An image is worth a thousand words

This one is a great example of a picture telling the entire story. I was paying $1.30 per gallon back in 1999 when I first came to Bay Area. This year I paid as much as $3.30.

technorati tags: gasoline, gas, price, california, opec, failed+policy

A blast from the past - Tintin and Captain Haddock

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exclamations_used_by_Captain_Haddock
Here's a great compilation of all the juicy exclamations used by Captain Haddock in the Tintin comic books. Once again, Wikipedia scores over conventional encyclopedias - show me an article like this in the Brittanica!

Tags: wikipedia, tintin, captain haddock, exclamations

The mathematics of Sudoku, a puzzle that boasts "No math required!"

http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/48550?&print=yes

A very interesting article on Sudoku strategies and the underlying math. It makes for some good, heavy reading over the Labor Day weekend.

"The instructions that accompany Sudoku often reassure the number-shy solver that "No mathematics is required." What this really means is that no arithmetic is required. You don't have to add up columns of figures; you don't even have to count. As a matter of fact, the symbols in the grid need not be numbers at all; letters or colors or fruits would do as well. In this sense it's true that solving the puzzle is not a test of skill in arithmetic. On the other hand, if we look into Sudoku a little more deeply, we may well find some mathematical ideas lurking in the background."

Here is another look at the math underlying Sudoku - an order-3 Sudoku grid (the most popular type with 3x3 blocks) has almost 4,000,000,000,000 unique solutions.

Tags: sudoku, math, mathematics, puzzle, recreation, leisure, labor day weekend

802,000 join nationwide disaster drills as U.S. military participates for first time

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20060901p2a00m0na016000c.html

This is what real disaster preparedness looks like - and costs like! In USA we are used to doing everything on the cheap - then we end up with debacles like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Even the response to 9/11 leaves a lot to be desired - the commission's report on that is only gathering dust with not much action having been taken on the recommendations.

Maybe California should take a lead and partner with Japan for disaster preparedness. After all, we do share the same disaster potential in form of magnitude 7 earthquakes in highly populated areas.