The Abstracted Professor

Lately, TAE has talked with Mrs. TAE about my desire to possibly teach some classes. This may stem partially from an over-blown sense of self-importance; I am brilliant, I must share that brilliance.

But I also think it doesn't hurt that TAE's mother was a teacher for almost 30 years, and impressed deeply upon me the value educators have in modern American society. For if I could do one thing for students, it would be to convince them to be open-minded, and to question everything.

I don't know what I would teach. My college education was fairly versatile. I spent two and a half years in intensive biochemistry, then switched gears completely and spent the next two and a half years in engineering. Then I spent two years in grad school doing a mixture of both. I could probably teach math, physics, engineering, biology, chemistry...pretty much any boring class you can think of.

It'd be nice to give something back from the volume of information in my brain (much of which is going completely unused in my current occupation as an MEP design engineer).

But my motives aren't completely selfless. Teaching a college class (which you can do as an adjunct prof without your doctorate) would be a good way for me to decide if further post-graduate education is in my cards. I still casually toy with retaking the MCAT and becoming a doctor of medicine, but I also still toy with the idea of becoming the philosophical kind of doctor.

At this point, me going back school is an innocuous discussion, the family budget allows only one family member in college at a time, and Mrs. TAE has to finish her schooling before I can make any bold career moves. So for the time being, a part-time, adjunct professorship at the local community college might be just what the doctor ordered. The challenge is figuring out how to get a spot on the adjunct faculty rotation at the community college, their web-based job listing site is outdated at best, and cryptic at worst.



At any rate, it'd be fun to teach a night class. My evening class professors were always the nutty ones, and it'd be them after whom I'd model myself.

Read More

Bad Hurricane Forecasts Become the Norm!

Seems like this year is shaping up to be a wildly average year for hurricanes!

From Gregg Easterbrook:
Before the 2006 hurricane season, both the government's National Hurricane Center and the media-favorite hurricane prediction center at Colorado State University forecast an exceptionally severe Atlantic hurricane season: Instead, the 2006 season was smack on the average of the past half-century. Before the 2007 hurricane season, the National Hurricane Center and Colorado State again predicted a harsh Atlantic season. In April 2007, Colorado State called for a "very active hurricane season," with nine hurricanes, five of them intense. (The average of the past half-century is six Atlantic Ocean hurricanes, two of them intense.) In May 2007, the National Hurricane Center forecast a "75 percent chance that the Atlantic Hurricane Season will be above normal," with up to 10 hurricanes, as many as five of them intense.

The National Hurricane Center and Colorado State weren't alone. AccuWeather's weightlifting Hurricane Center Chief Forecaster Joe Bastardi, who is "recognized for his astonishing ability to grasp the potential impact of severe weather patterns," warned that the U.S. Gulf Coast "is at much higher risk of destructive tropical weather" in 2007 than occurred in 2006. Tropical Storm Risk, a weather forecasting consultancy in London, predicted the 2007 season would see nine hurricanes, as many as four of them intense. The forecast came from Mark Saunders of University College London, whose bio calls him a Professor of Climate Prediction. (Go here and click Saunders' bio under the "staff" link for hilarious puffery in the English vein, including that he received an award "at the Royal Albert Hall" and a claim Saunders "has published nearly 300 scientific research papers." What this means is Saunders' name has appeared in author lists on papers with dozens of authors. (No human being has ever done 300 papers' worth of original research.)

So what happened? The first half of the 2007 season was quiet, with no hurricanes. In early August, the National Hurricane Center announced it was standing by "expectations for an above-normal season. As we enter the peak months, August through October, of the Atlantic hurricane season, NOAA scientists are predicting an 85 percent chance of an above-normal season, with the likelihood of … seven to nine hurricanes, of which three to five could become major hurricanes." About the same time, William Gray of Colorado State -- the media's favorite hurricane forecaster, perhaps because he always predicts disaster -- declared, "Though the 2007 hurricane season has gotten off to a slow start, my colleague Phil Klotzbach and I still anticipate another active season with above average numbers of major hurricanes." A slow start. Come on you hurricanes, let's get cracking, form and destroy something! Instead, the bottom line on the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season was six hurricanes, two of them intense -- smack on the average of the past half-century.

This did not discourage Colorado State: "Based on our analysis of fall parameters, the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season is expected to be more active than the average 1950-2000 season," the school's forecasters said in December 2007. The initial Colorado State forecast for 2008: seven Atlantic hurricanes, three of them intense. Hurricane predictions bonus: In November 2006, after his 2006 Colorado State forecasts proved wrong, Gray declared, "We are improving our skill in seasonal prediction with an improved level of understanding." He predicted his predictions would get better -- and was wrong about that, too.

Anyway, scary as hurricanes seem, especially after Katrina, as a kid growing up in Tornado Alley TAE leared that hurricanes historically are pound for pound the least deadly of all natural weather phenomena. Earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados, and blizzards all occur with generally less than 12 hours warning, and therefore are virtually impossible to escape through planned evacuation. But hurricanes are almost always predictable to within 90 miles 48 hours in advance, giving residents of coastal regions plenty of opportunity to move inland. A good example is the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, which killed an estimated 230,000 people. Hurricane Katrina, which caused a relatively similar amount of flooding and surface damage, claimed about 2,500 people (includes missing persons). In terms of lives lost, Hurricane Katrina, the fifth deadliest hurricane of all time, was only 1/100th as deadly as the 2004 Tsunami.

Read More

Large Hadron Collider

I warned you people.

Read More

9/11 blogging by requirement

Future conversation with The Abstracted Daughter:

TAE: "six years before you were born a horrible catastrophe occurred that forever changed America."
TAD: "9/11? Boring! We learned about in history class. Dad, did you know that the number of Americans killed in 9/11 was 3,000 but the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam war was 20 times that? Almost 60,000 people! And the number of Americans killed in World War II was 150 times the number killed in 9/11; 450,000 Americans!
TAE: Yes, I know.
TAD: So why is 9/11 such a big deal?
TAE: Um.

James Fallows on 9/11:
On November 2, 2001, a driver on the Washington Beltway cut me off in traffic and gave someone else the finger. I remember the date because I thought, The 9/11 era is over.
In fact, the 9/11 era was both transitory and permanent. The political moment in which the United States could have done anything to address basic problems—notably, reliance on imported oil, which then cost about $25 per barrel—was gone within six months. Other consequences of 9/11 will stay with us. It is hard to imagine when airline travel will be “normal” again, or when no American troops will serve in Iraq.
For several years after the attacks, saying that a policy or idea reflected “pre-9/11 thinking” could end the discussion. But by 2005, some people, mainly academics, began arguing carefully that too much alarm over possible terrorism could be self-defeating. They said that 9/11 was a moment of unprecedented shock for America but did not overturn every previous principle of how the United States should deal with other nations or preserve its own liberties.
Early last year, a British Cabinet member announced that his government would stop using the term war on terror, because it united and perversely dignified disparate terrorist groups. The U.S. electorate made essentially the same decision this year, in rejecting Rudy Giuliani’s bid for the presidency. His approaches to economic, legal, and foreign-policy questions all began: “On 9/11 … ” Seven years afterward, that is no longer enough.

I remember exactly where I was the morning the Twin Towers were hit. Most of us do. But I also remember exactly where I was when I kissed a girl the first time, I remember exactly where I was when I graduated high school, I remember exactly where I was when I got my acceptance letter to college, and another acceptance letter to graduate school. I remember exactly where I was when I asked Mrs. Abstracted Engineer to be my wife, and I remember exactly where I was when The Abstracted Daughter was born. I remember exactly where I was when I first truly believed in God and I remember exactly the bench I was sitting on at Tall Oaks Church Camp on a Thursday night when I finally accepted Christ into my life.

The point is, events, good or bad, mark our lives like signposts. But they are the past; we live, and we learn, and we move on. If we let the bad events supercede the good and let them define our actions and overshadow our lives, if we allow them to fester inside us and dictate who we are, then we lose something of what makes us humans: the ability to rise from the ashes and rebuild ourselves from within, better than before.

Did 9/11 make us stronger? Sometimes I would argue yes, sometimes I would argue no. Personally, no setback in my life has truly made me stronger until I learned from it, and learned to smile again.

Read More

You heard it here first.

Click me (headphones required).

Read More

Fannie-Freddy and Bush is a socialist

3o years ago, if you wanted a $45,000 house, you showed up at the bank with $9,000 or they showed you the door. A 20% down payment was pretty standard for first-time home buyers and refinancing was fairly rare.
Also rare was "using your homes equity" to fund a bass boat and a 2-week trip to the Bahamas, but that is neither here nor there.

The main reason Fannie and Freddy went broke was because they lent huge sums of money to people who should not been given it. And who told Fannie and Freddie to lend that money so frivolously? Why, George Bush of course.

The following are excerpts from a Bush speech in 2002 that coincide with the start of the shady lending and wild mortgage practices that are now causing so much chaos.

Bush: "Let me first talk about how to make sure America is secure from a group of killers, people who hate -- you know what they hate? They hate the idea that somebody can go buy a home."

Bush is making the obvious point that terrorists hate realtors more than any other group of people, becuase realtors aid in the infidel practice of home buying.

Bush: "I believe when somebody owns their own home, they're realizing the American Dream. They can say it's my home, it's nobody else's home."

Bush accidentally mistakes the American Dream for the Third Amendment to the Constitution.

Bush: "Five-and-a-half million [more] families by 2010 will own a home. That is our goal. It is a realistic goal. But it's going to mean we're going to have to work hard to achieve the goal, all of us. And by all of us, I mean not only the federal government, but the private sector, as well."

What he is saying here is that not only will the private sector do whatever they have to do to get 5.5 million families mortgages, but the Federal Government will also help by buying out any mortgage companies that go belly-up when all that lent money dries up.

Bush: "Well, probably the single barrier to first-time homeownership is high down payments. People take a look at the down payment, they say that's too high, I'm not buying."

He's so right! High down payments are a lender's way of guaranteeing that the monthly payment will be low enough that lendee won't default on the loan. By keeping the down payment high, the bank also protects itself in case of a foreclosure by having a large initial burst of capital from the lendee that it can use to cushion any losses taken while trying to resell the home. So the high down payments are in effect, protection for the banks against people who couldn't afford the monthly payments. They also protect the person trying to get a loan, as the bank is in effect protecting the applicant from their own demise.

By and large, the decrease of the 20% down payment down to 10%, then 5%, then 0% down on 80/20 loans was the single factor that caused the current housing mess. If you do the math, putting 20% down on a 30-year mortgage effective cuts your monthly payment in half compared to a 0% down loan.

Bush: "There are neighborhoods in America where you just can't find a house that's affordable to purchase, and we need to deal with that problem."

He's exactly right. That is why a person searching for a home drives past those neighborhoods and goes to the neighborhoods with smaller houses and buys one of those. The wrong thing to do is to find a bank that'll loan you an 7/2 adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) so that you can get into a huge house, then hopefully flip it in 5 years before your ARM matures.

Unfortunately, that is what many people did, and the housing market collapse coincided with the maturation of their ARMs. Double Whammy!

And now, for Bush's real kicker: "And so, therefore, I've called -- yesterday, I called upon the private sector to help us and help the home buyers. We need more capital in the private markets for first-time, low-income buyers. And I'm proud to report that Fannie Mae has heard the call and, as I understand, it's about $440 billion over a period of time. They've used their influence to create that much capital available for the type of home buyer we're talking about here. It's in their charter; it now needs to be implemented. Freddie Mac is interested in helping. I appreciate both of those agencies providing the underpinnings of good capital."

Wait, what two companies did he say? Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac? Seems like I heard about them in the news lately...yes, it seems I remember hearing that they didn't have anything to do with good capital, but instead with $200 Billion in BAD capital. Capital that I, a taxpayer, am now picking up the tab for.

Of course, the "period of time" Bush was talking about was June 2002 - May 2008, when the two companies cried uncle and rolled over.

Now this is all post-haste, and really, do we need another blogger hating Bush and pointing out that he was best friends with those usurous scoundrels since he got elected, but I want to point out that its still going on elsewhere.

The current housing "aid" bill supposedly helps first time homebuyers by giving them a tax refund equal to 1/10th the total value of their home. So if Mrs. Abstracted Engineer and I bought a $150,000 home, we'd get a $15k credit on our taxes for 2008. Sweet! Free money!

Not so! The legislation stipulates that the refundee then has a grace period of 5 years upon which time, the refund must be paid back in full over the next 7 years.

So let me get this straight, the government is going to help me get a loan I can't afford by giving me free money, then right when I am in the midst of mortgage payments the government will start asking for the money back?

Only in America.

Full speech text here.

Read More

Just by typing the name Britney Spears I'm adding to the problem

Britney wins back custody of kids.

Britney invests large amounts of money in her sons' college funds.

Britney makes triumphant return to VMA's.

Britney drops music biz, will try honest work for a while.

Notice only one of the above is an actual, active link?

But the real problem is that Britney's video for "Piece of Me" won Video of the Year. This video featured Britney mooning "paparazzi" then running around and dancing with blonde women. Didn't Lohan do that in 2006? Isn't the paparazzi theme (and paparazzi in general) getting a bit old?
This video was better than Linkin Park's "Shadow of the Day" with its LA riot undertones? Or Feist's "1 2 3 4" where the entire video was shot in 1 continuous take and the song was all over the television and radio courtesy the iPod nano commercials?
Or, in an ideal, perfect world, Amy Winehouse would win with her song, "Rehab," and then during her acceptance speech (in a brash move of hilarious irony) she'd dedicate the song to Spears.

Read More