From Nucleus to Universe

Orders of Magnitude

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 ~ This blog is too cool.

Believe It...

Soothing Sights

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 ~ These places looks so astonishing it's hard to believe they exist? Guess I'll have to go see for myself. If I ever get done assembling this investor due diligence package.

I want to take this train...

Internet Safety

8 Steps to Keeping Your Computer Safe on the Internet

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 ~ Great summary and solid advice from my one-time Microsoft colleague Leo A. Notenboom, (© 2013) Reprinted with permission. Any typos or formatting screw-ups are mine.

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Internet Safety is difficult. yet critical. Here are the eight key steps to internet safety - steps to keep your computer safe on the internet.

Viruses & Spyware & Worms ... oh my!

The very concept of "Internet Safety" is almost an oxymoron these days.

It seems like not a day goes by where we don't hear about some new kind of threat aimed at wreaking havoc across machines connected to the internet.

Anti-Microsoft sentiment coupled with the massive installed base make Microsoft products, and particularly Microsoft Windows, an irresistible target for hackers and "script kiddies". In recent years, products like Adobe Reader, Java, Flash, Firefox and more have come under attack as their popularity has increased.

Even the Macintosh is no longer invulnerable.

Here are some things you can, and should, do to stay safe.

Climate Change Ocean Rise

Interactive Global Map

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 ~ What would Puget Sound look like if it were 5m higher? Among other changes:

• The Ports of Tacoma and Seattle are under water
• So is most of Sodo, Georgetown and several neighborhoods all the way to Tukwila
• A much smaller Everett is a narrow penisula jutting north from Mukilteo
• Mount Vernon is on the coast
• Tsawwassen is an island
• In British Columbia, all of Delta and Richmond, including Vancouver Airport, and most of Highway 99, is under the Strait of Georgia

How much will the oceans rise? No one knows for sure, but careful estimates over the next century are for 5m or more. Climate change also brings more frequent and ferocious storms. Storm surges can raise ocean levels 5m or more on their own.

Check out the interactive map to see the effect of rising ocean levels of 1 to 60m anywhere in the world.

Worthy Website—IV

Let's Go Drill the Arctic!

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 ~ This website has been around a while, but it has been freshened up lately because of Shell Oil's imminent plans to start exploratory drilling off the coast of Alaska. A sample crowd-sourced advertisement for Shell's "Let's Go!" campaign:

It takes a few minutes of poking around for most to realize that this is not an official Shell Oil website, but a very clever and detailed parody. Like all good satire, it is darkly humorous and all-too-plausible.

Worthy Website—III

The Dark Money Universe

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 ~ Citizens United has unleashed a supernova of cash into our political system, much of which remains utterly anonymous. Mother Jones has created a page showing what they call the final frontier of unlimited political money:

I'm seeing red. Click on the picture for the full interactive experience.

Worthy Website—II

Ocean Currents

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 ~ Following on my recent post of an entrancing wind map of the US, here's one animating global ocean currents:

Unlike the other, alas, it is not current, but historical. More here.

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Other worthy websites:
Animated Wind Map of the US
Want to Get Away?
Periodic Tables
The Earth
Political Horse Race
Be Funky

Worthy Website

Following Wind

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 ~ I've periodically enjoyed intresting and unusual web sites, especially those that are both useful and stylish, that are helpful with flair. So, I've decided to make it an irregular feature.

Thanks to my friend Stan Krute, here's an animated and hypnotic rendition of the way the wind blows in the US:

Some earlier worthy web sites:
Want to Get Away?
Periodic Tables
The Earth
Political Horse Race
Be Funky

Want To Get Away?

The World's Your Oyster

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 ~ Very cool web site that shows at a glance the cost of flying anywhere in the world:

The Caribbean is looking mighty nice about now...

Record Wind

In Two States

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 ~ The overheated and ignorant rhetoric on gas prices continues its steady drone.

Meanwhile, renewable energy from wind recently set records in two states.

Media Map

Who Reads What?

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 ~ Forbes has a really interesting interactive map that shows the primary source of news in each of the US states.

The most interesting result is that three states--Minnesota, Wisconsin and New Mexico--get their news from The Onion, a leading on-line humor and satire site. This is much like getting one's news from The Daily Show, but without the addition of any actual facts.

Also noteworthy:

Periodic Tables

Many Elements in Common

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 ~ The periodic table is a useful way to organize the natural elements based on their chemical and physical properties. While all such tables have the same logical organization, their actual display can be quite imaginative.

For example:

Here's a video showing the periodic table as a piece of furniture, with embedded samples:

The Earth

Beautiful Detail

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 ~ Check it out at 8000 x 8000 pixels.

Business Sociopaths

Milton Friedman was Wrong

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 ~ Milton Friedman writes in the first paragraph of his much-cited 1970 NYT Magazine essay:

Businessmen believe that they are defending free en­terprise when they declaim that business is not concerned "merely" with profit but also with promoting desirable "social" ends; that business has a "social conscience" and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing em­ployment, eliminating discrimination, avoid­ing pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of re­formers. In fact they are–or would be if they or anyone else took them seriously–preach­ing pure and unadulterated socialism.

Business has only one purpose—maximizing profits—and only one constituency whose desires should be heeded—its owners (shareholders.) Ayn Rand uses cartoonish caricatures in more than 1000 pages of turgid prose and to reach the same simple statement, and imputing an ethical foundation more pithily put in Wall Street—greed is good.

Events of the past few years have shown beyond any credible dispute that greed is good only for a privileged or lucky few; most have fared much worse due to the effects of others' greed.

Bully!

Teddy Roosevelt on Politicians

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 ~ A friend posted this quote today from Teddy Roosevelt talking about politicians:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

It applies to entrepreneurs equally well.

Pipeline Dreams

Keystone XL Fantasies

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 ~ The number and fervor of those seeking to stop the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline is awesome:

An estimated 10,000 to 12,000 protesters converged on the nation's capitol Sunday to press President Obama to block construction of the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport tar-sands oil from Canada to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.

There were more than enough protesters on hand to link arms and entirely encircle the White House compound.

Later today, and doubtless in a complete coincidence of timing, it leaked out that Obama may defer the decision (which he will make personally) until after the 2012 elections. The delay will likely please few, and make KXL even more of a political football; it's highly unlikely the issue will engender a thoughtful, fact-based election debate on energy policy.

Instead, we will get the usual dissembling from the API and others about how the project is supposedly a choice between developing desperately needed sources of energy in an environmentally responsible manner or not developing them at all. And of course, we'll hear about all those jobs it would allegedly create. Never mind that the job figures are likely bogus, and the numbers simply output of the fossil fuel echo chamber.

Expect overheated accusations against Obama for delaying the decision, and much wailing and rending of garments about the unconscionable cost to the Big Oil entities involved. Those of us advocating a saner path—the commitment to renewable energy sources—can lean back in our chairs, arms crossed in sardonic satisfaction. KXL makes strange political bedfellows, is a terrible idea worthy of fervent opposition, and it's hard to be sympathetic to the mighty fossil lobby over a delay of only a year or two. Not until they see the kinds of delays that renewable energy projects suffer should their complaints be prioritized.

Horse Race

Who's Ahead for the GOP Nomination?

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 ~ Pundits and talking heads needn't bother with messy issues and difficult policy analysis! Now we can all follow the action with this elegant and essential animated graphic:

Playing the animation shows the horse race from March 2010 to date. A news ticker displays contemporaneous events.

While the concept is amusing, it is also informative: notice how each new entrant initially sprints away from the laggards up near to the leaders, but then falls back. These nags may look appealing at first, but they can't keep it up.

The treatment is very accurate, but light on some of the details. All horses are accurately shown being ridden by jockeys; however, the jockey's colors (Koch Industries, Bank of America, etc.) are tastefully omitted. Even more generously, all candidates are represented by entire horses; some would be more accurately depicted by just the back end.

"So, What are You Doing?"

"(These Days?)"

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~ I've been asked this, or questions like it, quite a bit lately. Perhaps, thanks to this lovely turnover economy, it's because many of us are changing positions, jobs or careers at a frenetic pace. Perhaps, unfortunately, it's because my LinkedIn page doesn't provide the simplest summary. Or perhaps it's because today's my birthday, and birthdays are a great time to ping friends and colleagues with such whazzup questions.

It's hard even for my close friends to figure it out; the line-up changes all the time. And indeed, I need several prosthetic memory devices (laptop, Droid, calendar, and many, many lists) to stay on top of it myself.

While I do consulting and contract work, what I really do is serve as a kind of entrepreneur-at-large, pursuing several opportunities where I can help turn the chaos of a general idea into a growing, successful business.

The current line-up? My favorites (that I can talk about):

Shale Game

Does Anyone Know the Rules?

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~ Shale oil is both being pushed ever-harder, and is under growing scrutiny for its impacts and its evident lack of sustainability. Before posting some current thoughts, I am reposting my earlier overview from the waning months of the Bush Administration.

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Monday the U.S. Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) finalized regulations to encourage oil shale development on federal lands. The rules specify royalty rates and lease sizes and are intended to create a regulatory framework to encourage commercial development, primarily in the so-called Green River Formation, a two million acre tract of federal land straddling Colorado, Utah and Wyoming that optimists in the Fossil Industry think may contain perhaps 800 billion barrels of "recoverable" oil.

"Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."
—Attributed to Samuel Johnson by James Boswell

Electric Cars

Back to the Future?

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~ The first practical electric cars were built more than 100 years ago, back before gasoline and other fossil fuels came to dominate transportation starting in the 1910's.

What's surprising is not that such electric cars were built, but that they used standard battery technology then available and boasted some of the same features of modern electric cars, including 50-mile or longer driving ranges between charges.