DailyBrisk: 04/01/10

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Comic Gold. From Scott

Democrat Rep. Hank Johnson worries loading too many people onto Guam could capsize the island

April 1, 2010 | 3:22 am

First, before you watch this short but remarkable video, a little background on Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson.

He's from Georgia's Fourth District. A Washington, D.C. native, he's the fellow who took office in 2007 after knocking off former five-term Democratic Rep. Cynthia McKinney.

A former county judge, the 55-year-old is an attorney, a standard liberal Democrat, receiving 100 ratings from the ADA and ACLU. Video at: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/03/hank-johnson-guam-.html

April 1st

April fools

'The earliest recorded association between April 1 and foolishness can be found in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1392)'. In 1686, John Aubrey referred to the holiday as 'Fooles holy day'. . .On April 1st, 1698, several people were tricked into going to the Tower of London to 'see the Lions washed'. (Wikipedia).

We are all, sometimes, quite silly, as many British writers have observed with exasperated wonder -

Go, teach eternal wisdom how to rule -
Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!
Alexander Pope

Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
Kipling

Lear: Dost thou call me fool, boy?
Fool: All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.
Shakespeare

Left continues to go bonkers over Tea Parties.

KRUGMAN, KING, BLOW AND RICH: BLINDED BY HATRED OF TEA PARTIERS. Millions of law-abiding, peaceful, middle-aged female protesters, and they see firehoses and “good ol’ boys.” Tell ‘em to watch Letterman.

And “firehoses?” Wasn’t Bull Connor a Democrat? And one who was — like Krugman, King, Blow, and Rich — frightened into wild overreaction by people peacefully protesting?

U.S. Navy Captures 5 Pirates After Gun Battle in Indian Ocean

USS Nicholas guided missile frigate

Suspected Somali pirates fired on a U.S. Navy warship off East Africa early Thursday in what appeared to be a ransom-seeking attack on an American guided missile frigate, officials said.

Happy 40th Birthday, AMC Gremlin

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the AMC Gremlin's unveil to the public. Later, everyone would realize the "first American-built import" with a base price of $1,900 was actually the funniest automotive April Fool's Day joke in history.

More Di Vinci Code?

The Last Supper – relentlessly studied, scrutinized, satirized and one the world's most famous paintings – is still revealing secrets.

"We asked ourselves why Da Vinci chose those particular foods, because they don't correspond to what the Evangelists described," says Bauer. "Why bread, fish, salt, citrus and wine? Why is the saltshaker tipped over in front of Judas? Why is the bread leavened?"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100331091143.htm

Here comes the iPad-WSJ possible replacement for the laptop

Significance of gadget depends on your POV

The first reviews of the much-vaunted iPad are out. In The New York Times, David Pogue does some serious fence-sitting, deciding to write two reviews: one for techies and one for regular folks. Techies aren't going to love it, he says. As an e-reader device, it has poor visibility in sunlight, is too heavy, and right now has tiny selection of titles. "If you’ve already got a laptop and a smart phone, who’s going to carry around a third machine?" he asks. For the layman, Pogue says, the new Apple tablet will be a revelation. "The iPad is so fast and light, the multitouch screen so bright and responsive, the software so easy to navigate, that it really does qualify as a new category of gadget," he writes.

The Wall Street Journal's Walter Mossberg is an even bigger fan. The iPad, he says, "could be a game changer the way Apple's iPhone has been." As an e-reader, Mossberg finds the device better than the Kindle.

Read it at The Wall Street Journal

Poor Al is wrong again

Arctic sea ice grows back to 'normal' for first time since 2001...

Steven Goddard and Anthony Watts:

Barring an about face by nature or adjustments, it appears that for the first time since 2001, Arctic Sea ice will hit the “normal” line as defined by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) for this time of year.

John Donne - 'love's mysteries'

John Donne painted by Isaac Oliver
after a painting in The Royal Collection

Having spent most of the day speaking with electricians, building contractors, realtors and printers, I realize again how difficult it can be to make time to write. Donne made time, though eventually he would have more than half a dozen children and a wife to support. For years he lived hand to mouth, but his friends helped him.

After he died, in 1631, his friends published his poetry and prose. It created a sensation then lapsed into obscurity for more than a century. Charles Lamb, Thomas De Quincey, Coleridge, James Henry Leigh Hunt, Elizabeth Barrett, Robert Browning, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and TS Eliot rediscovered him. They became Donne's fans.

We're fans, too. Today, on his feast day, we've rewritten our file on Donne and added some new material.

Remember there is always a phone, camera and recorder around you. Always.

War Through an iPhone Camera Lens The Marine in the photo above is in the middle of a fire fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan's Helmand province. AP photographer David Guttenfelder caught the moment, and many others just as captivating, with his iPhone camera.

AI breakthrough?

A new way to model thought, developed by MIT research scientist Noah Goodman, could have broad implications for both AI and cognitive science.

Grand Unified Theory of AI: New Approach Unites Two Prevailing but Often Opposed Strains in Artificial-Intelligence Research

ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2010) — In the 1950s and '60s, artificial-intelligence researchers saw themselves as trying to uncover the rules of thought. But those rules turned out to be way more complicated than anyone had imagined. Since then, artificial-intelligence (AI) research has come to rely, instead, on probabilities -- statistical patterns that computers can learn from large sets of training data.

The probabilistic approach has been responsible for most of the recent progress in artificial intelligence, such as voice recognition systems, or the system that recommends movies to Netflix subscribers. But Noah Goodman, an MIT research scientist whose department is Brain and Cognitive Sciences but whose lab is Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, thinks that AI gave up too much when it gave up rules. By combining the old rule-based systems with insights from the new probabilistic systems, Goodman has found a way to model thought that could have broad implications for both AI and cognitive science.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100331221414.htm

You knew sooner or later someone would have to tackle this one ...

Magazine Preview: Can Animals Be Gay?

If there ever was a reason for 3-D TV, it is watching a golf tournament

And, of course, it would be The Masters

Augusta provides an ideal laboratory to show golf in the third dimension. The course is gorgeous. It undulates. Its elevations change. There is no better way, as a viewer, to see the true range of the difficulties this course provides than to see it in person ... or 3-D.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/sports/golf/01threedee.html?th&emc=th