And I’m not riffing on the Romantics. Just a little while ago, my two sons (who are on day 1 of a nearly four week school break) began arguing with each other over the amount of clay each one had, and I overheard the argument turn ugly.

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Popularity: 22% [?]

I came across this video when Jon Gruber posted something he’d read about giving a presentation, and how that differed from giving a speech.  The post he linked to itself contained a link to this video, which I found incredibly interesting.

Steve is not terribly entertaining here, but it is clear he’s being incredibly honest. And it has nothing to do with Apple, really. Just Steve reading some notes, giving a speech. 

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

Tags: ’steve jobs’, apple, communication, speeches

Popularity: 1% [?]

I really hope he gets the nomination.  As I live in Denver, I’m going to try to get involved in the convention. 

I was IM’ing with a close friend today when he asked me who I supported for President.  I replied ‘Obama’.  Turns out he does do, and he immediately turned me on to this video.  When I watched it, I got goose-bumps.   This guy – when I hear him speak in a context like this – simply blows me away.  I can’t recall ever having that reaction to any living politician.

Ever.

EDIT. The video is at dipdive.com, but I’m simply embedding it here.  It looks like that is OK.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Wow. My gut told me it was a lot, but this study provides an irrefutable quantity:

935

Here’s the CNN report about the project:

CNN Report

And here’s the project itself, complete with a searchable database. Amazing stuff. Thank you to everyone involved.

Public Integrity Org

This is incredibly disturbing, but sadly unsurprising. At what point does “…publicly made false statements” turn into “lied” ? This damage will take years, and quite possibly decades, to repair. I hope that both my kids and I (and Jen) live to see our country once again behaving as though we want the rest of the world to behave.

There’s hope. It begins in January 2009.

Tags: bush, iraq

Popularity: 1% [?]

Snarky title aside, this telescope probably wouldn’t have been possible without the contributions from Gates and Simonyi.

 http://snurl.com/1wngv

"… a three-billion-pixel detector" that will produce "…30 terabytes of data each night".  Wow.  My question, of course, is where will all that data get stored?

Tags: telescope, microsoft, stars, astronomy

Popularity: 1% [?]

I read the below article in Wired a few days ago and was so struck by it that I had to write about it here.  A friend and I had talked about this very topic the previous Sunday while hiking south of Denver, so this was already on my mind.

http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/15-10/ff_plant_formula

The article stresses that the process itself involved in the production of ethanol is fairly straight-forward:

1. Thermochemical treatment  The raw plant feedstock is treated with chemicals — often diluted sulfuric acid — to break down cell walls and make the cellulose accessible.
2. Enzymes    A mix of cellulase enzymes is then added to convert the cellulose and hemicellulose molecules into the simple sugars glucose and xylose.
3. Fermentation    Yeast or bacteria are added, converting the sugar into a mixture of ethanol and water, what refineries call "the beer."
4. Distillation    The ethanol is refined and purified, producing a fuel that could one day end up in your gas tank.

This echoed what I already knew (at least marginally understood anyway), but I was surprised to hear that the biggest barrier to large-scale production of ethanol is the molecular structure of cellulose, and the difficulties involved in breaking down that structure.   I was under the impression that this particular problem had been solved & was scalable. There are approaches, to be sure, of breaking down cellulose to produce cellulases, but apparently none so far has proven cost-effective (translation: it isn’t profitable).

I was even more surprised – pleasantly so – at the amount of research currently being funded on this & other renewable energy sources.  I had argued with my friend that substantial research wasn’t being conducted into renewable energy sources now, mostly because the political climate didn’t favor it.  I was wrong, and that’s great.  I do feel somewhat vindicated, though, to see the Wired article point out one of my primary assertions:  that when Reagan declared the energy crisis over in the 80s, federal funding of energy research vanished nearly overnight.  And it has taken twenty years to correct that mistake.

Tags: ethanol, energy, cellulose, cellulases

Popularity: 1% [?]

“We have our missing Boy Scout.”

As a parent, this absolutely thrills me. As a Scout leader in my area, I am relieved that this had a happy outcome for the Troop. Nice job by the Search & Rescue teams.

Missing Scout Found (from sfgate)

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Don’t look so surprised – Wal-Mart is in fact going into communities where classic economic redevelopment has failed, or worse yet, has never even been attempted.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/02/19/financial/f091544S30.DTL

Wal-Mart gets lots of criticism for lots of things, and as an employer that brings together a population greater in size than many American cities, this is no surprise.  When was the last time a city of this size (1 million plus people) didn’t receive criticism? 

My opinion of Wal-Mart is ever-changing; stories like this one are why.

Tags: walmart, wal-mart, economic redevelopment

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I came across this story yesterday and the more I think about about, the more it inspires me to move forward with some of the things I’m working on (look here over the next few weeks for details)

This kid is a 7th grader from New Jersey who got involved in raising funds – and awareness – for autism research through his hockey team.  Check out his site here:

http://assistfrombubba.com/

He has several convenient methods by which you can make a donation (do so).  Even if you don’t make a donation, take his story as inspiration to make a difference.  In something.

Tags: autism, research, hockey, fund raising

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The story behind how Bono decided to "…help" has been told before.  This post is about how serious that help has become, to the point that it (and he) are at the actual and spiritual center of a series of initiatives that will positively affect tens of millions of people, and perhaps even hundreds of millions.

Here’s a great graphic from the NYT illustrating the four organizations which Bono leads, co-founded, or to which he lends his celebrity:

Wow.  I love U2 and would enjoy meeting Bono as a fan of his music.  I passed simple fandom a while back, though, and now would be humbled to meet Bono – the man driving this sphere of influence & social change.

Tags: Bono, one.org, data.org, edun, product(red)

Popularity: 43% [?]