XKCD: Process of Cancer and the Nature of Survival

XKCD is a website for the geek audience drawn by Randall Munroe, who is a coder-turned-cartoonist. He describes the site as a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Frequent topics are LOTR and geek frustration.

There are two things you might want to know about XKCD:

• Often you can let your mouse loiter over the cartoon to see the rollover-hover-alt-title text; it's a way of delivering the punchline after you've read the base material
• At times, XKCD's references are so arcane that there is room for help and interpretation, which leaves a niche for ExplainXKCD.com.

Randall Munroe is often quite funny, but at times the webcomic focuses on relationships, physics, or infographics that serve to explain complex topics. For instance, this chart presents the characters and plotlines of several popular stories on a time axis. (It helps to know that Primer is a recursive time-travel movie, major geek points for that.)

Last October, Randall Munroe's fiancée was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer and his work has occasionally referred to their experience. Yesterday's XKCD's infographic is a compelling depiction of the process of cancer, brutal in its frank exposition of odds and outcomes.

It's not funny. It is brilliant. You can find it here (it deserves to be seen in its own setting)

Venn Diagram: Living, Dead, Undead

Major geek factor: Venn Diagram and Zombies



from the excellent DogHouse Diaries.

2011 Tour de France, Contador's Dive, True Heroes

It is difficult to comment on the Tour de France because of the cognitive tension: we would like to be able to believe in the concept, but we have seen too much of the real.

There are statistical indications of improvement:

the fastest riders on three of the last climbs in the Tour, including the famed Alpe d’Huez, were still three minutes slower — a lifetime in cycling — than many of the fastest riders on the same climbs during the 1990s and 2000s.

The following gems seem to be legitimate:

• The best athlete and the best strategy, won in the last days.
• Chapeau, the Schleck Brothers (aka Frandy Schleck)
• Chapeau, Thomas Voeckler - for staying there
• Chapeau, Yohann Gene - for getting there
• Chapeau, Johnny Hoogerland - for getting back on the bike.
• Chapeau, Laurens ten Dam - for being a hard man

Lest we be too upbeat, we suspect that Alberto Contador took a dive in the 2011 Tour. He simultaneously kept the cameras on his sponsor's logo and made himself a much more sympathetic character when his 2010 doping hearing begins in August. Paradoxically his status is better after losing the Tour de France; I think Occam's Razor applies.

If you prefer legitimate heroes and clean competition, Pittsburgh is hosting the National Veteran's Wheelchair Games August 1-6, 2011.

Res ipsa loquitur

I am reluctant to discuss sports because I have no expertise in it. I am particularly loathe to discuss baseball because I once lived in a town that had a baseball team, and so my disappointment in Pittsburgh is great.

I am willing to discuss the socialogy of sports, and in that vein I convey Craig Robinson's Venn diagram of baseball team names:



When I review Craig Robinson's website the legacy of Edward Tufte is evident.

Tour de Carmageddon: JetBlue vs the WolfPack

The news brings reports of a big cycling event focusing on the optimized intergration of the human form, technology, and the sporting spirit. I'm referring, of course, to the Tour de Carmageddon.

A Los Angeles highway called the 405 is closed for construction. Project managers hope that paying to rebuild a bridge will stimulate the economy by forcing millions to seek alternative transportation routes. Local governments have apprehensively been preparing the population for "Carmageddon".


JetBlue airlines saw a marketing opportunity and advertised flights from Burbank to Long Beach, a route encumbered by the 405 closure, for $4 a seat. It's not a moneymaker but JetBlue got a lot of media coverage out of it. The JetBlue marketing folks were quite clever in seeing an opportunity in somebody else's difficulty.



Local bicyclists, who saw the 405 closure as an opportunity for bicycle advocacy, proposed a challenge: they claimed to be able to make the 38-mile Burbank to Long Beach connection faster than the jet.


The challenge is arranged so that when blogger Joe Anthony leaves his home to arrive at the Burbank airport one hour prior to departure, the team of five local bicyclists called The Wolfpack will depart the same neighborhood.

The destination is the Long Beach Aquarium, and whoever gets there first wins. The bicyclists are constrained to honor all stop signs and red lights.

What I like about the structure is that it adds the pre-flight and post-flight time logistics to the flight time, and the relatively short distance makes it competitive; there wouldn't be any comparison if the route was LAX to JFK.

The bicycle riders won, arriving at the Aquarium one hour and one minute (1+01) before the JetBlue passengers. The 1+01 time is exaggerated somewhat by the fact that the cabdriver got lost on the way to the Aquarium, but the victory is confirmed by the fact that the bicyclists arrived just as the jet was touching down.

It is interesting how uninvolved parties with completely different agendas seized on the highway closure as an opportunity for activism. I'm sure this is an isolated instance of an otherwise non-existant phenomenon.

Biophilia, Homophily, Essential WDUQ and WYEP

I was listening to NPR/WDUQ the other day and I was amused to hear one person mention "E.O. Wilson's theory of biophilia", which prompted me to suspend my listening and think, That's what I love about NPR - one person mentions Wilson, the other person is confident that the audience knows who Wilson is. As opposed to, for instance, ABC who recent felt the need to generate a graphic explanation when Christiane Amanpour used a big word.

In fact, I was listening to NPR while I was out riding my bike on a trail, indulging my own biophilia - the need to be out in the weather with plants and animals.

Since we're discussing "philia's", I should also mention homophily, or the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others. I know we have a tendency to draw information from sources we like, and to me one of the values of NPR radio is that it broadens my spectrum and introduces sources that I otherwise wouldn't encounter. For me, NPR is a force for heterophily.

Locally, National Public Radio (NPR) has changed to Essential Public Radio (EPR), and the talk show I was listening to was a new feature introduced as part of that change. The changes at WDUQ are an issue for me because while I'm a public radio kind-of-guy, I'm also as change-averse as the next Pittsburgher.



The new format includes "NPR talk radio" in place of a lot of jazz, and NPR's version of talk radio must be heard to be appreciated. The show that mentioned Wilson's biophilia was a panel discussion on, "Why aren't there more people of color in the national parks?", and I'm pretty sure that topic's not going to come up on Rush or (Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes') Fox.

If conservative AM talk radio is "Hate Radio", then NPR FM talk radio is "Care Radio", and my initial response to the new WDUQ format is that I'm not sure that I want to be involved in so much enlightened caring. There's a level of empathy and concern that represents my upper threshold, I reach it pretty quickly, and I like to save my empathetic capacity for my key issues, thank you very much.

So the new WDUQ talk format drives me to listen to more WYEP music. That's OK with me, I like WYEP a lot, and in recent years I've been a member of YEP and not DUQ, because I'm more inclined to support the underdog. It's curious that YEP ended up buying and changing DUQ.

WYEP informed me yesterday that Biophilia is also the name of Bjork's next album. Interestingly, Bjork's "album" is being released as a series of interactive Apps rather than unimedia song releases. Where did I learn that? Why, on NPR, of course.

Pexas, Fracking, Hacking, and Dick Cheney's Heart

Worth Listening To: This American Life, Sunday 6pm

If you missed "This American Life" about Pennsylvania fracking, the role of Penn State, and the hardball that industry plays with local government, the show will be replayed on WDUQ 90.5 at 7pm Sunday. (Listen online here: http://www.essentialpublicradio.org/listen )

Best Line: Pennsylvania is becoming Texas. Texsylvania? Pexas? (NTTAWWT)

While the content of the show is significant and worthy, it's also a refreshing reminder of the public service that the media and journalism was is supposed to play in American civil society. Remarkable that it comes from NPR and not commercial radio, isn't it?

Murdoch's Hacking, Democracy, and Atom Bombs

Rupert Murdoch's London newspaper has been found violating journalistic ethics (and the criminal code) by hacking cellphone voice mail functions.

• Does Rupert Murdoch have boots on the ground in the States? Heard of Fox?
  
• Could it happen in the United States? Definitely
  
• Do US news organizations hack the news? CBS Boston did last week

The trenchant point, it seems to me, is that in an information economy, hacking information is economic theft; it's playing with the currency. It's a major issue in the digital shift.

Slightly OT: We now process American elections through digital systems. The person who wins the big election gets the nuclear button. Presidents have been chosen based on Florida elections, and there's a guy in Florida who keeps hacking Florida election servers.

At the root of it all, it's still all Greek: at one time, media organizations (the fourth estate) were obligated to render a service by informing the polis.

Dick Cheney, Wall Street Journal, and the progress of American health care

Dick Cheney does have a heart, and American progress in medical care seems to him, on consideration, to be a good thing. (see article)

Saying, "Dick Cheney has a heart" is a counter-intuitive assertion, and here's another one: it's good to spend money on health care.

Some wags say, It's a crisis! Look at all the money we're spending on health care! I say, spend more money on keeping me alive. Isn't it a sign of a civilized country that we spend (invest) in the quality of our citizen's physical lives? What else might displace that as a priority?

(We do recognize that spending money on medicine is not the same as investing in demonstrated metrics of improvement, but the question of efficiency is constant at any funding rate.)

WDUQ Saturday : Fracking is a Game Changer

Saturday at Noon, Sunday at 6pm, WDUQ 90.5 or wduq.org

I'm a fan of National Public Radio (NPR), and also of an NPR show called This American Life (TAL). TAL's main driver is Ira Glass, and he's excellent.

This week's TAL is about fracking in Pennsylvania. Here's the intro text:

A professor in Pennsylvania makes a calculation, and the result blows his mind. The numbers say that his state is sitting atop a massive reserve of natural gas—enough to lead a revolution in how America gets its energy. But another professor in Pennsylvania does a different calculation and reaches a troubling conclusion: that getting natural gas out of the ground poses a risk to public health. The story of two men, two calculations, and two very different consequences.

The show will air Saturday at noon and Sunday at 6pm. The show's website will have the audio available Sunday after 7pm.

Bicycle Death on C O Canal near White's Ferry

A bicyclist was killed on the C&O Canal near White's Ferry.




From WJLA:

A falling tree struck and killed a man who was bicycling on the C&O Canal Towpath between Whites Ferry and Edwards Ferry Sunday night.

A National Park Service spokesperson told ABC7 that Neil Reich, 56, of New York, was near mile marker 33 shortly before 7 p.m. when high winds and heavy rain knocked down numerous trees.

Reich was riding his bike with a companion on a two-day bike trip from Harpers Ferry, WV to Washington, D.C.

According to the companion, Reich stopped to put on his rain coat because of the storm. His companion continued biking along the towpath and stopped later to wait for Reich.

When Reich didn't catch up, the companion went back to find him and had to maneuver around some trees that had fallen. The companion then found that Reich had been struck by a fallen tree.

The companion called 911 and Montgomery County Fire and Rescue responded to the area. The squad had to chain saw numerous trees to gain access to Reich. The tree struck Reich in the head area. He died at the scene.

Our sympathy goes out to his family and friends.