Young Mountains

Trip Report: Mount Washington

2009-12-23T14:45:00.026-05:00

Mount Washington. Trip report with pictures after the cut.

Nick, Kate, and i took a few days off and drove to New Hampshire for a winter ascent of Mount Washington, the third-highest point in the US east of the Mississippi. Mount Mitchell in North Carolina and Clingman's Dome in Tennessee mark the two highest points. The mountain is well-known for it's commendably awful weather. In the summer you can take a memorable road to the summit, but in the winter things close down and the only access is by snowcat or on foot.

We elected to take the Boott Spur trail to the summit (map; it's the southernmost trail), starting at 5AM. The total elevation gain is approximately 4,300 feet from the trailhead at Pinkham Notch. While longer, the trail is also appreciably shallower than the more popular Lion's Head route. This still meant we had some memorable 45° snow slopes, but on the whole the trail offered nothing especially scary.

From NH-16, Mount Washington is on the right and Boott Spur is the prominence on the left. The trail winds up the ridge to the left to Boott Spur. A flat trail across the col bridges the Spur and Washington's summit cone. The final push is an easy 750 feet to the top.

We left early (5AM) on the 14th, a Monday. Unfortunately for us it snowed all weekend, so while we had excellent weather for most of the ascent we were forced to break trail through 3-7 feet of snow the entire way. This meant extremely slow going through the subalpine zone, where accumulations of drift were the thickest. By the time we hit treeline it was around 11 AM, meaning we were averaging a dismal 400 feet vertical per hour.

The AMC folks have a set of bizarre jargon apparently borrowed from tire literature, wherein "traction" refers to crampons and "flotation" refers to snowshoes. We brought both traction and flotation, and without them travel would have been much more difficult. Nothing like breaking trail through waist-deep snow without, uh, flotation.

If someone doesn't already make snow baskets for ice axes, they should.

Mount Washington from a small clearing. The time here is about 6-6:30 AM.

At treeline we were mercifully out of the wind, which was amazingly calm at this point. Although we could see drift spinning off the summit the weather that day was southwesterly, so we were well-sheltered all the way up Boott Spur. Which was good, because that was still four hours off.

We were still making very poor time, primarily because we hit a snow slope that required step chopping. Once we hit rock we switched to crampons, but were sufficiently fatigued that progress was still slow.

Kate and Nick are one of those couples who match equipment. Not really, but they are a couple that happens to have the same jacket, gaiters, pack, and snowshoes.

Made the top of Boott Spur at around 3:00 PM, for an even slower rate of 300 vertical feet per hour.

Nick and Kate had been up Boott Spur last January, minus flotation, and turned back due to exhaustion. None of us were in a mood to turn around a second time, so although darkness was 2 hours off we decided to have a go at the summit and descend in the dark.

This signpost on the col might give you an idea of the type of weather experienced up there. At the time, however, the weather was still pretty decent--overcast, maybe 15°F, 20 mph winds. In the background are regularly spaced cairns (rock piles), which serve as trail markers in the winter.

Here's Tuckerman Ravine (left) and the col from halfway up the summit cone. As you can see it's getting pretty dark; we didn't make the summit until 5PM, at which time it was completely dark. We took the obligatory victory shot and began the descent. From a technical standpoint descending in darkness was not an issue. However, the trail to Lion's Head passes through a deep drift of snow, at which point there are no cairns. In addition, the wind had picked up (gusting at 60 mph) and it had begun to snow. So, we lost the trail.

At this point we were all exhausted, and Nick had brought his camping equipment as training for the Gannett Peak approach. Kate and Nick were thus vigorously in favor of camping on the mountain, which in December would have made for a memorable evening, to say the least. I was vigorously opposed, but we all agreed to hike in the direction of the Lion's Head proper to hopefully find a spot sheltered from the wind. Halfway through the Alpine Garden we ran into a trail that led straight to the Lion's Head. We changed into crampons and made the descent without further incident.

We were on the summit at 5PM and reached the Lion's Head trail at 6. We spent roughly 2 hours wandering around the Alpine Garden, and made it back to the car at 10:47 PM, for a total of about 18 hours on the mountain.

Due to the late hour of our arrival we had to settle for a victory dinner of Burger King. This did not cut it, so for a victory lunch the next day we dined at the Thai Nakonping Restaurant in North Conway, which is highly, highly recommended.

Thanks to Jen for letting me borrow her camera for the mountain. Whoever gave her the camera must be a pretty awesome guy.

Hear me talk about science on a highway in central Oregon

2009-12-18T09:51:00.002-05:00

From UC: Geology's been in the spotlight as of late.

Heading up to Rockland, Maine, to see the Ultimate Emily and drink eggnog with Lindsey Green's extended family. Or something.

Success!

2009-12-16T10:02:00.003-05:00

Summited! We took the Boott Spur trail up and made it to the top at about 5 PM. It was completely dark at the time--fun stuff, and at one point we lost the trail in a bit of a blizzard and spent two hours wandering around the east side of the mountain. We descended via the Lion's Head and made it back to the lot very late at night, for a total of 17 hours on the mountain.

I'm presently on Cape with Eamonn & Molly. When i have some free time i'll put together a more detailed trip log for a pretty memorable mountain.

Going to Mt. Washington

2009-12-11T16:34:00.007-05:00

Leaving tomorrow for the home of the world's worst weather. Both the New York Times and National Geographic have featured articles about it within the year.

At the time of writing, the weather on the summit is -6° F, with 70 mph winds. The wind chill is -44° F. The forecast for Monday, hopefully summit day, looks much better. Relatively speaking.

After Washington (or not) i'll be traveling a bit around New England to see some friends. Hopefully i'll be able to put up some pictures while i'm out and about.

Great.

2009-12-11T08:43:00.005-05:00

"... you can’t blame him. It’s a great program with a lot of prestige. And they’re going to pay him a substantial amount of money.”

-Brad Jones, UC defensive back

Yeah, i know. Kelly leaving Cincinnati was inevitable in today's mercenary society (but it doesn't really merit an Obama analogy). From a position of job security it makes perfect sense--all you have to do is be better than Charlie Weis and ND will give you all their moneys and reputable facilities. Speaking of lower standards, Notre Dame and the BCS. Yeah.

At Cincy, now we'll have a big shiny training center--that we built for Kelly. And he's bailing before the Sugar Bowl--that's low, and the players feel it. On a positive note, we're reportedly looking into Butch Jones at CMU and now i hear we're considering Houston's coach, Kevin Sumlin, whom i've heard pretty good things about.

Few more plants

2009-12-10T14:05:00.003-05:00

Some plant, Hoover Wilderness.

Some other plant (a lupine?), Hoover Wilderness

"Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve." -G.B. Shaw

2009-12-10T09:16:00.004-05:00

But i think we got much more than that in 2008. The text of Obama's Nobel acceptance speech:

...We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations - acting individually or in concert - will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.

I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago - "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life's work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak - nothing passive - nothing naïve - in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism - it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

Climategate 4: Fudge factors

2009-12-09T15:20:00.006-05:00

Man, the University picked one hell of a time to have me TA Environmental Geology.

RedState's been circulating a piece of IDL code that was purloined from the CRU (reposted below)

;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,’Oooops!’
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)

Emphasis added by RedState. This was further analyzed here:

These two lines of code establish a twenty-element array (yrloc) comprising the year 1400 (base year, but not sure why needed here) and nineteen years between 1904 and 1994 in half-decade increments. Then the corresponding "fudge factor" (from the valadj matrix) is applied to each interval. As you can see, not only are temperatures biased to the upside later in the century (though certainly prior to 1960), but a few mid-century intervals are being biased slightly lower. That, coupled with the post-1930 restatement we encountered earlier, would imply that in addition to an embarrassing false decline experienced with their MXD after 1960 (or earlier), CRU's "divergence problem" also includes a minor false incline after 1930.

Essentially, the code produces a set of temperature values and then applies the "fudge factor," in order to make a chart of temperature. What this does is elevate the original temperature values, and outside observers have cried foul--this certainly means that scientists have been tampering with their data in a self-serving manner.

These commenters fail to completely understand what a fudge factor really is: a numerical expression of unknown or unmeasurable forces that influence a simulation of real life. Equations representing real conditions often don't attain measured conditions for reasons that are unknown or cannot be accounted for within an equation. Climate deniers say that this was done to fabricate data in order to bolster scientists' preconceived notions. In actuality, this factor was applied to match observed temperatures--reality--and as of the time of writing there's no evidence that the fudged figure ever made its way into a publication of any sort.

An example of a fudge factor in action would be a calculation of drag on a body, which relies on the drag coefficient C_d:

C_d = F_d / [ 1/2 * ρ * v^2 * A ]

where F_d = drag force, ρ = fluid density, v = velocity of the object through the fluid, and A = reference area. Of interest here is A, because everything else can be empirically determined. However, in many cases it's impossible to accurately determine A. Think of a complex object, such as a barnacle-studded ship hull--a surface so complex that it defies measurement. You can't quantify the effect of the barnacles, but you know that they increase the area of the hull. So to match calculated drag with the measured drag effect, engineers must "fudge" the area by increasing it arbitrarily, to a point where the calculated drag matches up with reality.

Students who've gone through high school physics may remember the Planck constant, which is a fudge factor--a correction applied in order to match calculated data to empirical data. Folks familiar with Einstein might know about the cosmological constant, a fudge factor that Einstein himself called his "greatest blunder" but has turned into something that may well exist. Fudge factors are used throughout science; i've used them in the context of stream flow and glacier dynamics. Chances are whomever designed your plumbing system, or your car, or airplanes, fudged numbers. Fudge factors are everywhere.

The reason fudge factors tend to get a bad rap is because they indicate something is missing from your equation or model. There's a relationship that you've left out, either because of accident, because you can't measure a known effect, or simply because you can't account for what's causing it just yet. It means that you, as a scientist, can't quantify everything that's going on in your system, which is embarrassing but by no means throws your model out the window. Earlier, barnacles were quantified by an arbitrary increase in area. Here, the divergence of "tree ring temperature" from real temperature are quantified by an arbitrary increase in temperature. The "fudge factor" refers to all those things that may influence the decline in tree-ring data.

Does this mean the researchers at CRU faked data? Signs point to no, but quite honestly no one really knows right now. What we do know is this: At no point in time did their published work show that tree ring data indicated an increase in temperature over the past decades. It has always shown a decrease, and CRU has been open about that fact. There's nothing that indicates the "fudged" data ever made it into a published document. Again, deniers and skeptics are confusing 'scientists' preconceived notions' with observed reality. They are also demonstrating a profound misunderstanding of science, which i suppose isn't all that surprising.

In any case, this whole point is scientifically moot because you don't need tree rings to make a hockey stick. Plenty of other lines of evidence exist that demonstrate global warming. It's the PR fallout that's doing the damage.

Climategate 3: Dendrochron and the 'hidden decline'

2009-12-09T12:40:00.015-05:00

One of the great ironies of the CRU row is that Keith Briffa, the researcher vilified by climate deniers as the scientist behind the "padding" of data, voiced similar concerns to the deniers' ten years ago. Above is a figure from Briffa et al's (1998) paper [PDF] for The Royal Society. Y-axis represents +/- standard deviations from a mean dataset. You can see that two factors called "ring width" and "maximum latewood density" parallel summer mean temperatures until ~1965, when width and density diverge from temperature. Briefly, this is the "decline" referred to in the emails:

"I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

If anything, this figure shows that the "decline" was definitely in the scientific literature over a decade ago--not hidden in personal communications and model code. Claiming the scientific community is covering up a blunder, when in fact it's just old news, is a common tactic of climate skeptics with an axe to grind. And the 'hiding' that was done, sad to say, was just another case of misinterpretation by those unfamiliar with jargon.

I'd hate to say that this misunderstanding is limited to the conspiracy theorists, but Thomas Friedman in the NYT today spreads the lie even further.

Now. About dendrochronology, the field that produced the chart above, and why proxy data is not as valuable as direct observations. Dendrochronologists (lit. "those who study tree ages") study the annual trends of tree ring growth to get at the long-term environment of the tree in question. Everyone knows trees gain a ring each year. Each ring is divided into "early wood," which grows typically during spring; and "late wood," which is denser and grows later, usually summer to fall. Tree growth depends on a number of factors: soil conditions, moisture, species, traits unique to the individual tree, and temperature. Stress a tree beyond the optimum conditions of any of these factors and it will respond. When a tree is exposed to severe weather or an impact it will often stunt growth for that year, so dendrochronology has been used to gauge the recurrence of hazards such as avalanches and floods.

But for stable trees, the dominant control on long-term growth trends appears to be temperature. With a caveat. Trees grow more when the climate is more favorable, so the basic premise is that global warming will encourage trees to grow faster. Averaged northern-hemisphere tree ring datasets show a good correlation between ring growth and/or density and long-term temperature metrics. Briffa gives an r-squared value of 0.70 for the years 1881-1975, using max. late wood density and measured mean summer temperature deviations. Since this correlation exists over the period where we have measured temperatures, scientists have extended the tree ring record back in time, as a proxy for temperature. That is, tree rings do not measure temperature, but their properties vary in accordance to variations with temperature over long (>10 year) time spans--so tree rings can be used as a substitute for temperature records for those times when none exist.

Now the caveat: Since 1975 the correlation between temperature and ring properties has broken down. Looking at the tree ring data alone, the decline in tree growth indicates that global temperatures have actually been cooling. The skeptic blogosphere (no doubt Fox News will pick this up soon) seems to believe that this constitutes evidence of a cover-up. Why hide the tree ring proxy data? Because it shows something that is, as a commenter wrote, contrary to scientists' "preconceived notions" about climate change.

But there's a reason scientists have preconceived notions about climate change. It has something to do with the earth actually warming. Instrumental data sets, as well as a number of climate proxies (including my area of interest, glaciers) show a lot of warming over the past 200 years. Since 1950 the effect has been especially pronounced. You'd have to lack any understanding of science to say that proxy data takes precedence over measured data. Those who ascribe to this belief are essentially sitting in a room claiming the air's getting colder, when the thermometer on the wall shows that it's getting warmer. Scientists using proxy data must defer their proxy data to reality. That they do so is no great secret. The discrepancies between proxy trends and real trends constitute the argument skeptics should be having.

No one really knows why trees have altered their historical growing patterns within the past several decades. Briffa gives a few of the many possibilities (a rise in CO2, UV-B variations, atmospheric shielding), some of which skeptics will like more than others. This uncertainty leads to the fundamental criticism of proxy data: we don't know for certain what factors control the behavior of the proxy in the past. Some proxies, such as glacier mass balance, are more cut and dry than others. Yet that fundamental uncertainty remains.

Even if they jump on the retroactive validity of climate proxies, deniers are still a decade behind the curve. Skeptics should be questioning the validity of proxy data in the past, not arguing that proxy data overrules observed measurements in the present. So far i've seen too much of the latter, which brings me to the second irony of all this: in accusing scientists of emphasizing data that confirms their biases, climate skeptics fall into the same trap themselves. They go overboard whenever something is released that panders to their preconceived notions, and make themselves look foolish as a result.

Climategate, 2

2009-12-08T20:48:00.003-05:00

Earlier i wrote that so far the leaked, hacked material from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) consisted only of personal correspondences, and no actual criticisms of the data. Turns out there's more than that: climate deniers have now delved into reams of lifted model code to exhume whatever dirt they can find on the methodology. They found juicy bits that really weren't juicy at all. It's fully debunked here (gets kind of technical, you've been warned).

Since i'm officially on break now you can expect more about simple things that make this whole debate silly.

Fish Stories

2009-12-08T14:13:00.011-05:00

Stanley Fish penned a bizarre piece appearing in today's NYT, where he reviews Sarah Palin's biography and praises, of all things, her perseverance. Huh. Sarah Palin abounds with many attributes, but perseverance is not one of them.

What struck me was Fish's underlying assumption in approaching Going Rogue:

My assessment of the book has nothing to do with the accuracy of its accounts...As I remarked in a previous column, autobiographers cannot lie because anything they say will truthfully serve their project, which, again, is not to portray the facts, but to portray themselves.

Emphasis added by me. Fish here cites a ten-year-old column written by himself, which is unsporting but not necessarily invalid. The premise is, at a very elementary level, true. Autobiography is not held to the same standards of objectivity as biography, Fish's counterpoint in the 1999 piece. The caveat is that subjective autobiographies must still conform to objective reality. The "real-life" nature of nonfiction is the primary reason why nonfiction, as a genre, generally sells better than fiction. It's why James Frey billed A Million Little Pieces as a memoir, not a based-on-a-true-story narrative of his alter ego. The integrity of the genre depends on factual accuracy, the only element of autobiography that separates it from full-on fiction.

Palin's memoir, while not riddled with falsehoods, contains a good number of them--some of which go beyond the scope of simple errors of recall. Her claim of Alaskans' libertarianism, for instance, completely ignores the fact that Alaska is the biggest state recipient of federal dollars, per capita. It has almost no basis in reality.

Almost, and here's the genius of Fish's argument. By his logic, Alaskans don't need to be libertarians, they just need to think that they are. Present it in a homey manner full of regionalisms and you've won Fish over. Even if Palin really did spend $150,000 of the RNC's money on designer clothes, as long as she scapegoats an aide convincingly, it doesn't matter. The quality of her autobiography is predicated not on how accurately she presents the facts of her life, but rather how well she sells them.

It's not as though the incentive doesn't exist for Palin to be dishonest. Frey ultimately claimed to embellish the truth because it made a better story, and the same could be said of Going Rogue: it fills the need of a certain demographic to have a representative narrative of its own. These types of 'confirmational autobiographies' contain no room for ideological nuance; their purpose is solely to validate the audiences' preconceived notions about society and, of course, their author/candidate. To take such documents at face value, without context, is to beg to be deceived.

Fish stumbles into this trap by viewing Palin's attributes in subjective isolation, established and evaluated by Palin alone. It's as if a man who slept through the 2008 election was asked to review Going Rogue; he may very well come to the conclusion that it is a masterful portrait of a virtuous politician. But we can judge Palin's traits on more than just how well she "talks the talk." Any quality autobiography must correspond to objective reality, and by omitting context Fish produced a sloppy and incomplete piece of literary criticism.

Quick hit on "Climategate"

2009-12-07T12:51:00.002-05:00

Earlier this week, an IPCC researcher at UBC-Victoria reported that he suffered a break-in that poached a computer from the climate lab.
“They went through my desk drawers. It was bizarre and the only computer that wasn't secured was stolen. It wasn't secured because it was broken. There was nothing on it,” says Weaver.
Of course, this is all a result of the leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, purporting to reveal a conspiracy of scientists perpetuating a global warming hoax. RealClimate has its take on it here:
More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions; Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking.
What's more interesting to me is what was not taken in the first place. The hackers had access to reams of raw, unprocessed data. None of it was touched. Instead they went directly for the ad hominem, the personal correspondences. In other words, they lifted the items that have absolutely no bearing on whether or not the data show an overall warming trend since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. So far i've heard nothing that counters this observation. That's because the climate deniers have jack-shit for data. Their effectiveness is predicated solely on their ability to confuse and confound the general public, and i'm sad to say they've been doing too good of a job so far.

BEARCATS

2009-12-05T15:42:00.001-05:00

What a game. That is all.

Weird Cincinnati: Restaurant Rivalry Gets Bloody

2009-12-03T14:06:00.008-05:00

While it seems that i'm eternally doomed to live a block away from the local firehouse, my current living arrangements kindly put me within walking distance of three Indian restaurants: Ambar, Amol, and Apna, all within a hundred feet of each other. Ambar is by far the most popular, which didn't explain why, earlier this September, the owner was shot twice outside of the restaurant.

At the time, we joked that someone from Apna or Amol probably did it. Apparently the CPD actually thinks it could be for real.
"We don't have a rush of - or any - people shot in the face and not robbed. It just doesn't happen," said Cincinnati police Detective Paul Meyer. "I've been doing this for 37 years, and people always say 'I bet you've seen everything.' I've never seen anything like this."

Meyer said it could be "business-related."
It's no news that there's a rivalry between the Indian restaurants. I mean, shit, there are no fewer than eight Indian restaurants (all Punjabi) in the Clifton/University Heights area. Tuesday's TNR gives more details:
“Yes, there’s a competition,” Singh said. “There have been times when I brought in really good chefs from India, helped them get situated legally, you know, just really tried to help them. But then other restaurants would offer my chefs more money to work for them once they got here.”

Prior to the shooting, Singh said his restaurant only endured small-scale crime: one of his employees was robbed at the an ATM inside the restaurant, the building was vandalized and a small fight once broke out between one of his employees and employees from a neighboring restaurant.
Of course, the other eating establishments are keeping mum:
Other restaurants declined to comment on the situation.

“There’s no competition,” said the manager of Apna India.

Likewise, the manager of Amol India said “No, we don’t have any competition.”
Riiight. Anyway, for the time being i'm going to assume Apna and Amol are free of blame, since Apna has a great buffet deal and Amol makes a samosa chaat to die for. They can't beat Ambar's tandoori chicken, which is the best i've had Stateside, hands down.

Trees

2009-12-03T13:36:00.003-05:00

Jeffrey Pine in the Hoover Wilderness.

Quaking Aspen. Aspens are capable of clonal reproduction, spreading through the root system (like grass). A colony of ~47,000 aspens in Utah is often considered to be the largest (by mass), and one of the oldest, organisms on earth.

Devil's Postpile

2009-11-23T11:19:00.004-05:00

In recapping last summer i last left off in Yosemite, at Cathedral Peak. Going backwards in time, el grupo took a day to visit Devil's Postpile National Monument: a geological double-whammy, in that it combines columnar-jointed basalt with glacial striations.

Columnar jointing occurs when a body of magma (molten rock) cools at a generally uniform rate. When things cool they contract, and if they cool uniformly, cracks (joints) will form in a regular, typically hexagonal pattern. The Postpile is right close to Mammoth Mountain, a volcano--there's your magma source.

At a later date a glacier scraped off the top of the columns. Rock fragments embedded in glacier ice can etch "claw marks" on underlying bedrock, and this is how your glacial striations form.

Cincinnati news, 20 November 2009

2009-11-20T14:25:00.010-05:00

- This is a start: Ohio Sues Credit Rating Agencies, "asserting that they provided misleading credit ratings that led to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for state funds."

- Starbursts! is in Cincinnati (Norwood) to sign her book.

- "The laughter of little children echoed through a Hamilton County courtroom Friday," in what passes for local news 'round these parts nowadays. You can also vote for your favorite turkey, or take the Twilight Quiz.

- More seriously, the Cincinnati Police Department shows it finally knows how to handle shooting someone. Meanwhile, in the comments, Cincinnatians manage to simultaneously place blame on political correctness, African Americans, tasers, the CPD, the media, Welfare, "society," "Godless society," and women.

Cincinnati Football Roundup

2009-11-14T11:25:00.009-05:00

Am writing from Lexington, KY, in the Common Grounds Coffee House. Judging by the difficulty finding legal parking, they're currently locked in a pretty intense parking war with the surrounding businesses. Esteban's a few minutes north, in Georgetown, getting his motorcycle license. The above picture is further southeast in the Red River Gorge, taken two springs ago during a climbing trip. This particular camp ground is accessible only via a two-pitch trad route, and features hundred-foot drop offs on all sides. Definitely solves the noisy neighbor problem.

Last night the blimp was out for the Cincinnati-WVU game. The defensive game was a step up from last week's fracas, which is still pretty troubling, but our offense was damn scary. That Pead call...wow, we got lucky. Pitt's going to be an interesting game, at the very least. Their offensive line doesn't have the sheer weight advantage that UConn used very effectively to batter UC last week, but both UConn and WVU have found a pretty good way to box in our offense and run out our defense. I'm certain Pitt's paying attention.

The rest of this weekend looks pretty uninspiring. Cue the annual collective groan at the BCS' shortcomings.

Speaking of Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, the Bengals-Steelers game this weekend will be one to watch. Since i tend to forget about the NFL, it was a bit of a shock to find the Bengals actually winning games back in October. This game might very well decide the rest of the regular season, and it'll be close.

2008 Revisited: Stripping delegates! Haircut planting!

2009-11-12T14:00:00.005-05:00

Well this is interesting:

Remember the mess that was Florida, Michigan and the earliest Iowa caucus in history?

Turns out some of the complications were orchestrated by the Obama campaign.

In his new book "The Audacity to Win" Obama campaign manager David Plouffe confesses they tried to "box in" Clinton after the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee decided to strip Florida and Michigan of their delegates as punishment for holding primaries earlier than allowed.

Waaay back in the day i wrote an editorial in the Round Table about this. I don't think i kept a copy, unfortunately. At the time, i wrote things that were pretty much in line with what Plouffe now discloses: Michigan and Florida's delegate-strippings (sounds dirty, doesn't it?) were politically-motivated punishments against DNC bylaws, and worked in favor of Obama to the detriment of Clinton. Both Florida and Michigan favored Clinton, so by excluding them Obama's campaign got a huge boost.

As TPM notes, none of this is "earth-shattering." In hindsight i'm still a bit upset, but not unreasonably so, because Obama is still a politician and what he did is good politics. There are some revelations, however, that really skirt the bizarre:

Among the juiciest [bits] is another Plouffe confession that Obama researchers planted the Edwards $400 haircut story with Politico.

Of that old editorial, i do remember promising not to vote for Obama in the 2008 election. Definitely ate those words.

Maintenance, November 2009

2009-11-11T15:30:00.005-05:00

- Today was a beautiful time to work on the Frankenbike, it being Veterans' Day and sunny. Unfortunately, i spent the better part of the afternoon scouring the house for her key. Turns out it was still in the bike--not the ignition, which i had checked earlier, but the seat cover latch. Fantastic. Nonetheless, i now have a drill and a new clutch cable, meaning i can finally get into the crankcase to replace the damn thing.

- The folks let me know that Christmas (my 2007 Camry), and most Toyotas produced from 2004 onwards, have an unresolved "issue" that sometimes results in a stuck accelerator. Ruh-roh. This made news when an off-duty CHP and his family were killed due to a stuck accelerator in their Lexus. This raises the question of why a police officer didn't take the obvious steps to resolve the issue (shift to neutral and kill the engine), but not being in the car at the time it's hard to judge.

- I bought the Windows 7 upgrade at the student rate ($30) and installed it successfully...after eighteen hours of wrangling. Microsoft and Digital River really botched this one. I quite literally had issues at every single step of the install process, and ultimately had to resort to the good ol' double install trick* to get the damn thing working.

That being said, i'm incredibly happy with W7. It's a much slimmer OS than Vista, and Microsoft did a great job ironing out most of the kinks and inconsistencies of both Vista and XP. I also can run in XP mode for the ancient programs geology demands i use. Lastly, i'm up to 64-bit architecture now, and the processing boost is really, really great.

* If you do want to upgrade from 32-bit Windows Vista/XP to 64-bit Windows 7, Microsoft requires a clean install of a full-version of Windows 7, not the upgrade. This means an upgrade key won't work. There's a workaround for this, found here, that will let you use an upgrade key to do a clean install. This means anyone buying Windows 7 can get a full installer for the price of an upgrade--pretty sweet!

Lost in Color Space

2009-11-10T14:32:00.009-05:00

Color space conversion is annoying the hell out of me. Take a look at this picture, taken from the first Portland post. This was taken in Adobe RGB color space, but like all web images, was improperly converted to sRGB (Standard RGB) color space during upload.

This is the same image, except using Adobe's Adobe RGB to sRGB converter, instead of Google's direct translation. Notice the more vivid reds.

Shorter Scott: the colors are different and i'm not happy. A technical discussion as to why they are different follows, and if you process images with Photoshop it may behoove you to read on. Monitors typically define color as a function of three channels, or base colors: red, green, and blue. By varying the "colorfulness" (difference from gray) of each channel, you can simultaneously vary the hue, saturation, and brightness of your particular color. If you quantify the channel variations, the colors can actually be mapped to Cartesian (x, y, z) coordinates--they can be represented as a volume. When calibrated to a known color reference point, this color map becomes absolute--a true color space.

Each channel has 256 layers, so 256 x 256 x 256 = 16.7 million possible colors. Bitchin!

sRGB is by far the most common color space, mainly because our color photoreceptors (cone cells) are most sensitive to those three wavelengths. However, another tetrachromatic (4-channel) color space--CMYK--is preferred for print. These colors--Cyan, Maroon, Yellow, and Key black--correspond to ink used in most printers. CMYK color space encompasses a different area of color space, or gamut, than sRGB. This can result in inaccuracies while printing, and also means some colors possible in CMYK space cannot be represented in sRGB space.

Hence Adobe RGB--a color space designed to represent CMYK space using RGB colors. Speaking objectively, Adobe RGB represents an improvement upon sRGB because it can accurately portray a greater gamut than sRGB. Personally, i prefer Adobe RGB because it gives more vibrant reds and greens, which are important when shooting landscapes. It's also the default setting in Photoshop, so i was using Adobe RGB long before i knew there was a compatibility issue. A big one.

Here's the issue: both Adobe RGB and sRGB have 16.7 million possible colors, but Adobe RGB has a larger gamut. Therefore, it must represent a greater range of color using the same amount of colors. This means that the spacing between colors in Adobe RGB is greater than the spacing between colors in sRGB. Therefore, one color represented in Adobe RGB will have different color values of R, G, and B than the equivalent color in sRGB. Because of this mismatch, a red-155 in sRGB will be less vibrant than a red-155 in Adobe RGB.

With me so far? A particular RGB value in Adobe RGB is not the same color as the same value in sRGB. The sRGB color is less duller than the Adobe RGB color with the same value.

And now here's the problem: sRGB is the web standard--every photo site that i'm aware of, from Flickr to Facebook to deviantArt to Picasa, uses sRGB. When images are uploaded, the host will interpret Adobe RGB color values as though they were sRGB colors. This means that colors are changed during the upload process. The result? Images processed in Adobe RGB appear bland and flat, compared to sRGB images--even though Adobe should show a better range of colors.

Furthermore, because web browsers will automatically do this conversion, you simply cannot use Adobe RGB images for the web, without risking the loss of color information. Within Photoshop there is an option to accurately convert an Adobe RGB image into its sRGB equivalent, but this means all of my images to date have come out different than i've viewed them on my hard drive. Really this is just me being anal about my images, but really i just have this thing about when i'm not portrayed accurately [PDF].

You can read more about this problem here.

The PJG

2009-11-10T08:24:00.008-05:00

Portland has the best Japanese garden i've yet to see in the states. Situated in the hills west of town, Portland did a simply great job of isolating the park in its urban setting. Esteban and i took an afternoon off and went to investigate.

We were fortunate to visit Portland during their peak leaf-peeping time. The weather was surprisingly good; temperatures were balmy, the clouds strangely burned off by midafternoon, and it rained only once during the entire conference period. On this day Portland's perpetual cloudiness gave a great diffuse light--perfect for foliage.

One thing that differentiated PJG from other gardens is their noncommercial photo policy. I've agreed not to market any of these pictures, and it's easy to see why they're so anal about this--it's nearly impossible to take a bad picture in the place. This says quite a bit about the Japanese aesthetic, and even more about how that spartan ideal of beauty has influenced contemporary photography.

Also in the Washington Park area: the International Rose Test Garden and the Hoyt Arboretum, among other venues.

For those in Chicagoland / Beloit, Rockford has a surprisingly good garden, even if it is a bit noisy--the Anderson Japanese Gardens.

Portland

2009-11-09T17:47:00.009-05:00

Three weeks ago i was in Portland, Oregon, basking in what most people agree is the city that best approximates Pinko Commie Heaven. Bush I dubbed it "Little Beirut," which makes little sense given the city's demographics. UC paid my way to Portland because i was presenting results from the Death Valley work; you can find an abstract here. The entire conference was at the Oregon Convention Center, which is capped by those two glowing spikes in the foreground. The skyline of Downtown Portland lies behind.

Geographically, Portland is divided by the Willamette River, with the downtown on the west bank. Someone compared it to Cincinnati, which i suppose works if you move all of downtown Cincinnati across the Ohio. Barring that, Cincinnati is contemplating putting in streetcars, using Portland as a model.

Portland's Pinko Commie status, as well as Cincinnati's streetcar plan, are based on Portland's simply stellar environmental record. There's pretty much consensus that Portland is the greenest city in the United States (1 2 3 4 5). Perhaps the most tangible aspect of Portland's green initiative is the seamless integration of their streetcar, bus, and light rail systems. Public transit within the downtown area is free, meaning i was constantly shuttling across the Willamette to catch lunch before the afternoon technical sessions. The area is also fully supported by Google Maps. Add Portland's bike ethos and you have a metropolitan area that was, while i was there, quieter and completely free of traffic snarls.

People often lose sight of the fact that green initiatives can benefit in ways that have nothing to do with being "green." Portland's just another example of the quality-of-life improvements that green initiatives can bring to a city.

On a completely separate note, Portland has an excellent Japanese Garden, which is where Esteban and i spent an afternoon after our sessions.

Can't forget the food carts. This place does an authentic Loco Moco!

Lapsing

2009-10-27T09:22:00.011-04:00

Hi friends and family, i'm back from a week of geology in the Pacific Northwest. Presently i'm up to my nuts in grading and organizing pictures for the departmental photo contest, so for now you'll have to content yourself with this totally mediocre view of Mount Hood, "Oregon's most recently active volcano."

Pre-Chicago Nerd Pron

2009-10-08T14:05:00.005-04:00

Pollster Strategic Vision LLC is in a bit of trouble after a failure of transparency in regards to their survey methods. Folks at 538.com took it to a new level when they found seemingly non-random non-uniform distributions of trailing digits (e.g. 53-47 McCain-Obama). In a recent post, they use Fourier analysis to determine the likelihood of the discrepancies to be the result of a systematic methodological error. The result:

The Strategic Vision result, on the other hand, or something more extreme, would occur by chance with probability only 0.00019. That’s not as low a p-value as the results obtained without filtering the non-uniform components, but it’s still very low -- less than one chance in 5000 to have occurred by chance alone.

In other words, statistics demonstrate that Strategic Vision has been cooking their books. "Nerdgasm," indeed.
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On a slightly related note, Tom Levenson (director of the science writing grad program at MIT) pretty thoroughly dissects Megan McArdle's entire mode of thinking. McMegan inexplicably shares blogspace with TNC and Sully over at The Atlantic. She is known for blogging as "Jane Galt" and lying. Levenson establishes McArdle as a truly professional cherry picker of knowledge, not knowing--or not caring--enough to think critically about the data sources she uses. If you can get through it (4,000 some words), you get a great analysis of how the phrase "conservative think tank" (or liberal think tank, for that matter) is irrevocably oxymoronic.

Shorter version at BJ.
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Chris Mooney (different Chris Mooney) has the latest debunking of climate myths. Unfortunately this is something we will never get enough of. 27%!