Disposable Dispatches

2009-07-17T11:40:00.000-07:00

I just got my invite to Google Voice that I had registered for previously. This is a great service that I have been eagerly waiting for. Google has gotten it precisely right on this one, and it represents the future of VOIP as I see it.

Right now they have great integration in the offering. In short, Google Voice fits nicely with most users who have a limited need for a home phone, with their predominant needs met through a mobile phone. It allows for your calls to be simultaneously rung to any number of mobiles, and transcription of unanswered calls into text messages. Think "visual voicemail"-like messages you would see on the iPhone, except with the voice transcribed into text, with the option to download the audio. Plus, its got a neat feature that allows you to listen-in while a message is being left, and you can choose to pick up if you want. (Reminds me of old-school answering machines - remember those?)

I will spare the complete run down here, and instead direct you to www.google.com/voice where you can explore all the features.

You should all register, and hopefully you will get an invite soon. Best of all, it is free!

I have no doubt that this is merely the start of things to come, with Google commanding enough clout to finally drive adoption of open standard XMPP phones (a competing protocol to SIP/SIMPLE) - the details of this are not important, but suffice it to say that it will take the place of a traditional land line phones and will nicely augment Google's Android mobile phones. (Re: Android mobile phones, this is not sufficiently compelling to persuade any of you to buy an Android phone, you are still far better off with an iPhone!)

The only potential draw-back: now Google knows who you are talking to and, to some extent, the content of the voicemails that are transcribed or conversations that you choose to record. But, anyhow let's be honest - isn't it easier to cease resistance to Google as overlord and master, and just grin and bear it?

Kiss Seafood

2009-05-30T21:25:00.001-07:00

Geolocate this post.

Posted with LifeCast

2009-05-21T23:16:00.001-07:00

Hiroshi Honolulu

http://www.yelp.com/biz/yakiniku-hiroshi-honolulu

Great Restaurant In Waikiki

2009-05-21T20:47:00.001-07:00

Posted with LifeCast

2009-05-21T16:22:00.000-07:00

Can Clone/Grow Your Hair Back!
ICX-TRC is an autologous hair regeneration therapy, a suspension of human dermal papilla (DP) cells, for the treatment of male pattern baldness and female diffuse alopecia. DP cells stimulate the generation of new hairs when injected into the scalp in close proximity to the epithelial cells which generate new hair. It is intended that ICX-TRC will be used by specialists in hair transplant centres, dermatologists and plastic surgeons to treat patients with hair thinning or hair loss.

			View the ICX-TRC animation

2009-05-12T23:40:00.001-07:00

G-Wheel Sweet Looking 2-Wheeled Gas Powered Skateboard

Lame Video/Music - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z7s6_OdwHc&feature=related

2009-05-12T21:02:00.000-07:00

Google Announces Google Squared
Apparently Squarely Aimed at Wolfram|Alpha

A beta/labs version of a new database type search was announced today, looks very interesting.

Movie here...

Full review here...

2009-05-10T23:55:00.000-07:00

Eagerly Awaiting the Launch of Wolfram|Alpha

I remember the first time I saw Google shortly after it's launch, and it seemed a little like magic. Google was far better than Altavista, or the slew of other early search engines or directories like Yahoo! around at the time. If Wolfram|Alpha is nearly at good at answering questions as Google is at finding relevant websites, it could be a big winner - effectively negating the need to traverse to another site. This is the latest offering from Stephen Wolfram, creator of software Mathematica, and generally really smart guy.

2009-04-02T18:04:00.000-07:00

From the Economist:

Things can only get better

The OECD issued a grim forecast for the economies of advanced industrialised countries. The organisation expects GDP among its 30 mainly rich member states to plummet by an average of 4.3% this year. America’s economy is projected to contract by 4%, the euro area’s by 4.1% and Japan’s by 6.6%. The World Bank updated its forecast for the world economy, which it now expects to shrink by 1.7% in 2009.

2009-02-09T12:30:00.001-08:00

Good leading indicator: PRIVATE AVERAGE WEEKLY HOURS OF PRODUCTION WORKERS

Which is the average hour of private sector workers, and falls in advance of layoffs. The trend will be a sign the economy is turning around.

http://data.bls.gov/

Current picture is not pretty:

2009-02-08T17:09:00.000-08:00

Interesting Book about my great aunt Katharine Kuh: "My Love Affair with Modern Art"

Good Blog Post about the Book Here

Rip-off from the publishers blog (linked here):

New Reviews for Kuh

Critic's are still loving MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MODERN ART. This weekend, The Economist, The Boston Globe and Newsday all praised Kuh's memoir.

Newsday calls Kuh's collection of essays "a thoughtful guide to the groundbreaking art she nurtured," allowing 21st century readers "to profit from her intimate understanding of the 20th century art and artists she supported so ardently and observed so intelligently."

The Economist finds Kuh's tales of her friendships with artists moving, but says that her description of Mark Rothko's troubled genius is particularly poignant:

According to Kuh, Rothko claimed an artistic kinship with Rembrandt, believing that they both sought what he called “a maximum of poignancy”. On the surface it is difficult to imagine two more different painters, but both poured their lives into their art and had the rare ability to connect to the human spirit. Katharine Kuh believed this was the key to great art. Luckily, she devoted her life to sharing it with others.

The Globe says the work is "a mesmerizing portrait of the genius behind the geniuses" and "exhilarating," saying "this book does what Kuh always wanted art to do -- it opens your eyes."

You can read the entire reviews here.

posted by Ann Rittenberg Literary Agency, Inc. at 10:55 AM

Amazon Link Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Affair-Modern-Art-Legendary/dp/1559707690

2009-02-02T11:24:00.000-08:00

Cool Web Widget: NPR Stories on a 3D Globe

2008-11-29T14:12:00.000-08:00

	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007
Corporate profits with inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments	767.3	886.3	993.1	1,231.2	1,447.9	1,668.5	1,642.4
Domestic industries	597.6	730.5	827.7	1,037.8	1,208.5	1,401.0	1,297.8
Financial¹	240.4	301.1	335.6	356.2	407.1	462.1	429.7
Nonfinancial	357.2	429.4	492.1	681.6	801.4	939.0	868.1

Financial Services accounted for as much 40% of all U.S. Corporate Profits in recent years!

The above excerpt is from the Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis website HERE. Overall the sector has averaged 40% throughout the decade.

This is a disturbing statistic to me, considering that much of the sector is not fundamentally creating value - and as we have recently seen it could be argued the sector destroys value. This is a rise from approximately 10% in the 1980's.

HERE is another interesting Wall Street Journal article relating to this trend.

2008-10-20T12:40:00.000-07:00

Economists Explain 'How To Save Capitalism'

Talk of the Nation, October 20, 2008 · The credit crisis and the mortgage meltdown have led many people to question the fundamentals of the economy; some argue that capitalism is to blame. In the November issue of Harper's Magazine, economic experts weigh in on capitalism — and whether the system needs fixing.

Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel prize in economics, argues that it is time to "Realign The Interests of Wall Street."

Eric Janszen, a former venture capitalist, says the United States must "Reindustrialize."

2008-10-20T00:13:00.000-07:00

Colin Powell Succinctly Sums Up Why Barak Obama Should Be the Next President...

2008-10-09T19:43:00.000-07:00

Interesting Prescient Blog Post About the Current State of the Economy

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly07/unraveling-summary.html

2008-09-21T17:02:00.000-07:00

Tony Blair Interviewed by Jon Stewart

2008-07-14T17:42:00.000-07:00

Gecko Tape

Gecko hair. It's one of the stickiest substances known to man.

Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York have developed some synthetic gecko tape by creating arrays of carbon nanotubes on flexible polymer tape. Based on the tiny structures found on the foot of a gecko lizard, these pieces of tape can support shear stress four times higher than the gecko foot and even sticks to Teflon! Another nifty property is that this tape can be easily pulled off perpendicular to the surface, but not parallel to it. The bond is about 10 pounds per square centimeters, which is quite a lot for something so small!

Since the gecko tape is reusable and won't dry out, the nanotube-based gecko tape could be used in a variety of applications, such as microelectronics, robotics, and space exploration.

Source: Carbon nanotube-based synthetic gecko tapes
and Nanooze.blogspot.com

2008-06-18T12:17:00.000-07:00

Nuclear dangers rise with oil costs

Countries rush to atomic power

David R. Sands (Contact)
Tuesday, June 17, 2008

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jun/17/nuclear-dangers-rise-with-oil-costs/

The rush of countries seeking to obtain nuclear power as the price of oil soars is going to make U.S. efforts to contain nuclear proliferation and keep terrorists from obtaining weapons of mass destruction even harder, the Energy Department's top intelligence chief warned Monday.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former top CIA analyst who heads the Energy Department's Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, said the coming global boom in nuclear power is forcing the U.S. government to rethink old proliferation strategies and take a hard look at the countries joining the nuclear club.

"The power of the atom has become one of the most highly sought-after prizes of 21st-century technological advancement," Mr. Mowatt-Larssen said in a rare public address at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"States want to harness its power for energy, weapons, deterrence and prestige. Sub-state actors desire it for the asymmetric power of becoming a state, at least in terms of the influence they are able to wield."

Nearly 280 small-scale nuclear research reactors can be found in 56 countries, he said.

The dangers of nuclear proliferation were underscored with revelations over the weekend that plans for a small nuclear device were found on laptop computers traced to the nuclear smuggling operation run by disgraced Pakistani researcher A.Q. Khan, whose international network was thought to have been shut down four years ago.

Officials say they are still trying to determine who might have seen the weapons blueprints.

Mr. Mowatt-Larssen did not directly address the new charges against the Pakistani scientist, but said the task for intelligence agents had grown more difficult with the nuclear boom.

Countries across the Middle East and Asia have announced plans in recent months to establish domestic nuclear programs, for both economic and strategic reasons.

A study by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies found that virtually every Middle Eastern nation save Iraq had expressed interest in nuclear power, in part, analysts said, because of the fear that Iran was pursuing a nuclear bomb.

"If Tehran's nuclear program is unchecked, there is reason for concern that it could in time prompt a regional cascade of proliferation among Iran's neighbors," the report said.

Much of President Bush's weeklong European trip that ended Monday focused on rallying international opinion against Iran's nuclear programs. Tehran claims its nuclear programs are for peaceful civilian uses.

"For each new country that develops a civil nuclear program, we should re-evaluate that country's leadership intent, its technology base, security practices, economic and social standing, and tradition of law and order and then reformulate our own nuclear, economic, technology, political and deterrence policies in response," Mr. Mowatt-Larssen said.

The old narrow focus on keeping nuclear materials and know-how out of the hands of known terrorists is not enough, said Mr. Mowatt-Larssen, who added that the new nonproliferation strategy must focus on what he called "all things nuclear."

"We must make a strategic shift from our traditional views of terrorism, proliferation, nuclear weapons and nuclear energy as being separate entities and instead view them as parts of a single framework of all things nuclear," he said.

2008-06-18T11:21:00.000-07:00

Report on Pakistani Smugglers Fuels Nuke Worries

by Tom Gjelten

For NPR

Morning Edition, June 17, 2008 · A top weapons expert says blueprints for a sophisticated nuclear bomb may have been passed in recent years to Iran or North Korea — or even to terrorist groups. Publish Post

David Albright, a former United Nations arms inspector, released a report Monday on a smuggling ring headed by A.Q. Khan, the engineer who once presided over Pakistan's nuclear program. Khan and his partners are said to have obtained detailed designs for a small but powerful nuclear weapon, apparently with the idea of selling the plans on the black market.

The bomb blueprints were discovered in 2006, but their existence has only now been made public. They were found on computers belonging to three Swiss businessmen under investigation for their ties to the smuggling ring directed by Khan, who is under house arrest for having sold nuclear secrets to Libya and other countries.

Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, has been following the Khan case for several years. It originally appeared that Khan was peddling only an outdated Chinese bomb. But when investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency examined the computer files, according to Albright, they found plans matching a nuclear weapon developed by Pakistan in the late 1990s.

"They figured that Khan took something from his own country's nuclear arsenal — which is treason, under anybody's laws — and was willing to sell it to other countries or other persons," Albright says.

The Pakistani government claims it shut down Khan's smuggling network in 2004. But U.S. officials have hinted recently that elements of the network may still be active. Albright says the files found on the Swiss computers suggest that the black market activity that originated with Khan went on even after Khan was put under house arrest.

"You see a collection of 50 people involved in this, and these are people who are in the — for many of them, they're in the business of buying and selling. They're middlemen, they're traders," Albright says. "They work in secret often, and so you have to worry that many of these people that really have not been the subject of investigations or public attention just continued, waited a while and then continued. There's no sense that this whole operation really shut down."

The big question raised by the discovery of the bomb blueprints is whether Iran got the plans. The U.S. intelligence community reported in December that Iran apparently suspended research into the design of a nuclear warhead five years ago. Albright says if Iran at that point had the blueprints for a sophisticated device, it may have felt it could afford to hold off on further weaponization research.

But Albright emphasizes that there's no evidence that Iran actually acquired those bomb blueprints. Investigators for the IAEA have been studying documents on an Iranian laptop recovered by the CIA. But Director General Mohamed ElBaradei told the IAEA board last month that not much had been found on that laptop: only a document suggesting that the Iranians were working on a uranium metal design, possibly for a nuclear weapon.

"The agency currently has no information, apart from the Iranian metal document, on the actual design or manufacture by Iran of nuclear material components or of other key components of a nuclear weapon," ElBaradei said.

It's also conceivable that the bomb blueprints found on the Swiss computers were sold to terrorists — or to anyone with the cash to buy them. Albright notes that the bomb design was in electronic form and therefore could have been reproduced many times.

"You're left with a very unsettled feeling that they may have hidden some, others may have gotten it and have it now, and you have in the black market electronic detailed nuclear weapon designs that could be of interest to a lot of people," he says.

In a speech Monday in Washington, D.C., the intelligence chief for the U.S. Department of Energy, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, declined to comment on the Khan case. But he warned that the United States and its allies "have not done enough to keep nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists."

2008-06-15T15:05:00.000-07:00

Ring may have shared nuclear weapon plans

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/15/nuclear.ring.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

WASHINGTON (AP) -- An international smuggling ring may have secretly shared blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon with Iran, North Korea and other rogue countries, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

The smuggling ring was led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

The now-defunct ring led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan is previously known to have sold bomb-related parts to Libya, Iran and North Korea.

A draft report by former top U.N. arms inspector David Albright says the smugglers also acquired designs for building a more sophisticated compact nuclear device that could be fitted on a type of ballistic missile used by Iran and other developing countries, according to the Post.

The drawings were discovered in 2006 on computers owned by Swiss businessmen; they were recently destroyed by the Swiss government under the supervision of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency to keep them out of terrorists' hands. But U.N. officials said they couldn't rule out that the material had already been shared.

"These advanced nuclear weapons designs may have long ago been sold off to some of the most treacherous regimes in the world," Albright wrote in the draft report, which was expected to be published later this week, the Post reported.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, Nadeem Kiani, did not rebut the report's findings.

"The government of Pakistan has adequately investigated allegations of nuclear proliferation by A.Q. Khan and shared the information with" the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, Kiani told the Post. "It considers the A.Q. Khan affair to be over."

In Vienna, a senior diplomat said the IAEA had knowledge of the existence of a sophisticated nuclear weapons design being peddled electronically by the black-market ring as far back as 2005. The diplomat, who is familiar with the investigations into the A.Q. Khan network, spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the issue.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had made it public knowledge back then and had expressed concern about who potentially had come in possession of the information.

The diplomat referred a reporter to a transcript of a panel discussion on November 7, 2005, where ElBaradei spoke of at least one weapons design being copied by the Khan network onto a CD-ROM "that went somewhere that we haven't seen" and added, "That gives you an indication of ... how much the technology had [been] disseminated."

2008-05-05T16:16:00.000-07:00

And the beat goes on: Dead rat hearts get second chance

Minnesota researchers have found a way to grow new functioning heart tissue from tissue taken off of dead rats. The procedure called whole organ decellularization could some day allow scientists to grow specialized organs so they can be transplanted into human bodies matched for just the right organs.

U.S. biologist Doris Taylor, who is the director of the University of Minnesota Center for Cardiovascular Repair, at the UM Stem Cell Institute, and her team of researchers used a biotechnology process called decellularization.

In the process they washed away existing heart cells with detergents and other chemicals from the muscle and blood vessels within the hearts of dead rats. What was left was a basic collagen structure—a scaffolding of tubes that once was the blood vessels within the organ. Taylor’s team injected the collagen structure with immature heart cells from newly born rats. The tissue structure was then fed a solution of nutrients and left to grow on its own. In about four days the heart tissue began to contract. A pacemaker was used to stabilize the contractions of the heart, along with the introduction of fluids and pressure. Within eight days, the new heart was pumping on its own.

Taylor stated, within a Reuters article, "The hope ultimately—although we've got a ways to go—is that we could take a scaffold from a pig or a cadaver and then take stem or progenitor cells from your body and actually grow a self-derived organ.” She also stated that other organs, such as kidneys, livers, lungs, muscles, and pancreases, could be potentially generated in the same way, by using the basic structure from organs of human cadavers and the stem cells from the recipients themselves. In this way, the new heart would be very similar to the cells of its new owner, with less likelihood of being rejected after it is transplanted.

Taylor noted that such a regenerative method could be used on a human within ten years. According to an article on Bloomberg.com, Taylor stated, “The heart is just a beautiful, elegant organ, and it would be very difficult to recreate it. We started thinking, `Wouldn't it be cool if we could just take the cells out and put new cells in?’.

The research of Taylor and her colleagues has been written up in the January 13, 2008 issue of the journal Nature Medicine. The title of their article is “Perfusion-decellularized matrix: using nature's platform to engineer a bioartificial heart.”

Her team consists of Harald C. Ott, Thomas S Matthiesen, Saik-Kia Goh, Lauren D. Black, Stefan M. Kren, and Theoden I. Netoff.

The abstract to the paper states: “About 3,000 individuals in the United States are awaiting a donor heart; worldwide, 22 million individuals are living with heart failure. A bioartificial heart is a theoretical alternative to transplantation or mechanical left ventricular support. Generating a bioartificial heart requires engineering of cardiac architecture, appropriate cellular constituents and pump function.”

It continues: “We decellularized hearts by coronary perfusion with detergents, preserved the underlying extracellular matrix, and produced an acellular, perfusable vascular architecture, competent acellular valves and intact chamber geometry. To mimic cardiac cell composition, we reseeded these constructs with cardiac or endothelial cells. To establish function, we maintained eight constructs for up to 28 d by coronary perfusion in a bioreactor that simulated cardiac physiology. By day 4, we observed macroscopic contractions. By day 8, under physiological load and electrical stimulation, constructs could generate pump function (equivalent to about 2% of adult or 25% of 16-week fetal heart function) in a modified working heart preparation."

2008-04-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

George Soros on Charlie Rose

Interview with George Soros talking about, among other things, the potential for a cyclical negative feedback effect in the housing market, hedge funds and leverage ratios, and the overall prospects for the US and global economy. This is a luminary in the field of finance, well known in finance circles, but relatively unknown within the broader populous.

Worth looking at his wikipedia bio if he is unknown to you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_soros

2008-04-08T09:31:00.000-07:00

Pete Peterson, co-founder and senior chairman of Blackstone , interview on Charlie Rose

He is very concerned about a potential downward spiral within the economy. He discusses the negative feedback loop consisting of negative savings rates, consumers having falsely drained equity out of their homes under the false presumption of continued home appreciation, reduced demand and a stagnant/recessionary economy, foreclosures, additional housing inventory.

"An hour with Pete Peterson, co-founder and senior chairman of The Blackstone Group.

2008-03-27T12:56:00.000-07:00

Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity

By Gary Wolf 03.24.08 | 6:00 PM

Photo: Rennio Maifredi

Ray Kurzweil, the famous inventor, is trim, balding, and not very tall. With his perfect posture and narrow black glasses, he would look at home in an old documentary about Cape Canaveral, but his mission is bolder than any mere voyage into space. He is attempting to travel across a frontier in time, to pass through the border between our era and a future so different as to be unrecognizable. He calls this border the singularity. Kurzweil is 60, but he intends to be no more than 40 when the singularity arrives.

Kurzweil's notion of a singularity is taken from cosmology, in which it signifies a border in spacetime beyond which normal rules of measurement do not apply (the edge of a black hole, for example). The word was first used to describe a crucial moment in the evolution of humanity by the great mathematician John von Neumann. One day in the 1950s, while talking with his colleague Stanislaw Ulam, von Neumann began discussing the ever-accelerating pace of technological change, which, he said, "gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs as we know them could not continue."

http://www.wired.com/services/referral?messageKey=794e204b36af9d6bf54239ac14329fce