In the absences of human support, how long do you think it would take before an urban neighborhood to turn into wilderness rural again? I have always wondered about that question.
But apparently, I need not speculate too much. The process is actually happening in Detroit. This from Detroitblog…..
It’s always fun to go up north here Click Here to continue reading.
A recent post over at the Marginal revolution on Benford’s law was very educational. Here is a quote….
In many data series a surprising number of entries begin with the number 1, and the number 2 is also more common than a random distribution might suggest. This is called Benford’s Law. For instance about one third of all house numbers start with one. That may be a quirk of bureaucratic numbering psychology, but the principle also applies to the Dow Jones index history, size of files stored on a PC, the length of the world’s rivers, and the numbers in newspapers’ front page headlines. It does not apply to lottery-winning numbers, see the graph at the above link.
The law only applies if you are measuring or counting something. That is why it does not apply to lottery numbers. The interesting thing about this law is how it can be used to detect various kinds of fraud. Apparently, it is very hard to fake numbers (for financial results or voters tallies) and still comply with Benford’s law.
The New York Times has an article that suggests that interval training is the best way to lose weight.
After interval training, the amount of fat burned in an hour of continuous moderate cycling increased by 36 percent, said Jason L. Talanian, the lead author of the study and an exercise scientist at the University of Guelph in Ontario. Cardiovascular fitness — the ability of the heart and lungs to supply oxygen to working muscles — improved by 13 percent.
It didn’t matter how fit the subjects were before. Borderline sedentary subjects and the college athletes had similar increases in fitness and fat burning. “Even when interval training was added on top of other exercise they were doing, they still saw a significant improvement,” Mr. Talanian said.
The study is hardly definitive, but it makes intuitive sense to me. After all, interval training is just mimicking the natural way we work.
Life brings its share of surprises. But few things have surprised me more in life than finding out that almost everyone in America who is not white fears rural areas. I never would have thought the only areas of the country left where people do not lock their doors would inspire such fear, but apparently Click Here to continue reading.
I wish that this rant by Megan had been available to me last week. It would have gone way better with last week’s essay of the week. But we have to take what we can get when we can get it.
Did you know that there are 34 countries with a fertility rate of 1.5 or less? Did you know that to keep population stable it you have to have a fertility rate of 2.1 or more? Did you know that more then half the world’s population has a fertility rate that is below replacement rate?
Do you think that those trends are nothing to worry about? If so, you owe to yourself to read Wolfgang Lutz, Vegard Skirbekk, and Maria Rita Testa’s paper called The Low Fertility Trap Hypothesis: Forces that may lead to further postponement and fewer births in Europe.
This excellent paper lays out the reasons why it may be next to impossible to raise fertility rates once they drop below replacement levels. Even if you are not convinced by their interpretation of the data the paper will make you think.
For more on this paper, read this post by the Ape Man. And we call out a big thank you to the Alpha Source blog for bringing this paper to our attention.
How is this for an abstract….
ABSTRACT—In a study testing whether the relationship between exercise and health is moderated by one’s mind-set, 84 female room attendants working in seven different hotels were measured on physiological health variables affected by exercise. Those in the informed condition were told that the work they do (cleaning hotel rooms) is good exercise and satisfies the Surgeon General’s recommendations for an active lifestyle. Examples of how their work was exercise were provided. Subjects in the control group were not given this information. Although actual behavior did not change, 4 weeks after the intervention, the informed group perceived themselves to be getting significantly more exercise than before. As a result, compared with the control group, they showed a decrease in weight, blood pressure, body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and body mass index. These results support the hypothesis that exercise affects health in part or in whole via the placebo effect.
Recently I was trying to explain to someone why there was no point in installing a software firewall on a PC that was already protected by the hardware firewall on a NAT router. We both agreed that there was no point in having a software firewall monitoring incoming traffic. The router performs the same port Click Here to continue reading.
I am always being told that global warming is going to raise sea leaves and such. So you think that people living on an island would be happy to have an earthquake that rises said island up in the air by 10 feet. But no, they are crying about what a catastrophe it is (h/t Pierre Legrand).
In an instant, the grinding of the Earth’s tectonic plates in the 8.0 magnitude earthquake Monday forced the island of Ranongga up three metres (10 foot).
Submerged reefs that once attracted scuba divers from around the globe lie exposed and dying after the quake raised the mountainous landmass, which is 32-kilometres (20-miles) long and 8-kilometres (5-miles) wide.
Corals that used to form an underwater wonderland of iridescent blues, greens and reds now bleach under the sun, transforming into a barren moonscape surrounding the island.
The stench of rotting fish and other marine life stranded on the reefs when the seas receded is overwhelming and the once vibrant coral is dry and crunches underfoot.
Dazed villagers stand on the shoreline, still coming to terms with the cataclysmic shift that changed the geography of their island forever, pushing the shoreline out to sea by up to 70 metres.
Snark aside, I do feel for the actual people affected, but I think that it is cool that an earthquake can raise an entire Island by 10 feet.