Book of the Month

Donal's picture

Personal Information

Biography

Donal is now posting on a wordpress blog called simply, Donal.

History

Member for
4 years 25 weeks
Blog
View recent blog entries

Blog Posts

Donal's picture

Between Forehands

by Donal 3/13/2012 - 3:54 pm   |

In Spring are two American tennis tournaments, each of which likes to be known as the fifth major. Both include both the men's and women's tours at the same time, which does give them the feel of a major, but they have 96 player fields instead of 128, and offer 1000 ranking points to the winners instead of 2000. Still, they're big tournaments.

The Indian Wells Masters, now officially called the BNP Paribas Open, was the Pacific Life Open (with lots of whale ads) from 2002 to 2008, and has had almost a dozen names over the last 38 years. I associate Banque Nationale de Paris and BNP Paribas with the French Open at Roland Garros, but BNP Paribas is now the largest bank in the world, so I guess they can sponsor a tournament anywhere. The Miami Masters, or Sony Ericsson Open, started out many names ago as the Lipton, and is often just called Key Biscayne. Larry Ellis of Oracle now owns the Indian Wells event, and former top ten player Butch Buchholz started the Key Biscayne event. [Read more]

Donal's picture

HP and the Methods of Rationality

by Donal 3/13/2012 - 9:52 am

Yes, I enjoyed the original Harry Potter novels, and the films, and watching Emma Watson grow up, but a fanfic called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality has really caught my interest. Author Eliezer Yudkowsky (aka Less Wrong) has not only reacted to some of the common complaints about Rowling's plot, such as Harry being an indifferent student, he has written a story that makes science and reason seem magical and powerful. Yudkowsky's Harry does occasionally sound more like Encyclopedia Brown than Tom Brown:

Dear Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall,

Or Whomsoever It May Concern:
 [Read more]

Donal's picture

Your ticket, sir

by Donal 3/9/2012 - 11:29 am   |

For an example of profits trumping fair traffic policing, The Consumerist blog cited a Canadian Yahoo article, Cellphone ticket baffles senior with no phone:

A Winnipeg couple is shaking their heads, wondering why they got a ticket for talking on a cellphone while driving — when they don't own a cellphone.

Laszlo Piszker and his wife, Margaret, were pulled over by two city police officers in the 2500 block of Portage Avenue on Friday.

Piszker was handed a $199.80 ticket, even after he urged the officers to search him and the car for any sign of a cellphone.

"I told them, 'Do whatever it takes. There's no phone in here; never has been. I don't know anything about the phone.' But they won't have it," ...

Immediately after getting the ticket, the couple went to a nearby police station to complain.

Piszker said the officer there laughed and suggested the ticket was likely issued to fill a quota. [Read more]

Donal's picture

Updated - Just when you thought it was safe ...

by Donal 3/6/2012 - 11:18 am   |


Yesterday, local news reported that a 13 year old NE Baltimore girl was missing. She had gone off to a skating barn, but hadn't come back. Her family turned out to search the neighborhood, and her older brother found her body under some trash in an alley. That sounded fishy, and I wondered to myself if he knew where to look, but today the case took another turn.

The headline Police: Girl Found Dead Was Playing With Gun makes it sound like she shot herself, but her family said she was afraid of guns: [Read more]

A 13-year-old girl reported missing in northeast Baltimore over the weekend was playing with a gun with a friend when it fired, killing her, police said Monday afternoon.

Family members identified the victim as Monae Turnage. Police said the teenager was accidentally shot by a .22-caliber rifle that she and her friends were playing with.

Two boys, ages 12 and 13, were charged with involuntary manslaughter. ...

The family said the juveniles pretended to be upset over Monae's disappearance, joining in the search for her and eventually guiding her 16-year-old brother to her body, which was found under some plastic trash bags on Sunday in the 1600 block of Cliftview Avenue.
Donal's picture

Absolutely Fabless

by Donal 3/1/2012 - 2:18 pm   |


During his keynote speech at the Energy Innovation Summit, Dr Steven Chu cited an ARPA-E grant recipient, Envia Systems, which has announced, "a more energy-dense lithium ion battery that it says will be cheaper than today's batteries and allow for an electric car with a 300-mile range." [Read more]

Donal's picture

The World's Dirtiest Oil

by Donal 2/29/2012 - 7:50 pm   |

TransCanada is moving ahead with the Southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline that would take oil, and synthetic oil from tar sands, from Cushing, Oklahoma to the refineries and ports near the Gulf of Mexico. A White House press release stated: [Read more]

The President welcomes today's news that TransCanada plans to build a pipeline to bring crude oil from Cushing, Oklahoma, to the Gulf of Mexico. As the President made clear in January, we support the company's interest in proceeding with this project, which will help address the bottleneck of oil in Cushing that has resulted in large part from increased domestic oil production, currently at an eight year high. Moving oil from the Midwest to the world-class, state-of-the-art refineries on the Gulf Coast will modernize our infrastructure, create jobs, and encourage American energy production.
Donal's picture

A Shadow of Blue

by Donal 2/29/2012 - 2:07 pm

A SHADOW OF BLUE from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.

Donal's picture

The Bricked Battery Affair

by Donal 2/27/2012 - 5:09 pm   |

I watched a brief video on Motley Fool last weekend to the effect that Tesla Motors is a good investment while Zipcar has probably grown to its upper limit within walkable urban cities. But I'd be concerned about the bricked Roadster battery reports, which are getting fierce on both sides. A dogpile search shows dozens of stories like "Tesla Downplays Danger of Bricked Battery" and some that ridicule anyone that wouldn't already know that batteries will discharge. Meanwhile, self-proclaimed experts on Slashdot swear that LIon batteries couldn't possibly be fully discharged because they found an old cell phone once and recharged it. [Read more]

Donal's picture

Cold Fusion Believers and Homecoming Queens

by Donal 2/24/2012 - 7:24 pm   |

 

As we've seen in the comments to my last two posts, cold fusion, or LENR, has many skeptics and some firm believers. Scientific American describes a film, The Believers: [Read more]

Donal's picture

Prince Neymor vs the Defensives

by Donal 2/24/2012 - 9:24 am

Prince Neymor was frustrated. He was expending a lot of energy—using almost all his powers—against his former teammates. But 'teammates' was hardly the proper word for the odd group he faced.
 [Read more]

Latest Comments

more