Steve Jobs bio

"I think his desire for complete control of whatever he makes derives directly from his personality and the fact that he was abandoned at birth." p4
"He learned to stare at people without blinking, and he perfected long silences punctuated by staccato bursts of fast talking. This odd mix of intensity and aloofness.." p31
"He could be brutally cold and rude to her at times, but he was also entrancing and able to impose his will. 'He was an enlightened being who was also cruel.' "p32.

Steve Jobs biography

"They developed...whole new devices and services that consumers did not yet know they needed." p xxi
"Jobs said that his appreciation for Eichler homes (http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&source=mog&hl=en&gl=us&client=safari&q=eichler%20homes&sa=N&biw=320&bih=416#p=0)
instilled in him a passion for making nicely designed products for the mass market." p7

Brain changes shape from studying.

London can drivers study furiously to pass a test of knowing 25000 streets. Their brains were studied and actually changed shape versus controls. TE
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/Media-office/Press-releases/2011/WTVM053658.htm

Informed consent for Anesthesia

It seems that the more you tell patients about specific risks, the more it relieves their anxiety.
Here's a list of studies of consent for anesthesia.

How Medicare Fails the Elderly

  

OPINION   | October 16, 2011
Opinion:  How Medicare Fails the Elderly
By JANE GROSS
The truth about Medicare: what it pays for is not what most recipients need or want.

China and the global economy

" Never before in history has a country with such a low per capita income played such a central role in the global economy."
An article in which a Yahoo finance columnist argues that China will not dominate the world economy, but that China and India have a GDP per capita that is rising towards that of the developed world. And beyond that hje's skeptical whether China can make the transition from manufacturing to services.

http://www.jgmobile.net/article/20110821/ENT07/308219965/1134/ENT07&template=mobileart

Projection onto Buildings

http://castroller.com/Podcasts/BestOfYoutube/1862328

Rachel's

"Rachel's Challenge" -  Rachel Scott was the first student murdered at Columbine High School in 1999.  Her father Darrell Scott started Rachel's challenge to "start a chain reaction of kindness" which has been heard by millions.  The 5 primary points are to

1) look for the best in others 

2) dream big 

3) choose [friends who are] positive influences 

4)speak with kindness and 

5)start your own chain reaction.

NYTimes: Apple Introduces a New iPhone, With a Personal Assistant

"The iPhone is the most critical product in Apple's line-up and the largest source of its revenue, accounting for more than $13.3 billion — almost half of total company sales — in the most recent quarter."

Although the new phone is virtually indistinguishable from its predecessor on the outside, the company says the iPhone 4S is packed with better technical innards, including a more advanced camera. http://nyti.ms/pIZtws

-Tom. 

World Earthquake Map

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/

Popular Science's yearly list of 'Best of What's New' in Technology:

http://www.popsci.com/bown/2010
http://www.popsci.com/bown/2009

http://www.popsci.com/bown/2008

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/flat/bown/2007/index.html

Like a flexible solar panel:

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/flat/bown/2007/green/item_59.html

NYTimes.com: Super People

An article about the expense families are going to to ensure their children's resumes ensure them a good college admission.  "Bursting with pent-up energy, the mothers transfer their shelved career ambitions to their children." "Such students are known in college admission circles as "pointy" - being well-rounded doesn't cut it anymore." OPINION   | October 02, 2011 Opinion:  Super People By JAMES ATLAS Has our competitive society finally outdone itself in its tireless efforts to produce winners whose abilities are literally off the charts?  Here is the article about kids whose parents maximize their resume to help them get into good universities... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/opinion/sunday/meet-the-new-super-people.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=super%20people&st=cse And here is a movie coming out this month that's a documentary about bullying and the launch of a nationwide effort to highlight and oppose bullying between girls.  They talk on their website about setting up private screenings at your school (at the left hand column), and have somesuggestions on how kids can handle occurrences. http://www.thebullyproject.com/resources.html View the trailer at the imdb site http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1682181/

Floppy music DUO - Imperial march

Thought you'd like this video - remember the noise these floppy drives would make when first reading the disk? This guy programmed it Yo make music.

http://www.trulia.com/crime/

This site provides crime statistics for selected cities.

Crime Map - Trulia

http://www.trulia.com/crime/

-Tom.

Road Dust Suppressants.

Road dust - an environmental hazard. To suppress dust, they've tried "water, salts [MgCl2], asphalt, molasses, vegetable oils, synthetic polymers, lignin [the part of wood that's not cellulose fibers]."

http://www.epa.gov/esd/cmb/pdf/dust.pdf

-Tom.

Gravel Road Dust Suppressants

Road dust - an environmental hazard. People have tried suppressing the dust with "water, molasses, lignin [a wood product used in making Saran wrap]."

http://www.epa.gov/esd/cmb/pdf/dust.pdf

-Tom.

NYTimes: A $42 Million Gift Aims at Improving Bedside Manner

A new center is intended to teach medical students how to have a better relationships with their patients. http://nyti.ms/r1UaHw

On Kickstarter Designers Dreams Materialize - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Kickstarter is an ingenious site where reative minds can seek crowdsourcing funds for a project - a new gizmo or widget, an indie film or an artistic endeavor, a book, or a furniture design.  The project needs a clear plan, a start and end date, and if you don't raise the needed funds, everyone's pladge is returned.  What's in it for donators? If they give above a threshold amount set by the instigator, they get a first production run of the new product at a discount. Or an invitation to an advance showing of the artwork. Or a tee-shirt. And the reward of backing a good idea.
The site describes the basic idea and lists the rules of how the site works through paypal funding.

http://m.post-gazette.com/living/garden/on-kickstarter-designers-dreams-materialize-1176718?p=0

http://www.helium.com/items/2028382-entrepreneurs-are-using-kickstarter-to-fund-their-dreams

Kickstarter - a grass roots site for funding ideas

http://www.helium.com/items/2028382-entrepreneurs-are-using-kickstarter-to-fund-their-dreams

-Tom.

Waterproof Breathable Fleece

Unlike most cotton fabric, this sweatshirt won't soak up rain as if it were a sponge. With a water-resistant polymer bonded to its cotton thread, the hoodie repels more than 80% of moisture. And since the polymer is not applied as a coating, the sweatshirt still breathes. Under Armour, around $60 - from Popular Science10/11 p17.

Dry Ice Bubble

NYTimes.com: What if the Secret to Success Is Failure?

Good character traits are maybe more important than grades in grooming someone for success. "...he noticed something curious: the students who persisted in college were not necessarily the ones who had excelled academically at KIPP; they were the ones with exceptional character strengths, like optimism and persistence and social intelligence. They were the ones who were able to recover from a bad grade and resolve to do better next time; to bounce back from a fight with their parents; to resist the urge to go out to the movies and stay home and study instead; to persuade professors to give them extra help after class."..."People who accomplished great things, she noticed, often combined a passion for a single mission with an unswerving dedication to achieve that mission, whatever the obstacles and however long it might take. She decided she needed to name this quality, and she chose the word “grit.” "...he identified a set of strengths that were, according to his research, especially likely to predict life satisfaction and high achievement. After a few small adjustments, they settled on a final list: zest, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism and curiosity." "they also see many parents who, while pushing their children to excel, also inadvertently shield them from exactly the kind of experience that can lead to character growth." "give them everything they want and need, to protect them from dangers and discomforts both large and small. And yet we all know — on some level, at least — that what kids need more than anything is a little hardship: some challenge, some deprivation that they can overcome, even if just to prove to themselves that they can. "  September 18, 2011 What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? By PAUL TOUGH Why our children's success - and happiness - may depend less on perfect performance than on learning how to deal with failure.  Also - this story of 3 children suddenly dropped into a school where they didn't know a word of the language is a great example of the strengths achieved through initial failure. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/my-familys-experiment-in-extreme-schooling.html

NYTimes.com: Bicycle Visionary

"So if a city believes that biking is part of a better future, it must sometimes muscle through a reluctant, rocky present. That’s precisely what Bloomberg and Sadik-Khan have done, in a fine example of the way the mayor’s frequent imperiousness and imperviousness to criticism can work to the city’s long-term advantage. " OPINION   | September 11, 2011 Op-Ed Columnist:  Bicycle Visionary By FRANK BRUNI If a city believes that biking is part of a better future, it must sometimes muscle through a reluctant, rocky present. Here's a link to the article if you don't subscribe to the New York TImes, or aren't in a Starbucks. And the video below is a related, funny rant highlighting a biker's frustrations with bike lanes in New York.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3UPKYm5nb

NYTimes.com: The Trouble With Homework

"Spaced repitition" (returning to a suject briefly and repeatedly)and "retrieval practice" testing, and "cognitive disfluency" (if hard to learn signals brain to retain it better) can improve knowledge retention. OPINION   | September 11, 2011 Opinion:  The Trouble With Homework By ANNIE MURPHY PAUL The quality of homework matters more than the quantity.  Here is a link if you don't subscribe to New York Times or you aren't in a Starbucks.

Truck falls over, then rights itself

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaHtccTJQCM&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Skilled bike rider

Rides the top of a fence, etc
He's going to feature in the upcoming film "Premium Rush"


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShbC5yVqOdI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Any guesses?

Here is the story of this photo.

Performance Art on a Light Rail Train

iPhone-controlled RC helicopter

RC helicopter that you control with your phone. It started as a project on kickstarter to get the funding going...

Teach in a low-income area for 2 years after college.

http://www.teachforamerica.org/
http://www.teachforamerica.org/our-mission/enlisting-committed-individuals

Medley of 90's songs - a capella. Clever video edit.

Computerized cars

"The Chevy Volt requires 10 million lines of code, two million more than it takes to run a Boeing 787." - Popular Science, Sept '11, p. 36
"Cars are the most thoroughly computerized machines most of us will ever buy, but unlike phones or laptops they are nearly impossible to upgrade." p.38
"Maybe...car ownership [will shift to a cellphone business] model in which drivers would get a free or highly subsidized car and sign up for a fee plan that includes fuel or access to charging stations." p 85
"Google's seven robotic cars have since logged more than 100,000 fully autonomous miles on California roads...there has only been a single accident, when a human-driven car rear-ended a robot-Prius at a light." p. 85

Change of Address forms - all in one place.

All rock music is the same... (note: contains swear words.)

Vashon in an hour (<--click this link to see a better layout.)

EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking near Seattle, Washington

This trip has dogged me for years! I finally got off one ferry, and made it across the island in time for the other ferry that leaves exactly an hour later. I can't tell you how many times I've done it in 1:05 and 'missed it by that much.' It feels good to finally have a bike fast enough to make that trip in an hour - a lightweight carbon-fiber front-wheel-drive recumbent: Cruzbike Silvio. There are some killer hills across this island, so that's why it's so hard to make 14mph.

Cancer's complexities

New York Times: Recent discoveries in cell biology have complicated the basic principles of the last decade of cancer research. Here's the article.

Just when we thought we knew everything about cancer... Now it appears that 'non-coding' DNA does have functions after all, and RNA and bacterial DNA are more important than we thought. Bacteria are , after all, the most plentiful cell type in the body.TE

Word definitions from Urban Dictionary

Some random definitions from urban dictionary:
(Disclaimer: beware - lots of ribald obscenities on the urban dictionary site...)
protohype - leaking a prototype device to generate buzz about a product you don't quite yet have ready for market.
presponse - To respond to a question before it is finished, often confusing the asker.
NELB - not entirely load bearing - Any plan, concept or idea that is doomed, from the start, to catastrophic failure, usually due to a complete lack of skill and/or knowledge on the part of the planner.
Phobar - Acronym for "PHOtoshopped Beyond All Recognition." 
voluntold - An unpleasant task assigned by your boss.
intexticated - Describes people who drive while sending text messages on their phones.
Googleheimer's - The condition where you think of something you want to Google, but by the time you get to your computer, you've forgotten what it was. 

emailnesia - when you sit down at your computer to type an email but forget what you were going to send and to whom. 

neverendum - repeatedly putting a referendum initiative on the ballot, so that voters will eventually support the proposition because they don't want to hear about it anymore.
nontouchitarian - A person who doesn't let their food touch other foods on the plate so that every flavor remains individual. 

procrastineating - When a person makes it sound like they are apologizing when, in fact, they are just shifting the blame or using twisted logic to argue their way out of responsibility for their actions.

fauxpology - When a person makes it sound like they are apologizing when, in fact, they are just shifting the blame or using twisted logic to argue their way out of responsibility for their actions.

[give the] cold finger - Similar to cold shoulder, except a cold finger is done by ignoring someone's text or facebook message--usually when said person's comment is pointless or uncalled for.

typeless - adj. The state of being so astounded that one cannot type; writing equivalent of speechless

aarping - [AARP is the American Association of Retired Persons] When an elderly person, such as your grandfather, complains incessantly about nothing.

Trading in a gas guzzler may not make cents

With gas going for $4 a gallon and up, you may be thinking of swapping a big car or SUV for something more frugal. Here’s what to consider:

• Will gas savings offset the depreciation of a new car? The answer is usually no, unless you’ve owned the old car for several years. Depreciation accounts for almost half the cost of owning a car over the first five years, with the biggest hit coming in the first few years. So trading in your car early smacks you with a double whammy: You’ve paid the biggest chunk of depreciation on your old car, and you’ll pay it again on your new car.
• How much size can you sacrifice? Fuel-efficient vehicles are often smaller than gas guzzlers. If you can’t fit everyone you need to carry, what’s the point of trading in?
• How much gas will you actually save? We’ve found in our testing that real-world overall mpg is often less than the EPA highway mileage figure that carmakers advertise.

Bottom line

Switching to a frugal vehicle may be a decision of conscience rather than one of cash. It usually makes financial sense to keep an old car for its natural life, then change to a high-mpg model. But if you swap to a high-mpg used car, you miss the depreciation costs of a new car, save more money, and have a greater choice of vehicles for the price.

By the numbers

Keeping an older car can be cheaper. The figures below assume the new cars were bought with five-year loans at current interest rates; the Explorer was used as a trade-in; the older cars were bought with 15 percent down; and gas cost $4 per gallon.

Cool music video

This video is eye candy.  About half way through, develops some clever kaleidoscope-like effects. Took a lot of work, I'm sure. Unfortunately the song is not very good.

The above site fills your screen, but to see a quick version of it, see the youtube version.



Reminds me of a previous video experiment, where you input an address and the climax of the video uses google streetview of that address incorporated into the video. The effect can be quite eerie. Again, the song is so-so.
http://thewildernessdowntown.com/

Laser bug zapper combats malaria

See a lecture about the device and its creation at
http://www.ted.com/talks/nathan_myhrvold_could_this_laser_zap_malaria.html

"What if  you could shine a nonlethal laser on the bug before you zap it, and you could listen to the wing beat frequency, and you could measure the size. And then you could decide: Is this an insect I want to kill, or an insect I don't want to kill?"

Marriage proposal

Takes a lot of guts, and a lot of practice! He really fell for her.

Stem cell therapy working for minor wounds like ACL tears in the knee

An article on veterinary use of stem cells to repair injuries in prize horses.

Unusual vacation ideas - Science tours

Tour a Kansas salt mine and giant archives - http://undergroundmuseum.org/index.php
Tennessee - tour the most intense neutron beam, and a uranium-enrichment plant, see models of nuclear reactors...
http://ornl.gov/ornlhome/visiting.shtml
Livermore CA - Simulations of worst-case scenario disasters, see world's highest energy laser...
https://www.llnl.gov/about/tours.html
Brookhaven, Long Island - Dept of Energy labs - collider, brightest X-ray source, National Weather Service (storm-tracker) http://www.bnl.gov/community/summer_sunday.asp

From Popular Science, May '11, p.73

Adverse reaction, Adverse Event Reporting System

https://www.rxevent.org/
Finally, a straightforward way to report adverse drug reactions.

-Tom.

NYTimes: A Laptop, Its Head in the Cloud

This is a landmark - a laptop with no hard drive, that relies on the web for both apps and storage.

Google's Chromebook concept for laptops is built on the assumption that you can get online almost anywhere. http://nyti.ms/lpqlbW

-Tom.

Sand Man - The Sand Art of Peter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttwxawO0ESc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Cool Sand Art | Cool Pictures | Cool Stuff

http://www.collthings.co.uk/2010/05/cool-sand-art.html

-Tom.

Joys of Seattle: Seattle, a Tasting Menu

Sampling the odd and delicious offerings of a city where locavore living has become a lifestyle. http://nyti.ms/l85sVu

Your Commute is Killing You

Your Commute Is Killing You

Long commutes cause obesity, neck pain, loneliness, divorce, stress, and insomnia.

By Annie LowreyPosted Thursday, May 26, 2011, at 5:57 PM ET

This week, researchers at Umea University in Sweden released a startling finding: Couples in which one partner commutes for longer than 45 minutes are 40 percent likelier to divorce. The Swedes could not say why. Perhaps long-distance commuters tend to be poorer or less educated, both conditions that make divorce more common. Perhaps long transit times exacerbate corrosive marital inequalities, with one partner overburdened by child care and the other overburdened by work. But perhaps the Swedes are just telling us something we all already know, which is that commuting is bad for you. Awful, in fact.

Commuting is a migraine-inducing life-drain—a mundane task about as pleasurable as assembling flat-pack furniture or getting your license renewed, and you have to do it every day. If you are commuting, you are not spending quality time with your loved ones. You are not exercising, doing challenging work, having sex, petting your dog, or playing with your kids (or your Wii). You are not doing any of the things that make human beings happy. Instead, you are getting nauseous on a bus, jostled on a train, or cut off in traffic.

In the past decade or so, researchers have produced a significant body of research measuring the dreadfulness of a long commute. People with long transit times suffer from disproportionate pain, stress, obesity, and dissatisfaction. The joy of living in a big, exurban house, or that extra income left over from y

First, the research proves the most obvious point: We dislike commuting itself, finding it unpleasant and stressful. In 2006, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and Princeton economist Alan Krueger surveyed 900 Texan women, asking them how much they enjoyed a number of common activities. Having sex came in first. Socializing after work came second. Commuting came in dead last. "Commuting in the morning appears particularly unpleasant," the researchers noted.

That unpleasantness seems to have a spillover effect: making us less happy in general. A survey conducted last year for the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, for instance,found that 40 percent of employees who spend more than 90 minutes getting home from work "experienced worry for much of the previous day." That number falls to 28 percent for those with "negligible" commutes of 10 minutes or less. Workers with very long commutes feel less rested and experience less "enjoyment," as well.

Long commutes also make us feel lonely. Robert Putnam, the famed Harvard political scientist and author of Bowling Alone, names long commuting times as one of the most robust predictors of social isolation. He posits that every 10 minutes spent commuting results in 10 percent fewer "social connections." Those social connections tend to make us feel happy and fulfilled.

Those stressful hours spent listening to drive-time radio do not merely make us less happy. They also make us less healthy. The Gallup survey, for instance, found that one in three workers with a 90-minute daily commute has recurrent neck or back problems. Our behaviors change as well, conspiring to make us less fit: When we spend more time commuting, we spend less time exercising and fixing ourselves meals at home.

According to research from Thomas James Christian of Brown University, each minute you commute is associated with "a 0.0257 minute exercise time reduction, a 0.0387 minute food preparation time reduction, and a 0.2205 minute sleep time reduction." It does not sound like much, but it adds up. Long commutes also tend to increase the chance that a worker will make "non-grocery food purchases"—buying things like fast food—and will shift into "lower-intensity" exercise.

It is commuting, not the total length of the workday, that matters, he found. Take a worker with a negligible commute and a 12-hour workday and a worker with an hourlong commute and a 10-hour workday. The former will have healthier habits than the latter, even though total time spent on the relatively stressful, unpleasant tasks is equal.

Plus, overall, people with long commutes are fatter, and national increases in commuting time are posited as one contributor to the obesity epidemic. Researchers at the University of California–Los Angeles, and Cal State–Long Beach, for instance, looked at the relationship between obesity and a number of lifestyle factors, such as physical activity. Vehicle-miles traveled had a stronger correlation with obesity than any other factor.

So, in summary: We hate commuting. It correlates with an increased risk of obesity, divorce, neck pain, stress, worry, and sleeplessness. It makes us eat worse and exercise less. Yet, we keep on doing it.

Indeed, average one-way commuting time has steadily crept up over the course of the past five decades, and now sits at 24 minutes (although we routinely under-report the time it really takes us to get to work). About one in six workers commutes for more than 45 minutes, each way. And about 3.5 million Americans commute a whopping 90 minutes each way—the so-called "extreme commuters," whose number has doubled since 1990, according to the Census Bureau. They collectively spend 164 billion minutes per year shuttling to and from work.

Why do people suffer through it? The answer mostly lies in a phrase forced on us by real-estate agents: "Drive until you qualify." Many of us work in towns or cities where houses are expensive. The further we move from work, the more house we can afford. Given the choice between a cramped two-bedroom apartment 10 minutes from work and a spacious four-bedroom house 45 minutes from it, we often elect the latter.

For decades, economists have been warning us that when we buy at a distance, we do not tend to take the cost of our own time into account. All the way back in 1965, for instance, the economist John Kain wrote, it is "crucial that, in making longer journeys to work, households incur larger costs in both time and money. Since time is a scarce commodity, workers should demand some compensation for the time they spend in commuting." But we tend not to, only taking the tradeoff between housing costs and transportation costs into question.

How much would we need to be compensated to make up for the hellish experience of a long commute? Two economists at the University of Zurich, Bruno Frey and Alois Stutzer, actually went about quantifying it, in a now famous 2004 paper entitled "Stress That Doesn't Pay: The Commuting Paradox." They found that for an extra hour of commuting time, you would need to be compensated with a massive 40 percent increase in salary to make it worthwhile.

But wait: Isn't the big house and the time to listen to the whole Dylan catalog worth something as well? Sure, researchers say, but not enough when it comes to the elusive metric of happiness. Given the choice between that cramped apartment and the big house, we focus on the tangible gains offered by the latter. We can see that extra bedroom. We want that extra bathtub. But we do not often use them. And we forget that additional time in the car is a constant, persistent, daily burden—if a relatively invisible one.

Do not take it lightly. People who say, "My commute is killing me!" are not exaggerating. They are realists.

Yes, there's an app for that.

NYTimes: When Doctors Are Called to the Rescue in Midflight

"Airborne calls for medical assistance pose a singular challenge for physicians, who find themselves suddenly caring for a stranger whose history they don't know, often with a problem well outside their specialty, in a setting with limited equipment but no shortage of onlookers scrutinizing their every move.
...Journal of the American Medical Association. The paper argued not only that the medical kits should be standardized, down to the number of latex gloves, but also that a method for reporting incidents should be consistent among all airlines."

Since the earliest days of commercial aviation, airlines have depended on doctors who board planes as passengers to deal with in-flight medical emergencies. http://nyti.ms/kqwXvH

-Tom.

top ten in-flight emergencies

Animoto - video from photos

http://animoto.com/

Scrapbooking, Greetings, Slideshows and More at Smilebox

www.smilebox.com

Nice Guys Finish First

New ideas are emerging that cooperation and helpfulness are evolutionary advantages in humans, as opposed to the traditional view that all behaviors are ultimately selfish.
"An infant of 12 months will inform others about something by pointing. Chimpanzees and other apes do not helpfully inform each other about things. Infants share food readily with strangers. Chimpanzees rarely even offer food to their own offspring. If a 14-month-old child sees an adult having difficulty — like being unable to open a door because her hands are full — the child will try to help.
Tomasello’s point is that the human mind veered away from that of the other primates. We are born ready to cooperate, and then we build cultures to magnify this trait."

Developments in the study of evolution suggest that the survival of the fittest depends as much on cooperation as it does on a competition between self-interests. http://nyti.ms/jGvloF

Insanity vs Judgment

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results"

"Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment."

These pithy quotations, often attributed falsely to others, both come from Rita Mae Brown. 

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rita_Mae_Brown

-Tom. 

Health Insurers Making Record Profits as Many Postpone Care

Health care costs are rising at 7%, and insurers are being granted the ability to raise premiums 22%(!) TE

Companies continue to press for higher premiums, saying they need protection against any sudden uptick in demand once people have more money to spend on their health. http://nyti.ms/mga2GO

To Find a Parking Spot, Drivers Look on Their Phones

In San Francisco, a phone app gives information about areas with available parking spaces. http://nyti.ms/iAFcgJ
App shows available parking spots in real time thanks to sensors embedded in the road. TE
"The system, introduced last month, relies on wireless sensors embedded in streets and city garages that can tell within seconds if a spot has opened up." "San Francisco already has the dubious honor of the most car-pedestrian accidents in the country..." 

Safe driving tips.

http://editorial.autos.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1183820&icid=autos_1810&GT1=22010

Fascinating global time lapse video

Here's the world weather image time lapse

and here's the ocean temperature time lapse

and this water vapor time lapse - it looks like a hose spraying from the equatorial regions to the temperate zones.

TV shows

Not sure if this interests you, but here are a few TV shows/media links that were worth watching, available online.

In this TV show, a millionaire is anonymously dropped into an inner city neighborhood, and asked to find local grass-roots movements to restore the troubled neighborhoods. It's surprising what local grandmothers and shop owners are doing out of their own pocket. At the end of the show, the millionaire gives away $100,000 of his own money to the organizations he feels are most deserving. 

http://abc.go.com/watch/secret-millionaire/SH5580166/VD55117876/james-malinchak-gary-in

In this show, a young celecbrity chef feels americans are dying of obesity, and wants to get into local schools to start a revival movement of eating healthier foods.  He encounters surprising difficulty but still ends up hopeful.

http://abc.go.com/shows/jamie-olivers-food-revolution

This one is more drama and less substance, but its idea is to generate a surprise crowd of seeming passers-by who are in on performing a dance number for an unsuspecting person.

http://www.sidereel.com/mobbed/season-1/episode-1

Here's a link to a computer server that plays my favorite songs, and introduces me to similar music.

http://broadcaster.pandora.com/t?r=927&c=901946&l=37961&ctl=238BA2C%3AF8BE3C3433892A77A0FFF5D3FBC8350F050542759970026E&

Parahawking - now that sounds pretty cool. Paragliding with trained hawks that guide you to where the thermals are.



-Tom.

World Airline Traffic (24-Hour Time Lapse) AMAZING!!!

Fascinating ballet-like little ants on the screen:

Commentary on this video describes the flights predominating:

And a similar theme on this video of all flights suddenly grounded on 9/11:

NYTimes: Aboard the L Train, Luncheon Is Served

On Sunday, a moving subway car was quickly transformed into a traveling bistro with a six-course menu, served to a dozen diners. http://nyti.ms/iRr0nB

Now that's my kind of flash mob!
-Tom.

NYTimes: On Small Farms, Hoof Power Returns

A sign of the times.  TE

As diesel prices skyrocket, a number of small farmers are turning — or rather returning — to animal labor to help with farming, trading tractors for oxen. http://nyti.ms/jXTmjh
"...setting out to prepare a pasture using a tool so old it seems almost revolutionary: a team of oxen."
"...they are cost effective only on small farms. They are also time intensive, performing well only when they can be worked every day, and becoming temperamental when neglected."

"“You still have to walk nine miles for every planted acre”"

"Since the dairy industry relies on keeping cows pregnant so they lactate, millions of baby bulls are born each year. A pair of calves start at $150... "

"“Even when it’s tough with them, it’s better than spending a day with a tractor,” he said."