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Wednesday, December 4, 2002
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In the early 1900s the chair of Columbia's Astronomy Department described one Miss Harphram as the "our chief computer."
Until the middle of the century the label "computer" referred to a person (often a woman) who computed... Over the past few centuries mechanical and electronic devices improved the the quality and quantity of the calcuations and, at some point, the term was applied to the machine rather than the person. (searching an etymology dictionary suggests first uses in 1646 for a person, 1897 for a mechanical device, 1941 for an electronic device and 1945 in the modern sense)
Columbia has a great page that discusses the evolution of computation at the University. Note that Hollerith was associated with the Columbia School of Mines and he submitted his invention (the modern punch card) to that institution.
8:45:23 AM 
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Thom Hartmann argues that the upcoming war with Iraq is largely to protect core American interests - the interests of the American ruling class.
There are dictators who exceed Sadam on the evilometer, but they are not in the critical path to American interests, so they don't count. At the same time the administration has taken advantage of the poor sense of geopolitics on hte part of the voting public and has somehow equated Iraq with religious terrorism.
8:33:57 AM
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When you are looking for a needle in a haystack, not knowing if a needle is present, it is tempting to use techniques that might have unintended consequences.
It turns out that some people are sufficiently hot that radiation detectors intended to protect infrastructure are triggered.
8:02:15 AM
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Slate has a piece on surface-to-air missiles and airliners. This may be a very frightening risk to air travel ... there clearly is a precident - KAL007, a Russian airliner shot down when a SAM got away during war games, the airliner we took care of over the Gulf and several others...
They get the part on the maneuverability of airliners wrong - while a B707 did do a barrel roll over Lake Washington (with Tex Johnson at the controls), airliners are not well stressed and momentum takes the crispness out of maneuvers. A "heavy" large jet on takeoff would be a very easy target.
The Stinger missles and Russian SAMs are very very old designs and it wouldn't take too much for people who didn't like us to build something better - I'm sure the North Koreans would help out along with scads of competent people in the remnants of the Soviet Union who know how to build stuff.
It wouldn't be terribly hard to build an anti SAM missile defense ...sort of a Star Wars Jr. My guess is people are thinking about that at the moment...
6:27:21 AM
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