Our Only Hope

Badass Physics Applets

I was doing some hw today and needed some help graphing vector fields. I found this awesome site with tons of physics applets. It's pretty effing cool if you're into that kind of thing.

WTF Jobs?!?!?!

Yes the MacBook Air is one of the sexiest tech items this world has ever seen, but this year's Macworld, continued what is becoming a deadly trend for Apple. What made the iPod the biggest tech success in the world today? Was it the design, was it sex appeal, was it the logo, was it the "oooh shiny thing!" factor?? No, It was functionality combined with an innovative and effective user interface at reasonable price.

Apple started drifting away from a focus on functionality and features, and has honed in entirely on glitz, glam, and sex appeal with the iPod touch. The MacBook Air is yet another Apple product that sacrifices functionality for a pretty design. What is the point of having a pretty little box, or a beautiful touch screen display, when it doesn't do what you need it to? At 1800 bones this machine has got to be able to function as your one and only computer, but with only 80 gigs, and no optical drive you're going to find yourself shelling out hundreds more on essential computing ad-ons pushing the price to somewhere around $2300. This just isn't practical when the MacBook and MacBook Pro are in the picture. Especially considering the MacBook pro starts at 2 grand, and is still a very compact computer.

The iPod touch suffers from this same flaw. No matter how cool the screen is, no matter how fun the multi-touch user interface is, only tech geeks are going to be willing to spend 400 bucks on 16GB. If Apple doesn't shape up quickly and make products that (god forbid) are maybe a little less sexy, but maintain the great user interface and have respectable specs at a decent price, the future of Apple will not be so bright.

I'm Back

So it's been over a month since my last post which is completely unacceptable by blogging standards. I would feel guilty about it buuuuuuut nobody reads this anyways.

Chimps are pretty smart.... doooiiiii (+ a rant)

I am always amazed when I see footage of chimps, but this one is particularly cool. It baffles me when I get the response, "I believe that evolution exists but I don't believe we came from monkeys." When I see this video I see a cousin. Obviously a distant cousin but the millions of years necessary to create that divergence I think is a reasonable amount of time for such differences to develop. More than anything though, what irks me is the ALTERNATIVE postulated by Christianity, and how it is supposedly far MORE logical. I believe Adam rose from dust, correct? And Eve from Adam's rib? So clearly any literal interpretation of the Bible is perhaps a little misguiding.

Maybe this is straying from Chimps too far to put in one post, but this brings me to something else that needs addressing: If the Bible cannot be literally interpreted, then it is said that its value comes from the morality embedded in its stories. The lessons that can be learned from this book can guide us and help us navigate this confusing world. Well maybe not Leviticus, the often cited text guiding us to execute anybody who is gay, wears vision correcting lenses, cuts or trims the hair near the temples or commits any other fairly ordinary act that happens to make the cut for counting as evil (something about shellfish or seafood too right?). Clearly, then, the good moral guidance from the book needs to be sifted from the bad. So now we're left with a book that advises us to do horrible things as well as really good things. Obviously this is problematic for a couple reasons the most obvious that you could "sift" incorrectly and mistake horrible, atrocious guidance for good and vice versa.
To me what's really interesting about this though, is that in order to do this sifting, you have to make the decisions about what is good and what is bad. Therefor the morality that one gets from the Bible is ALREADY imbedded in you, and interpreting the Bible is simply an exercise in identifying good morality vs. bad morality. This to me is a very convincing argument that morality exists within us, and the very notion of receiving morality from one individual text is not only flawed, but dangerous.

Design that Solves Problems for the World's Poor

The world’s cleverest designers, said Dr. Polak, a former psychiatrist who now runs an organization helping poor farmers become entrepreneurs, cater to the globe’s richest 10 percent, creating items like wine labels, couture and Maseratis.

“We need a revolution to reverse that silly ratio,” he said.

Nanosolar Powersheet

Green Tech
Nanosolar Powersheet

The New Dawn of Solar

Imagine a solar panel without the panel. Just a coating, thin as a layer of paint, that takes light and converts it to electricity. From there, you can picture roof shingles with solar cells built inside and window coatings that seem to suck power from the air. Consider solar-powered buildings stretching not just across sunny Southern California, but through China and India and Kenya as well, because even in those countries, going solar will be cheaper than burning coal.

The Wind Dam
what a great idea, I wonder if there would be any negative impacts from it. Either way it's some smart thinking.

Time for a little Truth

Thank you Adam for having me read this awesome article from The New Yorker

Why, then, would a new President spend political capital on yet another tax hike when he will almost certainly seek to undo the Bush tax cuts for more immediate demands, like universal health care? When I asked Obama about this, he smiled and leaned forward, as if eager to explain that my premise was precisely the politically calibrated approach that he wanted to challenge. “What I think you’re asserting is that it makes sense for us to continue hiding the ball,” Obama said, “and not tell the American people the truth—”

Are we ready?

Mali mini clip

Picasa

Because not everyone has access to Facebook I'll be posting my pictures up on Picasa as well now. Have a lookkkkksieee

IN_RAINBOWS/RADIOHEA_D

Even though probably 10 million people have seen this picture by now I want to share it with the world. I'm in love with the art and the entire album even though it took me a while.

Christmas break

For anybody who doesn't know yet, I'm coming home for Christmas break. I'll be home from Dec. 18th until Jan. 9th.

Study Abroad

About a week ago I moved into my new apartment in Zähringen in Freiburg. I'm about 3 weeks into doing my year abroad here and so far it's going really well. I'm finally playing hoops again, now for USC Freiburg Herren 2, which Adam referred to somewhat accurately as quadruple A ball or something along those lines. I'm loving Skype more than ever, it's keeping me in touch with the people I miss the most!

Blackle/Earthle inspired

I've been thinking about posting up random thoughts and such for a while now, and I thought I would just try it out. I know black isn't always the most fun to look at but, but it's Blackle and Earthle inspired, both are well deserving of your homepage location. My intent at this point for this space is as much a diary as anything else really. I'll probably have pictures and links every once in a while. We'll see what happens though!