Parity Violation

On Monday I believe I was awoken by a phone call on my home phone. I answered and got an earful of beeps. So, I hung up. A few minutes later, another call. I said to the beeps “This isn’t a fax line” and hung up again. However, for the third call I figured I’d be ready. I quickly set up my desktop computer to receive faxes (trivial in Mac OS X, btw), and when the next call came I had the computer answer.

I looked at the fax. It was from some Company A in California to some Company B here in Houston. They wanted a credit history report on some third Texas company. A few minutes later another fax came in; same sender and would-be recipient but the form this time requested info about yet another company.

So, I found the web site of Company B and found the contact info for their Houston office. Sure enough, it was my home number only with a different first digit. I thought about just forwarding the faxes to them… but then I thought that’d just make Company A think they had the right fax number. So, since the fax number of Company A was listed on the faxes I decided to send them a fax.

I put it to the attention of the accounting person who had been sending all the faxes (accidentally) to me. I explained that they were faxing the wrong number and getting my home number and I gave them the correct fax number for company B.

A little later, I got a call from the accounting person - they left me a voicemail - apologizing for the inconvenience and thanking me for my fax to them. So, all is well that ends well. The whole thing was actually kind of an intriguing mystery, so I won’t say I had fun figuring it all … I’d rather just not have been woken up in the first place, but at least I was able to solve the case.

So, as you have probably have heard Star Wars : Episode III is quite good. Certainly better than any of the other prequels. There’s still some bad dialogue here and there, but the film holds up quite well and ties in nicely to Star Wars (Episode IV.)

One thing I’ve really noticed and I haven’t read anyone say anything about, is the effect that seeing Episode III has had on my feelings about Return of the Jedi. I watched the last 30 minutes or so of my Jedi DVD, and I have to say it carries a lot more emotional punch now.

Specifically, I think now we care about Darth Vader’s redemption. Upon first viewing, Luke’s quest to save his father - I can’t say I cared that much. But now having see Anakin’s fall from grace, I think the audience is more invested in seeing his redemption. Now when the ghostly Anakin appears at the very end of Return of the Jedi (an apparition now played by Hayden Christienson), I certainly got a just a tad bit choked up… that never happened until I saw Revenge of the Sith.

Well, it only took 8 years or something. Late Night with Conan O’ Brien will finally be on at its proper time of 11:35 in Houston starting June 6. I predicted when I moved back to Houston in 2000 that by time I graduated it’d be on at 11:30. I believe at that time it was on at 2:10 AM. I think currently it is on around 1AM.

When the show was on here at like 2:40 AM, I think Conan came to Houston and did a whole bit on who was watching his show that late. I know he came to one of the dorms at Rice and also I think was nearly killed at the bus station. Anyway, all that is finally over with. The late night landscape in Houston is finally as it should be.

Salon.com has posted a speech television journalist Bill Moyers gave on Sunday at the National Conference for Media reform. He nails the stenographer mentality of most of the mainstream press. The best line perhaps:

Objectivity is not satisfied by two opposing people offering competing opinions, leaving the viewer to split the difference.

but the story is full of them. He goes on about the GOP attack on PBS and his own show, NOW, in particular. It’s a good read, but these are scary times.

It’s hurricane season, and the NOAA has released its prediction of the activity in the coming hurricane season, quickly picked up by the wire services. What of course is missing is any comparison of last year’s predications to what actually happened. Not that this information is hard to find, because I found it:

In 2004, the NOAA predicted 12-15 tropical storms, with 6-8 becoming hurricanes, and 2-4 of these becoming major hurricanes. In fact, we had 15 tropical storms and 9 hurricanes, including 6 major hurricanes. This kind of before and after comparison can be found from the NOAA itself. So, not too shabby on the NOAA’s part - but not great - they lowballed the number of hurricanes by 1 and were off by 2 on the major storms.

However, let’s see in tomorrow’s papers if any reporters bother to look up this kind of historical accuracy of the NOAA’s predications. Or anybody else’s, for that matter. Too often the press parrots the predictions of some “expert” on any given topic and doesn’t bother to check to see how good they’ve been at prognosticating in the past.

This is a very amusing story in today’s NY Times. Here’s the lead:

Powerball lottery officials suspected fraud: how could 110 players in the March 30 drawing get five of the six numbers right? That made them all second-prize winners, and considering the number of tickets sold in the 29 states where the game is played, there should have been only four or five.

So the explanation? The 110 people got their numbers from fortune cookies. You know, how they print lottery numbers on the back? Well, there you go - the same numbers appear on many many cookies and apparently the cookie picked a winner. This led to $19 million in unexpected payouts. Who knew fortune cookies would actually say something predictive? And accurate for that matter.

I guess the lesson here is never to pick the fortune cookie numbers. You may win, but if you do so will 100 other people. That’s $30 million jackpot split 100 ways is looking pretty puny. Though I guess, even a few thousasnd is still a lot more than nothing. :-) So, maybe there’s no lesson here after all. Hmm, it seems that the cookie company is going to randomize their numbers more with a computer, so there won’t be 100 cookies with the same numbers again. Oh well.

As you may know, I like to grumble about fortune cookies which don’t give fortunes; like ones that say “A penny saved is a penny earned,” or “Don’t cry over split milk,” some similar platitude. I want a fortune. Like, “Tomorrow you will get hit on the head with a piano.” I mean, give me something. I’d appreciate at least an effort at predicting the future. Not some moral to a fable.

Here’s a wire story for all you folks who don’t haven’t registered at the NY Times site.

I like to use the text editor pico. Ok, that’s not really true, I prefer a real text editor like TextWrangler or BBEdit, but when I need to edit a simple text file and I’m logged in to some unix machine, pico is what I use. I don’t care for the complexity of vi or emacs (nor do I really know how to use them) when I just want to change my PATH or something. My advisor’s machine, however, does not have pico installed. So, I figured I’d just download the binary and put it my own ~/bin directory and I’d have it when I needed it.

Well good luck finding a binary download of pico. I googled download linux pico and got bubkus. That Tucows page looks promising but doesn’t actually have any downloadable link on it.

Contrast this with a search for mac os x pico download and you find links to download binaries in the top 5 hits. And pico is included with OS X anyway! Of course these installers are for pico and pine, but still.

Where do linux users get their software anyway? I use fink for pretty much everything, but fink is a Macintosh thing. Anyway, I ultimately found pico on another linux box I have access to, gzipped it and scp’ed to the computer in question.

This is great. Speculation continues about Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions. I personally don’t think she wants to be president nor do I think she would win the nomination or the presidency, but that doesn’t stop a lot of chatter. Clearly, she has to win re-election as a senator from NY first. So, check out this gem from a recent poll, from this AP story.

Sixty-five percent of Democrats polled by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute said she should pledge to serve a full term if she runs for re-election, but 61 percent also said they would like her to run for the White House in 2008(emphasis added)

That’s fantastic. So, Democrats in NY want her to pledge to serve a full term but then break that pledge and run for the White House? It would seem so. This reminds of a West Wing episode…

JOSH - So, if we’re lucky, foreign aid’s going to be funded for another 90 days at 75 cents on the dollar. No one who’s ever said they wanted bipartisanship has ever meant it. But the people are speaking. Because 68% think we give too much in foreign aid, and 59% think it should be cut.

WILL - You like that stat?

JOSH - I do.

WILL - Why?

JOSH - Because 9% think it’s too high, and shouldn’t be cut! 9% of respondents could not fully get their arms around the question. There should be another box you can check for, “I have utterly no idea what you’re talking about. Please, God, don’t ask for my input.”

Very funny.

I don’t particularly enjoying running just for running sake, but I do like to play ultimate frisbee which requires a bit more endurance than I currently have. Ultimate is really a game for someone with a soccer player’s stamina, and I have the stamina of a softball player.

That said, I’ve started trying to add a little running in addition to the Thursday ultimate pickup game. My original goal was to run in the Astros 5K on May 28, but it turn out I won’t be in town. Anyway, I made this rather cool map of the running track around Rice, complete with measured lengths.

I used the Microsoft Terraserver for the original image and then used the scale at the bottom, along with the caliper tool in Graphicconverter to draw and measure the various legs. As you might be able to tell, I tend to start running at Entrance 13.