The 2007 Red Sox Parade

I just posted this video from the 2007 Red Sox Parade. Manny Delcarmen and his bullpen band gave us a little concert:



Congrats to the 2007 World Champion Boston Red Sox!

More Photos are here.

This is my life ...

...in OPN/OPM notation:

Terrorism quote

As a systems academic, I really enjoyed this quote:

Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems. Jurgen Habermas

I found it on Matti's blog. A functioning democratic society and economy requires that the people feel safe to go about their daily business. By disrupting the feeling of security, the whole complex system can fall apart. This is how we end up with Americans defending the Bush administration's right to torture captives without due process. Where are our principles? The terrorists have damaged a part of our "complex system", but they still haven't gotten any closer to achieving their goals. We both lose.

Yesterday's attacks in Pakistan were quite horrible, I must say. These types of attacks are becoming so common now that we barely even notice. That is sad.

World Solar Insolation vs. Solar Installation

This is an interesting chart that showed up in the IEEE Spectrum magazine, October 2007. Green areas show where solar power is installed, and yellow areas show regions with the most sunlight. It shows how the politics can influence technical decisions. Germany, New York, and Japan have many installations of solar power, but relatively little sunlight. It's interesting to note that China seems to be a prime spot for solar installation, but doesn't use a significant amount. Is this a possible part of the solution to China's smog problem?

The other interesting fact, pointed out by a friend of mine who is a solar power buff, is that the whole world has installed 3705 MW of solar power (as of 2005), which is about the same amount of power a single new nuclear power plant with twin reactors could generate. (I wasn't able to verify this, if someone can, please post a comment).

Happy 50th Birthday, Sputnik!

Still the coolest looking satellite ever!

Read more about Sputnik at Wikipedia.