Brain Lint

We saw U23D last night at the Imax and it was great! I love 3d movies, and since I saw one like 10 years ago, I don’t know why all movies aren’t 3d yet, but I digress. They made great use of the “one” additional dimension, at times Bono or the Edge are all up in your proverbial “grille” with the crowd unfurling behind them.
Between the great visual effects, which at time moved the stage’s background visuals into the foreground, and the great sound system of the Imax, this was a fun experience. So if you like U2 at all, check out www.u23dmovie.com to find it near you.

I get a kick out of seeing some of the really old stuff at the Tufts library. There’s something about the permanence of these objects; they’ve been hanging out on this planet for longer than me and will probably continue to do so. Tufts weekly issues from 1943, scientific journals from the 60s. I saw a few journals that had lost their bindings and were shelved with just twine holding them together, like a gift from the past.
Last weekend I wanted to pick up some books on signal processing and time series analysis, and I dragged Kristi along with me so that we could get some groceries while we were out. While I scanned the math books the find the easiest to understand, she happened upon a book called Great American Liberals, edited by Gabriel Mason and published in 1956. The most fascinating thing for me about this book is how infrequently it has been checked out of the library. The due dates are:
July 7 1959
December 3 1971
March 13 1988
April 17 2008
At this declining rate of readership, the next time it leaves the library will be in 23-25 years!

Oil change international put together a great tool to visualize the flow of money from oil companies to presidential candidates and congressional representatives. The graph view of the presidential race is sort of what you expect, with republicans soaking up more oil money than democrats.

What interests me about the data though, is what makes a donation from someone who works at an oil company “oil money”? Where do we draw that line? It would seem that a matched pair of max $4600 donations from the CEO and (homemaker) spouse are on one end of the special-interested donation spectrum, but what of a $500 donation from someone who owns a gas station, or a pair of $500 donations from a research scientist?

For me, I think the inclusion of some of the donations as oil-money are disingenuous, but its hard to say which donations are or are not to be included.

Maybe one day we’ll see public campaign finance and no one will have to figure that out?

There’s a great musical adaptation of one of Barack Obama’s New Hampshire speeches making the rounds.