The Glamour of Marine Biology

From a post by Todd Oakley:

Once, I was collecting sludge in Half Moon Bay, California, in an attempt to find Euphilomedes ostracods. A group of 10 or so girls, about aged 11 or so, were having a picnic nearby on the beach with 3 or 4 of their moms. The gaggle of young girls soon came running over toward me, yelling girlishly, and separately..... "Are you a marine biologist????". I paused. I looked down at my sludge, and my wet suit, and then threw out my chest slightly, and lowered my voice, "Why, yes, I am a marine biologist". I had just gotten a shrimp in my sieve, flopping around, and I showed it to them. For that one shining moment, I felt like a rock star.

Multi-Author Blog Annoyance

Two of my favorite blogs, Cosmic Variance and Overcoming Bias,  have multiple authors.  In both you have to scroll to the foot of a post to see who wrote it.  This is unnecessarily annoying: the author's name should appear at the head of the posts in a multi-author blog.

The Wages of Ignorance

If you think the Wages of Sin are bad, just wait till you see the Wages of Ignorance.

I Remember Loop Invariants

Apparently all models of the 30GB Microsoft Zune music player failed yesterday, New Year's Eve.  The cause, as revealed here, was a bug in the C code that will put the Zune processor into a closed loop on day 366 of any leap year.  Reading the Microsoft code (a more complete listing is here), and the attempts to fix it here, made me realize that there are still programmers who do not understand loop invariants (at least not well enough to be able to use them when they need to).  Sigh.  I can still remember the excitement I felt when I first read about them back in 1983: no longer did I have to have to try to understand code by stepping through it, one instruction at a time, or by just staring at it very hard; instead I had a systematic way of laying out the underlying structure of the problem that was to be solved, and then deriving the code from it.  Even if you don't use loop invariants formally, they are an incredibly useful tool for clarifying your thinking on the more difficult bits of code.

Darwiniana on BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio is starting the new year with several programs marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin (and also the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species).  The first full week of 2009 sees the following:

Darwin: In Our Time.  Melvyn Bragg discusses Darwin's life and work with various guests.  Four 45 minute episodes broadcast at 9:00am UT each day from Monday 5th to Thursday 8th January.

Dear Darwin.  Various academics (Craig Ventner, Jonathan Miller, Jerry Coyne, Peter Bentley, and Baruch Blumberg) read out personal letters they have written to Darwin.  Five 15 minute episodes broadcast at 15:45 UT each day from Monday 5th to Friday 9th January.

Hunting the Beagle.  Maritime historian Robert Prescott tracks down the final resting place of the ship that took Darwin round the world.  A 60 minute program (actually a revised repeat of one broadcast previously) to be broadcast at 21:00 UT on Friday 9th January.

In addition, the following is scheduled for broadcast in February:

Darwin, My Ancestor.  Ruth Padel, writer and great great grand-daughter of Darwin, talks with various experts and tries to find out what he was like as a person.

BBC radio programs such as these are normally available for listening to over the web for up to a week following their broadcast (sometimes even longer).