Posts from — November 2009

I played an arrangement of Grieg’s “The Last Spring” in Symphonic Band in college, but had forgotten about it until I recently got it as part of a collection of classical music that I bought on Amazon. It has since become one of my favorites:

Here are a couple of videos of the SF Bay Area that I found particularly enjoyable.

The first was taken with some sort of remote-controlled helicopter (I assume that the footage was stabilized in post-processing, because it’s amazingly smooth):

Aerial video – San Francisco from Jason Lam on Vimeo.

(via spots unknown)

This is time-lapse footage of notable scenes around the region:

Another Cloud Reel … from Delrious on Vimeo.

(via andrew sullivan)

If you’re looking for a challenging puzzle, try out the Maps Without Labels Quiz. They show you a color-coded map of the world (or other region) and you have to guess what the colors represent. I got a few of them, but some of them are really, really hard. I wish there were hints. #10 is driving me crazy.. don’t tell me the answer if you figure it out.

via kottke

from the LA Times:

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it would be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District of Columbia if the city refused to change a proposed same-sex marriage law.

The threat could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and healthcare.

Under the legislation, which the City Council is expected to pass next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey laws prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Even if you’re in favor of freedom to discriminate, how that could be more important than helping the less fortunate is beyond me.

At first I thought that this article was a joke, since it reminds me of The Onion’s video segment “Christian Charity Raising Money To Feed Non-Gay Famine Victims”, but it’s seemingly not.

The two recent This American Life episodes about the American healthcare system were both incredibly informative and really great radio. These segments fundamentally changes my thoughts about the nature of the healthcare problem. I learned a lot from them and I think it’s likely you would, too. Free downloads on these pages:
More is Less
Someone Else’s Money

I’ll comment on a few thoughts distilled from these episodes soon.

I’ve had serious writer’s block about this topic for a while, so I’m using the old “lower your writing standards and go for it” method that allows most of these posts to be written.

Why would society owe people health care? We don’t have mandates for a lot of other important things, and it seems that the default answer to this question should be ‘no’. People are not owed success, but they are owed an opportunity to succeed. The more I think about it, the more it seems like the health care system as it is robs many, many people of this opportunity.

According to NCHC:

A recent study found that 62 percent of all bankruptcies filed in 2007 were linked to medical expenses. Of those who filed for bankruptcy, nearly 80 percent had health insurance.

(and I’ve seen similar numbers elsewhere)

If a family member is uninsured and is suddenly stricken with a serious, expensive illness, that family loses a tremendous amount of financial freedom. Will they be able to send their kids to college? Will they be able to try a new work venture? Tied down by extraordinary expenditures, it seems to me like they’re not nearly getting a fair opportunity to succeed.

Malcolm Gladwell:

Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master’s in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that’s the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter.

I agree.

Actually, I think everyone should make a real effort to learn more about statistics. Prob/stat is the only field of math that is both difficult and extraordinarily useful in everyday life.

I meant to post this a while ago…

When I first started at Google, several friends told me things like “My street isn’t on Google Maps” to which I would reply “Move somewhere else!”, but now I can tell them to report the problem themselves.

I’ve reported two problems so far: the marker for my parents’ house was slightly off, so I moved it (and the change was live immediately) and I found one road with the street name misspelled (still waiting to hear back from them on that one).

Keep it in mind!

I really like this picture.