Plane malfunction illusion: Rolling shutter effect

Chris wanted to take a photo while on an airplane flight. The aircraft was a Bombardier Q400. Chris didn't have a camera with him, only his Apple iPhone 3GS. The scanning order of his iPhone sensor combined with the light refracted from the airplane window caused a distinctive "detaching blades" phenomenon in the photo. Rotating the camera warps the blades in different directions.

Edit: Unfortunately for me, Chris is no longer sharing his photos online, but I have found others. Keep reading!

Bombardier Q400 digression

Q400 passenger airplane by The Cranky Flier on Flickr

There have been some serious safety concerns with the Bombardier Dash Q400 Turboprop. Persistent problems with faulty landing gear received plenty of media coverage. Also, landing gear failure is highly noticeable to passengers! Some of the worry is depicted by The Cranky Flyer in the little drawing.

Although there have been no passenger injuries, thanks to pilot skill, multiple instances of left or right wheels failing to extend fully (or at all!) upon landing have occurred in Canada, the United States, and France. Those are the markets for Bombardier's small-to-medium sized commercial and business aircraft.

Engine stalls in very cold weather, due to ice, is another issue with the Q400. Both the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Canadian air safety regulators launched formal inquiries.

Despite the appearance of Jason's photo below, there have never been any problems with Q400 propellers blades detaching and falling off while in flight!

Blades by Jason Mullins on Flickr

Decline of Web 2.0

In a prior post, I wrote about a whimsical 1870s era cartographic depiction of America as a Young Hog. The source publication from which I first learned of it, University of Michigan's Map Library blog, has since been discontinued. I shouldn't be surprised, even though it makes me feel sad.

Web 2.0 is user-contributed content

Blogs, Huffington Post and Forbes per-pageview paid contributors, BuzzFeed, Second Life, YouTube, image sharing services, question-and-answer sites, and comment sections (for online newspapers as well as blogs) are examples of user-created online content. It is difficult to believe that Technorati tracked millions of active blogs at one point in time. User-contributed content sites seem to have been in decline for years.

Technorati was considered an authoritative source for blog activity. It was before my time, but sounded great, even including a blog search engine that was superior to Google's blog search. Google Blog Search vanished years ago, like many Google services.

Blog growth outpaces Moore's Law?!

That's what Technorati claimed in 2005: Blog growth was frequently doubling. The BBC seemed VERY excited about Technorati, and blogging in general, see "A new blog created every second"! Even though the dot com bubble was years earlier, there was still a lot of Internet hype then.

In August 2005, Technorati was tracking 14.2 million blogs, up from 7.8 million in March of the same year, according to the BBC. New blog count was doubling every six months! That's analogous to the real Moore's Law, applicable to technology, not blogs. 

Moore's Law isn't a law of physical science, but rather, a rule of thumb based on the observation that semiconductor processor speeds double every six months. (Moore's Law hasn't held up so well due to the physical limitations: there are only so many nanometers of room on processor chips.)  There's more to read about Moore's Law here including a link to Gordon Moore's original article about it. 

Technorati landing page

With such amazing growth, it wouldn't be long before blogs outnumbered Earth's adult population! 

Make America Porcine Again

Years ago, I found a post on the University of Michigan's Map Library blog. I consider it evergreen, as it is about two of my favorite things: Piggies and cartography!  Now seems like a good time to write about it. After all, maps were the safest way to travel during the COVID19 pandemic. Old maps even allow one to travel in time, with sufficient imagination.

In lieu of the Map Library blog, I turned to Big Think's Strange Maps. I located this excellent post, National Porcineographic: Portrait of America as a Young Hog.

Helping humans by helping pigs

William E. Baker was a 19th century tailor. He made his fortune thanks to a strategic alliance with what became the Grover & Baker Sewing Machine Company. (It was later acquired by Singer Sewing Machines.) Baker's philanthropy was extensive, but centered on his Hygienic Farming and Sanitary Cookery initiative. He wanted to improve human health by helping pigs.

Unvirtuous circle: Boston was a cesspool

New England rapidly industrialized, and the population grew along with it. An ecosystem evolved but it was of a distinctly pragmatic sort. The City of Boston instituted a garbage pick-up service but then disposed of the garbage anywhere and everywhere possible. Typical locations for garbage dumping were on the outskirts of the city or in neighboring communities. It was NOT environmentally friendly! Town and nearby country dwellers developed a recycling response: They fed the garbage to pigs.

W.E. Baker believed that this practice was the cause of much disease, in both swine and the people who consumed unwholesome pork. In 1875, he introduced a 'Sanitary Piggery' in rural Massachusetts. It was the cornerstone of Baker's contribution to the pure food movement.

"Baker’s Sanitary Piggery involved a clean environment and wholesome food for its porcine residents - it was even rumored they had individual beds, and slept under sheets. That may have been hyperbole, but it underscores Baker’s belief that public health depended greatly on sanitary food production."

He didn't blame pigs for the filth and squalor in which they, um, wallowed.

The world’s finest example of porcineography

The Porcineograph 

Haiku spam and double digit sigma events

Haiku Schmaiku

Howdy Ma'am,
Just spam, I am.
Five syllables short

-- Bloggerel Doggerel blog, 2007

Verse is courtesy of The Climateer, who doesn't write about climate too often, thankfully! He has a great blog description which is perpetually relevant: "In war, everything not censored is a lie."

The Climateer DOES write about investment bankers who blame statistics for their poor trading decisions... or possibly, outright deceptive practices. There was a lot of that going on in 2008. I finally hoisted some posts about double-digit standard deviations from my bookmarks and read them.

25 Sigma Event Very Unlucky

From Climateer Investor and others along the way, it seems like a 25 sigma event is impossible. "How unlucky is 25 sigma?" (2011): When Goldman Sachs was Really, Really Unlucky: 

"One of the more memorable moments of last summer’s credit crunch came when the CFO of Goldman Sachs, David Viniar, announced in August that Goldman’s flagship GEO hedge fund had lost 27% of its value since the start of the year."

As Mr. Viniar explained, “We were seeing things that were 25-standard deviation moves, several days in a row.” 

April was the month of mathematics

April 2020 was the scheduled date for the most recent Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month. It is a biannual event, i.e. held once every two years. Sadly, it was uniquely ill-timed to coincide with the arrival of the full-force of the COVID-19 global pandemic. A lot of recurring events have fallen by the wayside. 

Tea for 8 by S. Goldstine

Possibly even worse is the fact that I see no mention of

any activities for 2022. I noticed this while browsing through the pages of the online Mathematical Imagery SIG (special interest group) of the American Mathematical Society (AMS). I encourage readers to visit! Included here are two scaled-down examples that I liked. 

The Four-Color Theorem works for any map on a plane or a sphere, i.e. four colors are sufficient to color every neighboring region with a different color. For other shapes, say this toroidal tea set, eight colors were necessary. 

Polar coordinates
by D.A. Lakew 

The shape on the left is a group of super-imposed polar surfaces. There is much more, along with detailed explanations, equations, etc. 

 You will also find pleasing drawing such as those I shared in my Cornucopia of Mathematics post, dating back to the turn of the century, uh, this century. Although I didn't hot link to the images (well, maybe one), and gave full credit to the source, a 2003 academic event at a university in New England, I noticed a few months later that the source web pages had gone 404 error not found.

On the origins of Mathematics Awareness Month

As any blog reader of mine knows, I strive to find surprising information. The origin of AMS's Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month can be traced back to none other than... Ronald Reagan?  

Bard of the Deep State: Brookings not to merge with Heritage

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is the central bank of central banks. Think Tank Watch is similar to BIS, except it is for think tanks. Both are meta organizations although only BIS has global gravitas. Also, I suspect that Think Tank Watch lacks any governance role for think tanks, unlike the mild governance authority of BIS over central banks.

Think Tank Watch's editor-in-chief seems rather pleased with himself. There's nothing wrong with taking pride in good work.

One of Harvard’s best think tank sources: Think Tank Watch. #thinktankshttps://t.co/7mwFAnKm8H

— Think Tank Watch (@ThinkTankWatch) March 24, 2021

Think Tank Watch saw something and said something

Brookings Institute to merge with the Heritage Foundation:

Think Tank Watch has learned that the center-left Brookings Institution is in the late stages of a merger deal with the conservative Heritage Foundation to form a new think tank behemoth called "Brookitage."

The news comes via unnamed sources. Is there any other way to get information in Washington D.C. than 'unnamed sources'? Of course not!

Making policy not shaping or influencing

"We cannot afford to be just a liberal think tank in today's polarized political atmosphere," said a senior level Brookings official. "Bringing the most well-known liberal think tank together with the most well-known conservative think tank would send a huge message to Capitol Hill. Things need to change."

It is unusual for think tanks to take such an active political role. Also, think tanks tend to be hothouses of similar ideologies. Brookings and Heritage are not similar, so merging will no doubt be uncomfortable for all involved. Also, Heritage is likely none too happy with that portmanteau of a name, Brookitage.

Why hasn't the growth rate of Real Potential GDP recovered?

Missionary Work Among Savages blog is authored by 2slugbait, a pseudonym for an econometrician. He recently wrote a post about whether President Reagan's 1981 tax cuts performed as advertised with the perspective of hindsight. I think his motivation was also to assess whether a similar supply-side approach could have been a better alternative to the fiscal stimulus measures implemented by President Obama during the 2008-2010 financial collapse.

Although the recovery during Obama's second term in office was one of the most anemic in U.S. history, 2slugbait's conclusion was that a supply-side effort would not have produced an enduring benefit.

Voodoo economics not so great

Economist Arthur Laffer was known for his Laffer curve. Laffer's recommendations about supply-side measures (rather than demand-side economic stimulus) were referred to as voodoo economics by detractors, most famously by former President George H.W. Bush. 

Voodoo economists in action?

2slugbait demonstrates empirically why supply-side economics was only mildly effective. Specifically, neither of the following worked out the way supply-side economists posited at the time:

1. cutting the top marginal tax rate would encourage greater labor efforts and 
2. more hours worked would have a greater net impact on increased personal savings than increased consumer spending would.

The (infamous?) Laffer curve

Skepticism about David Stockman and Laffer's tax policy recommendations during the Reagan Administration is the less interesting part to me. Tax cuts for middle-income wage earners (not solely those high net worth "job creators" 😕😡 ) CAN provide a modicum of economic stimulus, even though it is not enduring! That was apparent from 2017 to March 2019, as well as the early 1980s.

Something else is much more interesting to me: The long-term decline in Real Potential GDP. 2slugbait noticed this too in his post.

Real Potential Gross Domestic Product

According to 2slugbait,

"If the Reagan tax cuts actually affected the supply side of the macro economy... then we should have observed an unparalleled increase in the growth rate of real potential GDP... 

Yes, real potential GDP did grow at a pretty good clip immediately after the Reagan recession, but it quickly faded... even at its peak it was only barely above the growth rates during the Nixon, Ford, and Carter years and well below rates enjoyed during the LBJ and Clinton years."

Real potential GDP (let's refer to it for convenience in this post as RPGDP) is defined in the Federal Reserve Economic Data repository (FRED) as 

Gold Star of Texas

The state capitol building in Austin, Texas (21 October 2008)

Cupola of the state capitol at Austin

Photograph by TedLandphair via Picasa

Credibility and the Internet: Queuing Theory

This was old news about queues back in the 1990s, yet it was written up as an (Inderscience) journal article, and received coverage as though a new finding in the June 2010 issue of ScienceDaily, an online "new discoveries!" update service owned by Reuters. See footnote #1 for even more.

M/M/1 queues, Kendall notation, and models of balking and reneging behavior are certainly useful. However, the concepts and most models have been well-established for at least forty years.

This Wiley text book, Fundamentals of Queueing Theory, was published in 1998.

An earlier edition was published in 1983, and explains in detail the theory and application of the concepts presented in the journal article summarized by ScienceDaily in 2010.

A little more about M/G/1

Over at Math StackExchange, I noticed a rare inquiry. If you're curious to learn more about queues, go read my answer to this question, Kendall notation's “General distribution”, what does that mean?

I found this comment endearing:

Oh I thought that this stuff wasn't even used in real life jobs... I thought it was merely theoretical, but seems that I'm wrong!

I'm okay with the G general theory [G as the general case when you just don't know what sort of service time distribution to expect] since I'm not required to study it for now (I'm following an academic course), I just wanted to understand what the G meant and you helped me in that. Do you have any experience with multi-class queues too?

Reference

1. Liao et al. "Optimal staffing policy for queueing systems with cyclic demands." International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2010; 7: 317-332.

Chemical Heritage

This aluminum necklace was on display at the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) in 2010. It was part of the CHF's Chemistry and Fashion: Making Modernity exhibit. A description of the necklace is still available via an unfortunately image-free post about Atomic Age women's jewelry. 

I like the necklace, a lot! Aluminum is very light; I do wonder whether the same necklace could be made of platinum or possibly iridium. If so, how it would it compare--in appearance (e.g. lustre) and weight-- to the aluminum version?

Aluminum necklace circa 1950

I wrote this post in October 2010. Times changed at the Chemical Heritage Museum since then, resulting in many broken links. This is an expanded version of that post, with replacement by valid alternative links for inline URLs. I apologize if I missed any. 

URL persistence hasn't been taken as seriously as the IETF and Internet Society had hoped; URL status, according to a Google Groups thread, as of 2013:

URLs are simply not persistent...from a recent study, about 15% of URLs from a large sample reach a lifetime of 1000 days. It's abysmal. And other studies back it up.

No Moore Chemical Heritage

Sadly, Chemical Heritage was absorbed by the Science History Institute in 2018, including the CHF's 5-story building. Most CHF collections can still be viewed at the museum's original location, at 315 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I was born in Philadelphia, and attended graduate school there, so I feel an affinity. 

The former CHF building is near Centennial Hall, the Liberty Bell, and adjacent to a nice residential neighborhood called Society Hill. Penn's Landing is a few blocks to the east. That's where William Penn first arrived on the shores of America. 

Gordon E. Moore helped found the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and his generous donations provided much of the initial and sustaining funds.

Moore's Law

Periodic Tabloid: 
Musings on the Molecular

Interested in the legacy of Gordon Moore? A reproduction of his 1966 article, in which he introduced his famous law, is included in Understanding Moore's Law: Four Decades of Innovation. The book also recounts many observations by Moore, his peers, competitors, and others. It was written in order to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Moore's Law. 

Although "Understanding Moore's Law" was published by the now defunct CHF Press, the Science History Institute kindly keeps an electronic version of the full text available as a PDF for online readers.

Heritage of Chemistry: Moore notable, noble chemists

I promise that this heading will be my final pun for today. It is a double pun, the best kind!

When I first wrote this, chemist and materials scientist Andre Geim had recently won the Nobel Prize.  In merely 10 years, he went from the dubious distinction of receiving an IgNoble prize for levitating frogs with magnets to winning the Nobel Prize for producing a one atom-thick material consisting of carbon atoms, arranged in a hexagonal lattice.  Geim named it graphene, and mapped its properties: incredibly thin but still incredibly strong, good heat and electrical conductivity, almost entirely transparent yet very dense.