Anyone Need a Good SAS Programmer?

My current company, despite my objections and expertise, is phasing out SAS, and I think it is a misguided decision.

I am only about three years away from semi-retirement, but you won’t find a more motivated worker.  Not only am I a “virtuoso” SAS programmer with many years of programming and data analytics experience, but I’m also very good at teaching and mentoring others in the use of SAS—something I almost never get to do in my current position.

I need a change.

I have “big city” job skills in a small town where there appear to be no other employers who would be able to make use of my SAS expertise.  And, at this stage of my life, I can’t relocate and am unwilling to commute, so working from home appears to be the only option.

I’m looking at potential opportunities as an “encore career” and would really like to do something that directly benefits society.  I loved my 21 years at the Iowa Department of Transportation, and would love to be a public servant once again, or to work for a nonprofit organization. Or work on scientific projects—true science, not data “science”. Or, data for good projects.  Both salary and number of work hours (up to full time) are completely negotiable.  I’m at a point now in my career where I can be more flexible for the right opportunity.

I have my own personal SAS Analytics Pro license, so could do work for you even if you don’t have SAS.

SAS is a great product, and SAS Institute is a great company.  And SAS keeps getting better all the time.

Some say that SAS is difficult to learn, but, like many things, it is not difficult at all if you have a good teacher who has a thorough understanding of the subject matter and a passion for teaching it. That would be me.

Scythia Sweet

One of the enjoyable aspects of recording asteroids passing in front of stars (we call them asteroid occultations) is the interesting names of some of the asteroids. This month, Bob Dunford, Steve Messner, and I had two double-chord events across the asteroid 1306 Scythia, discovered in this month of 1930 by Soviet astronomer Grigory Neujmin (1886-1946).

The name 1306 Scythia immediately brought to mind a favorite piece of music, the Scythian Suite—surely one of the most unusual and otherworldly compositions by Sergei Prokofiev, or anyone else for that matter.

A quick look at the entry for 1306 Scythia in the 5th edition of Dictionary of Minor Planet Names by Lutz D. Schmadel (1942-2016) quickly confirmed my suspicion that the subject matter of both asteroid and musical composition is the same.

Named for the country of the ancient Scythians comprising parts of Europe and Asia now in the U.S.S.R. in regions north of the Black sea and east of the Aral sea.

In the wee hours of Friday, July 12, Bob Dunford in Illinois and I in Wisconsin observed only the second asteroid occultation of 1306 Scythia (and the first since 2014). The predicted path is shown below.

Predicted shadow path of the asteroid 1306 Scythia from the star Tycho 5189-597-1 (UCAC4 414-136241) on 12 July 2019 UT.

Bob, who was observing at Naperville, observed a 4.3-second dip in brightness as the asteroid covered the star between 8:23:46.203 and 8:23:50.531 UT, and I, observing at Dodgeville, observed a 1.3-second event between 8:24:01.783 and 8:24:03.054. Our light curves are shown below.

Bob Dunford’s light curve of the 1306 Scythia / Tycho 5189-597-1 event of 12 July 2019 UT, using a 14-inch telescope.
David Oesper’s light curve of the 1306 Scythia / Tycho 5189-597-1 event of 12 July 2019 UT, using a 12-inch telescope.

Here’s a map showing our observing locations relative to the predicted path.

1306 Scythia / Tycho 5189-597-1 event of 12 July 2019 UT – Predicted Path and Observer Locations

Here’s the profile showing the chords across the asteroid.

1306 Scythia / Tycho 5189-597-1 event of 12 July 2019 UT – Asteroid Profile and Chords

Just four days later, both Bob Dunford and I had a high probability event of the same asteroid passing in front of a different star, and this time we were joined by Steve Messner. Bob and Steve both got positives! Unfortunately, I was clouded out.

Predicted shadow path of the asteroid 1306 Scythia from the star TYC 5188-573-1 on 16 July 2019 UT.
1306 Scythia / Tycho 5188-573-1 event of 16 July 2019 UT – Predicted Path and Observer Locations
1306 Scythia / Tycho 5188-573-1 event of 16 July 2019 UT – Asteroid Profile and Chords

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) wrote the Scythian Suite in 1915 when he was 24 years of age. Even at that young age, Prokofiev already showed great talent and originality.

Sergei Prokofiev, circa 1918

Here are some excerpts of the Scythian Suite performed by the Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Stanisław Skrowaczewski. This is a 1983 recording (Vox Box CD3X 3016). The movement descriptions are based on those given in Wikipedia.

1st movement: Invocation to Veles and Ala – barbaric and colorful music describing the Scythians’ invocation of the sun.

Some of the music you’ve heard in the original “Star Trek” certainly was inspired by this.
Alien landscape music
Alien landscape music #2

2nd movement: The Alien God and the Dance of the Evil Spirits – as the Scythians make a sacrifice to Ala, daughter of Veles, the Alien God performs a violent dance surrounded by seven monsters.

Best to observe this nasty dance from a distance…
This certainly reminds me of Dmitri Shostakovich, but he was only 9 years old at the time and just beginning to compose!

3rd movement: Night – the Alien God harms Ala; the Moon Maidens descend to console her.

This beautiful movement of many moods begins peacefully, then moves to a section of descending lines that might remind you of “The Planets” by Gustav Holst, but this was being written at the exact same time as the Scythian Suite! Next the music takes an ominous turn, and then returns to a little night music, but more a travel through interstellar or intergalactic space rather than a terrestrial night.

4th movement: The Glorious Departure of Lolli and the Cortège of the Sun – Lolli, the hero, comes to save Ala; the Sun God assists him in defeating the Alien God. They are victorious, and the suite ends with a musical picture of the sunrise.

Here, now, the conclusion of this remarkable work.

Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite. There is nothing else like it in the orchestral repertoire!

Dodgeville Streetlights

Has anyone else noticed how Alliant Energy is gradually replacing our orangish-white-light streetlights with bluish-white-light ones? The orangish-white-light streetlights are high-pressure sodium (HPS) with a correlated color temperature (CCT) of 1900K, whereas the bluish-white-light streetlights that are replacing them are LED with a CCT of 4000K, and, most notably, they are two and a half times as bright.

Even though I have written to both Alliant Energy and the City of Dodgeville, nothing has changed.

My questions, which are still unanswered:

What is the justification for increasing the streetlighting illumination level by two and a half times over what it has been for decades?

Why are we going from 1900K to 4000K (cold white), when 2700K or 3000K (warm white) is readily available and being used in many communities in the U.S. and Canada?

This same transformation is happening in Mineral Point, and probably many other communities in SW Wisconsin as well.

Is anyone else noticing how this is profoundly changing the rural character of our nighttime environment? Is anyone else concerned about this? The increase in glare and light trespass onto neighboring properties from these new LED lights is quite noticeable to me, even though they are nominally full-cutoff. Why? They are too bright, and too blue.

If anyone locally is reading Cosmic Reflections (and sometimes I wonder if anyone is…), and if you have noticed and are alarmed by these streetlighting changes, please contact me on blog or off blog (oesper at mac.com) and let’s meet and discuss a plan of action. Something needs to be done before it is too late and we are stuck with this very negative change to our nighttime environment.

Dark-Sky Communities

Back in 2006, I started a Yahoo! Group called DarkSkyCommunities. My goal was to provide a forum for astronomy enthusiasts and other like-minded individuals to discuss living where you’d have a star-filled night sky and never have to worry about streetlights or neighbor’s lights. Everyone else in the community would value the night sky and a natural nighttime environment as you do.

My approach with DarkSkyCommunities was not to be a heavy-handed moderator. I approved new members but after that, members were free to post (within reason) anything they wanted to. In that sense, it worked pretty well and there were very few postings I ever had to take down.

Unfortunately, astronomers know next to nothing about intentional community and intentional communitarians know next to nothing about astronomy, so the group drifted far from my original intent to a general discussion about light pollution, with “what’s wrong with the IDA” being a surprisingly popular topic for discussion. Eventually, though, a small number of individuals with a chip on their shoulder or an axe to grind became the most frequent posters, and that sort of poisoned the group.

So, I’d like to introduce to you DarkSkyCommunities 2.0: a Google group called Dark-Sky Communities. Here’s the description on the landing page:

Dark-Sky Communities is a discussion group for the development and nurturing of intentional communities where the night sky and the nighttime environment are valued and protected. The emphasis is on affordable, sustainable dark-sky communities where those of modest financial means can live, work, and retire. This group is moderated to keep the focus on intentional communities that are astronomy-friendly.

This time around I am going to approve (or disapprove) the messages posted to the group so that we stay on the topic of astronomy-friendly intentional communities. If you have an interest in this topic, please join!

Light pollution, despite our best efforts, is getting worse almost everywhere. LED lighting which had (and still has) so much promise is generally resulting in more lights, brighter lights, and bluer lights—not the direction we want to head.

Someday, I would like to live in a place where I can walk a few feet beyond my door, set down a lawn chair, and watch a meteor shower without being assaulted by streetlights, insecurity lights, glare, and skyglow. Is that too much to ask?

Would you like to live in a place like that, too? Let’s make it happen!

In Praise of Indexes

SAS Press recently discontinued selling physical books, and now offers publications only in an electronic format (EPUB, Kindle, and PDF). I’m sure this is not an isolated incident and many other smaller publishing houses are going the same route.

I recently purchased the 3rd edition of Kirk Paul Lafler’s useful book, PROC SQL: Beyond the Basics Using SAS. I have the first and second editions of his book in softcover, and I was pleased to find that I could order a physical copy of his third edition through Amazon. After receiving the book, I quickly discovered that the third edition no longer includes an index!

I contacted SAS about the omission of the index, and received a prompt and courteous reply:

“You are correct about the index.  Indexes are no longer a standard part of our print books.  I do understand your concern, and have forwarded your feedback to the appropriate editors. All of our e-books are searchable. If you would like a complimentary copy of the corresponding e-book, I will be happy to forward that to you.”

I learned that neither the hardcopy nor the electronic version of the book contains an index.

I know I am 63 years old, and maybe not as immersed in modern technology as my younger colleagues, but since when did an index become a dispensable part of any non-fiction book?

First page of the index of PROC SQL: Beyond the Basics Using SAS, Second Edition

A good index is like a table of contents, only much more detailed. Sure, you can search a PDF for a particular term, but what if you can’t think of the term you’re searching for? For example, you might not remember that the type of many-to-many join you are looking for is called a Cartesian product, but when you see this term in the index it jogs your memory and you can find it on pages 237 and 242, which then leads you to the term cross join.

Another problem with searching through a document is that I have yet to see any search provide the ability to search for more than one non-contiguous terms at a time on a page or adjacent pages. A well-crafted index is often more effective than one-dimensional searching at finding topics that can’t easily be reduced to a single word or term.

Index subheadings, such as shown for CASE expressions above, are also hard to replace with one-dimensional searching.

Indexing is so important and requires such skill (to do it right) that there is even a professional organization for it: the American Society for Indexing.

I hope you can see now that every non-fiction book, printed or electronic, needs an index to help you quickly find the information you need.