Interestinger and interestinger

Well, John McCain pulled a surprise in selecting Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate. She's pretty, she's red-headed, and she's feisty, but what else is she? Her choice blows out the Republican claim that Obama's not sufficiently experienced -- she was the mayor of a town of about 6500 and was governor for two years, and has never faced any real national issues. Of course, she was really nominated in an attempt to get the nobody-but-Hillary voters, and that may succeed, but I'll be very interested in what Hillary has to say about her. It would have been very interesting to know how many others were contacted about the position and declined because they didn't want to be tainted by being the VP candidate on a losing ticket...

Oh, wait! I forgot another key advantage that Palin has -- she does not seem to have ever been photographed with George Bush.

Being studied

In the EdBiz (as Tom Lehrer once put it) we get used to studies as something we do or something we assign others to do. But now that we're retired persons in a city with a major university and medical school, we find that there are opportunities to be the object of study. Sounds grim, I guess, but not really.

Judy and I are now in a study of ageing and memory that looks at memory processes and, at the same time, will give us a longitudinal look at our own memories. We certainly experience enough "what IS that word?" moments to make us wonder sometimes, and this is a simple study that just requires us to take a few memory tests.

I'm also in a study of vascular function and cognition, looking at relations between how the functioning of our vascular system and our cognitive systems are related. This is a more complex study and will involve some blood and MRI studies as well as cognitive testing.

There are three reasons we like to do this sort of thing. One is that we believe it contributes to knowledge and science. A second is that we always learn something from them. And a third is that there is generally a modest stipend for contributing (though not always; a study I did a year ago paid almost exactly enough for parking and gasoline).

And, of course, it gives me something to write about in the blog when the days are slow...

Al Gore and the internet

A recent conversation in which somebody said "Yeah, and Al Gore invented the internet" in a depricating manner -- to which I had no real answer -- left me wondering just what was said. So I looked for sources, and found that he really said, in part,

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."

Judy managed the University of Iowa's networking system in the late 1980s and she says that indeed, Gore's initiatives were critical in moving from the older networking environments to the real internet, and that it wouldn't have happened without him. This is confirmed by Vin Cerf and Bob Kahn. How did the distortion leak out? Through the efforts of that real Friend O' Truth, George W. Bush and his trusty sidekick Karl Rove, whose efforts continue as consultant to the John McCain candidacy.

Who's your buddy?

There was an interesting photo in the most recent Smithsonian, and I realized that it reminded me a great deal of another photo I saw a few months ago. In both cases, a politician was being associated with another politician who is widely accepted as having done great damage to others. One of them is embarassingly like a child with his father. Some even believe (and I agree) that the other politician is fundamentally evil. The analogy is far from exact and I'll admit it can be picked apart, but the resonance is certainly there. Judge for yourself.

Catching up

Once again, I've let the blog slip. Perhaps that's telling me something, but I'll choose to believe that I'll still be able to keep it up.

So -- what's happened over the last couple of weeks? We were in LA for a week at the annual SIGGRAPH conference, where we enjoyed the awards dinner where our very good friend Stephen Spencer received the 2008 Outstanding Service Award -- very much deserved. We also enjoyed seeing a number of friends. I also organizes a BOF (Birds of a Feather) session on teaching computer graphics in context in computer science that generated a very active and productive discussion, and was part of a short course on proposal writing. And after the conference we had a wonderful visit with Randy (our son on Judy's side) and Cynthia that included an informal organ concert at the home of Randy's boss. Some of the music was familiar and lovely, and some (by Olivier Messaien) was pretty challenging, though interesting.

Since coming home, I've been focused on working on the Computer Graphics Shaders textbook and on a paper that was accepted for SIGGRAPH Asia in Singapore in December. I guess that focus is my excuse for not doing a blog sooner. But with the political conventions coming up, it should be a lot easier to find things to write about!

Please close the windows

We're deep into August, but the request "Please close the windows" doesn't mean what it usually does at this time of year. We've been having really nice weather with the low temperatures down in the lower 60s or even mid-50s, and Judy's been asking me to close the windows because it's uncomfortably cool for her. The long stretch of wet weather is also continuing, and I've not yet had to water any of our plants. (This has actually been going on over a year; I didn't need to water last summer either.) An unusual, but not unpleasant, stretch of weather -- though there are probably many places in the world where the weather is as bad as ours is good. Global warming brings all kinds of climate change.

Iowa wildlife

In yesterday's Cedar Rapids Gazette there was a small news report about an unusual traffic accident on I-380. While a semi carrying bananas was passing a car, the truck hit a buffalo while the car sideswiped a second one on the shoulder of the road. Not the usual kind of wildlife we would find in our back yard!

How time flies...

It's been almost a month since my last posting -- a very busy month, but that's probably not a good excuse. In that month we've come home from China and gotten back on North American time, been to some NSF panels in Washington, Steve's been to an advisory board meeting in Edmonton, and we've been out to visit family in Sacramento. This is the first weekend we've been home in about six weeks. It's about time!

A few things to share from the month, though. First, you may have an image of a suburban home in China, but unless you've visited there you probably don't think of this:These are very interesting homes with plenty of room, but they don't look much like a North American or European home.

Second, we've talked about our extended Chinese "family" of friends who Judy knew through her lab at Iowa. While we were at the NSF panels we went to visit our friends Jie and Yu and their brand-new baby Alex. Such wonderful people!


Edmonton was a very quick trip with no sightseeing time, but I did take one photo to share. Remember that I'm a mathematician at heart, so I was glad to see an example of a hypoteneuse (with a nod to Tim for the bad pun):

This morning was one of those rare August mornings when the temperature and humidity both fell, and after we went out to the Saturday farmer's market (see the earlier posting on that) I went for a long walk. The woods undergrowth is high and had some interesting flowering plants, and there were some butterflies out along with lots of birds and a few baby rabbits. A really nice day. I hope your day was lovely too!