Friday  25 Sep 2015           1 comment

Pascal's wager, in fifteen words: you can't prove whether God exists but you should believe because the stakes are infinite.

The argument is criticized—deservedly—on logical grounds, but it also should be called out for being an appeal to fear: think what might happen, for eternity mind you, if you don't believe.

Ben Carson gave Pascal's wager as his closing words in a debate on science and faith. Carson is second in some polls of GOP voters, second only to a buffoon whose signature tactic is appealing to fear of immigrants. It seems like an eternity since we had a President who said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Wednesday  23 Sep 2015           comment?

Happy equinox, everyone, at 01:21 PDT this morning (0821Z).

Tuesday  22 Sep 2015           comment?

One medicine I take requires fine tuning of dosage. My doctor told me it's important to stick with one manufacturer, as there's potential variation between what are supposed to be equivalent formulations. The pharmacy in town stocks the drug in a range of dosages, all from the same manufacturer: Mylan. Out of curiosity, I read up on the company.

From Wikipedia, I learned that Mylan hired a private eye back in the 1980s to check out FDA officials who seemed to be delaying its drug approval requests. Their concerns were well‑founded; several of Mylan's competitors were bribing the FDA. Mylan seemed like one of the good guys.

Then I read about an episode where Mylan had cornered the market on raw ingredients for a few popular generic drugs, allowing them to raise the price through the roof. Not the good guys there. Mylan settled with the government for $147 million without admitting any wrongdoing.

A smaller drug company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, was in the news this month for raising the price of a decades‑old drug from $13.50 a tablet to $750. Turing's CEO, Martin Shkreli, said "the drug was unprofitable at the former price." A tablet sells for $0.66 in the UK and for $0.10 or less in India. Asked how he sleeps at night, Shkreli said, "You know, Ambien."

Saturday  19 Sep 2015           comment?

At right, a few Japanese map symbols. I like how the additional lines on the power station symbol point both down and up, perhaps to suggest alternating current. Or maybe they imply rotation, instrumental in the production of AC. (See also this motor logo.) Comment on the symbol for chimney would be superfluous. The obliqueness of the symbol for quarry suggest cuts imposed on the rock rather than an existing order. The word quarry (from Latin quadrum) refers to the foursquare shape rocks are hewn to. Typeface designer Adrian Frutiger died this month, which spurred me to read about symbols on the web. His book Signs and Symbols: Their Design and Meaning is every bit as good as the reviews on Amazon say. Happy nineteenth, everyone.		factory
		power station
		chimney
		quarry

Thursday  17 Sep 2015           comment?

A ninth grade student made headlines this week for having been detained after bringing a homemade digital clock to school. He was taken from school in handcuffs and interrogated without his parents present. The school and police defend their choice of how to respond to what they saw as a suspicious device; the boy's father is considering transferring him to another school.

Alfred Hitchcock said that his father asked the police to lock him up for five minutes after he'd misbehaved as a kid. Frank Zappa was arrested in a dopey sting operation when he was 24. Both went on to distrust police and to explore the theme of injustice in their art.

Some are quick to say it's horrible that 14‑year‑old Ahmed Mohamed had to endure harsh treatment; others say it's awesome that he's now been invited to the White House. Me, I'm reminded of a parable I quoted a few years ago.

Wednesday  16 Sep 2015           comment?

From an early transcript of this evening's debate:

Hugh Hewitt: ...  Governor Kasich, you've been on my show a lot. You refused to attack Hillary Clinton, ... .

Carly Fiorina, I don't have to bring up the Secretary of State—you bring her up, so (inaudible).

Hewitt said "you bring her up sua sponte." Your first guess as to what subject he's a professor of will likely be correct.

Saturday  12 Sep 2015           3 comments



I remember the ten stamps the USPS issued in 1991 showing the planets (and the moon) along with spacecraft that had photographed them. People had their favorites: one friend liked Neptune for its serene blueness, another was partial to the Pluto stamp for its text: not yet explored. The former was an artist; the latter, an engineer. Neither lived to see the pics we're now getting of Pluto.

Pluto has far exceeded my expectations. It looks amazing.

Friday  11 Sep 2015           comment?

"It's half the size of an adult, so it's more manageable and would fit in a lot of homes." Just the thing for an Amazon wish list.

Wednesday  02 Sep 2015           comment?

"horrible, neutered"	– Washington Post
"Sauber, aber seelenlos" (clean, but soulless)	– Frankfurter Allgemeine
"lacks elegance"	– flex941 on Slashdot
"simply garbage"	– Daring Fireball
"resembles a pre-school's [logo]"	– Business Insider

Today's topic is Google's new sans-serif logo.

The double-loop g is a highlight of most serif (and some sans) fonts. I wish there were a g in Tommyjournal to grace the top of this page. Google had a proper g, but now they are yet another company to have boiled the taste out of their logo to make it legible on tiny screens.

Google trots out another rationale: the new logo is concisely expressible in SVG, saving bandwidth. Well, music played with sine waves and no vibrato can be encoded concisely too.