I'm back!  Sorry for the gap; on Monday and Tuesday I attended the Society of Toxicologic Pathology conference in San Francisco, which involved dinners with colleagues and customers, and today I was in Vista (after flying directly into Carlsbad airport - very cool!).  A really worthwhile experience although like all conferences, tiring...  learned a lot and was "on" a lot, and am now rather exhausted...

Still, it's all happening...

Yesterday I did something I haven't done in a  l o n g  time: I sent a fax.  I was in my hotel room, needed to print my boarding pass, and this was the easiest way to get hardcopy.  I'm still carrying a modem cable (!) and it still worked (!!)  Felt like briefly returning to my youth, to hear that modem beeeep as it connected.  Weird that there isn't a TCP/IP way to "send a fax", isn't it? 

Inhabitat notes Solvenia's gorgeous honeycomb housing complex.  Very nice.  Definitely a cut above your average public housing.  I wonder if the inhabitants are a cut above the average, too? 

Powerline: Ania Egland answers MoveOn.  "Hello Senator McCain, these are my precious boys Noah and Daniel. Their daddy served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I grew up under communism. So, when you say we have to protect freedom in Iraq, I understand. And, someday, I would be proud if they volunteered to serve this great country. Senator, thank you for your leadership."  One more point that needs to be made - we have a volunteer military.  People like my daughter Nicole who serve in the military are there because they want to be, it is their chosen profession.  Who is Move On or anyone to tell them what to do?  And yes, I am really proud of my daughter and all our soldiers, sailors, and airmen. 

Proteins gone wild: a conversation between a molecular biologist and the proteins she studies.  I love it! 

George Carlin: Modern Man.  A comedian / philosopher for our time.  Wow, was he great, or what?  [ via Daring Fireball ] 

Michael Arrington on modeling the real market value of social networks.  "Is MySpace worth $3 billion, or $20 billion?  It depends on how you value a user.  It’s time to start comparing the big global social networks on something other than unique visitors and page views."  Absolutely.  Mere counting of noses assuming they could be monetized later was the air that inflated the dot-com bubble.  Now that we have advertising as a means to accomplish the monitization, you still have to run the numbers. 

So what do you think of McCain's proposed $300M prize for an efficient electric car battery?  I think it is a pretty great idea, actually, perhaps offering prizes is the best way for government to stimulate development in such things.  

Jerry Pournelle thinks so too.  "The neat thing about prizes is that we spend no money unless someone wins. Now surely it would be worth far more than $300 million to have any capitalist have the battery technology McCain describes. Indeed it would be worth far more, and the only real criticism of the McCain prize might be that it wasn't large enough."

TechDirt: Yahoo needs to go private to right itself.  This sounds right to me.  There are people like Jerry Yang himself to put up the money, and once they're private they could go back to doing what makes sense, instead of what [they think] the market wants.  [ via Marc Cantor, who thinks so too... ] 

Check this out: Rolling with 88 weighted keys, live on bike.  Yes of course, who wouldn't want a full size piano on the back of their bike, complete with the pianist?  I love it... 

This is the cutest greatest thing: two-legged puppy gets landing gear.  What can I say?