Conyers and Future Posts

For some reason, I've only had precious few opportunities to complain about the walking fail that is Monica Conyers. Despite the councilwoman's incompetence and moodiness (putting it rather mildly), she hadn't done anything truly illegal yet, had she?

Well, where there's smoke, there's fire. Conyers has pleaded guilty to bribery. While she hasn't decided to step down yet (and I fully expect her to refuse to do so), Detroit's other councilmen are putting the city first (for a change) and taking the choice out of her hands. Such a move indicates real leadership in Detroit's city hall; let's hope that it is not an isolated incident.


Besides this shitmess, I am now back in town and have a bunch of material that is overdue for this blog:

1. The GEM meeting wrapup.
2. Part two of my response to Telepathichtroy.
3. A looonnnggg overdue description of the best Spring AGU presenter ever.
4. The sun is boring again.

Should be a good blogging time all around!

So You Want to Model: Part 1

This post is part 1 of a two part response to a comment on a post concerning numerical modeling of the space environment. TelepathicTroy called for Open Source space codes in order to develop transparency as far as code capability and performance.

This post presents a non-open source solution to this issue: The Community Coordinated Modeling Center. The CCMC is a NASA-run organization that acts as a third party who runs and compares many different space weather models. Furthermore, they provide a resource to the community for running these models and visualizing their results. Although this is not opening up source code to everyone, it does give non-code developers the chance to run each model through a gauntlet of tests and evaluations.

This resource is open to everyone. Check out their runs on request section, or browse their library of simulation results and play with their plotting tools. There are results available from recent model comparisons, the conclusions of which were presented at the current GEM Workshop.

There are issues, however. A limited set of parameters and controls for each model are available to the end user, and this leads to model developers contesting CCMC results that may show their model in a bad light. It is constantly asserted by developers that the results of a certain run would be much more favorable if CCMC had used a certain set of paramters instead of their defaults (typically picked for robustness.) I must admit guilt to this very charge, but in some cases the developer is indeed correct. So while the CCMC is a powerful comparison and evaulation tool, it is still cannot do what an open source approach can: provide 100% transparency to what a code is doing and how well it does it.

It is interesting that such a tool could give rise to a hobby-based or grass roots space weather modeling crowd. Unlikely, but an intriguing prospect.

Stay tuned for Part 2: the SWMF.

Hell yeah!

Anyone who follows this blog (anyone? Bueller?) knows how I feel about IP bandwidth caps. They're awful.

In a nutshell, imagine hitting a ceiling in the amount of bandwidth you could use in a month (see: running out of cell phone minutes) and then getting charged out the ear for each megabit you use after that. Now imagine how it would change your use of the web when browsing high-bandwidth sites (especially YouTube.)

Factor in how important the web has become as a way to spread information when information is under attack (anyone? Iran?). Conclusion: bandwidth caps are a terrible idea.

Apparently, New York Congressman Eric Massa agrees.

GEM Update

The GEM workshop rolls on; here's an update from the world of space environment modeling.

GEM is very busy; there are several sessions, or "break-out sessions", occurring at one time. Because of the concentration of the material, you're always missing something that is both interesting and relevant to your research. The meeting is supposed to be in "workshop mode", which means talks are short and discussion is long. There is typically a 50% compliance rate with this.

Probably the most interesting information coming out of the workshop so far is how separate space weather models handle the same events. While there are some large-scale similarities, there are many important differences. These differences come up in the three major MHD models in the community - or, in plain-speak, three numerical models, relying on the same underlying physics, all give different results for the same solar driving conditions.

This is a somewhat scary revelation, though not at all surprising. In essence, it means that what we think we know, what the model is actually doing, and what we think the model is doing can all be conflated together and not consistently with each other. Much of this comes with the differences in the way the physics are implemented in the different codes and the different parameters you can change within a single code.

The solution is a lot of work: model parameter space mapping, data-model comparisons, and comparisons to other models. Within a single modeling group, this is a fine solution, but sharing and comparing such results is not always a welcome proposition. As funding can depend on model performance, teams are often reluctant to share these verification and validation results to the world even though it is a necessary step towards better science.

Such was the case this week: modelers could not settle on a set of community-wide verification/validation methods and metrics. This is, of course, a case of history repeating. Some groups do understand the importance of these comparisons and are making concessions and contributing, but others are clamming up as hard as they can.

Truly Outrageous.

On the final stop of my "Tour de Conference" for summer 2009, I will be going to the Geospace Environment Modeling (GEM) summer workshop. This is THE meeting for researchers such as myself; I'll be sure to keep the updates flowing throughout the week. I will be giving four seperate presentations (two talks, two posters), so my plate will be pretty full. We'll see if I can get in any arguments with other numeric modelers...

I frickin' love the internet.

Internets, I love you.

TheTorrents and ISPs Dilema

An extremely interesting story has popped up over at Tom's Hardware. In Norway, one of the hotbeds for internet and intellectual property law, may see a landmark trial soon. Norway's largest ISP is being sued because they refuse to block the controversial file sharing website, The Pirate Bay. The suit is being brought by, among other agencies, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). No, I didn't know there was such a thing either.

Let's pretend that the IFPI wins. This would essentially lay the groundwork for any company forcing an internet service provider to block anything that is against their interests. Sound familiar (I'm looking at you, China)? I could rant about this for some time, but I think this quote from the ISP being sued wraps it up nicely:

“This would be the same as demanding that the postal service should open all letters, and decide which ones should be delivered.”

Indeed.

Iran and the Internet

Yes, I'm a bad blogger. I've now finished 2/3 of the travel/conference season, and it's taken a toll on my blog frequency. I returned to Los Alamos last night at midnight from my second trip to find that my lawn had grown twice as fast as it should have. Oh, the sounds of a choking push mower...

I did want to take a quick opportunity to comment on the uprising in Iran- particularly the role that the web has played so far. Apparently, demonstrators have used Twitter to help organize their movement, and despite the Iranian government's work to block certain sites, key video and pictures of what is unfolding have made it to the outside world. After apparent DDoS attacks on Mir Hossein Moussavi's websites, counter DDoS attacks have been organized-- and not just by Iranians, either.

The results thus far have been stirring (from here):


Sure, the internet gives a mouthpiece to some of the greatest whackos ever, but the limitless speech and information it provides has become a key tool for the free world.

Spring AGU Wrap-up

Spring/summer is always rough because of the number of conferences that take place. This year I have three week-long trips within five weeks, each requiring a good amount of preparation on my behalf. Before I take off for my second trip, here's the highlights from the AGU Joint Meeting (aka spring AGU) as far as space science:

1. There was a good portion of presentations dedicated to the TWINS satellites, which are now pumping out data. These satellites carry instruments that detect high energy neutral atoms flying away from the magnetosphere, yielding interesting data products -- including temperature maps of the magnetosphere. While this is a data source I'm not familiar with, it could be a very powerful method for exploring magnetospheric dynamics.
2. The space weather sections were mildly interesting. They served more as a show-and-tell session rather than a true science expo. Right now, there are three agencies working to convert science computer models to operational computer models: NASA's Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC), NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). How these entities will coexist has yet to be determined.
   
3. There was a crazy guy there. See upcoming post.
   

Yeeeaaaah, that's about it, honestly. Typically, Spring AGU is under atteneded by the space group, and this year was particularly sparse. Add in the fact that the conference started on Sunday of Memorial weekend (U.S. citizens, anyway) and you get a whole lot of nuttin'. My presentations (one oral, one poster) were basically for naught (three people in the audience? C'MON!) Hopefully next year (Brazil!) will be better, but I may skip out.

I did enjoy Canada, however. Where else can you leave your wallet in an airport (yes, I did) and have it returned with every penny and every piece of plastic in place and unmolested (yes, that too)?

Updates coming...

I've been quite busy since returning from spring AGU, but I have a lot of posts coming up:

• News from the conference
• Whackaloons from the conference
• Solar cycle news
• GO WINGS!
  
• Oprah makes my skeptic side barf.

Sorry about the delays; I'm scrambling to prepare for my 2nd of 3 trips in 5 weeks. Good stuff on the way!

Space Weather Webcast at the AGU Conference

Log in NOW to view the session "Space Weather Prediction: Are We There Yet?" Sessions on this topic will be occurring today AND tomorrow!

CLICK HERE.

Los Hollywamos, NM.

Sitting in the ABQ airport, waiting for my flight to Toronto to board. Thought I would shoot off a quick post to describe a very bizarre scene from yesterday.

Because Los Alamos is so far from the nearest major airport, the standard protocol is to pick up a rental car in town (often the day before your flight) and drop it off at the airport. Yesterday, my wife drove me to the local Hertz station at the LA airport, which serves small airplanes and few flights. As we tried to pull in, a young man sporting a black hoodie and a walkie talkie stopped us and asked us what we were doing. We told him we just wanted to get to the rental car place and he waved us through.

It became far stranger as we approached the tiny Los Alamos terminal: in the gloomy weather we've been experiencing lately, there were dozens of people, large semi trailers, tents, equipment, and a lot of commotion. As I got out of the car I was stopped again by a tall man in a black, large rimmed hat, a long black trenchcoat, and a police badge hanging from his neck. Again, my request to get to the rental car desk was enough to get me through and I was able to pick up my car.

The cause of all of the commotion? Los Alamos was the background for a day of shooting a major hollywood movie, "Did you Hear About the Morgans?". The shoot had lasted all day, and the stars of the movie were on hand: Hugh Grant, Kim Shaw, and a talking horse.

I guess you never know what you'll run in to up here.

Spring AGU

This Saturday I leave for the spring American Geophysical Union meeting, held in Toronto, Canada (this year, anyway).

I'll be sure to blog the interesting space science that goes on. Additionally, this year AGU has a Twitter page that you can follow if you are so inclined.

Being held over Memorial Day is going to hurt attendance this year. Spring AGU is already a smaller meeting, so it will be interesting how many people turn out.

More people should do things like this.

Following some links provided in a comment in my previous post led me to this study of the happiness of programmers using different languages from Dolores Labs. They surveyed Twitter posts that concerned various languages (e.g. "I sure love Fortran!" or "C is making me ANGRY!") and tallied the results to see what language garnered the most positive responses.

Here are the results:

The winner... PERL! I guess I can't leave my favorite language quite yet, eh?

Clearly, the results should be scrutinized and a formalized study would likely yield different results. Despite these criticisms, simple studies like this are fantastic. The results give clues as to what a broader, more rigorous study would uncover. The methodology provokes thought on ways to improve the study, the implications of the outcome, etc. And more importantly, the results are just neat. I am reminded of Mark Twain's famous quote on science, "One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."

Please explore the Dolores Labs site so I feel better about hot linking their results.

Shhhh... I'm having an affair!

Yep, you read it correctly- I'm cheating on my one true programming love, and I may wind up leaving her altogether. I've been a Perl monk for 3 years now, and it has been my go-to language for everything except scientific numerics and visualization. There's a good reason, too: it's easy to use, intuitive, and exceptionally powerful.

This is changing as I type, however. I've been enticed by Python, which promises to do everything that Perl can do. More importantly, it is becoming a staple in scientific programming and has powerful visualization modules available. The allure of my glue language becoming my EVERYTHING language is too much to resist. Imagine a CGI script that performs the calculation, generates the plots, and returns the requested material - and it's all in the same language! It is for reasons such as these that Python is climbing up the most used language charts.

My first task with Python is to re-create Dawkin's Weasel program, a straightforward goal (Oh, look - the good folks at New Mexico Science Watch are already on it!). I have a working version in Perl now with a CGI frontend. Let's see how quickly I can get up to speed in Python. But don't tell Perl yet; I don't think she could take it. If Python lives up to its billing, I'll let Perl down slowly.