My kids have a puzzle of “jungle creatures”.
I hate it1. I do not hate it because there is no jungle in the world in which these animals all live together2. Continue reading “That’s no monkey…”
Author: Josh Witten
http://www.thefinchandpea.com
KFPR 1865AM – The Finch & Pea Radio
The only problem with Marie-Claire‘s Song of the Week pick is that it is only once a week. One song a week? Isn’t this the 21st Century? Yes it is. But, the University of Alberta, insists that Marie-Claire spend large chunks of her time working for them.
So, we did the next best thing. We made a Pandora station, KFPR 1865AM – The Finch & Pea Radio, around the artists who created the music featured in our Song of the Week.
*If you live outside the United States, you may not be able to listen to the station. This is not our fault. We suspect that Cory Doctorow will be perfectly happy to tell you whose fault it is.
Cinde-Really 5: If the slipper fits…
We all know how Disney’s Cinderella ends. The Grand Duke visits every house in the kingdom looking for the girl the lost glass slipper fits. Cinderella is locked in the tower to prevent her from trying on the glass slipper1. Cinderella escapes the locked tower. Wicked Step Mother breaks the glass slipper to prevent her from trying on the glass slipper. Cinderella produces the other glass slipper. Slipper fits. Cinderella marries the prince.
Cinderella never actually tries on the glass slipper. She tries on a glass slipper, but she does not try on the glass slipper that was left at the ball. Continue reading “Cinde-Really 5: If the slipper fits…”
Nightmare data
The lovely and affable Tyler Dukes* has successfully pitched a session for the Science Writers 2012 meeting in October on dealing with “nightmare documents”:
Investigative science writing like this isn’t unique — but it’s a lot more rare than it should be…it’s expensive and time consuming. And more and more often, it’s becoming an unavailable option to news organizations looking to cut costs…In late March, I issued a broad-based call for what I called “nightmare documents,” the sorts of opaque public records that can be a real pain for journalists trying to use them in their reporting…Impossible-to-analyze databases. Government records hidden behind clunky Web interfaces. Unsearchable public reports digitized on ancient scanners.
I’ve encountered the same problem, not as a journalist, but as a researcher – datasets that are “shared” or “publicly available” that are almost unusable due to poor formatting and annotation. Although many journals require datasets to be made available, the requirements for useful formatting and annotation, even at public data repository sites, are usually laughable. And, most busy researchers can only be bothered to meet those minimal standards (eg, “Do you think that is good enough for them to let us publish? Cause I got a grant due.”).
I am happy to say that this is an issue of which Open Data advocates are well aware and are taking concrete steps to address.
*We say nice things about people who want to interview us; and by “us” I mean “me”. Mike says positively horrid things about everyone he talks to.
Happy Phi Day!
As you may not be aware, we have declared today, 14 August, to be Phi Day. Here at The Finch & Pea we don’t go in for the superficial assignment of such days to the date that looks like the estimated value of important numbers in your particular dating system (eg, putting Pi Day on 14 March).
Phi is also known as the Golden Ratio. While it can be expressed as the number 1.618…, Phi is an irrational number, which means that the decimal portion goes on infinitely without repeating. So, any simple numerical expression is just an estimate and does not represent the true meaning of the number.
Phi represents a particular ratio of segments. If we take the regular pentagram (composed of lines of equal length) on the right. The ratios of red:green, green:blue, and blue:pink are all equal to Phi.
If we imagine that the year is a line that is 365.25 days long, we can divide it into two segments whose ratio to each other is Phi. Dividing at Day 226 gives us the ratio 226/139.25 = 1.623*.
The 226th day of a regular calendar year is 14 August*. Happy Phi Day!
*Ideally, we’d go for Day 225.75, which is 6PM on 14 August, but then we’d have to decide on a time zone.
**In a regular year, 226/139 = 1.625. In a leap year, 14 August is Day 227, which gives us 227/139 = 1.633. 13 August is a bit better in a leap year (226/140 = 1.614); but I think there is something to be said for a consistent day on the calendar.
The Finch and Pea 