Action Shots of Water Ballons

Just saw a great article on NPR's web site about Edward Horsford's photographs of water balloons as they burst. The photos are brilliant, they capture the rupturing plastic and swirling water as the balloon breaks. 

• Edward Horsford's Flickr Stream
• NPR Article: Water Balloons Without The Water

On his Flickr stream are several other fun shots, including a detailed close-up of a spider and another of a snowflake.  

Illegal Manipulation of Automated Trading Systems

From this CNBC Article:

Two Norwegian day traders have been handed suspended prison sentences for market manipulation after outwitting the automated trading system of a big US broker.

The two men worked out how the computerized system would react to certain trading patterns – allowing them to influence the price of low-volume stocks.

This could become a more serious problem as trading systems become more automated, and I suspect that there are cases similar to this one that we never hear about.

One argument made by the defense is interesting: the defense lawyer admits that his clients misled the trading algorithm in order to make a profit, but weren't responsible for the actions of the computer. They're appealing the case.

String Lengths in R

For some reason, in R this does not do what I expect:

string = "mystring"
print( length(string) )
[1] 1

What I actually want is this function:

print( nchar(string) )
[1] 8

An Idea Whose Time Has Come

If you enjoy literature, politics and satire, you'll love ShakesPalin.

After inventing the word "refudiate" and subsequently comparing herself to Shakespeare as a wordsmith, Twitter is abuzz with posts bizarrely fusing quotes from the Bard on Avon and the Thrilla From Wasilla. Here are some of the better ones:

Alas, poor Couric, I read them all.

But soft, what light from yonder window breaks? It is the East, and I can see Russia from my front porch.

Here's my personal favorite:

Be not afraid of mavericks: some are born mavericks, some achieve maverickry, and some have maverickness thrust upon 'em.

Scientists Drawn By Seventh-Graders

Children draw and describe their perception of scientists before and after visiting FermiLab. Quoting from the project description page:

Few young people have never met a scientist or engineer and most have an opportunity to see where they work. In 1985, middle school teachers asked us if they could bring their students to Fermilab. They helped us develop Beauty and Charm so that those students who came to a working research laboratory would come with a purpose.

Roger Ebert is a sarcastic genius

Some choice words from Roger Ebert's review of Sex and the City 2:

Some of these people make my skin crawl. The characters of "Sex and the City 2" are flyweight bubbleheads living in a world which rarely requires three sentences in a row. Their defining quality is consuming things. They gobble food, fashion, houses, husbands, children, vitamins and freebies. They must plan their wardrobes on the phone, so often do they appear in different basic colors, like the plugs you pound into a Playskool workbench.

It doesn't slow down from there. My favorite thing about this movie is the contempt and sarcasm that it inspires in Mr. Ebert.

R Graphics Parameters That I like

Reproduced here so that I don't lose them:

par( lwd = 1.5 )
par( mgp = c(3,1,0) )
par( mar = c(4,5,3,2) )