Tull

I’m Back

OMG.

That is all I have to say right now.  Moving a family 720 miles in any direction from where you are SUCKS ASS.

But we are getting there.  Got Internet, I suppose we can call that progress.

Time to reconnect with all the people who can’t stand me.

Aurora CO is………..different.

HEY, “The Strange Attractor” is up at Astropoetica!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Wooooo!

Odds-N-Ends

• ITEM #1

During the course of writing my global consciousness article I asked Dr. Roger Nelson the following:

I have struggled to understand how you gather the data and interpret it.  On your recent appearance with George Noory I believe you used a “coin flip” analogy.  In ten flips of a coin we expect five heads and five tails.  Useful data would be some significant number of coin flips that deviate from the expected result.  The EGG’s generate random strings of 1’s and 0’s, and when you retrospectively examine the data for correlation to some major world event you are looking for coherence in the form of unusually long strings of 1’s or 0’s.  Am I even in the ballpark on this?

While waiting for Dr. Nelson’s reply to this, I found a mainstream media news story that used virtually the same analogy, so I went forward with it.  It is useful in that it gives non-mathematically inclined people (me, specifically) a means by which to grasp the concept, but it is not an entirely accurate description.

In an email, Dr. Nelson offered this clarification:

Not exactly. What we do is collect 200 bits each second at each node. The bits are summed, and this sum is the trial value. Like flipping 200 coins and counting the heads, we expect about 100, +/- standard deviation of 7.071. Thus we have some 65 parallel sequences of numbers like 101, 97, 78,111, 100,… The standard measure calculates the variability of those numbers across all the eggs to create a “network variance” measure for each second. Then we combine the seconds over the duration of an event to make a statistic that represents the departure from expectation (if any) that is correlated with the attention and emotions shared around the world during the event.

Basically, the question is simple: Do we see deviations from expected random behavior of our instrument (the egg network)during times when large numbers of people share focus and emotional responses? All the calculations do is create a fair scientific measure of that hypothesized correlation.

Of course there are many other questions we can ask, like does distance matter, and how many people must be involved, but the essential starting point is: Do we see a correlation between big events and non-random structure in our data?

I might also add that Dr. Nelson went well out of his way to help me with my article.  I’m grateful for his efforts on my behalf.

• ITEM #2

I just heard from Marge Simon over at Star*Line.  She picked up two of my poems for the Jan. 2010 issue.  More on that at a future date.  Look for my poem “Giza” in the July/August issue, late summer or early fall.  “The Strange Attractor” is due out at Astropoetica as well.  I strongly recommend you follow that link.  Astronomy and poetry.  Beautiful.

• ITEM #3

I found out a couple weeks ago that they are shutting down the facility where I work.  This could be a disaster, or it could be an interesting new adventure in my life, depending on how I choose to view it.  I may be able to transfer to another facility in Aurora, Co.  Scary idea, but kind of exciting as well.  Can anybody tell me anything about Aurora?

• ITEM #4

Not one, not two, but six poems rejected by GUD in the space of about six days.  Ouch!

• ITEM #5

I have a Twitter account.  It’s a toss up as to which confuses me more–Dr. Nelson’s random event generators or Twitter.  I did manage to set it up such that I can post to the sidebar of this blog from my cell phone.  Woo hoo.  You can follow me. Could some kind soul tell me how to get ABC news off my thing where I read other people’s crap?  I did everything it said…still there.

• ITEM #6

The whole Michael Jackson thing depresses me a lot more than I might have imagined.  I was never much of a fan, but I remember when his music started getting big.  Good times.  Good days.

• ITEM #7

Found this at a thrift store today.  Looks like a good read.  What’s funny is that it was published in 1977.  Did they imagine that nothing important would likely happen between 1977 and the year 2000?  Wasn’t there some wall somewhere that fell down?  1989-ish?  The Simpsons?

This is the sort of book I like to read sitting out on the porch with the terminator squarely overhead, and with a cold beer handy.

• ITEM #8

Finally, I take back every mean thing I ever said about White House press corps senior correspondent Helen Thomas.  I just heard a news story on Fox where she crawled right up White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’ ass.  I thought she only did that to republicans.

“The point is the control from here. We have never had that in the White House. And we have had some control but not this control. I mean I’m amazed, I’m amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency and you have controlled…”

Get on with your suddenly bad self, Helen!

Another Stormy Night…

We had a couple weeks of peace and calm, and I had just about convinced myself that summer arrived early.  Goodbye spring!  Goodbye severe weather!

Not so fast.  For the past three days, and apparently for today and the next two days, there has been a dry line stalled in the east Texas panhandle.  This causes a situation in which thunderstorms blow up along the dry line and then move northeast every afternoon and evening.  This is a particularly debilitating set of circumstances as it is usually the same regions that get hammered day after day.  It jangles the nerves.

Fortunately (for my region, at any rate, much less fortunate for those affected) all the action has been north and west of where I live.  But I have noticed that the area creeps a little closer each day, and the storms have been getting progressively more violent.  The photo above shows a storm about 70 miles north of my location.  Here is a link to KWTV and tons of video footage showing what that storm was doing, including the much talked about “pig farm” tornado.  There are some brief local adverts at the start of each clip, but they are short and only marginally annoying.  It’s worth looking at.

This morning’s NWS hazardous weather outlook sounds a lot like yesterday’s, and probably a lot like what tomorrow’s will sound like as well.  This crap won’t end until sometime Tuesday, when a cold front moves in from the north and pushes the whole business out of the area.

So this Memorial Day weekend is blown.  I wonder what it is like to live in a place where spring is a beautiful reward for having survived winter?