J. Michael Andresen

My last Tuesday contest was so much fun that I thought I would run another one! Be the first to give the correct answer in the comments and I will send you a prize! Today's Question: Why I am behaving so oddly in the video below?

Katie and I saw WALL-E 1.4 times over the weekend. (We had it from Netflix on Saturday, and then on Sunday we were babysitting a child who wanted to see the first forty minutes of it before bedtime.) It's a really great movie, and well worth seeing even for those without kids. I must admit to one small area where I was unable to suspend my disbelief, however. The premise of the movie is that humans have destroyed earth and have established a colony on a massive spaceship in the outer solar system. The colony thrives for over 700 years in resort-style luxury, but they grow soft and fat because their bones disintegrate in the microgravity of outer space. Given the technological wonder that is the spacecraft and all the amazing things it is shown to be capable of, why can't the ship be piloted in a large circle? That could provide a downward acceleration of 9.8 meters per second squared and thus mimic gravity of the earth. I just don't get it.

An IM conversation today: Tina: I noticed that the rocks we got you on our vacation are still at our house. Tina: So what time are you coming over tonight? Michael: I can't make it tonight. Tina: But how can you spend one more night away from your rocks? Michael: I know, I know. Michael: But they've lasted for millions of years. Another week or two seems safe. Tina: Clearly the rocks will be fine. I fear you will be a slobbery mess as you weep from missing them. Michael: Aja Michael: (That's not a typo. It's Spanish for "aha.") Tina: Bueno! Tina: Me gusta hablar en espanol. Michael: You are able to eat in Spanish? Tina: Nope. Michael: No tengo ni idea de cómo decir algo en español. Tina: Is that one of those things like being status free on Facebook? Michael: Yes! Michael: Or not, since I'm just using Google Translate . Tina: We'll leave it to the philosophers to decide. Michael: Sounds good.

A relatively new friend of mine (an old friend of some of my MIT friends) posted a link on his blog to a web site designed around a book with cutesy graphs containing life-affirming messages. Here's the one that caught David's eye: This is a cute way to describe the very true concept in life (or science) that it's good to keep your eyes open for interesting experiences (or observations) that are unrelated to your initial purpose (or hypothesis). I browsed a few more pictures on the site, but stopped after being disturbed by this one: My inner nerd prevented me from deriving any pleasure from the cute drawings after this bungled Venn diagram. The different Venn circles are supposed to represent sets of some description, and the items that belong to both encircled sets are contained in the overlapping intersection. What, I ask you, is the set of "Where you are" supposed to contain? Maybe each of the cells in my body is considered individually? That would make sen...

I had a contest on Tuesday to Name Those Tools! The answers are embedded above. I thought that the nail set was the trickiest of the bunch. My project last weekend was to put baseboards in the closet of our guest bedroom. For some completely bizarre reason, the previous owners did not see fit to put baseboards in the closet. (I have to trust Katie that this does, in fact, qualify as bizarre.) Here's our new baseboards, still needing to be painted: The nail set, as Gloria pointed out, is for pounding nails below the surface of the wood so that they can be spackled over and then painted. I brought my nail set when I moved in with my lovely wife, and enjoyed stumping her as to the function of the tool. (That was the inspiration of the quiz!) The hand plane was to make the tiny-yet-complicated piece of baseboard pictured below. Although it's only the size of an overgrown toothpick, it took 2 of the 8 hours I worked on the project to shape the wood so that it would fit into the all...

Lance Mackey finished in plenty of time to beat the pack in the Iditarod . (He's pictured above crossing the finish line with his 15 dogs.) That means he has now won the prestigious sled dog race an amazing three times in a row . The top five mushers are now at the finish in Nome (the rest of the pack is still on the trail) and are listed below with their finish time: Top Finishers 1 Lance Mackey 03/18 11:38 2 Sebastian Schnuelle 03/18 19:05 3 John Baker 03/18 20:18 4 Mitch Seavey 03/19 04:18 5 Cim Smyth 03/19 04:27 Lance beat the second-place finisher by 7.5 hours. Wow! That means that the answer to Question 5 on the 2009 Prognostication Quiz is A. The dozen Mackey-a-roons who correctly predicted this: Tina Pete C. Ted Kevin Jan Zoe Katie Gloria Michael Adrian Marcus Ekrem That means Tina remains in charge of her own destiny. The current leaderboard (Tina has 4 points, the rest have 3): Tina Pete C. Ted Kevin Stephanie Jan Zoe On the other end of the list, Marcus finally managed ...

I've decided to run a contest to enliven my sleepy Tuesday. I did a house project over the weekend and used the three tools shown above. What specific task were each of the three tools designed for? The first person to put the correct answer in the comments section wins a prize that I will send through the mail. (Click for a larger image.) Good luck!

Grant posted a link reporting a study suggesting that patients feel more comfortable when doctors are dressed stereotypically. I commented, "It's also true that pretty people are more intelligent. It turns out that if you have 'good genes' it gives you lots of advantages, including physical beauty, intelligence, disease resistance, and many others. (In other words, the same genes that regulate accurate production of a person's face also regulate accurate production of a person's brain.)" Grant worried that studies that get at this correlation might be driven by rare but powerful outliers such as genetic syndromes that affect both craniofacial development and IQ. That is probably not the case because (a) those syndromes are astoundingly rare and (b) they would cause a potential subject from being admitted to a scientific study to begin with. Here's a review and meta-analysis confirming this effect. It also points out that the earliest research in t...

Yesterday in lab, two of my coworkers built an arch into their bay. They had collected an insane number of styrofoam boxes piled high around their desks, and it was starting to impede their workflow. They decided to clean up their work space and make a beautiful piece of art at the same time. That's Blake on the left, and Orion on the right. It's not as structurally sound as an arch is supposed to be. The top is held together by tongue depressors stuck through the styrofoam, and the flanges at the top are as much structural as they are decorative. Still, it's an impressive feat of engineering for two scientists with no formal training in architecture. I learned a bit about arches recently at a local art exhibit on Eero Saarinen, who did have some formal training in archtecture. He designed the St. Louis Gateway Arch. I visited St. Louis two years ago this month: The Gateway Arch is a caternary arch, the arch shape that bears the most weight. If you ever want to try again, ...

The Economist has a wonderful editorial this week about legalizing drugs. I wholeheartedly agree that the world will be better off by far if the United States legalized, taxed, and regulated illicit drugs such as cannabis, cocaine, and heroin. The goods that will come from legalization: 1. We will save the $40 billion the US spends trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. 2. We will save the costs involved in incarcerating so many drug offenders (as well as gain their productivity in society). 3. We will gain money through taxation on the legal drug trade. 4. Legalized drugs will be regulated, and thus purer and safer to take. 5. With all these savings, we will have lots of money to spend on treating drug addiction as a public health issue rather than as a law and order issue. We will have lots of money to fund treatment programs for addicts that are ensnared by the easier availability of drugs. 6. We will prevent tens of thousands of killings in countries that produce drugs when proc...

Katie and I have had a bad eBay experience recently. We bought a piece of furniture, I assembled, and only then (of course) realized that it wasn't what we had ordered. It's been quite an annoying ordeal getting it returned and our money refunded. Right now the seller says he refunded our money, but it hasn't appeared back in my account. Is PayPal holding on to it? That experience reminded me of a fun exchange I had with a customer back when I was an eBay seller. (I used to run an annual "garage sale" type series of auctions every year before Christmas.) ===== Dear Michael, The $8 shipping charge is high considering Media Mail for this could be no higher than $4. Will you consider lowering this? Thank you, Mrs. Ives ===== Too late to do that. Can you just bid $4 less than you would have if shipping were less? Thanks! Michael ===== Actually you can agree to do this by just making the commitment with a buyer. The buyer can then change the shipping charge before payi...

Here's the third installment of rebus puzzles I made in grade school. (Click for a larger version): Check out Challenge #1 and Challenge #2 for an introduction to my oeuvre and for solving clues. My sister Missy had the first correct answer last time, while Grant provided the best surrealist answer (with my sister Tina between the two extremes). Post your answers in the comments section!

I've not had as much blogging time as I'd like because I'm writing a grant that is due a week from Thursday. I was thinking today that I could probably get a nice quid pro quo from my audience. I've attached the current appearance of Figure 4, which is the key bit of preliminary data that will hopefully fund a grant. I'd like to ask everyone's assistance in helping me write the figure legend. (I hate writing figure legends!) Look at the figure above, and try to summarize what it's saying in one sentence (or more, if you're particularly bored). I'll pin them all together and paste them into the grant before I send it off. Thanks for helping me out!