I finally finished posting the photos from our London trip… in 2003. Actually, the photos were online at my old photo site, but I had never captioned and organized them. Tonight I finished days six and seven and uploaded the remaining pictures. So if you want to see the photos, now with captions, check out the London 2003 photo albums.
We went to Plaza Frontenac this morning to see Good Night, and Good Luck, the George Clooney/David Straithern movie about Edward R. Murrow’s clash with Senator Joseph McCarthy. Great film, great performances. So very appropriate, especially in light of King George’s domestic spying… oops, I mean terrorist surveillance.
According to an article at ScienceBlog, all of us who enter our currency at Where’s George have been helping model the spread of infectious diseases. The authors of the study were trying to model the spread of disease in modern society and happened to find out about Where’s George.
If you’re not familiar with the site, registered users enter the serial numbers of their currency, which the systems records with the user’s ZIP code. As the bills change hands, people continue to enter the serial numbers, providing a trail showing the bill’s progress across the country over time. You’re notified whenever one of your bills is entered again, and points are allocated based on a formula. They’ve even added integration with Google Maps so you can visualize the path. if you’re really into it, you can buy special stamps to mark the bills so that users are encouraged to visit the site and register the bill.
Anyway, since money gets passed from person to person just like a virus would be, these researchers were able to use the data to develop a model that describes the movement of travelers over both short and long distances. Nice to know that all this time I was actually helping to work toward a scientific breakthrough and not just playing a silly game. I wonder how many ways you can split a Nobel Prize?
Finally, after years of television shows about doctors, lawyers, cops, and criminals, IT workers finally get their due. News.com reports that Channel Four in the UK is set to air “The IT Crowd” a comedy about a “dysfunctional IT department.” Of course, this means that in a few years, we’ll have our own American version on NBC.
Now the real question is when will the networks have the guts to present a series about… chemical engineers. Just imagine the suspense as the handsome ChE works feverishly to complete a McCabe-Thiele diagram in time to save the day. I won’t even get into the season-ending cliffhanger where he calculates the tortuosity of a packed bed.
