One third of air pollution in California is from China

"...researchers concluded that 208Pb isotopes are a marker for PM2.5 from eastern Asia."

Wow.  Mercury, Lead, and all that slow, painful death we keep reading about in China is hitting the US West Coast. 

The national and social policies to pollute remind me of Mao's famous quip about welcoming a global nuclear war to control his own population are regain greater China's rightful place in the world.

Nexus by Ramez Naam

Nexus is an enjoyable techno-thriller and I am blown away by how well Mez writes in this genre. It is always refreshing to be challenged by new ideas; The reader willingly suspends disbelief and a few formulaic character tropes in order to enjoy the thrilling plot twists, story and awesome technology.

I am dictating this review into Google's Android offline (no network) speech-to-text system, which itself was recently science fiction.

The big idea at the center of the book is therapeutic and positive applications for augmentation of humanity via drugs. Mez explores the idea using hard science, broadly in great detail, unlike previous sci-fi stories I have read about human augmentation, which were softer and concentrate on social implications.

Washington State football championship

Bellevue wins the toss: elects to defer.
Kickoff fielded at 5 . returned to 23
56 yard pass

Intercepted in end zone! 1st at 34

Touchdown Bellevue!

7 - 0

Trade punts.

End of the 1st quarter.

Timmy scores on a keeper.

14 -  0

East side scores.

14 -  7

Bellevue marches down the field,  eating clock.  Sam scores untouched.

21 -  7

Crusaders fumble inside of their own 10  first and goal Bellevue inside the ten.

Buddha scores!

28 - 7

Henry is injured.

Timmy scores on a keeper again.

35 -  7

20 seconds left in the first half.

2nd half

Bellevue punts.

East side backed up in coffin corner.

Intercepted by Timmy.   Pick 6 touchdown!

42 -  7

Yeah!

Fumble!   Bellevue recovers.   Field goal.

45 -  7       4:30 to play in 3rd quarter

End of 3rd quarter.

Crusaders march down the field and score.

45 -  14.  8 minutes to play in the game.

Buddha scores.

52 -  14      with 2 minutes to go in the game.

52 - 20 final score.

waited too long but finally bought bitcoin

Buy high; sell higher...

Icy Streets and Sidewalks

I slipped several times during my walk to work on the ice in the streets and sidewalks this morning.  The weather has “colded over” in Bellevue.

It’s time to dust off the tire chains and tune up the ski gear.

Reddit

 

 

One of my kids introduced me to this awesome time wasting web site with great content, comments, and many funny, clever, interesting links.

Here is a video of how to make a hand grenade out of materials you can easily buy after you clear TSA security at the airport.

 

Proof that fonts matter, even if you are a minimalist who prefers lots of white space and text.

 

 

 

 

Can you say, “Pangolin?”  It’s a mammal.

 

Raptor, Flanker

Skype hits bottom, digs

Since we are hiring in Seattle, I spend a lot of time in remote interviews with candidates.  We frequently use collabedit with the plain old telephone system (POTS) since almost everyone has a web browser and a phone.  However some of the candidates prefer skype so that we can see each other by video.  Skype used to have a free “Screen sharing” feature where the interviewer could watch the candidate’s screen as she coded up solutions, used her integrated  development environment (IDE) editor, and looked stuff up on the web to solve coding problems.  Now, however, not only has the skype quality of service (QOS) gone down but the formerly-free features all cost money.  Yuck.

The evil search giant (ESG) has added document and screen sharing to their free “Hangouts” video conferencing service, the question is:  why would anyone want to use skype anymore?

 

Hangouts runs on all devices, has better ‘net, more features, and is completely free.  Services offered by the ESG are nefarious, intrusive, creepy, and the worst services in the world, except for all of the alternatives.

Weekend Update 11/4/2013

Friday 11/1 at work included an interesting all hands-meeting followed by a fun event I organize for the first Friday of the month, 4pm – 6pm. 

Dipping vegetables, Humus, pita chips, bagels, dips, beer samplers, energy drink samplers

Pot Luck Shabbat Dinner, Friday Night Lights

Our weekend kicked off with a fun fifth grade Sunday School pot luck dinner with more great food and fun people.  Then it was football at Bellevue High, watching Yofi’s team crush their opponent, Mercer Island 49-7.  Yofi Scored:

 

 

Saturday morning Eitana had an early morning soccer game

And it was also the “Kids’ Workshop” at Home Depot (first Saturday of the month:

She built a cool model boat.  On Sunday, there was Sunday school and Bellevue had very-high winds (70 Km/hr), which shook many leaves and twigs down and caused power outages for 100,000 people in the Puget Sound region.  We were lucky and had no flickers.

 

We had planned to see a Theatre play in which a friend of mine is starring but Eitana brought home a friend from Sunday school, so we watched NFL and ate bad food instead.

Adinah was home doing laundry for a short time and it was great to see her.

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the art of Battling Giants, Malcolm Gladwell 2013

I just finished reading this one; it is very good and I recommend it. However, the book seems unfinished to me; Gladwell did not supply any evidence at all for his last "forgiveness" theme and his attacks on the California three strikes law.  There is a plethora of evidence and a few very strong theories that support his assertions but he does not bring any of them into the book.  I was looking forward to more "falling action" and having Gladwell tie all of the misfit / hidden strength themes together. There was not enough meat at the end.

But the analysis and popularization of the "inverted U" curve, as well as the sociological adversity themes were well presented and very enjoyable.

Go read it now.

In 2014, Consumer TV's, Monitors, Projectors will all go WiFi wireless just as printers did

Google ChromeCast and other, similar devices will start to explode next year, and by the end of the year, the manufacturers of Projectors, Displays, Monitors, and TVs will absorb their function directly into the display device itself.  Wires & cables are just so 15-minutes ago.