I hardly see any impressive weather in the DC area; even the storm last night (major flooding still this morning) seemed pale compared to the storms I remember from my youth in Wisconsin. I have fond memories of watching isolated thunderclouds developing in the clear blue sky, the anvil slowly spreading out. There's nothing like that here; even though the Appalachians are barely foothills, all of the clouds get smushed together by the time they reach here.
By far the most impressive storm system I've ever witnessed was when I was at UW-Madison for school. I was riding my bike home from the engineering campus to my apartment near the capital. Behind me was a vertical wall of clouds, easily 20,000 feet from base to top, stretched from horizon to horizon. Below it was dark as night, but in front of me it was a clear sunny day with brilliant blue skies. It was also moving very fast; I barely beat it home in time. By the time I had my bike up on the porch, the wind had picked up from nothing to 30-40 MPH gusts. When the rain hit, it was horizontal and you couldn't see the other side of the street.
I'm feeling homesick...
John
[Finally a topic on ML that I can speak authoritatively on, and I almost missed it]
One of my e-mail addresses was used to register multiple domains, years ago, and so I'm on every "Millions CD" in existance, as far as I can tell. I get ~450 spam messages quarantined daily, so 2500 is just a vacation away from the computer.
For the geeky "build a server from scratch for fun" crowd, I'm one of the developers of qpsmtpd, a replacement SMTP server (written in Perl) that eliminates roughly 60% of the spam hitting our corporate servers (that includes two completely independent anti-virus scanners). And, no, it's not slow in the slightest; all incoming mail to perl.(org|com|net) and apache.org uses qpsmtpd.
I also use dspam for our corporate network. This is an adaptive anti-virus scanner (like CRM114 but with other methods) that learns what you consider to be spam. It's got a nice web-based quarantine, so even the computer averse can manage it.
I've used SpamAssassin in the past, and though I like it overall, the need to continually tweak the configuration rules became a drag. dspam just learns on it's own, so it is ideal from the admin point of view.
Ask me more if you are curious...
John
Someone has already built a RNG (random number generator) based on a commercial CCD source, but for the good stuff, you need to pay dearly. Most of the hardware SSL accelerators include an onboard RNG, as do some of the recent Intel chipsets. There was some controversy about Intel including both an RNG and CPU ID functionality in one of the earlier Pentium family, but that got nixed when Microsoft was intending to use that to tie you copy of Windows to that chip.
Of course, they've gone and done just that...
John
Two comments, somewhat belated and not entirely on topic:
1) At Wiscon 14, Iain Banks explained the 'M' as being a marketing decision by his publisher. At a later con, his publisher denied that and said the M (for Menzies) was inserted for the SF novels to placate his family (Banks is not his family name). I still tend to think it was a Stupid Publisher trick, but then I work in the industry. ;-)
2) My Google-foo is failing me, but I distinctly remember an incident in Milwaukee where a heavy lifting helicoptor was transporting an air-conditioning unit for a new building and lost the rear rotor. The pilot (Viet Nam vet) was able to not only use the remaining controls to guide the cargo to a nearby sandpile and drop it without significant damage, but then guide the helicoptor itself to a softish landing (copter destroyed but pilot and all bystanders unharmed).
John
Clementine's also been done to the melody for Ode to Joy by countless choirs (who were supposed to be singing the latter straight), apparently sometimes as an encore and sometimes just to mess with the conductor...
John
On the subject of Magneto - I have in my hands a copy of The Physics of Superheros by James Kakalios, an actual PHD in physics, who teaches a very popular intro physics class "Everything I know about Physics I Learned from Reading Comic Books" (which I'd love to sit in on, except he's in Minnesota and I'm not).
I looked up Magneto and after a long discursion on why the iron in your blood isn't magnetic, he points out that Magneto could, in fact use diamagnetic levitation which has been demonstrated to work for frogs.
John
Further information from my synagogue listserv:
I passed your note on to a friend of mine, whose father works at the FDA. This is what I received back:
"There's not a lot I can suggest. Wandering down the path of trying to find some company who'll champion it for orphan drug status, which gives up to ten years of patent rights might just work. [...I will forward this to him...] Maybe he can suggest someone. However, this is one of those reasons why it's rough that the system works in the direction it does. The FDA won't submit a review to itself, won't pay a review for itself, won't research that itself.
If there's a company they have in mind, that's where they should put energy. They can just find pharma company addresses and start sending letters.
On the basis of those suggestions, I think that the note upstream that Teva (a huge pharmaceutical based in Israel) is currently manufacturing generic pemoline, that would certainly be the best first order of attack to obtain a current supply (possibly after getting the "Compassionate Use" protocol sorted out to make it all legal). Then use the information that Tim Kyger spectacularly provided to make the situation permanent.
John
I have two things to report.
This from a friend at NIH:
Ms. Hayden's physician can apply to the FDA for a "Compassionate Use" protocol. We often do this for our immuno-compromised patients when they require an antimicrobial (or antibacterial) that is not yet approved for public use. This entails working with the pharmaceutical [company].
And the other thing is that I have a contact with an FDA atty who once worked for Henry Waxman. I'd rather not post his name in a public forum, so I'll send that to the panix.com addresses.
John
The parallel with the IBS drug Lotronex isn't quite right, because that drug was intended from the start to be used to treat that condition. Cylert was being used off label to treat narcolepsy. As such, the FDA likely couldn't consider this use when deciding whether to ban it. Getting them to reconsider the ban is likely to require making the argument that it should be relabeled as a narcolepsy treatment.
It appears that it would be possible to classify Cylert as an orphan drug (less than 200k patients in US), with money available to fast-track testing as a treatment for narcolepsy. But that still needs a drug company who cares enough to make the effort to apply for orphan status, with no guarantee of success.
Sadly, it seems that Teresa has been living on borrowed time...
John
I don't know if it will help, but a friend of mine works for NPR's All Things Considered, and I have forwarded this page to her. I also have friends in Israel, so if it turns out that Teva is a possible source, I can see if I can do anything about it that way, too.
Teresa - best wishes for you in your quest.
John
I once got tossed over the handlebars of my bicycle at 15-20 mph.
Yeah, I second this experience. I had a couple years of judo plus theatrical sword-fight training (a summer at a Ren Faire). I was riding my bicycle in Madison (and I was going fast) and some moron in a car pulls out in front of me. I swerved too fast, the front wheel went to 90 degrees, and I went over the handlebars. I had a slight scrape on one elbow and a ruined front fork. Reflexes are wonderful!
John
Is it Emily Dickens whose poems can be sung to "The Yellow Rose of Texas"?
Most famously (perhaps) used as a plot point in the Neil Gaiman script for Babylon5, Day of the Dead, which also featured Penn and Teller as Rebo and Zooty (Zoot Zoot).
It really isn't that hard to fit most of her poetry to a number of tunes of similar meter. To make this "on topic" I also note that you can use the melodies from What Child is This and It Came Upon a Midnight Clear...
John
All this talk of heavy cream reminds me of my father.
When he was still working as a salesman in Wisconsin, depending on which client he was visiting, he would stop a different cheese factory. He once got a brick cheese that was so sharp, he had to stop the car and put it in the trunk because of the odor. It was yummy!
Anyways, there was one cheese factory where you could take your own jar in and get a quart of "cream" for $1. It was so thick that you could turn the jar upside down and it wouldn't come out. He would make the most amazing french silk chocolate ice-cream out of it (excuse me while I clean the saliva off of my keyboard).
Sadly, in the last two years I've come over all lactose-intolerant, so no more mega-rich dairy desserts for me. ...SOB... I keep begging for my wife to put me out of my misery, but she keeps finding things around the house that need doing...
John
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