The surname “Brown” is one of the most common in America. And “Michael” is one of the most common names for men. So it’s no surprise that there are a lot of “Michael Browns” out there.
Most of them live in somewhat obscurity. But simple statistics would indicate that a few of them would achieve fame. Wikipedia lists 25 different men named Michael Brown. The list includes politicians, athletes, musicians, and artists.
Two of them are scientists. And one is an astronomer. And Michael E. Brown the astronomer is the subject of today’s article.
Mike Brown discovered what may turn out to be our tenth planet. Or our twelfth, depending on how you count them. And perhaps many more.
Mr. Brown is a voracious planet hunter. He’s an associate professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology and he spends a lot of his time peering at the heavens through Caltech’s telescopes in search of planets. In the last five years, he and his associates have been responsible for discovering no fewer than 10 new bodies of rock and ice hurling around our sun and eligible to be considered planets.
Three years ago, he discovered Sedna. Careful measurements later determined that Sedna was almost as large as Pluto. That news set the astronomical world on its ear.
Once astronomers started looking in earnest for new planets, our time-honored definition of planets started crumbling. It fell completely apart last year with the announcement of the discovery (by Brown and his team) of a new heavenly body, tentatively named. Xena. When the orbit and size of Xena were carefully plotted, yep, Xena is actually larger than Pluto.
Brown’s wife proved that a prophet is without honor in his own city. When he called to tell her the news that Xena was larger than Pluto, she said, “That’s nice, dear. Can you stop by the store and pick up a loaf of bread on your way home tonight?”
Mr. Brown estimates that there could be as many as fifty bodies out there that are big enough and “round” enough to be considered a planet. (Potato-shaped rocks need not apply for planet status.) Science textbooks are soon to be re-written on a scale that hasn’t been seen in a generation.
Rather than a tightly defined list of exactly nine planets, it now seems that the rocks and balls of gas that orbit our sun exist in somewhat of a continuous spectrum of sizes, shapes, and characteristics. Perhaps there is no limit to the variety of stuff that is out there. Things seem to be a lot more complicated than we first suspected.
For his efforts, Michael Brown was honored by Time Magazine, having been included on its list of “100 Influential People of 2006”. Good for him. I’m not a big fan of the magazine, but if they would ever like to recognize my superior blogging skills by including me on a similar list, I wouldn’t turn them down.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Shoeboxes of Data
After my formal computer education, one of my very first real job interviews was with a company that produced computer output on microfiche.
For the uninitiated, microfiche is kinda like microfilm, except that the media is a 4x6 card instead of a roll of film. It’s a medium that has all but disappeared in common business practices today. It has been regulated primarily to government archives and libraries. But in the early 1980s, it was definitely bleeding-edge technology.
Until then, the process of creating microfiche was strictly photographic and analog. The document was printed on regular paper and then the pages were photographed one page at a time to create the fiche. It wasn’t much better than actually standing at a photocopier and recreating the entire report by hand.
But this company was using a new-fangled technology called com or “Computer Output Microfiche”. In this process, the fiche was created digitally, directly from the data source — usually a computer tape. It was much faster and cheaper than the analog process and it could create an unlimited number of perfect images.
In my job interview, I was indoctrinated by two guys who were the microfiche disciples of the company. They extolled the virtues of microfiche over conventional means of storage and lookup. They made a convincing argument that disk storage was particularly expensive and ineffective. After all, it required expensive online disk drives and indexes and the energy and upkeep to keep them running. And horror of horrors, online disk storage required that people have those expensive crts at their desk. We can’t have that, can we?
Ah, yes, crts. Cathode Ray Tubes. Dumb terminals. Essentially, a tv screen with an oversized typewriter keyboard attached. That’s what people had before there were pcs on every office desk in the universe.
The compelling argument in favor of microfiche was that you didn’t need a $7,000 television set on every desk when you could have one $500 microfiche reader that would serve the entire office. Need to look up a customer’s account? No problem. Just walk over to the microfiche cabinet, find the appropriate card, insert it into the reader, search for the customer’s page, copy the information to a notepad, and walk back to your desk with the customer still on hold.
That was 1980. It took about five microfiche cards to hold about a meg of data.
I have a memory card on my keychain that holds about a gig of data. That’s a thousand meg or 5,000 microfiche cards — enough to fill ten shoeboxes.
For less than a thousand bucks, I can walk to my office supply store and pick up a one-terabyte external hard drive that will plug into the usb port on my laptop. I can tuck the entire drive into a corner of my briefcase. A terabyte is a thousand gig. A thousand keychain memory cards would fill about ten shoeboxes.
Conventional wisdom used to say that bigger was better. All we needed was more shoe boxes. And bigger shoeboxes. In the ultimate irony of technology, we have come to realize that bigger is smaller. And instead of a shoebox, all your really need is a shirt pocket.
For the uninitiated, microfiche is kinda like microfilm, except that the media is a 4x6 card instead of a roll of film. It’s a medium that has all but disappeared in common business practices today. It has been regulated primarily to government archives and libraries. But in the early 1980s, it was definitely bleeding-edge technology.
Until then, the process of creating microfiche was strictly photographic and analog. The document was printed on regular paper and then the pages were photographed one page at a time to create the fiche. It wasn’t much better than actually standing at a photocopier and recreating the entire report by hand.
But this company was using a new-fangled technology called com or “Computer Output Microfiche”. In this process, the fiche was created digitally, directly from the data source — usually a computer tape. It was much faster and cheaper than the analog process and it could create an unlimited number of perfect images.
In my job interview, I was indoctrinated by two guys who were the microfiche disciples of the company. They extolled the virtues of microfiche over conventional means of storage and lookup. They made a convincing argument that disk storage was particularly expensive and ineffective. After all, it required expensive online disk drives and indexes and the energy and upkeep to keep them running. And horror of horrors, online disk storage required that people have those expensive crts at their desk. We can’t have that, can we?
Ah, yes, crts. Cathode Ray Tubes. Dumb terminals. Essentially, a tv screen with an oversized typewriter keyboard attached. That’s what people had before there were pcs on every office desk in the universe.
The compelling argument in favor of microfiche was that you didn’t need a $7,000 television set on every desk when you could have one $500 microfiche reader that would serve the entire office. Need to look up a customer’s account? No problem. Just walk over to the microfiche cabinet, find the appropriate card, insert it into the reader, search for the customer’s page, copy the information to a notepad, and walk back to your desk with the customer still on hold.
That was 1980. It took about five microfiche cards to hold about a meg of data.
I have a memory card on my keychain that holds about a gig of data. That’s a thousand meg or 5,000 microfiche cards — enough to fill ten shoeboxes.
For less than a thousand bucks, I can walk to my office supply store and pick up a one-terabyte external hard drive that will plug into the usb port on my laptop. I can tuck the entire drive into a corner of my briefcase. A terabyte is a thousand gig. A thousand keychain memory cards would fill about ten shoeboxes.
Conventional wisdom used to say that bigger was better. All we needed was more shoe boxes. And bigger shoeboxes. In the ultimate irony of technology, we have come to realize that bigger is smaller. And instead of a shoebox, all your really need is a shirt pocket.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
A Particularly Perplexing Pill
A few years ago, a friend of mine in the health care industry told me that a man my age needed to take an aspirin every day. Something about thinning blood and preventing heart attacks or something like that.
I have to say that it was a friend of mine that told me to take the aspirin because I never go to a doctor. Never. I can’t remember the last time I was at a doctor. I went to a Marcus Welby-type for a few years. Then he retired, as all good Marcus Welby-types do. I haven’t had a decent reason to visit a doctor since then.
You know all those commercials where they say things like “be sure to consult your doctor” for whatever? Well, I don’t have anybody to talk to.
Back to my story. So I was told by a friend to take an aspirin each day. So I did. No big deal. Later, I found out, oops, not just any aspirin. Think of your sensitive stomach! You want ulcers? It has to be children’s aspirin.
Really? I had been taking regular aspirin for several months and I didn’t notice any difference. No heart attack. No stroke. No ulcers. Just a half-empty aspirin bottle to show for my efforts. (That’s why I don’t like preventative medicine. How do you know when it works?)
Nope, that’s not good enough, said my friend-the-surrogate-doctor. It had to be a children’s aspirin. Or at least, it had to be one of those new mini-dose aspirins.
Mini-dose aspirins? Yeah, it seems that so many middle-aged men were being advised by their doctors (I guess they actually had doctors) to take children’s aspirin that there was a rush on the stuff. But a lot of guys didn’t like the idea of taking “children’s” aspirin.
So the marketing suits at the drug companies came up with a brilliant idea. Let’s make children’s aspirin but put it in a bottle that says “Mini Dose”. Same drug. Different label.
It was a hit. Soon millions of men in America were relieved of the embarrassment of buying the kid stuff. Now they could get real he-man drugs. Little bitty, tiny pills.
Okay, so I went to the store in search of the new drug. Hmmm... I guess this is it. But look at the size of the dose. 81 milligrams. Eighty-one? What’s the deal with that? Why not an even 80? Or 100? What’s the business about a silly milligram more?
Back to my friend with the question du jour. That’s just the way it is, I was told. A mini dose is 81 milligrams. Get used to it.
Never one to be satisfied with an answer like that, I had to do some digging. This is what I found out.
A standard aspirin is 325 milligrams. Back in the days before children’s aspirin, parents were instructed to split an adult aspirin. And then split it again. The kid was to receive one-fourth of the original pill.
When children’s aspirins came around, it seemed logical to introduce a pill that was exactly one-fourth the size of the adult aspirin. Well, technically, 325 divided by 4 is 81.25. I guess they figured the extra quarter milligram was taken up in the dust left behind on the kitchen cabinet when the pill was split. Whatever. The drug companies weren’t going to quibble a quarter milligram, but by golly, they were going to get that extra milligram in there.
So a children’s aspirin is 81 milligrams only because the drug companies are good at math and they like rounding.
When the adult mini doses appeared, it made sense to manufacture them in the same molds that were used for the children’s aspirins. So the 81 milligram adult mini aspirin was born.
Doesn’t matter. I take them every day. I still haven’t had a stroke or a heart attack. Or an ulcer. Or an upset stomach, headache, diarrhea, night sweats, fainting spells, or anything else. I still operate heavy machinery any time I feel like it.
And I still don’t have a doctor to call my own.
I have to say that it was a friend of mine that told me to take the aspirin because I never go to a doctor. Never. I can’t remember the last time I was at a doctor. I went to a Marcus Welby-type for a few years. Then he retired, as all good Marcus Welby-types do. I haven’t had a decent reason to visit a doctor since then.
You know all those commercials where they say things like “be sure to consult your doctor” for whatever? Well, I don’t have anybody to talk to.
Back to my story. So I was told by a friend to take an aspirin each day. So I did. No big deal. Later, I found out, oops, not just any aspirin. Think of your sensitive stomach! You want ulcers? It has to be children’s aspirin.
Really? I had been taking regular aspirin for several months and I didn’t notice any difference. No heart attack. No stroke. No ulcers. Just a half-empty aspirin bottle to show for my efforts. (That’s why I don’t like preventative medicine. How do you know when it works?)
Nope, that’s not good enough, said my friend-the-surrogate-doctor. It had to be a children’s aspirin. Or at least, it had to be one of those new mini-dose aspirins.
Mini-dose aspirins? Yeah, it seems that so many middle-aged men were being advised by their doctors (I guess they actually had doctors) to take children’s aspirin that there was a rush on the stuff. But a lot of guys didn’t like the idea of taking “children’s” aspirin.
So the marketing suits at the drug companies came up with a brilliant idea. Let’s make children’s aspirin but put it in a bottle that says “Mini Dose”. Same drug. Different label.
It was a hit. Soon millions of men in America were relieved of the embarrassment of buying the kid stuff. Now they could get real he-man drugs. Little bitty, tiny pills.
Okay, so I went to the store in search of the new drug. Hmmm... I guess this is it. But look at the size of the dose. 81 milligrams. Eighty-one? What’s the deal with that? Why not an even 80? Or 100? What’s the business about a silly milligram more?
Back to my friend with the question du jour. That’s just the way it is, I was told. A mini dose is 81 milligrams. Get used to it.
Never one to be satisfied with an answer like that, I had to do some digging. This is what I found out.
A standard aspirin is 325 milligrams. Back in the days before children’s aspirin, parents were instructed to split an adult aspirin. And then split it again. The kid was to receive one-fourth of the original pill.
When children’s aspirins came around, it seemed logical to introduce a pill that was exactly one-fourth the size of the adult aspirin. Well, technically, 325 divided by 4 is 81.25. I guess they figured the extra quarter milligram was taken up in the dust left behind on the kitchen cabinet when the pill was split. Whatever. The drug companies weren’t going to quibble a quarter milligram, but by golly, they were going to get that extra milligram in there.
So a children’s aspirin is 81 milligrams only because the drug companies are good at math and they like rounding.
When the adult mini doses appeared, it made sense to manufacture them in the same molds that were used for the children’s aspirins. So the 81 milligram adult mini aspirin was born.
Doesn’t matter. I take them every day. I still haven’t had a stroke or a heart attack. Or an ulcer. Or an upset stomach, headache, diarrhea, night sweats, fainting spells, or anything else. I still operate heavy machinery any time I feel like it.
And I still don’t have a doctor to call my own.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Vote to Win: A Bad Idea
The state of Arizona will consider on its November 7 ballot an idea which should be soundly defeated. It’s an idea that is so patently absurd that I’m surprised that I even have to write an article condemning it. But registered voters signed referendum petitions in sufficient numbers over the summer to get this stupid idea on the ballot. So the whole state is going to vote on it in the next general election.
The idea: Pay people to vote.
Actually, the plan is that each person who votes in either the state primary or general election will be given a chance to win a state-run lottery. The grand prize of the lottery (actually, the only prize) will be a cool one million dollars.
Proponents of the plan claim that their goal is to increase voter turnout by giving people something tangible as a reward for their vote. Apparently, these people don’t realize that participation in the democratic process is supposed to be a reward in itself.
Neither side of the debate has forgotten that federal law prohibits making or offering of any “expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote.” Fans of the law claim that the chance to win a million dollars has no value because it is just that — a “chance”, not actually any compensation.
Well, they’re wrong.
Any statistician, economist, accountant, or casino operator will tell you that the probability that an event will occur contains an inherent value. It is the value of the event multiplied by the likelihood that the event will occur.
I’ll use very round numbers for demonstrative purposes; the concept is the same. If four million people vote and receive a chance to win a million dollars, each chance is worth exactly twenty-five cents. To say that it doesn’t have a value mocks the intelligence of the voting public and denies basic fundamentals of mathematics.
That’s right, they would serve the same purpose if they just handed everybody a brand new Arizona-commemorative quarter at the polling place. And they’d probably make more people happy at the same time.
Even if this hare-brained idea could pass legal muster — which it can’t — I would still question the wisdom of attempting to use such methods to increase voter participation. That makes the assumption that increased voter participation is always a good idea.
In fact, if incentives such as this are enacted, all it will guarantee is that more people will vote that wouldn’t have voted otherwise. People will vote who haven’t studied the issues. They will vote without any idea of who the candidates are. Many will vote without even being able to read English. Many will turn in blank ballots or ballots that will have to be invalidated because they voted for more than one candidate for the same office. Some people will just make random marks on squares on the ballot. They'll do it because they have no interest in exercising their right to vote; they just want that million dollars.
In fact, I can envision the worst possible scenario. A couple of days before the election, the Democratic Party will release advertising with the following message. “Confused about who to vote for, but still want to be entered in the lottery? No problem. Just vote a straight Democratic ticket! That lets you vote for all the best candidates with only one stoke of the pen.”
The biggest problem is that the proposal incites the very people to vote who actually have the least valid reason for voting. The least educated, the least informed, and the those least interested in the democratic process are the ones that would be most drawn to this type of incentive. I don’t want to deny them of their right to vote; but I see no reason to offer them special incentives to do so.
Let’s hope that wisdom prevails among the voters of Arizona and this measure is defeated. It’s a bad idea.
The idea: Pay people to vote.
Actually, the plan is that each person who votes in either the state primary or general election will be given a chance to win a state-run lottery. The grand prize of the lottery (actually, the only prize) will be a cool one million dollars.
Proponents of the plan claim that their goal is to increase voter turnout by giving people something tangible as a reward for their vote. Apparently, these people don’t realize that participation in the democratic process is supposed to be a reward in itself.
Neither side of the debate has forgotten that federal law prohibits making or offering of any “expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote.” Fans of the law claim that the chance to win a million dollars has no value because it is just that — a “chance”, not actually any compensation.
Well, they’re wrong.
Any statistician, economist, accountant, or casino operator will tell you that the probability that an event will occur contains an inherent value. It is the value of the event multiplied by the likelihood that the event will occur.
I’ll use very round numbers for demonstrative purposes; the concept is the same. If four million people vote and receive a chance to win a million dollars, each chance is worth exactly twenty-five cents. To say that it doesn’t have a value mocks the intelligence of the voting public and denies basic fundamentals of mathematics.
That’s right, they would serve the same purpose if they just handed everybody a brand new Arizona-commemorative quarter at the polling place. And they’d probably make more people happy at the same time.
Even if this hare-brained idea could pass legal muster — which it can’t — I would still question the wisdom of attempting to use such methods to increase voter participation. That makes the assumption that increased voter participation is always a good idea.
In fact, if incentives such as this are enacted, all it will guarantee is that more people will vote that wouldn’t have voted otherwise. People will vote who haven’t studied the issues. They will vote without any idea of who the candidates are. Many will vote without even being able to read English. Many will turn in blank ballots or ballots that will have to be invalidated because they voted for more than one candidate for the same office. Some people will just make random marks on squares on the ballot. They'll do it because they have no interest in exercising their right to vote; they just want that million dollars.
In fact, I can envision the worst possible scenario. A couple of days before the election, the Democratic Party will release advertising with the following message. “Confused about who to vote for, but still want to be entered in the lottery? No problem. Just vote a straight Democratic ticket! That lets you vote for all the best candidates with only one stoke of the pen.”
The biggest problem is that the proposal incites the very people to vote who actually have the least valid reason for voting. The least educated, the least informed, and the those least interested in the democratic process are the ones that would be most drawn to this type of incentive. I don’t want to deny them of their right to vote; but I see no reason to offer them special incentives to do so.
Let’s hope that wisdom prevails among the voters of Arizona and this measure is defeated. It’s a bad idea.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Related to the Pope
A recent Associated Press article illustrated the intertwining of the generations, using actress Brooke Shields as an example. It seems that the lovely Ms. Shields is related to Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Niccolo Machiavelli, Hernando Cortes and at least five popes.
The point of the article is not that she is distinguished by her pedigree, rather that such a pedigree is completely normal. Anybody that lived more than a few hundred years ago probably had a half dozen or more children. As such, they undoubtedly have millions of ancestors today.
It is estimated that at least 80% of the population of England is directly descended from King Edward III, who reigned 700 years ago. Even six U.S. presidents can be counted among his descendants.
The Mongolian conqueror Genghis Khan spread his influence — as well as his seed — almost as far as the Holy Roman Empire. Traces of his dna have shown up literally on all corners of the world.
So we don’t have to go all the way back to Adam and Eve to prove that we’re all “cousins”. But that’s not what struck me about the Brooke Shields article. I got hung up on the fact that she was descended from five popes.
When I first read that, my feeble Protestant mind started protesting. Waitaminnit. Aren’t popes actually people that received the ultimate promotion from priesthood? And isn’t a fundamental tenant of priesthood one of celibacy? And if one is celibate doesn’t that make it kinda hard for him to have, uhm, descendants? This certainly required further investigation.
I discovered that the Catholic Church considers celibacy to be a discipline, not a doctrine. It wasn’t until around the year 800 that they decided that a celibate lifestyle was the only acceptable one for a priest. Prior to that, several popes had been family men in quite the literal sense. Even after that, there were a few popes that married and fathered children before they entered the priesthood. In those cases, they can rightfully claim descendents.
And there were a few popes that were just scoundrels. Popes that had illegitimate children (or at least illicit affairs) during their papacy include Pius II, Innocent VIII, Alexander VI, Julius II, Clement VII, Benedict IX, and Pius IV.
It has been claimed that Clement II died while being treated for a venereal disease. And Paul III was said to have postponed his own ordination so he could continue his promiscuous lifestyle, spawning the Protestant Reformation in the process.
In fact, nepotism was so rampant with the pre-reformation popes that several of them were father-son combinations, handing down Peter’s keys to Heaven much like a father might hand down a dry-cleaning business to his son. Maybe it’s not ironic that the word “pope” is taken from the Latin “papa”, which means “father”.
So, Brooke, rejoice in your heritage. There’s a good chance that your family tree — as well as mine — includes a cacophonic mixture of royalty, papacy, mass murderers, world explorers, and shepherd boys. Mixing all that dna over the course of a few generations contributes to the fact that we are all unique in our own little way.
The point of the article is not that she is distinguished by her pedigree, rather that such a pedigree is completely normal. Anybody that lived more than a few hundred years ago probably had a half dozen or more children. As such, they undoubtedly have millions of ancestors today.
It is estimated that at least 80% of the population of England is directly descended from King Edward III, who reigned 700 years ago. Even six U.S. presidents can be counted among his descendants.
The Mongolian conqueror Genghis Khan spread his influence — as well as his seed — almost as far as the Holy Roman Empire. Traces of his dna have shown up literally on all corners of the world.
So we don’t have to go all the way back to Adam and Eve to prove that we’re all “cousins”. But that’s not what struck me about the Brooke Shields article. I got hung up on the fact that she was descended from five popes.
When I first read that, my feeble Protestant mind started protesting. Waitaminnit. Aren’t popes actually people that received the ultimate promotion from priesthood? And isn’t a fundamental tenant of priesthood one of celibacy? And if one is celibate doesn’t that make it kinda hard for him to have, uhm, descendants? This certainly required further investigation.
I discovered that the Catholic Church considers celibacy to be a discipline, not a doctrine. It wasn’t until around the year 800 that they decided that a celibate lifestyle was the only acceptable one for a priest. Prior to that, several popes had been family men in quite the literal sense. Even after that, there were a few popes that married and fathered children before they entered the priesthood. In those cases, they can rightfully claim descendents.
And there were a few popes that were just scoundrels. Popes that had illegitimate children (or at least illicit affairs) during their papacy include Pius II, Innocent VIII, Alexander VI, Julius II, Clement VII, Benedict IX, and Pius IV.
It has been claimed that Clement II died while being treated for a venereal disease. And Paul III was said to have postponed his own ordination so he could continue his promiscuous lifestyle, spawning the Protestant Reformation in the process.
In fact, nepotism was so rampant with the pre-reformation popes that several of them were father-son combinations, handing down Peter’s keys to Heaven much like a father might hand down a dry-cleaning business to his son. Maybe it’s not ironic that the word “pope” is taken from the Latin “papa”, which means “father”.
So, Brooke, rejoice in your heritage. There’s a good chance that your family tree — as well as mine — includes a cacophonic mixture of royalty, papacy, mass murderers, world explorers, and shepherd boys. Mixing all that dna over the course of a few generations contributes to the fact that we are all unique in our own little way.
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