Overthinking a problem…

Food for thought

If you happen to have some time on your hands these videos may well be worth your time. First, on our inability to understand the exponential function, a lecture:

Although it is not news (and has not been for a few hundred years), it certainly is a reminder of things I sometimes conveniently forget.

Second, a simple, but effective summary of what the climate change options are:

More here.

OK, I’m getting a Tablet PC…

From the Engineering Windows 7 blog:

The Math Input Panel or MIP is designed to be used with a tablet pen on a Tablet PC, but you can use it with any input device such as a touchscreen, external digitizer or even a mouse. MIP outputs the recognition result via the clipboard in MathML format, a standardized mathematical markup language. Any equation you write and recognize in MIP reaches your destination application in a completely editable form – you can insert and edit the output as you would edit any text.

Future mobility

Read this:

Cellphones – Third World and Developing Nations – Poverty – Technology – New York Times

Things will be very different in the future…

Giggles…

Sometimes American politics is just too much. Josh Marshall:

Sen. Vitter, fresh off his prostitution scandal might be challenged for his seat by the chief of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, who presumably doesn’t sleep with prostitutes.

And if porn star Stormy Daniels gets into the race, it’ll be a threesome.

How to Save the Suburbs

This interesting interview reminds me of something i think Krugman has said somewhere, that economics is about telling stories.

Energy prices have nothing to do with it. I said that at the time. They can accelerate the process, but what drives it is the shift in consumer preferences. Gen Xers and Millennials want a lifestyle closer to Friends and Seinfeld (that is, walkable and urban) than to Tony Soprano (low density and suburban). It’s not that nobody wants Tony Soprano. About 50 percent of Americans actually do want that configuration. But if we’ve built 80 percent of our housing that way, that’s the definition of oversupply. The other 50 percent of Americans want walkable urban arrangements and yet that’s just 20 percent of the housing stock. That’s called pent-up demand. So the market is just responding.

Via Matthew Yglesias.

CNBC FAIL

I agree with Josh Marshall:

This is a seminal piece of video. You have to see it. I’m not sure I’ve seen anything that captures — albeit unintentionally — the vast disconnect over what is happening today in the US economy.

He is talking about this video

Funny!

Duty calls

Biogas

På tal om lokala och småskaliga lösningar, som var för sig “inte räcker” för att avvärja den globala uppvärmningen (eller för den delen täcka alla våra energibehov) så såg jag Kunskapskanalens temasändning om framtidens drivmedel ikväll. Där visades en dokumentär om biogastillverkning i Kina. Det intressanta var att man utvecklade småskaliga system för fattiga bönder på landsbygden, där de använde dyngan från djuren till att röta biogas. Istället för att metangasen från gödseln går rakt ut i luften togs den tillvara och drogs in i huset och användes till matlagning och belysning. Förutom att det ger avsevärda minskningar av växthusgaser (metan är en 20 ggr starkare växthusgas än koldioxiden som bildas när man bränner den), så sparar den massor med skog som annars skulle eldats upp för matlagning. Samtidigt sparar man massor med arbetstid när man slipper gå ut och leta ved. Smart.

Det finns för övrigt intressanta idéer på närmare håll också.

Money…

A lot of money:

According to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Energy, the United States is importing 12-14 million barrels of oil per day. At a current price of about $115 per barrel, that’s $1.5 billion per day, or $548 billion per year.