Jan 11, 2016
Iceland on Mars
Last summer, when I spoke at the Mars Society Convention, I used Iceland as one of three comparison points for the expected evolution of self-governance on Mars. Today, the Mars Society posted…
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Archive page 42 of 73
Jan 9, 2016
Phonics 0.6.1 Released
I just posted a new version of Phonics to GitHub and submitted v0.6.1 to CRAN, where it should appear shortly. This new release includes two new phonetic algorithms. First, this release includes…
Jan 8, 2016
Opening Transpolar Shipping Lanes
Russian company Росатомфлот is planning to build an enormous ice breaker to open polar shipping routes. The ship will be nuclear powered with a deadweight of at least 55,000 tons. For comparison,…
Jan 7, 2016
Talking SMACK
In recent days, a study has surfaced on the practice of maternal kissing of minor injuries of childhood (boo-boos), by the Study of Maternal and Child Kissing (SMACK) Working Group. The study,…
Jan 6, 2016
Funny Money in Canada
Fast Company has an oddish story about the emergency of a new local currency in Canada. Local currencies, a kind of scrip, have existed where local merchants agree to accept the alternative.…
Jan 5, 2016
Reappointed to the Howard County Board of Appeals
I am honored to say the Howard County Council reappointed me to the County's Board of Appeals last night. I thank the Council for this remarkable experience and the trust and faith…
Dec 31, 2015
Flood Mitigation Mistakes in Tucson
The Arizona Daily Star has a post about recent flood mitigation measures taken in Tucson, and opens with this: "This is a great Christmas present for 600 property owners," said Tucson City…
Dec 29, 2015
Review on Government-Run Disaster Risk Pools
There's a great review article in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction on the Australian approach to government-run disaster risk pools. The key takeaways are: Get your pricing right, Pricing reflective…
Dec 27, 2015
Phonics is Now on CRAN
You can now download phonics on CRAN. Or just do this: r install.packages("phonics") You will have to compile it. Image by Bruce1ee / Wikimedia.
Dec 25, 2015
A Tyvek Christmas Miracle
A couple of years ago, I bought a roll of Tyvek sheeting for a special project. It was completely the wrong answer for that project, but that's a subject of a different…
Dec 24, 2015
Soundex in Phonics
It's Christmas Eve, I have about eleventy things I need to get done, so I checked out how the yak was doing. I just pushed a new v0.5.1 of Phonics in R…