Flutterby™! From 2011-01-02 to 2011-01-31

The Economist: Lessons from Iceland: Coming in from the cold. Comparing Iceland, which let its banks fail, to Ireland, which bailed them out (to absurd extremes). Via this Philip Greenspun blog entry.

[ related topics: Weblogs Work, productivity and environment Economics ]

Over the past 20,000 years, the human brain has shrunk from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 cc.

[ related topics: History ]

Crafts with Dan: "Our paper is too pulpy. Commercially, they use sodium hydroxide to break down fibers, but I'm not sure what's in our drain cleaner... Hey, I know, if we heat baking soda we can drive off a carbon atom and end up with sodium carbonate, which'll kick our pH off the high end of the scale..."

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

Alan Yates' Laboratory — Wireless Power Experiments: interesting reading from a technical standpoint, but I wanted to repeat:

... Unfortunately a lot of commercial effort currently seems to be being expended in accumulating patents for ambush purposes, waiting for the day when someone finally gets a system to market and accumulates enough share to make it the defacto standard. ...

Hat tip to MarkV.

[ related topics: Wireless Economics ]

Saved for future reference: MeFi thread on things to see one a road trip in Arizona.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Invention and Design Travel ]

The $4 million per mile boondoggle: 2 girls undermine entire US border strategy in under 18 seconds (YouTube video). Worthy on its own, but an ad for The Other Side of Immigration.

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Embedded Devices Video ]

Interesting parallel that came up in conversation today. Mrs. Patrick Campbell is famous for saying:

Does it really matter what these affectionate people do — so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!

And in that same era, in the early days of the automobile, red flag laws existed to keep automobiles from scaring horses.

[ related topics: Automobiles Government ]

The Gauss Christmath Special (YouTube video).

Thanks, MarkV.

[ related topics: Movies Video ]

Headline: "Sheriff wants Lindsay Lohan charged with battery". I vote we skip the intermediate device and just plug her into the wall.

EPA allowed use of Clothianidin, a pesticide they knew to be bee toxic.

[ related topics: Food ]

A very moving article from Inside Higher Education: a community college teacher testifies on behalf of a murdered student. It is easy to forget how wide the ripples of a death can travel.

[ related topics: Law Enforcement Community Education ]

Women or Wine ? Monogamy and Alcohol by Mara Squicciarini and Jo Swinnen (PDF):

Intriguingly, across the world the main social groups which practice polygyny do not consume alcohol. We investigate whether there is a correlation between alcohol consumption and polygynous/monogamous arrangements, both over time and across cultures. Historically, we find a correlation between the shift from polygyny to monogamy and the growth of alcohol consumption. Cross-culturally we also find that monogamous societies consume more alcohol than polygynous societies in the pre- industrial world. We provide a series of possible explanations to explain the positive correlation between monogamy and alcohol consumption over time and across societies.

Via Marginal Revolution, Via Andrew Sullivan, with a hat tip to Bill Humphries.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Wines and Spirits Economics Marriage ]

A mathematical model for the determination of total area under glucose tolerance and other metabolic curves. M M Tai.

OBJECTIVE--To develop a mathematical model for the determination of total areas under curves from various metabolic studies.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS--In Tai's Model, the total area under a curve is computed by dividing the area under the curve between two designated values on the X-axis (abscissas) into small segments (rectangles and triangles) whose areas can be accurately calculated from their respective geometrical formulas. The total sum of these individual areas thus represents the total area under the curve. Validity of the model is established by comparing total areas obtained from this model to these same areas obtained from graphic method (less than +/- 0.4%). Other formulas widely applied by researchers under- or overestimated total area under a metabolic curve by a great margin.

Yay! M M Tai has rediscovered the trapezoidal rule for approximating the integral!

The fun part? Google tells me that it's been cited by 136 other papers. That means a whole lot of doctors have apparently never heard of calculus.

Hat tip to J. J. Campanella.

[ related topics: Mathematics Graphic Design ]

10 frames for deckles and screens assembled. Want to make more, but I think we've only got 5 tubs to work with.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment ]

Northern California problems: "nothing in Sonoma or Napa is really exciting me, maybe we should go all the way to St. Helena for lunch..."

[ related topics: California Culture ]

Shadow passed along a springy wood stool designed by Carolien Laro. YouTube video of the springing action. I've got all sorts of questions about durability and such, it seems like she's using the wood in a way that doesn't make the flex axis terribly strong, but it is kinda cool.

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Embedded Devices Video Woodworking ]

In the wake of The Lancet withdrawing publication of the paper, BMJ takes down Andrew Wakefield and the whole "vaccines cause autism" scare: How the case against the MMR vaccine was fixed.

(For the archives: USA Today version, Newsday version, CNN version, but it's worth reading the BMJ one instead.)

[ related topics: Health Law Current Events Archival ]

Remember: Abstinence is only 100% effective if you use it each and every time you have sex (thanks @Scarleteen http://bit.ly/dHRo7p )

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Erotic Sexual Culture ]

For years I've been able to say "come back when you know what you want and I'll build it". Two projects recently are mucking with this. The first is my service on the Petaluma Technology & Telecommunications Advisory Committee. The second is that I'm currently doing some research for a look at possible transportation futures.

In both of these the goal is much more of a matter of framing possibilities in ways that the various members of the audience can hear from their own various biases and perspectives so that they can make decisions based on that information.

This is a great growth opportunity for me.

One of the things that strikes me though is just how many competing agendas there are in transportation. Since their inception railroads have been huge mechanisms for transferring public dollars into private coffers, but as we start to look at the impacts and costs of car pool lanes versus buses versus passenger rail for various applications we start to see all sorts of evidence of transportation policy being used for wealth transfer, of infrastructure built out for disaster or emergency scenarios in interesting ways, of users making trade-offs between energy costs, overall operating costs, and capital costs in ways that tendril out into the economy in extremely complex ways.

This stuff is fascinating.

[ related topics: Automobiles Trains Economics Public Transportation ]

Skulpt — Python written in JavaScript running in your web browser. With WebGL bindings.

[ related topics: Python ]

I think people complaining about that Tom Ford/Vogue "kids dressed up" thing are missing what it says about *adults* and our views of sexy.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Automobiles ]

Fantastic MeFi entry on Mapping Slavery. If you like maps or sociology or the reasons behind the "War Between The States"/"Civil War", just go there and start looking.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Maps and Mapping ]

From European road lighting technologies By Dale Wilken, United States. Federal Highway Administration. Office of International Programs, United States.

In Switzerland, experts emphasized the importance of dry roadways when conducting field measurements. There are, however, only a couple of summer months during which pavements are dry enough to be measured.

Uh. Yeah. So I understand the need for consistent measurement conditions, but this sounds a bit like "our standards are for situations in which the product is rarely deployed".

[ related topics: Books ]

Stat OTD: Road fatalities per billion km (1997): US 10, Japan 15, Germany 14, France 16, Britain 8, Greece 29(!), Turkey 139(!!!).

[ related topics: Food Birds ]

Ya know, I'm not much on the "LOL Fox commentators!" thing, I mean why give 'em any more coverage than they already get. On the other hand, Bill O'Reilly is almost back to the flat earth:

O'REILLY: I'll tell you why [religion's] not a scam, in my opinion: tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can't explain that.

SILVERMAN: Tide goes in, tide goes out?

O'REILLY: See, the water, the tide comes in and it goes out, Mr. Silverman. It always comes in, and always goes out. You can't explain that.

Apparently O'Reilly's been taking science questions from the Insane Clown Posse.

Via SE

[ related topics: Religion moron Journalism and Media Clowns ]

Holy shit, I live in the future again: I'm learning about transportation technologies. Among those things are "lane departure warning" systems, which have been deployed on commercial trucks for a decade now. They're also in higher end cars right now. I'm not sure where you can buy one, but now (or very very shortly) there's also the Mobileye C2-270 which not only warns you when you drift out of the lane, but also warns for bicyclists, pedestrians and other potential hazards.

And just sits on your dashboard.

[ related topics: Theater & Plays Consumerism and advertising Machinery Education ]

Marin County Bans "Smart Meters" Probably more for the ability to detect Grow-Ops (industry term for hydroponic or indoors plant growing) and fraud from Grow-Ops more than anything related to "health effects of radiation from smart meters".

[ related topics: Bay Area ]

I'm interested in learning more about the Luna Road in-road solar powered lights replacement for "Bott's dots" and "cat's eye" reflectors (and some of the technologies that could be enabled by having illumination on the road surface), but boy their web site is Flash based and seems to be intent upon keeping me from learning anything about their product. I got close once, but then hit the back button and got the intro voiceover again.

Must've cost them a pretty penny in studio time, but... yuck.

[ related topics: Currency Education Photovoltaics ]

Chattanooga (Unix, Gnu and ) Linux Users Group

I've been working on Yet Another CMS^(tm)(c) called Widget abusing Chugalug.org as a test site, and wanted to plug the group, and some ideas in the CMS.

Things like the Chattanooga Linux Jobs section are automagically generated in a way inspired by Flutterby's topic and keyword identification. I've been impressed that this specific mailing list and organization, even knowing their stuff is web-indexed and searchable, posts whatever they seem to want to, and prefers the mailing list as the center of the community.

"Widget" is subscribed to the mailing list, and creates/indexes comments from it.

[ related topics: Free Software Content Management Open Source Work, productivity and environment Chattanooga Community ]

So Facebook took money from Goldman Sachs. When we have to bail out Goldman Sachs *again*, can we also nationalize Facebook?

[ related topics: Currency ]

Blog of various woodworking, and this is the easiest way to get the link from the ipad to the real computer... http://woodworkessence.com/

[ related topics: Weblogs Woodworking ]

More damage has been done to the American psyche by "fat is bad" propaganda than any other movement. "Lite Ranch Dressing"? Just. So. Wrong.

When does artistic license devolve into censorship? Perhaps when tobacco is excised from history. From Boing-Boing: excising cigarettes from historical photos.

[ related topics: Photography Free Speech Art & Culture ]

Via Philip Greenspun comes Figure 1-2 from the NSF Science and Engineering Indicators 2010 report:

At this scale it's hard to read (click to zoom) but the black bar on the left is "Bachelor's degree or higher", the pink bar on the right "less than high school", the bar groups are subject.

Seems like moms, not schools, teach kids math.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Photography Mathematics Archival ]

So with Family Build Night, we've had some great nights when we've been able to plan on enough volunteers to provide the one-on-one adult to kid-using-tools supervision that the site administrator would like us to provide, but we don't always have that ratio. So we have to plan for not having it. So this is a redacted and edited bit of the frustrated email I just sent:

To put this in context, remember that several of those kids are carrying pocket knives (which we've had to ask them to not pull out to solve problems that they've had) and one or two are carrying buck knives. And I say this without shock, because at 7 or 8 every kid I knew had a pocket knife. They've got far more access to tools and dangerous things out in the courtyard or over by the creek than they do inside when they'd actually have some adult supervision.

The Boy Scouts guidelines have hand tools at 7 (Tiger Cubs), pocket knives at 8 (Cub Scouts), although they do delay bow saws (as distinct from other saws) until 10 (Webelos). And part of Charlene's reasons for doing this program is that these kids don't have the resources to do Scouts, and we'd like to provide some of those same enrichments to them.

Safety is important and we feel that so is learning to respect the tools, and they're only going to get that if they learn to use the tools within an adult sanctioned space, where they're not trying to hide the tools from us.

What are the concerns here? Is it [redacted] liability? Access to tools by the little kids? We can put the kids with tools in another room or otherwise segregate spaces.

And we also feel like we're losing the boys because without the use of tools they find the outside much more compelling. If we could whittle outside and only tear paper inside, so would we.

We're grateful for the opportunity to work with these kids, and will continue to do so even if we're restricted to using tools only in a one-on-one situation, but we're frustrated that they're getting a much less rich adult-integrated upbringing than kids in higher income households are getting.

Anyway, that's our frustration for the moment,

And Charlene comments "They could do more damage with a pencil", to which I replied "Don't tell 'em that!"

Further, remembering from my childhood, the one major accident with a hand tool I remember was when an over-protected kid picked up a chisel, I said "don't use it like that!", he said "I know what I'm doing" and sank it into his wrist. Had he had an introduction to the chisels, he'd be far better off.

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Nature and environment Software Engineering Space & Astronomy Sociology Work, productivity and environment Education Woodworking ]

need to talk to a lawyer with experience in California and liability issues. Bonus if they'll give us a discount for a worthy cause.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Law California Culture ]

Twitter’s Response to WikiLeaks Subpoena Should Be the Industry Standard:

ANALYSIS — Twitter introduced a new feature last month without telling anyone about it, and the rest of the tech world should take note and come up with their own version of it.

Twitter beta-tested a spine.

[ related topics: Invention and Design ]

My brother and his family live in the Chicago suburb of Forest Park, a pleasent bedroom community at the end of two elevated train lines with a population of about 15,000 souls. Rather to my surprise, my 17 year-old nephew has decided to run for the town council this April. (he will be 18 by then, and finishing high school) I saw him this weekend, and he spoke of setting up a fund-raising event and getting our large clan out to drum up support. He also had his first political anecdote.

Last week he attended a basketball game at his school and discovered that former White House consigliere Rahm Emmanuel was also there. Rahm is of course in a four-way race for mayor of Chicago (4 real candidates plus some cranks). My nephew went up and introduced himself to the former US congressman as a fellow candidate and asked him for any words of statesmanlike wisdom. Rahm took him by the shoulder, looked into young Matthew's eyes and told him, "Go negative early."

[ related topics: Politics Sociology Machinery Community Trains ]

I think maybe it's time to stop being so negative all the time. Rather than engaging in antifanity, I'm going to promote profanity.

Just got my TI eZ430-Chronos hackable digital wristwatch. BM Innovations makes a heart rate sensor: http://www.bm-innovations.com/chronos

In the news reports and ensuing forum comments about the Queensland Floods (If you want a "holy crap!" moment, take a look at the first picture on this BBC photo set) someone wrote "9 deaths, 4 of them children", and it got me to thinking, which is always dangerous.

In an infant, we have a risk factor for the mother, and the parents or some combination of parents and society have a few tens of thousands of dollars invested in bringing that creature forth from the womb.

In a 20 something, we, the parents and society, have invested at least, what, half a million bucks?

I wonder if it's another symptom of the human tendency to mischaracterize risk and miscalculate rewards that we tend to call out the potential more than the actual...

[ related topics: Children and growing up Interactive Drama Photography Current Events Monty Python California Culture Community ]

Woodworking porn: video of some serious bandsaw magic

[ related topics: Video Woodworking ]

Jeri Ellsworth is currently posting "Electronics A to Z" on her YouTube account. Today's episode: B is for Battery. If you've ever wanted to see what happens when you connect 40(!) 9 volt batteries in series and shorted them, this is your video.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Movies Video ]

Whitepixel breaks 28.6 billion password/sec:

This software and hardware combination achieves a rate of 28.6 billion MD5 password hashes tested per second, consumes 1230 Watt at full load, and costs 2700 USD as of December 2010. The capital and operating costs of such a system are only a small fraction of running the same workload on Amazon EC2 GPU instances, as I will detail in this post.

[ related topics: Software Engineering Cryptography ]

And when I finally get a handle on woodworking... Utsushi - in search of Katsuira's tiger part 1 and Utsushi - in search of Katsuira's tiger part 2 follows Ford Hallam as he recreates a 19th century sword hilt. Lots of painstaking chisel work and detail inlay.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Fabrication Woodworking ]

It's difficult to make a case for public transit based on energy costs. At best buses only save about twice the fuel of single-passenger automobiles, although with higher efficiency commute vehicles or carpooling this drops off, so if a bus takes much longer than a car you start to find that paying for fuel is way overshadowed by wages.

It may even be difficult to make that based on overall costs, yes, highways and roads are incredibly subsidized, far beyond gasoline and other fuel tax levels, but so are public transit modes.

Heck, if you go back to the railways of the 1800s you find that though the railroad barons got incredibly wealthy, their personal fortunes were remarkably close to the amount of public debt that the railroads ended up defaulting on. Basically, railroads have long been mechanisms for wealth transfer.

So many of the arguments for public transit that actually make internal sense are about access to transportation for poor people, or about changing the culture and development patterns to build cities and metropolitan regions for which public transit can actually have a reasonable energy or economic payoff.

I'm looking for other pro-transit arguments. It doesn't matter too much to me whether you agree with them or not, what I'm looking for are arguments that internally make sense. I'd especially like to find sociological models or arguments about how transit shapes communities, but even well thought out arguments about subsidies will catch my eye.

Heck, some good papers about train or ferry commuters being happier than those traveling similar times by car because of a better user experience would also be appreciated.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Politics Sociology Law Work, productivity and environment California Culture Automobiles Machinery Community Trains Economics Public Transportation ]

A bit of what I'm talking about:

Center For Transportation Excellence says in their page meant to rebut critics that

The Federal Transit Administration’s 1999 National Transit Database [link elided 'cause it's 404] shows an average operating cost per passenger mile on light rail of 45¢, compared to 55¢ on buses.

So as of 1999 buses cost as much per mile to operate as automobiles do in 2009 in stop-and-go traffic. Since 20% of that automobile cost is fuel, if you get a car that's twice as efficient as the average of 22.6 MPG (not counting trucks!), which could just be a new car, your operating costs are inline with a train.

So you can argue about subsidies, but as soon as you start to do that you see something like that CFTE page making statements like:

Approximately 40 million Americans, nearly 20% of the population, use transit on a regular basis. [vii] On the federal level, transit receives approximately 20% of available transportation funds.

apples, meet oranges.

I'm having trouble tracking down simple numbers on construction of rail per mile costs vs road per mile, and really that's the wrong metric, the numbers need to be about road per mile costs. Which means, of course, that I'm back to the same apples and oranges that others are complaining about.

I know that there has to have been some deeper thinking on this, but in light of all of the shouting by the various advocacy groups I'm having a hell of a time finding it.

[ related topics: Sociology Automobiles Trains Economics Public Transportation ]

Last night's SCWA meeting was at Orion Speakers. Great sound, but the equalizer didn't have an "Angst" knob that'd let me turn it up high enough to make Pink Floyd sound as good as they did when I was a teenager...

[ related topics: Nostalgia Children and growing up Music ]

A couple of years ago, after a screaming fit with the client, I let them do a sinfully stupid thing, add/allow another field for logging in besides their system assigned account number. It was their cell phone number. I didn't add that column to the unique keys list. I should have. That was my 2nd sin.

There are now a bunch of people with the same cell phone number.. and different passwords (which kinda works...) and because people are people: There are also the same cell phone number with the same password.

The real insanity is: the client expects the system to properly guess what the proper user is, from multiple people using identical credentials.

I'm not a popular person today, I've been applying electro-convulsive shock therapy. Some of it to myself.

Say the mantra with me: "the client is not always right.. I will not let them talk me into stupid things..." - Repeat.

[ related topics: Wireless Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

[shameless plug]

Nancy as Everything Just So has been playing with websites for a long time. She went after it seriously and professionally a few months ago. Last week she launched Buy Chattanooga Homes and Tennessee Paralegal Association. Both of these clients are exuding happiness. But what what makes the "arrival" is a competing fairly high end web shop just called her to outsource some of their load. Awesome.

My favorite part: I've had very little to do with it. Which means I need to also plug Derek and the crew at Scenic City Productions for the graphics and back end work.

[ related topics: Work, productivity and environment Graphics Chattanooga ]

Dire Straits "Money For Nothing" song banned from Canadian radio (Via MeFi). As you'd expect, over the "faggot" lines. I rolled my eyes when they took "nigger" out of Huckleberry Finn, but I did not speak up because I understood that it was social commentary...

[ related topics: Music Current Events Currency ]

HP has ramped up their efforts to get me to buy my ink directly from them. I've been involved in the back room chatter about consumer products sales occasionally, so my first reaction was a bit of an eyebrow raise: They're offering me a discount from what I'd pay at the retail level. This means they're confident enough in their market strength that they're willing to piss off Staples et al.

So in light of my recent musings on transportation, what does this mean? A few guesses:

• Local sales tax revenue is toast. Maybe a bit of an overstatement, but given that everything's being shipped from China anyway, there'll be few reasons to buy from a local vendor.
• The real efficiency gains in transportation will be gotten from bringing the products to the consumer rather than bringing the consumer to the products. Why run buses through a neighborhood every half hour when you can run one delivery truck once a day?
• Shopping will fall to the virtual presence before commuting does.

[ related topics: Politics Consumerism and advertising Machinery Economics Public Transportation ]

That moment when all the wood is arrayed, and all the clamps are laid out, and the brush hits the glue and everything has to be executed, every joint assembled, and the whole carcase clamped together before the glue begins to dry, is a moment of great centering calm. What has to be done is clear, there are no decisions, just execution.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

To boldly go where no diacritical mark has gone before: The Shatner Comma. As seen in the University of Trantor Book of Style.

[ related topics: Books Education ]

You have a great need for other people to like and admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. Disciplined and self-controlled outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You pride yourself as an independent thinker and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic. Security is one of your major goals in life.

*

[ related topics: Psychology, Psychiatry and Personality ]

Yay to Wikileaks for helping do what the US State Department couldn't: Tunisia's corrupt President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ousted.

What stormtroopers do on their days off.

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Charlie Stross: Reasons to be cheerful

[ related topics: Weblogs ]

Citizen Media Law Project: Immunity for Online Publishers Under the Communications Decency Act

[ related topics: Law Journalism and Media Douglas Adams ]

Surprised to find Wikipedia has an article on "Brucesploitation". Doubly that it refers to Lee, not Campbell.

In Australia, a woman riding an inflatable sex doll down the flood-swollen Yarra river has had to be rescued:

The incident prompted a warning from police that blow-up sex toys are "not recognised flotation devices’’.

I have, of course, previously mentioned the Bubble Baba Challenge.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture Whitewater ]

Getaround - neighborhood car rental / car sharing. Interesting...

[ related topics: Automobiles ]

Wow! Phi and Pi calculators in Conway's Life. Via MarkV.

I was going to whine about Google's search results this morning. About how sites like eHow.com are making it difficult to find actual valuable instruction that's tempered with experience.

But then I remembered my observation that the brilliance of Zynga is that they saw gold farming as an opportunity where other game designers saw it as a flaw, and got to thinking "what's the opportunity in this, and how can we work towards that?"

Don't know yet, but just a little reminder to look at those steaming piles and see opportunity.

[ related topics: Games Work, productivity and environment ]

I'm looking for some background and details on a new study about common (often over the counter) painkillers, heart attack and stroke. That entry will come shortly, but in the process I found Effects of glucosamine, chondroitin, or placebo in patients with osteoarthritis of hip or knee: network meta-analysis. The conclusion notes that:

Industry independent trials showed smaller effects than commercially funded trials (P=0.02 for interaction).

Yep. Unfortunately, anti-news...

[ related topics: broadband Invention and Design Current Events Consumerism and advertising ]

An SE link to Study Links NSAIDs With Higher Risk of Heart Attack, Stroke, led me to track down the original. The difficulty I had finding it once again shows the abysmal state of journalism world-wide. The MedBioWorld.com article linked to the source

The study is Cardiovascular safety of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs: network meta-analysis Trelle et al. The summary article in BMJ is Cardiovascular safety of NSAIDs:

The controversy and confusion about the cardiovascular safety of drugs to relieve chronic musculoskeletal symptoms provides an important lesson. Drugs for symptomatic relief must be evaluated with regard to the target symptoms as well as less frequent yet serious adverse effects. NSAIDs are not an ideal treatment with respect to efficacy or safety.

The drugs were naproxen, ibuprofen, diclofenac, celecoxib, etoricoxib, rofecoxib (Vioxx), and lumiracoxib. Of those, "Naproxen seemed least harmful", which is a bit surprising that it's safer than ibuprofen.

[ related topics: Drugs Health Journalism and Media ]

So one of the big questions is: is energy going to get more expensive, or less expensive? Those of us who haven't bought photovoltaic arrays yet are betting on less expensive. Drop the question on any far left self-proclaimed "progressives", as I've run into occasionally, and you'll hear "OMG peak oil!", or "more expensive".

Patent #7785861, "Hyperphotosynthetic organisms", was issued August 31, 2010

... Also provided are methods of using the engineered organism to produce carbon-based products of interest, biomass or pharmaceutical agents. ...

The company is Joule Unlimited, founded by George Church. A puff piece in the Globe and Mail shows that they're looking for funding.

(Via MeFi)

But things like this also show that if you're going to make the case for alternative transportation infrastructures, energy may or may not be a compelling argument.

[ related topics: Intellectual Property Invention and Design Current Events Photovoltaics ]

The Yahoo News article is headlined "Scientists warn California could be struck by winter ‘superstorm’", complete with a stock picture of ooooh super spooky scary cloud formations, and links to fire tornado videos.

It's a rewrite of a New York Times article warning about "superstorms" which is itself basically a rewrite of this USGS press release about a disaster planning conference that used a couple of hundred year flood as its central scenario.

Worth looking at each of those articles and asking yourself at each stage what the value-add is of the "journalism" involved.

[ related topics: Current Events Journalism and Media California Culture Earthquake Conferences Economics ]

First pass at slides for a presentation to the North Bay GIS User Group covering OpenLayers, GeoServer, Mapnik, QGIS and more.

[ related topics: California Culture ]

The other night I watched for the first (and probably last) time CNN's Parker-Spitzer show, a rather pallied talk program starring the former Governor of New York/whoremiester Elliot Spitzer. They ran a segment on Steve Jobs' medical leave, asking Business Insider honcho Henry Blodgett to explain what this means to the tech markets. Its a generally harmless piece, but watch the screen in the first 30 seconds or so. As is usual on CNN, a few biographical factoids about the guest are displayed, including the fact that Mr. Blodgett is banned for life from being a stock trader, and that host Elliot Spitzer indicted him and extracted a $2 million fine for stock-jobbing. Yet there they were being as friendly as possible to each other. Is CNN running an on-air rehab clinic, or does America actually provide a second chance?

[ related topics: Apple Computer Invention and Design Law New York Economics ]

Back from Mill Valley to see Po Bronson talk about Nurture Shock. Then dinner at Sol Food. Makes for a good evening.

[ related topics: Food Bay Area Woodworking ]

Skip Sommer writes about prostitution in Petaluma's early days.

[ related topics: Sexual Culture ]

Dust off those hardware skills, the 555 Contest is coming. For those of you who aren't hardware nerds, the 555 is an IC designed by Hans R. Camenzind and brought to market by Signetics in 1971, and it's still going strong 4 decades later! With the addition of a few capacitors and resistors it can be a timer or oscillator, a switch debouncer, a frequency divider, a flip-flop, a touch sensor, and... well... I guess that's what the contest is about.

Forest Mims and Jeri Ellsworth are on board, so even watching from the sidelines should be awesome, once they work out the categories and such. So go over and help 'em make this a good one.

[ related topics: Hardware Hackery ]

Chattanooga's Electric Power Board deploying intelligent switches run by their high speed fiber, but also of interest is that it mentions the Bloom Box (previously mentioned) that EPB has at their headquarters. A reminder that fuel cells are actually shipping.

[ related topics: Chattanooga Net Culture Archival ]

Reading up on GPS accuracy. Anyone got favorite whitepapers on RTK implementations or other dGPS technologies?

[ related topics: Maps and Mapping ]

Make script files executable automatically when you save them from Emacs.

Nerd question: Is it wrong that I just used vi to edit my ~/.emacs.d/init.el?

Still digesting some of Wikileaks, Karl Marx and You

Wikileaks is the first concrete realisation of the crypto-anarchist dream: completely anonymous leaking, dealing blows to tyranny.

It's a decent broad overview of the "free culture / hacker movement", with a quote and description of most of the major factions.

[ related topics: Sociology California Culture Cryptography ]

The good news: I'm spending the day learning about really cool technologies! The bad news: It'd be terribly easy to follow the shiny objects off onto a path that has nothing to do with my deliverables...

[ related topics: Current Events Education ]

Mark Petrovic:

News porn (n): fake news; news to lure you into reading something designed to sell corn flakes

[ related topics: Erotic Sexual Culture Current Events ]

Charlene just asked if, after this day of research, I was any smarter. Yeah, I guess, in an "Ouch! that smarts!" sort of way.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama ]

"I can't die," LaLanne would say. "It would ruin my image."

Jack LaLane, founder of the modern health movement, dead at age 96.

[ related topics: Health ]

nzkoz:

I swear openID was designed by the devil to lure developers with the promise of simplicity then repeatedly destroy their will to live

Ack! Numerous meaningless pseudo-differentiations written to confuse the pointy haired ones makes Dan's head all asplodey!

Piano Stairs (YouTube video). Encouraging casual exercise by making it fun. (Hat tip to Shawn).

[ related topics: Music Movies Video ]

Alabama law firm to Taco Bell: That's not beef:

The meat mixture sold by Taco Bell restaurants contains binders and extenders and does not meet the minimum requirements set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be labeled as "beef," according to the legal complaint.

Hat tip to Dave Goodman

[ related topics: Food Law Current Events Consumerism and advertising ]

Why nobody bothers to chase ambulances anymore.

[ related topics: Law Automobiles ]

Krugman on Fresh Air just referred to the Euro as a "Great Experiment". Last time I heard that phrase it was about the Soviet Union in 1930s

[ related topics: Currency ]

Chris in Florida forwarded along this wonderful little article on Maurice Franklink, wood turner.

[ related topics: Woodworking ]

How to hack a marathon if you aren't a runner. I'd like to run a marathon, I guess I just need to figure out which one to sign up for and do it.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Sports ]

Last weekend, Charlene and I went to see The King's Speech. Enjoyed the film, but it also felt a little fluffy, a little too shallow. Christopher Hitchens asserts that The King's Speech was far too kind, especially to Churchill and George VI.

Seems like there's lots of depth in the maneuvering to keep the royal family palatable to the public and the intricacies of diplomacy of that era that would make a great history, but which will never be told.

[ related topics: Movies Sociology ]

I know I've scoffed at "The Singularity" before, but it sure seems movie-wise like we've achieved something like that. Someone has created a 10 minute compilation of a Russian dubbed Indian robot clone movie that... well... Those Indian filmmakers have more awesome in their left nostril than Michael Bay ever will.

I think this is the trailer, Shankar's The Robot. Here's the first 10 minutes of that compilation. And I mean "awesome" in that 13 year old sort of way.

But, really, why do people even bother with effects films any more? This shows that it has been done. Period. We have reached the effects films and awesomeness singularity.

(Via Mefi and via MeFi)

Related, and probably more worth watching: Lazy Teenage Superheroes. (SE thread). As I was watching this, I was reminded of the days way beck when that I was impressed by "The Mind's Eye" and raytracing...

[ related topics: Movies Robotics Television California Culture ]

Anyone else running MediaWiki sites get attacked hard by spammers last night? Huge hits on PetalumaOpen.com and Flutterby.net...

[ related topics: Sports ]

Just what everyone should have: a series of posters extolling their exploits as Dear Leader.

[ related topics: Current Events Art & Culture Fabrication ]

Make any browser behave like IE6

Note to self: Consider pronunciation carefully when complaining to people that you are unable to find your caulk.

Don't save digitally what you don't want on the front page of the newspaper

Is an old rule bumping into a new generation where it seems they twit/post/face plant every stupid thing they do. In AU news, notes of USA lawyers mining facebook for evidence is the new hotness.

[ related topics: Invention and Design Law Current Events Journalism and Media ]

Offer on Freecycle for a 10" salad spinner, "perfect for someone who cooks for one or two". Really? If we had any more people in this home we'd have to re-purpose a washing machine. Yes, we eat a lot of greens.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Food ]

If you listen to only one ukulele reinterpretation of 1970s classic rock today, make sure it's Jake Shimabukuro Live in Japan - Bohemian Rhapsody.

[ related topics: Music ]

If you want background on the situation in Egypt right now, may I strongly suggests following what @wikileaks is posting on Twitter. Through briefings like 10CAIRO181, Scenesetter for Admiral Mullen and 10CAIRO179, SCENESETTER FOR FBI DIRECTOR MUELLER we can see that the U.S. State Department is concerned, unsurprisingly, with discussions between states, not with the populations of those states. And the Egypt - Egyptian Military Succession Plans Told to US Embassy overview written by a Wikileaks staffer with links to various cables shows that military groups get respect.

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Law Enforcement Television ]

I generally don't link to BoingBoing, but it's worth an exception: Sean Bonner: Egypt turns off internet, Lieberman wants same option for US.

In reading through those Wikileaks memos, it's plain that our government has, as a matter of policy, promoted stability over freedom. It's good to remember that that's what governments do.

[ related topics: Privacy moron Civil Liberties Net Culture Government ]

Eros Blog: Seven things Google doesn't mind you searching for. Why does Google autocomplete suggest "Jeffrey Dahmer", work just fine for "how to abduct someone", but return nothing for "Violet Blue" or "bittorrent"?

[ related topics: Weblogs Work, productivity and environment ]

So if I praise Exit Through The Gift Shop's cutting commentary on the art scene, am I one of the people it mocks? Post-punk irony is *hard*

[ related topics: Interactive Drama Art & Culture ]

Jared Axelrod

We are born naked. Everything else is cosplay.

[ related topics: Nudity ]

Boulders were delivered yesterday, we installed the flagstone today.

[ related topics: Photography ]

Once I finish screwing about with these TI MSP430 wireless boards, I really should learn more about FPGAs. I've mentioned FPGA dev kits before, but here's another low-cost way to get started: The open design XuLA-200 from XESS.

[ related topics: Wireless Graphic Design ]

Pirate Box

"Darts was looking for something that would allow people in the same physical space to share files, but it had to be dead simple"

Brilliant, Simple and Effective!

[ related topics: Space & Astronomy Current Events Art & Culture ]