it does help understanding to strip something down to as simple a statement as possible.  Like explaining "grabity" to a bright 4 year old.  If you can do that so she understands it, it's a certainty that you do, too.

 

As the U.S. Marine mondegreen motto says, "Simplify!"

UPDATE!  Just for grins, I took the paragraph I quoted above, and ran it through the Up-Goer Five editor, replacing all of the flagged words.  I could not find a replacementy for "jargon" that I was happy with.  Here is my effort:

The problem of talking about our world to lots of different people often comes down to this: can you take something that's hard, and explain it in a way that someone who doesn't know about the field can understand? The usual approaches, such as cutting out the strange words used only in the field and using simple stories, sound easy, but are often quite hard to do.

Shamelessy stolen...

...from Gerard.

I love this idea.  And his other one about us taking a year off from policing the world.  And making Israel the honorary 51st state while we do.

Nukes: Time for a Live Demo

Dear LowInfo Citizens, It's been about five years since this was first proposed. It is still something to keep in mind as you hope for change and a better world via magical thinking. You may not be interested in false hopes, but false hopes are interested in you....

People get ready.... Police in India’s Kashmir publish nuclear war survival tips, say notice doesn’t signal concern.

... Yeah, right. Duck and cover!

A bomb called Licorne. Fired at 18.30 on July 3, 1970, and yielded 914 kilotons (Think "57 Hiroshimas"). Imagine it being fired next door. Hope that if it is ever fired, it is fired next door.
Sixty-seven years ago : "On Monday, August 6, 1945, the nuclear weapon Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima by the crew of the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay, directly killing an estimated 80,000 people. By the end of the year, injury and radiation brought total casualties to 90,000-140,000. Approximately 69% of the city's buildings were completely destroyed, and 6.6% severely damaged." - Hiroshima
"Little Boy," the aptly named 16 kiloton bomb that took out Hiroshima, was -- in comparison to the nuclear devices in the world's arsenals -- sort of a light field artillery shell. There was, at the time, a second bomb called "Fat Man." Weighing in at 21 kilotons it would put paid to Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. With the erasure of Nagasaki, the world was fresh out of nuclear weapons. It was only a temporary lapse. Today we've got about 25,000 of these little items of discipline scattered about.
The largest nuclear bomb ever detonated in the atmosphere was The Soviet Tsar Bomba , or "Big Ivan" which at 50 Megatons was very harmful to every living think on Novaya Zemlya Island (located above the arctic circle in the Arctic Sea) in October of 1971. Whatever else you might think about them, you can't deny those Soviets dreamed BIG dreams.
No matter what our political feelings, I believe we can all agree that the world is getting just a wee bit too hot for comfort these days, and I don't mean "Global Warming." I mean that people here and there about the globe are getting just a wee bit too hot under the collar. They seem to have forgotten just exactly what comes into play like the force of gravity when whole nations or peoples get really ticked off. Time to refresh our collective memories.
I think we need to have the people of the world focus like a laser on the table stakes of going beyond these little patty-cake wars we are currently diddling around with and look, really look, at what can actually happen with one little slip.
What we need to do this is: "The Live Demo." By this I mean we need to find a small island or deserted space somewhere on the planet and sacrifice it for the greater good by setting off one, just one, low-yield thermonuclear device in the atmosphere for all the world to see.
Think of "The Live Demo" as a remedial educational moment for the entire world; a kind of slap upside the head coupled with a large shout out of: "PAY ATTENTION!"
I believe this "Live Demo" needs to be announced -- in date, time, and place -- to the entire world with something approaching the intensity of the promotion dumped on the Beijing Olympics.
I believe that we should allow any media organization that wishes to to cover this event and provide the infrastructure necessary to film and broadcast it (from a safe distance) to the entire world in all media -- live. I believe we should re-task a satellite to give us a view of the event from space.
No matter what many may think, this event would be the essence of "appointment television" for the people of the world.
I think we should also construct some of those quaint suburbs, villages, and towns that were set up in the ancient Nevada tests to demonstrate just what happens to a family sitting down for an evening snack when the sun is brought -- for one brief shining moment -- to the surface of the Earth. (Those of you who saw the opening scenes of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull probably got some laughs out of this stuff, but it is not really a laughing matter, is it?)
I know that there will be an army of Environmentalists around the world that will bitch and moan about the "harm to the environment" from setting off a single nuclear device in the atmosphere. Those same people need to contemplate instead the "harm to the environment" that comes from setting off several hundred or several thousand of these devices in one very bad afternoon. They need to, for one brief and shining moment, sit down and shut up!
Then there will be those who will carp about "The Test Ban Treaty." They need to take a chill pill, lie down and think of England... or Cleveland... or Tel Aviv... or Tehran.
I can assure you that having the entire world tune in for "The Live Demo" -- and the whole world will tune in -- shall give the entire planet pause. It's not enough for humans to be told about nukes. Every so often, we need to see to believe.
Let's touch off a nuke for world peace next year on August 6. It will be a fitting memorial to Hiroshima. Nothing else we can do will have quite the same... impact.

---

Lest we forget: Here's 10 minutes about the first "live demo" on a city.





I would imagine that if you repeated those grisly facts to most of the people of the world today they'd express either some polite sadness, a bit of political high dudgeon, or the classic contemporary rejoinder, "Whatever." It's not that they don't know or care, but that -- for the vast majority of the population of the world -- they simply cannot imagine a Hiroshima.
It has been 65 years since the incineration of a city in a second, and we've lost any sense of exactly what happens. The images only survive in black and white films of a long-ago era, films of before (a city) and after (rubble and ash). In black and white images blood is the color of shadows and that's what we have, as a race, of memories about what these weapons can do -- shadows of victims seared into stone at the moment of the blast; the moment the Sun was allow to bloom on the surface of the Earth.

Has Obama lost...

...Gary Trudeau??

The whole comic is below the fold.

Crashing OabamaCare

John Nolte over at Breitbart has this bit of underhanded sneakyness.  We, the people, can crash ObamaCare.  And, it's legal!!  The money quote:

Here's the two plus two: Starting next year, you can wait until you’re sick to purchase health insurance. And if you do so, you cannot be denied or even charged a higher premium price. Here's the four: Because the ObamaCare penalty to be uninsured is much cheaper than purchasing insurance, why not do exactly that?

Go read the whole thing.

And thanks to the ever suave Mr. Green.

Results are in...

...on the 50 year "War on Poverty"

...from Gerard.

I guess the lawyers have finally managed...

...to teach everyone else to eat their young.

From The Anchoress:

Not everyone is into political issues, or keeps up with them, and my husband has a limited attention span for news articles on issues that have promised “nothing new” for the last few decades. For that reason, and although he is strongly pro-life, articles touching on the issue rarely get his attention: there’s a lot of yelling on all sides, but few if any saying anything new.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is helping to change that, by saying something new, extreme, and rather shocking, and by trying to codify his new words into law. Deacon Greg Kandra sums it up in a particularly good homily:

. . .In New York City today, 40% of all pregnancies, nearly half, end in abortion.
Among minorities, it’s as high as 60%. In some neighborhoods, it’s 67%. And that’s just the beginning. To some, it seems, that’s not enough.
In Albany two weeks ago, the governor of this state proposed an abortion bill that threatens to make New York the bloodiest state in the union.
It would permit unlimited late term abortion on demand – right up to the ninth month.
It would allow people who are not doctors to perform abortions.
It would declare that the “state shall not discriminate” against the right to abortion, a declaration that could threaten the very existence of Catholic hospitals. Long Island alone is home to six hospitals that could be crippled by having Medicare funds withheld if they refuse to comply.
If enacted into law, this bill would declare that abortion is a fundamental right that cannot be denied. No parental notification for minors, no limits on taxpayer funding of abortion, no limits on late-term abortions.

 When I was 16, the hospital my mom worked at shout down the maternity ward (1966 - end of the baby boom).  She found a new job at a Catholic run maternity home.  We moved into a house that was across the street from the hospital, so I got  to see a lot of the "young mothers".

They came from all over the country.  It gave them and their parents a chance to save face - "Oh, Patty is going to school in California for a year."  Which was true.  I saw them crossing the street to school as I was coming and going.  So, the home provided a place to live, school, and a hospital where a young girl could have her baby.  They were also given counseling by social services workers.  Most of the babies were adopted.

The home is still there, and it's gotten larger. 

And yet, more and more every day, we are killing our unborn children in ways that would loudly be declaimed as "inhumane" if we executed murders, or put down our pets in the same way.

Our government is warring against our children, but not against those who threaten us.

It's that simple.

Vincent

Found this at Gerard's:

Tadao Cern photoshopped the original self portrait, and voila'!!

Bits and Pieces...

For starters, my first lesson for the Education Portal has been published.  For a definition of "programming", got here: Introduction to Programming

Next, I got my License to Carry today!  Amazingly, I sent the application in yesterday, and got an e-mail early this afternoon to go up to the Sheriff's office to pick it up.  He said they were processing about 100 per day.  And that's just York County!

Finally, this, from Holger Awakens:

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Executive Order On Gun Violence? Oh Really....

To: Governor ______________
Rep. __________________
Senator ________________
Senator ________________
State Rep. ______________
State Sen. ______________

From:  (Your Name)
             (Address)
           

CC: Sheriff ________________

RE: Executive Order Regulating/Banning Firearms in America


I am writing today to remind each of you that any executive order issued by President Barack Hussein Obama dealing with regulating or banning firearms in the United States of America is not a law. An executive order does not follow the constitutionally mandated method of enacting laws in this country and in regards to firearms, the 2nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution forbids the infringement of the Federal government on the right of the people to bear arms.

Thus, I am insisting, as a citizen of the State of ___________ and a citizen of the United States of America, that you, as my representatives in a constitutional republic, communicate clearly to me and the other citizens of this state that such an executive order is null and void in this state. I further expect you to enact legislation that spells out in no uncertain terms that the County Sheriff of the counties of this state must prepare a plan to defend the citizens from any sort of harassment, threat or encroachment by any Federal law enforcement official.

I will not follow any such executive order issued and it is your responsibility to be sure that no citizen of this state is duped into believing such an order to be valid.


Respectfully,

( Your Name)

 And, that's been my day!!

New Year's Resolution

Somewhere in the blog-o-sphere, I read a bit on resolutions.  Instead of "Lose 50 pounds, give up drinking, and get the outstanding debts paid off", pick one word.  Post it on the fridge.  Put it in the car.  Make it your desktop.

"Humility" was the first word that popped into mind when I read that.

Dunno if I'm ready for that.  Of course, being the person Koda and Suzu might think I am is way tougher...

Christmas 2012

My Christmas status report...

Well, it seems we are all still here, Mayan calendar not withstanding.  I kept telling people that their calendar stopped because they ran out of numbers!

I've been living here for about a year and a half now.  Doc Deb was gracious and invited me to move in when I lost my job last year.  I'd been doing maintenance stuff in exchange for my keep, until she lost her job in March.  She decided to move down to Texas to be with her parents, who are getting a bit frail.  I'd pulled the pin on my retirement benefits (such as they are), so now I'm staying in the house, making the mortgage payment.

The last three months have been exciting - I started working as a contract writer for a company called Remilon.  I'm writing on-line classes on programming for them, for starters.  The idea is, you could take a full class on one of many subjects for free, and then take the CLEP exam, and get college credit for the class.  It's an inexpensive way to clear out a lot of undergrad requirements, given that the cost of a CLEP exam is usually under $100.00.  My first lesson is finished, and I just uploaded the video for my second one yesterday.

Given that I live at the main crossroads in Red Lion, there is a *lot* of traffic, and traffic noise, which makes recording my lessons pretty much impossible.  I went to the local library, and asked if I could use one of their conference rooms as my recording studio.  I wound up talking with the director, Don, about it.  One thing led to another, and I wound up hanging a projection screen in the board room for them.  We are working on starting some computer skills classes there.  I use the library as my office sometimes, as it gets me out of the house and away from potential distractions (like Baxter helping me type).

Got the heater working, and think I've located the leak that flooded the basement.  It's not the boiler, nor is it the water heater.  I believe that it's in one of the pipes going through the cellar wall to the heater in the kitchen.  That means, the kitchen floor will have to come up in order to locate and repair said leak.  Fun.

I got an estimate on getting the old siding replaced.  The Home Depot guy (also named Don) was mostly worried about the sagging laundry room.  I did a little poking around, and it looks like there is no really code-grade footing for it.  The floor will also have to come up for diagnosis and repair, and possible jacking/shoring.  Yay.

Christmas... I'm going to get the place picked up and cleaned up this weekend.  My plan for Monday is to bake.  Current projects are to be two pumpkin pies and weapons-grade fudge topped brownies.  (I may do soft oatmeal cookies before that, just to get me through the weekend.)  Christmas day will be my Christmas movie marathon: The Ice Harvest (John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Connie Nielsen), The Holiday (Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jack Black, Jude Law), Scrooged (Bill Murray, Karen Allen), and a new one, the 200th episode of NCIS.  I think of as a take on "It's a Wonderful Life", with Gibbs taking George Bailey's place in the center of things.  And maybe, if I can find them, the "Eureka" Christmas episodes, too.  Dinner will be turkey tamales and Caesar salad.  And french vanilla ice cream laced with brandy (from the book "Ice Cream Happy Hour").  And, of course, I hope to chat with my daughter.  She is on the road from L.A. to Billings, Montana as we speak.  She expects to arrive today, and will be staying with my cousin and his wife until she can get situated.

Update - pictures!!

Living room with tree, candles, and Baxter

Dining area/work area

Bar, red hat, and Dakota

Kitchen work station, with pie!!

Close-up, workstation and pie!  Kitchen composting happens in the green bins on the left.

And that's about it for year end here in PA.

Merry Christmas to all!

Steve...

...is unwell.

Go and offer sympathy and condolences!

"We're screwed..."

...okcupid has a wicked sense of humor!!

We’re screwed. You should be too!

This was in my in box right now, followed by a link to a potential match.

Oh, my!

Muir. Nail. Head. (and Nibbles)

No assembly required.

"Safety" and "the children" are the "nibbles" that are and will be used to diminish our freedom, one victim (and one nibble) at a time.

Gotta say, I say I saw this kind of thing coming back in the 70's, when the park rangers banned BASE jumping and hang gliding from the top of El Capitan in Yosemite, because someone got themselves killed. I did not connect the dots from that to basic constitutional rights, though, nor did I see malicious intent behind it.

And they used to call me "cynical".

Update:  Joan of Argghh, who is posting at Primordial Slack, has this:

My comment there:

A few years back, the school I worked at had a near miss with this – neighbors complained about one of our students who lived in their apartment complex, cop came out to the apartment, and discovered that our student was planning a shooting spree at the school. The BCPD came out and talked with us a couple of times – the gist was, lock door, lights off, gather (he didn’t say “huddle”) in a corner out of the line of sight from the window by the door (each classroom had one). He clearly told us not to run, because of the possibility of being seen by the shooter or a potential accomplice.

And yes, we were a “target rich environment”, er, “gun-free zone”.

Mike, Meet Mr. Griffin

I'm thinking that Mike and Robert Griffin III should get together for a chat, based on Mr. Griffin's remarks in USA Today:

 "For me, you don't ever want to be defined by the color of your skin,'' Griffin said at the end of Wednesday's post-practice news conference in reference to a question about Martin Luther King, Jr. "You want to be defined by your work ethic, the person that you are, your character, your personality. That's what I've tried to go out and do.

"I am an African-American in America. That will never change. But I don't have to be defined by that.''

Aapparently, ESPN's Rob Parker doesn't like the sort of honesty and forthright talk that Mr. Griffin delivers.  NRO quotes Parker as saying

" ...'my question, which is just a straight honest question, is [Griffin] a brother, or is he a cornball brother?'"  

That was Sunday.  Today, CBS DC reports:

 "(Those comments)  led to the commentator’s suspension.  Shortly after Sports Illustrated’s Richard Deitsch broke the news of Parker’s suspension via Twitter, ESPN made a statement on the issue.

“Following yesterday’s comments, Rob Parker has been suspended until further notice,” ESPN spokesman Mike Soltys tweeted. “We are conducting a full review.”

Good man 1, urban plantation 0.

Heh.

Mike Explains It All

Stolen from Gerard.

I've been thinking lately that we should seriously consider replacing the word "race" with the word "culture".  Not all blacks are professional victims.  Not all Moslems are Jihadists.  But there is a culture of victimhood prevalent in black society.  There is an alarming culture of brutality and murder in the Moslem world.

Gerard. Park. Out of... (Updated)

...and the park is Yellowstone!

Go.  Read!

(Update - got the frikkin' link right.  Sheesh!)

Elevating Thought

 It's been a month since the election, and I'm still trying to re-group.  What upset me the most (after the outcome)  was the encroaching lack of civility and clear, useful journalism on the Right as well as the Left.  I find that disheartening, since one of the Big Deals we made about the Left was and is their lack of civility, and the mendacity of the MSM.

One writer who comes to mind is John Nolte, at Breitbart.  Here is his opener on the Zimmerman/NBC suit:

"Though it might feel like a hundred years ago, it was only last April when the media joined Barack Obama's cynical crusade to gin up his base in Florida through the artificial inflaming of racial tensions. And there was no question NBC News was the worst of these co-conspirators after the network was busted editing a 9-1-1 call to make Trayvon Martin's suspected shooter, George Zimmerman, look like a racist. Today, Zimmerman filed suit against the Peacock Network."

Now, I gather that his basic assertion about NBC editing the sound track of the 911 call is factual.  But I don't think anyone would deny that the inflammatory nature of the paragraph.  I'm not suggesting that Mr. Nolte do anything differently - he has his "bully pulpit", the editors must like the way he's writing, and the First Amendment applies.  You go, John.

But I think this kind of writing only helps to maybe put an up-tick in the pitch fork, torch, tar, feather, and rail markets.  Which I don't think is really helpful at all, even in the short term.

My metaphysics training has taught me to stand guard at the doorway of thought.  In a nutshell, this warning is based upon the idea that we see and become what we think and believe.  If we don't pay attention to what we are admitting into our thoughts, we can start to slide downhill.  A practical example - repeat a lie often enough, and it (seems to) become true.

My distress is in no small part to my own slippage.  Looking back over my pre-election and near-post election posts, I'm struck by how they could have been less, well, vulgar, and more informative and thoughtful.  Fortunately, Gerard turned on a light for me, and gave me a glimpse of what I've been seeking.  It has apparently been wending its way thru the web.  One full copy of it is at The Thinking Housewife.  I'm excerpting the first section here:

A Plan for Traditionalists

AT The Orthosphere, Kristor offers a reasonable guide to survival and affecting the culture. In the immediate future, he recommends:

1. Resolve to pay no more PC jizya (beautifully spelled out in the Solzhenitsyn essay that has been discussed a lot lately in the wider orthosphere). Tell the truth, and call a spade a spade: calmly, politely, and without being obstreperous about it, but nevertheless firmly. Without making a big deal about it or calling attention to yourself, fail to appear for the public rites of Moloch. If you must thus appear, quietly fail to meet the requirements of the rite.
2. Write, read, blog, talk: join a book club, an apologetics roundtable, a bible study group. Learn the arguments for reaction, for Christianity, for theism; learn the arguments against them, and how they may be defeated. Speak up: fearlessly, scandalously, but always humbly and politely.
3. Live a virtuous, upright life, at home and in business. Speak the truth, and do the right thing. Whatever it happens to be, don’t let it be about yourself; let it be about the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.
4. Beware; and be prepared to move, quickly. Get rid of stuff that you don’t need or that is not positively beautiful to you in some way – especially debt and belly fat, which are likely going to cost you as the financial and medical sectors of the economy devolve over the next ten years.
5. Maintain tradition in small things: e.g., dress more formally than is customary these days, practice old-fashioned manners, refrain from swearing; read old books, and then discuss them around the family dinner table; join together in regular and serious family prayer, if only to bless each meal; remember your family holiday traditions, and observe them gravely and with joy.
6. Pray without ceasing. Pray whenever your attention is not wholly consumed with the task at hand. Work toward praying even when it is. Nothing is so convincing as sanctity, or so attractive, or so authoritative. Without it, personal rectitude can seem like Pharisaical arrogance (and risks becoming just that). You can’t push sanctity. But you can work at allowing it to happen.

 (Debt isn't the huge problem it was five years ago.  The belly fat, though continues to be tough.)

There's more, all worth read, pondering, and incorporating into our lives.  Go!

The New Revolutionary War

The ever-suave and lucid Steven Green has a post up about Michael Cannon's article in the LA Times.  The gist is, many states are not implementing the exchange infrastructure required to make Obamacare "work" (sorry).  He posits that this will make the true costs of the monstrosity visible  to all, causing massive sales in torches, pitchforks, rails, tar and feathers.  (OK, he didn't say the part about increased sales.  But it's a happy dream... .)

Vodkapundit doesn't think this has much of a chance.

This all got me to thinking (uh-oh), which started to coagulate what's been ricocheting around my cranium since the election.  Here's my comment:

"I've been contemplating may navel since the election, and I'm coming to the conclusion that the only way to stop this frikkin' nightmare is to fight and beat it at the state level.  (And by "frikkin' nightmare", I mean the whole greedy, bloated Federal Government!)

State laws prohibiting state enforcement of Federal mandates.

Lawsuits, lawsuits, lawsuits.

States, start to wean yourself off the Federal dime.  Keep your own tax money.  Don't send any money to Washington.  Pay for your own schools and roads.

Keep as much activity and business in-state as you can, to circumvent the commerce clause.

Make yourself business-friendly.  Low taxes, right-to-work.  Train literate and numerate workers - teach them reading. writing, arithmetic, history and computers; art, literature.  Yeah, world art & lit, but make sure there's a solid foundation in American and Western history, lit and art.  Give the kids their heritage, not someone else's.

It doesn't have to be a shooting war, but it is a war."

If we aren't going to start a shooting war, which, I think, is a really bad idea, we need to entrench and start resisting through the "system" at the state level.

But we must fight back, because it is a war.

Like I said...

"...God, family, friends, country."

Getting The Poverty

Sippican has a post up about splinters and poverty, which prompted me to comment.  As often happens, my comments are turned into posts...

I too have caught the poverty. Ten years ago, I was a well paid contractor at a Major Aerospace Company in Southern California.  Now, I'm trying to get along on Social (in)Security and what little pension I have from said Major Aerospace Company; renting my friend's house in SE Pennsylvania from her so she doesn't get foreclosed.

I love it and wouldn't trade it for anything, except, perhaps, to hear from my daughter on a more regular basis.

Updating a bit, from a second comment:

A further thought.  I infer from the comments here, that we all are relatively safe and dry (if not as warm as we might like).  I presume we have enough to eat, lights in the house, and (obviously) the interweb.

We are not impoverished, just broke.  Yes, the lack o' cash does focus the mind, as V-man says.  It seems to focus it on the more important things, like God, family, friends and country.