We've Moved!

We're getting more and more comfortable in our new digs -- come on over! And adjust your links, if you got 'em.

Episode II: A New Beginning (?)

So, uh... what do yall think?

Men Are From Mars, Sparkles Are From Venus

This was sunrise on the golfcourse while I was walking dita this morning -- gorgeous crescent moon (compressing this picture, alas, will obscure it a tad) and a sparkling Venus above the light pole to the left.  [Dad, I hope you don't mind, I couldn't resist adding a title to this post :-)]

I'm Counting All My Relevant Friends

'Cause this keeps coming up again and again... Also not to miss this morning is this succinct post from Amy Perfors, which I feel is related to the stuff I was suggesting, imperfectly, in the fourth paragraph of this older post. For what it's worth, this is related to a problem (or perhaps more simply, a phenomenon) in a field that I'm a little bit more familiar with: message-passing for inference in Bayesian Networks. In particular, certain kinds of networks (those that aren't acyclic) suffer from "double-counting" problems when trying to answer a query using message passing. For those networks that are simply connected (or probably more precisely, their junction graphs are simply connected), the message-passing algorithms don't double-count and are guaranteed to terminate at the correct "answer" (the posterior probability for some query). Occasionally, this kind of result holds for more complex networks under more strict conditions. Um... don't worry if that last paragraph doesn't make sense. Just go read the original article.

Speed Terms and Term Structures

Marginal Revolution's Tyler Cowen writes a post about relativity and interest rates. I (think I) agree with C, that MR is definitely one of the best blogs (or at least, best econ blogs) on the web. I don't really have more to say, other than point out the post. In particular for you, Dad. Hope y'all are having a good morning. I'm a little tired, but otherwise alright. Weather outside is cold but dry and clear, which is a notable (and welcome) exception to the last week we've had.

The Travails of His Travels

I spent the morning a bit bummed and confused by the conflicting reports (when I say conflicting, I mean between the NYT and CNN) of the recent Palestinian election, the Hamas victory, and Bush's post-election comments. The NYT initially had Bush asking Abbas to stay on in power...? But I didn't know if that meant, "Don't resign the PM position immediately," or "at all," or just, "we want to deal with you as president," or what. CNN and MSNBC had none of this. So I was confused. Well, these are just piddling concerns anyway. I'm at least three-times removed from having any experience of the event. And who knows what the President actually said? I have no time this afternoon to track the video down on C-Span. Instead, I'm (like) completely overjoyed to see that On The Face's Lisa is back from her longish blog-absence. Not just back, but posting with a vengeance. Blink once, and she's hosting an Iranian ex-pat blogger in Tel Aviv. Blink twice, and she's commenting on the elections. And while you're at it, check out Hossain's blog too, which looks as if it would bear quite a bit of reading as well. So Lisa seems to have weathered her Troll Storm, and has emerged on the other side to fairer weather, and with flying colors! Excellent, excellent. Anyway, go read.

Making marriage a chore --no wait!

Had lunch at Southern Lights avec mère today; had a sandwich called 'The Bohlen'. The post I mentioned was by Tyler Cowen here and it's about a book by a Brown professor named Scott Haltzman (his website, here), where he suggests that men approach their marriages more like they approach their jobs. Cowen got it from the WaPo, where they sum up Haltzman's book:

Use the male habits and male skills that serve him well at work, at play, in competition, in the field and in other venues where he thrives. View marriage as your most important task, Haltzman urges men, and pursue success as you would anything else that matters. The assumption is it's a lot more pleasant, and the payoffs far greater, to live with a woman who is satisfied, secure and feeling loved compared to one who is none of the above. Make this your job, he says.

Now that I read the Post article, though, this stuff sounds more like pop psychology than I had thought (the usual references to our cavemen and cavewomen ancestors). Nev mind...

SST/IRAC

Since Dad's in a picture-postin' mood, I thought I'd contribute this one. It's a shot of the Milky Way's center from some kinda space telescope thingy that y'all astronomers got orbitin' our planet nowadays. (You can get the full range of photos here). I've had this one as my desktop image for a bout a week now. It's quite beautiful. Anyone else have pictures to share?

Fabulous-ist-est

For the third day in a row, I start the morning off with a little music. Three Iron&Wine tracks from a recent gig on NPR (NPR!). As the man says, they're pretty h0ttt. Some of you may find them "a little sweet for morningtime." Well, go back to your Journey, then. You've got a game to prepare for. [Also, I'm going to renew my suggestion that y'all listen to this album. The more I listen to it, the more I love it, start to finish. It's epic. Objections to Sweet Music of the Mornin' be damned.] [And, while we're at it, don't miss the Bishop Allen track at the "You Ain't No Picasso" blog (one of the two links given above). That's pretty awesome, as well.]

DFO

There is something called the Dartmouth Flood Observatory, and they published this great map of NO on September 2. Explains why they call the undamaged part the Sliver by the River. I love great graphics like this. 

Independent Study

So today I started my fifth course - an "independent study" that counts as a 400-level art history course. What it really means is that I work for free for Professor Brumfield, who taught my Russian Art/Architecture course last fall. Brumfield travels Russia taking pictures for his books (which, btw, are *the* definitive reference books for Russian Architecture) and then he teaches a little and lectures a little (museums and stuff). But what I do, is take the slides, scan them, photoshop them, and label them. And organize. His office looks like a hurricane went through it! (like mom's, but ten times the stuff queezed into half the amount of space!) One thing I don't really understand is that if you are a faculty member and all the walls of your office are piled with books and papers up to the ceiling, how do you ever reach them? Are they just there for show? His office is long and narrow, smells slightly "old," and there's just barely room for me to sit at the computer next to him - no passing. I reach the things on the far side of the room and he reaches on the near side - kinda thing. Anyway, he is hillarious and reminds me a lot of Jeff Soles - they slightly resemble one another and have similar voices, both v. smart and somewhat "set in their ways", etc. But Brumfield is, how should I put it.... more congenial? I dunno. It's going to be nice to work with him. So the real reason for writing this post (besides to keep y'all updated, of course) is to ask for a little help. I can do basic photoshop and, believe it or not, I am *way* more computer literate than he is. But you all know how I feel about the darn machines, so I was wondering - how do I make a spreadsheet? Is that through excell? Also, I'm working on a mac and the little symbols at the bottom of the page (you know, like the E for explorer and the trash can and stuff) are on the setting where they get bigger as you scroll over them. How do I turn that off? I know there is some way, but how do I get them to always be the same size? He's kinda crotchety, and for some reason the big thing bugs the heck outa him. Anyway, let me know if you have any ideas! Thanks, more later!!

Separation Anxiety

This should be pretty much Must Read. Melton's name is familiar around the lab here. My advisor knows him pretty well.

Blogging, Why Can't I Quit You?

Which reminds me, have any of you (in the friends-and-family who are reading this) seen this yet? Or do you plan to? I'm trying to decide if it's worth the $10+ for seeing it in a first-run theater. Thoughts? Suggestions? (After reading Shutterfool, I think the needle is starting to edge over towards "Yes.")

Fables of the Headline Deconstruction

Am I the only one who finds Slate's front-page today among their best ever? Best Evar? (I thought not.)

In Accordance with the Concordance

It's been sitting on my list-of-links-to-blog (LLTB) for a day or two now, so I'll go ahead and get it up here: go check out the post on Amazon Concordances and Text Clouds over at Junk Charts. There's a neat little matching game there too, try it out. The first thing this makes me think of, though, is something like this -- but not so much classifying texts as ranking them based on, say, relative word frequencies. I'd like to see these computational "difficulty" rankings of math books, displayed alongside their pages on a site like Amazon -- that'd be really useful. [P.S. Related, to this post and to the last, is this post from Edward_Winkleman. Neat. L, you may (in particular) find this interesting. Also on a similar subject, someone I once had as a professor is in the news again.]

Thank You Very Mu(n)ch!

I just thought I'd give a link to a recent comment by Kriston, in case some of you missed it. In response to C's post about economists and chocolate, he notes this paper on a proposed economic model of investment and insurance in the art world, and the effects they (might) have on art theft, taking the relatively-recent Munch theft as "paradigmatic." Well, consider the mill gristed! I don't really have a strong enough background in economics to evaluate some parts of the their model -- it's filled with references to resellability functions (as in the image at right) and famousness scores, etc. Perhaps there's an extensive literature of this kind of thing in the theoretical study of art exposition? I probably should investigate the references more closely. At any rate, scanning the paper, it seems like their model is on-the-face plausible. What seems missing, at least to me, is data. As near as I can tell, it's all largely theoretical -- this is certainly a plausible account of incentives, risk, and reward in art theft... but does it fit observed data about spending trends, "famous" paintings (these kinds of things exist for people, why not famous objects too?), and theft patterns? As near as I can tell, the only empirical claim is cited somewhere on page 14. The footnote implies that there are Art Loss datasets out there -- links anyone? Hmm. I'll try tracking one down this evening, if I have the time. But this gets me thinking of something different, but related. The recent book event at The Valve, on Franco Moretti's Graphs, Maps, and Trees, has been excellent (truly! not to be missed!). But the latest (last) posting is Cosma Shalizi, which he also cross-posts at his own blog. The book that is the subject of the discussion, the Graphs, Maps, and Trees tries to take (in a nutshell) the view that the study of literature (or at least, one avenue of study) is in a quantitative vein, developing more mathematical or rigorous theories which span whole genres and time periods, which are inspired by data-driven mappin'-and-graphin', and which involve a whole 'lot of data-collectin' (which is the nominal connection back to the art-theft paper here). But you shouldn't miss Shalizi's contribution, which is sharp, precise... just what you'd expect a professional statistician to bring to this kind of discussion. Doesn't he have actual work to do? How is he so widely read and accomplished?! Anyway, I'll end by quoting a part of his essay.

Even if we shutter and lock the Cabinet of Horrors, and go to look for explanations of trends in such cultural products as novels (which is, after all, what Moretti wants), I’m afraid we will find most of them in the capacious Closet of Mildly Appalling Objects. There is no shortage of attempts to give such changes meaning as signs of something else, some aspect of the social or economic structure, of the way we live now (or the way they lived then), but very, very few of them are convincing. In his great book on changing fashions, A Matter of Taste, the sociologist Stanley Lieberson looks at some of the reasons why these attempts at ad hoc explanation are so often bad. (He puts things more politely; I paraphrase.) First, the facts are often just screwy, both about the developments to be explained: non-existent trends, non-existent causes, weirdly mis-characterized trends, trends being explained by events which happened long after the former began, etc. (In fairness, such “scholarly misconstruction of reality” is a lot more common than we academics like to think.) Second, the mechanism connecting the explanatia to the explananda is left totally obscure. Third, no attempt is made to test the explanation, by checking that it can account for the magnitude of the observed change, by ruling out alternative explanations, or by much of anything else. The result is a steady stream of claims about how culture works which are advanced with what is, under the circumstances, an astonishing degree of assurance. Lieberson’s book provides many fine examples of such cavalier just-so story-telling for names, the decline of hats, etc.

Well, anyway, you'll have to read the entire essay for the context to that quote. I still maintain it's fabulous.

The Heart is a Lonely Audiophile

Okay, I'm serious when I say I don't want all my posts to be of the form, "Listen to this!" But! That said, I think some of you will enjoy this (Dad, you in particular). This morning I have discovered (read: someone else pointed it out to me) a singer, Jenny Lewis. She has an album, Rabbit Fur Coat, that is almost completely downloadable from teh interwebs, although I have a feeling I'm going to need to buy this one too. Anyway. Go to the site, and start with Track 6: Melt Your Heart. If it does, then go ahead and get the rest of the album. Or let me know if you need me to pass along to you via backchannels. Excellent. And who are these "Watson Twins?" They have the voices of angels. (And tour dates include the Somerville Theater! I'll just have to walk on down the street...) [Okay, Upon Further Review: I find that Lewis is actually the lead singer for Rilo Kiley, which I didn't know because (a) I am hopelessly unhip, and (b) I'm not really a fan of R.K. The songs of theirs I've heard, I haven't liked. Lewis Solo, on the other hand, apparently I love. Who knew? Also, La points out that she's had a movie career, too. I'm unfamiliar with Troop Beverly Hills though...]

Gunner for the Ages

Classic Bill Simmons on Kobe's 81-point game. 81 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assists, that is. Pah. The. Tick.

Music Could Be At The Door

I'm going to point out two new tracks online from a band I'm listening to more and more: Eagle*Seagull. Check out Photograph, but forsureforsure download Death Could Be At the Door. Which is, as the kids say, "teh hottt." Also, they're coming to Boston in March. On a wednesday night. Excited am I. Also, apparently their name, with the asterisk in the middle, is an attempt at Google-manipulation? I.e., the star is a wildcard, and so you should match anything with "eagle," eventually followed by "seagull." Their growing popularity renders this Strategy of Obfuscation slightly useless, but scroll-down the search page and you'll see a few good examples still remain. My inner geek thinks this is all excellent. [Question that occurs to me later: is there really a difference between my "inner geek" and my "outer geek?" I'm not sure.]

Hail Soprano, Well Met

I just thought I'd mention this, since I know a few of you may be interested in the news (and perhaps a congratulatory email?). The reason that La will be at the Super Bowls party in two weeks, loudly proclaiming the superiority of her Native Stillers, is that she'll be singing in the semi-finals of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in Boston (I think) that weekend. This is by virtue of being one of those selected after the "district" auditions a few weeks ago. Yay! An audition, a wedding, and a gigundo football game. It'll be a busy weekend for her, and a happy one for the rest of us. I'd been meaning to write something about this for a little while, but only this morning has she provided me with the link to the online list of semi-finalists. Which I had searched for a few weeks ago, and failed to find.

A Daylong What-Now?

Since I hate Joe Theismann's announcing with the passion of a thousand suns, any news that Al Michaels might be thinking of moving away from ESPN will always make me a little warm inside. The possibility of Tirico/Theismann on Monday Nights, after Michaels and (insert name here) on Sunday nights is much much better than the current situation. (Read that as: "two down, one to go." Although how they think Theismann is the current voice of Sunday night worth saving, is beyond me.) Anyway, beyond the whole "Who T wants to announce where, and when" concept, I think the notion of sports broadcasters maneuvering, Machiavelli-like, by leaking to the NYT is amusing to think about. Sort of like politics, but writ slightly smaller. Also, I will brook no dissent about the semantic coherency of a phrase like "passion of a thousand suns." Ms. C, you have been warned.