Musical Gems - Stoned

I'm in a musical mood this week, so here's another gem.  This one is by the Canadian band, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings.  I ran across this song 10 to 15 years ago when I was listening to Pandora.  It's a catchy tune with some nice guitar playing.

The band consists of Stephen Fearing, Colin Linden, and Tom Wilson, all of whom play guitar.

This song is from their 2003 album, BARK.  The lead singer for this song is Tom Wilson.  His deep voice is key to the song's appeal.  Listen to the song below.  Beware that the video is a bit weird, but the music is great!

What are the Odds? - Part 2

Back in July 2009, I noted that a man in Serbia, Radivoje Lajic, had just experienced the sixth meteorite impact on his home.  Mr. Lajic concluded that aliens were targeting his domicile.  I suggested that the odds of this happening by chance were about one-in-one quadrillion and concluded that one could not reject his hypothesis on purely statistical grounds.  It turns out I probably overstated the odds.

A coworker of mine, Aaron Betz, recently sent me an article in Wired from 2013 that gave the odds of being hit by any given meteorite at one-in-3,921,910,064,328.  The math can be found here.  Now this is only the probability for a single meteorite and literally thousands of objects impact the Earth's atmosphere every year.  However, best estimates are that only about 500 or so are large enough to leave a substantial meteorite.  If the typical person lives to age 80 that lowers the odds of having your home hit by a meteorite sometime during your lifetime to one-in-3379.  The probablility of being hit six times is 1:1.488 septillion (1.488E+24).  So, yes, the aliens are trying to kill the poor man!

On a related note, a man from Ohio, Gregg Nigl, managed the first perfect prediction for the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament.  If the odds of any team winning a game in the tournament were 50/50 then the odds of pulling off Mr. Nigl's feat with a random guess would be 1:281 trillion.  The odds of a perfect prediction of all 63 games would be 1:9.223 quintillion (9.223E+18).

Of course the odds for any given game are NOT 50/50, so a perfect bracket is not as unlikely as that.  But still,...  Duke mathemetician, Jonathan Mattingly, has taken this into account an calculates that the odds of a perfect bracket are about 1:2.4 trillion, or about 3.8 million times more likely than the 50/50 odds.

Now you might think that these are really long odds, but lots and lots of people are filling out NCAA brackets each year so the odds of at least one of these people getting a perfect bracket must be pretty high.  Well there are 7.5 billion people in the world.  If each person in the world filled out a different bracket, then the odds of a perfect bracket amoung those 7.5 billion entries is 1:320.  Put another way, it would take 160 years of NCAA tournaments before the odds of a perfect bracket rise to 50 percent.  So don't hold your breath waiting.

For comparison purposes the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot on any given drawing are 1:292,201,338.

To summarize:

• You are 8200 times more likely to win the Powerball jackpot than you are to fill out a perfect NCAA bracket.
• You are 620 million times more likely to fill out a perfect bracket than you are to have your home hit by a meteorite six times.

Relative Sizes of Astronomical Objects

If Earth were the width of a hair, the sun would be 1 cm across and 1.2 meters away. Alpha Centauri would be 200 miles away. The Milky Way would be 10 times larger than the moon's orbit around the earth. The visible universe would be 3/4 of a light year across.

Here's the math.

Musical Gems - Something Good Coming

Tom Petty died on October 2nd, 2017.  He was one of America's most prolific singer\songwriters with a stretch of hits running from the late seventies up to his death.  He was the driving force behind Tom Petty and Heartbreakers and a member of the 1980's supergroup, The Traveling Wilburys.

He had a knack of putting together songs with catchy melodies and thought-provoking lyrics.  Something Good Coming from the Heartbreaker's 2010 Album, Mojo, is a good example.

Musical Gems - Pride (In the Name of Love)

Today's musical gem is, in my opinion, the quintessential U2 song.  This song has it all: solid catchy rhythm section from Adam Clayton on bass and Larry Mullen on drums, great vocals by Bono, and that signature delay and reverb from The Edge on lead guitar.  If I could only listen to one U2 song from now until the end of forever, this would be the one I'd choose.

Pride (In the Name of Love) was released in 1984 on The Unforgettable Fire album.  The lyrics are intentionally vague, but it's clear even to dense people like myself that the song is about Martin Luther King Jr.  The Unforgettable Fire was U2's fourth studio album and came between their breakout album, War, and their monster hit album, Joshua Tree.  Other great songs from this album are: A Sort of Homecoming, The Unforgettable Fire, and Bad.

Musical Memory Bank - Countdown

Today's muscial gem is a song from 1982 by the Canadian progressive rock band, Rush.  This one comes from the album, Signals.  The album also included the songs "New World Man" and "Subdivisions", which recieved a lot of airplay and are firmly established in most Best-of-Rush song lists.

Countdown is about the first launch of the space shuttle, Columbia, on April 12, 1981.  The two astronauts on board were John W. Young and Robert L. Crippen.  The members of Rush had front row seats and watched the launch from a VIP area at the Kennedy Space Center.

Musical Gems - Sultans of Swing

For this edition I chose, Sultans of Swing, by Dire Straits from their 1978 debut eponymous album.  This song is certainly on my list of top ten favorites of all time.

Musical Gems - Faster

Here is a great song by George Harrison.  This is from his 1979 album simply entitled, George Harrison.  The song is called "Faster" and it's about Formula 1 racing.  Specifically, it is inspired by  Formula 1 drivers, Jackie Stewart and Niki Lauda.  If you watch the video below, you'll see clips of George playing guitar and singing in the back of a limo; Jackie Stewart is the driver.

Musical Gems - The Heart of the Matter

My wife texted the kids and I the other day and asked us what was our fondest memory.  I was thinking about this on my commute to work on the DC Metro.  I listen to my Spotify playlists when I commute and it occurred to me that many of my fond memories are involked by listening to songs that trigger memories of where I was and what I was doing at some time when the song was playing.

Music triggers something primeval.  The only thing as powerful for provolking memories for me, is when I smell certain aromas from my past.

I have a list on my Spotify account (userid: kerkphil) called "Real Gems," and I realized that I like these song just as much for the memories they prompt as I do for the quality of the voices, the playing, and the lyrics.  So I've decide to slowly introduce some of these songs.

The one I chose for today is the last song that played as I was coming home today.  It's entitled, "The Heart of the Matter," and it appeared on Don Henley's 1989 album, The End of the Innocence.

New Links Pages

Sometimes I find an interesting article or two online that I don't have the time or gumption to write about.  I've added some pages to this blog where I will post these.

So far I have the following:

• Viking Links - For those of us who are fascinated by the vikings.
• Economics Links - Articles on economics topics that I found interesting.
• Space and Astronomy Links - What's happening out there?

I am also added a similar page to my Rock Art blog.

Trilobites and the House Range

Two Species of Trilobites at the Same Time!

My son, Evan, and I went out past Delta yesterday to go dig fossils at the U Dig Fossil quarry near Swazey Peak in the House Range.  The quarry is located where a very rich vein of the Wheeler Shale is exposed and one can find very well preserved trilobite and other fossils from the Cambrian era (half a billion years ago).  It costs $28 per adult for two hours and you get a 20% discount if you can show them a Utah driver's license.  They give you a rock hammer and a bucket and you are allowed to cart off as much rock as you want during your stay.  The quarry is dug out periodically with power equipment so there are fairly fresh shards of shale to work with.  You try to split the rock along a seam layer and hopefully expose a fossil when you do so.  Most of the fossils are trilobites and are very small and often just pieces.  Sometimes you find only an impression because the fossil itself is fragile and breaks up when you split the rock.  The biggest ones we got were an inch or two long.

Viking at the Renaissance Faire

Yeongmi and I attended the Utah Renaissance Faire this August at Thanksgiving Point.  I went in character as Kyarssgand Vaneldsson.  I wore my full kit: tunic, boots, pants, belt, sword, seax, helmet and the fake beard and hair.  It's hard to eat with a fake beard.

Bilbo's Birthday Party 2016

September 22nd is Bilbo (and Frodo)'s birthday.  We threw a party at our place and, of course, it rained.  But we still had a pretty fun time.  This is our second one this year.  We did another back in the Spring to celebrate Bilbo's Unexpected Party with Gandalf and 13 Dwarves.  It rained then too.

The Snack Table

Belgium 2015

I took a trip to Belgium with Yeongmi last September.  The primary purpose was to present a paper at the Dynare Conference, but we spent a fair amount of time sightseeing before and after the conference.  The bottom line is the waffles are to die for, the chocolate is superb, but I can't comment on the quality of the beer.  Oh and the best part is they never ask "Do you want fries with that?", the assumption being that of course you do and they're automatically included!

Old Guild Halls on the Main Square in Brussels

Making a Viking Plank Shield

After having made several viking style shields with plywood, I decided I would try making one out of planks.  This is more authentic, I understand, but I am still cheating by using some old pine boards that were once part of a set of shelves I no longer use.  I figured the lumber was essentially free and I still have lots of glue, nails, paint, fabric, etc. from making the plywood shields, so why not?

My online reading has led me to conclude that the planks in actual viking shields were simply butted together and glued.  The linen fabric and rawhide edging were very important in keeping the planks together.

Making Viking Shields

I had the crazy idea to make viking shields for myself, some family and friends.  I thought I would document how I did it and add some tips I learned.

The intent was to make something that was fairly accurate historically, but without too much cost.  As a result I used a lot of modern materials such as plywood, zinc-coated nails, wood glue, and vinyl fake leather.  The overall construction is pretty close to how the vikings appear to actually have assembled their shields, however.

Being Gandalf

For Christmas 2015 my children got me a high quality replica of Gandalf's staff from the Hobbit movies.  It is quite solid and heavy, made from strong plastic with a steel core.  It even has a built in crystal at the top that lights up.

It glows!

Joseph Lejuene at the John Cockerill Statue in Seraing, Belgium

I was in Brussels Belgium for a conference last week and found myself with a Friday free, so Yeongmi and I took a trip to Liege, Belgium in the heart of Wallonia.  Before the trip my mother emailed me this photo of an ancestor of mine, Joseph Lejuene, who was from Liege.

After a long Google search I found the following entry at Wikipedia on John Cockerill, an industrialist who was responsible for building one of the first ironworks and a mechanical engineering companies in Seraing, Wallonia on the Meuse River, a few miles upstream from the city of Liege.

The statue in the photograph is a memorial to him and is located in front of the city hall in the town of Seraing.  Cockerill's grave is just in front of the statue.  The statue faces north toward the river, and on the northwest side of the pedestal is an iron statue of an ironworker that Joseph Lejuene posed for in the late 1880's.

Photo from the same spot taken on Oct. 2, 2015

Kyoto 2015

My first weekend in Korea, July 3 - 5, I took Alan to Kyoto, Japan.  This is one of my favorite places on the earth and Alan had never been to Japan before.  So I cashed in some Korean Air frequent flyer miles and off we went.  We visited a whole slew of UNESCO world heritage sites in our three days there.  I walked until I thought I would drop dead, rested, and then walked more.  We had a great time!

Fushimi Inari

Taiwan 2015

I was back in Taiwan this June for another conference, this time the Computational Economics and Finance Meetings.  And my youngest son, Alan, came with me.  We were there for week from the 19th of June through the 26th, when we flew to Korea.  The weather was hot and muggy.  It rained frequently and I had difficulty walking long distances.  The conference ran from the 20th through the 22nd, and I did get some free time to go out then, but frankly we were both uncomfortable enough that we went out very little.  When the conference was over, however, we went on a two-day tour to Sun Moon Lake in the mountains of central Taiwan and that was lots of fun.

Wenwu Temple at Sun Moon Lake