Dean Foster's Rants

Rants:

• A cute dot counting test . It is supposed correlate with your math ability. But no one knows why this should be.
• A great rant from Bjorn Lomborg: "If you reduce your child's intake of fruits and vegetables by just 0.03 grams a day (that's the equivalent of half a grain of rice) when you opt for more expensive organic produce, the total risk of cancer goes up, not down. Omit buying just one apple every 20 years because you have gone organic, and your child is worse off."

  Now I just need a place to put it on our mortality page.

• Bad power point presentations much too common. Tufte recommends just using a handout. (Watch it--its funny!)
• The picture at right will probably get my entire cite banned by some automatic software. By copying this picture all over the net--the goal is to embarass people into not using such software. The random quote at the bottom of this page is a second attempt at getting my site banned.
• Science presented a silly graphic in a recent issue that Robert Stine made dynamic. So we (Robert Stine Kate Propert and I) wrote a comment on it, which Science was unwilling to publish. Thank got for vanity publishing on the web!
• I actual believe that cryptograph can solve some things. Bruce Schneier used to believe, but his current book he loses the faith. Here is my review of his book.
• Let me weigh in on the teaching of evolution in our schools. I actually believe evolution is the most beautiful and accurate theory ever created. But what is taught in schools is more often the religion of evolution.
• Dawkin's wrote this rant for the Guardian that I really wish I had written. He points out that religion dehumanizes life in ways that can't be matched by science. (I've mirrored this rant here.) (see also Salman Rushdie.)
• Deirdre McCloskey wrote a nice rant against the usual accedemic policy of getting letters for P & T.
• Emails sent to me (foster@wharton.upenn.edu) become the property of the University of Pennsylvania unless they are encrypted.¹ Consider this policy a first step towards Stallman's nightmare.

Raves:

• Gopen and Swan's wrote a nice piece writing: "The Science of Scientific Writing."
• Lyrics for some Hebrew songs that I'm using to learn how to read Hebrew.
• I love high dimensional spaces.
• My favorite wine glasses are now available on line.
• Bean Free Library has some good SF titles for download for free. Kinda cool! They admit that these are teaser--since they are frequently the first few books in long series that you might buy.
• A cute cartoon which often has piece on linux.
• Philosophers have written many papers about what is called the "surprise quiz." I've only written one and its in the form of a story.
• I was very lucky to be born under ophiuchus, the 13th sign of the zodiac.
• The American Scientist has an article on spiders that yeild to intruders. Very nice evolutionary game theory.
• A nice discussion of risk and the preception of risk. I'm not sure I believe all his numbers.
• I like red wines. They are pretty good on a alcohol/calorie basis. They are even better for overall health.
• I recently started programming with Ruby. Its been a joy. In my first day, I wrote 1000 lines of code that actually made sense. Unfortuantely, the poplularity of ruby is only slightly ahead of fortran! But it is up and coming.
• My friend and colleague Mike Steele has an interesting twist on the impending bird flu epedemic. Namely, what about the economy?
• Ok, let me put in a rave just for balance. Tom Weller wrote a cool book called science made stupid. If you find an actual copy, please buy it. If you find two, buy them both and send me one. Sceptic.net also thinks he's cool.
• I own all the books written by Terry Pratchet. You should start too!
• A nice deflator which computes the value of US dollars over time. Useful when reading about history.
• Here is a lovely article on procrastination. The author would encorage you to put of reading it to work on better things. But your sufing the web now aren't you? So give it a read!
• I've been using really bad maps on the web for years. But finally there is a really good one. Give it a try!
• For a nice discussion of the similarity between power laws and log normals see this paper.
• Lyle Ungar wrote up a way of saving wine that I find very useful.
• This cite has you listen to various accents and see how they are recorded in a standard notation. To get a handle on the IPA listen here.
• A cool science site is based on the idea of a the 3rd culture.
• cut-the-knot is a wonderful web site for expository mathematics. Now I just have to get him to add statistics and I won't have to teach any more!
• There is a wonderful biking map of the Philly area. (The map in the center is the one I like.) You can get hard copy from local bike store.
• Ever wonder how many people play on a team? We put this list together.