Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Micellar Nanocontainers Distribute to Defined Cytoplasmic Organelles
Translation:
Nanorobots have been invented that are
small enough to pass through cell walls
In the future, doctors could inject
patients with zillions of these.
The smart little critters would know where
to go to deliver their drug payloads.
An Egyptian Diary
Excerpts from the diary of an Egyptian doctor...
April 21
Cairo is still on the surface the same but when you dig deep you find a hidden Tsunami about to be unleashed. There is a significant sense of uncertainty, anxiety, and apprehension. There is no real government. The police force is still absent and the state of lawlessness prevails.
April 21
Cairo is still on the surface the same but when you dig deep you find a hidden Tsunami about to be unleashed. There is a significant sense of uncertainty, anxiety, and apprehension. There is no real government. The police force is still absent and the state of lawlessness prevails.
April 25
It is very remarkable what has happened in Egypt in the last 4 months. At the beginning there was a lot of excitement about the revolution and its unlimited potential. Now this is the day after and things are turning fast into the unknown. Simply put no one knows what will happen in the next few months.
Now there is a state of chaos in the country. There is no effective government. There is no law and no police force. That has allowed the criminals to roam the city and commit crimes with impunity. There are many stories of people stopping motorists and forcing them to sign a sell contract to sell their cars by force for free to those criminals. Even some people started building illegal buildings with no permits since no one is watching.
But the most significant thing is the emergence of a new group called “Salafeyeen” who aspire to return Egypt to the early days of Islam. I had never heard of them before. They are very radical and they are not bashful to broadcast their manifesto which is essentially against any progress, against women and against Christians. By comparison the Muslim brotherhood is like the Boy Scout.
10 Steps Ahead
Secrets of Business Visionaries....
Author Erik Calonius says:
"The most transformational ideas are almost always
the silliest when they first pop out of the egg.
Who needs a personal computer?
Why would any adult want to watch a full-length feature cartoon?
No one will ever be able to get a heavier than air machine to fly!
Most great ideas are not only considered silly,
but are rejected by the establishment....
"All visionaries have an idea that moves them.
They have a mission.
And nothing, no personal or commercial obstacle,
will stop them. What’s also common is that no
amount of success assuages their drive;
once the reach one goal, they begin towards another....
"In order to make a dream fly,
you need people who believe in you.
You have to scale up that dream from
your personal fantasy to one that others share....
"Emotional contagion is the odd way
that humans can pass one emotion on
from one person to another,
like bees in the hive shaking to their mates
until they entire hive is vibrating.
What’s amazing is that in businesses run
by visionaries, the emotions of the visionary leader
are mimicked by the employees.
The entire hive is alive.
The power of one human being extends to
hundreds and thousands of others....
"Visionaries do seem to have many gifts:
Emotional intelligence, intuition, courage,
persistence, that ability to see patterns and things
that the rest of us just miss.
So can we do that, too? The answer is yes.
There are ways to spike our emotional intelligence.
We can use intuition forcefully as well, once we
understand something about it.
Courage can be raised through practice....
"The most successful visionaries are familiar with their intuition.
They can sense when their gut feelings may not be accurate.
They know when it would be better to punt the decision to
someone else. But they also know
when their gut is telling them to take
one particular path, rather than another...."
Monday, April 25, 2011
A Joke
When Eagleman was a boy, his favorite joke
had a turtle walking into a sheriff’s office.
“I’ve just been attacked by three snails!” he shouts.
“Tell me what happened,” the sheriff replies.
The turtle shakes his head:
“I don’t know, it all happened so fast.”
From a profile of a scientist who studies
perceptions of time in the new issue
of The New Yorker.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
What a Way To Go...
He died of a perforated colon at the age
of 64 while on a South American cruise,
having swallowed the toothpick
that speared the olive in his martini.
I wonder if this story is
ginned up.
It left me shaken.
Not stirred.
From the wonderfully lovely
blog Slow Love Life
by Dominique Browning,
the former editor-in-chief of
House & Garden
That's a Lot of Malware
The new study reveals that while the threat
level to critical infrastructures has accelerated,
the response level has not, even after the majority of
respondents frequently found malware designed to sabotage
their systems (nearly 70 percent), and nearly half of respondents
in the electric industry sector reported that
they found Stuxnet on their systems
As Superman Would See Metropolis
Amazing video of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty
taken by a camera mounted to a remote-controlled model plane.
"Pilot" 'Zippy' Pirker
says his craft, the Zephyr,
can be controlled at
a distance of 27 miles.
And, below, Luke Skywalker
meets Maria von Trapp...
And, below, Luke Skywalker
meets Maria von Trapp...
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
The Essence
The 5 Key Traits...
1 — Passionate Curiosity
"Though chief executives are paid to have answers, their greatest contributions to their organizations may be asking the right questions. They recognize that they can’t have the answer to everything, but they can push their company in new directions and marshal the collective energy of their employees by asking the right questions."
2 — Battle-hardened Confidence
"Do they tend to blame failures on factors they cannot control, or do they believe they have the ability to shape events and circumstances by making the most of what they can control? It’s a positive attitude mixed with a sense of purpose and determination"
3 —Team Smarts
"Team smarts is also about having good “peripheral vision” for sensing how people react to one another, not just how they act."
4 —Simple Mindset
"Most senior executives want the same thing from people who present to them: be concise, get to the point, make it simple."
5 — Fearlessness
"They’re looking for calculated and informed risk-taking, but mostly they want people to do things — and not just what they’re told to do."
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
All White
“I feel like the whales are talking to me with their eyes.”
So said one viewer of an exhibition of life-size photographs of whales.
As the briny Fates would have it,
I am rereading 'Moby Dick,'
I am rereading 'Moby Dick,'
a ceaseless cetacean spouting forth of quotes:
"The universal thump is passed around."
[Ship captains] "make me jump from spar to spare,
like a grasshopper in a May meadow."
"I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts."
"The great floodgates of the wonderworld swung open."
"Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian."
"Things that God would have us do are hard for us to do....
It is in...disobeying ourselves, wherein the
hardness of obeying God consists."
"Things that God would have us do are hard for us to do....
It is in...disobeying ourselves, wherein the
hardness of obeying God consists."
"Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being."
"Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and
not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is on its prow."
"Conscience is the wound."
Monday, April 18, 2011
What Every Young Girl Should Know
And as the ad says, "Keep your utensils clean."
Art by master illustrator J.C. Leyendecker....
He did a New Year's Eve baby every year
for the Saturday Evening Post from 1908 to 1943.
It's a medieval notion of rebirth dating to the 15th century,
but Leyendecker is believed to be the first person
to popularize the image in the modern mind.
Some of his babes were
not so heartwarming....
(From Today's Inspiration by Leif Peng.)
Our Hero
Now inspecting crippled reactors in Japan.
The company's stock has tripled in the past two years.
Our Neighborhood
New views from NASA.
Here are two of 2.5 million new images.
And another more Earthbound view....
Friday, April 15, 2011
China's $3 Trillion in Reserves...
China right now has its US reserves parked in US treasuries. The logical spot for some of those reserves is US corporations and US assets, returning the dollars where they mathematically must return.
Now imagine the shock in Congress were China to make an offer to buy Exxon-Mobile, Boeing, and every toll-road and bridge in the country.
At some point, such a shock will come. Mathematically it must.
Now imagine the shock in Congress were China to make an offer to buy Exxon-Mobile, Boeing, and every toll-road and bridge in the country.
At some point, such a shock will come. Mathematically it must.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Quote of the Day
It is a shame that people like Malcolm Bryan,
a former president of the Atlanta Fed,
aren't still around.
As quoted from a 1957 speech
he described the net effect of "premeditated inflation"
(his term for a little bit of Fed-induced inflation) on
the average money-saving citizen as follows:
"Hold still, little fish. All we intend to do is gut you."
On Happiness
From a review of the new book "Obliquity"
which contends that the best way to
achieve one's results
indirectly.
"Happiness is one of those goals.
[Author John] Kay quotes John Stuart Mill,
who framed what has come to be known
as the happiness paradox:
"Those only are happy . . . who
have their minds fixed on some object other
than their own happiness."
Or, as Hawthorne said: "Happiness
is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just
beyond your grasp, but which, if you will
sit down quietly, may alight upon you."
Obliquity is the condition
of being oblique—
a deviation from the vertical or horizontal.
It also refers to the angle between the plane
of the earth’s orbit and the plane of the equator, a.k.a....
The obliquity of the ecliptic.
An expression that will
mystify all who hear it,
except astronomers.
The U.S. Plot to Steal the Amazon
This is a good one.
Brazilians think we want their river, the rain forest,
the spider monkeys, all of it....
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Bio Robots
The robotic hummingbird....
It weighs 1/10th of an ounce.
The bio-snake....It swims!
Yikes.
Attend the International Workshop on Bio-Inspired Robots....
@ Chapel Hill
Your average, everyday personalized license plate
in Chapel Hill.
(That's an '@' sign in the middle
of the plate.)
Friday, April 8, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Good Work...
William & Mary glee club Common Ground performs
for intellectually and developmentally-disabled clients
of The Ark of Greater Williamsburg.
Williamsburg Presbyterian Church—
April 4, 2011.
The glee club "In Accord" breezes through an
impromptu version of 'You Found Me' by The Fray.
impromptu version of 'You Found Me' by The Fray.
Captured on their way
to the same venue.
to the same venue.
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