LeaveMeAloneBox Video

The only this this device does is turn itself off using the same physical switch a human used to turn it on.

LeaveMeAloneBox Video: "Here's a short Video of the Ultimate Machine doing its thing. Notice that once the box top is open, if you continue to flip the switch, the hand follows to flip the switch off."

Kai-Fu Lee on Cloud Computing

The numbers below can be looked at 3 says:
-- (5 years ago) Crazy Talk!
-- (now) That's pretty cool!
-- (5 years from now) Yeah so? My Pc does that.


Kai-Fu Lee on Cloud Computing: "6. Programmable. 'For fault tolerance, Google uses GFS or distributed disk storage. Every piece of data is replicated three times. If one machine dies, a master redistributes the data to a new server. There are around 200 clusters (some with over 5 PB of disk space on 500 machines). The Big Table is used for distributed memory. The largest cells in the Big Table are 700 TB, spread over 2000 machines. MapReduce is the solution for new programming paradigms. It cuts a trillion records into a thousand parts on a thousand machines. Each machine will then load a billion records and will run the same program over these records, and then the results are recombined. While in 2005, there were some 72,000 jobs being run on MapReduce, in 2007, there were two million jobs (use seems to be increasing exponentially).'"

24 Hours on the 'Big Stick'

24 Hours on the 'Big Stick': "Carrier launches are astonishing events. The plane is moved to within what seems like a bowling alley's length of the bow. A blast shield larger than any government building driveway Khomeini-flipper rises behind the fighter jet, and the jet's twin engines are cranked to maximum thrust. A slot-car slot runs down the middle of the bowling alley. The powered-up jet is held at the end of its slot by a steel shear pin smaller than a V-8 can. When the shear pin shears the jet is unleashed and so is a steam catapult that hurls the plane down the slot, from 0 to 130 miles per hour in two seconds. And--if all goes well--the airplane is airborne. This is not a pilot taking off. This is a pilot as cat's eye marble pinched between boundless thumb and infinite forefinger of Heaven's own Wham-O slingshot."

FIRST Robotics Video - New York Regional Competition - Hand-Built Robots - Popular Mechanics

FIRST Robotics Video - New York Regional Competition - Hand-Built Robots - Popular Mechanics

Bike Trip to New Ulm & Wabasha

Here is our trip

The Stock Market Surged Yesterday Because Why? - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

I have always hated the news reports saying that it went up or down for a particular reason. It seems to me that most of the time they are making stuff up or, worse, just talking to one or two people (or even 5-10) and then distilling it down to a single reason. Looking for the cute sentence instead of acknowledging the complexity.

The Stock Market Surged Yesterday Because Why? - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog: "I may be wrong, but it strikes me that the articles that appear in nearly every newspaper every day that describe a particular day’s stock-market movements are pretty much worthless."

Freedom Never Cries

Freedom Never Cries:
"Though you might after watching this video. I am not a huge fan of Five For Fighting (though it’s a great name) but John Ondrasik just gets it. He knows who the good guys are and who the bad guys are and isn’t afraid to stay it. Sadly, that’s not a very common trait among today’s purveyors of pop culture."

Jonathan Coulton » Blog Archive » Prepare for the Robopocalypse

Jonathan Coulton » Blog Archive » Prepare for the Robopocalypse

Pretty cool video about a 4 legged balancing robot.

Last of the Few: Top Gear: Bugatti Veyron vs Eurofighter Typhoon

Last of the Few: Top Gear: Bugatti Veyron vs Eurofighter Typhoon

Camcorder Brings Zen to the Shoot - New York Times

Camcorder Brings Zen to the Shoot - New York Times

Interesting little video camera that focuses on simplicity and few features.

Major Brian Shul: "I loved that jet" - Maggie's Farm

Major Brian Shul: "I loved that jet" - Maggie's Farm: "One day, high above Arizona, we were monitoring the radio traffic of all the mortal airplanes below us. First, a Cessna pilot asked the air traffic controllers to check his ground speed. 'Ninety knots,' ATC replied. A twin Bonanza soon made the same request. 'One-twenty on the ground,' was the reply. To our surprise, a navy F-18 came over the radio with a ground speed check. I knew exactly what he was doing. Of course, he had a ground speed indicator in his cockpit, but he wanted to let all the bug-smashers in the valley know what real speed was 'Dusty 52, we show you at 525 on the ground,' ATC responded. The situation was too ripe. I heard the click of Walter's mike button in the rear seat. In his most innocent voice, Walter startled the controller by asking for a ground speed check from 81,000 feet, clearly above controlled airspace. In a cool, professional voice, the controller replied, 'Aspen 20, I show you at 1,742 knots on the ground.' We did not hear another transmission on that frequency all the way to the coast."

Freedom Means Responsibility - George McGovern

Freedom Means Responsibility - WSJ.com:
"Nearly 16 years ago in these very pages, I wrote that ''one-size-fits all' rules for business ignore the reality of the market place.' Today I'm watching some broad rules evolve on individual decisions that are even worse.

Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior. Much paternalist scrutiny has recently centered on personal economics, including calls to regulate subprime mortgages."

Interesting commentary on what people pay for in a "free" (as in information) society

Kevin Kelly -- The Technium

There are a number of other qualities similar to trust that are difficult to copy, and thus become valuable in this network economy. I think the best way to examine them is not from the eye of the producer, manufacturer, or creator, but from the eye of the user. We can start with a simple user question: why would we ever pay for anything that we could get for free? When anyone buys a version of something they could get for free, what are they purchasing?

Geldof and Bush: Diary From the Road - TIME

The Most Powerful Man in the World studied the front cover. Geldof in Africa — " 'The international best seller.' You write that bit yourself?"

"That's right. It's called marketing. Something you obviously have no clue about or else I wouldn't have to be here telling people your Africa story."

Lunar Eclipse from last night

Zero Gravity Alka-Seltzer

Minnetronix Can Can

Twisted Balloons Fashion

Royal Pingdom » When data center cabling becomes art

Park Square Theatre : 2007/2008 Season : Well by Lisa Kron

All Lisa Kron wants to do is put on a nice, orderly play about her family and how she got cured of allergies. But her mother—who’s watching the play from her onstage La-Z-Boy—has her own agenda. Interrupting to correct Lisa, make friends with the actors, and feed snacks to the audience, she steals the show. This 2006 Broadway hit, a New York Times "Top Ten Pick," is a touching and utterly original comedy for anyone who has ever had a mother.