what are the odds of a white buffalo being struck by lightning?

i think like most people my first thought upon hearing that the third white buffalo born on a wisconsin farm was struck by lightning was, what are the odds? apparently the calculating the odds of a single white buffalo being born in the first place is difficult at least in part because - for reasons that aren't entirely clear - more white buffalo are being born and about 2 dozen have been reared in the past 12 years out of a captive population of about 500,000 animals ( which i guess is another way at getting at the odds cited by the executive director of the national bison association of at least one in two-hundred thousand - about 2 are born per year out of a population of 500,000 which is 1:250,000 ). so lets say the odds a white buffalo being born each year are about one in 250,000 which is about the same as the odds of dying in a plane crash. not great odds, but a whole lot better than winning the lottery. calculating the odds of three white buffalo being born on the same farm is a bit more difficult without knowing the farm herd size, the number of births each year and the number of years between white buffalo births. someone better versed in statistics than i will need to calculate that number. 1:1,000,000? 1:10,000,000?

it's probably not a bad assumption that the white buffalo's chance of being struck by lightning is probably about the same as any that of any other livestock. surprisingly, at least to me, in wisconsin lightning is responsible for 80% of accidental livestock losses, which isn't the same as the odds of being struck directly by lightning since a part of those losses come from barns burning down after strikes, but still, it's a lot bigger number than i would have suspected.

bonus points will be awarded to anyone who can find a better estimate of the number of lifestock actually struck or directly killed by lightning.

Hybrid Hypocrisy?

it's interesting to note that a full quarter of hybrid owners own an suv. perhaps they're trying to meet their own familial CAFE standards?

relatedly, i wonder when the union of concerned scientists is going to get around to officially responding in depth ( as promised ) to CNW's "dust to dust" study that claimed that hybrids cost more in terms of overall energy consumed than non-hybrid vehicles.

What Happened to iFolder?

product manager jason williams sort-of answers the question of what happened to the cross-platform file sharing application ifolder. if sounds like they had to "realign" their development direction with interests of their enterprise linux customers, apparently killing off the peer-to-peer features in favor of encryption, multiserver support and storage scalability.

linkage: 11.06.2006

nyt: Twilight of the Idols:

"Today’s insights are not so much perceived from the shoulders of giants as glimpsed from a mountain of jointly authored papers announcing results from large labs, and rapidly circulated through journals, conferences and the Internet. So is the end of the traditional science biography in sight? The genre may be a lens magnifying portions of the history of science, but in time it could seem as antique as Galileo’s telescope. At the least, changes in science itself may demand that science biographers adapt or become extinct."

newmexican.com: U.S. ok'd for ozone-destroying pesticide:

"The Bush administration on Friday won international approval for U.S. farmers to use thousands of tons of a potent ozone-destroying pesticide without having to dip substantially into large stockpiles that were recently revealed."

hacking netflix: Should Libraries Outsource DVD Rental to Netflix?:

"If libraries could offer a discounted subscription to library card holders, is that a good idea? Should libraries be renting movies in the first place?"

blogging baby: Uncool dads, fret not: there's a book for you!:

"Find out how to make garbage bag kites, animated Lego movies and more -- so you, too, can be your household's very own MacGyver."

popular science: Your Brain on Fatherhood:

"This fact, she says, suggests that the brain changes don’t simply stem from the onset of the busier life that follows the arrival of a new family member, but from parenting itself. Kozorovitskiy cautions that the work isn’t directly applicable to humans, although other research has linked parenting with increased brain activity in humans. If nothing else, it could provide new dads with the ammo needed to extend their paternity leave."

photojojo: The Mailable Photo Frame:

"...when you're ready to send the photo to a friend, just fold in the cardboard stand and use the area provided to write a message and address."

nyt: Too Close for Comfort:

"St. Paul complained that married men were more concerned with pleasing their wives than pleasing God. In John Adams’s view, a “passion for the public good” was “superior to all private passions.” In both England and America, moralists bewailed “excessive” married love, which encouraged “men and women to be always taken up with each other.”"

i wonder what else i missed in sex education?

i haven't really hung out at reddit, but after the news of their purchase by wired digital i thought i'd stop by every so often and see if i ran across anything beyond the same old same old that you see at other "social media" sites. i certainly didn't expect to run across "what Craigslist taught me about penises and why it scares me (SFW) and actually learn something new. growers and showers - who knew?

from the comments, i guess it's widely known amongst gay men, but i'm guessing that way less than 10% of heterosexual men know about it.

linkage: 11.02.2006

new yorker: safe as houses:

"if you control for inflation and quality, Shiller found, real home prices barely budged between the eighteen-nineties and the nineteen-nineties. The idea that housing prices have nowhere to go but up is, in other words, a statistical illusion."

slate: can you really save the planet at the dinner table?:

"Pollan's book becomes less satisfying, however, when he sets out to answer the question: How should a responsible person eat in the modern world?"

o'reilly radar: What VCs Learned from Odeo and YouTube:

"Looking out across recent wins, you don't see all-star proven teams. You see scrappy entrepreneurs long on ideas and enthusiasm, but short on actual management experience like those at Facebook, Digg, Flickr, etc."

asia society: Asia and the Emerging Global Financial System:

"There is no economic theory that suggests that borrowing a trillion dollars at an increasing rate is a permanently sustainable strategy."

bbc news: Bearded drinkers lose out:

"Almost £500,000 worth of Ireland's world famous stout is lost each year in the moustaches and beards of imbibers of the creamy headed black stuff."

This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics: Katie Couric and celebrity that is bundled not blended:

"It is a larger anthropological question why it is our day time personality should have to be approachable and nightime newsreaders austere. Perhaps, we suppose that the "vessel" of nighttime news must be stout enough to withstand the emotional difficulty and moral horror contained in many newscasts. Perhaps its a simpler sexism that says that news reading at night is a kind of rhetorical heavy lifting and to this extent "men's work.""

Benjamin Franklin, Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress (1745).:

"But if you will not take this Counsel, and persist in thinking a Commerce with the Sex inevitable, then I repeat my former Advice, that in all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones. "

treehugger: Biodiesel Grows To Commodity Status:

"In whose interest is it to indicate a short-term price fall off projection that does not accommodate the potential demand created by the new, highly efficient and relatively clean diesel designs?"