Wil McCarthy's Blog, page 4

Map of stimulus jobs

http://money.cnn.com/news/storysupple...



Okay, so we spent a trillion dollars of our grandchildren's money to

"create or save" less than a million jobs. That's more than a million

dollars per job. Am I missing something?



Also, while California accounts for only about 10% of the U.S.

population, it sucked up 20% of the job creation -- by far the largest

share of any state. No other state seems to have gotten more than its

pro rata sh...

Nowhere to put it all

Old Man Winter decided to drop two feet of snow on the city, followed by

cold temperatures and wind. I gotta say, after the last two winters I'm

just not ready for this crap. This kind of thing keeps up, it may

endanger Denver's standing as the second most livable city in America.

Bring back the drought!



--

Wil McCarthy < http://www.wilmccarthy.com >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon

handgun myths

For no particular reason, I'm feeling grumpy about handgun myths today.



Myth #1: If you own a gun, you're 10 times more likely to shoot a friend

or family member than an intruder/attacker.



Myth #2: Gun owners are 3 times more likely to be shot than

demographically comparable non-gun-owners.



Like a lot of myths, these both mix up correlation with causation. It's

true that many more people are murdered by someone they know than by

someone whose house they're breaking...

Bulldozer

Yes, I can grate my driveway and move heaps of gravel with my snow plow.

Bwahahaaaa.



--

Wil McCarthy < http://www.wilmccarthy.com >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon

The owl-neck illusion

Taking a cue from a book I'm reading about the brain, I decided to try

the "owl neck" illusion in virtual reality. This simply consists of

turing up the yaw sensitivity so the apparent twist of your head is

double the actual twist. This makes it possible to look directly behind

you, and even twist your head almost all the way around.



I found it interesting, but I don't think I experienced the body

remapping sensations the book said I should. This may be because you

c...

Overheard from my 9-year-old daughter

In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight

When he farted, and earthquake started, and everybody died

We-eeeeeoh-eeeeoh-um-a-waaay



--

Wil McCarthy < http://www.wilmccarthy.com >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon

VR

Virtual reality seems kinda retro these days -- a future that never

quite materialized -- but I was really into it back in the 90s, and even

bought a VR headset sometime around 1995. Of course, it never worked,

and the company that made it went out of business, and the whole field

sort of went into a coma. I kept the headset on the theory that I could

make a wearable computer out of it for Augmented Reality applications,

but that never came together either, and now AR and ...

Captured by the Indians

Been a while since I wrote anything here, but I am home sick today and

appear to have the time. I've been reading a book called "CAPTURED BY

THE INDIANS: 15 firsthand accounts 1750-1870", and it's been somewhat

eye-opening.



The idea that native Americans were the bad guys, and white settlers the

good guys, persisted through the 1950s but had started to break down by

the late 60s and was basically dead in the late 70s, when I moved to

Colorado, entered junior high, and ...

Tonga?

I thought this might amuse you...



http://spaceports.blogspot.com/2009/0...

Neubles !

Here's an apparently serious, scholarly work about making macroscopic

objects out of condensed matter. It's rather speculative, but then it

would have to be...



http://www.scipub.org/fulltext/ajeas/...



--

Wil McCarthy < http://www.wilmccarthy.com >

Engineer, Columnist, Author, etc.

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed" -- Francis Bacon