Solving Conference Realignment Mathematically

When I read this article at fivethirtyeight.com, I immediately thought of this site.

So, how y’all been?

When Zombies Attack!

Mathematicians at Carlton University (which a Canadian friend of mine has described as the country’s “last chance” school) have studied the way a zombie outbreak would occur, and what human strategies would work in stemming the tide. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look good for us. The entire paper is amusing, but I especially enjoy the introduction that establishes the difference between zombie folklore and “Hollywood” zombies.

Is grad school a cult?

I recently stumbled across an interesting article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, in which “Thomas Benton” (a pen name) makes the case that graduate school is something like a cult. He’s driven to this conclusion largely by his sense that most graduate students, especially in the humanities, would be better served outside academia. He quotes the following rules of thumb for identifying a cult, taken from the anti-cult Freedom of Mind Center webpage:

• Behavior control: “major time commitment required for indoctrination sessions and group rituals”; “need to ask permission for major decisions”; “need to report thoughts, feelings, and activities to superiors.”
• Information control: “access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged (keep members so busy they don’t have time to think)” and “extensive use of cult-generated information (newsletters, magazines, journals, audio tapes, videotapes, etc.).”
• Thought control: “need to internalize the group’s doctrine as ‘Truth’ (black and white thinking; good vs. evil; us vs. them, inside vs. outside)” and “no critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen as legitimate.”
• Emotional control: “excessive use of guilt (identity guilt: not living up to your potential; social guilt; historical guilt)”; “phobia indoctrination (irrational fears of ever leaving the group or even questioning the leader’s authority; cannot visualize a positive, fulfilled future without being in the group; shunning of leave takers; never a legitimate reason to leave”; and “from the group’s perspective, people who leave are ‘weak,’ ‘undisciplined.'”

Of course, there are plenty of points to pick at — it may speak more to the “definition” given above than it does to grad school — but I think it’s an interesting observation.

Right Red Said What?

My well-known hatred of the modern implementation of traffic lights (for which I am sure future generations will mock us) notwithstanding, a recurrent question at lunches past involved the meaning of the red right turn arrow in North Carolina, especially the one located at the I-40 exit to RDU Airport (#295b).

The basic question is this: If a red right-turn arrow means the same thing as a typical, circular red light — for which you are allowed to make a turn after coming to a stop — then why would they have the red arrow?  Certainly most drivers treat it as typical stop sign, but sometimes someone will, in my opinion quite reasonably refuse to turn despite blaring horns from the ever-growing queue behind them of drivers trying to get the airport.

As with many things in this great nation, this law varies randomly depending upon state:

Fortunately for RDU drivers, North Carolina is one of the states that allows right turns on red arrows. Unfortunately for anal-retentive physicists, this means that red right turn arrows are nearly degenerate with the only possible additional information being that they indicate that a lane is turn only when red.  At least we’re not the only ones who get confused, the News and Observer blog post I linked to above follows a history of similar posts.

Unlike the behavior of the typical, dangerously unaware, vigilante drivers you sometimes find in Durham (thanks in part to the idiotic “Pace Car” program whose Google Page Rank I will now tag with the word “douchey“) confusion in this case would seem rest at the feet of the NC DOT who feels the need for redundant signage.  So I won’t honk at someone as they make me late for a flight, but I certainly wish they’d phase out the red right turn arrow.

The Annual Thrill-Ride

The end of the college football regular season means one thing: time to sell bowl tickets. This year is special, since we have four tickets to the BCS National Championship game. For the past couple of years, we’ve taken huge losses on Orange Bowl tickets due to surprisingly successful teams. But I’ve been insisted that we’d make it back and more with the sale of the NC tickets. In any case, you can follow the action here.

Grand Unified Weekly

Hit-n-run: The brand new Grand Unified Weekly site/blog/podcast. (Is there a difference anymore?) Blogroll’d.

Two is a trend

Congrats to John for ending the drought!

I thought I’d share a link that touches on a number of Lunchtime! themes, however inspiring or sad that might be. Namely: sports, lists, Duke, spelling/grammar mistakes, and poor judgment.

On an unrelated note, I recently saw Mulholland Drive for the first time. Let me toss out this conversation starter: WTF?!?

Finally, as one of the few Americans at the institute, I’ve been congratulated on our recent elections more times than I can count. Since I’m sure this is disproportionate to whatever amount of credit I actually deserve (first time voting in a swing state!), let me at least pass along the sentiment.

Being Trendy

So my sinus headaches have progressed into an eye infection requiring that I now get antibiotic eye-drops just like Emil (Ann’s cat).  I guess he made it look cool and I sub-consciously wanted in on the trend.

Apparently epidemiologists work may be similarly replaced by simply monitoring the frequency of search terms using Google Trends (awesomeness previously discussed). Lunchtime’s unwilling blogger Ann reports (by forwarding a New York times article) that Google Flu Trends is having remarkable success at correlating the flu incidence reported by CDC and the prevalence of flu-related search terms:

Correlation between trends in flu-related searches and incidence

I know it’s been a long time since I last posted, but I have become a massive Digg addict and if you care what random web-pages I’m looking at you can follow me there.  Last week I finally replaced my computer (purchased in 2001) that died this summer.  It has a mere four cores, so Brian’s cyber-manhood is safe for now).  The upshot is that in a few weeks I will be blogging more regularly.  In the mean time I am playing some games I have been waiting on for, oh, four or five years.  I started with Gears of War, which is a lot of fun but not as awesome as Gary Jules’ cover of Mad World for Donnie Darko.

Suspicious Activity in Political Futures Market

As those of us who play with the Hollywood Stock Exchange know, futures markets can be a great way of aggregating information.  Nate Silver over at the awesome blog FiveThirtyEight has reported on an interesting pattern in the value of Barack Obama’s presidency win bond.  Someone is periodically shorting massive quantities of that stock while, at the same time, buying massive quantities of Hillary Clinton’s.  The only way that could pay off is if something eliminated Obama from the race…

How much fossil fuel does it take to make gas?

Before I changed it, Wikipedia’s entry on Cellulosic ethanol (which is as likely a technology to save the world as there is) claimed that:

It takes 1.2 gallons of fossil fuel to produce 1 gallon of ethanol from corn. This total includes the use of fossil fuels used for fertilizer, tractor fuel, ethanol plant operation, etc.

This turns out to be incorrect (see below) and I have heard variations on the argument that “more than a gallon of fossil fuels are used to make the equivalent to a gallon of gasoline out of ethanol” in conversation and on television. It seems like they appear all over the web. While I find it to be a little surprising, at first glance it at least seems plausible. However, it begs the question — how much fossil fuel does it take to make a gallon of gasoline? That turns out to be an extremely tough question to answer. (Don’t get me started on how hard it is to try to figure out how much it costs to make gasoline — although this info from the DOE helps a little.)

If we are going to consider how much petroleum is used to make chemical fertilizer, transport the corn and ethanol, and even feed the workers involved shouldn’t we do the same for gasoline? After all, we have to dredge the oil up from the ground, often ship it halfway around the world in supertankers (anyone know know the fuel economy for a Suezmax tanker?), before refining it into gasoline.