Steve's quick notes

No more quick notes -- see "Steve's View" or delicious.

2006-11-13T10:06:00.000-05:00

I have decided to abandon this site in favor of simplicity. If I want to make a post I will use Steve's View. If I just want to tag something I will use delicious. I'll leave this site here, of course, but you won't see any more posts.

Blue Mongol - Roswell Rudd with Badma Khanda and the Mongolian Buryat Band

2006-11-02T06:43:00.000-05:00

Janet and I saw Roswell Rudd perform with Badman Khanda last night in Reston. It was a few hours very well spent. The music is a beautiful and novel mix of traditions. Everyone on stage, Roswell Rudd, Badma Khanda, Batuvshin Baltanseren, Javklan Erdenebal, Sayana Tabkharova and Jamiyan Urantuga, was individually impressive.

Links:
The CD is "Blue Mongol" (Amazon has samples).
Badma Khanda singing to school children in a video.
Their current tour.
Soundscape.

Scientists and Engineers for America

2006-10-31T16:14:00.000-05:00

Scientists and Engineers for America is a new organization trying to support science in our society. I just joined.

Dr. Mike at proteinpower.com covers intermittent fasting

2006-10-31T14:59:00.000-05:00

Dr. Michael Eades has a blog, (on proteinpower.com, "A critical look at nutritional science and anything else that strikes my fancy.") that has covered the health benefits of intermittent fasting.
His post on intermittent fasting.
My prior post on intermittent fasting.
The Yahoo! group on intermittent fasting.

Watches that work

2006-10-16T08:12:00.000-04:00

A special advertising supplement to yesterday's New York Times features mechanical watches. A lead article entitled "Like a Phoenix: The Stunning Rebirth of the Mechanical Watch" starts by explaining that the watch industry panicked (unnecessarily) in the 1970s when quartz watches came out. It seems that I am one of the few who chooses a watch based on function. My preference is the Timex Ironman 100-lap (T51931), but I do wish it were a bit smaller and more stylish.

University of Maryland top Countercultural College

2006-09-18T17:46:00.000-04:00

"High times" lists University of Maryland at the top of its list of "top 10 countercultural colleges" (High Times, Diamondback). I understand that President Mote did not mention this singular honor in his annual State of the Campus address to the Senate (Diamondback).

Constitution Day

2006-09-11T14:35:00.000-04:00

Sept. 18 is Constitution Day. Who knew? To do my part in promoting awareness of the Constitution I'm pointing to a quiz by Lawrence Douglas and Alexander George that appeared in the Chronicle for Higher Education (link).

Followup on shared bookmarks

2006-09-04T17:08:00.000-04:00

I posted in July that I was looking into sites for sharing bookmarks (link). After trying things out a bit this summer, I've settled on del.icio.us. I also use Connotea for bookmarks related to genetics, and I've created a specialized blog (News on Genetics) for brief comments on genetics news.

EBay Inc. vs. MercExchange, LLC

2006-08-08T09:53:00.000-04:00

EBay Inc. vs. MercExchange, LLC makes it harder for "patent trolls" to stifle research and development. A commentary in Genetic Engineering News by Courtenay C. Brickerhoff (for which I cannot find a direct link) alerted me to this. Justice Kennedy questioned the "potential vagueness and suspect validity" of business method practices. Brickerhoff is rightly concerned that the ruling will apply as well to many biotech patents. See my comments on Labcorp-vs. Metabolite Laboratories.

Allmovie.com Goes glacial

2006-07-30T22:02:00.000-04:00

I have used allmovie.com for a while now. Although less cited than the "Internet Movie Database" (imdb.com), it has carefully researched reviews and extremely useful cross-listings. However, allmovie recently redesigned their site such that pages take absolutely forever (OK, a few seconds, and up to a minute) to load, one has to visit more pages to get the information one wants, and the browser freezes completely if more than a few pages are open at once. This has nothing to do with bandwidth. It is about ads (the status bar mentions "bannerfarm.ace.advertising.com") and some seriously bad web design that somehow convinces the browser (yes, I've tried several) to take up most of the available CPU. Since fewer and fewer people are actually going to see these ads, this will probably be a temporary situation. In the meantime, imdb.com and the New York Times will have to do.

Just do it -- quantity, practice, preparation and quality

2006-07-13T01:27:00.000-04:00

A story from "Art & Fear:Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking" by David Bayles & Ted Orland has been cited by over 120 people (e.g. empowermentillustrated.com, kintespace.com) and is worth noting. Students who expected to be evaluated on the quantity of their work produced work of better quality than those who expected to be evaluated on the basis of the quality of their work.

U.M. envy

2006-07-11T12:15:00.000-04:00

The announcment that Google will be building a center near the University of Michigan, where Larry Page was a student (news) has the locals here, where Sergey Brin was a student, salivating.

Empires fall

2006-07-07T17:45:00.000-04:00

This blog, Empire's Fall, looks interesting. I don't do that mutual-linking thing (which seems like a burden), but it looks recommendable and I put it on my delicious site. The theme seems to be the fall of the American empire.

Netherlands vs. Portugal -- don't blame the ref

2006-06-26T09:28:00.000-04:00

All the papers this morning are blaming the referee who handed out a record number of cards in Portugal's victory over The Netherlands, but it was the players who behaved as though they were playing hockey.

Vint Cerf on Kojo Nnamdi

2006-06-13T13:01:00.000-04:00

I just heard (bits of) Vint Cerf on Kojo Nnamdi. I love this guy; he is very articulate and reasonable about the internet.

Is Ken Lay criminally insane?

2006-05-05T17:02:00.000-04:00

Ken Lay's defense seems to be that he not only didn't understand what was wrong with his actions at the time, but he still doesn't get it. (Floyd Norris, NT Times; Google news) Does that make him innocent because he had no intent to deceive, guilty and unrepentant or just insane?

Software Out There

2006-04-05T10:36:00.000-04:00

"Software out there," in the New York Times today, does a good job of describing the trend to remote software.

Are those high utility bills brought to you by governor Ehrlich and friends?

2006-03-18T12:22:00.000-05:00

E-mails Show Industry Ties, an article in Today's Post, talks about the changes at the Public Service Commission, which sets utility rates in Maryland. Once again, Republicans show that pro-business always trumps free market (and pro-consumer is something they never cared about). Why did Maryland elect a Republican governor?

Second thoughts about big brother west.

2006-03-17T16:46:00.000-05:00

"Google copies your hard drive." Electronic Frontier Foundation, Feb. 9, 2006
http://www.gmail-is-too-creepy.com/
"big brother east" is NSA.
"big brother west" is Google.
Privacy in cyberspace at privacyrights.org is useful.

blossoms

2006-03-17T15:09:00.000-05:00

The Bradford pears are out in University Park. They are beautiful, and the weather is predicted to be just the right temperature to keep them from wilting too soon (without freezing), but I do wonder if the famous cherry blossoms downtown might not peak a bit sooner than ideal for the festival.

Labov and The Atlas of North American English

2006-03-17T11:59:00.000-05:00

Nice piece in the times today about linguistic (phonetic) tourism.
"It's Not the Sights, It's the Sounds" by Tim Sultan (yes, in the Travel section).
He discusses Labov and The Atlas of North American English and gives lots of fun examples of regional speech.
http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/travel/escapes/17accent.htm

Quick notes

2006-03-16T09:50:00.000-05:00

This blog will be used for quick comments unencumbered (as they say on Car Talk) by the thought process. I was inspired by Mark Gerstein's textstream.