Even Josh has succumbed to this meme… so I’ll join in:
My blog is worth $27,662.46.
How much is your blog worth?
Author: geoff
One year later
One year ago tomorrow, Friday:
Well, after 20.63 years at Sun, I have been caught up in today’s RIF (Reduction In Force). As of 5pm today, I’m out of here.
One year later, I’m living in a new apartment, in a different city, working for a different company, on a different and fascinating collection of problems. And I’m having a blast.
Not surprisingly, one of the dominant qualities of Amazon is the sheer scale of the operation. Normally I encounter this in a relatively abstract way – transactions, servers, gigabytes, bandwidth. Numbers. Numbers on a screen, on a piece of paper. But later this month I’ll get a chance to experience scale, when I visit the Fernley fulfillment center (automated warehouse) in Nevada. Here’s a piece from Business Week about the place.
You need to get out more…..
Here: let me tweak that amino acid receptor protein for you….
Cori Bargmann, a geneticist at the Rockefeller University, has studied two variants of a worm called C elegans, that differ in their feeding pattern. One variant is solitary and seeks its food alone; the other is social and forages in groups. The only difference between the two is one amino acid in an otherwise shared receptor protein. If you move the receptor from a social worm to a solitary worm, it makes the solitary worm social.
Where do you want to go today?
Sullivan on Coulter
Here’s a moving response by Andrew Sullivan to the odious Coulter, and the bigots who support her. Money quote:
What Coulter did, in her callow, empty way, was to accuse John Edwards of not being a real man. To do so, she asserted that gay men are not real men either. The emasculation of men in minority groups is an ancient trope of the vilest bigotry. Why was it wrong, after all, for white men to call African-American men “boys”? Because it robbed them of the dignity of their masculinity. And that’s what Coulter did last Friday to gays. She said – and conservatives applauded – that I and so many others are not men.
Museum of Communications
Here’s a Seattle museum that looks intriguing:
The Vintage Telephone Equipment Museum, now known as The Museum of Communications, is sponsored by Charles B. Hopkins Chapter 30, TelecomPioneers. We are located at 7000 East Marginal Way South, Seattle, Washington, 98108. The museum can be reached on (206) 767-3012 and is open every Tuesday from 8:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and by appointment other days.
Perhaps some of my Amazon colleagues will be up for a field trip some Tuesday lunchtime.
[Via BoingBoing.]
Ignorance and stupidity is pandemic – but you knew that
First evolution… then geology… now the rotation of the earth. From the bacon-eating atheist Jew:
Saudi Arabia’s commission issued this ‘famed 1974 fatwa — issued by its blind leader at the time, Sheik Abdul Aziz Ben Baz — which declared that the Earth was flat and immobile. In a book issued by the Islamic University of Medina, the sheik argued: “If the earth is rotating, as they claim, the countries, the mountains, the trees, the rivers, and the oceans will have no bottom.”‘
In a university book? Don’t count on the cure for cancer coming from an Islamic state.
But don’t expect it come from the American Bible Belt either. Just look at the recent words of Marshall Hall of Cornelia, Ga., is a retired schoolteacher who has spent the last 30 years protesting the teaching of evolution. His books argue not only that Darwin was wrong but also that science has been wrong ever since Copernicus and that the idea of Earth turning is a “carefully crafted Bible-bashing lie.”
If you’re not thoroughly satiated, check out this entertaining demolition job at Good Math, Bad Math.
The irreducible minimum…..
This morning I arrived at work to find an email requesting me to complete an on-line survey about my commuting pattern. It’s all part of the Commute Trip Reduction (CTR) law, which requires participating employers to survey their staff regularly.
I was happy to fill in the survey, but I did encounter some problems. For example, it wanted to know my one-way commute in (integer) miles. I rounded to zero; I hope that’s not going to cause problems. And then it wanted me to select three factors that might persuade me to abandon my personal car in favour of more efficient commuting styles. I searched in vain for the check-box labelled “None of the above – the only way to make my commute more efficient or environmentally friendly would be for me to camp in my office.”
West Ham 3, Tottenham Hotspur 4
Sometimes the best sporting events don’t involve the top clubs fighting it out for a championship. In today’s match, West Ham were desperate for any points that they could salvage to stave off their (increasingly likely) relegation from the Premiership at the end of the season. [I have long thought that something like this would be a definite improvement for the smug cartels that make up U.S. sports. But I digress….] Spurs are in wonderful form right now: even though Keane was out, Berbatov is playing beautfully, Defoe shows hints of being a future Ronaldo, and Robinson is one of the very best keepers anywhere.
The match was an absolute classic. West Ham started out with a ferocious energy that startled Spurs and left the visitors 2-0 down at half time. But early in the second half, a pointless foul gave Spurs a penalty, and 12 minutes later they scored a second goal. West Ham looked broken, but they kept at it, denied Spurs time and time again, and fought back. So it was 2-2 with five minutes to play – plus a hefty chunk of extra time, due to an epidemic of heavy tackles. (The Hammers had six players booked.)
In the 85th minute, West Ham scored to go 3-2 up, but 4 minutes Berbatov equalized. Full time. The minutes of extra time ticked by, and it seemed that either club was capable of scoring, but couldn’t quite do it. Finally, just when I was thinking that the referee’s watch must have broken, West Ham threw everything into a final attack, Spurs won the ball and counter-attacked, the West Ham keeper blocked Defoe’s shot but couldn’t hold on to the ball, and Stalteri tapped it into the net. Whew! It was just like something out of a comic book.
And kudos to the producers of the Fox Soccer Channel, who realized what a gem this game was, and cancelled a couple of “classic football” shows in order to rebroadcast today’s match again.
Jonny Hahn
Many years ago, when Chris was an undergraduate at U.C. Santa Cruz, I would often take some time off from a business trip to Silicon Valley and scoot over Highway 17 to visit him in Santa Cruz. On one of these occasions, we were walking down Pacific Avenue when we encountered a street musician, playing an extraordinarily small piano and singing songs that just hooked you in and made you smile. His name was Jonny Hahn. He was selling a CD of his music, called “3657“, and I bought a copy before we moved on. I thought nothing more of it, but over the years I found myself listening to the songs and wondering what had happened to him. But I didn’t wonder too hard: it felt like one of those ephemeral moments that you look back on and then let go.
And then today I was shopping for kitchenware in Sur La Table on Pine Street, right next to the Public Market, and as I came out of the shop I heard a familiar piano style. It was Jonny Hahn. I went and listened to him, and after he’d finished a piece we talked a bit. He’s a Seattle resident, and plays most of the year by the Public Market. He remembered that visit to Santa Cruz; he said that he’d always enjoyed going there because of the good vibe he got off the ocean, but recently the city authorities had made life impossible for street musicians, so he’d stopped going.
I bought four of his CDs: two of what he described as “very political” songs – “Thinking without a permit” and “Don’t feed the corporations” – and two of solo piano pieces – “Lost in the Inzone” and “Collage”. Lovely stuff. You can hear his music for yourself at CDBaby, and also at the iTunes Music Store.
But even though the CDs are really good, I know I’ll be heading back to the Public Market, because I prefer listening to Jonny in his natural setting. What a delightful rediscovery. Maybe ephemeral isn’t always what it seems.
UPDATE: From Richard McDougall‘s gallery: Jonny “in his natural setting”….