Thanks - First, a big thank you to Dan Waber, who generously lent me all of the equipment mentioned in this post.
click all images to enlarge
Why astrophotography? I had expressed interest in landscape photography for the purposes of creating large prints to hang in my new house and when he and his wife dropped by to visit, he let me borrow his gear to see if it was worth the investment. Astrophotography was not the initial goal but I when I traveled to the deep rural midwest US it kindled my early childhood interest in astronomy and I thought it would be fun to attempt some photos of the stars.
The gear - The set up is quite "basic" as far as modern DLSR photography is concerned. It's a camera, lens, wireless remote, 2gb SD card, and tripod.
2gb SD card - Synergy brand recommended for the Nikon D50, see note below.
Tripod: Bower ST-3100 (discontinued, but this is a similar model - 59", collapsible)
the setup
The process (glossed over) - Ideally it should be a clear, cold, moonless night in a place that is as far away from city lights as possible. Use a wide-angle lens at its widest f-stop (f/smallest number) and make sure that a bright star is in focus. Capture the images in RAW format. Your camera should be on a tripod and you should use the clicker for your exposures. (There are quite a few of them, outlined below.) After you take the photos, then use software to process them and bammo! You have gorgeous images of stars!
9 exposures of Orion, 20 seconds each with f/5.6 at iso 800
The Process (details)
Since the Nikon D50 was sold June '05-Nov '06 it is somewhat difficult to focus on the stars (I had to do it manually, whereas most modern cameras will do this automatically or make it much, much easier to do it manually). Everything else is relatively straightforward.
Set the f-stop to f/smallest number and make sure your iso is set between 400 to 1600. Your exposure time should be between 10 and 30 seconds. You'll have to take about 10-30 exposures of what you're aiming to actually photograph. Make sure that you keep your settings the same for these (same f-stop, same iso, same exposure time). After that, you'll need an additional 10-30 of "dark frames, dark flat frames, and bias frames" which you'll use in photo processing.
Read the descriptions here: "Light, Dark, Flat, Bias... What are they and how to create them?" for full details about why each of these steps are important. Summary: the "light" frames are the stars themselves. The "dark frames" use the identical settings as the light frames, however you take them with the lens cap on. This is because your camera will pick up random noise and have its own internal noise so the "dark frames" will be subtracted in processing. Next up are the "bias frames" which are taken with the shortest possible exposure time (1/3,200 of a second for instance) to capture the signal your camera makes when it takes a photo. Then the "flat frames" are taken with a white cloth over your lens to correct for any dust or smudges on the lens.
Load your images into deepskystacker (free) via the menu on the left according to the kind of images they are (light (picture), dark, flat, etc.), click "check all", then click "register" and it will do the rest after you click "Ok".
The resulting image will be in .tif format. Open it in a photo-editing program (I use PhotoFiltre7 which is free) and play with the levels.
You can also experiment with levels and sharpening and reinforcing.
The final result!
17 exposures 15 seconds each, focal length 18 mm f/3.5, iso 400. Also 7 dark frames, 17 bias frames 1/3,200 second each.
Compare with a single exposure. :)
Learning about cameras and astronomy and photo editing has been a fun experience. If you have the gear, give it a try!
It summarizes the thinking at the center of principled progressiveness and
contains valuable insight into how to accomplish goals in American politics.
Below are some key talking points from the video.
The article from the Washington Post which is quoted below is here.
"Sen. Bernie Sanders, a loyal soldier for Hillary Clinton since he conceded the Democratic presidential nomination in July, plans to push liberal legislation with like-minded senators with or without Clinton’s support if she is elected — and to aggressively oppose appointments that do not pass muster with the party’s left wing."
0:43 All Democrats in power do is cave in to pressure from the right, they're not used to pressure from the left.
Talking points from Hillary's administration upon receiving pushback to her right wing appointments and decisions:
I can't believe he's trying to rain in on the parade of the FIRST FEMALE PRESIDENT, no respect here!
You didn't win, she won, shush - don't do it!
You have to support your Democratic President!
How do you expect Her to get anything done if you don't bow your head and take everything she says as gospel?
1:21 Democrats in office don't want pressure from the left, they want to put in corporatists.
"In an interview, Sanders said he and other senators have started plotting legislation that would achieve many of the proposals that fueled his insurgent run for president, including * a $15 federal minimum wage, * tuition-free public college, * an end to “mass incarceration” and * aggressive steps to fight climate change."
Note how this is framed as "plotting" by the Washington Post. Yes, Bernie is "plotting" to do good things for Americans. The language is subtle, but nontrivial.
"The senators, Sanders said, also plan to push for the breakup of “too big to fail” banks and to pressure Clinton to appoint liberals to key Cabinet positions, including treasury secretary. Sanders said he would not stay silent if Clinton nominated the “same old, same old Wall Street guys” to regulatory positions that are important in enacting and overseeing the financial policies he supports."
2:38 What does this do? It makes the corporate Democratic party members think twice. They don't want to do that.
Example: Michael Froman, President and Chief Executive Officer of CitiInsurance and head of Emerging Markets Strategy at Citigroup, managing infrastructure and sustainable development investments, gave Obama a list of people to put into his cabinet. Note that CitiGroup was one of the big banks that crashed the economy in 2008. Why was this allowed? No progressive pressure to push back... (The Republicans on the right were ok with this, by the way, there was no opposition from them.)
3:28Treasurary Secretary choices for Obama from CitiGroup (Michael Froman)
Robert Rubin - board memeber of CitiGroup, used to run Goldman Sachs. Pushes policy that deregulates banks.
Larry Summers - Wants to deregulate big banks and wanted to repeal Glass-Steagall. (these were decisions which led to the collapse of the economy in 2008).
Tim Geithner - (Eventual Treasure Secretary). This is the guy who said "Yup, let's take taxpayer dollars, enormous volumes of taxpayer dollars... and bail out the banks."
* Note that the 4 of the 6 banks that were "too big to fail" are now BIGGER than they were before.
Obama said "ok, Number 3 it is."
4:00
If you try to go against anything Obama says, the left will eat you alive. "How DARE you! You need to support Obama in all of his decisions." Meanwhile, the right is giving him lists of people to appoint and Obama goes along with it.
4:26 Hillary's White House will cry about opposition to her right wing appointments. The minute she wins she will turn and say "Thank you Bernie, now go away, you have no power here."
4:40 - This is especially important. BUT YOU (and me, us, the people) DO HAVE POWER! Don't give up that power. The ideas and principles of Bernie won 22 states, 13.4 million votes, and ~46% of the Democratic vote in the primary including the vast majority of the YOUNG people of the country. This is nontrivial. This is not 1% of a vote or something weak like that. The policy platform of the Democratic is the most progressive it has ever been, and Bernie wants to use the leverage he gained in the primary to push that agenda!
We need to take part and not roll over when all the media starts crying about opposition from the left to Hillary's Right-Wing agenda. (pushing war, pushing fracking, allowing Dakota Access Pipeline, letting bankers put people in government who want to deregulate banks so that 2008 can happen all over again, etc.)
5:42
Power used to deliver to the American people is exactly what a politician is supposed to do! "You gave me the power with your votes, I will use that power on your behalf."
Team Hillary says "I intend to advance our shared progressive agenda" a few hours later "We have put forward ideas for the first 100 days that Republicans will agree upon."
7:23 - First 100 days of President Hillary's term.
Republicans will block everything she tries to do (most notably Supreme Court nominees). So Hillary will go for corporate tax cuts ("tax reform", e.g. "tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires") because this is what all of the right and a good chunk of the Democratic parties want. She can then claim victory and "getting things done". At this time Bernie, Warren, Brown, et.al. will fight back and we need to support them. Does anyone expect Hillary to stand up to the Republicans and say "No, this is the Democratic party platform now, this is the agenda we are going to fight for..." (of course not).
8:19 “The Democratic Party, before they start compromising, has got to rally the American people around our ideas and make it clear that if Republicans do not go along with reasonable ideas to benefit the middle class and the working class, they are going to pay a very heavy political price.” - Bernie
Does anyone expect President Hillary Clinton to rally or inspire the American people toward progressive causes, especially those which go against the wishes of her donors?
8:42 - The way to get Republicans to work with you... (how politics does not work)
NOT to ask them "pretty please"
NOT to simply agree with their ideas (why bother electing Democrats then?)
They don't care how nicely you ask or if you go golfing with them, etc.
You will not have a beer with Mitch McConnell and he will all of a sudden say "Oh yeah, you're right, raising the minimum wage is a good idea, even though my donors don't want to do it because they would lose some profit."
"These guys in power are preventing you from getting a living wage. You're working your [butt] off. I want to give you $15/hr. They want to give you $7.25/hr."
"Nah, you guys keep all the money, what do I need it for? You keep your billions, I'm doing ok."
But the only way to find out is to take the ideas to the American People.
10:40 - Why do people love Sanders so much?
Sanders is right on POLICY.
Sanders is right on METHODS for achieving policy goals.
He's not about backroom dealing. He wants to take the ideas to the American people.
10:54
One of the treasury secretary positions is Sheryl Sandberg. She's 2nd in command at Facebook. Silicone Valley has given enormous amounts of money to Hillary, including Sheryl. Sheryl is *not* a bad person - but she is not the best choice for treasury secretary. “I personally believe that a billionaire corporate executive is frankly not the kind of person that working families want to see as secretary of treasury,” Sanders said. “We need somebody who has a history of standing up to Wall Street and is prepared to take on the financial interests whose greed and illegal behavior has done so much harm.” “I expect her to appoint people who will head agencies in a way that is consistent with the Democratic Party platform, and if not, I will do my best to oppose those nominees,” - Bernie Sanders 12:43
Hillary was OUTRAGED that anyone said she is not a progressive. Well, if she is truly that, no problem she will have all the support in the world from the left to push that progressive agenda which is on the Democratic Party Platform.
Summary:
It's not about "I'm with *her*" or "I'm with *him*" - it's about your actions.
If elected Democrats want to be progressives, no need to fight.
If elected Democrats want to be neoliberal corporatists, then they will receive opposition from the left, as they should.
Assuming all of the data is accurate and up to date and adjusted to inflation, etc. here is a quick table showing the dollars raised per death. Note that according to the data in this infographic Prostate Cancer receives the most dollars per death (Just shy of $7,000), even more than Breast Cancer. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Heart Disease combined (again, according to the data in this chart) kills 739,519 however each disease received ~ $49 and $91per person killed, respectively. Of course, perhaps they are both very well funded and do not "need" donations as much as the other diseases.
Long story short - if the story is in infographic form... it is probably not well presented.
EDIT -- Note that many others had similar thoughts and redesigned this infographic.
Time management is difficult in the age of the internet.
Choose one hour of one day sometime in the next week to turn off all devices - phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, gaming system, radio, mp3 player, etc.. everything.
On paper write out what you want to do with your schedule. If you know your college course load then that's great! Plan 1 hr of study time for every time you are in a class or lab each day. (e.g. if you have 3 classes on Monday, plan for 3 hours of study time, minimum. If you have 4 classes Tuesday, plan for 4 hours of study time, minimum, etc... proceed like that for your entire week.) When planning, make sure to eat and wake/sleep consistently, at least during the week. Try to plan in one hour of physical activity (even if it's walking at a brisk pace) each day. Make sure to give your mind and body time to relax as well -- a few hours each week to just do nothing or to relax and unwind doing a sport or activity you find enjoyable (music, athletics, etc.). Block out how all of that time will fit into your schedule on paper. You'll find that your schedule will rather quickly be filled in.
Now that you have a schedule sticking to it is the hardest part.
It requires turning off all those devices while studying and in class.
Your brain works best when you are 100% focused on the task at hand. You're naturally smart enough to be above most students even when your brain is at, say 80% or 70% focused, but there is a "wall" that you will reach at some point which will require you to be able to put forth close to 100% focus to succeed (undergrad or graduate studies or advancing beyond a certain point in your career, etc.). It is easier to develop that habit of 100% focus now than 4 or 5 or 10 years from now. :)
If you can make and keep a schedule you will basically be super(wo)man compared to your peers.
They'll be panicking and cramming before exams, and you'll have it all under control. They'll be rushing to finish a lab report or HW set, and you'll have it already done or need only one or two hours where they will need the entirety of that beautiful Sunday afternoon to finish it.
Sometimes, a visual proof is more helpful than pages of computations. Here are two interesting math concepts which you might find interesting.
1. "Dual" of polyhedra -- basically take a solid like a cube, find the midpoint of each edge, and rotate each edge about the midpoint until it connects with the other sides. Those two shapes are "dual". http://hyrodium.tumblr.com/post/76098308148/dual-polyhedrons
2. The "Sum of squares" 1 + 2 + 4 + 9 + 16 + ... has an elegant representation. Just think about stacking blocks and count up how many blocks are in the solid rectangle when you're done: Proof 1 - fantastic animation! (source) Here is a Non animated 2d proof.
89,092,521 (47.57%) left no tip, but... "Cash tips are easier for cab drivers to "forget" to report, so even though data suggests people tip more when paying by card (where the tip presets start at 20%!), drivers still prefer an under-the-table tip."
> It took a while longer to de-anonymize the entire dataset, but thanks to Yelp’s MRJob, I ran a map-reduce over about 10 computers on EMR and had it done within an hour.
Aside from being a catchy tune, 8675309 is an integer with some interesting properties. The fact that is is a primitive Pythagorean triple is remarkable!
Below are some general guidelines about how to make an online course work best for reasonably responsible high school students. An important philosophical belief I have based on my experience with both in-class and online learning is that "technology is a tool" and like any other tool it takes consistent practice to master and it may not be perfectly suited for every single person. It can be made to work reasonably well for almost everyone if the following guidelines are kept:
Good practices
1. There must be regular (once-per-week minimum) communication between the student, online instructor, and in-school contact.
2. The student is expected to:
2a. spend roughly 1 hour/day, 5 days/week, every week on coursework (reading the text, regularly accessing the website to see videos, notes, try problems, email instructor, etc.)
2b. ask questions as soon as a problem (tech, math, etc.) arises!
3. The student should be provided with a quiet place to work on the course. (library, quite time at computer lab, etc.)
4. Logistically speaking, tests are 90 minutes, on paper. The student will need space, time, and a proctor for these tests. Midterm & Final = 180 minutes. Returning the tests is easy as using a smartphone or scanner to turn them into PDFs. * Note -- These times are specific to my courses. Your mileage may vary.
Here is how students often ... don't find success:
Bad practices
1. Students don't interact with the instructor regularly. Students don't have any sort of at-home or in-school person to check in on them weekly.
2. Students do the following:
2a. Spend 0 hours on the course for 2 consecutive weeks, then try to cram 10 hours into a weekend.
2b. Do not let the online instructor know when something is wrong (tech,math, etc.)
3. Students try to do their coursework in loud or distracting environments.
Myself and my team of instructors will continue to check in with the student and instructor throughout the enrollment, but the expectation is that the student is keeping to the suggestions above. Sometimes he or she may veer off course -- that's human, it happens, and it can easily be fixed if it's caught quickly.
Interactive Fourier series visualized in d3.js http://bl.ocks.org/jinroh/7524988
Tilt Shift photography of galaxies and nebula: http://imgur.com/a/yZcOB/layout/horizontal#0
Note: "Look at the eleventh pic, for example (NGC 3621). Many of the specks of light to the left and right are other galaxies millions of lightyears away. If this were truly tilt-shift, those galaxies wouldn't be in focus." from this comment.
lunchbreak reader feed notes:
The Wikipedia article on Homer pretty drat awful... This comment thread illustrates why this page is really a mess, from a historian's viewpoint. Taking everything with a grain of salt, but it seems that wikipedia has some policies that do not agree with what is commonly viewed as good academic practice. The particular article on Homer gets ~ 100k views a week, so this is a problem.
Will the social sciences ever become hard science? (very likely no, and with good reason.)
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2014/04/will-social-sciences-ever-become-hard.html
The poetry that moves men to tears The comments of this article are full of thoughtful, insightful poems.
Anthony Holden's new anthology celebrates the poems that move men – with revealing contributions from the likes of Ian McEwan, Jonathan Franz...
From the comments section (which is just as fascinating as the article itself):
Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up earlyand put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,then with cracked hands that achedfrom labor in the weekday weather madebanked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I`d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.When the rooms were warm, he`d call,and slowly I would rise and dress,fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,who had driven out the coldand polished my good shoes as well.What did I know, what did I knowof love`s austere and lonely offices?
The problem is simple, the researchers are disproving always false null hypotheses and taking this disproof as near proof that their theory is correct.
Beautifully graphs with clear explanations and interpretations are one of my favorite things. This blog post by the 538 blog is a prime example of just that.
While discussing counterexamples with a student today I mentioned the Weierstrass function. Here is an great blog post which gives some backstory to the development of and reaction to the function that is everywhere continuous and nowhere differentiable. A thumb on the nose to Newton.
Sometimeshttp://www.reddit.com/r/math turns has some wonderful curiosities on its frontpage. Several users have math texts from the mid to late 1800s and posted a few images. As it turns out, each text has been digitally archived and can be viewed for free by anyone with an internet connection and a PDF reader. The discussions about typesetting, mathematical notation, and mathematical exposition (writing style), was interesting. Below are some highlights.
Artist Matt Collings chats openly with scientists as he takes a tour of some of the most important equations in physics. Equations are explained to be an unambiguous generalized shorthand for expressing relationships about physical quantities. "A little increase in mass means a gigantic increase in energy." How much, exactly? Well, the details are actually worked out in a way that anyone can follow.
This documentary is well worth watching as it gives an approachable and concrete explanation of what all the symbols on the page actually mean and how truly remarkable it is that such universal truths, which literally apply to all objects in the universe, can be expressed in such a compact manner.
The concept of "Mathematical Beauty" is explored and (spoiler alert) it basically means that a single, compact equation can very simply and very generally express the relationship between quantities (mass, energy, time, velocity, force, etc.).
1) The relationship between mass and energy: E = mc^2
(E = energy, m = mass of an object, c = the speed of light)
2) The force of gravity between two bodies: F = (G * m1*m2)/(r^2)
(G = the gravitational constant, m1 and m2 = "the first object having mass m1, the second object has mass 2" and r = the distance between the two objects)
3) Time dilation: t' = t*sqrt[ 1 - (v/c)^2 ]
t = time in your frame of reference, as you move at velocity v.
t' = time according to someone watching you from another frame of reference at rest to the first. c = the speed of light.
4) Dirac Equation: (i*gamma*del - m)*phi = 0
Difficult to summarize without getting into complicated mathematics. Essentially it predicted that all matter has anti-matter components and it described how the most elementary of particles behaved. More here.
"What makes the theory of relativity so acceptable to physicists in spite of its going against the principle of simplicity is its great mathematical beauty. This is a quality which cannot be defined, any more than beauty in art can be defined, but which people who study mathematics usually have no difficulty in appreciating." Paul Dirac 1969 full speech here
5) Hawking Equation: S = A/4
S = entropy (disorder) , A = the area of the black hole
It is worth mentioning another blog post which goes nicely with this theme.
"Math doesn't use fancy words and weird notations because mathematicians are trying to confuse non-mathematicians. It’s not done out of spite, or out of some desire to exclude non-mathematicians from the club. It’s about precision."
As a particularly nice example, I offer up the equation for the Fourier Transformation.
At first, it can seem intimidating and overwhelming -- so many symbols, fractions within superscripts, what does it all mean? Well, each symbol has a very specific and unambiguous meaning, quite a lot of punch is packed into this array of symbols!
The image above was originally seen here and explained for the lay reader in this blog.
