The trouble with innovations is that the really cool ones are perpetually light years away. This presents itself in two facets.1) Vaporware is perpetually in the extremely early stages of R&D, like fusion power, connecting human nerve cells to computers directly, faster than light travel, and teleportion.2) When a cool innovation is proposed the time line before we'll see it on the market is always 5+ years, aka "impossibly far in the future."And yet, people seem to be okay with this. Take this announcement on MSNBC about "spacesuits of the...
Wednesday, 31 August 2011
Tuesday, 30 August 2011
The knee-jerk reaction whenever some technoceleb makes it big is to try to examine every facet of his/her life and see how young persons can potentially emulate those things. The implication is that "if I am like Steve Jobs, my career and revenue stream will also be like Steve Jobs."This is a dangerous habit, and a difficult one to break. Firstly, its dangerous because Steve Jobs brilliance is more than a little in his uniqueness, and trying to copy...
There are a lot of things I could say about him. Because of this, I'm going to write two entries about him. This one is about (as alluded to by the above Eminiem video) the fact that Steve Jobs rightly deserves a giant sign above his mega-mansion that says "I told you so!"How Jobs determined his path forward once he left his India-buddhist-sojourn only he can ever really know. But he knew it, to be sure. And he never once slowed down. The naysayers, myself included, scoffed at Apple products, but the shareholders reaped the rewards as consumers...
Monday, 29 August 2011
First, I really enjoyed this book; it was entertaining. I am looking forward to the sequel. Right off the bat, I'd score it a 7 out of 10. That said, there are two major problems I had with it that I kept thinking about during reading. Also, I assume by reading this you don't mind spoilers. If you do then close your browser now. I won't be offended.First, Cronin's massive tome reads like a movie. And it is in the movie category that we find that Cronin has essentially troped his way into an 800-page derivation of O.P.P. (other people's precedent)....
Thursday, 25 August 2011
1. Think about cool idea that belongs in a science fiction novel.2. Search wikipedia for evidence this idea doesn't exist IRL.3. Search Google Scholar for researchers working on this idea.4. Confirm the idea has not been commercialized, nor will be in the next 5 years.5. Assume all that is needed is a spark of genius to make this idea a reality, despite the hundreds of researchers working on it.6. Assume I am capable of producing this spark.7. Amuse self with business plan for company that produces this idea.8. Think about cool idea that belongs...
Wednesday, 24 August 2011
First: Amen.Second, am I the only one who wants to plot a chart of income inequality in democratic countries over time and then compare it to a plot of the increase in # of democratic countries over time? I hate to disagree with Yglesias (who does this politics stuff better than I ever will) but there seems to be an underlying assumption here that once a certain level of democracy is achieved (fairness for everyone) that the country that has achieved it can not subsequently decline into a worse state of democracy, rather they just sit in stasis...
Jerry Richardson is a racist bigot:Richardson, who said that Newton “was dressed perfectly” for their meeting, was blunt. “I said, ‘Do you have any tattoos?’” Richardson told Rose. “He said, ‘No, sir. I don’t have any.’ I said, ‘Do you have any piercings?’ He said, ‘No, sir. I don’t have any.’ I said, ‘We want to keep it that way.’ . . . ."“We want to keep no tattoos, no piercings, and I think you’ve got a very nice haircut.”Florio is quick to point out that a different employee of Richardson,...
Monday, 22 August 2011
Friday, 19 August 2011
Jonah Lehrer points to a pretty dang convincing study that not only are there no long-term ill effects from smoking pot, but actually that once education/race/gender/social status are normalized, it turns out that pretty much everything D.A.R.E told us about pot is myth.Once these population differences were corrected for, the long-term effects of marijuana use disappeared: The scientists found that “there were no significant between group differences.” In other words, the amount of pot consumed had no measurable impact on cognitive performance.Furthermore,...
Thursday, 18 August 2011
Here's a long, interesting article about Accuracy International, the sniper rifle outfit that is supplying many western nations with cutting-edge man-killers. I want to highlight one passage though:Sniping, and the design, engineering and manufacture of sniper rifles, revolves around one characteristic: precision. There are no grey areas with sniping — a bullet fired at long range either hits its target, or it doesn’t, depending on how good the rifle and its human operator are.My initial knee jerk reaction was to point out the author's misuse...
Saturday, 13 August 2011
Today I saw you at the park. You were proudly watching your son's football practice.One thing I've learned to do since my daughter was born was to not judge other parents. That deranged father with a death-grip on his daughter's arm while she screams and claws at him? I don't judge him...he's probably me.But all that aside, I have to judge you. Because you were clearly putting your son's in harm's way. A seven year-old should not be playing tackle football. Certainly, signing your son up for sports is a great way to keep him healthy. And a complicated...
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
Normally I find XKCD hilarious and insightful, but I have to wonder at this one:If his first password, "Tr0ub4dor&3" is from the ASCII character set, then he's actually got an 11 character password, which translates to 72 bits. Where he gets "28 bits" I do not know. 2^72 at 1000/guesses per second is 150 billion years to crack. What am I missin...
Saturday, 6 August 2011
On the first day of class, Mr. Barnes handed me (and everyone else in the class) an 11X17" sheet of paper outlining the entire metabolic pathway of glucose in vertebrates. My life has not been the same since. The secrets - the dark, clandestine, unknowable secrets - were actually light, wondrous, and knowable. Mr. Barnes showed us the way. He had irrevocably changed my life in one day. I only signed up for his class, "college biology," because a few years earlier my sister had taken it and had rave reviews.Oh, Mr. Barnes, I wish you were still...
In the interests of disclosure I must admit this: I am 80% of the way through a bottle of 'Two Buck Chuck.' They just opened a Trader Joe's here in town, and I admit I am partaking in their unexpectedly tasty wine selection. Carol Williams. Vicki Kohl. While these names may not be immortalized in the annals of greatness, the fact that more than a decade after I had them as teachers I remember their names should alone stand as a to testament them. The women were, among other greater things, my junior and senior year English teachers. Here's the...
Thursday, 4 August 2011
If your God-given talent happened to be "the incredible ability to recreate scientific research that has been recently published in peer-reviewed journals and prove that it is junk," would you feel blessed by this or cursed?Surely you perform a great benefit to society by casting a clear light on dubious research...but on the other hand the scientific community almost certainly will despise yo...
Wednesday, 3 August 2011
I really like this Robin Hanson post about human (or other) population at a galactic level. His point:If Earth were paved over with a city the density of Manhattan today (1.6 million in 60 square kilometers), Earth would have a population of 14 thousand billion. Since Manhattan now has an average building height of 25 meters, a two kilometer deep version could hold a million billion people, and a two thousand kilometer deep version (Earth’s radius...
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