Noah Millman amalgamates the discussions TPI and I have had over carbon: tax carbon and divert some of the tax revenue into breakthrough methods to capture and sequester carbon.TAE likes compromis...
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
Preschool
Posted on 09:04 by hony
Some articles are so good I don't need to summarize or analyze, just link. Read this. Money quote:The economists calculate that, for every dollar invested in preschool for at-risk children, society at large reaps somewhere between eight and nine dollars in retur...
Monday, 26 July 2010
Become What You Are
Posted on 06:32 by hony
Who'd have thought that Nietzsche would have agreed with me?I promised at the beginning of the year that the blog's focus for 2010 would be the coming revolution in Human-Machine Interface, and as I saw it, the likelihood that the next revolution in technology will be the integration of electronics directly into the human body, or conversely the integration of consciousness into electronics, leaving the body behind.Nietzsche, who annually wins awards for having the single most irritating name on Earth to try to type correctly, wrote a century ago...
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Popularity
Posted on 11:18 by hony
TAE's mind continues to be boggled: This Entry continues to be far and away the most read one I have written, broken links and anti-India substance be damne...
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Schadenfreude
Posted on 12:35 by hony
Ran into a kid that bullied me from elementary school all the way up through my junior year of high school. He's really fat now, and drives a Coke truc...
Parenting
Posted on 10:29 by hony
Back when I was in grad school, I used to take long, long rides on my bike. I had gotten into road biking, had my Levi Leipheimer Edition Team Discovery Jersey, my U.S. Postal jersey, my Team Discovery Edition Trek 1500 road bike, and a helluva lot of free time.In retrospect, it was incredibly self indulgent. With basically no external control over my schedule, I could pop in to the lab in the morning, do a little work, go to my classes, then have a healthy lunch at my leisure while I read headlines. By 1 pm, I would get bored with my research,...
Monday, 19 July 2010
Trusting Big Brother
Posted on 06:47 by hony
The Washington Post this morning has a massive interactive spread entitled "Top Secret America" in which they "shockingly disclose" information about companies and their relationships with government entities, including the amazing number of people with Top Secret clearance in the United States.First off, day one of this week long article revealed essentially nothing that wasn't already publicly available. If you are aware of the "awards" section of the FedBizOpps website, then you could easily have protracted this information. Further, many of...
Tour de France
Posted on 06:26 by hony
The question every cycling enthusiast is asking this time of year: who is Holly from Velocenter...
Friday, 16 July 2010
Preserving the Past
Posted on 09:04 by hony
TAE posits that the film adaptation of "Mimsy Were the Borogroves", "The Last Mimzy" is actually a fairly intelligent idea: future humans might need our DNA to save themselves. TAE further posits that we should all be freezing a sample of our cells, now, in case we need them later.The argument in "Mimzy" is that future humans have mutated, due to some unexplained ecological crisis, into beings lacking viable immune systems. They live in bizarre suits. A scientist sends back in time inanimate objects and a robotic rabbit hoping the rabbit will obtain...
Friday Poetry Burst
Posted on 06:15 by hony
The Inventor, by Rudyard Kipling (yes, I do favor Kipling to all other poets)Time and Space decreed his lot, But little Man was quick to note:When Time and Space said Man might not, Bravely he answered, "Nay! I mote."I looked on old New England. Time and Space stood fast.Men built altars to Distance At every mile they passed.Yet sleek with oil, a Force was hidMaking mock of all they did,Ready at the appointed hour To yield up to PrometheusThe secular and well-drilled Power The Gods secreted thus.And over high Wantastiquet Emulous my lightnings...
Thursday, 15 July 2010
Posthumous Charity
Posted on 12:06 by hony
TAE's Law of Posthumous Charity: wealthy individuals who only donate the bulk of their riches to charity after their death so that they can continue their rockstar lifestyle up until that point garner no friends in Heaven for their "selflessness."Paul Allen, has been philanthropic for decades. However, his promise, like Buffett's and Gates', is a posthumous one. TAE remains cynica...
Wednesday, 14 July 2010
Super Tuna
Posted on 11:25 by hony
As TAE cynically watches the human race destroy itself via environmental disaster, war, and political gridlock, I have to wonder, are we doomed?One of TAE's grandstand issues is that the human race is raping the oceans as though they were a limitless resource. One example is that having exhausted the world's cod populations, we then turned on the tuna. Now bluefin tuna are extremely threatened, and may very well go extinct. I thought about this yesterday as I was guiltily eating a tuna salad sandwich.So it seemed providential to me that this New...
Monogamy, Ctd.
Posted on 09:22 by hony
Last night my wife and I had a very serious conversation in which she essentially wanted me to act less like a guy and I essentially wanted her to be more like a guy. It was the timeless discussion, had by probably every single heterosexual couple in history: the man is too physically affectionate, and unreceptive to the signals the woman gives that she needs space, meanwhile the man feels like the woman isn't physical enough. A happy medium makes for a happy marriage.Which brings be back around to Christopher Ryan's belief that humans aren't inherently...
Friday, 9 July 2010
Friday Poetry Burst
Posted on 07:24 by hony
Invictus, by William Ernest HenleyOut of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud.Under the bludgeoning of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.Beyond the place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade,And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishment the scroll,I am the master...
Tesla Motors IPO in freefall?
Posted on 06:33 by hony
Tesla Motors, the electric car venture of Elon Musk (who made a killing off PayPal), launched its IPO last week. The stock has dropped ever since, and is currently trading below the IPO price.During the storied and successful career of Musk, it is often pointed out that he went to graduate school for only two days. TAE posits the question: should Musk have invested in an MB...
Thursday, 8 July 2010
Creepy Prescience of TAE
Posted on 11:01 by hony
Yesterday I posted this suggesting Darwinian evolution of software was not only possible but potentially extremely useful in developing smarter software.And then this morning I read this:Working like natural selection, the [genetic algorithm] takes a population of random waveforms, mutates the "fittest" of them – in this case, those with lowest energy use – and then "interbreeds" the mutated forms to make new "offspring" waveforms. The process is then repeated through several "generations" until the optimal waveform is found.I love being r...
Rivals
Posted on 10:38 by hony
Does Lance remember what it is like to have a rival? It seems to me that he needs to remember the strategies he used to crush Jan Ullrich, year after year: isolate Jan from his team, rely on the Blue Train to hold back the peleton, use teammates as catapults, and wait until Jan burns out and then make a break of his own.Having a much stronger Radioshack team, but working against a potentially more dangerous rival than Jan, Lance should remember his roots. When they hit the mountains, Lance needs to take Contador with him on break after break, and...
Post 1000
Posted on 08:12 by hony
Turns out this is the 1,000th post I have done. Blogging here has become a hobby of mine, both a way to vent my frustration at climate-hating politicians and pork-barrel-loving NASA cronies, as well as a place for me to speculate on future technology while analyzing current American scientific policy.Other people have equally fun hobbies. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate, likes to publish breakthrough works on things ranging from gravity analysis to new microscope techniques. He needs a break too, because doing nothing at all to...
TAE's Law of Philanthropy
Posted on 06:11 by hony
If "N" is the maximum number of charities a person can afford to donate to, then there are no less than N + 1 charities that want that person's mone...
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Robot Evolution
Posted on 09:34 by hony
Sometimes my mind wanders over topics I am sure have been discussed at length by experts.For example today I was wondering if we're going about this all wrong in our attempts to build a computer that mimics the human brain in our quest for artificial intelligence. As Jonah Lehrer harps on an on about on his blog, the human brain is probably the most complex (yet efficient) machine in the Milky Way Galaxy. In fact it's pretty much orders of magnitude more complex than anything else, including the Large Hadron Collider.If we are really committed...
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
TAE's International Popularity
Posted on 10:52 by hony
My sitemeter informs me I am extremely popular in India...but virtually unknown to the rest of southeast Asia. If the Chinese government were censoring me...I'd find that extremely flatterin...
Monogamy, Ctd.
Posted on 09:38 by hony
A reader writes: "I'm curious to know your current argument for monogamy. I can plainly see the pre-civilization argument for it, but why should it exist in this day and age?"First off, I am pleased that someone finds my arguments for pre-civilization human monogamy compelling. If you just apply the cold logic of evolution, you find the checks and balances rules here and while a male human could easily sneak in on many females, he would increase the risk that none of his children would live, and the females would choose the option of having a sole...
Monogamy
Posted on 06:33 by hony
There's a new book out, called "Sex at Dawn" in which the authors argue that human monogamy is just not natural. I have not read the book yet, because of TAE's Rule of Paperbacks (No book is good enough to justify paying for the hardcover version. Always wait for the paperback version).The authors, of course, are using their combined years of biology and human evolutionary history...oh wait, neither of them are biologists. This isn't to say they aren't experienced in human sexuality, or that biology and evolution are completely unknown to them,...
Friday, 2 July 2010
Genetic Engineering of Athletes
Posted on 10:58 by hony
The easiest and most reasonable method for genetic engineering of an already living person is with custom-built, targeted viruses.So when I hear news that scientists have identified specific genes in Tibetans that allow them to live and reproduce at 13,000+ feet of altitude, and that these genes evolved quickly in their race and not in any other, it leads me to assume that athletes of endurance sports would love to get their hands on those genes.Putting ethics aside, that is.So why not just build custom viruses that contain the aforementioned Tibetan...
Inadvertant Great Idea
Posted on 10:05 by hony
The "@" symbol was included on the typewriter in 1885, and remained the least used key on the board until 1971, when Ray Tomlinson used it as the natural divider in a new technology known as "email."It is now widely used in email, text messaging, computer programming languages, and even modern genetics. None of these were anything close to what the original intended use was, which was for merchants to price items: "3 bananas @ 5 cents...
Friday Poetry Burst
Posted on 09:08 by hony
Kaa's Hunting, by Rudyard Kipling"His spots are the joy of the Leopard: his horns are the Buffalo’s pride.Be clean, for the strength of the hunter is known by the gloss of his hide.If ye find that the bullock can toss you, or the heavy-browed Sambhur can gore;Ye need not stop work to inform us: we knew it ten seasons before.Oppress not the cubs of the stranger, but hail them as Sister and Brother,For though they are little and fubsy, it may be the Bear is their mother.‘There is none like to me!’ says the Cub in the pride of his earliest kill;But...
Quote of the Day
Posted on 08:19 by hony
From my friend (who is tastefully named Alex): "If I were President, I'd immediately end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and spend all that money on education...
Thursday, 1 July 2010
Reception
Posted on 09:33 by hony
The world is abuzz with the iPhone 4's sketchy call reception. So much so that the new Droid X ad actually calls out the iPhone:"It comes with a double antenna design. The kind that allows you to hold the phone any way you like and use it just about anywhere to make crystal clear calls."Whether or not the iPhone 4 has reception issues, the fact remains: cell phone reception and call quality are sketchy at best on most phones, be they smartphones or not.TAE posits the question: why is that? Here's why I am confused: Yesterday I woke up to the...
Politics
Posted on 07:47 by hony
The specific reason TAE stays out of politics as often as possible is because people are unreasonable. Why debate politics with people when their minds are set? Why ask their opinion when it stands a fair chance of being the opposite of my own, and I am forced to get a lecture? Why argue with people who say "wikipedia is filled with left-wing lies" or suggest that I am a Democrat simply because I defend the ARRA stimulus? Why should I let people assume I am a Republican because I support gun rights? Why does my vehement denial of party membership...
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