March 2011

There were 31 posts published in March 2011 (this is page 2 of 4).

Jake Barnett, boy genius

Meet Jake Barnett, a 12-year-old math prodigy from Indiana who is already blazing new trails in science.

“We were in the crowd, just sitting, listening to this guy ask the crowd if anyone knew why the moons going around Mars were potato-shaped and not round,” she recalls. “Jacob raised his hand and said, ‘Excuse me, but what are the sizes of the moons around Mars?’ “

The lecturer answered, and “Jacob looked at him and said the gravity of the planet . . . is so large that (the moon’s) gravity would not be able to pull it into a round shape.”

Silence.

“That entire building . . . everyone was just looking at him, like, ‘Who is this 3-year-old?’ “

via Genius at work: 12-year-old is studying at IUPUI | The Indianapolis Star | indystar.com.

Rush’s Greensboro show postponed

I found out today that the Rush show in Greensboro I was planning to see on Friday has been pushed back by a day. Apparently those wicked “unforseen circumstances” caught Live Nation off guard.

Look, I’m a busy guy. My wife is a busy woman. Even our kids are busy. We all planned for me to see this show months in advance, because that’s what it takes to coordinate all of our schedules. I know Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Neal Peart are rock stars and putting on a tour takes a herculean effort, but I was really looking forward to taking a day off of work and driving with my brother to see them play.

Telling fans three days before the show that it’s been postponed is pretty stupid, in my book. Now I can’t go. This sucks.

Live Nation announced today that due to unforeseen circumstances the Rush performance previously scheduled for this Friday, April 1st in Greensboro has been postponed one day and will now take place on Saturday, April 2nd at the Greensboro Coliseum. Doors remain 6:30 pm with show time at 7:30 pm.

After much consideration, as the Toledo performance would have been the 4th show in 5 days the decision was made to delay the show rather than move forward as previously scheduled. The added time between shows will ensure that fans in Toledo are treated to the best performance that Rush can deliver. As a result, the Toledo performance previously scheduled for Wednesday, April 6th will be postponed one week and will now take place on Wednesday, April 13th at Huntington Center.

Tickets for both of the previously scheduled performance will be honored at the rescheduled dates. Fans requiring a refund may do so at point of purchase.

For complete tour and ticket details visit: www.livenation.com and www.rush.com

Artificial Leaf

Fascinating.

Speaking at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in California, MIT professor Daniel Nocera claims to have created an artificial leaf made from stable and inexpensive materials that mimics nature’s photosynthesis process.

The device is an advanced solar cell, no bigger than a typical playing card, which is left floating in a pool of water. Then, much like a natural leaf, it uses sunlight to split the water into its two core components, oxygen and hydrogen, which are stored in a fuel cell to be used when producing electricity.

With a single gallon of water, Nocera says, the chip could produce enough electricity to power a house in a developing country for an entire day. Provide every house on the planet with an artificial leaf and we could satisfy our 14-terrawatt need with just one gallon of water a day.

via Artificial Leaf Could Be More Efficient Than the Real Thing | Wired Science | Wired.com.

Internet pioneer Paul Baran dies

Internet pioneer Paul Baran died over the weekend at the age of 84. Baran’s packet switching technique provided the foundation of today’s Internet.

I find it amusing that AT&T told him it would never work.

In the early 1960s, while working at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., Mr. Baran outlined the fundamentals for packaging data into discrete bundles, which he called “message blocks.” The bundles are then sent on various paths around a network and reassembled at their destination. Such a plan is known as “packet switching.”

“Paul wasn’t afraid to go in directions counter to what everyone else thought was the right or only thing to do,” said Vinton Cerf, a vice president at Google who was a colleague and longtime friend of Mr. Baran’s. “AT&T repeatedly said his idea wouldn’t work, and wouldn’t participate in the Arpanet project,” he said.

via Paul Baran, 84, Dies – Helped Pave Way for Internet – NYTimes.com.

United Parcel Service Notification virus

I’ve been getting occasional emails with the subject “United Parcel Service notification” and the following text:

Dear customer.

The parcel was sent your home address.
And it will arrive within 7 business day.

More information and the tracking number are attached in document below.

Thank you.
© 1994-2011 United Parcel Service of America, Inc.

There is an attachment with the email that is called United Parcel Service document.zip or UPSnotify.rar, though there are other names, too. The attachment isn’t a document at all, of course: it’s a trojan horse designed to infect your computer with a virus (called TROJ_SPYEYE.SMEP) that allows others to control it. Trend Micro says the “controlling” site for the virus has since been shut down, so the risk may be low.

I’ve read that these fake emails also masquerade as coming from FedEx and DHL.

As always, do not click on links or attachments from people or services you don’t know, especially if they are written in poor English. Also, consider switching to Linux or a Mac.

Coffee and Google hits

I decided to wade into Google’s Webmaster Tools tonight, just to see how Google sees ol’ MT.Net. As typically happens on these adventures, I was amazed at what I learned.

One thing I never appreciated when I first began blogging is the power of images to attract web hits. I take hundreds of photos each week, and my lazy nature dictates that I often don’t bother naming them something descriptive: I simply copy them to the blog and assume the visitor will figure it out. Of course, web spiders, search engines, and the like cannot make sense of images, so services such as Google’s Image Search (GIS) must rely on metadata, filenames, and other information to properly index the images it finds. The long and the short of it is that my search hits have increased dramatically now that I’ve been giving more descriptive names to my images.

Tonight I discovered that my blog is one of the top hits for the “coffee” image search. My site earned 22,000 impressions from that term, leading visitors to my musing about the power of coffee.

Attached to that post was a wonderful image I obtained from Wikimedia Commons taken by Julius Schorzman (and seen above). Julius’s Creative Commons license stated that I did not have to attribute the photograph to him provided it was used on a non-profit site.

MT.Net is still free and worth every penny. Regardless, in light of the image’s popularity in GIS, I want to give credit where it’s due and thank Julius for allowing me to use his image.

Broadband op-ed in News and Observer

The News and Observer ran my opinion piece on municipal broadband today:

Don’t block broadband
BY MARK TURNER
Published in: Other Views

RALEIGH While farm life has never been easy, at one time it was significantly harder. In the mid-1930s, over 97 percent of North Carolina farms had no electricity, many because private electric companies couldn’t make enough money from them to justify running the lines.

Aware of the transformational effect of electrification and recognizing the need to do something, visionary North Carolina leaders created rural electric cooperatives, beating passage of FDR’s Rural Electrification Act by one month. Through the state’s granting local communities the power to provide for their own needs where others would not, over 98 percent of farms had electricity by 1963, and our state has prospered.
Continue reading →

Parks getting more attention

I was happy to see that a tenacious N&O reporter, Matt Garfield, went the distance in our recent 4-hour Parks and Rec Board meeting. The quote he printed came near the end of that way-too-long meeting.

I wrote before of my disappointment with how the news media covers parks issues. The coverage of Thursday’s meeting is a big improvement and hopefully part of a larger trend to better cover the parks that the people of Raleigh love.

Moore Square Master Plan

I was quoted again in the N&O, this time during Thursday’s marathon Parks and Rec Board meeting. We were debating the Moore Square Master Plan and discussed a letter presented by the State Property Office [PDF] objecting to including restrooms and a kiosk on the square. I thought it was ridiculous not to add restrooms to a park anticipated to attract young families:

“I find it a little surprising that the state prefers a line of Porta-Johns,” said Mark Turner. “I don’t know if I could support this [plan] without the structures.”

I’m still mystified at how the state could object to this. The letter signed by Moses Carey, Jr. states that there are public restrooms at the Moore Square Transfer Station and at Marbles Kids Museum. That may be true for the bus station but if Marbles’s restrooms are public it is certainly news to them.

The state cites the historic nature of the square in their objection to structures, yet for over 70 years there were structures on the square: a school and a church. The facilities in the plan are minor by comparison and in the case of the restrooms, tucked underneath the proposed slope. What’s even more ironic is that the state itself obliterated the other two original public squares, building the State Capitol and the Executive Mansion on them.

I think the state should either go along with the proposed plan or put forth one of its own. Better yet, perhaps the city should outright purchase Moore Square from the state. For the last century, the City of Raleigh has been a faithful steward of the square for the state. The city has earned the right to have a greater say in its use!

Moore Square could be such a wonderful gathering place for the folks who visit downtown. It could be a delightful escape from the skyscrapers and asphalt. The Moore Square Master Plan respects the history of the square and adds to it, bringing it into the 21st century. It’s time the state got on board with this centerpiece component of Raleigh’s downtown revitalization.

Air horn

Working from home, I’ve gotten a good idea about the things that go on in the neighborhood. Yesterday there was something quite unusual. In the early afternoon, Kelly and I both heard an extremely loud air horn: loud enough that it literally sounded like a train was in our back yard.

We’re used to hearing horns at our home, with a fire station a quarter-mile away and the Norfolk Southern railroad yard a mile in the other direction. Oddly, this sounded much more like a train than a fire truck. We’re still not sure what it was.