Leonard Susskind: My friend Richard Feynman | Video on TED.com

I loved the ham sandwich and baloney story that Leonard Susskind told about his friend Richard Feynman.

Mindless Eating

I listened to a lecture today by Brian Wansink, Ph.D., author of Mindless Eating, a book about better eating habits that lead to weight loss and better health. It's amazing how simple things we get use to are really bad eating habits. Here's an example. Take two normal table glasses. One is tall and thin like a water glass, the other short and wide like a cocktail glass. Wansink's research shows that most people (even professional bar tenders) will fill the short glass with 38% more liquid than the tall glass. Why, because we're conditioned to be a better judge of the volume we want by height than by width. Same thing with the size of the plate we use to eat with. If we use a smaller plate we'll eat significantly less because using a larger plate we tend to fill it up and eat more unconsiously even though we'd feel perfectly fine with the volume of a smaller plate.

I'm going to give his "Mindless Method" a try and see if I can shed this stomach of mine. There's an interesting test at this site as well, check it out.

The Evolving Internet: A look ahead to 2025 by Cisco and the Monitor Group's Global Business Network

My employer (Cisco) published its most recent forward looking study of the Internet today. It's called " The Evolving Internet: A look ahead to 2025 by Cisco and the Monitor Group's Global Business Network" and although I haven't studied it in detail yet, I scanned it this morning and I liked what I saw.

Those who know me will not be surprised that I particularly liked the three dimensional evaluation criteria that they used to frame their analysis. Lately nearly everything I do ends up finding its way into some sort of analytical cube like this. I've been wondering whether there is something wrong with me that I can't seem to frame things simply in two dimensions. Glad to have company.

Dunbar's Number

My personal strategy for anonimity on the Web is to game the system by joining every social site I discover, liking everything, friending everybody (whom I actually know and who want to be friends, ok almost everybody), and posting the same benign profile stuff everywhere. Why you ask? To confound those spooky behavorial targeting algorithms that lurk in the backgroud of the Web as best I can. I see it as a challenge; to not be profile-able.

Because of this strategy, I have long since passed the so-called "Dunbar Number" on many social sites to which I belong. It's also caused me to follow closely the work of people like John Udell and projects like Open Social. The Dunbar Number is a hypothesis about social group size limits by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar. A good summary of the hypothesis can be found on The Psychology Wiki and in this blog entry by Chris Allen.

What made me think of this in the first place was a podcast interview of Spencer Wells by NPR's Dr. Moira Gunn.

Spencer Wells is an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society and
Frank H. T. Rhodes Class of '56 Professor at Cornell University. He leads the
Genographic Project, which is collecting and analyzing hundreds of thousands of
DNA samples from people around the world in order to decipher how our ancestors
populated the planet. Wells received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and
conducted postdoctoral work at Stanford and Oxford.

They were discussing his new book Pandora's Seed. I loved Well's Genographic Project (I contributed my own DNA for it) and I was considering reading his new book until I heard Wells discuss it. It seems to me that he threw the kitchen sink (e.g. global warming, obesity, etc.) into this book to hit as many liberal agenda hot buttons (and sell as many books) as he could. One example of the things that particularly annoyed me in the interview was that Wells seemed to take some credit for pointing out the relationship between the typical Facebook Friend list size (which is apparently about 150 "friends" on average) and Dunbar's Number of people in a neolithic farming village (also about 150). I think I'll pass on the new book.

Myngle - Online Language Education

Myngle has built something in the "that's a good idea, wish I'd thought of that" category. It's pretty simple. Use Web 2.0 technologies to connect language teachers (who make a few bucks on the side) in real-time, and one-on-one, with students interested in learning a new language. I may have to try it when I retire. I've always wanted to speak French.

John Malone on America and Obama

You just have to love Dr. John Malone. The guy's a certified genius but also a "what you see is what you get" straight-shooting kind of guy. His Ph.D. is from Johns Hopkins, BA is science from Yale, worth $2.3 billion (according to Forbes, but probably way low because they just couldn't find all of it). He ran TCI (America's largest Cable company) and sold it to ATT for $54 billion. He's the kind of person that you could just sit and listen to for hours. He's so logical, well informed and well spoken.

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal here's a few nuggets from what he had to say... (I agree with him about Obama)

WSJ: What are the biggest risks for Liberty right now?

Mr. Malone: I think the biggest concern I have for the next year or two would be on the retail side, because of the consumer sentiment and the macro conditions. The concerns really tend to be much more macro: Is America going to make it, rather than are we going to make it? It's pretty hard. If the country doesn't make it, do any of us make it?

WSJ: What are you doing to protect against the weak American economy?

Mr. Malone: Well, my wife, who is very concerned about these things, moved all her personal cash to Australia and Canada. She wants to have a place to go if things blow up here.

Canada has a lot more fiscal and bank responsibility than most places in the world and lots of natural resources.

We have a retreat that's right on the Quebec border. We own 18 miles on the border, so we can cross. Anytime we want to we can get away. It would probably be illegal but we could go. Actually our snowmobile trail goes right on the border.

WSJ: Do you think President Obama should be re-elected?

Mr. Malone: I don't think he should have been elected in the first place. I think he's incompetent. But now, I've thought that of the last couple presidents. [Obama's administration] is all academics and lawyers. I'm afraid that our real problems are systemic and long term. And lawyers are primarily trained in fighting over the pie, not making the pie bigger. And this country definitely needs to think about making the pie bigger.

"The Thrill of Victory"

My friend Bruce Pearlman and I played in a Member-Member golf tournament at The Golf Club of Georgia this past weekend. I had one of those rare moments in life that ABC Sports use to refer to as "The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat." It happened like this.

We were one of seventy-two, two-man teams organized in nine flights ranked by golf handicap. I'm an 11.0 handicap and we were in the 8th flight (next to last...so our expectations weren't that high.) The tournament was played over two days and was essentially a "best-ball" format net after handicap.

We both played great the first day and what's more (the real secret to success in "best-ball") we never had a bad hole at the same time. We shot a net 62, or 10 under par, and lead our flight by four strokes after day one. The highlight of the day was my partner Bruce Pearlman's natural "EAGLE" on the 18th hole of the Lakeside course (a net double-eagle or 3 under par for a single hole.) It was awesome and the approach shot was probably the winning shot for us.

On day two, we got a little defensive on the Creekside course (a much harder course) trying to protect our lead but we still managed to eek out a net 2 under par 70, thanks to my short irons and Bruce's putting. That was good enough to win our flight and put us in the playoffs.

We were the last team to finish and get back to the clubhouse. And, because we hadn't really expected to be in the playoffs we were a little stunned. The format was to divide the nine flights into two halves (top five by handicap, and bottom four by handicap) and then have the winner of each half play in the finals, both playing Lakeside's 18th hole in an elimination. The format was alternate shots so there was lots of strategy about who hits first, etc.

We decided that I would hit the tee-ball. All four of the flight winners in our half hit relatively poor tee-shots, including me, mainly because we'd been waiting too long and were nervous. The other three competitors in our group had to chip out of trouble and then lay-up in three because they couldn't reach the green. Bruce managed to get our ball slightly further than the rest, it was sitting 215-220 yards from the whole. So we had to decide whether to go for it or not?

Bruce wasn't sure it was such a good idea to go for it seeing what the others had already done. It seemed a little risky. But I decided to go for it. That was the "thrill of victory" moment for me of the tournament. I decided to go with a five-wood (a good decision, I was pumped) and I hit it perfectly. That may have been the best shot I've ever hit in 50+ years of playing golf. But the greatest thrill of all was hearing that crowd of my friends at the club roar when my ball landed on the green in three, just 10 feet from the hole. That was an awesome feeling.

We won that first round, ended up in the finals and got beat by a much younger, and much lower handicap team. We gave them a run for their money and we could have won it all, but in the end Bruce and I were happy with how we played and happy to have had such a great experience.

Health Care

I spent nearly three hours today trying to understand the meaning of the Obamacare legislation. I am a reasonably intelligent individual, I have experience analyzing legislation (in my work), I know generally where to look and despite all that, I found it to be basically incomprehensible. This suggests to me that most people; don't have a clue what has happened, how it will effect them, why it was necessary (0r not), when it will take effect, what it will cost, what the alternatives might have been (or might still be), or in general what they should think about it.

I'm going to try again to decipher it and when I do, to write here what my opinion is. Right now I am suspicious of it simply because it's too complicated to understand.

What are we missing in life?

A family member sent me this story recently. I don't know whether it's true or not? I wasn't able to find any evidence that it is true. Somehow I wish it were both true and not true.

In Washington , DC , at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, this man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

After about 3 minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then he hurried on to meet his schedule.

About 4 minutes later: The violinist received his first dollar. A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

At 6 minutes: A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

At 10 minutes: A 3-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head the whole time. This action was repeated by several other children, but every parent - without exception - forced their children to move on quickly.

At 45 minutes: The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

After 1 hour: He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed and no one applauded. There was no recognition at all.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell sold-out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100 each to sit and listen to him play the same music.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the D.C. Metro Station, was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities. This experiment raised several questions:

• In a common-place environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?
• If so, do we stop to appreciate it?
• Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this: “If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made . . . then how many other things are we missing as we rush through life?

Climate Change and Open Science - WSJ.com

This Wall Street Journal article Climate Change and Open Science - WSJ.com made the right basic point about liberal hypocrisy in the Climate Change debate, but disappointingly it failed to cite the best sources of real information from an unbiased scientific point of view.


I believe that source is Dr. S. Fred Singer & Dr. Craig D. Idso, from the Science and Environmental Policy Project and Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, who coauthored "Climate Change Reconsidered; The Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change" published in 2009.



In this book, the petition letter shown here from Dr. Frederick Seitz (Ph. D. Physics) President Emeritus of Rockefeller University was published. Dr. Seitz circulated this letter:





urging fellow academics with qualifications in the physical sciences to sign the petition at http://www.petitionproject.com/ and thereby acknowledge their agreement with this statement in the petition:

According to the "PetitionProject.org"...

The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis.

Publicists at the United Nations, Mr. Al Gore, and their supporters frequently claim that only a few “skeptics” remain – skeptics who are still unconvinced about the existence of a catastrophic human-caused global warming emergency.

It is evident that 31,486 Americans with university degrees in science – including 9,029 Ph.Ds, are not "a few." Moreover, from the clear and strong petition statement that they have signed, it is evident that these 31,486 American scientists are not “skeptics.”

These scientists are instead convinced that the human-caused global warming hypothesis is without scientific validity and that government action on the basis of this hypothesis would unnecessarily and counter-productively damage both human
prosperity and the natural environment of the Earth.