Daley Ponderings

Here are the last ones to share, I'll try to be more careful in the future to link to posts properly when I "share" things, so you can actually see the content regardless of whether facebook or google or the original poster make it difficult...

Statistics in science: I don't quite understand the difference between statistically significant and practical importance, or rather, how does one make a study that accounts for this problem.

Statistics was one of my two worst courses in college.  In both cases, I went to the professor during office hours when I didn't have a shot of completing the homework and said, "I'm really not getting it," and the professor, assuming I couldn't really mean that asked what parts I wasn't getting.  I pulled out lecture number 1 and said, let's start here...)  I did manage to pull off a B in both courses, which convinced me that grading on a curve is horrible, particularly when I could have pulled off an A in the statistics class had a worked a little harder on the final, but I hadn't realized how far the course was going to be curved, so didn't think it mattered, and I wouldn't have remembered anything after the final anyway, so I wasn't studying for learning, but just a grade.  If anyone got lower than a B in my statistics course, you must now know less about statistics than when you entered the course.

And lastly, an interesting disparity between what members of churches want (or at least say they want in a poll) and what pastors think is a good idea to preach about.

More than a month's worth of notes...

10/3 - Joy's diaper was dry all night long.  She went in the potty three or four times.  This was exciting to me and so the next night I prepared to be diaperless.  I spread a waterproof pad, with towels on top.  But she and I are so wiggly during the night, it was hard to keep the towels straight and then she was cold without anything on her lower half and when she did wet the towels, changing them was a pain.  So, we're not ready to go diaperless yet, but we do have success with pottying in the night.  However, recently (read: several weeks) Joy has been screaming in the night, whether it's changing her diaper or putting her on the potty.  I found that if I'm aware of more subtle movements I can nurse her before she screams (but that is her first vocalization) but I am at a loss for the hygiene part.  Do I just put her in a paper diaperand undo all the work and awareness of needing to go?  Or do I persist in hopes that she'll stop screaming before we both go insane with the sleep interruptions?  I need to go look at forums for suggestions.

10/5 - Joy got her uppder left lateral incisor.

10/5 - Jonathan, "I don't feel like Dad-o is a grandpa, 'cause he still goes up on roofs and stuff." (More)

I think Heather generally does a good job (though I think she might not be taking as many naps as she should be at the moment) of getting rest, and happy to have people come cook and clean for her, but it is always a good reminder to make sure we get enough rest.

I was going to have Jonathan read this article about the status and progression of fiction, as he sometimes questions why we don't let him read or watch certain things, but then I decided the article itself was more than he needs to know right now.

I came across yet another version of a distributed social network, this one with hardware.  FreedomBox Foundation is working on figuring out how to make tons of tiny little web servers that take out the centralized model.  The New York Times has a decent article on explaining why Mark Zuckerburg having all of your information is a bad thing.

The introduction video on FreedomBox's site was a good non-technical description, and with graphics, for all of you who don't like to read that much...  :)

It mentions diaspora, friendica and buddycloud.  I'd heard of diaspora, and I have an account, but it doesn't interact with me very well.  I glanced through buddycloud this morning, and didn't see anything particularly interesting.  friendica emphasizes being able to interact with other current social networks, which is a good thing, since it is a hard thing to get people to switch.

I guess I should spend some time in figuring out how to install one of them and see if it is worth using.  I've not been clear on how much you can customize the installations, and how hard it is to add features, etc.  And how open the development really is, in terms of them wanting features from outside people, etc.

Mostly, I think the problem is that I want it just to work, and so I don't want to spend lots of my own time developing a system.  Maybe I could work on figuring out if I could add plugins into LifeType to make it do some interesting things with the new social networks.  LifeType 2.0 (if it ever comes out) started a couple years ago adding some social networking features, and so it might fit in well; I don' t know.

But, as facebook and google are increasingly unfriendly (Facebook announced they would no longer import notes, such as this one, starting in a couple weeks)  I suppose their theory is that people will manually double post, or move to facebook only, or something like that.  But, that is a pain, so I'll probably just stop posting to facebook.

A good quote from Linux Journal:

There are 100000000000 stars in the galaxy.  That used to be a huge number  But it's only a hundred billion.  It's less than the national deficit!  We used to call them astronomical number,  Now we should call them economical numbers.  -- Richard Feynman

And in case you think I'm getting too serious with all my political posts, here's another one for Wall Street.

And be careful in apple orchards...

(thanks Dawn for keeping me up-to-date with the important news)

Pretty eerie, how similar these situations are.  I understand that being a police officer in a high stress situation is hard, and I am happy that there are people that are willing to step up to that job.  I also know that in some cases, the videos being played are designed to start right after a guy throws something at an officer, but if you look around on youtube, you will find plenty of videos that are showing the entire thing, and in many cases, the officers are overreacting, in my opinion.

This video is somewhat out of date by now, but the "conspiracy theory" that Ron Paul is being ignored doesn't seem like too much of a conspiracy when you see these videos.

<youtube account was deleted, so can't see the video any more>

I recently discovered that due to changes by Facebook and Google, quickly sharing items is harder than it used to be.  There are a couple things I shared recently that I thought good enough to actually type up a post here.  (you may agree or disagree about my choices of "good enough")

Here is a video of a candidate, Herman Cain, who's political and business history looks interesting (though his personal history doesn't look quite as good, assuming the various allegations are true).