Map art

Two fun articles about two of my favorite things: maps, and art.

• 100 Years of National Geographic Maps: The Art and Science of Where

  At this writing (the count is obsolete as soon as it is tallied), National Geographic cartographers have produced 438 supplement maps, ten world atlases, dozens of globes, about 3,000 maps for the magazine, and many maps in digital form.

• Beautiful hand painted ski trail maps

  If you've ever noticed most ski trail maps look kinda the same, the reason is many of them have been painted by a single individual: James Niehues.

  Each view is hand painted by brush and airbrush using opaque watercolor to capture the detail and variations of nature's beauty. In many instances, distortions are necessary to bring everything into a single view. The trick is to do this without the viewer realizing that anything has been altered from the actual perspective.

Some great construction porn

You know, for people who like to look at pictures of giant construction projects.

• Photos: Demolition begins on Candlestick Park

  Crews have started tearing down San Francisco's Candlestick Park so houses, a hotel and a shopping center can be built on the site.

• Incredible Photos from the Construction Site of the New Bay Bridge

  Over the years, Blum captured workers hanging like fruit bats from the structure's immense underbelly. He watched studs being installed while squished inside one of the span's titanic piles, which weigh up to 365 tons apiece and reach as far as 300 feet below the waves. In one of the more surreal moments, he crawled into a hellishly cramped metal chamber, where the air was so hot you couldn't survive without wearing an air-fed respirator, to observe a man put in a robotic weld.

  (See also: Photographer focuses lens on Bay Bridge builders in exhibit)

Stuff I'm reading, blustery day edition

I think the New Normal is that it will rain only about 2 days a month.

But when it rains, it rains HARD.

• An Introduction to Computer Networks

  Welcome to the website for An Introduction to Computer Networks, a free and open general-purpose computer-networking textbook, complete with diagrams and exercises. It covers the LAN, internetworking and transport layers, focusing primarily on TCP/IP. Particular attention is paid to congestion; other special topics include queuing, real-time traffic, network management, security and the ns simulator.

• Surviving Data Science "at the Speed of Hype"

  There is this idea endemic to the marketing of data science that big data analysis can happen quickly, supporting an innovative and rapidly changing company. But in my experience and in the experience of many of the analysts I know, this marketing idea bears little resemblance to reality.

• Why Robot?

  All the hoopla about “robots stealing our jobs” has led people to assume that if some new technology performs a task traditionally performed by humans, it must be a robot. But the term carries a lot of pop-cultural baggage that risks clouding our understanding of what we’re really talking about when we talk about automation.

• Robot-writing increased AP’s earnings stories by tenfold

  AP managing editor Lou Ferrara told Automated Insights that the news cooperative’s customers are happy to be receiving more stories, and that automation has freed up reporters to work on more difficult stories, according to the release.

• Why Learning to Code is So Damn Hard

  for the most part, these introductory tools do a great job of guiding you like a child in a crosswalk past the big scary variables and conditional statements and through the early phases of programming syntax. As you conquer one after another of their gamified challenges, your confidence rises. Maybe you can do this after all! How hard can it be? You're basically a developer already!

• Screw motivation, what you need is discipline.

  How do you cultivate discipline? By building habits – starting as small as you can manage, even microscopic, and gathering momentum, reinvesting it in progressively bigger changes to your routine, and building a positive feedback loop.

• DeathHacks

  There’s a lot of grunt work that needs to be done after a death. Magazine subscriptions need to be stopped. Home services like lawn care need to be curtailed or amended. Maintenance schedules need to be deduced from calendar entries or handwritten notes. A lot of this is just simple phone calls or emails. Some of it is not.

  The cable company, when called, wouldn’t let me downgrade my dad’s service without receiving a faxed copy of the death certificate and a letter outlining my executrixship. They insisted on me changing the account into my name, pronto. I hung up. Their online chat service, however, would let “Tom” do anything he wanted as long as he had the account number and the eminently guessable-by-me password that was the same as the alarm system’s. This was a reproducible result. Using my dad’s Google document with the usernames and passwords of all of his major accounts, I got a lot of things accomplished without having to speak to or see a real person.

• Stibitz & Wilson Honorees

  The George R. Stibitz Computer & Communications Pioneer Awards honor individuals who have made significant contributions to the fields of computing and communications. The Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Pioneer Awards honor individuals who have made significant contributes to the preservation of biodiversity on Earth.

The Book of Strange New Things: a very short review

One of my holiday gifts was Michel Faber's The Book of Strange New Things, and I finished reading it the other day.

Is it possible for a book to be both compelling and repellent? Both bizarre and familiar? Both pedestrian and exotic?

I suppose so, since all those words seem to come to mind as I think about The Book of Strange New Things.

Faber's story tells of Peter Leigh, a young Londoner in some near-future time, who has somehow volunteered for, or applied at, or been chosen by, but at any rate is now associated with, an anonymous corporate entity named USIC, which has put Peter into a spaceship and sent him somewhere else.

It's not really clear where the else is, or why USIC wants to be there, or what's actually happening on that place, except that Peter is now there, along with some other people.

Oh, and Peter, you see, is a minister.

You might think that Peter is there to minister to the other USIC staff on this faraway place. But no, Peter is actually there to minister to the indigenous population: the aliens.

These aliens are not human beings, although they are sufficiently similar to allow for comparisons, and for communication, and for interactions. Happily, by the time Peter gets there the aliens (whom Peter comes to call Oasans) have learned a small amount of English, and during the course of the book their English improves as Peter talks to them and reads to them from The Book of Strange New Things (which is the term the aliens use for Peter's King James Bible). Peter even learns a few works of the alien language.

So that's what the book is about. That, and Peter talking with the other USIC staff, and exchanging emails with his wife, Beatrice, who has remained back in England.

Yes, Peter has left his wife in England and has climbed on a spaceship to some other place. No, I don't buy that for one moment. That's just one of many confounding things about this book.

Another very disturbing thing about The Book of Strange New Things is that it has no ending.

Well, of course, the book ends; there comes a point when there are no more pages to turn and you have finished reading it.

But the story doesn't conclude; it doesn't resolve; it doesn't answer. You just go reading along in the book and then, even though the book has raised all sorts of disturbing and infuriating questions and problems, it just stops. You don't find out what happens; you don't learn the outcome. Infuriatingly, near the end, when Peter gives a speech that seems certain to explain What He Has Learned, he gives the speech to the aliens, in the alien tongue, which is not explained at all, so you have no idea what he has said (although the aliens seem very satisfied by what he tells them).

It's like a sonata which breaks with form and doesn't return to the tonic at the end: it's unsettling and it leaves you all anxious and perturbed.

Usually, when I finish a book, if it was a book worth reading, and if I have paid a fairly reasonable amount of attention, I have some idea what the book was "about": what issues was the author concerned about, what questions are under debate here, where does the author stand on the key topics.

Not so with The Book of Strange New Things.

Of course, it is broadly clear what Faber is interested in: his main character is a minister, the title of the book is the alien's description of the King James Bible, and the book, overall, is divided into four parts:

1. Thy Will Be Done
2. On Earth
3. As It Is
4. In Heaven

So obviously the book is a reflection on faith, on belief (Peter's wife, after all, is named "Bea Leigh"), on humanity and its relationship with religion, and on our purpose in life.

But does Faber actually have an opinion on these matters? If he does, he keeps it well-hidden. It seems he is content to tell a tale, to raise questions and pose problems, but he is not trying to take us in any particular direction in these discussions.

Early in the book, Beatrice says to Peter, "I have a vision," and she proceeds to tell him what it is:

I see you standing on the shore of a huge lake. It's night and the sky is full of stars. On the water, there's hundreds of small fishing boats, bobbing up and down. each boat has at least one person in it. None of the boats are going anywhere, they've all dropped anchor, because everyone is listening. The air is so calm you don't even have to shout. Your voice just carries over the water.

And then, at the end, Peter reflects on his experience. A bit.

he looked around several times at his church silhouetted against the brilliant sky. No one had emerged from it but him. Belief was a place that people didn't leave until they absolutely must. The Oasans had been keen to follow him to the kingdom of Heaven, but they weren't keen to follow him into the valley of doubt. He knew that one day -- maybe very soon -- they would have another pastor. They'd take from him what they needed, and their search for salvation would go on when he was long gone. After all, their souls dreamt so ardently of a longer stay in the flesh, a longer spell of consciousness. It was natural: they were only human.

Is Faber trying to speak directly to us here? Is he frustrated that we are not keen to follow him into the valley of doubt? Is he deliberately unwilling to tell us anything that might pass for an answer, since he knows that our experience with his book is just transitory, and our search will go on when he is long gone?

Is it OK if our boat isn't going anywhere, as long as we are listening?

I'm not sure, and I'm not sure, in the end, what to tell you about The Book of Strange New Things. I'm quite glad I read it, but I think I'd find it very hard to know whether or not to recommend it to anybody else.

Maybe it's just the sort of book that you have to happen onto on your own, and then on your own you have to decide what it is, and what to make of it, and how you will feel about that when you are done.

So on we go.

Wikipedia minutiae

There's a great article on Medium about Giraffedata: One Man’s Quest to Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical Mistake.

Giraffedata—a 51-year-old software engineer named Bryan Henderson—is among the most prolific contributors, ranking in the top 1,000 most active editors. While some Wikipedia editors focus on adding content or vetting its accuracy, and others work to streamline the site’s grammar and style, generally few, if any, adopt Giraffedata’s approach to editing: an unrelenting, multi-year project to fix exactly one grammatical error.

What, precisely, is that grammatical issue? Giraffedata explains it on a personal Wikipedia page (I wasn't even aware there were such things): User:Giraffedata/comprised of

Many people do not accept "comprised of" as a valid English phrase for any meaning. The argument goes that "to comprise" means to include, as in "The 9th district comprises all of Centerville and parts of Easton and Weston." And thus, "the 9th district is comprised of ..." is gibberish.

The phrase apparently originated as a confusion of "comprise" and "composed of", which mean about the same thing, as in "the 9th district is composed of ..." There is a traditional saying to help people remember these two sound-alike words: "The whole comprises the parts; the parts compose the whole."

But "comprised of" is in common use and some people defend it as a fully valid additional definition of "to comprise". Even dictionaries acknowledge this usage, though they all tell you it's disputed and typically discourage writers from using it. See for example Wiktionary.

Here is my view of why "comprised of" is poor writing

As the Medium essay notes, Giraffedata's work isn't always welcomed.

He was surprised, however, to find in the first three months that some people disagreed with his edit, sometimes vehemently. “When the first few people said, ‘Why did you do this?’ I said, ‘Well, it’s not grammatical. It’s not English at all.’ And then finally somebody came and said, ‘You jerk, it’s a matter of opinion! It’s completely valid, I looked it up in my dictionary! You have no right to mess with my article!’” Henderson laughs. “That came as quite a surprise.” He stopped checking the ‘minor edit’ box, to acknowledge that some users might find the change controversial.

Indeed, he acknowledges the controversy on his personal Wikipedia page:

A usage note in the Merriam-Webster dictionary notes that a writer "may be subject to criticism" for using "comprised of" and suggests alternative wording for that reason. It notes that in spite of being in use for over a hundred years, it is still attacked as wrong, but says it isn't clear why the attackers have singled out this usage. Opposition has long been declining; in the 1960s, 53 percent of American Heritage Dictionary's expert Usage Panel found the wording unacceptable; in 1996, only 35 percent objected; by 2011, it had fallen a bit more, to 32 percent (quoted here). OED usage note calls it "part of standard English".

Still, doing this brings him joy:

When asked what motivates him, Henderson says he views his pursuit as similar to that of people who choose to spend their Saturdays picking up litter from the side of the road. “I really do think I’m doing a public service, but at the same time, I get something out of it myself. It’s hard to imagine doing it for the rest of my life,” he says with a laugh. “I don’t have any plans to quit, but I guess eventually, I’ll have to find a way. It’s hard to walk away, especially when I’ve actually accomplished something.”

I understand the compulsion, and I expect many have felt it; after all, Duty Calls.

Risky business

Really, when you get right down to it, I don't know very much about football.

So take this for what it's worth (nothing).

But I just don't get why everybody is jumping on the bandwagon to label the Seahawks's last play call "risky" or "stupid".

As I recall, Jerry Rice scored, what, 40 touchdowns on slant passes from inside the 10 yard line?

And Rice probably made 5 times that many first downs on that play, and perhaps 10 times that many total "quick slant" receptions in his career.

That was a perfectly fine play call, even a good one.

Malcolm Butler just did something completely unexpected and amazing.

Which is why, even though I didn't really care about the game, nor who won, and barely even watched a game of football all year, I still really enjoyed almost all of yesterday's game.

Go Patriots, go Seahawks. Well played, and good entertainment, start to finish.

Goodbye to January

Yesterday, it was 75 degrees in Marin County, clear blue skies, a gentle light wind, so we drove out to the Pt Reyes Lighthouse to see if we could see any Gray Whales. According to the recorded message at the Pt Reyes National Seashore Ranger Station, 18 whales had been seen on Friday.

Visiting the lighthouse to look for the whales in January is extremely popular, so at this time of year you can't drive all the way to the lighthouse. Instead, you have to park at Drake's Beach, and then take the shuttle bus, which is a nice ride and very comfortable.

There may be no better viewpoint over the Pacific Ocean than the observation deck above the Pt Reyes Lighthouse. With our binoculars, we could see miles out to sea, though the views got hazier as we looked. I'm pretty sure that we could see the Farallon Islands; it looked just like this.

But we didn't see any whales.

Sometimes that's what happens. I think they all were there on Friday.

So we rode the shuttle bus back to Drake's Beach, and went for a walk on the beach.

There were about a half dozen elephant seals sunning themselves on the beach, with docents keeping us tourists safely away. In many ways, seeing an elephant seal yawning, just 30 feet away, is a more impressive sight than a pod of gray whales 5 miles out to sea.

But they're both pretty great, and I'm glad we can make such a wonderful day trip on a Saturday in January. Yay California!

January was a month of glorious mild weather; I rode my bike to work every day, and barely needed my sweatshirt on many mornings.

But January was dry, reports the Merc: Driest January in history: Bay Area swings from boom to bust after wettest December.

For the first time ever, San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento have recorded no rainfall for the month of January -- nada drop.

...

The state's monthly snowpack survey Thursday near Lake Tahoe's Echo Summit summed up the bad news: 12 percent of normal, with the equivalent of 2.3 inches of water content in the "meager" snowpack. Other spots around the state were worse, some slightly better -- but the outlook is equally dire.

"Unfortunately, today's manual snow survey makes it likely that California's drought will run through a fourth consecutive year," according to a news release from the Department of Water Resources.

Surprisingly, people don't seem to care.

The winter snowpack's water content typically supplies about 30 percent of California's water needs and is considered water in the bank to melt through the dry summer months. Reservoirs rely on ample runoff from snowmelt to meet demand from summer through fall. After three years of drought and dwindling reservoir levels, the demand is growing.

And drought-weary Californians show signs of conservation fatigue. A poll from the Public Policy Institute of California, released this week, showed 59 percent of residents say the water supply is a big problem in their region, but that's down from 68 percent in October.

Indeed, you barely hear it discussed on the news, nobody seems to be talking about it at all.

There will be new data, though: A New Satellite Will Watch the Western Drought from Space.

SMAP will spend three years taking the most accurate readings ever of soil moisture around the world. That’s right: It will measure how wet the dirt is. From space.

As Bob Dylan says, though, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. It is dry, dry, dry, and there are too many people in California using too much water, and nobody is working on ways to address the problem.

But it was a beautiful day to visit Pt Reyes yesterday.

Goodbye to January, happy February!