I’ve been more than a little absent from the blogosphere for the better part of a week because Hilary and I have been sick. We sat on the couch and did very little productive. On Wednesday, we went to the doctor to discover that Hilary had the dreaded H1N1 brand of the flu. Luckily, her fever broke the next day, and she has made a full recovery. Unfortunately, the doctor ordered her to rest and “avoid unnecessary social interaction,” meaning that we would miss visiting with the family for Thanksgiving. My parents brought us leftovers, which were good, but it’s just not the same. I thought I’d give you a list of the fairly unproductive things I did this weekend (because I know you care):

1. Watched Dead Like Me… the entire series and the movie. The show was awesome, mostly because of Mandy Patinkin; the movie blew.
2. Read 1.5 books: I finished Wobegon Boy by Garrison Keillor and have just a few pages left in Slam by Nicholas Hornby. They’re sort of ironic books to read back to back.
3. Built a fort.
4. Rented and played a ton of Assassin’s Creed II. It is vastly superior to the first.
5. Watched as much Glee as Hulu would allow. That is a great show. I feel bad for all the people on the bandwagon I guffawed at in my head.
6. Put up the Christmas tree and various other decorations.
7. Watched Hilary crochet. A lot.
8. And least, but definitely not least: I all but finished both of my major papers for the semester. They’ll both get at least one more heavy edit session, but the pages are written, and the bibliographies (my least favorite part) are complete.

So there you have it. My Thanksgiving stay-cation. I’m typically an obsessively productive person, but thankfully, the flu took all that out of me for one glorious and enjoyable week. I just hope I can get re-motivated now…

That store is ripe for a hooligan to change the P to a B.

Ever since I struggled to write a paper for a physics lab class and my friend introduced it me I have been a fan of LaTeX. Since that moment I have written everything that needed any sort of typesetting in TexShop for OS X.

Recently I needed to organize several papers for their references, I conveniently found in installation of BibDesk. This was a wonderful find. BibDesk was able to create my BibTeX file for my references as well as organize all of the PDFs for papers. With it I am able to now start a centralized organization for academic papers, something that will hopefully help me in the long run.

Furthermore it has helped me write my papers. I was able to load in a dozen papers related to my topic (Ganymede) and systematically read through the papers adding more information to my paper. The simple addition of a read checkbox to BibDesk makes the whole thing just work perfectly.

Of course after talking to a Windows using roommate about this I was only able to recommend LaTeX and BibTeX and not any neat front ends.

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It really bothered me seeing all those pieces of paper on the street in Jounieh (for a bank that I won’t name )! Usually when ATMs are inside the bank, they have a trash can next to them (which minimizes the thrown tickets), but when the ATM is on the street, it can get really messy! Good thing we have Ella to calm us down Here’s a song dedicated to you! ‘It’s Only A Paper Moon’ by Ella Fitzgerald. Have a lovely day

Expérience de courte durée avec Mendeley, me voici revenu sous Papers pour mac et pour iPhone.
Cette petite vidéo Youtube m’a semblé très instructive.

TOP REASONS WHY WRITING PAPERS IS FUN!!!!

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#10 FINISHED!

Pass the paper, get the grade.

Not done with it yet as of now, so here’s a Loldog picture FTW:

Statistica Sinica loves us! Well, not truly but it’s OK…

I found out earlier tonight that a year’s old issues are freely available from their website! And that’s a good thing, tight? Moreover, preprints sit there waiting for us to right click and save them to our disks!

I really like the following article,

Zhang, Shaojun; Niu, Xu-Feng; Ang, James S., Building tracking portfolios based on a Generalized Information Criterion, Statist.Sinica 13, No. 4, 1075-1096 , 2003. [link]

Insurmountable.  Impossible.  Or at least very, very difficult.  I have been charged with the task of coming up with a complete costume design for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights Dream.  Those of you who know me recognize that this should be, perhaps, the coolest homework assignment ever.  “Should be” being the key phrase there.  Under normal circumstances, it would be, but these are not normal circumstances.  I have three weeks to design them.  “Three weeks,” you say, “that should be easy.”  But you forget, perhaps, that I have much more on my plate then merely designing 27+ costumes.  I have, after all, four more classes on top of Costume Design.  And they all have their fair share of end of the semester projects.  I also have to design the costumes of four characters from Romeo and Juliet.  This was changed, of course, at the last-minute, from designing four costumes to designing the complete set of costumes for four characters.  This, as you may realize, presents a much more complicated problem.  Juliet, for example, should really have at least four costumes: the masquerade, her pajamas, her day clothes, and her burial clothes.  In an act of utter rebellion, which is actually out of character for me [when it comes to homework assignments, at leat], I’m saying “fuck it.”  As far as I’m concerned, Juliet only has one outfit, wears a simple black mask to the ball, and sleeps in the nude.

Then I also have to do the scene design for Romeo and Juliet, which I’m sure will be changed on us at the last-minute.  As it stands now, we only have to design the scenery for one scene, but I’m sure it’ll be changed to the whole play, or something.  And to cap off my Fundies of Design class I have to make a winter kite.  No, I don’t have any idea what that is either, so don’t bother asking.  I’ve never even flown a kite, let alone made one; that should make the whole experience just that much more fun [please not the heavy sarcasm].  I have a scene to direct for Directing, which is being presented two weeks from yesterday.  I still don’t have my third actor and I have no idea when I’m going to find time to rehearse.  To make that whole process more fun, I also have to do a production pitch, which as far as I can tell, is going to result in me having to create yet another concept of design.  Yay…..not.

Moving on to my other major, I have a paper to write for American Lit. that’s due two weeks from Wednesday and a major final to study for, that will take place three weeks from yesterday and is thankfully my only real final.  And of course, all the readings I’m supposed to be doing.  I’m hoping the knowledge I gleaned from 12th grade Humanities will be enough to help me BS my way through the end of the semester.

Then there’s Italian, which I am suspiciously not failing.  I’m supposed to be going into the Language Teaching Center to work on the Rosetta Stone software, but I haven’t really had time and when I went to do it on Wednesday, the LTC was closed.  Go figure.  We also have a test coming up, which I’m not at all prepared for and we’re going to have to write a paper.  In Italian.  I don’t know enough Italian to write a paper!

And I’m already behind on everything because I had the swine flu last week.  That’s right, dear reader, I had the H1N1 flu, and let me tell you, it sucked.  I was sick for a week, couldn’t eat solid foods for four days, everything hurt, I had a fever, chills, a cough, absolutely no energy.  Not fun stuff.  So I missed a week of class and now November is basically over.

I had my first breakdown today.  Not first one ever, not even of this semester (those have been happening fairly regularly), but of this whole Insurmountable Task episode.  I sat on my bed, pathetically sobbing, because I have too much to do and I’m being a horrible best friend.  And then I was sobbing harder, because all I could think was “if I’m such a horrible best friend, how can I ever hope to get a boyfriend?”  By horrible best friend, I really just mean neglectful, because I’ve been so busy.  But Doc is very good with guilt trips, so I feel awful [which will inevitably just make me mad at him for making me miserable and then mad at myself for being mad at him when I am being neglectful, though justifiably so].  Meanwhile my cat was sitting in my lap, trying to comfort me with her purring as I drenched her ears in big, sloppy tears.  She’s a very tolerant cat when you’re upset.  And then I realized how pathetic it was that I was sitting in my bed with my cat, crying about how stressed and lonely I am, which only made me cry harder.  But I eventually stopped crying and took my dog for a walk and then came back up here, feeling a bit better.

So now I’m ready to begin this nearly insurmountable task and I will hopefully not have been institutionalized at the end of it.

Here goes nothing….

Newspapers cover the glitz, glamour and gloom surrounding Dubai’s financial fall from grace…. From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: recession video. The blog is also related to: recession survival.

5.04: Londoners: don’t read today’s Metro; it’s on drugs. Here are a few of its actual headlines: “Ninja squirrel supermum defeats dog.” “Bulgaria in contact with aliens.” “Dog thinks he’s a shop assistant.”

And in the weekend edition presumably, “‘Ne’er the twain shall meet’ says Scissorhands fetishist masseuse.” “Thinking you’re a shop assistant gives you cancer, dog trials find.”

All of which reminds me of my all-time favourite tabloid headline. I read this during the 2006 World Cup, a triumph for the power and possibilities of English grammar: “Crouch WAG on Crack.”

An example to us all in saving breath.

6.26: Michael Wolff, who wrote a biography of Rupert Murdoch, is calling on readers to boycott books until publishers stop putting out ghostwritten memoirs by brick-jawed politico-Mommy Sarah Palin and her like. Slate magazine has launched a Write-Like-Palin competition, challenging its readers to match the glory of this sentence from her latest opus, Going Rogue: “As the soles of my shoes hit the soft ground, I pushed past the tall cottonwood trees in a euphoric cadence, and meandered through willow branches that the moose munched on.”

Slate has also helpfully compiled an index for the improperly-referenced work.

6.50: Ducks back in a shonky sort of row this  morning, after the skein was devastated by bird strike yesterday. Sometimes, getting somewhere before light turns out to be such a pyrrhic victory you feel like the Grinch that stole Christmas from a Jehovah’s Witness.

No, not the band/group. Me. I have spent my day doing homework. Now I’m finished with my two biology papers and my science and research paper. Now I can relax a little. But I still have to get my history paper together, but that have to wait until tomorrow. It’s too late now, and I am exhausted after sitting in front of the computer all night. Feels like the only thing I have done today is homework and finishing papers. It was the only thing, except running up and down the stairs in biology class, I did at school today, and it’s mostly what I’ve done since I came home. Anyway, how has your day been?

Just to give me motivation and to cheer me up:

I really love print screen! I was listening to the song, and for some reason I had to stop the video, and it stopped just like this. AHHH LOVE IT.

Well, where to start? First of all it is essential to note that the print industry is in decline. However this is only in certain countries, such as the United Kingdom. Between the years of 2003-2007 there was a world-wide increase of 8.8% in newspaper sales according to the World Association of Newspapers (WAN). Of course what use is that to us budding young journalists learning our trade at a University in Scotland? The continents which have sold the papers are those where gaining access to the internet is difficult due to financial constraints and of course other factors which I will not diverge into.

Gavin O’Reilly the president of WAN commented saying ‘digital and print don’t need to be competitors, but complementary, the future is not only online.’ This is of course a good point, but in 2005 there were an estimated 70 million blogs. I have no doubt that this figure has increased within the 4 years between 2005 and 2009. This of course begs the question, why are blogs so popular?

In short they are everything that newspapers aren’t. Well most of the time anyway. Blogs are opinionated, controversial and most of all suited to peoples requirements. Different people will read blogs for different reasons, whether it is for enjoyment or even to learn about the news. It makes me shiver saying exactly that, people do read blogs to be informed of current events throughout the world. I certainly would prefer to be picking up a paper or watching a news programme to learn of such things, someone with an expert opinion, not a 15-year-old giving his views on complex issues which are happening half the world away.

Online however does seem to be the future of the journalism industry. Everyday a large percentage of normal people will have their laptops or desktop computers on glaring at the screen at online news sites, Facebook, YouTube, or any other of the interesting things to be found on the internet. It is because of online that the print industry is in decline. Of course this is just my personal belief.

Of course the newspapers still have their online sites, with which they can compete. The New York Times have an estimated 33,792,000 inbound links and 14,709,972 monthly visitors. This ranks it 4^th in the list 15 top rated sites for news. The New York Times however is the highest ranked newspaper and comes in behind sites such as Yahoo! News and Digg. Sites such as Yahoo! News are becoming increasingly popular with younger generations as the sites as easily accessible and are more recognised by the youth of today due to Yahoo! being an internet heavyweight. So even here the newspapers are in trouble. Quality British papers such as The Times fail to even scratch the top 10 in the list and other papers such as the Independent fail to make it into the top 15.

The future is evidently online; however will it all be dominated by nonsense news sites and blogs which make no apparent sense? I certainly hope not, yet I am sure the newspapers will make a comeback.

Adam Morris of the Edinburgh Evening News makes a valid point that papers have survived greater threats from radio and TV and that he believes they will make a comeback (check my profile of him for more details) even if the industry won’t be as great as it once was.

Of course most of the blame can be put on the doorsteps of my generation for not embracing the newspaper and preferring to look at bright computer screens and sidetrack off into different areas of the web and ending up on a site packed full of amusing little cats.

My view is rather regrettable, regrettable in the fact that my generation could be the one that kills off the newspapers in favour of the more glamorous internet which features no moderation meaning that information which is pointless can slip into the minds of readers believing that it is an actual fact. Hopefully the print industry does make a comeback, it would be a greater comeback than that of Ali in the jungle.

Basically I believe that the industry is in serious trouble, if this was Watchmen the doomsday clock would be at 1 minute to midnight (sorry if you don’t get the reference) and the threat of nuclear war would be the threat of idiot bloggers much like myself infiltrating the minds of people across the world in an attempt to make them think they are reading proper news.

Of course I know on a Sunday morning I read a paper while eating my breakfast and then either see friends or play on my PS3. This is the best way to whittle away a morning, with an intelligent and insightful read. It is a great shame that newspapers may not be available to do that, but hopefully all of this will change if people start to see sense. Of course Joker would have no sooner killed Batman by the time this has happened.

Most of the work that we carried out at UCL in evaluating the quality of OpenStreetMap is focused on England, and particularly on London. This is mainly due to the accessibility of comparative datasets. The reason for this was the availability of data, as the Ordnance Survey research unit kindly provided me with the full Meridian 2 dataset for comparison. More detailed comparison, for which we used MasterMap, came from the wonderful Digimap service, though because of the time that it takes to process it we were limited in the size of the area that was used for comparison.

One of the open questions that remained was the accuracy of data collection in other parts of the world. Luckily, Ourania (Rania) Kounadi, who studied our MSc in GIS at UCL, had access to detailed maps of Athens. She used a 1:10,000 map from the Hellenic Military Geographic Service (HGMS) and focused on an area of 25 square kilometres at the centre of the city. The roads were digitised from the HGMS map, and then the Goodchild-Hunter procedure was used to evaluate the positional accuracy.

The results show that for most of the roads in the evaluation area there was an overlap of 69% to 100% between OSM and HGMS datasets. The average overlap was very close to 90%. Her analysis also included attribute and completeness evaluation, showing that the quality is high on these aspects too.

OSM positional accuracy for Athens

So a pattern is starting to emerge showing that the quality of OSM data is indeed good in terms of positional accuracy. This is surprising at first glance – how come people who are not necessarily trained in geographical data collection and do not use rigorous quality assurance processes produce data that is as good as the authoritative data?

My explanation for this, as I’ve written in my paper about OSM quality, is that it ‘demonstrates the importance of the infrastructure, which is funded by the private and public sector and which allows the volunteers to do their work without significant personal investment. The GPS system and the receivers allow untrained users to automatically acquire their position accurately, and thus simplify the process of gathering geographical information. This is, in a way, the culmination of the process in which highly trained surveyors were replaced by technicians, with the introduction of high-accuracy GPS receivers in the construction and mapping industries over the last decade. The imagery also provides such an infrastructure function – the images were processed, rectified and georeferenced by experts and thus, an OSM volunteer who uses this imagery for digitising benefits from the good positional accuracy which is inherent in the image. So the issue here is not to compare the work of professionals and amateurs, but to understand that the amateurs are actually supported by the codified professionalised infrastructure and develop their skills through engagement with the project.’
Rania’s dissertation is available to download from here.

Hall KD, Guo J, Dore M, Chow CC (2009) The Progressive Increase of Food Waste in America and Its Environmental Impact. PLoS ONE 4(11): e7940. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0007940

This paper started out as a way to understand the obesity epidemic.  Kevin Hall and I developed a reduced model of how food intake is translated into body weight change [1].  We then decided to apply the model to the entire US population.  For the past thirty years there has been an ongoing study (NHANES) that has been taking a representative sample of the US population and taking anthropomorphic measurments like body weight and height. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the USDA have also kept track of how much food is available to the population. We thought it would be interesting to see if the food available accounted for the increase in body weight over the past thirty years.

What we  found was that the available food more than accounted for all of the weight gain.  In fact our calculations showed that the gap between predicted food intake and actual intake has diverged linearly over time.  This “energy gap” could be due to two things: 1) people were actually burning more energy than our model indicated because they were more physically active than expected (we assumed that physical activity stayed constant for the last thirty years), or 2) there has been a progressive increase of food waste.  Given that most people have argued that physical activity has gone down recently, which would make the energy gap even greater, we opted to for conclusion 2).   Our estimate is also on the conservative side because we didn’t accout for the fact that children eat less than adults on average.

I didn’t want to believe the result at first but the numbers were the numbers.  We have gone from wasting about 900 kcal per person per day in 1974 to 1400 kcal  in 2003.  It takes about 3 kcal to make 1 kcal of food so the energy in the wasted food amounts to about 4% of total US oil consumption.  The wasted food also uses about 25% of all fresh water use.  Ten percent of it could feed Canada.  The press has taken some interest in our result.  Our paper was covered by CBC news, Kevin and I were interviewed by Science and Kevin was interviewed on Voice of America.

[1] Chow CC, Hall KD (2008) The Dynamics of Human Body Weight Change. PLoS Comput Biol 4(3): e1000045. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000045

From Federalist No. 1 – First published in the Independent Journal on October 27, 1787 in support of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution as drafted in the Continental Congress of 1787

“And yet, however just these sentiments will be allowed to be, we have already sufficient indications that it will happen in this as in all former cases of great national discussion. A torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose. To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives. An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty. An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good. It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.” -PUBLIUS

Two hundred twenty-two years later, and this warning still applies to public debate in the United States today.

More to come…