Todd G. Simpson

This is one of the better books for laymen that I have read in a while.  In large part, I think this is due to the fact that I knew very little about the recent developments in astronomy, and was surprised to find that Neutrino Telescopes are alive and well.  The last time I had looked, it was so hard to detect a neutrino, that even thinking of a telescope was absurd. While the book follows many of the pioneers of the area, I was most intrigued with the storyline that exposed how neutrinos come in three flavors, which can change through interaction with mass and/or time.  Thus, an electron-neutrino at birth, may be a tau-neutrino upon detection.  This is visualized well by Close as neutrinos being like harmonics of several frequencies which interact in wavelike ways as the neutrino travels through space and time.  It is interesting that this is the same visualization invoked by superstring theory. To explain the flavor-changing behavior, neutrinos (or a...

With Borders scaling back so many of their stores, I have ended up buying more books than I normally would. One I picked up is "What is Life?" by Ed Regis.  It is a good short read, although it is now 2 years old, which is a long time given the rate that "artificial life" is moving at.  Since the book came out, Craig Ventor claims to have created the first artificial life . One thing I did not know was that Schrodinger wrote a book with the same title in 1944 which predicted the existence of a DNA-like molecule;  Crick actually credits Schrodinger with inspiring some of his early work. Ed Regis points out that Schrodinger's book never actually defines what life is; that is left hanging.  Interestingly, I felt the same about Regis's book.  While he argues that life is defined by having an "embedded metabolism" that argument still seems weak.  Carl Sagan pointed out, many years ago, that cars have a metabolism, which is hard to argue against....

It is gut-check time. Do I cheer for San Jose or Vancouver? I have two conflicting logic trees: I am Canadian Vancouver is in Canada Therefore, I should support Vancouver San Jose has 22 Canadians on their Roster Vancouver has 16 Canadians on their Roster I am Canadian Therefore, I should support San Jose So, I have turned to "How We Decide" which I just recently read to see if it has any answers. Jonah Lehrer would suggest that I check two aspects.  My emotional brain, and my rational brain. My emotional brain screams "Vancouver"; obviously there is a stronger emotional link between location (Canada) than roster. My rational brain says "San Jose".  In the last three years, I have never watched a Canucks game, or followed the team very closely.  However, I have been to many Sharks games, enjoy watching there progress, and even listen to quite a few games on the radio. Lehrer suggests that typically your rational brain is the one to follow. I...

A lot of the press today is claiming that Microsoft overpaid for Skype.  I am not so sure. Here are some numbers for comparison. Skype has 560 million registered users, of which about 2% (say 11 million) are paying customers with an average ARPU of $8.  Thus, Skype should be generating about $8*12*11M ~ $1B/year in revenue right now, with an EBITDA of about $250M.  So, Microsoft is paying about 8X revenue, and 32X EBITDA. T-Mobile US has about 33M subs, with an ARPU of about $50.  So, T-Mobile's revenue should be around  $21B/year.  AT&T is paying about 2X revenue, and 7X EBITDA. Thus, Microsoft is paying a 4-5X premium for Skype compared to what AT&T is paying for T-Mobile. The obvious question is : Can Microsoft leverage Skype 4X more effectively than a traditional mobile carrier?  To that, I think the answer is yes: 1) Skype is not a major enterprise player, yet.  Microsoft should be able to make this happen.  That alone...

Here is your guide to "sharking" a car. With Carshark, and a little creativity, you to can make your drive to work more interesting.  In the paper they show you how to hook things up so that you can control a car through WiFi. You are sitting at a red light, and want to have a little fun.  How about sending 07 AE 15 A2; this controls the horn frequency?  Drive-by ringtones.  Could be a $1B business.

This is an interesting project ( link ) and it is good to see that it is kickstarted. The opening video is quite well structured, starting from positive feedback and moving to negative.  I have taken a snapshot of the video at a screen which presages the five areas that will be covered. There is no doubt that Facebook is (1) a valuable service, and (2) has raised some hackles due to their ownership of users data. The area from above that most interests me is the "society" sphere, and what a student at Stanford (from the mobisocial lab...sorry, I don't have an exact name) calls the "circle of like."  Facebook provides great value today to users and to websites, and has created a virtuous circle where clicking "like" drives more traffic to Facebook, and more data / information / knowledge to websites.  I highlight this as the circle reinforces two strong user bases, so displacing Facebook is probably harder than even Google imagines. The main ques...

I have about a 20 minute commute to work, and like to simply relax and listen to the radio.  Lately, however, I can't find a station that is worth listening to.  It is not the innuendo that bothers me, it is the constant, lowest common denominator, one-track, childish innuendo that I find annoying.  So, I switch from channel to channel trying to avoid the announcers.  In the mornings this is almost impossible; every station (except pure classical music) is like talk radio for middle school boys. So, I listened to NPR today, and found it refreshing.  A few of the segments actually caused me to think :-) I also did a little searching, for academic interest, at how close to the line some of the stations are today.  I found this link , which outlines what is "indecent".  The definition is actually quite interesting: "Because the Supreme Court has determined that obscene speech is not entitled to First Amendment protection, radio and television stati...

I enjoy reading layman physics books.  And, I enjoy the Science vs Religion debates, especially those that cast Science as a Religion. Superstring theory has always both intrigued and bothered me. Intrigued as, on the surface, it has a nice visual "ah ha" about it; the universe is comprised of tiny (zero dimension) vibrating strings, which can form chords and harmonies that result in manifestations that are available to the human senses. Bothered as, below the surface, it is a huge mess of mumbo-jumbo that has no intuitive sense to it.  Relative to relativity (sic), this is a fairly easy statement to make; even a layman can get a grasp of relativity through Einstein's own writings.  But, relative to quantum theory, can Superstring theory really have "no intuitive sense".  What I really mean is that superstring theory has no science behind it - no way to test anything.  Quantum theory, on the other hand, has been tested over and over again. [...

I have both a Macbook Pro and a Gateway running Windows 7.  I use both about the same amount. Scorecard for the last month: Windows reboots required:       None Mac reboots required:               Three FYI, I have a lot more software running on my Windows box than I do on the Mac.

So, it is my first week at Mozilla Labs; I picked a great first week - the launch of Firefox 4 for both desktop and mobile.  One of the big topics for Mozilla is Identity and Privacy.  After all, "Firefox answers to no one but you."   However, digging into identity (above the layer of authentication and authorization) is a tricky business. This book is a very interesting framework in which to think of identity.  It is intuitive social science: we all have expectations about how our personal information should be used, based on the context of use; when our expectations are not met, we react poorly; when our expectations are stressed, but not broken, expectations may evolve, especially to encapsulate new technologies. Contextual Integrity is the catch phrase to encompass this idea...and the idea that identity/Privacy is not about hiding your information, but about its appropriate use. The difficulty is turning a social science into a computer science.  The...