Saturday, November 13, 2004

How I defended science, and saved the day

There I was, reading my morning list of blogs, using the "open in tabs" feature of FireFox, when I got to the BoingBoing entry titled
Eat Less, Breath More, Lose Weight. It was an excerpt of an article by Richard A. Muller, entitled The Physics of Gluttony which I repeat here:
Let me address this issue by invoking another physics principle: conservation of mass. More specifically, let me talk about the conservation of carbon atoms. When you digest food, its carbon atoms enter your blood. Unless they are expelled from your body, they add to your weight. But here is the salient observation: the only effective way your body has to get rid of digested carbon is to combine it with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, and then expel it through your lungs. Unless you breathe out the carbon, you gain weight.



Here are some numbers, taken from books on exercise physiology. Fat, protein, and sugar all contain about 0.1 gram of carbon per food calorie consumed. So if you digest 2,000 calories of food (a typical daily diet for adults) then you take in about 200 grams of carbon. At rest, each breath exhales about 0.5 liter of air containing about 1 percent carbon, for about five milligrams per breath. After a day at 12 breaths per minute, you get rid of about 120 grams of carbon. That’s less than you ate, so you’ll gain weight.

The gross scale of oversimplification was immediately apparent to me, and had me in a tizzy!

The concept was simple, too simple. While simplifcations like this have appeal to the masses, but are dangerous, especially when they are as wrong as this one. I couldn't let something like this go unchecked. I immediately mobilized my forces, and put on my superblogger cape to defend science!

I immediately started to Google around to build a response. My first, and correct, suspicion was that Urea, a major component of urine, was an organic compound. Since all organic compounds, by definition, contain carbon, I knew I was safe. I then proceeded to fill in the details. I started to work on the other end of things. I followed the trail to feces, which has a very high carbon content as well.

Still, it seemed that it might actually be satire... and I had to be sure. I followed the links back a few more steps, and actually read the original article, quickly calmed down when he stated:

This month I want to talk about diet and exercise for weight loss, and I'm going to oversimplify on purpose. Consider a spherical physicist….

so... it was intended as satire after all... whew! Time to put the superblogger cape away, and calm back down!

So, instead of my saving humanity, you instead get a view of the thought processes of a middle aged self described "technologist" living in the midwest. I'm very glad I edited this thing before I posted, and I'm sure you, gentle reader, are as well. Thanks for following me on my morning adventure. Join me at another time when I race off to type a blog and save humanity. 8)

Via BoingBoing, and MIT Technology Review and this blog.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

So there I was, following a link from this story at BoingBoing, and instead of something interesting, I got a view of one of the most clueless ISPs on the planet.

It has to be one of the worst possible ways to handle the suspension of a web site account. Brought to you by provider vDeck. Instead of the web site I was surfing to, I got this:

account suspended

Your account has been suspended. We have sent you an email explaining why. This email should also contain information on how you can unsuspend your account.


Now, if that isn't unfriendly, I'm not sure what is.

In response to this, I wrote the following email:

Here's a gentle suggestion to help you future sales efforts. Your hosting operations folks are making your organization to be composed of rude arrogant assholes, I strongly suggest you modify their behavior.

The situation:
I followed a link to http://host117.ipowerweb.com/suspended.html

And I see this:

"account suspended


Your account has been suspended. We have sent you an email explaining why. This email should also contain information on how you can unsuspend your account."


#1. I don't have an account, in fact 99.99995% of the persons to see this message don't have an account. Wrong target audience
#2. Insufficient information: If they were over their bandwidth cap, just say so, otherwise act appropriately. You now force us to speculate as to why the account is suspended... were they Al-Queda members? Did the FBI say so? Or what!?!?!?!
#3. I won't get any email about this... you're routing the information that you didn't provide, to the wrong person
#4. No course of action left to the end user.
Can we assume that you're just being stupid, and its a temporary web site cap?
Should be keep hitting reload until it works?
Can we come back later and see the content?
Are your servers and networks down?


In summary, you're telling me (instead of your customer) that you don't care about the social norms of the internet. You're also telling me that you're rude to your customers.(as well as the public) Further, you put your logo behind this message. Bad idea!

I'd like to know what steps are being taken to rectify this behavior, and what steps you've made to compensate your customer.

Michael Warot


Of course, the email bounced!

Saturday, July 10, 2004

I've been reading John Robb's Weblog as well as having read all of the content of Global Guerrillas, to learn about the current state of the world. I've learned quite a bit, and am now far more worried about the future of the United States, and less about my own personal safety.

It appears that the nature of warfare has changed. We find ourselves confronted with a set of enemies, both foreign and domestic. The domestic ones are the ones I can help defeat. Here is an overview of the situation as I now see it.

The nature of warfare is continually evolving. Our country was attacked by a decentrallized network of terrorists on February 26, 1993, this attack, using $300 of materials, which left a 30 meter wide hole through 4 levels of the World Trade Center, should have been a wakeup call... but wasn't.

We face a threat that we are truely unprepared for, small cells of 5-15 very intelligent and dedicated people who are working towards disruption of our way of life. Their emphasis is already shifting to attacks against our infrastructure, and away from body counts. Fighting this enemy will require a far more intelligent and proactive strategy than those currently enacted.

A radical solution is necessary if we are to maintain our way of life. It's far more likely that we'll be forced to change our way of life, and adapt, as humans always do, to a new order of things. I fear that the United States will not make it's 250th birthday.

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Arron Schwarts points out that Local Goes Live (Google Weblog), which is interesting in it's own right. I took it off in a new direction, and did a search for Hazardous Waste near my home, and found it interesting, to say the least.


I wonder what other uses people will come up with for this?