Einstein never said that…

November 30, 2008 by

Einstein quoteI was testing BlogJet today as a possible desktop blogging tool. Strangely, what caught my eye first was not the tool, but the quote, attributed to Albert Einstein, that they used in the sample post… I found it a little hard to believe that Einstein who died in 1955 would have a quote about computers…especially about computers being fast. Here is the quote:

“Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” — Albert Einstein (or was it Leo Cherne?…read on)

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Where is the bear in the big dipper?

October 28, 2008 by

On the mantle of my bed I have a planetarium (Sega HomeStar) that projects the night sky onto my ceiling. Every other night or so, I turn this on when I’m relaxing into sleep. It allows me to star up at the stars, forget about the day, and contemplate the vast, unending beauty of the universe we live in. It is hard to look at the sky without your brain searching it for patterns (after all the brain is a pattern finding machine). The brain cannot help but try to connect the dots in a futile search for meaning and familiar shapes. Seven of the brightest stars in the northern hemisphere form what we call Ursa-Major – Latin for “The big bear”. I for one, and most people I know never can see any bear shape at all in those stars, so we call it The Big Dipper instead.

We can’t see the bear for 2 reasons –

  • First, there are actually 20 stars that make up the bear, and the “big dipper” is just his rump and tail – that’s right I said “tail”.
  • Second, bears don’t have tails.

Why does this bear have a tail?
According the the Greeks, Zeus, the king of Greek gods, flung this bear into the heavens by its tail, stretching the tail into the shape it has now. Was this story compelling enough that Greeks, Roman’s, and all of Europe and generations of artists would see a bear? Apparently it was:


Artists have been drawing this “bear with a tail” for centuries.

Interestingly, many American Indian tribes who never heard the Greek story, also knew these seven stars as part of a large bear. They saw the three stars of the Dipper’s handle not as a tail, but as three boys chasing a bear. A much better story if you ask me.

To see how other cultures saw these stars, check out this nice site.

I think this image shows it best:

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Deadline to register to vote is today (in Texas)!

October 6, 2008 by

I know a lot of you don’t live in Texas but many of you do and others are in states with similar deadlines. I just wanted to send out a reminder to make sure you are registered to vote in the November presidential election.

If your not sure, there is an easy way to find out on the Obama website (I’m sure there are many others but I used this one)

http://www.voteforchange.com/index_obama.php

Finding out how to vote is now quick and easy.
Using this tool you can:
1. Register to vote.
2. Request to vote absentee.
3. Find your polling location.

This should only take about 3 minutes.

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Why the Japanese love wikis, the French love blogs, and the Germans love…testing?

June 26, 2008 by

Look at this Google trends search comparing the terms “wiki, blog, music, movies”. It would appear searching for music online is in decline (but there is a definit Christmas time bump as people fill there new iPods and laptops with movies and music). But look at the steady climb of blogs and wikis, they are almost as popular now as online music (the term MP3 follows music but is lower).

Blogs

So what’s the deal? Why are blogs and wikis so popular? Are they really as popular a search term as music and movies? To try and find the answer I looked at the cities and countries where the data comes from. Blogs are dominated by the French and Vietnamese?

The word blog returns 3,510,000,000 results worldwide on Google (that’s 3.5 Billion with a B). My research (consisting of asking Google “blogs popular in france”) returned this article. Although it is already 2 years old, it asked the same questions and reports that users of France’s most popular blog spent over an hour there on average versus just 12 minutes in the US.

French blogs stands out in other measurable ways. They are noticeably longer, more critical, more negative, more egocentric and more provocative than their U.S. counterparts, said Laurent Florès, the French-born, New York-based chief executive of CRM Metrix, a company that monitors blogs and other online conversations on behalf of companies seeking feedback on their brands.

“Bloggers in the United States listen to each other and incorporate rival ideas in the discussion,” he said. “French bloggers never compromise their opinions.”

Wiki

Wiki appears to be crazy popular in Japan. Just look at these results:

Let’s ask the same question. First some anecdotal evidence, like this article about a Japanese government official caught doing something he should not have been on the internet…editing wikipedia articles about the robot toys known as Gundam?
I love this quote:

“The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam,” ministry official Tsutomu Shimomura said.

The agriculture ministry verbally reprimanded five other bureaucrats who contributed to entries on movies, typographical mistakes in billboard signs and local politics. The six employees together made 408 entries on the popular Internet encyclopedia from ministry computers since 2003.

Test

One term I that myself use a lot is the word “test”. When ever think my internet connection may have been lost, I open my browser, and just to make sure I’m not looking at a cached version of google, I type test. I figured I was not the only one so test is pretty high on google’s rankings. The suprising thing is where it is popular.

Note that I graphed it versus, xp and jobs. Both of those show new year increases (one for new christmas computers, the other for new years resultions I imagine).

But look how steady test is, which fits my theory that the term “test” is used to actually test google. Now look at the regions:

The Germans are not only number 1, they dominate with the top 5 cities. What is going on here? It does fit the sterotype.

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Attention Boeing/AirBus – Start working on blimps!

June 25, 2008 by


When I rent a car these days I try to rent a prius. I love gliding silently through the streets, pulling up to fast food windows and not having to shout over the rumble of an engine. Imagine if we could fly in such silent style. Imagine if the airplane was as quiet as a library. This painting made we wish for that. It is a painting by “futurist” Syd Mead who also worked on movies like Blade Runner, Tron and Aliens—but in his most recent work he envisions a future city by the name of Doha, Qatar.

I think we have the building architecture down. But somebody has got to get to work on these wonderful flying machines.
Technically, blimps are soft-body-inflatable aircraft – these are more like zeppelins, rigid-body-lighter-than-air craft. Either way, I would except the longer commutes if I could have a conversation without losing my voice and hearing.

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