Congratulations to my brother and niece for climbing Mount Fuji in late August.
The summit of Mount Fuji is 12388 feet above sea level. I believe this is a bit higher than I have ever been on land. I think the highest I have been is on Trail Ridge Road in Colorado which has a maximum elevation of 12183 feet. It is possible to drive to the top of Pikes Peak (14115 feet) but I haven't.
Showing posts with label Peter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peter. Show all posts
Monday, September 7, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Brothers
My brother Peter lives and works 3000 miles away in San Diego, California. While we have kept in touch to some extent I have not followed his professional career closely. Apparently it was going better than I had realized as Peter has just been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. This is of course a great honor and congratulations are in order.
The picture shows us on a balcony outside the UCSD building in which he has his office. Peter is on the right. The picture was taken in November 2003.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Stealing home
Another post from my brother, Peter Shearer.
Stealing home is almost unheard of in baseball today. But Jackie Robinson attempted it 30 times, succeeding 19 times. Today's NYT has an interesting analysis of whether these attempts helped or hurt his team, based on a statistical tool called run expectancy. It turns out that his efforts produced a net gain of 8.3 runs, which the author of the article dismisses as insignificant when considered over his entire career. I think that misses the point. To most players, trying to steal home would rightfully be deemed boneheaded because they would give up a possible run for a near-certain out. But Robinson was so good that his spectacular attempts succeeded often enough that he actually helped his team. That's pretty impressive. In addition, the knowledge that he might try to steal home whenever he was on third surely rattled many pitchers into making mistakes that are not counted in the statistics.
Stealing home is almost unheard of in baseball today. But Jackie Robinson attempted it 30 times, succeeding 19 times. Today's NYT has an interesting analysis of whether these attempts helped or hurt his team, based on a statistical tool called run expectancy. It turns out that his efforts produced a net gain of 8.3 runs, which the author of the article dismisses as insignificant when considered over his entire career. I think that misses the point. To most players, trying to steal home would rightfully be deemed boneheaded because they would give up a possible run for a near-certain out. But Robinson was so good that his spectacular attempts succeeded often enough that he actually helped his team. That's pretty impressive. In addition, the knowledge that he might try to steal home whenever he was on third surely rattled many pitchers into making mistakes that are not counted in the statistics.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Yale vrs Cramer
Another post from my brother, Peter (a Yale alumnus):
Given CNBC Jim Cramer's recent evisceration by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, I was interested to read what Yale investment guru David Swenson says about Cramer in the latest Yale alumni magazine:
"Jim Cramer exemplifies everything that's wrong with the "advice"—and I put advice in quotation marks—that is given to individual investors. Investment is a serious business. We're talking about retirement security of American citizens, and he turns it into a game. It's a game where his listeners lose. It's ridiculous. These high-turnover, rapid trading strategies enrich the brokers. It you look at Jim Cramer's approach on an after-fee, after-tax basis, the individual doesn't have a chance."
All I'd like to add is that Cramer is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
Given CNBC Jim Cramer's recent evisceration by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, I was interested to read what Yale investment guru David Swenson says about Cramer in the latest Yale alumni magazine:
"Jim Cramer exemplifies everything that's wrong with the "advice"—and I put advice in quotation marks—that is given to individual investors. Investment is a serious business. We're talking about retirement security of American citizens, and he turns it into a game. It's a game where his listeners lose. It's ridiculous. These high-turnover, rapid trading strategies enrich the brokers. It you look at Jim Cramer's approach on an after-fee, after-tax basis, the individual doesn't have a chance."
All I'd like to add is that Cramer is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Kepler telescope
I don't have a wife or kids but I do have a brother, Peter M. Shearer . He contributes the following:
Let’s hope that tomorrow’s planned launch of NASA’s Kepler Telescope to search for Earth-sized planets is more successful than the crash of their CO2 sensing satellite last month. The Kepler mission will continuously monitor the brightness of over 100,000 stars to detect subtle dimming events caused by transiting planets. Given the small size of many planets and their likely orbits, such events will be rare (don’t miss the 2012 transit of Venus---this won’t happen again until 2117), but if all stars have Earth-like planets, Kepler should detect about 500 of them.
One thing I’ve noticed is that most people seem to want there to be other Earths out there. For example, from the March 2 NYT article on the Kepler mission:
When a reporter departed from journalistic objectivity to venture a hope that other Earths are out there, Dr. Fanson happily joined in. “I hope the answer is yes,” he said. “I hope the universe is teeming with planets like Earth.”
It’s exciting to think about other Earths. But is it rational to hope they exist? To be truly Earth-like and potentially habitable they would need to have oxygen-rich atmospheres, which implies that they already have life. The record of what happens when isolated biospheres come into contact with each other is not a happy one for at least one of the two life systems. But the public and many scientists seem to yearn to find life on other planets, and are disappointed when experiments fail to detect it, as in the classic Onion headline “Mean Scientists Dash Hope of Life On Mars.”
Let’s hope that tomorrow’s planned launch of NASA’s Kepler Telescope to search for Earth-sized planets is more successful than the crash of their CO2 sensing satellite last month. The Kepler mission will continuously monitor the brightness of over 100,000 stars to detect subtle dimming events caused by transiting planets. Given the small size of many planets and their likely orbits, such events will be rare (don’t miss the 2012 transit of Venus---this won’t happen again until 2117), but if all stars have Earth-like planets, Kepler should detect about 500 of them.
One thing I’ve noticed is that most people seem to want there to be other Earths out there. For example, from the March 2 NYT article on the Kepler mission:
When a reporter departed from journalistic objectivity to venture a hope that other Earths are out there, Dr. Fanson happily joined in. “I hope the answer is yes,” he said. “I hope the universe is teeming with planets like Earth.”
It’s exciting to think about other Earths. But is it rational to hope they exist? To be truly Earth-like and potentially habitable they would need to have oxygen-rich atmospheres, which implies that they already have life. The record of what happens when isolated biospheres come into contact with each other is not a happy one for at least one of the two life systems. But the public and many scientists seem to yearn to find life on other planets, and are disappointed when experiments fail to detect it, as in the classic Onion headline “Mean Scientists Dash Hope of Life On Mars.”
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