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Showing posts from July, 2005

Great Compromise

In 2008, hundreds of millions of Americans will be ignored by the Presidential candidates because their vote is already decided. I, as a New Yorker, have no value to either democrats or republicans. They both see the state as voting democratically and all the electoral votes going that way. However, it doesn’t have to be this. States can decide to split their votes. Here is my great compromise (actually a series of deals). Too easy: New York and Texas both decide to split their internal electoral votes. Texas does have three more votes than New York so this is a small advantage for the democrats, but this would force politicians to campaign in both states. Who is Texas or New York would be against this. Hell, to make the votes exactly even, Vermont (3 votes) will also split their vote. Those other states: Hawaii (D-4) and Alaska (R-3) should also make a pact to split the votes. Geography: Illinois (D-21), Indiana (R-11), and Kentucky (R-8). All three are next to each other.

Starry Night - Wow!

I was going to see if I could create a photo mosaic for Molly, when I saw this. http://www.andreaplanet.com/mosaic/starrynight/ . "The image is a photomosaic of the famous painting 'Starry Night'. The image is made with over 210.000 tiny photographs and a total size of over 1.500.000.000 points in other words it is a 1.5 Gigapixel Image. Click over the image (Zoom In) until you start to see the tiny images. " After you zoom in, give the computer a few seconds (depending on your connection) to sharpen the image. This is truly amazing.

Sofa, Ring, Now what?

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This week I had to do some work on the soft and giant ring that I build. The springs under the cushions we coming loose (they were partly held down with duct tape, which the glue had melted a little in the heat). I also am making Lindy's giant engagement ring rust proof so we can keep it outside (the original plans had the ring living outside, although there might be a big problem in the diamond is not completely waterproof. For now I'll keep in on the deck, away from the heavy rain until I know for sure). So the question is, should I have another building project. True, I have no time and many other responsibilities, but should that stop me? I think the sofa and the ring were great successes. I would love to build a new sofa, incorporating lessons learned from the first one. This time I would actually have some appropriate tools (for both the ring and the sofa, I only used a hammer, screw drivers, skill saw, staple gun, the blade of a hack saw, and an electric drill). Now I ha

Supermassive? Ha, that is a Zircon!

How far is technology from taking the next leap in atomic manipulation? We can already turn one atom of iron into one atom of gold. How long before we can easily turn a pound of iron into a pound of gold. Or coal into diamonds (by just changing some carbon bonds). Look around and a huge percentage of things you see are made of a combination of just a handful of elements. I would say 20 elements make up 98% of the things around us. Imagine if we could master controlling and changing those elements. Out entire existence would change. Creating items that have been rare throughout the history of the planet (clean water, iron, wood, steel, grain, energy, plastic, gems, gold) would be easy and indefinitely replicable. Imagine building a house when you can get all the building materials for the house by transforming the dirt it was built on. There would be no more things to buy or sell, there would only be services to provide. And with the advent of more productive robots, the se

Prioritize

Just some excerpts for a NYTimes.com Op-ed , relating to the media's coverage of genocide in Darfur. The real failure has been television's. According to monitoring by the Tyndall Report, ABC News had a total of 18 minutes of the Darfur genocide in its nightly newscasts all last year - and that turns out to be a credit to Peter Jennings. NBC had only 5 minutes of coverage all last year, and CBS only 3 minutes - about a minute of coverage for every 100,000 deaths. In contrast, Martha Stewart received 130 minutes of coverage by the three networks... If only Michael Jackson's trial had been held in Darfur. Last month, CNN, Fox News, NBC, MSNBC, ABC and CBS collectively ran 55 times as many stories about Michael Jackson as they ran about genocide in Darfur... The BBC has shown that outstanding television coverage of Darfur is possible. And, incredibly, mtvU (the MTV channel aimed at universities) has covered Darfur more seriously than any network or cable station. When MTV disp

Daily Show

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I always find it hard to write in this thing when I haven’t posted in a while. So I will take this one Daily Show style. Headlines (Applause) - The Molly Web Site is back up and running. - Video game grand theft auto is getting in trouble because of hidden sex scenes. I guess the unhidden parts of the game (killing cops, beating up old ladies, soliciting prostitutes and then shooting them) were acceptable, but actual sex (something legal) has caused an uproar. George Bush nominates a cliché to the Supreme Court (insert picture from a tiny tunes episode where Dan Quayle took Buster Bunny to Congress and somebody put a pump in Buster’s ear and filled him up will air, while scores of Congressmen began to sing “fill-a-buster, fill-a-buster). He is a 50 years old son of an executive, Harvard Collage, Harvard Law, with a bad, no horrible, no atrociously conservative haircut. Warning!! Mini-rant. Actually, I will re-write what was going to go here as part of my next segment... Back in Black

Rant of the Day - Impossible Utilities

Before I continue, I just want to say that I know Molly’s website is down. Which leads into my rant of the day. My brother, who makes the website possible, just moved, but the internet company is having problems setting up his service. What a surprise... We are all familiar with the utility companies. Whenever we move, we have to get our telephones, televisions, electricity, and other services set up. The theory is that capitalism pushes competing companies to excel; however, since utilities have little or no competition, these companies seem to lack basic functionality. Here are just a few of the issues I’ve had in the past few weeks. When I moved I signed up for Internet, VOIP, and Cable though Cablevision, but quickly we decided we hated VOIP because it only occassionally works properly. I tried to cancel it, only to find that if I canceled VOIP, my bill would actually be higher. I asked how much it would be if a new customer wanted just Internet and Cable and they said it would be

Mind Games

How many voices are in your head? I have at least two, maybe three. Several years ago, I first released that they are each independent and capable of concurrent, unique thought. I was golfing and I kept forgetting the correct techniques and thus lost many a golf ball. However, I realized that I can have one voice repeating “keep your head down” and the other say “hit through the ball” at the same time. Lately, I’ve been thinking about this more. I’ve been practicing counting up numbers and saying the alphabet at the same time (one voice for each). Although these are very simple things, it is quite a mental challenge (note: I’m not thinking 1,2,A,3,B,C,4,5; I am thinking the numbers in my seemingly more prominent thought and the letters in a background, yet both are completely simultaneous (imagine literally hearing two voices). I do think that the two voices are not equal, but I can’t yet describe how, except to say that my initial thought patterns is always “louder” and more f