Udderings

Performance Art piece needs 3 male performers this Saturday at MIT

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:13:52 -0500

Performance Art piece needs 3 male performers this Saturday at MIT: Read it. Just trust me.

Obesity linked to grandparental diet : Nature News

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:30:24 -0500

Obesity linked to grandparental diet : Nature News: when the momma of your kids has cravings, ignore her and make her eat healthy. wait. not sure that’s a good idea.

Bostonist: Judge: Massachusetts Wine Shipping Laws Unconstitutional

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:15:47 -0500

Bostonist: Judge: Massachusetts Wine Shipping Laws Unconstitutional: I finally am allowed to buy wine over the internets. I think.

Google is Done Paying Silicon Valley's Legal Bills | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:10:00 -0500

Google is Done Paying Silicon Valley's Legal Bills | Electronic Frontier Foundation: Interesting this was posted the same day as the EFF’s ad for their Google Policy Fellowship

The Science of the Web Search for Flu

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:10:08 -0500

You might have heard about Google Flu Trends. Maybe you want to see the science behind it.

As for big search engines doing this type of analysis, there’s a couple articles.

First, there was Yahoo’s paper that came out at the end of October.

Then there was Google’s paper that was put online yesterday.

Previously, it’s been shown that disease outbreaks around the world can be tracked by crawling international media and news wires. This was how SARS was initially found. Both the Yahoo/Google search approach and the crawling require lots of computational power and/or a user base. There’s a cheaper way. Just buy an ad on Google and link them to a flu education site. You track the clicks and you win. This conference report is free online.

NHS medical research plan threatens patient privacy

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:18:51 -0500

NHS medical research plan threatens patient privacy:

This change in the UK’s policies in access to patient medical data is interesting for anyone interested in ethics of medical research. There aren’t enough details in the new policies to actually know how this might work. (via PLOS Blog)

On a different note, the whole thing points out a problem with large changes to government documents. This tiny phrase was amongst a much larger set of changes and noone noticed it until opportunities for public comment had closed. Would more granular changes sent out for comment improve this problem?

Imagine

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:31:02 -0500

dihard:

2. Wal-Mart should make suppliers eliminate the “on” light on appliances. There’s no reason to have a green light that shows your tv is “on” when you are watching it. Yvon did research to find that if Wal-Mart required this, it would save many power plants worth of energy.

I’m sorry, but that would piss me off. There are plenty of times in life when that thing is useful. Anyone who has ever seen a blank screen and known the problem wasn’t that there tv wasn’t on because of that light should understand.

Run Your Scientific Code in a Flash Player | MacResearch

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:51:55 -0500

Run Your Scientific Code in a Flash Player | MacResearch: Forget actionscript, let’s use C!!!!

The Nostradamus Attack

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:25:38 -0500

The Nostradamus Attack: If you thought that dictionary attacks and the ilk were the reason why MD5 is dead, this should convince you otherwise

If Detroit Falls, Foreign Makers Could Be Buffer - NYTimes.com

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:04:39 -0500

If Detroit Falls, Foreign Makers Could Be Buffer - NYTimes.com:

I’ve tried to argue at work that if some of the american automakers fail, the foreign companies will jump at the opportunity to invest more heavily in the US, perhaps even buying the factories of these companies as a cheap way to expand their infrastructure. This would restore some of the lost jobs.

This article (based on the opinion of much better informed people) mainly disagrees with me. It only mentions once the other companies taking over operations. I would still argue this would be a good move for them. I’m in love with the story of the solar cell company that’s currently underselling a lot of the market because they bought a factory from Polaroid when they went under. The equipment required only minor modification to output solar cells and the capital investment for this company was miniscule compared to the factories built from scratch. I’m sure some foreign company could find the same opportunities in Detroit.

142 Liters

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 16:33:12 -0500

dihard:

of water go into making one Starbucks latte, says the CEO of WWF in a keynote speech at the Net Impact Conference.

this sounds like a lot until you look up some other facts and see that it takes 49 gallons (185 liters) to make an 8 oz glass of milk. Get more water facts from rivers.gov.

Say Goodbye to BlackBerry? If Obama Has to, Yes He Can, Maybe

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 13:27:25 -0500

Say Goodbye to BlackBerry? If Obama Has to, Yes He Can, Maybe

Presidential Inauguration's Hard-Core Happy Campers - washingtonpost.com

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:02:55 -0500

Presidential Inauguration's Hard-Core Happy Campers - washingtonpost.com: This is ridiculous. I beg you, if you’re going to the inauguration, don’t stay in the Harper’s Ferry KOA. You might as well stay in Baltimore, you’ll be closer to DC. They do have nice showers though. I had to sneak through a hole in their fence in order to ever get clean one summer.

Something Called Terrorism - By Leonard Bernstein

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:08:56 -0500

Something Called Terrorism - By Leonard Bernstein: A speech by Leonard Bernstein from 1986 on “The Enemy”. I agree in so many ways.

New Drug Bypasses Gene Mutations

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:21:13 -0500

New Drug Bypasses Gene Mutations:

This is one of the most amazing drugs I’ve ever read about. It allows your cellular machinery to sometimes just skip over the stop codon of a protein and make something longer. And a lot of diseases are caused by mutations that cause early termination of the protein through new stop codons. So, one drug that can cure lots of diseases. Pretty awesome.

This drug is also what I would place in the category of something that most people “know it wouldn’t work”. Clearly if we skip stop codons, all the rest of our proteins are going to be screwed up, right? But someone had the balls to try and it works.

Pike board approves toll hike - Local News Updates - The Boston Globe

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:48:47 -0500

Pike board approves toll hike - Local News Updates - The Boston Globe: you now pay a $9 toll if you take a cab from Logan airport anywhere. Just another example of why you should never take a cab in Boston.

marco: Tiff: I tie all of Marco’s ties, so I’m looking forward...

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:24:18 -0500

marco:

Tiff:

I tie all of Marco’s ties, so I’m looking forward to trying out something new. Apparently I’ve only been doing a Four in Hand knot.

After some experimentation, Tiff just leveled up, choosing to upgrade my standard tie knot to the Shell Knot. And I just learned that my best man, Mark, gave me a Windsor for my wedding. (It was a great knot. I just had to know.)

Straight up Windsor for life. Or since the age of 5. (which on a different note, when you went to a school with uniforms that included ties, it seems so foreign when people don’t know to tie a tie. It reminds me of when I found out that one of my friends who grew up in Manhattan had never rode a bike or driven a car.)

Bothered about some design decisions on the new MacBooks

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:54:04 -0500

marco:

One of the reasons I’ve decided to hold off on a laptop upgrade is that Apple has made a number of questionable design decisions with them.

The buttonless trackpad
I’m not entirely sure who, exactly, had ever complained that Apple’s trackpads had too many buttons. I appreciate the goal of minimal design, but this isn’t elegant at all: it requires a lot of hardware and software tricks to work properly, and it still doesn’t. It’s incredibly unreliable, missing a lot of clicks. (Buttons never had this problem.) Supposedly a software fix is coming soon, but we don’t know if it will actually solve the problem, or if the problem can be solved without a hardware redesign. Why was this change necessary, adding tons of complexity (and more weight, I bet) at the cost of reliability, to eliminate an inconsequential part of the design that never bothered anyone?

I’m not sure the other design never bothered anyone. There’s a reason why there’s the whole tap to click on the trackpad option. Some people really don’t like the button. And the people who use the top on the trackpad are absolutely miserable in their attempts to drag stuff around. There are likely people who want something like the tap to click, but never used it because it makes using your trackpad almost hellish. This design makes that experience not suck.

Bone Marrow Transplant Appears to Halt HIV

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:20:40 -0500

Bone Marrow Transplant Appears to Halt HIV

Triathlete, 14, Is an Ironman Who's Not Yet a Man - washingtonpost.com

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 07:57:58 -0500

Triathlete, 14, Is an Ironman Who's Not Yet a Man - washingtonpost.com: Surprisingly balanced article on the ethics of allowing a 14-year old to compete in long distance triathlons.