Douglas L Ross' Weblog

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

2011-05-18T12:06:00.000-04:00

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

Mindless Eating

2010-12-09T16:50:00.002-05:00

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

2010-08-25T09:33:00.004-04:00

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

2010-08-17T12:36:00.004-04:00

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

2010-07-23T10:13:00.001-04:00

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

2010-07-13T21:03:00.004-04:00

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"

2010-05-04T13:31:00.003-04:00

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

2010-03-23T22:33:00.002-04:00

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?

2010-03-16T20:40:00.005-04:00

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

2010-02-22T12:59:00.009-05:00

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.

Susan Boyle

2010-01-15T12:00:00.002-05:00

Not only has Susan Boyle's performance on "Britans Got Talent 2009" received 85 million view on YouTube so far, she also stormed onto the top selling artists list with 3.1 million albums sold in 2009. Good for her, she has a wonderful voice.

2009 Top Selling Artists
RANK Name Name
1 Michael Jackson 8,286,000
2 Taylor Swift 4,643,000
3 The Beatles 3,282,000
4 Susan Boyle 3,104,000
5 Lady Gaga 2,813,000
6 Andrea Bocelli 2,668,000
7 Michael Buble 2,280,000
8 Eminem 2,166,000
9 Carrie Underwood 1,895,000
10 Black Eyed Peas 1,881,000
Source: The Nielsen Company

Yellowstone Association E-Newsletter December 2009

2010-01-08T18:48:00.003-05:00

When we visited Yellowstone this summer, they told us we were on top of a volcano, but it's a little hard to believe until you see something like this.

Yellowstone Association E-Newsletter January 2010

Scientists have confirmed the existence of a magma plume under Yellowstone that fills a magma chamber 20 percent larger than previous estimates. Using a network of 150 seismographs that recorded seismic waves from earthquakes around the world as they passed over an area extending from Missoula, Montana, to Evanston, Wyoming, a team of scientists was able to create a first-of-its-kind three-dimensional image of the plume. Recent scientific debate has focused on whether volcanoes such as Yellowstone were created by magma plumes-fingers of molten rock rising from deep in the Earth-or from shallow pockets of magma. The research, which involved scientists from Utah, Massachusetts, Michigan, Norway, Taiwan, and Switzerland, not only confirms the existence of a plume, but also indicates it extends at least 500 miles into the Earth's mantle (the layer between the Earth's crust and its outer core). University of Utah professor emeritus of geophysics and Yellowstone Volcano Observatory scientist Dr. Robert Smith says the plume may go even deeper, perhaps originating from the core-mantle boundary some 1,800 miles deep.

Dr. Smith calls this latest research a major development in understanding how Yellowstone works-what happened in the past and what could happen in the future. He adds that these findings do not indicate that Yellowstone is on the verge of a major eruption, which he calls "a very rare thing." The region's last three major eruptions have taken place at intervals of about 700,000 years, with the last giant eruption occurring approximately 640,000 years ago.

The voca people

2010-01-08T10:57:00.001-05:00

I love a cappella singing anyway and so when a friend recommended that I listen to this group called the Voca People I was interested. They are way more than any simple a cappella singing group, they are amazing. They sound like a complete orchestra & chorus combined. They are all over YouTube with 4-5 million views of this video.

Atticus Circle

2010-01-07T12:56:00.007-05:00

I had never heard of the Atticus Circle or it's founder Anne S. Wynne until the other day when a LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bi-sexual Transgender) employee support group in Cisco (my employer) sent me an invitation to join a discussion about...

"the value and process of recruiting our straight allies to our LGBT
Employee Resource Groups"

As a matter of fact, I didn't even know that Cisco had a LGBT employee resources group. I don't know whether the LGBT lifestyle is biological or social, but I know for sure that it isn't for me. I also believe that unfair discrimination against anyone, be they individuals or couples, is wrong. To me the "golden rule" is basically a law of physics. Every person should always be treated with love and respect, no exceptions, ever.

So I look for a logical solution to this dilemma. There is a simple solution to non-discrimination with respect to LGBT lifestyles. It's called civil union. Properly designed, civil union gives LGBT individuals and couples exactly the same civil rights and privileges as married heterosexual couples, thus eliminating the possibility of discrimination. It does this without changing the plain, historical, biological, and common sense definition of what marriage is.

In my view marriage is the combination of at least three things. First, marriage reflects the obvious science of evolutionary biology in which it is necessary for males and females to form bonds & unions for procreation and nurturing of children to guarantee the survival of our species. Second, the evidence from psychology suggests strongly that children and adults both develop best in the social institution of the family and particularly where there are both caring fathers and loving mothers. And finally, there is that mystical or perhaps spiritual quality that binds man and woman together in marriage, often lasting a lifetime, and that's like no other earthly experience.

Those of us who are defending the idea that marriage is the union of man and woman, are not arguing for discrimination against LGBT's, we think their civil unions should be equal in every conceivable way. We are merely attempting to preserve the meaning of the relationship which we hold dear, called marriage. And, to show that the relationships which LGBT couples have is fundamentally different; should be called something else like civil union; and should not redefine the historical, logical and mystical meaning of marriage between man and woman.

The Planetary Skin - The 50 Best Inventions of 2009 - TIME

2009-11-25T16:56:00.000-05:00

Cool idea by my company (Cisco) in collaboration with NASA to develop a way to actually get some facts about what is really happening on climate change. We're also putting "Routers in Space" but that's another story.

DouglasRoss.com

2009-10-29T21:08:00.002-04:00

Network Solutions is having a sale on URL's. Mine (http://www.douglasross.com) doesn't do anything at the moment (I'm saving it for a rainy day) but it was coming up on ten years and I needed to renew it to protect my name. So I decided to take them up on their pay-in-advance 20 year package sale for $279.00 or $13.95 per year (about half of the regular annual fee...probably not that good a deal in hindsight.) But the kicker was, after I hit the pay button it dawned on me that I'll be over 83 years old when this thing expires. How creepy is that? If I make it I'll take it as a good sign and re-up for another 20 years. And by then maybe I'll have done something with it.

Scribd

2009-10-27T00:17:00.000-04:00

I noticed that the FCC is publishing their proceedings on Scribd and so I decided to check this Scribd thing out. Haven't totally figured it out yet. Appears to be a free web publishing platform that allows you to download virtually anything.

Cymatics

2009-10-06T22:17:00.002-04:00

Have you ever heard of Cymatics? Me neither, but it reminds me of CellularAutomaton from Wolfram research. The patterns that Cymatics creates are very similar to the cellular atomaton created by Wolfram's simple rules.

Hudson Theater

2009-09-29T12:10:00.003-04:00

I sometimes do public speaking at industry events or at company meetings. I'm told that I am, at best, a mediocre speaker unless I'm really passionate about something. That passion seems to give me the words and to animate me in a way that makes me much more interesting than usual. It also seems to enable me to even deliver a joke properly when normally I'm terrible at telling jokes.

So what does all that have to do with The Hudson Theater in New York? I was staying at the Millennium Broadway hotel next door recently and I just happened to come across the write up below about the history of The Hudson Theater. It brought back a wonderful memory. Sort of my "fifteen minutes of fame" kind of thing. Here's the story.

In the 1950's I once attended a live airing of The Tonight Show (when Steve Allen was host) at The Hudson Theater. I don't remember that much about the show but there was one funny line from the guest comedian George Gobble that has stuck with me all these years. George's funny line was:

"Have you ever felt like the world was a Tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?"

I've never forgotten that line because it fit George Gobble's personality so perfectly and also I think because I always kind of related to it myself. Many years later, I had the opportunity to deliver a talk to an industry group at that same Hudson Theater. I stood exactly in the center of the photograph above looking out, addressing a packed house. From somewhere inside me I'm told that I really rose to the occasion and delivered a passionate address. I even told George's joke turning it on myself as a way of setting the audience's expectations low, and I got a big laugh. It was one on the best moments of my life.

The Hudson Theatre was built by Henry B. Harris, an up and coming producer who later perished aboard the ill-fated RMS Titanic. The theatre was then managed by Harris’ wife, Irene Harris, the last known Titanic survivor to be rescued in a lifeboat, who went on to become the first woman ever to produce theatre in New York City. With over 90 plays performed on the Hudson Theatre stage in 20 years, it was known as one of the finest playhouses in the city. One such play, Hot Chocolates in 1929 introduced the world to Louis Armstrong who went on to become a legend in his own right.

In the 1950’s, the Hudson Theatre was home to NBC’s The Tonight Show with Steve Allen as host. During this time legends such as Bob Hope, Elvis Presley, Ernie Kovacs, Milton Berle, Sammy Davis Jr., Barbara Streisand and Vincent Price graced the theatre’s stage. The long-running daytime game show, The Price is Right also made its debut at the Hudson Theatre.

In recent years, the theatre has hosted a wide range of events and meetings including product launches by Microsoft®; American Idol® auditions; NBC’s Last Comic Standing; and Bill Maher’s “Victory Begins at Home” show, which was broadcasted on HBO®.

The Millennium Broadway Hotel’s management were hoping to recapture the elegance of turn-of-the-century New York City when they embarked on the restoration of their 102-year old historic landmark, the Hudson Theatre. They are getting that…and much more. Based on a lead from the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, internationally acclaimed restoration experts from Jablonski Berkowitz Conservation, Inc. conducted tests under the painted walls, where they discovered beautiful turquoise Tiffany glass mosaics that have been forgotten over the years.

Not that the Hudson Theatre didn’t already have a distinguished association with Tiffany, the world-famous designer who New Yorkers embrace as their own. The theatre, used by the Millennium Broadway for special events and corporate meetings and presentations, has Tiffany ceilings and spectacular chandeliers, all of which are being gloriously restored to original condition. The surprise was the extraordinary Tiffany mosaic tiles around the theatre’s proscenium arch and decorating the mezzanine and balconies that had been plastered and painted over. All are being lovingly brought back to their opening night appearance in 1903.

When did "life" begin and when will it end?

2009-09-19T14:41:00.000-04:00

So as a joke, I asked the WolframAlpha search engine the question "when did life on Earth begin and when will it end." The answer was "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure how to compute an answer from your input." But the "answer" can sort of be derived from numerous other places on the web (which WolframAlpha apparently hasn't indexed yet or doesn't agree with) such as Wikipedia and it goes like this:

The earth is apparently 4.54 billion years old. That's relatively young in relationship to the universe which is figured to be ~13.7 billion years according to Wikipedia...

Current interpretations of astronomical observations indicate that the age of the Universe is 13.73 (± 0.12) billion years,^[1] and that the diameter of the observable Universe is at least 93 billion light years, or 8.80 × 10²⁶ metres.

The Earth's age calculation by WolframAlpha is apparently derived by Wolfram from one or more of the same sources which are also referenced in the Wikipedia Earth article which also estimates the Earth's age at 4.54 billion years:

12. ^a b See:

* Dalrymple, G.B. (1991). The Age of the Earth. California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-1569-6.

* Newman, William L. (2007-07-09). "Age of the Earth". Publications Services, USGS. Retrieved 2007-09-20.

* Dalrymple, G. Brent (2001). "The age of the Earth in the twentieth century: a problem (mostly) solved" Geological Society, London, Special Publications 190: 205–221. doi:10.1144/GSL.SP.2001.190.01.14 Retrieved 2007-09-20.

* Stassen, Chris (2005-09-10). "The Age of the Earth" TalkOrigins Archive. Retrieved 2008-12-30.

Wikipedia's Earth article also sites an estimate that life on Earth began within the first 1.0 billion years of Earth's 4.54 billion year life. It also sites one estimate (see below) for when life on Earth will end. That estimate is 1.5 billion years in the future when rising luminosity of the Sun will eliminate the biosphere.

14. a b Carrington, Damian (2000-02-21). "Date set for desert Earth" BBC News. Retrieved 2007-03-31.

Of course the question isn't well formed really for a search engine like WolframAlpha which is hoping to "compute" answers. It more or less assumes that the human part of "Life on Earth" decides to just stay on the earth and let ourselves become extinct 1.5 billion years from now, which of course doesn't make any sense? So it's really a philosophical question that I've asked. What would be nice is if WolframAlpha would identify and parse such philosophical questions and return all know possible theories for the answer.

New Grandson Wyatt

2009-09-13T18:02:00.001-04:00

We got to see our new grandson Wyatt this weekend. He looks like his father.

Reader’s Digest Files for Bankruptcy Protection (Update2) - Bloomberg.com

2009-08-24T18:26:00.001-04:00

I read this rather sad article today about the Reader's Digest declaring bankruptcy and it made me think of my father. He was born and raised in rural Kentucky and was a bit dyslectic. As a result I don't think they taught him how to read properly. Consequently, reading was difficult for him his whole life and in his youth he was not well read at all. Reader's Digest was a godsend for my Dad because it was short, to the point, easy to read in larger type, and with content that was interesting, timely, educational, often inspiring, and nearly always wholesome. The Reader's Digest became an indispensable part of his life and practically the only thing he ever read besides the Bible. He read every issue cover to cover and sometimes more than once. He was so attached to it that he just could not bring himself to throw out the old issues he had read. Our house was always littered with stacks and stacks of past Reader's Digest issues.

I have to admit that although I'm not a regular Reader's Digest reader anymore I still pick up a copy at the airport once in awhile and read it on the flight for old times sake. And yes, I have a favorite Reader's Digest article. I don't remember the author or the date of the issue but I remember the story exactly after more than fifty years. It was the story of a young boy who got his first job mowing grass for a wise old neighbor lady. The lady offered to pay $2.00 a week [keep in mind we're talking about early 1950's] for a regular mowing job and $4.00 for "the best mowing job there ever was." The boy asked "what's the difference" and the lady said "that's up to you to decide yourself." I learned about honor, striving to do your very best, and the satisfaction of hard work in one simple 500 word article in the Reader's Digest. I've never forgotten it and I believe it changed my life.

Jason Wyatt Ross

2009-08-14T12:48:00.006-04:00

From Douglas L Ross' Weblog

My youngest son Jason and his wife Christy just had their first child. His name is Jason Wyatt Ross and he was born Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at about 2:00pm at the Emory John's Creek hospital in John's Creek, Georgia. Little Wyatt was a healthy 7 lbs 9 oz and 20 inches long. He's just about the cutiest newborn you've ever seen.

Mother and son are doing just great and so is my son, the new daddy. We're very proud of them all and we wish Jason and Christy the very best as they embark on the life adventure of parenthood with little Wyatt.

Grandson #5 is on the way

2009-08-11T20:56:00.002-04:00

My youngest son Jason and his wife Christy are at the hospital as we speak waiting for our newest grandson to arrive. We're on our way. Say a prayer that everything goes well.

The Future Health 100 | Healthspottr

2009-07-30T09:47:00.001-04:00

Health Spottr may not be "the" source of all wisdom on who the leading thinkers are in Health Care, but they aren't that bad either. What made me think about this is that of the 100 names on this "Future of Health 100" list, I had only ever heard of about six of them. I'm getting a little older and starting to become very sensitive to the health care subject, so I resolved today that I'm going to figure out who these people are and what they think about health care that might affect my life.

John Barry, Popularizer of WD-40, Dies at 84 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

2009-07-22T12:15:00.002-04:00

Yet another historic milestone in my life has passed.

In late 1973, I was working in Los Angeles for Rockwell International. Being mid-westerners, we didn't take that well to the California lifestyle and I absolutely hated the LA comute (from the San Fernando Valley). About that time a headhunter in San Deigo called me and said they were looking for some kind of business development guy at a little company called WD-40 and was I interested? Even though I didn't know who WD-40 was or what they did, I decided to check it out. I went down for an interview and it turned out that that interview was with John Barry. I've never had a more interesting interview, he was a facinating guy.

I'll never know whether or not I would have gotten the job at WD-40 (I think I might have), because before I had heard anything back from Barry I'd already gotten another offer from a friend back in Wisconsin, and we jumped at the chance to get back to the mid-west. One of those forks in the road that could have changed my life completely.

Sad to see the likes of John Barry pass, I didn't really know him except for that one brief incident, but I have admired him from afar ever since.

Where Were You When Neil Armstrong First Set Foot On The Moon?

2009-07-21T21:11:00.006-04:00

The date was July 20, 1969 when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon at 20:17:40 UTC according to NASA. (For those who like precision, Neil stepped onto the Sea of Tranquility 0°40′26.69″N 23°28′22.69″E / 0.6740806°N 23.4729694°E / 0.6740806; 23.4729694 based on the IAU Mean Earth Polar Axis coordinate system.) I will never forget that date and time because I witnessed this historic event at 3:17 pm in the induction center at Fort Leonard Wood Missouri. It was a very odd moment in my life. I had left my wife early that morning in a very frightened and emotional state by herself in Milwaukee; travelled all day by busses without airconditioning in 100+ degree heat; met up along the way in various little towns with what seemed to me at the time to be a very ragtag and slightly dangerous bunch of fellow draftees; and then arrived at Leonard Wood to the welcome of a bunch of screaming Drill Sargents just 30 minutes before Neil's famous landing. Mostly because the Drill Sargents wanted to watch the Apollo landing themselves, our induction class was spared quite a lot of the normal torture of a first night in boot camp and allowed to stay in the company mess hall and watch that historic event for several hours. I was thankful for the chance to see that historic event and came to appreciate & respect all those fellows in my company very much.

One last thing. Many people forget that Apollo 11 took off from Earth during the Woodstock concert in New York. I wasn't a hippie, and I wouldn't normally have even been aware that Woodstock was taking place except for one other small detail on that odd day in July 1969. It turned out that one of my fellow draftee's had gone AWOL in a previous boot camp and decided to try to make it to Canada via New York. He heard about Woodstock, decided to stop and see it, got stopped by the police for speeding, was sent back to Leonard Wood and sat next to me in the mess hall watching Neil step on the moon. Then they sent him to Vietnam. I can't remember his name, and I have no idea if he made it back or not.

Radio UserLand Service Closing

2009-07-15T11:51:00.007-04:00

I think this January 3, 2003 entry was my first Blog post using Dave Winer's Radio UserLand software. I've long since moved on to Blogger, but it's still a little sad to see Radio UserLand go away. It seems like I'm having more and more of these senior moments lately when something memorable rides off into the sunset.

2009 Florida Vacation

2009-07-12T11:38:00.004-04:00

My son Jason and his wife Cristy couldn't make it to the traditional Ross family vacation in Florida this year. Cristy is expecting our fifth grandchild and the date was too near, so we included them in the family photo with a picture instead of the real thing, wishing they were with us.

Vacation was great, too short.

Bear Automotive

2009-06-29T17:18:00.003-04:00

The Bear brand, an iconic symbol of excellence in automotive service equipment, particularly wheel alignment equipment, passed into history recently when Cartek decided to retire the brand. It was a rather sad day for me because I once ran the group in Applied Power which had acquired this company from the decendents of the Damman brothers in the late 1960's. The Damman's had started the company in 1917 (an interesting history of the Bear business can be found here ) and at it's peak in the 1940's and 1950's the Bear logo displayed outside most good service stations was known nationwide as a smybol of a place where good automotive service could be found. It was a classic and I will miss it.

Wolfram Alpha

2009-05-20T13:54:00.003-04:00

Wolfram Alpha is endlessly facinating. For example, I learned a little trivia factorid today that my wife and I were both born on a Thursday [by putting our birth dates into Wolfram Alpha and comparing them.] It also instantly computed that someone with the equivalent of my current salary would have been making about $23,000 / year in 1946 when I was born. There is a great list of examples here.

The AlloSphere at the California NanoSystems Institute, UC Santa Barbara

2009-05-18T14:32:00.001-04:00

This is pretty cool..."a physical place designed to facilitate creativity and incubate ideas via collaboration." The AlloSphere at the California NanoSystems Institute, UC Santa Barbara

Wolfram Blog : Wolfram|Alpha Is Coming!

2009-05-01T13:33:00.001-04:00

Stephen Wolfram is at it again. This time he's going to show that you can make all human knowledge "computable" so that you can ask a computer (albeit one with "access to a huge system, with trillions of pieces of curated data and millions of lines of algorithms") any factual question and it will "compute" the answer. What a guy, I just love the way he fearlessly tackles these massive undertakings.

Assuming it works, if there was ever an application that could rival Google search, it could be something like this. See Wolfram's blog entry for more detail Wolfram Blog : Wolfram|Alpha Is Coming!

Political Will

2009-04-25T17:29:00.002-04:00

My friend Bill Loughrey has written a new book entitled Political Will that modestly attempts to answer the questions; "how America became great, what went wrong, and how to fix it?" I haven't finished reading the book yet, but I tip my hat to Bill for even trying to answer these great questions. I'll do a review when I finish it.

PW Singer on military robots and the future of war | Video on TED.com

2009-04-10T00:15:00.001-04:00

PW Singer on military robots and the future of war Video on TED.com

Listen to this talk by P.W. Singer about military robots. It's pretty scary. Singer is right, it's not our war machines that are the problem, it's us.

GigaPan

2009-02-22T16:38:00.004-05:00

Photographer David Bergman took this amazing photo at President Obama's inauguration with the GigaPan system. GigaPan uses a mechanical device called the Gigapan Epic plus an ordinary digital camera to take overlapping images (~220 in this case) and seamlessly stitch them together via special software to make one giant, high-resolution photo (this Obama inauguration photo apparently has 1.57 gigapixel resolution). On the GigaPan.org website it's possible to pan/zoom the photo to an amazing degree of detail. For instance, some ordinary people on the Mall will be able to identify themselves in this picture and show that they were there on January 20, 2009.

I believe the software which stitches the photos together involves fractal geometry technology similar to that which astronomers use to piece together images of the sky.

Bergman is selling prints of this photo here for ~$90+ and if I had been there I would deifintely buy one.

The White House - Blog Post - Signed, sealed, delivered: ARRA

2009-02-17T22:35:00.001-05:00

Is it just me or does this sound like an economic "Mission Accomplished?"

Black Swans

2009-02-14T17:04:00.001-05:00

It's amazing how many people are talking about Black Swans. Even the immanent former IBM strategist Irving Wladawsky-Breger is talking about them and citing Nissim Taleb. Meantime, Taleb is working on "domesticating the unknown."

What's Up (or Down) With The Economy?

2009-02-13T12:37:00.007-05:00

Dr. Albin F. Turbak, Ph.D. from Sandy Springs, GA wrote a very interesting blog post picked up and printed by one of our local newspapers today. The gist of his argument is that Congress, government regulators and the Fed were seduced by unsustainable economic growth and allowed (even encouraged) banks to run what amounted to a Ponzi scheme (primarily with mortgage backed securities). When the bank Ponzi scheme collapsed, it sent the world economy into a depression based on fear and uncertainty. He blames the Ponzi scheme and those who allowed it for wiping out half the retirement savings of innocent bystander consumers.

Although I largely agree with his analysis and I like his simple, easy to understand explanation, I disagree with one important aspect of what I think he is saying. To me, the value of our collective "retirement savings" was at least partly an illusion caused by the Ponzi scheme that Dr. Turbak pointed out. So, since we never really had it (because it was an illusion) we can't really say we lost it.

In truth, we were all a little guilty of the excessive greed [during the good times] that we are now accusing bankers of having and the reason we blame them for causing this mess. The real economic problem right now is negativism and lack of confidence. In essence we're living through a massive run on the bank, acting like sheep in a frantic flight to "quality" which discourages even sound investments and growth.

The real value of our retirement savings isn't known yet because we've probably overreacted. If confidence keeps spiraling downward it might get worse before it gets better. In the relatively near-term however, there is clearly going to be an opportunity to replenish those retirement savings with investments in great companies that are tremendously undervalued. The chart above comparing Dow & Nasdaq indices illustrates the magnitude of the problem (or opportunity) however you look at it.

Whitehouse Blog

2009-01-20T22:18:00.002-05:00

I thought President Obama's inaugural speech was a little disappointing when read for substance from afar, although I can imagine that it might have seemed more uplifting in person. I think the Wall Street Journal got it right in their pre-inaugural "The Opacity of Hope" editorial as they concluded:

"The complicated nature of our world means that every modern Presidency is to some extent a leap into the unknown. Mr. Obama's meteoric rise makes him a bigger leap than most. We don't know if he is a genuine man of the left, or a more traditional pragmatist. The audacity of our hope is that as President he will use his considerable talents to return his party to the policies of growth, opportunity and the vigorous defense of U.S. interests that marked it the last time the country had such great expectations for a Democratic President -- under JFK."

To me, Obama didn't start well with his first official act being this rather vague and plainly accusatory proclamation. The idea of a "National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation" suggesting that we have a "glorious burden" to take on after we reconcile ourselves to our past sins seems more than a little over the top. I'm sorry, but I don't think everything will be OK if we just say we're sorry for whatever was meant by discord and leave it to the Dem's to "remake this nation" into a welfare state while Obama provides aircover from critisim from the moral high ground of the bully pulpit of a black President.

I did like the new WhiteHouse.gov site and the new blog. Let's hope the Obama administration gets over this initial theatrical thing, and gets down to business with as transparent and fresh an approach as is exhibited here.

Famous People Born On My Birthday

2009-01-02T15:44:00.003-05:00

I love the website "on-this-day.com" because it's so interesting to have a glimpse back in time each day at special things that happened on this day. I was surfing their site today and peeked at a related link which they maintain with the birthdays of famous people.

I discovered that one of my hero's (Bret Farve, already a legendary Green Bay Packers quarterback at just 40 years of age) was born on October 10, 1969. This happens to also be my birthday. Pretty cool.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-21T15:16:00.003-05:00

From all of us in the Ross Family, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year.

John Templeton Foundation : Life's Big Questions : Archive

2008-11-16T09:23:00.001-05:00

For anyone interested in really "big questions" and what some of the worlds best thinkers are saying about them here is an interesting series from the John Templeton Foundation:

John Templeton Foundation : Life's Big Questions : Archive

Fairness

2008-11-14T20:51:00.005-05:00

On my flight home this week by coincidence I was seated by a young single black woman about 30 years old who worked for a big retail bank (which isn't going under) and whose job is still secure. She did not have a Masters degree but was obviously intelligent and ambitious (she was quite deliberately networking me and trying to set me up as a future contact that might work to her advantage). In a moment of candor that she might have regretted later, she revealed to me that she had recently purchased her first home and gave me a few more details than I would have normally expected. It was an 1800 square foot starter place in a nice new suburban sub-division for about $150k. She had put down about 20% and had a fixed rate mortgage at about 6.3%. With taxes and insurance, that made the payment about $1000 per month and that was apparently just a little more than her salary would justify. But she was making it ok.

It turns out that she was revealing this to me because she had two things on her mind and somehow she thought I might have some answers.

The first thing was whether I thought we were going into a depression? She was clearly frightened by the economic meltdown and the uncertainty that it is causing. So far she was ok, but she works for a bank and the failures had really rattled her. I told her that I thought we would be ok, that too many people had overextended themselves in all sorts of ways (mortgages, credit card debt, excessive spending, lack of savings, etc.) and that we're paying the piper now, but eventually, as we work our way out of this, it will make us stronger and healthier.

The second thing was more surprising. She described the situation in her neighborhood. A good number of her neighbors were in trouble, hopelessly behind in mortgage & credit card payments, holding property worth less than their mortgages because they put nothing down, facing bankruptcy and foreclosure. But what bothered her most was that many of her neighbors were re-negotiating or expecting bailouts that would effectively lower their costs by enough for them to afford to stay in their homes. Her question to me was; "Why is that fair? I did everything right, saved, invested in a home, worked hard, etc. and now my neighbors who didn't do any of that get rescued and I get nothing."

Here's what I said to her. Life is fair in the long run. You did the right thing and you should be proud of it. If you keep doing what you're doing you will come out way ahead of your neighbors in the long run. In the short run, you are better off subsidizing those who haven't been as prudent as you because a complete economic meltdown would drag everyone into the dumpster. It wasn't Bush's fault that all this happened and it won't be Obama that fixes it. It's people like your neighbors that made bad decisions who got us into this. Sure others exploited their greed but there will always be those who take advantage of their fellow man. It's people like you that made the right decisions that will get us out of this mess, and your neighbors could have too if they had been as responsible as you.

What we have to avoid now is permanently creating a class of people who think they can always count on a bailout or a handout and don't have to work hard and save and make good decisions like you did. Fairness doesn't come from redistributing wealth, it comes from people like you succeeding with what they have fairly earned and deserve to keep. Fairness comes from those of us who have succeeded giving generously to those who are needy and less fortunate out of charity, compassion, and a sense of personal responsibility, and not from some utopian illusion of fairness enforced by totally impersonal payroll deductions that are really about political power, and elitist central government control of who deserves what.

Cautious Optimism

2008-11-05T08:21:00.002-05:00

In this recent blog post I said that I felt like we have a chance to actually have a President that we can be proud of no matter who won, McCain or Obama. I still feel that way in principle, so now we'll see if I was right.

Despite the fact that I voted for McCain and I still think he was the better man, I join McCain in wishing President-elect Obama the very best. I pray especially that Obama and the country will be spared the kind of unprecedented trauma, through no fault of our own, that plagued President Bush from the outset.

Personally, I don't really care that much about Obama's race but I can understand the sense of pride that most African-Americans have in this accomplishment. It's worth a moment of celebration, but very soon Obama will need to move on and show that he deserved it, not just from a misguided sense of entitlement that likely got him elected in the first place, but because he can lead us in sensible directions that we'll actually be proud of.

If I could offer Obama one piece of advice, it would be to can his preachy rhetoric with all the liberal code words ["fairness" and "give back" and "inequality"] and just give it to us straight what he wants to do. Take a page out of Google's book and "don't be evil" give us transparency and truth. We didn't all go to Harvard, but we can all handle the simple truth.

Preserve America

2008-10-19T12:27:00.003-04:00

I'm very proud to report that my wife Joy was honored by the City of Alpharetta, Georgia for her efforts as a Trustee of the Alpharetta Historical Society and in historic preservation work for the city. Joy was among a group of Alpharetta residents who helped the city obtain recognition as a "Preserve America" city.

Preserve America is a White House initiative in cooperation with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and in partnership with the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, and Transportation; U.S. General Services Administration; National Endowment for the Humanities; President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities; Institute of Museum and Library Services; and the President's Council on Environmental Quality.

Grand Tetons and Yellowstone

2008-10-10T16:49:00.008-04:00

We just returned from two wonderful weeks hiking and sightseeing in Yellowstone and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I hadn't been to Yellowstone or the Grand Tetons since I was a kid, nearly fifty years ago and then only briefly. I had completely forgotten how awe inspiring those mountains are and how humbling it is to be a little flyspeck on that vast landscape.

In addition to the fantastic scenery we were very lucky to see both Grizzly and Black Bears, Moose, Elk, Wolves, Eagles and lots of Buffalo. One of the Bear encounters was particularly exciting because we had to quickly jump into our car when the big Grizzly charged up a hill and went right behind our car. I snapped the picture below out the back window as the Park Ranger was yelling and we were diving into our car.

Vice President Palin

2008-09-11T13:38:00.003-04:00

My son asked me what I thought about Sarah Palin for Vice President? I realized that I wasn't sure what I thought about it. So I thought about it.

My first reaction was negative. Mainly, I questioned whether she really had the necessary experience to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency. But that's really an issue that's being framed unfairly by a lot of false dichotomies from the liberal left who simply don't like her values or fear her popular appeal from the great-unwashed. For example, take Matt Damon's "finger on the trigger" question implying that someone that's dumb enough to have religious faith and to believe in a God's creation can't be trusted to have their finger on the trigger. When you really think about that you quickly realize that it rules out just about every President or Vice-President we've ever had. And besides that, the implication that a woman like Palin would be trigger-happy is ludicrous. The opposite is far more likely. In fact, a mother-of-a-soldier instinct and a little less testosterone on the nuclear trigger finger might very well be quite a good thing.

I'm warming up to Sarah Palin and I'd like to know more about her. Here's what I hope she will say and do that would convince me that she is the right choice:

With respect to the question of is she smart enough? If someone in government is trying to propose a policy and it's too "complicated" to explain to an ordinary soccer-mom, then it isn't the soccer-mom who has a problem. The policy is too complicated, one needs to either make it simpler or more likely forget it altogether because most likely we don't need another government policy anyway. I will take a pound of common sense any day over a ton of policy wonks.
With respect to the question of experience. The job comes with both a political party apparatus and a government that has millions of people who's job it is basically to advise the President. So it is not so much a matter of experience (since nobody every has enough experience with every conceivable thing one might need to know to govern) as it is a matter of: (a) leadership, (b) good judgement, including good judgement about close advisers, and (c) non-partisanship. In other words, I want to see Sarah Palin stop being the political attach dog for McCain and start acting like she is going to be somebody who gets things done by always putting her country above herself and her party.
Lastly, there is not enough representation in government of the point of view of: (a) ordinary, every-day, middle-class people who make this country great (b) women, and (c) people who are not beholding to any kind of special or self-interest. If Sarah Palin can convince me that she would tirelessly dedicate herself to the representation of these three points of view, then I would be convinced.

Center for Computational Thinking, Carnegie Mellon

2008-07-30T12:28:00.006-04:00

Prof. Wing at Carnegie Mellon coined the term "computational thinking." The term is actually a bit difficult to describe. Personally, I don't think even Prof. Wing has captured it's essence in a pithy phrase yet. For those who are familiar with computer science this definition resonates.

Computational thinking involves solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior, by drawing on the concepts fundamental to computer science.

Computational thinking is really about applying what mankind is learning by working with computers to the everyday problems of society. I particularly like the historical analogy that Prof. Wing uses to describe the potential significance of computational thinking. The analogy is to the invention of the printing press. The printing press had a profound affect on societal development by enabling wide spread dispersion of reading, writing, & arithmetic skills, and resultant development of problem solving, design and human understanding capacities. The computer is comparable to the printing press in that it encourages wide spread learning about computational thinking and is already clearly having a profound affect on future societal development.

Old Masters and Young Geniuses:

2008-07-25T06:38:00.001-04:00

According to professor David W. Galenson there's hope for us old guys who still want to make a contribution to society. I was listening to Dr. Galenson's lecture at an event where an organization called Civic Ventures was awarding The Purpose Prise to a group of baby-boomers who, unlike me, were taking on society's biggest challenges. It was inspiring. One of Galenson's insights that I thought was particularly interesting was this idea of two fundamentally different approaches to innovation; one the deductive "flash of brilliance" sort and the other the painstaking, gradual, cumulative, inductive sort that comes with the wisdom of a lifetime experience. He speaks of those of us in the later category feeling "stupid" in their youth at not being easily able to learn by the deductive method. This was my experience exactly and its somehow very encouraging to learn that I'm not alone.

The Finest People I've Ever Known

2008-06-16T21:40:00.008-04:00

Some people fit each other perfectly and are simply meant to be together. My uncle Kendall Ross and his beautiful bride Anna Rae Rowe were such a couple. Last year, after nearly sixty years of marriage, Kendal died and left Anna Rae alone for the first time in her life. It was incredibly sad and I simply cannot imagine how lonely she must have been. This past week Anna Rae died, essentially of a broken heart.

We're sad that she's gone and we'll miss her very much but we're all convinced that she's in a better place now, reunited with the love of her life, her friend, her protector, her companion, her everything. They made our lives better; they helped us all grow up with a wonderful model of goodness and decency; they were both deeply respected in the community for their work ethic, their penchant for helping others and the devotion to God and the church; and they also taught us that you can be good but still have fun. Someone said once that the real measure of a person is what they leave behind. Kendal and Anna Rae's legacy is two wonderful children (my cousins Joy and Jay) who are both just as good and kind and generous as their parents who taught them by their example.

I still can't say the name of either one of them without thinking of both and remembering the many, many good times with them throughout my life. I will miss them a lot.

Forty Years

2008-05-27T21:04:00.006-04:00

My wife Joy and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary this past weekend with our children and grand-children. We were on lovely Sea Island, Georgia watching this spectacular sunrise and wondering how it was possible that forty years could have gone by so quickly. We had a lot of fun telling all the old stories about how we met, and courted, and married, and brought up the kids. Lots of laughs and a few tears as well.

We've been through good times and bad together. We've both worked hard, had a few disappointments, but basically have accomplished mostly good things. We've had good health, loving families, good friends, three fine sons we're very proud of, wonderful daughter's-in-law who are perfect for our boys, and four of the best grandchildren ever. Life doesn't really get any better than that. We've really been blessed and we thank God for that. Now we're working to keep our health and live to celebrate forty more.

Facebooks Image Matching Engine

2008-05-20T07:39:00.005-04:00

So do I really look like any of these people? Facebook's facial recognition software thinks so but I think it leaves something to be desired.

However, it's an indication of what might be possible some day. I really want some kind of software that identifies people in pictures so that I can organize the mess of pictures that we've taken since the invention of the scanner and the digital camera. I estimated the other day that we have something on the order of 20,000 pictures. At the rate of say 30 seconds each to; identify who is in the picture (likely multiple people), when & where the picture was taken, record that information so it's associated with the picture file, etc. would take approximately 168 hours (the number of hours in a whole week working 24/7).

That will never happen without some way to automate the process. I'm still looking for a good way to do it.

Retirement

2008-04-20T09:58:00.003-04:00

Having reached the age when I could get Social Security if I chose to and where the probabilities start working against you for continued good health and an active lifestyle, I decided it might be wise to think more seriously about retirement sooner vs later.

When you approach the retirement decision, it leads you almost immediately to the question of can you afford it? For example, Google the word retirement and you get about 90 million hits where the top 1000 or so are almost all about the money. (Curiously, Google hits on retirement seem to vary between 88.5 million and 91.5 million. I wonder if there are 3.0 million of so out there who are like me and just can't make up our minds?) So I did the retirement calculator thing and I'm OK, I can afford to retire when I choose to. Check, that's not the problem?

So what is the problem? The problem for me is what to do with my time and my mind in retirement. There is a surprisingly large ontology of topics associated with or really comprising retirement in most people's minds (keep drilling down in the Google search and you'll find most of them...insurance, healthcare, communities, estate planning, exercise, diet, nutrition, senior dating, safety/monitoring, etc.). Individually they are all important, but they are also very negative in the sense that they are mostly associated with anti-aging and preparing for the end. What I'm looking for is advice on using my mind and my time in a positive and stimulating way in this last phase of my life. I figure if I do that well, all the other stuff will pretty much take care of itself as it has for my life up until now.

Americanism:The Fourth Great Western Religion

2008-04-07T22:27:00.004-04:00

I recently bought a Kindle from Amazon via my Amazon account. (It's Amazon's amazing new wireless e-book that uses electronic ink, really cool. And worth the 4 week delivery backlog when I got mine earlier this year.)

I love the concept of potentially hundreds of books, blogs, daily newspapers, etc. just showing up (for a small fee to Amazon & partners) on my Kindle when I get up in the morning. I also love having nearly infinite degrees of freedom in directing the Kindle's wireless delivery service (initially free) to send me just the stuff I want. The Kindle'e product hardware is still rough dispite it's $500 price tag (e.g. the Kindle freezes up quite frequently and has to be rebooted manually) but by and large it's worth the price.

But, the Kindle is also a little dangerous. It enables easy access to certain online media (books, DVDs, CDs, etc.) via the "Kindle Store" which is a subset of the real Amazon store. The Kindle store has been modified to exploit the product's features and push the convenience of owing an e-book. Personally, I find it addictive to be pursued so often by so many good books and at such relatively low prices. I've responded by buying many more books on Kindle than I ever did on Amazon and that I ever intended to on Kindle. It's just too easy.

The first book I read on my Kindle was (Yale Professor) David Gelernter's new book; Americanism - The Fourth Great Western Religion. As always, Prof. Gelernter's work is thoughtful and well written. I particularly liked the history lesson (on Puritanism) and the way he summed up Puritanism's influence in shaping Americanism in these lines:

"Tolerance is American but secularism is not"
"Religious freedom is American but contempt for religion is not"
"Religious doubt is American but religious indifference is not"
"Religious debate is American but cold academic disdain is not"
"Chivalry is American but complacency is not"
"America is a blblical republic, and Americanism is a biblical religion."

Dow Jones Insight Election Pulse

2008-03-11T09:36:00.003-04:00

I discovered a great election news blog today [called Dow Jones Insight Election Pluse] that shows off some interesting visualization technology which Dow Jones sells in conjunction with Factiva and other info sources.

Marc Andreessen: An hour and a half with Barack Obama

2008-03-09T09:22:00.007-04:00

I'm a huge fan of Marc Andreessen and I have no doubt that his thoughtful endorsement of Barack Obama [blog.pmarca.com: An hour and a half with Barack Obama] will have great influence. However, I suspect that many who follow Marc were already persuaded by more emotional "anything but Republican" feelings and had made up their minds anyway. I can relate to that, that's how I felt after eight years of Clinton.

What I like about Obama is that, with McCain, for a change after nearly sixteen years he gives us two decent candidates that we might actually be proud of. In my mind, both could be acceptable leaders. I sincerely hope that they have a thoughtful and civil debate which helps us all sort out the right way forward for America.

Marc's characterization of Obama made me think about why it is that I support McCain and I'm grateful to Marc for that. Of course I was not fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to meet McCain personally as Marc did with Obama. All I have to go on is the thirty years or so that I've observed Senator McCain's political and social behavior. What I've found is that I see a remarkably similar set of characteristics in John McCain as those Marc sees in Obama; smart, honest, straightforward, principled but pragmatic, willing to compromise and non-dogmatic . So in the end they are not that much different and, in my opinion, the choice hinges on experience vs charisma. Obama's charisma is uplifting and inspiring at times, and John can sometimes be a little dry. But as we saw with Clinton and even with Kennedy charisma can be short lived. The soaring rhetoric tends to evaporate into policy jibberish as the realities of a complex world must be faced and hard decisions made. I don't really know how or if Obama's rhetoric will turn into meaningful action. I do have thirty years of experience with John McCain's steadfast character and with my perception of his ability to take action and make the right decisions. That is the reason why I support John McCain.

William F. Buckley Jr - WSJ.com

2008-02-29T13:16:00.002-05:00

At the end of her WSJ column today mourning the passing of Bill Buckley, Peggy Noonan said something that resonated with me:

I share here a fear. It is not that the conservative movement is ending, that Bill's death is the period on a long chapter. The house he helped build had--has--many mansions. Conservatism will endure if it is rooted in truth, and in the truths of life. It is. It is rather that with the loss of Bill Buckley we are, as a nation, losing not only a great man. When Jackie Onassis died, a friend of mine who knew her called me and said, with such woe, "Oh, we are losing her kind." He meant the elegant, the cultivated, the refined. I thought of this with Bill's passing, that we are losing his kind--people who were deeply, broadly educated in great universities when they taught deeply and broadly, who held deep views of life and the world and art and all the things that make life more delicious and more meaningful. We have work to do as a culture in bringing up future generations that are so well rounded, so full and so inspiring. Bill Buckley lived a great American life. His heroism was very American--the individualist at work in the world, the defender of great creeds and great beliefs going forth with spirit, style and joy. May we not lose his kind. For now, "Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels take thee to thy rest."

The thought that we are "losing his kind" is similar to a feeling that I (and many others) have had about losing the memory of what it felt like to grow up in America in the 1950's and 1960's. There was a kind of American optimism and self-confidence in those days that Bill Buckley personified. I fear that we are losing that and that we're bringing up future generations now with a much more pessimistic worldview.

Basketball Stars

2008-02-27T18:41:00.003-05:00

Zach and Noah both started playing basketball at our church league this year and both of them were really great. I think I've got a couple of future basketball stars on my hands.

Goodbye Old Friend

2008-02-21T14:58:00.010-05:00

When the Times' story about John McCain's integrity hit the street today, ironically I learned about it from Google when they swiped the story from the NY Times and published it at the top of Google's news feed. That suddenly made me realize why, after nearly forty years, I've almost completely given up reading the once great New York Times. There are four reasons:

First, the NYT vertical content (i.e. Business, Science, Technology) is second rate. It's not competitive with other more specialized, up to date and faster paced Internet sources of business, technology and science news. Ok, I could live with that if the other things I liked were good enough.
I don't subscirbe to the paper edition of the NYT because I don't want to cut down trees, and I don't have time to read it everyday anyway. I live online now and I need and want something that's well organized, easy to navigate when I need to know something, and takes good advantage of today's technologies like RSS, social networking, etc. The NYT website is very disorganized, navigating it is a nightmare, and they can't get out of their traditionalist rut to embrace new technologies. Ok, I could live with that if the other stuff was good enough.
So what about the tradition of brilliant, informed debate on the editorial pages of the New York Times. There is no debate anymore. It's one continuous liberal diatirbe, and it's not even interesting, just monotinuous whinning from near-lunatics like Krugman.
So, finally there is the reporting. The notion of a "really good job of thorough, in-depth, investigative reporting that a big newspaper can do that little papers and TV and Radio sound-bite journalism can't afford to do." Frankly, my dear, I don't trust you anymore.

The Thinker

2008-02-06T20:45:00.002-05:00

This is my grandson Parker. He was four months old a few days ago and is the sweetest baby you'll ever see.

I think Parker is going to be a thinker, what do you think?

Geek Parenting: Top 10 Websites For Geeky Kids

2008-01-21T15:26:00.001-05:00

Saw this on Geek Parenting site. These kid's sites are awesome, I had no idea that so much existed for geeky kids.

Miles Per Gallon

2008-01-21T14:07:00.001-05:00

A friend of mine pointed me to some interesting stats recently:

Studies show that the average American golfer walks about 900 miles each year
Other studies found that the average American golfers drink ~22 gallons of alcohol each year

That means, on average, American golfers get about 41 miles to the gallon. A stat that kind of makes you proud.

Snow In Georgia

2008-01-20T20:20:00.002-05:00

My son Pat and his wife Ann had some fun with their new little one Parker when they took him out to see his first snowmen.

They pretty much shut down Atlanta for what would have been considered a light dusting of snow in Wisconsin. Most of it was already gone and the streets were clear by the next day. It was pretty though.

National Geographic Genographic Project

2008-01-19T16:25:00.001-05:00

The chart above traces the migration route of my ancient ancestors based on a comparison of my DNA with known markers. IBM and National Geographic are doing this five year project trying to map these migrations. If you haven't already done so you can contribute your DNA samples to the project by going to the website in the link.

2008-01-05T10:51:00.000-05:00

Crests and motto's of the clans from which my wife and are are decended.

Ross Clan motto = Success Nourishes Hope

Hollingsworth Clan motto = Learn To Endure What Must Be Borne.

Just Yesterday We Were Children Centertown 42328

2008-01-05T07:26:00.001-05:00

Someone left a comment on my entry about the book "Just Yesterday We Were Children" asking what information I have about where it can be obtained. I replied to the comment but it occurred to me that others might be interested and won't see those comments so I'm repeating it here in a new post.

The book can be obtained from Helen McKeown or Beth Harp who both live in Centertown, Kentucky. Or via the publisher, McDowell Publishing, 11129 Pleasant Ridge Road, Utica, KY 42376, 1-270-275-4075, sammcpub@aol.com

2008 New Year Resolutions

2008-01-04T16:38:00.001-05:00

I made three resolutions this year:

Stay Alive - I have type 2 diabetes. I like to eat and I don't like to exercise, but I want to stay alive long enough to see my grandchildren grow up. So in 2007 I radically changed my lifestyle and in 2008 I plan to learn to like it.
Listen More - I do not pay enough attention to what others are saying to me. I'm often too involved in proving my point to listen properly and consequently I "tune" people out when I could really learn a lot. I am especially bad about this with Joy, my wife of forty years who I love very much, and I hereby publicly apologize.
Write Something Every Day - It's Jan 4th and I'm already three days behind...oh well, so much for resolutions. But I don't think I'm alone. Like many others who initially enjoyed blogging and wrote a lot, it became tedious for me and was interfering with my work. However, stating your opinion in writing (in complete sentences) is a good discipline. One must think about it, develop metaphors and examples, tell stories, and do this all in one succinctly summarized post.

Finally, one more thing I should have made a resolution about and did not. That is, not to accuse others of doing annoying things without any proof. Ergo...another public apology: I suspect that I probably drank all the "good" Scotch myself and just forgot about it. So to my son Jason, who has always been truthful with me, I want to publicly apologize for off-handedly, and without thinking about it properly, suggesting that it might have been you and your friends who drank it.

Seldon Laboratories

2007-12-04T20:34:00.000-05:00

Seldon Laboratories is a small nanotechnology company in Vermont run by an amazing young man named Chris Cooper. It is initially focused on using the unique properties of carbon nanotubes to develop water purifications systems. Inexpensive and highly effective at removing microorganisms from fluids without the use of heat, ultraviolet radiation, chemicals, contact time, or significant pressure; Seldon's purification systems could literally eliminate millions of human deaths every year caused by polluted drinking water. In addition, the technology is also potentially applicable to sea water desalinization.

2007-12-02T09:12:00.001-05:00

Happy Holidays everyone.

Just Yesterday We Were Children

2007-11-11T08:34:00.001-05:00

Beth Chinn Harp and Helen Allen McKeown have complied a phenomenal 1250 page volume cataloging the lives of the people as a way to tell the history of my home town (Centertown, Kentucky).

New Grandson

2007-10-06T06:38:00.000-04:00

No matter how many times you witness the birth of a child, it never ceases to be just the most amazing and wonderful gift from God there could ever possibly be. I had that pleasure again this past Thursday (October 4, 2007) when my son Patrick and his wife Ann became proud parents for the first time.

Parker Alexander Ross (5lbs 12oz) was a few weeks early but thankfully, mother and son are both doing great. As you can see, Parker has a full head of wavy black hair, he's pink as a bunny and as beautiful a baby as there ever was. You can't tell from the photo but he's also got really big feet. Parker gets that from his daddy whose birth I remember to this day. Pat was a pretty baby too, but what I'll never forget is how big Pat's feet seemed to me at the time. It's odd the things that stick with you and that you never forget. Parker's birth will certainly be one of them. And we're looking forward to many years of watching him grow up and prosper.

Introducing This Blog - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog

2007-09-20T12:30:00.001-04:00

Kurgman is writing a blog now in the newly "free" NYTimes website. He's probably doing it to promote his new book. I assume he'll give the proceeds to the poor to alleviate income inequality, right Paul?

Anyway, out of curiosity I looked at the source of the chart that Krugman uses to make his point (by the way, it was pointed to not by Krugman but by a reader who made a comment). The very first paragraph of that report says this...

According to Kuznets’ influential hypothesis, income inequality should follow an inverse-U shape along the development process, first rising with industrialization and then declining, as more and more workers join the high-productivity sectors of the economy [Kuznets 1955]. Today, the Kuznets curve is widely held to have doubled back on itself, especially in the United States, with the period of falling inequality observed during the first half of the twentieth century being succeeded by a very sharp reversal of the trend since the 1970s. This does not, however, imply that Kuznets’ hypothesis is no longer of interest. One could indeed argue that what has been happening since the 1970s is just a remake of the previous inverse-U curve: a new industrial revolution has taken place, thereby leading to increasing inequality, and inequality will decline again at some point, as more and more workers benefit from the innovations. (The Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 2003)

In other words, inequality in this context is judged to be about a cycle of industrialization and innovation and dispersion of their benefits to workers, and not about some mythical "vast right wing conspiracy."

Sorry Paul, you seem to have gotten it wrong again.

Diagnosing Al Gore: Truth in the Balance - Man Made Global Warming Debunking News and Links

2007-08-26T18:27:00.000-04:00

As I've said before, I think Huber was right, the "environment is too important to leave it to the environmentalists." What I need is the facts to know what the situation really is, how much action is prudent to take, by when and by whom. Rather than take what Al Gore says at face value check it out. Have a look at this article for example. Or read the article by Mary Ellen Tiffany Gilder (yes George's daughter).

Wouldn't it be great if a commons database like Freebase had a peer reviewed data structure with the facts in it (as well as the assumptions in the models) so that anyone could see for themselves what was actually happening.

The Wikipedia Article Police

2007-08-17T22:40:00.001-04:00

I was born in Centertown, Kentucky. It's a small town (about 400 people, which is the same as the population in 1946 when I was born there). The town was incorporated in 1890 and the Centertown Baptist Church was established in 1907. I attended the 100th anniversery ceremony at the Church two weeks ago. It was a moving experience.

One of the things that made it a moving experience is that I got to see so many people I've known all my life and hadn't seen in many years. It also brought back many great memories. My earliest recollection of the Church was nicely captured in the picture below of myself and my cousin Marilyn Morton at about the age of seven (1953) taken in the Centertown Church at my Aunt Junita Ross' wedding to Reed Renier.

Afterward the Centertown celebration, I checked Wikipedia to see if anybody had posted an article about what I considered to be this significant historical event. Besides being 100 years old, the Centertown Baptist Church structure is also architecturally quite interesting. Since no one had posted anything on Wikipedia, I decided to post some of the highlights of the Church's history from the 100th Anniversery program brochure that the Church distributed.

To my surprise, within twenty-four hours my post had been deleted from Wikipedia because someone or some (probably automated) thing deemed the subject to be unworthy of inclusion in Wikipedia. In trying to understand this decision I discovered how complex Wikipedia actually is and it made me wonder just what the process is and who these editors actually might be? It is mind-bogglingly complex. Just as an example, here is the official explaination on the Wikipedia site for how to understand / contest this "deletion" decision (which of course, I don't have time to navigate):

Find out what happened

First, check the deletion log
The deletion log shows the administrator who deleted the page.
When a page is deleted, this is recorded in the deletion log along with a deletion summary supplied by the deleting administrator. To find this information, either:
Type the exact name of the page into the search box and click "Go", then click the bold red link "create this page". The deletion log will appear beneath the box that says "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name." or

Follow a red link to the page, if you can find one.
The deletion log will show the date, the administrator's name and the deletion summary. If the page has been deleted more than once, the log will have several entries; the most recent one is the one you want.
There are three different processes that result in pages being deleted. The deletion summary tells you which:
Very brief summaries such as "A7" or "CSD A7", as well as things like "spam" and {{db-bio}}, usually refer to speedy deletion.
A summary including "prod" usually refers to proposed deletion.
A summary including "AfD", "Articles for deletion", or a similar acronym usually means the deletion is the outcome of a deletion debate.
See the appropriate section below for more information. If you're still confused after checking the deletion log, politely ask the administrator responsible for an explanation by leaving a message on their Talk page:
Click the "Talk" link next to their name in the deletion log
Click the "+" button next to the "edit this page" link
Type a subject line and your message, sign it by typing ~~~~ and click "Save".

[edit] Speedy deletions
Pages and media that satisfy certain criteria are speedy deletion candidates, which means that they can be deleted immediately and without discussion. The criteria include pages that contain nonsense, copyright violations and articles that do not satisfy notability guidelines. When deleting these, administrators often leave short codes in the deletion summary instead of typing out a full reason, such as "A7" for articles that do not satisfy notability, or "G1" for patent nonsense. These codes are explained at criteria for speedy deletion.

[edit] Proposed deletions
Articles (but not other pages or media) may be proposed for deletion by any editor. If nobody objects to this within five days, the article is deleted. If any objections are raised, the article is not deleted, but anyone may still make the matter the subject of an Articles for deletion discussion (see the next section). Proposed deletions will often be labeled as "prod" in the deletion summary.

[edit] Deletion debates
A page or media file may also be nominated for consideration in a deletion debate, so that editors can discuss whether it should be deleted. Articles are discussed at Articles for deletion; other pages elsewhere (see Deletion debates for links). Such discussions normally last five days, after which time an administrator will delete the page if there is a consensus to do so. Anyone may participate in such a debate, however these discussions are not "votes". The weight of an argument is more important than the number of people making the argument, so encouraging mass participation in such debates to avoid the deletion of a particular article will not work.

[edit] Protected titles
If a particular page has been recreated and deleted multiple times, administrators may decide to protect it so that it stays deleted. If you try to edit a protected title, a message box will inform you about it.

[edit] What you can do about it
If a page or file that you created has been deleted, please don't take offense. See our content policies and the guide to creating your first article to get an idea of what you should be aiming for. Alternatively, remember we already have 1,955,860 articles – find a subject that interests you and work on improving our existing content.
Depending on the reason why the page was deleted, there are also several ways you can try to have it undeleted by administrators. In every case, you should first make sure that the page is appropriate for inclusion in Wikipedia and, if it is an article, that its content is based on reliable sources. If it is not, your request will likely be unsuccessful.
If you feel a page has been deleted in error, or if you think you have good reasons for wanting to edit a protected title, first contact the administrator responsible via the method explained above. If you are still not satisfied after discussing it with the deleting admin, consider starting a deletion review.
If an article was deleted as a result of a proposed deletion ("prod"), any administrator should normally restore it on your request. In such cases, you can leave a message on this noticeboard.
If the page was deleted for any other reason, and you would like to be able to access the text (for example, to resubmit it in a form that meets our content policies), there are some administrators who may provide you with the content of the deleted page on your request.
If anything about this whole process remains unclear, ask for help on the Help desk.
A substantial number of new articles by new users end up getting deleted. If you are one of those new users, you may feel confused right now, and need to ask for help on the Help desk.
If it looks like your page is definitely about to be deleted, copy-and-paste the source code to a text file, for example by using a text editor (which preserves your wikitext markup), or a word processor. However, after your page is deleted from Wikipedia, do not immediately put the page back up! Otherwise, it will probably just be deleted again, and the page name may even be protected against re-creation. Either find more evidence to prove the notability of your article, or wait for more evidence to be published elsewhere in reliable sources. If you intend to put your article back up straight away, make sure to post some questions on the Help Desk to ask how you can improve the article the next time around (though, it did get deleted, and that probably means that there is not much that can be improved, or some serious research will be necessary to find those all-important reliable sources your article needs.) You can also discuss how to develop your article properly on the drawing board. If your page gets deleted before you can copy its source code, however, you're out of luck. You'll have to try and request undeletion, and this isn't likely to be successful.

[edit] If all else fails, try another wiki
As a result of Wikipedia's rapid growth, by 2007 it had become one of the world's largest and most-visited wikis. Wikipedia articles tend to rank high in the search results for many popular search engines. Prior to Wikipedia, wiki technology was not very well-known; as a result, Wikipedia may be the first wiki many people see, and the first wiki they attempt to edit on. Some people may be under the mistaken impression that Wikipedia is the only wiki, or is synonymous with "wiki". In many cases, this is unfortunate, because Wikipedia is actually a very specialized kind of wiki (an encyclopedia), and newcomers may need some time to understand what constitutes encyclopedic writing. There is much content that Wikipedia does not want, but is nonetheless useful to someone.
There are many other wikis, many with content policies very different from Wikipedia's, catering to a wide range of interests. Some of these wikis were founded by groups of former and/or continuing Wikipedia editors, who had more to say about their topic of interest than belongs in an encyclopedia. Examples include Wookiepedia (for Star Wars enthusiasts); and StrategyWiki (for video-game walkthroughs).
For almost every sort of article that would be interesting to someone, there is probably a wiki somewhere that would welcome it.
To find a happy home for your deleted article, check the List of wikis, Wikipedia:Alternative outlets, and search WikiIndex. If you cannot find a suitable wiki on your own, ask for some "wiki outplacement" assistance on the Help desk. If your deleted article is in a subject area overseen by a WikiProject, members of that WikiProject may know of alternative wikis to publish subject area content not meeting Wikipedia's requirements. Once you find a home, you can immediately place your article there if you copied and saved the source code (though it may need modifications to fit into the new website.) If you did not obtain such a copy, you will have to ask the deletor to move the source code for you.

[edit] What not to do about it
As mentioned above, please don't take offense. It's common to feel hurt or angry after seeing hours of your work deleted, but please try to work with the complex processes Wikipedians have developed to manage the world's largest collaborative editing project.
Please do not post questions about your deleted article on this page's talk page. Instead, if you have questions, post them on the Help desk.
Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_was_my_page_deleted%3F"

Microsoft's Vista Is Not For The Faint of Heart

2007-07-10T16:28:00.000-04:00

I needed a new computer. I decided to buy an HP Pavilion Notebook on sale at a local retailer. The HP notebook only came with Microsoft Windows Vista software. There were no new computers of any brand available with Windows XP any longer. (I know it's possible to buy XP and change the OS, but who wants to go to that much trouble?)

To put it bluntly, Vista is a nightmare. So far I've spent roughly 20 hours on the phone with Tech support from both HP and Microsoft. In general, the support staff have tried to be helpful but don't know how to diagnose, much less fix, the multitude of Vista issues. Among the many nasty surprises I've had with Vista are the following:

Initially ITunes was un-usuable until I discovered (by myself without help from any Microsoft or HP tech support who should have known this) that a Microsoft Vista update was required to have been installed before installation of ITunes 7.3.
Having fixed ITunes myself, I then discovered that my IPOD itself was also un-usable, because it somehow causes Vista to fail to restart.
My HP printers are obsolete as HP decided not to migrate them to Vista
None of my older Thumb drives work with Vista
The HP docking station for the Notebook running Vista has driver problems with Vista
The Microsoft approach to Vista compatibility seems to me to aimed solely at upgrading existing PCs running XP to Vista. There is almost no help from Microsoft at identifying compatibility issues or installation problems with existing software (i.e. ITunes) on the Vista OS in a new computer.

Why am I enduring this punishment? I have yet to discover anything even remotely better about Vista in everyday operation. Microsoft lists twelve things I should be grateful for, but I don't get it with any of them:

Aero Aesthetics - I'm not that impressed with the "translucent" aesthetic UI. Initially I find that it seems to cause active windows to be very touchy and annoyingly easy to close by accident.
Common Controls - So what, they finally made the UI controls relatively consistent across the OS and Office suites.
Notifications - So far, I'm feeling notified to death.
Search Boxes - So what? Now I've got a whole bunch of search boxes that still take me to places that have information that is of little of no value.
Task Dialogs - This computer is for my wife who would be the first to admit that she is not now, nor does she ever want to be, tech savy. So "task dialogs" are a new source of dread and frustration. "Oh my god, there are six choices for this task, what do I do now?"
Aero Wizards - Wizards are not new? OK maybe they got the look and feel more consistent of something. Big deal.
Common Dialogs - We're talking files and folders here gang. Haven't really seen much improvement, and the new "look" caused me to have to rethink how to use it.
Control Panels - I immediately put it back in Control Panel classic view because I just don't have time for all the control panel improvements such as "a more scalable interface that can better handle large sets of settings." Just what I wanted a larger set of settings?
Style and Tone - I will give them an "A" for effort here. So far I haven't run across any of those old nasty-grams from Microsoft like "you failed to properly...do this or that." They've toned it down with a new friendly writing style and tone of voice.
Icons - They think the Icons are better than they use to be at describing what they do. Personally, I can't tell the difference. They are prettier.
System Font (Segoe UI) - They also thing their new font is the cats pajamas. It just looks like Arial narrow to me.
User Account Control - They don't even know what this is, there is no explaination for what they mean.

Have fun if you try Vista, I sure did.

Bloomberg For President?

2007-06-21T16:56:00.001-04:00

I would like to see the next President be a person who can "unite the country" is also a "competent manager" and can work not only "across party lines" but Internationally, in a non-partison and diplomatic way, to get things done. So what else is new, who wouldn't?

Zobgy makes the argument that Bloomberg could be such a "leader" that his polls show 80% of Americans want. In some ways I wish it were true, I wouldn't mind voting for an independent and sending both parties a little message to clean up their act. But I doubt that it is true because the American people themselves are so sharply divided. And, the election process is not the place from which unity naturally flows because the whole process is focused on the negative...what's wrong with the other guy.

Nothing I'm aware of from Bloomberg gives me the slightest comfort that he's thought about how he would "unite" or "lead" or even what his priorities would be for getting things done. Even if he eventually did that reasonably well, the man is just not that inspiring. I was inspired by the likes of Kennedy, Regan, Patrick Moynihan, Howard Baker, Bill Bradley, Bob Dole, Sam Nunn, Colin Powell and a few others but Bloomberg is just not in their league and I don't want to settle for less (I've done that for the past 20 years).

The most interesting thing that Zobgy points out about Bloomberg's potential entry into the Presidential race is that it might be more likely to divide the left in the same way that Perot divided the right in 1992. That could make room for a more inspiring and gifted figure from the center-right. It isn't obvious to me right now who that is. It would be ironic if that turned out to be Guiliani, one NYC major paving the way for another. One can only hope.

Blogger's New "Easy" Template Tool

2007-05-26T14:47:00.000-04:00

Google's Blogger has quite a ways to go yet before their so-called "easy to use" template tool is perfected. I spent a couple of hours this afternoon trying to get it to duplicate the template I had before I upgraded and it crashed half a dozen times. Not what I would call easy. (But, let's cut'em some slack, after all it is free!)

Forrester's Josh Bernoff & Charlene Li Test-driving Cisco's Telepresence

2007-05-22T18:14:00.000-04:00

Being an employee of Cisco, I've had the opportunity to use Cisco's Telepresence system about half a dozen times now. It's a truly remarkable way to communicate with customers and business colleagues while saving travel time and cost. But, as usual, Josh Bernoff noticed something interesting about the experience that hadn't occured to me. In his blog post Josh describes the persuasive effect that a realistic visual experience like Telepresence can have...

"look someone in the eye and if you're right, they can see it. Telepresence can be persuasive."

And if you're wrong the same thing is probably true. It's a powerful tool, probably more powerful than we have even begun to realize yet. That time we're saving in not having to travel to a meeting is likely to get redirected at making what we say on a Telepresence call more meaningful and better able to pass the "look someone in the eye" test.

Climate of Opinion - WSJ.com

2007-04-04T13:47:00.000-04:00

I think about Global Warming from the point of view of one who experienced and was deeply moved by both the ecstasy and later the agony associated with Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" in 1962 and The Club of Rome's dire predictions in their 1972 classic "Limits To Growth." Since those early days, I've also had many debates with both; (a) my friends who some call "radical" environmentalists, and (b) the hard core conservatives I also hang around with. I find myself in the middle.

That's why Jenkins article in the WSJ today struck a nerve with me. Few of us have the time to do the hard science (even if we are capable of it) and so; 'Who are we to believe about Global Warming and the like?' I believed Rachel Carson back in the 1960's because I wanted to believe her. And, because I had personal experience with being doused with DDT as a child from government trucks that rolled through our neighborhood and smoke-bombed us. How could that be "good" I reasoned and so reinforced the image she was conveying. But it turns out that she was basically wrong about most of the evils of synthetic chemicals and hundreds of millions of people are not dying of malaria around the world because DDT actually works with few side effects.

In my opinion, the difference between Rachel Carlson and many modern environmentalists is that she was basically sincere and simply didn't have all the facts at the time. As Bjørn Lomborg pointed out in his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and as Jenkins alludes to in his article today, too many environmentalists make "selective and misleading use of scientific data to influence decisions about the allocation of limited resources." And when we discover this, it does make us skeptical and we don't know who to believe.

I'm basically in Peter Huber's camp. I believe there are environmental problems and they need to be addressed but in a reasoned and measured way that doesn't wreck the global economy in the process. What makes sense to me is common sense, pro-active values like; promoting conservation, good stewardship, incentives for technological innovation, etc. as opposed to exaggerating the crisis and calling for excessive governmental regulation and controls that are only likely to compound the problem.

In Memoriam - Kendal Ross April 1926 - February 2007

2007-02-03T12:00:00.000-05:00

My uncle Kendal Ross passed away on Friday, February 2, 2007 at the age of eighty. He belonged to what’s been called the “greatest generation.” In my mind, Kendal Ross not only belonged to the “greatest” generation, his life was a perfect example of what that means. In all my life, I have never known anyone that was as honest, as loving, as caring, as hard working, as dependable and just plain fun to be with as this sweet, gentle man…Kendal Ross. He served his country with honor and self-sacrifice; he worked hard to provide for his family and was proud to see his children and grandchildren educated and successful, far beyond his own modest upbringing; he was a pillar of the community in my hometown of Centertown, Kentucky; a Deacon of the little Baptist Church there he attended all his life; a rock that everyone else could always count on and who asked for nothing in return; a loving husband and father and grandfather; a man’s man that commanded respect; and the best uncle that anyone could ever have. He was my hero and my only regret is that I never thought to tell him that. I hope he knew it. I will miss him very much.

But, Kendall would have been the first to tell us that there’s really nothing sad about a day like this, there’s actually a celebration going on in heaven today for the arrival of this good man. It was my great privilege just to know him much less to have been blessed with the many, many ways in which he made my life and the lives of my loved ones better.

The Language Of God

2007-01-14T18:43:00.000-05:00

It's probably not statistically significant but it's still really sad that Francis Collins' beautiful little book "The Language of God" is only ranked #181 on Amazon and Richard Dawkins' anti-God rant "The God Delusion" is ranked in the top ten at #9. The other statistic that's interesting is that Collins' book has been "reviewed" by about three times as many Amazon readers as Dawkins' book, and many of those reviewers are critics. Seems like the anti-God crowd either reads more [which I doubt] or is less tolerant than the people of God whom they accuse of being intolerant.

Golf Club of Georgia

2006-10-25T13:09:00.000-04:00

A little publicity for my club...

Oct. 24, 2006
MATTESON’S GREAT PLAY ENHANCES GOLF CLUB OF
GEORGIA REPUTATION

Established 1990

ALPHARETTA, Ga. -- The Golf Club of Georgia is known for its two Arthur Hills-designed championship courses, impeccable conditioning and first-class service. These days, however, the Club is gathering attention for its quality of golf and the golfers who play there.

Understandably, it’s a great source of pride for the members who call The Golf Club of Georgia their home. The latest evidence comes from PGA Tour rookie Troy Matteson, one of The Golf Club of Georgia’s Invitational Members and a former NCAA champion from Georgia Tech. Clearly, Matteson has been the hottest player on the PGA Tour over the past month, winning at Las Vegas in the Frys.com Open Oct. 15, then tying for second Sunday in the Funai Classic at Disney World to stand 42nd on the PGA Tour money list with $1,630,197.

A month ago, before a swing session with long-time teacher Jeff Paton, The Golf Club of Georgia’s Director of Golf, Matteson was struggling to keep his PGA Tour card. Now he’s two spots on the money list from an invitation to the 2007 Masters.

“It was life-changing, life-altering,” Matteson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "You play good and you start to believe you belong. The PGA Tour is a tough place when you’re a young guy. There are so many great players out here, so many great winners. When you win, you start to feel a little bit like you fit in.”

Paton also teaches former U.S. Amateur Champion Matt Kuchar, a 2006 Nationwide Tour winner in position to return to the PGA Tour in 2007. Additionally, The Golf Club of Georgia’s competitive history was enhanced this past April with the inaugural United States Collegiate Championship, which already is being called “the Masters of college golf” and will feature 15 teams in a 54-hole tournament April 9-11, 2007.

Since 1996 The Golf Club of Georgia has served as the home course for the Georgia Tech, which was named in 2005 by Golf World magazine as the nation’s top college golf program.
The Golf Club of Georgia’s competitive history began in the mid-1990’s with five years of hosting the Senior Tour’s Nationwide Championship, won twice by Hale Irwin. It grew in 1998 with the first Georgia Cup Match between the reigning United States and British Amateur champions, as Kuchar defeated Craig Watson of England. Georgia Cup Champions in later years have included David Gossett, Sergio Garcia and Ryan Moore. On March 28, 2007, the Club will host its 10th Anniversary Georgia Cup Match between U.S. Amateur Champion Richie Ramsay of Scotland and British Amateur Champion Julien Guerrier of France.

The Amateur Champions spend the week as guests of The Golf Club of Georgia and become honorary lifetime members. The Golf Club of Georgia’s course conditions are so superb that last spring both Brian McElhinney of Ireland, the British Amateur Champion, and U.S., Amateur champion Edoardo Molinari of Italy felt the greens were even faster than at Augusta National during the Masters. “The courses are fabulous,” McElhinney said. “It’s just a fabulous place to play golf.”

Among The Golf Club of Georgia’s notable members are Atlanta Braves pitcher John Smoltz, former NBA star Brad Daugherty and former Atlanta Falcons All-Pro guard Bill Fralic, who served three terms as club president.

The Golf Club of Georgia was selected in 1991 by Golf Digest as “Best New Private Course in America.”

For more information, contact:
Glenn Sheeley
Director of Communications; Business Development
The Golf Club of Georgia
One Golf Club Drive
Alpharetta, Ga. 30005

O-770-772-8167
C-404-281-4152
e-mail to: gsheeley@golfclubofgeorgia.com

ARF Blogs - Engagement By Engagement

2006-09-22T16:03:00.000-04:00

What a great idea. The ARF is sponsoring a blog [ Engagement By Engagement ] to capture the goings on at their upcoming Consumer Engagement conferences.

"The End of Faith"

2006-09-17T08:53:00.000-04:00

I recently heard the presentation that Sam Harris made at PopTech in 2006. I haven't read his book "The End of Faith" but I think I got the gist of it from his speech. Basically religious belief is fantasy, those who practice it are stupid and ignorant, and worse yet religion is dangerous [to the point where Harris actually advocates making religon socially and morally wrong] because it's fantasies undermine logical scientific reasoning and ultimately lead to [are basically the cause of] war, poverty, environmental disaster, etc.

On the other hand, the Christain Science Monitor pointed out that German philosopher and secularist Jürgen Habermas wrote this in 2004 in his essay "A Time of Transition"

Christianity, and nothing else is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [to Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.

It appears that the secularists are a little bit confused about cause and effect.

Inequality and the American Dream | Economist.com

2006-06-23T11:53:00.000-04:00

The United States Inequality and the American Dream Economist.com For a modest little British "newspaper" as they love to call themselves, The Economist has uncanny insight into the American psyche. They've hit the nail squarely on the head once again with their June 17th focus on "Inequality and the American Dream." As though The Economist was really the World's conscience [as perhaps it is] they set out three conditions that must be met in order for inequality to not be inherently wrong as many on the left have argued:

"...first, society as a whole is getting richer; second, there is a safety net for the very poor; and third, everybody, regardless of class, race, creed or sex, has an opportunity to climb up through the system."

To me they have omitted the most important condition that makes America unique. That is, the strong sense of right and wrong derived from our Judeo-Christian heritage, and the moral principles which guided the formation of this country. It is this set of underlying moral principles and not some vague idealism that I believe is the real American "genius for translating...talk of the American Dream into practical policies."

The New Renaissance

2006-05-18T09:37:00.000-04:00

I had the pleasure of hearing Thomas Friedman speak yesterday. He described the concepts in his excellent new book "The World Is Flat" and made the case for his notion that we are currently experiencing a significant turning point in the history of mankind. When I first read Friedman's book earlier this year it seemed to me I'd heard some of it before. The first writer I know that made a similar case was Douglas S. Robertson in his 1998 book "The New Renaissance" and later in 2003 with "Phase Change." Robertson's reasoning was more scientific and computer-oriented with less of the political implications of Friedman's book, but the underlying notion of a "phase change" right now was clearly the same.

Government Out Of Control

2006-05-11T13:11:00.000-04:00

ED-AE268_3redta_20060510202025
Originally uploaded by dross46.

The Wall Street Journal ran this graphic today. The number of regulators has grown at a CAGR of 5.5% over the past six years. If we let this continue for the next 30 years by then we'll have 1.6 million regulators [one for about every 400 American people] and the federal register will have a staggering 200,000 pages? This is insane.

Evolution; From Creation to New Creation

2006-04-05T08:58:00.000-04:00

For those who are interested in the religion versus science debate, this wonderful book by Ted Peters and Martinez Hewlett is a must read. The book offers a survey of the broad history of the subject from; Darwinism and the later day neo-Darwinian idological inferences of materialist philosophy, to diesim, creationism, intelligent design and finally to "Theistic Evolution." The authors come down firmly on the side of Theistic Evolution which is basically a realistic "reconciliation of Christian Faith and evolutionary biology." They place various points of view about Theistic Evolution on a continuium via an analysis of how each deals with five defining questions; Deep Time, Natural Selection, Common Descent, Divine Action and Theodicy. And they conclude with a bold and "constructive proposal" for a "future-oriented theology of creation and its concomitant understanding of the human being as God's created co-creator."

Barry Schwartz - The Paradox of Choice

2006-03-13T08:38:00.000-05:00

MediaPost Publications - Americans Get More Channels, Watch Fewer Of Them, Especially Broadcast - 03/13/2006 Ironically, Barry Schwartz spoke at PC Forum last night about the Paradox of Choice, and what did I wake up to this morning. Another possible example of too much choice in the channels people have to choose from on television. I wonder whether the "a la carte" crowd has thought about this problem. I'll have to ask Prof. Schwartz about that today.

PC Forum

2006-03-10T16:18:00.000-05:00

I'm headed to PC Forum this weekend. The speaker list, as usual, is awesome and the theme...

"Erosion of Power: Users In Charge"

...takes the premise that "the power institutions once held over (people) is eroding for three technology-based reasons" and the implications of that is what the conference is going to explore.

United States Collegiate [Golf] Championship

2006-02-20T16:24:00.000-05:00

The inagural United States Collegiate [Golf] Championship will be played on April 10-11, 2006 at my home club, The Golf Club of Georgia. We were proud to be selected to host the tournament and to work with our partners at Georgia Tech which is the host school of the inagural event.

Tollbooths on the Internet Highway - New York Times

2006-02-20T12:09:00.000-05:00

Is it just me, or does it seem a little hypocritical for the NYT to be lecturing others about "net neutrality" and insuring that the Internet "remain(s) free, and freely evolving?" The hypocrisy is that the NYT itself has walled off vast areas of its own content which use to be "free" and still is if you go to the library, make a copy and put it in your scrap book. So let's include in the definition of net neutrality the provision that if it's published openly anywhere at any time, and Brewster Kahle for example puts it in his Internet Archive, then its subject to net neutrality and free forever and the NYT can't make "profit-driven choices, rather than users' choices" and can't determine "which sites and methodologies succeed and fail" for its own content.

Energy Profits

2006-02-17T16:42:00.000-05:00

I got tired of the hype about "excess" oil company profits and decided to get the facts. It turns out that the oil and gas industry generally is near the middle of the pack of American industries earning about 8% on sales in the 3rd quarter of 2005 as compared to the average of about 6.5%, but far lower than, for example, the semiconductor industry which earned about 14% on sales in the same period, or pharma & banks which both earned more than 18% on sales.

wikiCalc

2006-02-17T12:25:00.000-05:00

Dan Bricklin [the author of VisiCalc] has come up with another brilliant idea called "wikiCalc." Here's how he describes it at the alpha test site

"The wikiCalc program is a web authoring tool for pages that include data that is more than just unformatted prose. It combines some of the ease of authoring and multi-person editing of a wiki with the familiar visual formatting and data organizing metaphor of a spreadsheet..."

Daniel Terdiman of CNET News.com wrote about it here today. WikiCalc kind of looks to me like a poor mans [open-source] version of what I think Quicken is trying to do with QuickBase and what Dan suggests Microsoft might be trying to do with Grove. Some people will object to putting the data in spreadsheets out in the open like this but the dirty little secret of private spreadsheets on individual PCs is that they are full of errors and inconsistencies. A little openness [in other words transparency] is likely to be a very good thing both for collaboration and for accuracy & reliability.

EFF: Homepage

2006-02-13T15:56:00.000-05:00

In a wonderful irony, the advertisement in the prime center space of the EFF: Homepage today featured ATT, just above the top headline "EFF Sues AT&T To Stop Illegal Surveillance."

InternetFrog.com: Network Tools, Internet Speed Test and Website Tools

2006-01-25T13:49:00.000-05:00

Here's a wonderful little online tester to find out what kind of actual Internet Connection you have.

Webby Awards: 10 Web Moments That Changed The World

2006-01-24T08:52:00.000-05:00

Webby Awards: 10 Web Moments That Changed The World

The folks at "The Webby Awards" recently published their list of the "ten web moments that changed the world." The moment that made me a believer that the web might change the world happened sometime around 1994 or 1995. I got on somebody's list [probably because of my involvment in Georgia Tech's GVU annual WWW user survey, which was pretty unique at the time] and I was invited to become an early user of something called PointCast. I became a very enthuastic PointCast user long before Yahoo, Excite, etc. had really developed anything comparable. PointCast was, to my knowledge, the first to recognize the potential of automated delivery of [nearly] real-time news and information to the desktop, personalized to an individuals particular interests. They ultimately failed because they didn't adapt their clunky [push] technology, but the idea and the early execution, including the user interface, was brilliant.

As significant as PointCast was and perhaps deserving of its own "web moment" for early recognization of the power of personalization, PointCast itself wasn't exactly the moment that I had in mind. The moment "that changed the world" for me came one day when I was on the phone with a friend who had the annoying habit of trying to impress me with the wealth of his knowledge about current events, particularly in my business. His phone calls typically began with "did you hear that so and so did such and such" with the implication being that he was in the know and I wasn't. On one fateful day I realized when he called that I could bluff him and say "oh yes, I heard that too." The trick was to quickly skim PointCast [it ran, supposedly in the background all the time on my PC, also making it one of the first always-on applications] and to get enough of the story to make my bluff work before he could figure out that it was a bluff.

From that moment on, it occurred to me that if I could do that, I could never be completely sure that others weren't doing the same thing to me? So "who really knows what they're talking about" is quite a different question than it use to be. The baseline that "everybody knows" [from merely parroting the results of a web search] is often substantial and may be seducing us into thinking we understand things we really don't. Ester Dyson and others have written about the development of "reputation systems" and other techniques to identy the reliability and trustworthiness of sources. It seems to me that a future "web moment that will change the world" will be when we can use technolgy to tell what is true and what it means.

Podcasting & Cars

2006-01-04T13:11:00.000-05:00

I'm totally addicted to Podcasting. My main source of Podcast marterial is Doug Kaye's "The Conversations Network" which covers an enormous variety of conferences and other interesting conversations. I'm able to make much better use of almost three hours every day with Podcasting [two hours during my commute & an hour when I walk & exercise] . But this has some implications and that's where the "& Cars" comes in.

Many people have observed that Podcasting is taking share from mainstream Media [e.g. I never listen to radio anymore, even PBS] and that its business model is disruptive. But I discovered another little subtly of Podcasting that's a bit problematic. I listen to my iPod via a pair of good noise-cancelling headphones. The obvious benefit is great audio quality. But there is a downside that I discovered today. It's kind of a guy thing. You get accustomed to the sounds that your car makes especially if you like cars and you kind of know what's making those sounds. Good sounds [remember that cool rumble of glass-packs] are like a security blanket that make you feel good without your being consious of it. Bad sounds that you shouldn't hear, even though they are still subtle, are a warning to get it fixed before it becomes a disaster. Listening to Podcast via headphones make all those sounds go away!

Have I lost touch with my inner carbureator? Oh my god, I think I have...and that's kind of sad.

The Truth about Torture

2005-12-08T16:49:00.000-05:00

Charles Kruathammer makes a very well reasonsed argument in The Weekly Standard for specific and extremely limited exceptions to the general "rule" that torture should be banned. I find two things praticularly convincing about Kruathammer's arguments:

He forces us to deal with the question of whether any use of torture at any time is ever justified in any circumstances. His conclusion is that we must "be honest about [the necessity of sometimes] doing terrible things [like torture]" in those rare cases where by doing so, there is a high probability that we might prevent even more terrible things. Nearly everyone agrees that torture isn't necessarily always the best solution even in extreme circumstances. However, logically the problem is that there is clearly some probability that torture might sometimes be the only practical solution.
Another thing that occurred to me was that we [Americans & British] have a tendancy to think of ourselves as being against torture in the abstract as a "matter of honor." Andrew Sullivan and others have suggested this and tied it [illogically in my opinion] to the otherwise quite sensible idea that tortured confessions in a legal system make no sense. I suspect that many of the ninty US Senators who voted for McCain's amendment [which says that torture is an absolute "no torture ever"] are really covering their political asses with "pieties about [being against] the evils of torture" while at the same time counting on the likelyhood that, in extremely serious cases, some "black ops" special forces or CIA guy somewhere will somehow do the dirty dead for us in secret and we won't have to know about it. In other words, we are just as hypocritical about this subject as we are about many others.