Global Warming Ready?

As seen in the subway...

Cool set of ads that Diesel's running to make global warming more obvious/appreciated by people.

Time to kick it up...

So I've been getting into the workout groove a bit more over the last few months. I had one of those "okay, you're not immortal..." moments where it became pretty obvious that getting into shape (and staying that way) now was preferable to having to deal with the consequences in another 10 years. Also, as it turns out, there's only so many times one can use the self-appointed "Fat Bastard" nickname before it sinks in that this might be a problem.

Anyway, every year Mike and I head up to Ottawa to run one race or another (the marathon or the half [if we're feeling nice and lazy]). Most times we realize a few weeks (or days) beforehand that we've got the race coming up and make a half-hearted attempt to "get back in shape". This time, though, we're going to make an attempt to suck less... adding running to the routine, being more diligent about time in the gym...

The purpose of blogging this? Public shaming, of course! Now anyone who reads this *knows* that I'm supposedly running more often, going to the gym, getting ready for a marathon, and trying to shake this whole "Fat Bastard" thing... and if you should ever happen to notice that I'm behaving in a way that's obviously contradictory to this, feel free to poke fun in whatever way most amuses you (not that anyone needed my permission or anything :)

Perky the Duck keeps tickin'

(From BBC News.)

Perky (as she's been named) first gets shot by a hunter, and tossed in his freezer. Then his wife gets the surprise of her life when, on opening the freezer, notices that the duck is looking back at her! It turns out that Perky's low metabolism managed to save her life.

Then (as if she's not gone through enough) while some vet's were operating on her, to repair her wing, her heart stopped beating. They pronounced her dead. Not 20 seconds later was Perky up and flapping her wings again. Wow, this duck's got one heck of a will to live!

Toronto Transit Camp

Live in Toronto and want to make the TTC work better? If you're free on Feb 4, you might want to head out for Toronto Transit Camp.

Date: Sunday, February 4th
Time: 9:30am to 5:00pm
Location: Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen Street West, Toronto
Attendance: Maximum attendance - 100
Cost: FREE for participants!

Recent reading: Fooled by Randomness

Finally got around to reading Nassim Taleb's book on randomness in markets. It's an interesting read that puts market performance (and fund performance) into perspective: thinking about just how luck, and random events can make a huge difference in the outcomes of any set of events.

There were a few things that especially stuck with me after having read this. The first one of them is survivor bias, meaning that when we look at a sample of people, companies, etc. that we tend to look at the survivors, not the failures. E.g. It's common to look at a set of N companies/people who are successful and say "these successful entities had X in common." What's less obvious is that if we looked at a set of failed entities, many of them would also have the same X in common.

That leads to the next point: it's easy to fit a rule to data. Taleb quips that he's convinced that if he looked hard enough, he could find a financial instrument whose performance was directly correlated to the temperature of a certain city in Mongolia. The point? Historical data's interesting, but separating signal from noise, and truly understanding what relationships are causal, is a whole lot more difficult than we might originally think.

I'm curious to think about how this fits into the study of neural networks... networks that are trained using historical data such that they can predict the future. It also all ties into a website that I (finally) stumbled across last week: FareCast. They have algorithms that predict whether the price of a flight is expected to go up or down over a certain period of time. Generally it sounds interesting: Should I buy this ticket now, or wait a few days? More interestingly, they're offering an insurance policy: you can buy a policy for $10 that can be redeemed if they're wrong... i.e. If I see a fare, FareCast suggests the price is going to hold stable or drop (and so I should wait to buy), and the fare in fact increases, I can have purchased an insurance policy for the change in price.

Just one of those books that brought together a few thoughts that've been floating around my mind recently... I'd suggest it's worth a read.

Bombs music video by Faithless

Worth a watch.

Airport Security flash game

Hillarious. Give it a play if you've got some time to kill... I can't seem to get the hang of it... maybe it's a statement about how arbitrary airport security decisions can be made (I'm still annoyed that Rebecca the guard at SFO didn't let me take my Nun Chucks toy).

Via Brad Feld.

Disney "Vault" ?

Just watching some TV (clearly not at home :-) while trying to recover from a nasty cold today... and noticed an interesting Disney commercial. Something about certain movies being available only for a certain period of time on DVD... then they go into the Disney "vault", and you can't buy them for a few months (or whatever). I suppose they're cycling what stuff's available for purchase.

What's interesting is that Disney is still using such a dated way of controlling the supply of content, in the age of on-demand. Especially strange considering that Apple's one of the company's pushing the way forward with iTunes and Apple TV, and Steve Jobs is on the Disney board. I wonder if they'll start realize that it becomes a whole lot easier to rent a DVD, and rip and burn a copy for your kids, if Disney insists on making it so hard to just plain purchase what you want, when you want it...

Oh Mercedes... what ad will you dream up next?

Via Adrants.

Arar finally gets paid?

The Toronto Star reports that Maher Arar will today receive (finally) an apology from our Prime Minister on behalf of Canadians as well as some financial compensation for what he endured. It's about time.

Wonder if the US (who went on the faulty intelligence from the RCMP) will follow along at some point as well...

UPDATE: He's going to get $10.5 MM plus his legal fees. Read more at The Globe and Mail.

For Ninja's, By Ninja's

Sheer genius. From Ask a Ninja.

Long on Iraq, short on the environment...

The New York Times has made a State of the Union visualization tool available that would make Tufte proud. Take a look at it and notice how certain words have been said more (or less) over the last few years. Interesting is the sharp decrease in the mention of the economy, and the equally sharp increase in the mention of Iraq.

Also notable is the increase in the use of "environment"... though at only 4 mentions, (vs Iraq at 34), it's clear what's important to this administration.

"Excuse me, madam, could you help me buy the most best tampons?"

Even though Lorenzo had never heard of MIT, the team from Cambridge scared him, too. There were 12 of them—6 ocean-engineering students, 4 mechanical engineers, and 2 computer science majors. Their robot was small, densely packed, and had a large ExxonMobil sticker emblazoned on the side. The largest corporation in the United States had kicked in $5,000 for the privilege of sponsoring them. Other donations brought the MIT team’s total budget to $11,000.

As Luis hoisted Stinky to the edge of the practice side of the pool, Cristian heard repressed snickering. It didn’t give him a good feeling. He was proud of his robot, but he could see that it looked like a Geo Metro compared with the Lexuses and BMWs around the pool. He had thought that Lorenzo’s paint job was nice. Now it just looked clownish.

If ever there were a reason to give underprivileged students full scholarships, this is it... it's a shame that MIT didn't give these kids scholarships, after they beat the pants off 12 of their students. :(

From "La Vida Robot", an article that Joshua Davis wrote for Wired and that appeared in the fantastic Best of Technology Writing 2006.

Mmmmmm Prada...

Looks like LG and Prada have hooked up to create a gorgeous new phone. Looks like the iPhone won't be the only button-free phone... and while I'm sure the Prada handset won't be nearly as powerful/capable, it's small, beautiful, simple, and seems to have a clean user interface.

Oh, and it's rumored that it'll sell for between $400-500, so not cheap, but not THAT expensive. Hmm... maybe I'll convince myself into getting one (unlike that Prada scarf I've lusted after for ages... I mean, it's reasonable to believe that a scarf should cost less than my laptop, right?)

Via Dial-a-Phone.

Billions and Billions

A friend and I were trading thoughts on improbable events this morning... and it brought a quote to mind... something Carl Sagan said...

I never said it. Honest. Oh, I said there are maybe 100 billion galaxies and 10 billion trillion stars. It's hard to talk about the Cosmos without using big numbers. I said 'billion' many times on the Cosmos television series, which was seen by a great many people. But I never said 'billions and billions.' For one thing, it's imprecise. How many billions are 'billions and billions'? A few billion? Twenty billion? A hundred billion? 'Billions and billions' is pretty vague... For a while, out of childish pique, I wouldn't utter the phrase, even when asked to. But I've gotten over that. So, for the record, here it goes: 'Billions and billions.'

Not quite an awe-inspiring quote, right? The point was more about the improbability of events when you start to think about the scale of our world, of the universe at large... one of those reminders: when you've got the one in a billion opportunity in front of you, go for it... it won't be there long... the numbers just don't work out that way :-)

Okay, the one thing I hate about my Mac...

My first gen MacBook Pro can handle a max of 2 GB of RAM, and the new one can only handle 3 GB... but between memory-hungry web browsers, and running a bunch of Mac and Windows (thank you Parallels) programs all at once, can chew all that memory up pretty quickly. This is definitely a laptop that would sing with 4 or more GB of RAM. Le sigh. :)

"If only I weren't a Jew and an atheist, I'd be in business."

Great article in New York Magazine on burnout by Jennifer Senior.

Via 43 Folders.

Le blog Streetkiss

That's right... Streetkiss. Check out the site. It's a bunch of folks in France who figured it's a good alternative to slapping the hell out of people randomly ;-)

Just walk up to an unfortunate stranger, give 'em a kiss, capture it on your phone, and share it with the world.

Now, knowing how Leila gets riled up over public display's of affection I wonder how she'll deal with this one :-)

Confused by Sony... again...

One of the "accepted" reasons for VHS's triumph over Beta has always been that the adult industry used VHS...

So why on earth would Sony ban adult content on Blu-Ray? I mean, the idea that you'd ban any content when you're trying to win a format adoption war is silly enough... but one of the key types of content that caused VHS to beat Beta? How strange... I just don't get Sony these days...

Got a new Mac? Get the new Parallels!

So my friend Shawn told me about the recent beta version of Parallels... It basically lets you run Windows (and other operating systems) on one of the new Intel-based Mac's... I've been a fan of Parallels since it came out, but this new version is wicked-cool... It lets Windows programs run on your Mac just like other Mac programs.

huh? Okay, so you can have a Safari window that happens to just float next to Outlook, or whatever else you happen to be using. It's like Windows programs and Mac programs just play nice together on the same computer (and you don't even have to look at the Windows desktop!). Would you believe that dragging and dropping works properly too? I dragged a picture off my Mac desktop right into a Word for Windows document... and it showed up... just like it should :-)

Sorry, I'm a bit overly giddy here... but it's really freakin' cool. Now all they have to do is get the multiple Windows apps to place nice with Expose and it's perfect (admittedly, it's pretty damn close as it is!).

A parody of a Justin Timberlake parody?

The original...


The parody...



You decide :-)

More from TED...

More discoveries from TED today… (yeah, I’m a fan of the TEDtalks), poet John Rives is absolutely brilliant… here’s a set he did at TED. Oh, and here’s another one.

Also, I got a chance to check out Bjorn Lomborg’s presentation where he talks about prioritizing the world’s biggest problems. I’ve been a fan of his since he wrote The Skeptical Environmentalist and am even more interested in his comments in this talk about the Copenhagen Consensus not only because of it’s global implications, but the ones for our own individual countries as well.

The Copenhagen Consensus’ results suggested that addressing AIDS should be our biggest priority, followed by malnutrition and things like malaria, and addressing climate change controversially last. The premise is that we need to invest in the things that give us the greatest returns (i.e. how do we do the most good by addressing the biggest problems), and once we’ve addressed these things, we should then move onto the next. We can certainly disagree with how the projects are ranked, but the idea that we must rank them, makes sense.

Personally, it makes me think of my views on Canadian politics. Most of my friends have heard me rant about how I think we as a country over spend and overly focus on healthcare. Don’t get me wrong, universal healthcare is important… but I think it’s too important to Canadians.

When you ask most Canadians what their priorities (politically) are, they’ll usually respond with healthcare and education… in that order. Even as a country that’s got a highly literate population and a number of great universities, we’re simply not graduating enough people (especially in science and technology) to keep up with the developing world.

The raw resource for a knowledge economy is skilled, educated workers… something that we won’t have for much longer as our education system continues to slip in/to disrepair and fall behind the rest of the world. This isn’t just a Canadian problem, it’s one that’s central to every major western economy: other things are getting priority over education, and as much as we think we can get everything done… we can’t.

So is this a rant about Canada or about tackling AIDS vs global warming? Both :-) but check out Bjorn’s TED presentation. if you have time… it’s a great debate to start in on.

So, how 'bout that iPhone... okay, but what about that interface? :)

so I’m writing this as I hang out at a friend’s place and Jax the wonder-cat keeps purring and nudging me for attention… she’s great, but I don’t think my Mac’s seen this much fur… ever. :-)

So today Apple launched the iPhone and it’s been covered about a million places, so I’m not going to dig into it… I’m also going to skip over all the questions about just what’s inside that little beast.

Actually, I’m way more interested in the interface on the it… specifically how they got the multi-point stuff to work so well.

After a little digging (i.e. reading old siggraph stuff that I probably should have kept up on anyway), I noticed a researcher named Jeff Han over at NYU’s Computer Science school. It turns out Jeff’s been doing some really cool work on multi-point, multi-user interfaces. He was even at the TED conference last year, and gave a fantastic demo you can watch on their site. (Here’s a link to some of Jeff’s research if you’re interested).

What’s interesting is that a lot of this stuff seems to be what Apple’s gone and used: a virtual keyboard that uses multi-point input to help with errors that have plagued this kind of keyboard in the past, and even the pinching gesture that Steve Jobs used to scale pictures in the mobile iPhoto demonstration. I wonder if the folks at Apple have just been keeping a close eye on the work being done by Jeff and others in the space, or whether some of them have been brought in to help Apple work on the design… for a project that’s been kept so well secret for so long, it’s anyone’s guess, I’m sure.

Anyhow, there’s some very cool software that seems to be driving the iPhone ... can’t wait to start playing around with one… I’m dying to see the keyboard in action. :)