Science & Technology Archives
I have tried not to post about this subject because, as my wife reminds me, it just lends credibility to the wackjobs out there but this seems like big enough news because there are actually people out there that let some old German dude in a dress make up their minds for them.
Yes, out of nowhere a voice of reason from within the religious world! The pope has said what reasonable people had concluded long ago. Namely that evolution and spirituality need not be mutually exclusive. "While there is much scientific proof to support evolution, the theory could not exclude a role by God." He goes further. stating "that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.”
In addition Pope Benedict had word about the environment and our role as stewards.
"Benedict also said the human race must listen to 'the voice of the Earth' or risk destroying its very existence" and that "willfully damaging the environment is sinful."
Discovery Magazine has received its entries for videos attempting to explain the physical theory of string in less than two minutes. There were a couple (the one above, The Next Revolution and Mass Through Strings) I feel were OK but, for the most part, I am a bit disappointed. Maybe I was expecting too much in terms of creativity and production values but many just seem like hardly any thought was put into how to direct and produce them. Of course, I didn't enter one so I really shouldn't complain too much.
The Java Developer's Journal has published the results of it's end-of-year poll of various Internet technology players which makes for some good reading. Here are a couple I found interesting:
Jason Bell, Editorial Board Member, Java Developer's Journal:
Incremental mainstream adoption of Ruby on Rails
It's going to happen, isn't it? Keep an eye out for Sun's offering of JRuby. Whether this is the death of other open source scripting languages like Groovy remains to be seen. Ruby has been a wake-up call and has now drawn the line dividing serious scripting languages from "hobby" languages (ones that wouldn't see enterprise adoption). For me, my job just got a whole lot easier, a whole lot quicker.
David Heinemeier Hansson, Creator of (Ruby on) Rails:
2007 will be the year where LAMPers finally decide to stop being neutral about the WS-* mess and pick the side of REST: the next wave of Web APIs will stop supplying both a SOAP and REST API and just go with the latter.
Gary Cornell, Founder & Publisher, Apress:
-IE 7 will have a fast adoption curve and so Firefox will cease gaining market share.
-The AJAX bandwagon will gain even more speed.
-Ruby's momentum will slow down as Python and PHP frameworks to combat Rails grow in popularity.
-The open-sourcing of Java will have no effect whatsoever on Java's slow decline in favor of dynamic languages (Ruby, Python) and C#.
-Apple will no longer gain market share for its desktops and will stabilize at its current meaningless level.
-Ultra lightweight notebooks based on flash memory with instant on/off will start coming out in large numbers.
I agree that so-called dynamic languages and frameworks will make big gains in '07 but feel pretty optimistic about the prospects for non Ruby on Rails flavors too. Groovy and Grails is primed to be pretty big and while I don't think it will overtake RoR in the next year, there are significant advantages that make the prospects for Groovy and its framework Grails to become very mainstream, look very good.
From a press release on the new book: The Definitive Guide to Grails:
Ruby on Rails is hot, but it seems that more recent noise from the Java community has been focused on Groovy and its framework, Grails. Taking inspiration from innovative frameworks like Ruby on Rails, or the likes of Django or TurboGears, Grails makes simple things simpler, harder things possible, and brings back the fun of creating web applications. Continuing to affirm the hype, Guillaume Laforge and Dierk König, remark "Grails definitely has an ambitious name for being the Holy Grail all application developers have sought so far. But more than a mere ambition, Grails fulfills its promises by letting you be more productive than you could have ever thought possible."
The Grails Framework is an open source, lightweight, agile Web development framework that leverages Groovy, an open source, lightweight, agile and dynamic Java-based scripting language, and complements Java web development. Grails is the ideal framework for developing in the web tier for Java developers and exemplifies the power of the Groovy language and its APIs.
I for one believe that there are too many Java developers out there (their community still dwarfs the next largest one) that are very interested in lightweight frameworks and rapid development but are not too keen on "throwing out" years of experience with the most popular language out here. Groovy in combination with the Grails framework offers the best of both of these worlds and I think people are just waiting for someone to really take up and champion Grails as David Heinemeier Hansson and 37signals have done for Rails.
If you are new to Groovy or Grails, this interview with Groovy project manager Guillaume Laforge is a good primer for learning about Groovy and Grails and where it stands in its current development.
Pluto has been through a lot and now it seems the small icy ball near the middle of our solar system just got that last kick in the ahem, ice-ball. Pluto is no longer a planet, as of today. I say you should raise a toast to Pluto tonight and this weekend in recognition of all it ihas done for us. No one is talking about it, but have they thought about what this means for poor, Charon, Plutos moon. Charon has probably been demoted to dust bunny. Pluto could not be reached for comment, most likely because it is 3,720,000,000 miles away.
The soon to be opened Minneapolis Central Library is already being heralded for both its architecture and the services it plans to offer patrons. Not only does the building have no internal loadbearing walls, and has a huge cantilever, the roof has grass planted on it as a way to handle runoff water (and in fact it recycles the water that does run off back onto the roof via pumps). The latest praise comes from The Christian Science Monitor. I quote part of that article here:
Patrons will check out their own books at electronic kiosks. Visitors will be able to download iTunes and eventually movies. Teens will have their own hip reading lounge where they can bring drinks and snacks and write poetry on the walls. And the librarians won't be sitting behind desks, stamping book cards. They'll be walking around among the stacks, talking on wireless devices dubbed "Star Trek" badges.
And about the building:
The new downtown central library is as provocative in design as some of the changes are among the stacks. No stuffy Greek columns here. Architect Cesar Pelli has created a post-modern building that uses blond wood and steel framing with geometry-defying angles. One plane juts out obliquely from the top of the building. Eventually a planned planetarium will rise from the roof that resembles the robot R2D2.
I am super excited to be able to get for a sneak preview of the new library next Tuesday when I will be at a presentation about Goggle Earth and (I assume) how it pertains to the library sciences and the Minneapolis Public Library system.
For one reason or another, I have never been much of a consumer of magazines. In many respects I am grateful for this. Time is always an issue and I can rarely get through a full magazine before the next one comes. But I also do not like the waste magazines generate. It is very visible and apparent to me as I retain stacks of magazines and then have to recycle them. That being said, there are a few magazines to which I really ought to be subscribing:
The New Yorker - I am always impressed with the content of this magazine and the esteem that it has throughout my network of friends and beyond. It hits right on most of the issues it tackles, and does so much better than the daily newspapers.
Paste - I love to find new music and film and Paste makes it easy. Not only can I read about a ton of great artists and projects that are just coming out, but I can also see and listen to them thanks the CD or DVD included with every issue. They are right on with my tastes too.
Aperture - The few times I have seen this magazine I was very impressed and since I would like to be a better photographer it would help me out.
National Geographic Traveler - Travel magazines are hard for me. I really feel like I need a good one and this one seems very good (though I am tempted to want the traditional National Geographic instead).
Make - I am curious and love to build stuff (or rip stuff apart. Is there another magazine that is better suited to those types of activities?
Wired - The only magazine on this list that I actually do get. I like it, I really do, but more and more often, I get this type of news via the osmosis known as being online.
These were all listed in the order I would like them. If anyone knows how I can get any of the following delivered free for a year let me know. Anything else missing?
A couple that didn't make the list but were very close were:Dwell, Real Simple mostly just because I don't think I would have time.
Before I get to dispensing today's links I wanted to announce a couple more posts to the
Alt Text Photo Gallery. Within the
Travel - Road Trips section I have posted two new galleries of some recent travels this summer / fall. The first is a
Labor Day weekend trip through the Badlands and Black Hills that Jena and I took with some friends and the second is
a canoe trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (my second and Jena's first time to a beautiful part of the world). I didn't do much in the way of optimizing or messin' with the photos but, I hope you enjoy them, nonetheless.
Now on with the links:
"If Kevin Garnett were only 5-foot-8, pudgy and going to work on a newspaper delivery truck, I doubt if many sports journalists would fret about his future."
-Mike Royko, Buffalo News, June 30, 1995
- The Polaroidonizer - I think this is pretty neat - give any image url to the Polaroidonizer, adjust some settings and it cranks out Polaroid® looking image complete with drop shadows and tilting like the image at right.
- James Mathias is The Shavior - Mathias' experiment in facial hair aside, the rest of his site is pretty good and so I am going to be adding it to my rotation.
- Kick Ass Kung Fu - I want this - Use your own body - both movements and likeness - in a game where you can kick the collective asses of whomever is loaded in. Video games and fitness you say?
- File Me Away - Another nice looking site, added here for diversity.
- HousingMaps.com - what do you get when you combine housing listings from Craig's list and Google Maps? HousingMaps.com is what.
- Zombie dogs - Despite the sensationalistic title and terrible photo this story actually shows some promising developments in science aimed at treating critically injured people by replacing their blood with icy water. Seriously.
- Power Failure - A look at how the proposed energy policies by the GOP fall far short in their dealing with issues of oil.
- Virus present in 80% of the population kills cancer cells - Why is a potential "cure" for cancer such a under-reported story?
Companies like Propel Fuels of Seattle Washington are making a big push in the promotion of biodiesel fuels as the next great energy source for the U.S. and for the world.
In a recent interview for Make Magazine, a former co-worker Rob Elam makes a compelling case for this, clean-burning, soybean-based fuel source.
Could this make vehicles such as the Volkswagen Turbo Diesel Golf, Jetta, Passat, and Beetle viable consumer options for clean, lean energy consumption? I know I had looked into these for a while as they get upwards of 50 mpg, however the relative dirtiness of the emissions had turned me off. Maybe that has changed now. Perhaps the first major adopters of this fuel source could be commercial trucking companies, etc.
UPDATE: I didn't know Willie Nelson has been promoting his own "Willie Fuel" I should have titled this post "On the road again with biofuel" or maybe "You can't even pretend to think you know about biodiesel! Who do you think you are?"
This product would be very cool to flood my basement with natural light. It couldn't hurt my workplace either.
- These "averaged" photos on Flickr produce great art. I want prints!
- Backpack - another product from 37signals I'll probably be using soon.
- What a beautiful website! I have always wanted to do something with leaves on Alt Text but it always seemed hard to get good images. Looks like John found a way - create them.
- Synthetic Biology - "specifying every bit of DNA that goes into an organism to determine its form and function in a controlled, predictable way...The goal...is nothing less than to "reimplement life in a manner of our choosing. And some potential applications? "building organisms, like supercoral that sucks carbon out of the biosphere and puts it into building materials, or an acorn programmed to grow into an oak tree - complete with a nifty tree house. And there's the opportunity to add new chromosomes to the human genome, ushering in a panoply of human augmentations and enhancements."
- Bacteria from space can eat radioactive waste. - This was a story from late last year that I was just reminded of on a more recent Wired article...
"A 25-year-old quadriplegic sits in a wheelchair with wires coming out of a bottle-cap-size connector stuck in his skull.
The wires run from 100 tiny sensors implanted in his brain and out to a computer. Using just his thoughts, this former high school football player is playing the computer game Pong.
It is part of a breakthrough trial, the first of its kind, with far-reaching implications. Friday, early results were revealed at the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation annual conference. Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, the Foxborough-based company behind the technology, told attendees the man can use his thoughts to control a computer well enough to operate a TV, open e-mail and play Pong with 70% accuracy. "
"Further out, some experts believe, the technology could be built into a helmet or other device that could read neural signals from outside the skull, non-invasively. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding research in this field, broadly known as Brain Machine Interface, or BMI.
DARPA envisions a day when a fighter pilot, for instance, might operate some controls just by thinking."
Scientists gingerly tap into brain's power
[Source: Kottke.org]
Progressive Insurance has been testing a program called TripSense that uses a small device (called the TripSensor oddly enough) that plugs it into your vehicle's On-Board Diagnostic (OBDII) port — usually is located just under the steering column — that tracks information about individual trips (from engine start to engine shutoff), and includes the following data:
- Start time
- End time
- Miles driven
- Duration
- Number of aggressive braking events
- Number of aggressive acceleration events
- Speed at 10-second intervals
- Time and date of each connection/disconnection to the OBDII port
Periodically the driver would unplug the device and connect it to their PC via USB and send the data to Progressive, which then evaluates it, aggregates it with other driver data and determines what discount you may qualify for.
Progressive is offering a 5% discount on premiums just for using the device with promises of additional discounts of up to 25% based upon the data you provide. Of course they probably don't promote the idea that your rates could actually go up if you drive poorly or a lot.
Progressive claims that information on aggressive braking/acceleration events are not used in the discount calculation. Stating that this information in order to better understand if it is predictive of future accidents.
Think of the data that progressive could have if all of its insured drivers provided this information (which according to Progressive is optional - drivers in the TripSense program can review the data (with charts and graphs) on their computers before determining whether to send it and qualify for additional discounts or not. By extensive use of this and future programs Progressive could have the most accurate data on driving habits possible.
Of course there are privacy concerns and concerns over how this data could be used. For more on that aspect of the program the Minneapolis Star Tribune has written a recent article.
I guess it is easy to forget about the biggest sign that life may exist outside of earth when there are such impotant stories to cover such as: Same sex marriages (we should just ban marriage altogether), Martha Stewart on trial, "steady leadership", and who could forget, Janet's boobs.
This draft post is actually a running list that I would keep moving each month so I would remember some issues and links to post about for that month. It would seem I stopped moving it late last June but some of these items are much older than that. New comments are found in ()
Affirmative Action - still needed
House (presumably mine)
War - Means to a Noble End? (could be but not likely very often)
Food? (was I questioning the need for food? was I simply hungry?)
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www.kuro5hin.org (must have wanted to link to this site as it is pretty good)
Very pessimistic view of the advertising industry
(one that I was inclined to believe a few quarters ago - though things look to be picking up)
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New Zealand's Mixed Member Proportional electoral system
The evolution of democracy. (The lionk above spurred me to want to start a thread about th evolution of democracy but ralized I would nee dto research much more. This idea however resonates with a recent desire of mine to read the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United States. I am both amazed and appalled at myself for never having done so — though I am most assuradly not alone. Oh yeah, and I was still very bitter about W "winning" the election)
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blogs to add to the list:
www.hypergene.net
www.notsosoft.com
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SCiNet · The World Trade System
Miniplants (Mini-plants could be built in mobile containers and shipped anywhere in the world — especially to developing countries. "The mini-plant system is designed in such a way that all the production machinery is fixed on the platform of the container, with all wiring, piping, and installation parts" built in.)
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http://www.frontoff.host.sk/adrift/index.php (so long ago had I meant to post about this blog that the domain has changed)
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Al Jazeera the clear winner of the War on TerrorTM
The NOVA presentation of Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe airs tomorrow night at 8 pm. Coincidentally that is the same time the Premier of 24 airs. Gotta love the dual tuner TiVo DirecTV that allows me to record both.
This sounds crazy and so it probably is. Robert Cringely throws out an idea and waits for the bobber to go down. Cringely suggests the following (greatly paraphrased):
1. a company should buy one copy of every CD on the market. (100,000 CDs at $14 each requires $1.4 million)
2. the company has to be a public company
3. measures would be taken to maintain a stock price of roughly $20 - at which price all users would own at least one share.
4. because each share carries ownership rights to those 100,000 CDs it also carries the right to download backup or media-shifting copies
5. wild success follows.
Could such an idea work? For about 10 minutes - which is about how fast the record industry would take to get an injunction against the company. I just don't think the solution to the recording industry rests on this sort "loophole" - there really needs to be a change in the mindset of media licensing and ownership.
Devices like Neuros by Digital Innovations and PoGo! Products' Radio YourWay are a step towards an idea I had some time ago about the way Radio could be recorded and played back (tenuously associated is this post from 2000 about the need for micropayments and the changing way we view purchasing media).
With features like, song recording on any FM/AM signal, song identification using digital "fingerprints" (don't you hate it when you hear a great song and then don't know what it is - ok so it only happens rarely on commercial radio), and wireless playback on any FM radio its no wonder Wired is writing about them. Once again Apple paves the way (with the iPod in this case) and someone else tweaks, improves, and markets a similar product to the masses.
A new fusion technique could someday lead to vehicles that are able to withstand, and indeed, harness the power of tiny nuclear explosions each second, and use the resulting energy given off for power. Or perhaps they could immerse the whole thing in water and use the resulting heat and steam to power a turbine as most other power plants currently do.
The system works by using a burst of 20 million amperes of current which vaporizes tungsten wires generating a magnetic field that accelerates the tungsten vapor toward the center of a cylinder. When the vapor slams into a plastic foam it creates a shock wave, which, in turn, generates X-rays that heat hydrogen (actually deuterium) to more than 20 million degrees Fahrenheit and squeeze it resulting in pressurized conditions similar to those at the center of the sun. [This description has been paraphrased for clarity and brevity from the original NT Times article]
For a few billionths of a second, the power of the X-rays crashing into the hydrogen capsule far exceeds the output of all the world's power plants.
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Also in science news from the NY Times: the last of the "Great Observatories" telescopes planned for in the 1970's is due to launch on April 19th. This time its an infrared telescope called Sirtf (Space Infrared Telescope Facility). Those NASA folks sure are clever.
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Don't come crying to me when you need someone who speaks Elvish.
I am the coolest stud at the MIT univeristy. I hacked an old-school telephone handset on my cell phone. Now I walk around Cambridge MA, looking like a phat pimp!
[link via What Do I Know?]
I never could have thought of this. To think, a carbon-based tether, or rope, the thickness of paper could be used as an elevator into space, the moon, beyond? My questions would all center around how to attach the tether to the earth.
[via metafilter]
I am not sure that small pox is the best place to start but I like the idea of
distributed computing helping to find cures for diseases, much like
SETI@Home has done for the search for extra-terestrial life. I do like
Oxford's cancer project, much more. [source:
MetaFilter]
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Hordes of mouth-breathing geeks forsake Lucas for Jackson - news at 11.
"I tried to make it work. But Star Wars just didn't hold up its end. A relationship is a two-way street. If George had told me he didn't want to do any more Star Wars movies after the original trilogy, yes, that would have hurt. But it would have been better than dragging me along like this. What he ended up doing was just passive-aggressive bullshit."
"If it hadn't been for Peter Jackson showing me what a fantasy saga can be, I might have settled for [summer 2002's] Attack Of The Clones as the best I could ever hope for."
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Today's Fun Fact (brought to you by the letter G: If coloring weren't added to Coca-Cola, it would be green.
Ironically, I was planning to post about NASA's newly designed site on Saturday. I even had a post pre-written for the day. NASA has set up this page to distribute info on the crash and the lost crew members. I don't really think I need to say anything more about that.
Hey, what-the there's a new food pyramid?! You turn around for a second and they sneak a new food pyramid in on ya!
Reebok with their
Terry Tate "Office Linbacker" spot. Be sure to check it out on the
Reebok site as it is much longer and funnier. Best line? "You know your need to have a coversheet on your TPS Reports, Richard!"
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Today's Fun Fact: Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.
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This lightbulb has been burning for over 100 years. It is a handblown bulb with carbon filament with approximate wattage of 4 watts. It has been left to burn continuously in a firehouse as a nightlight over the fire trucks in Livermore, California. You can even view it on a
live webcam.
Though I would like to believe I am watching an anthropological experiments when I watch shows like
Frontier House,
1900 House, and the new BBC production
Surviving the Iron Age, I know they will all soon most closely resemble Jerry Springer. I even have the same dirty feeling after I turn off the set. [
Related site]
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Men's Fitness Magazine recently
ranked Minneapolis, MN as the 11th fittest in the nation, which leads me to believe that we are one fat country. In Minneapolis, according to their findings, people watch less TV than in any other city, and have the highest levels of exercise and sports participation.
This isn't helping
New York's ranking ;)
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Group offers $200 for drug addicted women to be sterilized. [
NY Times]
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I think this is a great idea:
Servas (
U.S. Affiliated site). You can host travelers in your home and build "credit" for when you want to travel. This will resolve a huge issue for me when I travel –not meeting local people and learning about their culture. Tourist attractions are all well and good, but I would like to at least get a small hint of what it would be like to live in the place I am visiting.
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I am primarily linking to
this site now so that I remember the
URL when I actually get around to updating and ranking my Amazon wish lists. The original source of this was
Kottke.org but I do not like Jason's new Weekly remainders idea as the links tend to be gone when I go back to look for them.
I have thought recently about getting a Toyota Prius or another similarly high effeciency car but now I think I should just
power my car with cooking oil.
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Hiromi and I have been discussing a new site aimed at "bringing back to the web the idealism of 1997." he has a
domain but he doesn't know how to use it. I don't want to discourage him - he is just so darn cute. I only hope I could regain the idealism and excitement myself.
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You knew it was coming - another
Lord of the Rings related post. Don't worry it won't be the last. Of course the
new trailer is out and the movie is only 69 days away.
I carry my mobile phone in my front pants pocket, but considering that I do not want children, I always considered the radiation a bonus. Now Levi's is trying to foil my plan with their new
anti radiation Dockers. Sure I bet if they had their way my antiperspirant wouldn't lead to Alzheimer's either!
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If you don't like Bush's policies on the environment,
tell him.
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Why is it, in most cases, when aliens are depicted in movies and TV they are very thin. I see nothing in the advancement of our species to indicate that in a thousand years we won't all be 800-1000 lbs. I have to get to the gym. Let's hear it for the fat aliens!
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I have determined that this is the year I am finally going to get "in the best shape of my life". That means I will have to eclipse my former "best shape" of being 5'9" 130 lbs when I was 15.
If I don't do it now I will never get in shape - I am approaching 30! I figure walk my dog every day for an hour and then throw in a real cardio workout 2-3 times per week with a weight training session once or twice each week.
This parody of the Apple
Switch Ads pretty much sums up the last of my grudges against Apple computers. (that and they really stuck it to my family with the IIgs back in the day - $4000 for a computer that was only relevant for about 6 months. Bastards!)
Finally a deadline.
Hopefully this will happen before
this.
Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy is now available on DVD. So is
Kids In The Hall - Same Guys, New Dresses
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I like many things about the
new concepts created for the site of the World Trade Center towers, (nice little site by the way) but I do not think they are being imaginative enough with the high rise buildings. Maybe you can't be, but I would like to see some structures that are as fanciful as the name "skyscraper". That being said, I like the
Square &
Garden concepts best for the structures and the
Plaza and
Triangle concepts for the use of garden/plaza/park space.
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The micro machines shown in
these photos are no toys - they are much cooler. They are being shown next to tiny mites to show just how small they are.
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HIV muppet causes Republicans across the U.S. to grab their bibles and start condemning them thar bad people with the HIV. They should first try to understand the situation in South Africa. South Africa alone it is estimated that in 2002, 300,000 people will die of AIDS" and "40 percent of women of child-bearing age there are infected with HIV". Of course if lawmakers gave a damn (read: if this epidemic was in Europe or not concentrated among Africans the racist right might actually care to spend some of their recently insider-traded money to help the situation) there may not be such a desperate situation now.
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MoveOn.org has
published information on the
President's Vice-President's finances. Some things seem a bit shady. There is of course the making of over $36 million in the year 2000 but also the fact that the minimum size of the "accounting irregularities" that occurred while Cheney was CEO was $100,000,000.
[All of the previous links were found at
MetaFilter and reposted here as real live content]
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After years of promises that the oil refineries built on their land would benefit all the citizens of Escravos, Nigeria but seeing none of those promises come to fruition, hundreds of Nigerian women storm 4 Chevron stations and hold them until more jobs we given to local workers and improvements to the living conditions in nearby villages were made. [Story from
Yahoo News]
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After reviewing my own stats I am convinced that designing and developing for IE 5 and up and Mozilla 1.0 (5.0) and up is the correct decision.
Google's June browser distribution info further bolsters my view. Their
stats on operating systems make me feel like not spending too much time testing for Macs either but for the fact that many of my friends in the "online community" are using them. Plus I do respect Macs a bit more now that OS X is in wider use. From what I have seen it is a huge improvement over all other operating systems out there with the possible exception of XP (I still like XP's interface much better - but don't get me started on its layer-over-layer, outdated architecture it still uses)
With that said I am doing some housekeeping and you may notice some minor changes to the Alt Text. You may also notice the similarity between some of my modifications and some that
Jason has made. I swear these are mostly coincidental.
I would like to go on record that
Mozilla is now my default browser. All I have to say to defend myself is: tabbed browsing is da bomb.
[Web stat images from
Google Zeitgeist]
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In other news Alt Text and Amazon.com were finally able to put an end to their hostilities. With Amazon's announcement that it is opening its
new web services, essentially allowing developers and site publishers from using Amazon's data in ways that better fits their needs. This doesn't erase all past wrongs (especially as far as their patent stances go) but it does go a long way towards opening things up a bit. Plus it is really hard to hate them while admiring their site for so long.
UPDATE: There has already been a new site created that looks and acts like
Google but has all the data of
Amazon: meet
Amazon Light
Alt Text has been included as one of 10 weblogs in a study/project in developing an open source search tool called
latent semantic indexing (LSI). From what I have seen it is pretty promising. Some of the results may not contain the keywords you entered, but use the LSI algorithm to determine relevancy based on like words and topics.
There are still some holes in it as it is in development. It works with keywords only - there are no phrase searches allowed. Words that appear in only one post are not indexed, and the interface leaves a lot to be desired, but it is a very cool idea that I hope spreads.
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My dad on
President W's recent surgery: "They are looking for his head."
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Electric SUV coming (to California) from Toyota
I like Star Wars as much as the next guy, unless of course the next guy is one of
these people. Here is a link to
their site.
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This book looks very interesting and I plan on picking up a copy soon (I am trying to get it from the library - part of my cost saving measures lately - and as it turns out slightly more environmentally friendly). It is about "how humans relate to their environment" - meaning that in a closed environment like the one we are basically in (not including the input from the sun) we (humans) alone create waste that is not readily used by other organisms and broken down. And that we must strive to create products, but also the means of making the products, that are more in harmony with the ecosystem in which we live.
There is a nice review on this book, titled
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things to be found
on slash dot here.
Excerpts from the review:
"Our model of technology and development is completely counter to the natural cycles and principles that worked for millions of years to create the environment we so cleverly manipulate"
"The authors envision a world where, when a material item gets worn out, you simply throw it on the ground to decompose. Buildings should produce more energy than they use. Eliminate the concept of "waste" entirely. "
Lucas really couldn't be
THIS evil. Plans to change and release the original three Star Wars movies again with inserted scenes with Natalie Portman and ... (cough) Jar Jar Binks. It can't be true.
Also fun is
this collection of video from the Conan O'Brian show with Triumph the dog. Especially funny? All of them but thy the Star Wars one first.
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This guy has some rather large cajones. He plans to launch himself into space (or at least 30 miles up), from his backyard, in a rocket he is making himself. Here is the
slash dot link.
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These are some of the
coolest action figures I have seen.
Here are some links I was too busy/lazy to post about throughout the week:
It would be very interesting to see
this on a PC.
EtherPeg is quite a cool idea. A
Linux version called Driftnet (though done independently was made too.
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Fingerprint readers flawed says study. They can be fooled with $10 of supplies and a little bit of work.
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Is
this the new dating scene? "Honey look over there. Don't we know that pair of pasties from college?"
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URLizer.com will turn those long unruly links into shorter unruly links suitable for sending in emails. [Source:
broomeman.com]
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How to Piss Me Off 101: Lesson 3:
Bring in a corporate mentor consultant type to have us "bring 5% more awareness to our feelings".
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I know that this site:
The Rainforest Site is lame but if they really can really preserve 11.4 square feet of rainforest each day I click, from the fools they sell banner ad space to, then more power to them. [Related, of course, are
The Hunger Site and
The Breast Cancer Site]
You may someday find yourself in much the same position I am in now... that's right, I have been bumped down to
Kottke.org's 2nd tier of links. I know what you're thinking and I have thought about locking myself in a bathroom with a 2-week supply of Haagen-Dazs, but I just don't know if that will make Jason love me again. Was it something I said? More likely something I didn't say... That's a bitter pill to swallow.
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If you commute in the Mpls-St. Paul area you may find
this link useful. It is an
interactive map of the major roadways with traffic cams.
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No matter where you are from, you are likely to find this cool. They are able to restore sight in many cases by
implanting a solar-powered microchip into the eye as a silicon retina. The study shows good results, so good in fact that I do not doubt we will someday have technology that makes the
VISOR worn by
Gordi LaForge look primitive.
How did that happen that we're into May already! Wow I had planned so many posts. Here are some:
The new
Sony Vaio Handheld is very cool. I go back and forth on the idea of electronics convergence, but mostly end up on its side. I would like my organizer/contacts list/pda-type thing to have an MP3 player built in I really would.
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"Extreme Programming" is an interesting idea but can it really make for better more efficient coding?
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Old News about kicking granny to the curb.
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On Monday we officially closed on the land on which we plan to build a house. They are surveying it and "staking" it next week. We hope to break ground the week of the 20th. I hope that isn't optimistic.
Have you ever tried to pick out a gas fireplace? They have many configurations! Luckily most look like ass and there are only a few that look nice and fire-like. Photos coming soon.
My mood, I am finding is very much tied to the weather. At the moment you might expect me to be a little somber. You would be right. It reached 91 degrees here in Minnesota on Monday and now the scenes above are what I get to live in.
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Apparently not all is bleak, however. The
planets are aligning in a way where all five of the visible planets (w/the naked eye) will be in one part of the western sky. This even is said to happen only every 20 years or so.
Mark got me to thinking today about the possibility that there is no such thing as a selfless act. I had thought about this before and indeed, most acts that appear selfless to us, upon further inspection, will usually give the doer some sort of payback. I am going to hopefully finish reading
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins someday soon and can comment on this further.
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In other news:
light has been stopped.
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There are some things to like about this
site. Of course there is at least one big thing to hate - full screen. [thanks
Hiromi]
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Last but not least, I just saw The Fellowship of the Ring (yes, again) and the new trailer for the second movie, The Two Towers. The coolest thing about it was that they showed Treebeard (a talking, walking tree, or ent). I am pretty excited only 264 more days!
Mark got me to thinking today about the possibility that there is no such thing as a selfless act. I had thought about this before and indeed, most acts that appear selfless to us, upon further inspection, will usually give the doer some sort of payback. I am going to hopefully finish reading
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins someday soon and can comment on this further.
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In other news:
light has been stopped.
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There are some things to like about this
site. Of course there is at least one big thing to hate - full screen. [thanks
Hiromi]
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Last but not least, I just saw The Fellowship of the Ring (yes, again) and the new trailer for the second movie, The Two Towers. The coolest thing about it was that they showed Treebeard (a talking, walking tree, or ent). I am pretty excited only 264 more days!
Sometimes I am amazed by how machine-like humans and other animals are (or for that matter, plants). We take fuels into some orifices, discard wastes from others. There are electrical currents that flow through us, pumps that send fluids and gasses to even the most remote parts of us, and we have joints that rotate and hinge certain ways to allow us to do all the things we do. For the most part our actions are very machinelike as well. Wake. Routine. Consume Fuel. Commute. Work. Consume Fuel. (somewhere in there we discard waste) Work. Commute. Consume Fuel. Routine. Re-energize. Repeat. It is very strange how "life" can be seen as so very lifeless. People going through the motions - consuming, sleeping, working, repeating.
But then there are those brief moments - in between all this consuming and sleeping and working and routine that we all fall into from time to time - there are these wonderful moments when we think. Yes we think, some far too infrequently, but even then, some thoughts will be had. Then we create, and love, and laugh - we laugh and sing and dance and and dream and it is in these times when we are human - when we separate ourselves from our mechanics and our plumbing and that electrical current that runs through us and connect with something else; a different side to us.
This message brought to you by the thoughts that I get while sitting in a local restaurant watching people shovel food into their mouths and generally de-humanizing them, as I don't know the first thing about their dreams and thoughts and loves.
I am way late on posting about these stories, but I don't have much else to say right now and I have been meaning to post about them anyway, so here goes:
I miss the outrage that we (Americans) once showed to our government. Now we just wave a flag and let big business buy the laws that suit them. In this case however the government is at fault for coming up with their latest idiotic idea: the
Office of Strategic Influence has been established to, among other things, spread fake news to international citizens and media outlets. Now I wasn't at the meeting when this was conceived but I can just imagine how it went: "Oh I know, this is what we should do," says Bush crony number 1. "We know that much of the world doesn't trust the United States and believes that we are
mean (Bush cronies aren't allowed to use words of more than two syllables around him) in our actions abroad, so I think we should begin lying to them and even go so far as to start a new office to tell that that we are going to lie to them." Then crony number 2 says "Yes that is a great idea, but why stop at our borders, the American people will believe anything we tell them too, we just need to say it in front of a waving flag. This could come in handy when we tell them we are innocent of anything relating to Enron."
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Newsweek calls replacement pets the "Killer app" for cloning and suggest that it will drive the controversial science from university research labs to companies such as these: Genetic Savings & Clone (great name btw), Lazaron BioTechnologies, and PerPETuate, Inc. (those last two should start by cloning a good website for themselves) This, replacement of pets is such a bad idea on so many levels (none of which happen to be moral for me anyway). Of course you didn't think it would stop with mourning pet owners did you. Nope, the people at Transgenic Pets think (and they are probably right) that pet owners would like to "tinker" with the DNA of their future pet to minimize allergic reactions or shedding. They are already marketing allergen-free cats for sale (in about 2 years) for $750-1000 apiece.
Here's a story at Salon for more info.
This is one of the coolest architectural concepts I have seen lately - and it is actually going to be built. It is a new soccer stadium in Germany that will be like a large, transparent balloon on all sides and can light up, display all kinds of effects, and let daylight through. Be sure to watch the video.
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A proposed new lottery scratch game here in Minnesota will have those who fork out $1 scratching off Osama Bin Laden's face to win cash and prizes. I can't make this stuff up.
When you are having a bad day, just think to yourself,
it could be worse.
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Star Wars: Episode II does not open for another 5 months, but that hasn't stopped two bone-headed fans from
starting a line at Seattle's landmark Cinerama for the film to open on May 16 - a theatre that may not even show the film.
I have signed up to be a
Secret Santa. Gift giving to people you don't know has never been easier with sites like
this. [Source:
Kottke.org]
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Scientists make a computer out of DNA. "It is the first programmable autonomous computing machine in which the input, output, software and hardware are all made of biomolecules."
I woke up at 2:30 this morning, drove an hour out of the Twin Cities, climbed onto the roof of our 4Runner, and pulled a bunch of blankets over my wife and I to get a great view of an event that won't be back until 2099. The
Leonid Meteor Shower did not disappoint. I didn't try to count the number of meteors hitting the atmosphere but if I had the number would have been well into the hundreds. Some were so bright that we could see them flash even if they were behind us. (We actually thought someone was trying to use flash photography to capture them until we saw some of the brightest in front of us.)
At times 4-5 or more meteors would streak across the sky at a time, others would leave tra
