Lee De Cola's Blog

2012/08/24

drowned in the roar

the environmental movement can be heard about as well as a string quartet playing on the median strip of a superhighway.

2012/07/25

i don't believe in capital punishment, but here's an idea for mass murderers: a strong circular wire cage about 3 meters in diameter in the center of a room into which all the relatives and friends of victims may enter 16 hours a day.

2012/07/17

what you can do

a few years ago i gave a talk on climate change at Georgetown U. and a young student asked me what she could do for the environment. I replied:

it doesn't much matter what you do, individual efforts make almost no difference,
but probably the most impact you can have would be to kill yourself and yourself so deep that your rotting body won't emit greenhouse gasses,
finally, i can only tell you what i did today: biked to the bus stop, took the bus to the Metro then the subway downtown, walked a mile to the campus. that's an existential answer.

needless to say, in light of answer #2, i wasn't invited back to this Jesuit university again...

2012/07/01

My Review of R in a Nutshell

Originally submitted at O'Reilly

R is rapidly becoming the standard for developing statistical software, and R in a Nutshell provides a quick and practical way to learn this increasingly popular open source language and environment. You'll not only learn how to program in R, but also how to find the right user-contributed R...

a good place to start

By Lee De Cola from Reston, VA USA on 7/1/2012

Pros: Well-written, Easy to understand, Helpful examples, Accurate, Concise

Best Uses: Refreshing your skills, Novice, Learning new tricks, Teaching yourself R, Intermediate

Describe Yourself: University teacher

i'm using the book to refresh my R skills, tho i've used the program for about a decade now. i've also recommended it to my Virginia Tech students.

the examples are well structured from simple to complicated.

but sometimes the author likes to show off: introducing custom packages on p. 43 is way ahead of most readers.

QUESTION: is the code available anywhere?

(legalese)

lying brevity

what's with 500-page books that call themselves 'handbooks' and '... in a Nutshell'?

2012/05/19

contra Apple

all those icons trying to look like plastic blisters
a snyc alarm that sounds like a sparrow being squashed by a cafe chair
the icloud contacts page modeled after an old address book and a calendar with shreds of paper...

this is the design leader of the 21st century?

2012/05/18

like LBJ's villages

environmental scientists need to fly a lot for their research and meetings; they may have to destroy the planet in order to save it.

2012/05/08

i'm good

the new 'no thank you'

2012/03/18

time travel

Three stone-agers were sitting around their fire chatting about what the future would be like, when in a flash one of them disappeared. The others were astonished but agreed to meet the next night in the hope that he might return. Sure enough, at the rising of the moon the missing fellow reappeared, looking none the worse but clearly excited.
    'What happened to you?' they asked, and he replied 'I think I traveled into the future!'
    'What did you see?' they wanted to know.
    'Many wonders, but in some ways the people are just like us. Although they wear clothes of bright colors and strange materials, like us their teeth are often aching, as I saw them holding their hands on the sides of their heads and muttering in pain.'
    'What else did you see?' one asked.
    'Well, they hunt as we do, with tamed wolves leading them to their prey on long leather thongs.'
    'Ah yes, we do that, too; and what else?'
    'I saw that to keep their enemies from tracking them they carry the turds of their wolves in pouches by their sides.'

2012/03/02

things i try to remember

HONESTY - am I speaking the truth?
SELF-AWARENESS - do I KNOW when i'm lying or distorting?
COMMITMENT - am I working to help others?
KNOWLEDGE - do I know the correct information?