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Archive: May 4, 2025
Archive: May 4, 2024
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Longtime readers know, I used to be a pretty decent bike rider, doing Centuries, Ultra Rides, and even Double Centuries with regulatory. That was before I became old and fat. Now I do them with sporatic irregularity, in a futile effort to prove to myself that I am neither older nor fatter.
One of the classic Ultra Rides in Southern California is the aptly-named Breathless Agony, a ride which starts near sea level in Redlands (East of LA) and makes its way up to over 8,000' to the Onyx Pass above Big Bear Lake. I've done it before, it's never been "fun", I've sworn I would never do it again, and yet, I did. 104 miles, 11,000 feet of climbing, and very little fun, even in retrospect.
Not long after the start - still smiling
Early morning paceline was nice to follow
And so the climbing begins - Glen Oaks pass - in the mist
Ah, the grim reaper, the mascot for this event, I took his picture as he took mine
The cute little Glen Oaks post office
main point of this picture is to note the angle of the parking lot :/
After a lot of climbing and a brief, cold descent, the real climb starts: Damnation Alley, 11miles
The checkpoint in Angelus Oaks ... whew, made it ... took two hours for those 11mi and now I am cooked
I will say it is beautiful climbing into the clouds
A few lone riders each in their own world - Big Bear 24mi ahead - and much climbing left
Finally! - 8,000' marker - means I am almost there. I have to confess, a lot of stopping and resting.
Incredible views of the snowy peaks - and yes, it was cold, especially when stopped
What's that up ahead? Could it be ... the finish? OMG almost there.
Woo hoo!
From here, a 35mi descent back to the start - and man was I cold. Arm warmers only, no jacket (dummy!). I actually slowed down to avoid being even colder, which meant my hands got sore from braking. Not good.
Strava has the whole story ... so much fun I will never do it again.
(You can remind me I said that...)
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Archive: May 4, 2023
Archive: May 4, 2022
Archive: May 4, 2021
Archive: May 3, 2020
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 May! That's not just a name, it's an attitude :)
I sense everyone is not having the "sheltering in place" thing anymore and everything is gradually going back to "normal", whatever our politicians may say. The "flatten the curve" thing was all about avoiding overloading our hospitals; well they are sitting empty. No amount of sheltering is going to defeat the virus; for that we'll need a vaccine, and we may not get one. Note: there is no SARS vaccine yet, and it's still out there...
 I've noted how my company Teladoc's business is booming; so too all "business" video systems like Zoom. But as the WSJ notes, Microsoft isn't cutting Zoom any Slack (great punny headline), their Teams product is a worthy competitor. Teams is integrated into Office 365 and it's a pretty nice combination of Slack and Zoom. The new Microsoft in action... 
Tim Bray: Bye, Amazon. "I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19." Wow. Read the whole thing; not good.
 You know what's going to happen in May? NASA: Get ready to launch, America! "A new era of human spaceflight is about to begin. American astronauts will once again launch on an American rocket from American soil to the International Space Station as part of our Commercial Crew Program!" Yay. Planned for May 27, mark your calendars!
This is a fantastic bug story. "I shipped a word processor that formatted the hard drive every 1024 saves." The comments are great. Via Clive Thompson.
 Visual Capitalist: Visualizing the world's 100 biggest islands. So great. Can you even believe how big some of them are?
Indonesia may be an island nation, but some of those islands are huuge...
 From the awesome Discoverer: The best small towns in every state. The California pick is Ojai, and it's a good one. Would love to visit them all!
Bucket list item: Skagway, Alaska. Was just reading a novel about the Klondike gold rush. The whole Alaskan Inside Passage is a must see for me.
Everyone's adapting: World Tour teams to race Zwift's new Tour for All stage race. Starts tomorrow and lasts five days; stages are expected to last between 75 min and 2 hours. Well, cool. And broadcast "live" on Eurosport, too.
 So, have you watched Planet of the Humans yet? It's Michael Moore's latest documentary, it's free to everyone on YouTube, and it's pretty astonishingly anti-climate-change. Actually it's more accurately anti-green-energy. "It’s easier to fool the masses than to convince them that they are being fooled. -Mark Twain." I've watched it and I found it was pretty mild. But religions do not take apostasy lightly.
 Keep an eye on this: The Wolfram Physics Project: the first two weeks. In which Steve Wolfram and a band of interns try to rewrite physics from the ground up ... using automatons. Will it work? Stay tuned...
News you can [most definitely] use: NetNewsWire is reborn on IOS. Yay! I've been looking for a good RSS reader for my iPad; NetNewsWire is a good RSS reader. It's like Christmas!
 The 10-engine plane that time forgot. Yes you read that right, 10 engines, including six backward facing propellers and four jets.
 Soooo beautiful: A very close look inside the Mandalorian's ship. I love this sort of fantasy reverse engineering.
And of course ... May the Fourth be with you!
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Archive: May 4, 2019
Archive: May 4, 2018
Archive: May 4, 2017
Archive: May 4, 2016
Archive: May 4, 2015
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 Wow, May! And what a week it was ... I drove to Pahrump, Nevada to visit my ailing aunt, via Death Valley, and on the way parked in Stovepipe Wells to ride up Towne Pass (sea level to 4,900 feet in 17 miles). On the way I explored the "spaceport" at Mojave airport (open but quite a bit of forgotten glory), the Inyokern airport (now closed), and beautiful Red Rock Park (very much open and very much not forgotten).
It's a dangerous business, going out your door; you step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to...
Meanwhile, it's all happening:
I have little to add to the crappy situation in Baltimore, except to observe that it reflects a class problem, not a racial problem. In this context: White House defends Obama's record on race relations. So weird that they feel they have to do so, who would have predicted that six years ago when he was elected?
 This is very cool: a mesmerizing visual score of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto. The parallels between music and abstract art become very clear.
Unsurprising: Uber are quietly testing a massive merchant delivery service. I look forward to having my Amazon purchases - and perhaps my dinner - delivered this way :)
 I like this a lot, from Leander Kahney: In praise of the ambitious, indispensable, Apple Watch. It was popular to praise the Apple Watch sight unseen, and is now popular to disparage the Watch also, but Leander does more than either; he considers that once again Apple have taken a chance on making a new market, and that it may take time before the market matures, or even emerges. What was the MP3 player market like when the iPod was announced? The smartphone market like before the iPhone? Tablets before the iPad? Indeed Apple have created a new category, which all the Pebbles of the world never had done.
Big boo: RSS Graffiti have stopped operating. This was my chosen cool way to automatically relay blog posts to my Facebook (from whence they are further related to my Twitter). I get it; a free service cannot burn pennies forever. Now attempting to use dlvr.it instead, stay tuned!
The services in this "business" follow a familiar trajectory; a service proves useful, gets adopted, gets shared, gets popular, and then ... gets acquired by a real business which wants to make money. And which discovers that adoption and popularity are not always enough.
 Beautiful: Forgotten wonders of the digital world: World of Warcraft. I've never played WOW but this article makes me want to visit. Reminds me of the virtual worlds of Reamde and Ready Player One, which were more compelling than the real worlds which spawned them.
 And so it goes: Mercury orbiter Messenger retired after successful mission. After being the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, it was deliberately crashed into the planet surface, capturing this last photo as it did so. Excellent.
Seth Godin identifies an interesting phenomenon: Discovery Fatigue. "When Napster first hit the scene, people listened to as many different songs as they could. It was a feast of music discovery, fueled by access and curiosity. Now, the typical Spotify user listens to music inside a smaller comfort zone."
I've thought about this already, in the context of blogging; I can remember eagerly seeking out new blogs and diligently adding them to my blogroll, even as many others did the same. Now, I mostly just pull over the same old feeds (including Seth's). As he notes, once you're busy with what you've got, it diminishes your desire to get more.
 Earlier this week SpaceX successfully launched their Thales mission, but they weren't ready to retry landing the stage one booster again. fXf for the next effort to do so on the ISS resupply mission in June. But meanwhile Blue Origin launched their first rocket into "space", 300,000 feet up, but were unable to land their booster. Space is hard.
Hilarious: Tesla Club Sweden: Test drive of a petrol car. "We also begun to understand why there must be so many petrol stations everywhere, if all petrol cars always have to drive to them to refuel. Imagine if you could charge your electric car only at the power companies’ most expensive fast chargers – and nowhere else!"
 Since this is Star Wars day ("May the Fourth be with you"), I have to note this excellent photo series: The Empire Reboots, presaging the new Star Wars movie to be released this Christmas. Like you, I am having difficulty exercising Jedi patience to wait for it...
Last night we watched Avengers (Age of Ultron), or should I say the first half of it, before walking out. Bleh to the max. We went home and watched the Empire Strikes Back, warming up for the new sequel. CGI action is no substitute for an interesting story.
May the fourth be with him, too: Star Wars fans angry about Scott Walker's tweet: "Hope for the Republicans, there still is." Ann Althouse notes: If you strike him down he will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine :)
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 Last Saturday I rode the Breathless Agony, once again*, and was once again breathless and in agony.
This is a horrible 114 mile ride from the flatlands of Redlands up to the Onyx Summit at 8,440' above Big Bear Lake, and every year I ride it, hate myself for riding it, wonder why I'm riding it, and then afterward feel much better and soon cannot wait to ride it again. Proof positive, if any were needed, that middle-aged cyclists are masochists.
* 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014
This year I made it seriously harder by making bottles with expired protein formula; note to self, don't do that. Turns out you cannot climb very well when you run out of calories...
Herewith, some pictures:
endless stretches as the sun rises, before the first climb
summit #1, Jackrabbit, a Paris-Roubaix clone
summit #2 of Oak Glen, the steepest but not the hardest
climbing "Damnation Alley" to summit #3 at Angeles Oaks
forcing a smile
cresting summit #3, yay
hitting 7,000' on the way to summit #4, this is where it gets really bad
the summit! Yay. Not feeling that great, yet...
but after a period of lying-on-my-back recovery, ready to pose with the Reaper
Onward! Can't wait to do it all again next year :)
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Archive: May 4, 2014
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 Yesterday I rode the Breathless Agony, "the toughest century in California", for the ... (counts fingers) ... seventh time. All 114 miles, 12,300 feet of climbing, and [in a special treat] 100 degrees from Redlands at the bottom to the 8,443' Onyx Summit at the top. Gasp.
I was definitely out of shape this year (argh!) and had to rely on my gears (yay, 34x28) and my stubbornness to make it to the top. That final five miles to the summit is horrible, and seemed to have extra sections since the last time I rode it. As I was struggling up at 4mph a bee decided to sting me in the neck. I was not happy with that bee.
Anyway I made it - yay - and after about five minutes of feeling like I was going to throw up and die, I was okay, and then the feeling of accomplishment took over. My total time to the top was 7:23, not my best - at all - but not horrible all things considered. As usual I wondered why I did it while I was doing it, and as usual with 24 hours past I can't wait to do it again. And I am resolved to be in better shape!
Some pictures:
the route
early morning, driving in - yep, I'm riding up there
paceline through Moreno Valley
sun peaking up and it is *hot* already
Jackrabbit Trail, the first climb - road surface has not improved
this guy is always here, on the second climb to Glen Oaks
summit of the second climb, now a fast descent, and then the real climb begins
onward and upward into Damnation Alley - 12 miles at 6-8% without a break
whew made it to Angelus Oaks checkpoint
yay, bacon :)
a brief respite before the final climb to the summit
still smiling
view back down to the valley is incredible
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Archive: May 4, 2013
Archive: May 4, 2012
Archive: May 3, 2011
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 I'm in New Orleans, and yes, don't do the math, it is *late*. I spent a pleasant day at the Dark Report's War College conference, and after had an amazing dinner at New Orleans' institution Galatoire's on Bourbon Street, followed by some excellent live music and beignets eaten at midnight.
In customer situations I just about always wear a sports coat, but it was a warm balmy night and it was Bourbon Street so I figured what the heck, no coat required. Wrong. I get to Galatoire’s and they politely offered me a dinner jacket. Brown, clashed perfectly with my pink shirt. Reminds me of a story about President Jimmy Carter; you'll recall he often wore a cardigan instead of a coat, and one time he went to a fancy restaurant in Washington, with secret service and all, and the maître d’ politely offered him a jacket. A secret service man pulled the maître d’ aside and said "do you know who that is?" He calmly replied "all the more reason he should be properly dressed". So be it :)
A subplot of being in NOLA was the swelling of the Mississippi further North; news reports were coming in of flooding near Memphis. Although the river was placid and calm while I was there, in another couple weeks it could be quite different. fXf!
 Powerline: How Paul Ryan won the recess. The Republican budget plan isn't just better than the Democrats, it exists, and its proponents are out there in the country talking about it and listening to feedback. Whether you agree or disagree with the plan details, you have to admit, that's how it should work.
Meanwhile President Obama seems more concerned with Donald Trump than the budget deficit.
Timeline: Bin Laden over the years. It was "interesting" flying yesterday, with heightened security but few delays and no incidents.
 Boing Boing interviews Paul Allen. "You invested in Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne, which became the first successful civilian space flight and is now being commercialized by Virgin. Where do you see the space-tourism industry going in the next generation? I think it's great. It's going to be very interesting to see the level of demand as the years go by." Among his many projects is the Allen Institute for Brain Science, one of my customers and an amazing organization. Count me as a huge Paul Allen fan.
 Einstein was right, again. Actually a better headline would be "Einstein is still right". Relativity might be counter-intuitive, but at this point it's a proven fact.
Oh, that's it, time for bed. And I have to get up at 5:00 to work out. Yawn!
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Archive: May 4, 2010
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Any day spent in an all-day meeting is bad, unless the meeting is great, in which case the net is good; and so it was today. Ended with a brisk ride along the coast from Carlsbad to Del Mar, and then a great dinner at the Third Corner in Encinitas; rapidly becoming a favorite because they serve good food late.
{ BTW thanks for your emails regarding my Midway checkup. It's the kind of thing you post with fXf, hoping it isn't too weird, and I guess it wasn't. At least not for those of you who emailed :) stay tuned... }
 Important work: xkcd's color survey results. Please click through and read it all, but especially check out this chart from the doghouse diaries...
Cult of Mac notes a difference of opinion on pens and tablets. Bill Gates: "We think that work with the pen that Microsoft pioneered will become a mainstream for students." Steve Jobs: "If you see a stylus, they blew it." So, I actually think Mr. Bill is right; pens are better than fingers for many tasks. As keyboards are better than touchscreens for text entry.
 Strange doesn't even describe this: Fastest gun in the world. Check out especially when he shoots two targets in one draw. [ via Boing Boing ]
Google Voice for the iPhone and Palm Pre. All HTML web development. As John Gruber notes, "no app store in sight". And this is a voice-over-IP app; not trivial.
 So there's a new beta version of Google's Chrome browser, and it's supposed to be really fast, and so the Google people made a video (about making a video): faster than a speeding potato. Amazing. [ via Daring Fireball ]
Kottke on The Science of Avatar. "'We tried to make it not completely fanciful, if it was too outlandish, there would be a believability gap.' So while Pandora features floating mountains, that might not be so far-fetched. Of course, the reality-based scenario did have its limits. 'We figured that to actually lift mountains, the magnetic field would have to be strong enough to rip the hemoglobin out of your blood'." While watching it I found Avatar entirely convincing, although of course the science doesn't really work. The biggest disconnect is actually the root premise of the movie, that a being could control another [alien] being remotely.
 TechCrunch celebrates Gadgets of Days Gone By. My favorite is the Palm III, a breakthrough device that changed the world.
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Archive: May 4, 2009
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Work work work but made great progress (isn't a funny how accomplishing stuff makes the work work work fun where otherwise it would be, well, just work?) And had a nice ride along the beach at sunset, down to La Costa Resort where I remembered being there 18 years ago for a conference. Wow, just wow. I wonder if I'll visit again in another 18 years :)
Watched He's Just Not That Into You tonight. I though it was pretty good, better than I expected. Jennifer Aniston and Ben Aflack especially were pretty good, and especially were better than I expected. Maybe I was just in the mood for a cute chick flick :)
I agree with this: TechCrunch thinks the big screen Kindle Hail Mary to newspapers will fall incomplete. First you have to know, I love my Kindle. And everywhere I go it is recognized and appreciated (happened at dinner tonight). But I would not want it to be bigger, it is borderline too big now, or at least the right size for reading "stuff". I think few people will want a bigger one, but those who do will be people who need big type to read. Nobody is going to read newspapers on a bigger Kindle if they weren't reading newspapers on smaller Kindles before. Newspapers are dead, and electronic distribution on physical devices will not save them.
 There's a lot on the net about the Hunt for Gollum, the fan-movie which was released online Sunday. The whole project is appealing and cool, but it is useful (is it actually an entertaining movie)?
Tim Oren: Gollum, the dancing bear. I haven't watched the movie yet - maybe tonight! - but I was hoping for more, I do agree with Tim's central point that this is a new step forward in user-generated content and there will be more of this...
 Meanwhile while we're waiting for ever-cooler user-generated content, how about saving Sarah Connor? This is one of the very few TVs shows I watch. Really great. I must tell you I'm not surprised the show is in trouble based on the fact that I like it; seems like my taste is pretty different to the average TV-watcher...
 Picture of the day? Titan peeking out from behind Saturn's rings! Wow, how cool is that? Cassini just always seems to be in the right place at the right time to take this amazing pictures, I guess maybe Saturn and Titan and all the other moons are just photogenic :)
Kara Swisher nicely debunks the Apple-buying-Twitter rumors, in the parlance of a pretty girl being courted :) [ via Daring Fireball ]
 I have to agree with Engadget on this: Mind-controlled wheelchair prototype is truly, insanely awesome. Even if this one doesn't work, you just know this technology will exist, and it will be amazing. What a great time to be alive!
You can imagine all sorts of great uses for this technology for people who aren't handicapped also. Like, maybe, brain-directed computer user interfaces? Brain-directed blogging? Yes!
 Okay, maybe this is the picture of the day, dolphins leaping off the bow of an oceanic research vessel.
By the time most of you read this it will be Cinco de Mayo, so... Olé!
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Archive: May 4, 2008
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Yay, I made it! Yesterday I completed the Breathless Agony century, 114 miles and 12,300' of climbing, including the final climb to the Onyx Pass above Big Bear, at 8,443' above sea level. It was really great, in fact, I have to say this was the best organized and supported cycle race in which I've ever participated, right down to the fantastic chili meal served at the finish. The weather cooperated nicely too, not too warm in the flats, and not too cold in the mountains. I did wear a light jacket for that 38 mile descent at the end. Yeah, that's right; after you reach the Onyx pass, you go downhill at speed for nearly two hours to the finish. It makes you appreciate all the climbing!
(You guys may be getting tired of my post-race reports, but too bad; this is my blog, and I'm a cyclist, so some cycling is inevitable :)
The Breathless Agony mascot is the grim reaper; he was at the summit to help me celebrate:
This race is timed to the summit; I made it in 6:15, and I'm pretty proud of it. Even more bragworthy, on the last two climbs I was not passed by anyone. (We won't mention the people who finish in five hours, who were already up the road; they're disgusting :) All in all a great ride, I can't wait to do this one again next year.
Next up is the Eastern Sierra Double, in the area around Mammoth Lakes. Stay tuned for more...
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 I had a great day today; Megan and I went to Open House at JPL, and although it was crowded, it was really cool. We saw a Mars Rover in action, some excellent videos of satellites taking off and being launched, live footage of Earth and Mars and Saturn and comets (taken by satellites ), and saw how they manufacture and test satellite parts. JPL is a good thing.
I just want to thank everyone who's emailed about Ole's Ride for Cancer. I need to post a little form to gather your information, and I will; please stay tuned. In the meantime your support has been very gratifying. I have a Google Alert set for "pathology", and I just saw this blog: Pray for Christin, about a 15-year old girl diagnosed with osteosarcoma. Her prognosis is grim. This is what it is all about, helping people like Christin.
Meanwhile out in the blogosphere, it's all happening...
So Microsoft has given up trying to buy Yahoo (at least for the moment; maybe the stock will get hammered, the price will go down, and they'll try again). Speculation online seems to focus on how badly Yahoo's stock will get hit, but really I think Microsoft was harmed more than Yahoo; they needed Yahoo more than Yahoo needed them. (Remember the recent earning announcements; Yahoo beat expectations, while Microsoft was flat.)
I think this is the best take: Does Ballmer need to go? I don't know about that - my hunch is yes - but Microsoft needs something or they'll die. Sure they generate a ton of profit, and that's great, but there is little innovation left over there. With the Vista fiasco and Office becoming less and less relevant, the trend is clear.
 Gigaom replays a McKinsey article on Pixar, including an interview with Director Brad Bird. One of the key bits: "Q: What undermines Innovation? Brad Bird: Passive-aggressive people - people who don’t show their colors in the group but then get behind the scenes and peck away - are poisonous. I can usually spot those people fairly soon and I weed them out." Perhaps Microsoft needs some Brad Birds. [ via Jason Kottke ]
I totally agree with Fake Steve Jobs: The problem with Facebook. "A new study discovers that the vast majority of Facebook apps are an utter waste of time... Facebook is a Ponzi scheme. A handful of VCs have created the illusion of an actual market by funding apps companies and then doing deals with each other -- passing cash back and forth among to make it look as if money is being made." There is nothing there for which anyone would pay. Nada.
Want to see the web 2.0 echo chamber at its stupidest? Check this out: Six new startup stars. I want you to read about these six companies, and tell me whether any of them make the slightest sense to you as a business. Stars? C'mon. TradeVibes epitomizes the narrowness of these companies; "the best way to discover and research hot new startups online". Riight.
So Andreas Klöden won the Tour of Romandie (remember him). And rumor has it the Giro may invite Klöden's team Astana after all... Let's hope so; then we could see Contador and Leipheimer in action in a grand tour...
 The Tesla Roadster is supposedly "in production", but it isn't clear how many have actually been delivered. They did just open a store in L.A. - but with a 15-month backlog it will be for marketing, not for sales. "The Tesla store looks more like a cool ad agency or hip restaurant than a car dealership. Its industrial look features poured concrete floors, exposed beams and ductwork, mirrored front glass and planter boxes filled with horsetail stems. The service department is out in the open to allow customers to see what is going on with their cars." Will I visit? Of course!
 How cool would this be: Bison could once again thunder across the great plains.
Yes, please!
Finally, from Megan today: "two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left".
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Archive: May 4, 2007
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I'd like to interrupt my normally scheduled content for some chest-beating. We at Aperio have implemented BigTIFF - enhancements to the TIFF image standard to support files larger than 4GB in size. (Press release here.) We've created a little website at bigtiff.org which describes the enhancement in detail, provides source code and library downloads, and some sample images. Included among the samples is the world's first terapixel image. Yes, that image really does contain 3TB of image data, compressed into a file size of 144GB. Whew.
And you can view it right here, in the pleasure of your own browser:
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(Click the "+" to zoom in, and the "-" to zoom out)
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The magic here is Aperio's technology for viewing large images in standard web browsers. Pretty cool, eh?
(This could be another answer to "What do I do?" :)
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Archive: May 4, 2006
Archive: May 4, 2005
Archive: May 3, 2004
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 The Scientist has an interesting article about Rendering Images in 3-D:
To the uninitiated, three-dimensional microscopy makes the pretty pictures of fluorescently labeled cells that grace the covers of scientific journals. But to today's microscopists, the capacity to render images from 3-D and 4-D datasets is critical for studying the distances between objects in a sample and for tracking how complex samples change over time.
The article discusses many of the techniques commonly used for 3-D imaging, including confocal microscopy and deconvolution (illustrated in picture at right).
Aperio's ScanScope digital slide scanner is capable of scanning microscope slides at multiple Z-levels, yielding a 3D dataset. This is particularly useful for cytology preparations and other "thick" specimens. Please click here for an example of 3-D virtual slide viewing.
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Corrine du Toit takes a wonderful high-level view of the war on terror. "What makes the War on Terror(ism) unique from the War against Communism, is that it is not a battle of one or more nation states against one or more other nation states. It is about random populations of people who share an ideological perspective, and wish to impose that perspective on their resident nation state, and the rest of the world." If you're wondering "what are we doing in Iraq", here's the answer.
 This unusual sailboat is "Sailrocket"; a one-tack wonder designed specifically to break the world sail speed record of 46 knots. "SailRocket comprises a full length weather hull with minimal drag due to a huge hollow in the middle allowing the hull to sit on just two planing surfaces when traveling at high speed. The pilot sits in the cockpit right at the back of the hull and there is a foil, inclined to port forward. The crossbeam extends forward to port and has a tiny bullet shaped float at the end of it on which the mast sits. At high speed the boat will fly its leeward hull - the opposite of a conventional catamaran - and only the two planing surfaces on the weather hull will remain in the water." Very cool.
 BigWig notes a real-world example of natural selection in action, as Maldives nurses its coral reefs back to life. Apparently 70% of the coral in the Maldive Islands was wiped out by El Nino in 1998. Now the coral is growing back - five times faster than normal. "The pace of coral regrowth shouldn't come as much of a surprise. There's not a lot of competitive pressure from other individuals when 70% of a population is wiped out. The fact that the new corals seem more heat-tolerant should have been expected as well - anyone familiar with the idea of natural selection should've been able to predict that the children of the obviously more heat-tolerant surviving corals would dominate the next generation." Excellent.
Global warming is back in the news with the imminent release of The Day after Tomorrow. FuturePundit notes All Warming In United States Since 1975 May Be Due To Aircraft Contrails. "NASA scientists have found that cirrus clouds, formed by contrails from aircraft engine exhaust, are capable of increasing average surface temperatures enough to account for a warming trend in the United States that occurred between 1975 and 1994." Fascinating.
I think the real solution to global warming - and to the world's entropy problems - is to continue developing nuclear power plants. But what do I know.
This is interesting, but I'm not sure what conclusions to draw: a table of U.S. states, average IQs, average incomes, and whether they voted for Bush or Gore in 2000. [ via razib ]
I'm going to find some population growth data, and we can play the extrapolation game...
Seth Goldstein opines on Google vs. Wall Street. "What I saw was the end of a certain kind of investment banking innocence." The Google auction of shares is definitely going to shake things up.
Wired has an interesting article about Walt Mossberg, the WSJ's tech columnist: The Kingmaker of Personal Tech. I like Walt's columns; I guess most people do, which is why he's successful. He seems to have retained the common point of view. His balanced and insightful reporting combines with the WSJ pulpit he occupies to make him very influential. I was at Intuit when Walt criticized TurboTax for it's intrusive registration process, and it really made waves. Then-CEO Bill Harris literally called Walt to discuss his criticism.
Keep an eye on this: BBC introduces flexible TV with online trial. "Later this month, the BBC will launch a pilot project that could lead to all television programmes being made available on the Internet. Viewers will be able to scan an online guide and download any show." Of course. [ via Dave Winer ]
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 Speaking of 3D viewing (we were); check out this amazing pop-up version of Alice in Wonderland, by Robert Sabuda. (click on pic at right for larger version.) A 2D web page just cannot do this 3D creation justice :)
The pop-ups in this book are simply amazing. Not only are they marvelous 3D creations that emerge effortlessly from a 2D book, but they are dynamic; the movement of the pictures as each page is opened illustrates the action of the story (for example, a white rose bush is painted red). Each page has a major work of sculpture, as well as smaller books embedded on the page which contain an abridged version of Lewis Carroll's classic (and which have pop-ups of their own!) The rabbit hole is a genuine telescoping tunnel into the earth which must be seen to be appreciated (yeah, it folds out from a 2D page, too). Very cool.
Megan was recently given this book as a birthday present. I'm not sure which one of us is enjoying it more :)
One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small...
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall.
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Archive: May 4, 2003
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If you're at all interested in Cultural Evolution by Group Selection, please read this terrific post by David Burbridge on GNXP. He draws an important distinction between culture as an extended phenotype vs. culture as a self-replicating meme, and concludes that the former is far less likely to cause cultural evolution via natural selection than the latter. The central argument against all group selection is that groups don't replicate, only the individuals within them do (and actually, only the genes within the individuals within the groups do)...
 L.T.Smash notes an interesting "Time Capsule": the April 7 issue of Time Magazine (cover pic at right). Re-reading the articles in this issue leads to definite fehlervorhersagefreude: "Now that the first week's fighting has failed to match expectations, experts are asserting that the U.S. was not prepared for the possible difficulties." L.T. answers the question posed on the cover, What Will It Take To Win:
Two more days.
Charles Murtaugh discusses an important paper published in Science, that mouse embryonic stem cells can be coaxed into making eggs in a petri dish. Among a large number of potential applications, this allows eggs to be made from males; you could actually clone an animal by mating it with itself. Mind boggling.
Pogo! announces a new product: Radio Your Way. Looks like essentially a handheld Tivo for radio. [ Thanks Nick ] This looks interesting, but it has two big drawbacks relative to my dream: 1) only four hour capacity (i.e. no hard drive), and 2) doesn't interface cleanly to a home stereo system. Well, it is only a matter of time before someone gets this right.
Rumors that Sun will be acquired are circulating, fueled by a 92% drop in share price over the past three years. Dell, IBM, or HP are the logical suitors. I don't know, seems like Sun might be a bad deal at any price, hard to see where their long term value will come from.
Jon Rentzch posted an interesting article about an aspect of Apple's new iTunes Music Store which has gone under-reported; the way they handle micropayments. He suggests they "batch" credit card transactions so they amortize the overhead across several purchases.
Jon hits it exactly; I've been buying tracks from the iTunes store using my PayPal account, so I can see exactly what they're sending through… They authorize each time, but they only post aggregated debits after 48 hours. Since many people like me buy more than one track at a time, or especially more than one track within 48 hours, this will work for them. Interestingly, issuers are not going to be happy about this. Many of them have to pay per-authorization charges, even for transactions which are not captured.
More iTunes Music Store user experience; last night I downloaded Sting's latest: The Very Best of Sting. This album has eighteen tracks from the Police and Sting's solo career, and cost $9. That is - YEP - $.50/track. So for albums there is a volume discount over the store's $1/track price. I'm listening to Sting right now - Brand New Day...
Anders Jacobsen shows an amusing example of a low-tech virus.
Peter Provost shows a not-so-amusing example of an easy way to crash Internet Explorer. For a free crash, click here. Worryingly, an email with the same HTML causes Outlook to crash!
The CSS vs. HTML debate continues; Simon Willison throws his hat in the CSS ring. I don't think this is black and white, but CSS definitely has its problems; check out Objective, Chris Hollander's great blog, which looks crummy in Mozilla or a narrow window. Yeah, tables definitely have their advantages...
Amish Tech Support comments on blogroll dilution. This may be navel gazing, but I find it interesting; everyone wants to be popular, and managing blogrolls is a big part of directing traffic.
Finally, the latest computer room accessory (a kitten).
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