Why I haven't posted anything for several months....

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I've been preoccupied fighting esophageal Cancer.


I won!

The 'take away':  If you get heartburn as infrequently as twice a week, go to your doctor and be assertive as though your life depends on it, because your life depends on it!

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Why does the Big Gummint spend $81.9 BILLION ANNUALLY for computers?

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Carl Malamud recently, at the 2010 Gov 2.0 Summit, called out here the sloppy way our Government agencies have been, and are, wasting money and time in the ways that they buy information technology infrastructure (think - computers, data lines and the like).

The text of his speech is available here.
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Have you ever wondered how Google works?

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Here's how Google works.
Remember, this all happens about as fast as you blink your eyes!

Hat tip to Barry Ritholtz, The Big Picture
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A Star Is Born ... But How?

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Did you ever wonder where you came from?
You start with two hydrogen atoms.
All that stuff about the birds & the bees came way later!

my head hurts from trying to understand this stuff...

How did the universe form
the first stars?

That is the question asked by Research Scientist Daniel Wolf Savin of Columbia University's Astrophysics Laboratory.

 

This is the apparatus used by researchers in the lab to simulate the chemistry of the early universe (not your typical telescope).

Credit: Daniel Wolf Savin, Columbia University

Then he went about finding the answer.
The National Science Foundation posted a video of Dr. Savin discussing this work here.
I'm fascinated with this, but I can't even wrap my brain around it.  I'm so impressed with how people like Savin are pushing the boundaries of what is knowable.
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Typically brain disorders are diagnosed by observing a person's specific behavior.  This is, one supposes, analogous to diagnosing a heart attack by observing a person clutching their chest.
Here's a better way... Look at their brain....

After watching this video, your brain may join my brain in being stunned!
Then, let's both wonder how this technology might be applied to schizophrenia....
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We human beings are a strange lot.  We see problems that are easily solvable quite inexpensively -- yet we demand big, flashy and expensive solutions to these problems.  And the big, flashy, expensive solutions don't solve the problems as well as the simple solutions.  We human beings are a strange lot.
Here's how Rory Sutherland, initially a classics teacher and now Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Group, describes the world as it is -- and how it can be.
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A Doggy Summer for Memorial Day

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Barry Ritholtz is a financial strategist on Wall Street.  He just posted this video on his blog The Big Picture while wishing everyone to enjoy the Memorial Day Weekend.

I agree with Barry.  Enjoy the weekend!  And remember why there is a Memorial Day.  Remember the troops -- both past and present.
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