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Hypnotism - The Real Deal??

2010-08-24T20:57:00.002-04:00

Have you seen a hypnotic demonstration and wondered is this for real? Are these "volunteers" hypnotically eating wasabi like its ice cream really actors in on the joke?

Last week while cruising to beautiful Halifax, a lost "Las Vegas Hypnotist" found her way into the traditional mix of "cruiship" comedians and musicals. Three performances were listed, 7, 8:30 and 10pm. Resolved to expose any shills, I planned to attend multiple performances. Yet, family obligations to eat a ton prevented me from attending the earlier shows.

More aggressive tatics were called for, I volunteered myself onstage and my sister and two cousins also volunteered (independent of my skepticism), along with about ten others. Once we were sitting on stage, she asked the audience to be silent so she could commence the "hypnotic induction" booh-ha. She told everyone to close their eyes relax their neck. She came by and pressed our shoulders while soothingly incanting "double your relaxation." This went on with us progressively relaxing our upper-body and eventually leaning our head on our neighboring hypnotic patient. Finally with a countdown from 5, we were supposed to be in a hypnotic state. I felt relaxed at this point. We were told to pick-up an imagninary instrument and join the imaginary orchestra playing on-stage. My eyes were closed, and I didn't feel like picking up an instrument and air-guitaring it on stage, and so decided to remain still. I was tapped on the shoulder and told to sit-back with the audience. At this point a few others were also "tapped". Then the antics continued, with one guy being instructed to be an officer who has to stop the audience from laughing, but can't curse. Then everyone pretended to dance like this rag-doll the hypnotist flapped around.
Anyway, all this was very entertaining to the audience, as the people on stage were doing ridiculous things. But was it real?? Or were these hypno-zombies just expressing their "need-attention" chromosome? Consider when the hypnotist was recruiting volunteers from the audience, she said she wanted "fun loving, outgoing people". I'm just a skeptic, but the rest of the volunteers presumbly fit this profile. I recognized one guy on stage from the ship's American Idol. To give you a sense of his personality, he chose Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" for the karaoke competition. Needless to say, he went along with the rouse and even convinced some of his more gullible relatives. When I talked with him after the show, he admitted that he was just going along with it for kicks. Most of the approximately 10 people who remained on stage and appeared "hypnotized" said they were either not hypnotized or that it "wore off quickly". The 2 remaining people who insisted that they were hypnotized, may really have been hypnotized. However, I think these folks are probably fibbing, either to brag about the experience or for the same reason an adult does not inform a child who Santa Claus is. I even heard one volunteer change their story depending on whether they were talking to a skeptic or amazed audience member. Telling the skeptic it wore off quickly and the believer that they were truly hypnotized.
I'm still skeptical.

WSJ: Tax Me if You Can

2009-03-20T15:13:00.002-04:00

Japanese Astronaut Testing 'Odor-Free' Clothes

2009-03-18T21:02:00.002-04:00

One small step for man and giant leap for people who hate laundry.

He can wear his trunks (underwear) more than a week," Koji Yanagawa, director of JAXA's Human Space Technology and Astronaut Department

Where can I preorder?

WSJ: Tax Me If You Can

2009-03-16T18:29:00.000-04:00

We're constantly told that taxes don't matter to business and investors, but listen to that noted supply-side economist, Alec Baldwin. The actor recently rebuked New York Governor David Paterson for threatening to try to help close the state's $7 billion budget deficit by canceling a 35% tax credit for films shot in the Big Apple.

"I'm telling you right now," Mr. Baldwin declared, "if these tax breaks are not reinstated into the budget, film production in this town is going to collapse, and television is going to collapse and it's all going to go to California." Well, well. Apparently taxes do matter, at least when it comes to filming "30 Rock" in Manhattan.

Believe it or not, Mr. Baldwin's views are shared across the movie industry, which is pleading in state capitals across the country for most-favored-tax status. Hollywood productions are highly mobile and can film just about anywhere. So they have taken to shopping around the country -- and the world -- for the most lucrative tax avoidance deal.

According to the Motion Picture Association of America, nearly 40 states have corporate tax carve outs or generous cash rebates to lure movie studios to their states. In Michigan, producers negotiated a 40% tax credit on their production costs. A bipartisan bill introduced in the Texas legislature last week and supported by Governor Rick Perry would allocate $60 million into the Texas Film Incentive Program. Members of the Screen Actors Guild held a rally last week in front of the state capitol urging the tax breaks.

In some cases these state tax credits exceed a company's tax liabilities, which means that Disney, Dreamworks and others can get a net cash subsidy from state taxpayers. "In many states, today, movie producers actually pay a negative tax," says a Tax Foundation report on the subject.

The Hollywood studios are ruthless profit maximizers and are expert at playing state suitors against one another. In the midst of California's recent $42 billion budget showdown, producers threatened to leave the state if the legislature didn't offer more inducements. So lawmakers in Sacramento gave the industry a new $250 million deal to stay put.

The film "Annapolis," about the Naval Academy, was supposed to be shot in Maryland, but producers negotiated a better offer in Pennsylvania shortly before filming was set to begin. So they packed the trucks and drove up the interstate to save $10 million on their taxes. A film based on the John Grisham novel, "The Runaway Jury," is set in Mississippi but filmed in Louisiana thanks to tax incentives.

Of course, this is the same Hollywood film industry whose members fund causes and candidates that favor raising taxes on everyone else. The Motion Picture Production and Distribution industry last year gave $14 million in political contributions: 89% went to pro-tax Democrats. A few years ago, director Rob Reiner funded a successful California initiative to raise the state income tax rate to more than 10%. Unlike a film shoot, which can relocate on a moment's notice, your average small businessman in Encino is stuck paying the highest tax rate in the country -- at least until he gives up and moves to Reno.

We've got nothing against industries trying to reduce their tax liability. Shareholders expect nothing less. When we asked the Motion Picture Association to justify these tax breaks, a spokesman gladly pointed to studies showing that the industry is creating thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars of new investment in the likes of Michigan and New York. Fair enough. This is called "dynamic analysis." The movie industry's tax machinations are irrefutable evidence that low tax rates do affect business decisions.

As a general principle, however, states shouldn't chase smoke stacks or film production crews with specific tax breaks. It makes much more sense for cities, states and the federal government to lower tax rates for everyone. New York City can survive without Alec Baldwin and "30 Rock," but it can't function without the thousands of small businesses that pay taxes without the benefit of lobbyists and loopholes.

What is this?

2009-03-04T17:20:00.002-05:00

Guess what this is?

Funny Pic

2009-02-27T15:58:00.000-05:00

Dear Mr. President - Address the democracy shortage

2009-02-26T00:52:00.000-05:00

Address the democracy shortage

BY JOSH KORNBLUTH ’80

It is well known that during most of President George W. Bush’s tenure, the United States has been exporting its democracy to countries around the world. While there can be no doubt that this policy has been motivated by pure altruism, the time has come for us to be a bit more selfish about how and where we allocate our greatest national invention. The peoples of the Middle East and other regions have been receiving enormous infusions of American democracy for long enough that they should be ready to begin producing their own, home-grown democracies; there are even reports of a democracy surplus in Iraq! At the same time, here at home our democracy levels — severely depleted by the recent election — are dangerously low.

If this trend continues, we will find ourselves in an unprecedented situation: America will be forced to become a net importer of democracy. This would be a national shame, and I respectfully urge President Obama to address the impending domestic democracy shortage by taking the following bold steps:

1. Draw on our vast underground reserves. There is an ocean of untapped democracy that we have yet to make use of. Much of it lies beneath the surface of our culture, hidden by a gaudy blanket of consumerism. Drill, baby, drill!

2. Think outside the ballot box. While most of our democratic energy has been poured into elections, at other times our overall capacity has been severely underutilized. Encourage the daily generation of democracy at the grassroots level.

3. Promote sustainable democracy by 2050. The above suggestions, though necessary, are stopgap at best. Ultimately, to survive the democratic shortages that will inevitably arise from time to time, Americans must learn to conserve. Let us target 2050 as the year by which we will have reduced America’s “civic footprint” to a size commensurate with our share of the planet’s total population. Yes, we can!

Josh Kornbluth ’80 (joshkornbluth.com) writes and performs comedic monologues and is the author of one book, Red Diaper Baby, a collection of three monologues. To see a clip from his “Citizen Josh” monologue, go to paw.princeton.edu.

Wedding Crasher India - The Procession

2009-01-10T19:17:00.007-05:00

So during my recent trip to India I fortunately had the opportunity to attend a few traditional Indian weddings. And by few I mean five. Just in case that doesn't sound like a lot for a two-week trip, Indian weddings can be multiple day affairs. Why so many Weddings you may ask? In the Hindu faith the end of the year has many astronomically favorable days to get married. I wish I asked which constellation or planet make the December sky auspicious for marriage.

My introduction to Indian wedding party was just after dusk. The standard Indian driving soundtrack of two-stroke rickshaw engines and a billion horns was interrupted by explosions. These explosions were too close for the comfort of my ears and body. Fireworks for a competing wedding were being launched on a busy thoroughfare. These were not tiny sparklers. These were freakin' rockets. And we had to drive past this launch pad to get to our intended wedding.

Ok, so we get to the correct wedding's "party plot" park the bike and walk to intercept the "wedding procession." In case you're not familiar with "wedding procession," the procession has a blinking LED horse drawn carriage that carries the groom and some family at the rear of the procession. This is followed by the Wedding party's dancing friends and family. Both sides the procession are flanked by women carrying lamps on their heads. Then in front of the dancering is a full marching band plus sound amplification (to round out the deafening). And leading the pack is a brigade of children launching full-fledged fireworks. And like most dangerous things in India, fireworks are not considered dangerous.

So back to finding the wedding procession. We parked and are running to where we suspect our procession is. We intercept a chariot. It's the wrong wedding, but the right wedding is taking the same procession path but in the opposite direction. And actually the two weddings are converging into each other at that very moment. So as we make our way over to the other wedding party all hell breaks out. With my luck the two firework fronts of the two weddings converge just as we're crossing over to the other wedding. I felt like I was in no man's land. The fireworks begin to go off again. I almost got knocked over from the strong shock and jump behind some parked tata jeep for cover. Did I say I don't like being close to fireworks being shot off? The wedding procession is quite visually stunning with the flowing colorful saris and kutas. And crazy uncles seem to pop out and pull me into the dance marathon. The procession eventually reaches the party plot which seems to already have nearly a thousand people.

... To be continued ... More on Indian weddings ...

From India 2008

India - Thoughts - Part 1

2009-01-09T03:28:00.004-05:00

So I just got back from India... While the trip is still fresh in my mind I would like present a thought or two each day...

Today's discussion topic will be arrival at Mumbai's International Airport (Chhatrapati Shivaji International). Indian friends of mine tried to psychologically prepare me for the unpleasant smell I would encounter upon the jet doors opening following arrival in Mumbai. On descent I had a birdseye view of the ramshackle corrugated aluminum shacks that surround the airport. While taxiing after touchdown the smell of Mumbai and the adjacent "slumpockets" started to permeate into the plane. I turned off my ventilation nozzle, but it was hopeless, my nostrils were doomed. I was surprised at what little separation there is from the airport to these homes. In the US homes this close would require all kinds of variances and soundproofing. I couldn't help but wonder whether these shacks lining the airport in Mumbai occasionally get knocked down from taxiing planes' exhaust.

After picking up my baggage from the carousel I proceeded through customs. I expected long lines and I heard stories of officials demanding petty bribes. What I saw was two international flights arriving and the customs officials completely overwhelmed. There was one X-Ray machine belonging to the customs office for a flood of people. This x-ray machine had a conveyor belt sorely in need of some WD-40. The customs officials then waved most of my flight straight out of customs despite many customs officials looking rather idle. After passing customs I had to recheck my bag onto my domestic flight, so my bag needed to be x-rayed again and dropped off. This x-ray machine is in a narrow hallway, barely wide enough to fit one cart through. The following cart traffic chaos was a microcosm of the chaotic driving I would soon witness. After waiting on the long x-ray line and the push-fest for re-checking bags, I was now finally ready to wait on the line for the bus to the domestic terminal (Mind you, this is over 24hrs after leaving LA). But before you enter the domestic terminal you must go through security. Like most security in India, it is just a gesture. In retrospect, this was the tightest security check I saw in India.

From observation, metal detectors are improperly used almost uniformly throughout India. At a railway station, malls, etc, metal detectors were just used to check if people had something metal - the source of the metal is not really of concern. Posh malls had security. At one such mall, I was impressed when the security guard inspected the underbody of a van with this special mirror contraption. Then I saw the guard proceed to open the trunk and wave his beeping handheld metal detector along the interior of the trunk. After that I realized he probably wouldn't know terrorist device from his elbow.

The connecting flight to Gujarat was barely an hour long and not at any obvious mealtime, but in Jet Airways tradition a meal was served. I didn't even have time to finish my meal before the tray tables had to be stowed for landing!!

How Phelps Became the Face of PureSport

2008-12-03T14:12:00.001-05:00

As history's greatest Olympian, Michael Phelps earns an estimated $5 million a year by endorsing some of the world's best-known credit-card, hotel and cereal brands.

But his appearance as pitchman for a Texas protein-powder maker might go down in the annals of sports marketing as one of the most unusual deals ever.

Before he earned his eight gold medals and became a global celebrity at the Beijing Olympics, Mr. Phelps and three teammates agreed to endorse PureSport, a protein mix made by a tiny Austin, Texas, company that didn't exist three years ago.

The agreement with Mr. Phelps and three other Olympic swimmers -- Aaron Peirsol, Brendan Hansen and Ian Crocker -- gave the University of Texas spinoff a dizzying start.

The foursome, introduced to the company while training in Austin last year, took a 5% stake in exchange for their endorsements.

But it is Mr. Phelps's new star power that has provided the seven-person Human Performance Labs LLC with financing and access to scarce shelf space at retailers. The drink mix, initially sold through specialty shops, recently won a coveted spot at the Sports Authority, a 400-store sporting-goods chain.

"Phelps was the clincher," says Terry Gilmore, an oil, gas and real estate investor who put up nearly $5 million in January to launch the company.

Mr. Phelps rarely enters the water these days. The up to six-hour daily workouts that included 10,000 meters in the pool, plus weight training, are a memory for the time being.

The strapping Olympian is changing into a spindly couch potato. His once-bulky chest now appears to sink in from his shoulders rather than puff out.

He orders cheeseburgers and fries for lunch. If he has no corporate obligations, he says he tries to make it out of bed at his home in Baltimore for the final morning edition of ESPN's SportsCenter. He often misses it. Then, he watches a couple hours of television, may talk University of Michigan football with his friends, catch a movie, and another day is done.

"Doing nothing is actually pretty easy," he says.

The self-imposed, six-month layoff, the longest since he became serious about swimming at age 11, will end in mid-February, when Mr. Phelps plans to begin training for the 2009 swimming season and starts his long march to the 2012 Olympics in London. He insists PureSport's drinks will be part of that training.

In Beijing, every time Mr. Phelps emerged from the pool at the Water Cube, a coach handed him a plastic bottle filled with PureSport's protein and carbohydrate-filled cocktail. "About halfway through the meet, people started knocking on my door asking me what I was drinking and if they could have some," Mr. Phelps said during a recent interview.

Today, the company puts Mr. Phelps and his crooked smile wherever it can -- on packaging, store displays and in retail store appearances. PureSport can't afford national television commercials or print campaigns, so Mr. Phelps has become the core of its marketing campaign.

Last month, Mr. Phelps traveled to Chicago to celebrate PureSport hitting the shelves at the Sports Authority. Some 200 people slept outside overnight to meet him in Chicago, and 1,500 arrived for the event, which won television coverage on several local stations.

"We get him for at least seven days a year, and we book the hell out of him," says Michael Humphrey, chief executive of Human Performance Labs and a former sales executive with Broadcast.com and CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster. "Everything we can do to connect him to our brand, we'll do it."

That puts PureSport among the rarified list of big-name brands. Mr. Phelps has endorsements with VISA Inc., Hilton Hotels Corp., AT&T Inc., Kellogg Co., and Speedo International Ltd, among others, according to his agent, Peter Carlisle of Octagon, the Virginia-based sports-marketing firm.

Ryan Schinman, chief executive of Platinum Rye Entertainment, a celebrity broker for advertising campaigns, said the intense connection with a tiny start-up poses a serious risk.

"If it fails, does he want to be so closely associated with a losing company?" Mr. Schinman said.

PureSport is hardly as well-known as Gatorade, but if the company is to succeed, it will need Mr. Phelps off the couch and doing what he does best: swimming, winning, and publicly drinking that protein cocktail.

Funny Daily Princetonian Video

2008-11-21T11:27:00.001-05:00

Homeless man with sign "Obama won election. Where's my change?"

2008-11-09T02:38:00.002-05:00

"Dear Leader" needs more photoshop skillz

2008-11-07T15:58:00.004-05:00

Courtesy of the BBC, you can see N. Korea's "Dear Leader" needs more photoshop skillz to fake his great health... The difference in leg shadows of the soldiers and "Dear Leader" give it away...

Montreal comedians prank-call Sarah Palin

2008-11-02T03:34:00.003-05:00

Prank call to Sarah Palin.
Not convinced that this prank is actually w/ Sarah Palin. But in any case it's hilarious.

Slacker Nation? Young Japanese Shun Promotions

2008-10-31T20:34:00.000-04:00

Slacker Nation? Young Japanese Shun Promotions

'Hodo-Hodo' Favor Humdrum Jobs Even as Recession Looms

TOKYO -- Hidekazu Nishikido, a 24-year-old agent at a staffing company, recently got promoted to help manage a small group of employees. The new job means a higher salary and a better title.

But he isn't happy about it. Now he often works past 10 p.m., leaving him less time with his girlfriend. So Mr. Nishikido flatly told his bosses at R-live Inc. he isn't interested in further promotions.

"My job is important, but it's not what makes me tick," Mr. Nishikido says.

In a country once proud of its success-driven "salarymen," managers are grappling with a new phenomenon: Many young workers are shunning choice promotions -- even forgoing raises -- in favor of humdrum jobs with minimal responsibilities.

Even as Japan faces a sharp recession, civil servants are opting out of career-advancing exams and information-technology workers are flocking to headhunters to switch to less-demanding careers. A study this year by the consulting firm Towers Perrin found just 3% of Japanese workers say they're putting their full effort into their jobs -- the lowest of 18 countries surveyed.

That's prompting companies to craft delicate strategies to nudge young workers up the corporate ladder. "I tell them to break news of promotions gently," says Makoto Iwade, a lawyer who advises companies on labor relations. "They should feel employees out first to see if they're ready. Don't shock them."

Employment experts have begun to call these workers hodo-hodo zoku, or the "so-so folks." They say these workers, mostly in their 20s and early 30s, are sapping Japan's international competitiveness at a time when the aging country must raise its productivity to keep the economy growing.

"They'll ruin Japan with their lax work ethic," says labor consultant Yukiko Takita. "They're supposed to be leaders of the next generation."

Japan's once widespread practice of lifetime employment used to make loyal workers unlikely to reject promotions. In the 1990s, the country began grappling with the emergence of "freeters," young workers who hop from one casual job to the next. But the so-so folks are an even greater concern because, as full-time employees, they're at the heart of corporate Japan, Ms. Takita says.

Signs of hodo-hodo are widespread. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government, a destination for the city's elite, says only 14% of eligible employees took higher-level exams for management positions in 2007 -- down from 40% three decades ago. The electronics giant Sanyo Electric Co. says it's having an increasingly harder time filling demanding management positions like supervisors for overseas factories.

Information-technology job consultants at Intelligence Ltd., one of Japan's top recruitment agencies, report a recent rise in people looking to switch jobs not to get ahead, but to get out of positions they say are too demanding. "They find responsibilities a chore," says consultant Yoshihiko Fujita.

In a sign of the times, "Otaryman," a comic-book series about a less-than-driven salaryman, has become one of this year's surprise hits. In the book, the protagonist passes his days worrying about his colleagues' files spilling onto his desk rather than trying to impress bosses. "He just plods along (in) life, and has very small ambitions," says Makoto Yoshitani, the series's 28-year-old author. "I think people my age find that comforting."

Some authors even have started condoning this laid-back approach. "Slow Career: Job Survival for People Not Rushing Career Advancement" is one popular tome, with chapters like "Forget goals, just stay true to yourself" and "Not everybody needs to become a leader."

Chiaki Arai, who has written about the hodo-hodo phenomenon in newspapers, blames Japan's economic woes during the long slump in the 1990s and early 2000s. He says young workers saw older generations throw themselves into their work, only to face job and pay cuts as companies restructured. Now, young employees are cautious about giving too much of themselves -- even if it means less money or prestige, Dr. Arai says.

Moreover, getting a promotion no longer means getting such a big pay raise. The wage difference between managerial and rank-and-file positions has shrunk over the past decade as companies cut compensation amid restructuring. In 2005, division managers were paid about 2.2 times the rank-and-file worker, down from about 2.7 times in 1985.

With management posts increasingly harder to fill, Sanyo recently started holding compulsory career-training retreats for workers turning 30. At the retreats, executives give pep talks "to remind them their best years are still ahead," says Jun Nakamura, Sanyo's head of human resources. "We want to tell this generation that though it's been tough, they shouldn't give up yet."

Dai-ichi Mutual Life Insurance Co. is finding it so hard to identify managerial candidates that it has turned to the clerical workers it calls office ladies to fill positions. Promoting these women -- most of whom are in their 40s and joined the company in a non-career track -- would have been unthinkable 10 years ago, employment experts say. "I never imagined I'd be called on for a management post," says Saori Kakegawa, a participant in the program.

Law firms say the trend has companies scrambling to seek legal counsel on whether they can fire employees who refuse promotions. CyberAgent Inc., a Tokyo-based Internet advertising agency, is offering the unambitious a different way out. The company puts these workers on a "specialist" track where they can remain rank-and-file employees but have similar salaries as managers. This ensures the company "doesn't lose qualified employees by pressuring them to accept promotions," says Tetsuhito Soyama, general manager for personnel at the company.

Tsugumi Uemura, a public-relations worker at the company, opted out of the management track in April in part because she didn't feel ready. "I want to be a different kind of role model," says Ms. Uemura, who is 30.

For older-generation managers, and even some younger ones, the hodo-hodo mentality is difficult to understand.

Miya Matsumoto, manager of the laid-back Mr. Nishikido, says she's tried everything -- from screening success-themed films like "The Devil Wears Prada" to throwing after-work drinking parties -- to push her subordinates to be more ambitious. But her team members rarely show interest in bigger responsibilities, she says. She recently caught one of them napping on a train during work.

The 31-year-old Ms. Matsumoto says she threw herself into her job, often staying overnight in the office to get work done. "Don't you want to get ahead? Don't you want to get rich and drive a nice car?" she prodded Mr. Nishikido recently.

But Mr. Nishikido says he finds Ms. Matsumoto's enthusiasm off-putting. He says he was especially turned off when he learned she had left her sick baby at home with her husband to come to the office (Ms. Matsumoto says work emergencies sometimes must come first.)

"That's definitely not the life I want," Mr. Nishikido says. "No way."

How Not to Run Meetings

2008-10-29T19:55:00.000-04:00

Imagine a doctor rolling a patient into surgery saying, "If I didn't have to operate on people, I'd like my job a lot more." Or LeBron James telling a reporter, "If it weren't for the games and the practices, I'd really enjoy being an NBA player." Ridiculous, right?

Now imagine an executive saying, "If I didn't have to go to meetings, I'd like my job a lot more." Of course, I've heard this many times from the senior executives I've consulted to in my career. At first glance, it seems understandable, even humorous. But in reality, there is something very wrong about it.

The truth is, meetings should be the most important central activity in the life of the leader in most organizations. Meetings, for instance, are where generals decide whether to go to war, where executives decide how to deal with a changing market, and where mothers and fathers decide what to do about a family crisis.

But most meetings are run terribly. Leaders too often fail to entertain conflict, create relevant agendas, and squash show-and-tell presentations and lengthy department-by-department reporting that puts people to sleep.

The biggest problem with meetings, though, is that they so often mix tactical and strategic topics in the same conversation. A good way to understand this problem is to think about how it plagues us in our homes.

My wife and I often have our "meetings" in the morning when we're getting ready for our day. Our conversation goes something like this: "Who's picking the kids up from school? Do you think we should try to have another baby? What are we going to do about dinner tonight? Where should be go on vacation this year?" We leave having no idea what we accomplished, wondering if we were just brainstorming, making decisions or thinking out loud.

The same thing happens during so many of the executive staff meetings I've observed. Leaders shift the topic of conversation from extremely tactical issues like closing a sale, to a long-term topic like how to position the company for new competition, to more intermediate topics like how much to invest in research and development over the next eighteen months.

The thing is, even the most intelligent human beings cannot make the contextual shifts that are necessary to have all of these conversations in the same setting. And they certainly can't do so in a way that ensures that everyone in the room is on the same page. Some members of a team, either because of functional responsibility or personality, will take a conservative, protective view of an issue, while others will be more creative or daring. The meeting will drift back and forth until time has run out and everyone leaves frustrated that the most important topics weren't discussed and that no clear decisions have been made.

What leaders really need are different kinds of meetings – shorter ones, perhaps, but separate nonetheless – for tactical and strategic conversations. Clarifying the context of our meetings and keeping those different types of conversations in their proper places will give our meetings greater clarity and focus, which will go a long way toward eliminating the frustration and confusion that we've unnecessarily come to expect.

In fact, one client I worked with credits the change in their meetings to the turnaround of their organization. Back in 2006, a healthcare company was having trouble gaining momentum in the industry. They started to use their Monday morning staff meetings as a "Tactical Meeting," focused entirely on tactics to execute their goals. When they were tempted to get off topic and wrestle a big strategic issue, they scheduled a "Strategic Meeting" for a later time.

If the strategic issue was critical, they would have the strategic meeting immediately after the tactical meeting. That way the entire team was already together to work through the issue right away. The key to their success was being disciplined enough to focus on one strategic issue at a time, rather than mixing it with a variety of other topics.

Walk Score

2008-08-06T12:57:00.001-04:00

This website scores your address based on "walkability". My address scored a 97!

How It Works

Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. Walk Score measures how easy it is to live a car-lite lifestyle—not how pretty the area is for walking.
What does my score mean?

Your Walk Score is a number between 0 and 100. Here are general guidelines for interpreting your score:

* 90–100 = Walkers' Paradise: Most errands can be accomplished on foot and many people get by without owning a car.
* 70–89 = Very Walkable: It's possible to get by without owning a car.
* 50–69 = Somewhat Walkable: Some stores and amenities are within walking distance, but many everyday trips still require a bike, public transportation, or car.
* 25–49 = Car-Dependent: Only a few destinations are within easy walking range. For most errands, driving or public transportation is a must.
* 0–24 = Car-Dependent (Driving Only): Virtually no neighborhood destinations within walking range. You can walk from your house to your car!

The Walk Score™ Algorithm

Walk Score uses a patent-pending system to measure the walkability of an address. The Walk Score algorithm awards points based on the distance to the closest amenity in each category. If the closest amenity in a category is within .25 miles (or .4 km), we assign the maximum number of points. The number of points declines as the distance approaches 1 mile (or 1.6 km)—no points are awarded for amenities further than 1 mile. Each category is weighted equally and the points are summed and normalized to yield a score from 0–100. The number of nearby amenities is the leading predictor of whether people walk.1

Your Walk Score may change as our data sources are updated or as we improve our algorithm. Check out how Walk Score doesn't work.
What do you think makes a neighborhood walkable?

We built the Walk Score algorithm to measure the factors that we think are important to walkability. What makes a neighborhood walkable to you? Let us know and we'll publish your answers on our blog.

LA Earthquake - 5.8

2008-07-29T14:57:00.003-04:00

Stephen Colbert's Guide to Be an Expert on Anything

2008-07-25T21:12:00.001-04:00

Be an Expert on Anything
From Wired How-To Wiki
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Photograph by Jill Greenberg
Photograph by Jill Greenberg

By Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert won’t be taking the advice offered in this guide. He has dedicated his career to passing himself off as an expert on anything. Colbert honed this skill on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where he served as an analyst on everything from the Middle East to presidential gastronomy before gaining the title Senior Expert News Correspondent. He is a specialist in improv comedy, which he says “is partly about making people believe you know everything.” On Comedy Central’s hit show The Colbert Report, he goes beyond expertise into the arena of what he calls the anti-expert. “My show is an exercise in willfully ignorant, emotionally based, non-intellectual, -incurious passion about things. For instance, what gives Britannica the right to tell me that the Panama Canal was built in 1914? If I want to say 1941, that’s my right.” Don’t even think about arguing with him.

– John Hockenberry

PICK A FIELD THAT CAN'T BE VERIFIED. Try something like string theory or God’s will: “I speak to God. I’m sorry that you can’t also.” Security experts are in this category: They have security clearances, we don’t. We can’t question the expertise of the NSA because we are not in the NSA.

CHOOSE A SUBJECT THAT'S ACTUALLY SECRET. Dan Brown invented a secret subject for The Da Vinci Code, so now he is forever an expert on this secret subject that no one can challenge. Anybody who attacks the secret subject is, by definition, part of the cabal.

GET YOUR OWN ENTRY IN AN ENCYCLOPEDIA. In the media age, everybody was famous for 15 minutes. In the Wikipedia age, everybody can be an expert in five minutes. Special bonus: You can edit your own entry to make yourself seem even smarter.

USE THE WORD ZEITGEIST AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE. Ideally, you want to find words that sound familiar but people don’t really know their definitions: zeitgeist, bildungsroman, doppelgänger – better yet, anything Latin. But avoid paradigm. It’s so 1994. If you say the word paradigm, everybody knows you’re a poser.

BE SURE TO USE LOTS OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS. Someone who says the words operations security may be educated, but the person who uses the military abbreviation Opsec is clearly an expert. If I use the term Gitmo, that means I’ve actually been there. If you say, “We’re going to Defcon 1,” it means you probably have the launch codes. Real experts don’t have time for extra syllables.

SPEAK FROM THE BALLS, NOT FROM THE DIAPHRAGM. In the expert game, you’ve got to have sack. That means speaking with confidence. In America, you’ve got to steer clear of nuance and ambivalence – and don’t even contemplate doubt.

DON'T BE AFRAID TO MAKE THINGS UP. Never fear being exposed as a fraud. Experts make things up all the time. They’re qualified to.

DON'T LIMIT YOURSELF TO CURRENT KNOWLEDGE. If you worry too much about being up-to-date, you miss out on vast territories of obsolete knowledge just waiting to be reclaimed. Think of leech-craft and all the lonely experts in the use of the little creatures, which are now experiencing a renaissance in health care.

GET AN HONORARY PHD. They work wonders. I have a doctorate in fine arts from Knox College in Illinois. All I did was give a speech, and now everybody has to call me Dr. Colbert.

MAKE A HABIT OF NAME-DROPPING. Say things like “I was talking to John Hockenberry yesterday for my story in Wired. Have you seen my cover?” I plan to use this issue of Wired to assert that I now know everything about wires.

BE FAMOUS. IT HELPS.

Did you do this training yet?

2008-07-22T14:14:00.003-04:00

From BusinessPundit:

Samsung, Hyundai Curb Worker Suicides by Having Them Mimic Their Own Deaths

Suicide is a big problem in South Korea. According to the Financial Times, the compact peninsula has the highest rate of suicide in the developed world: 24.7 deaths per 100,000 people.

It’s become such a problem that employers are sending workers to “well-dying” courses to prevent suicides. During the courses, employees go through the arduous process of faking their own deaths.

Fake funeral training has become so popular that major companies like Samsung have built their own funeral training centers. Hyundai, another large employer, regularly sends employees to “well-dying” training.

Via the Financial Times:

South Korean companies are sending employees on ‘fake funeral’ courses to help prevent suicide. Participants sit at candlelit desks and are told to write their last will and testament. Attendees are prompted by questions such as: “If you died today, what would you tell your family”? Many of those in the room become emotional as they read out their wills.

Before they are “buried”, participants are asked to pose for their funeral portrait. Participants (then) enter a “death experience room” where they choose a coffin and put on a “death robe.” Course members get into their coffins and a flower is laid on each person’s chest. Funeral attendants place a lid on the coffin and dirt is thrown on the casket. Participants are left in the closed casket for five minutes and some start to cry in the darkness. Once the lids are opened the resurrected trainees are asked how they felt.

As someone who’s 99% ignorant of Korean culture, this strikes me as harsh. Is giving someone a reason not to die the same as giving them reason to live? Then again, it does seem to be working: Why else would Samsung have built a permanent funeral training center?

Thoughts?

The World's First Flying Saucer: Made Right Here on Earth

2008-07-15T14:41:00.000-04:00

If a professor at the University of Florida (U.F.) has his way, the first flying saucer to grace Planet Earth's skies isn't likely to come from outer space but rather from Gainesville, where the faculty member is drawing up plans to build a circular aircraft that can hover in the air like a helicopter without any moving parts or fuel.

In other words, it will look like a UFO, but will actually be more of an IFO—an identified flying object.

The saucer will hover and propel itself using electrodes that cover its surface to ionize the surrounding air into plasma. Gases (such as air, which has an equal number of positive and negative charges) become plasma when energy (such as heat or electricity) causes some of the gas's atoms to lose their negatively charged electrons, creating atoms with a positive charge, or positive ions, surrounded by the newly detached electrons. Using an onboard source of energy (such as a battery, ultracapacitor, solar panel or any combination thereof), the electrodes will send an electrical current into the plasma, causing the plasma to push against the neutral (noncharged) air surrounding the craft, theoretically generating enough force for liftoff and movement in different directions (depending on where on the craft's surface you direct the electrical current).

The concept sounds far-fetched, but U.F. mechanical and aerospace engineering associate professor Subrata Roy plans to have a mini model ready to demonstrate his theory within the next year.

At six inches (15.2 centimeters) in diameter, the device, which Roy calls a "wingless electromagnetic air vehicle" (WEAV), will truly be a flying saucer. Theoretically, Roy says, the flying saucer can be as large as anyone wants to build it, because the design gives the aircraft balance and stability. In other words, this type of aircraft could someday be built large enough to ferry around people. But, Roy says, "we need to walk before we can run, so we're starting small."

The biggest hurdle to building a WEAV large enough to carry passengers would be making the craft light, yet powerful enough to lift its cargo and energy source. Roy is not sure what kind of energy source he will use yet. He anticipates that the craft's body will be made from a material that is an insulator such as ceramic, which is light and a good conductor of electricity. "In theory you probably should be able to scale it up," says Anthony Colozza, a researcher with government contractor Analex Corporation who is stationed at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and helped Roy draw up the original plans for powering the saucer. The choice of a power source that is powerful, yet lightweight is "probably going to be the thing that makes or breaks it."

Roy began designing the WEAV in 2006. The following year, he and Colozza wrote a paper for the now-defunct NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) about the use of electrohydrodynamics, or ionized particles, as an alternative to liquid fuel for powering space vehicles. When NASA shut down NIAC in August 2007, Roy decided to continue his work at U.F.

If he's successful, Roy hopes to develop a more stable aircraft and a new form of fuel—air. Other craft that interact with the atmosphere have a problem: moving parts, whether jet engines, propellers or rotors. "My interest started when I saw inherent problems in helicopters and airplanes," Roy says. If these parts stop moving, the aircraft falls from the sky. The flying saucer, on the other hand, has no moving parts.

In theory, the WEAV would be more stable than an aircraft—airplanes and helicopters, for example—that rely on aerodynamics to provide lift. Using a plasma field, "you could produce lift in any direction, you could change direction quickly and that power could be turned on or off almost instantly," Colozza says. If the pilot wanted such an aircraft to move to the right, he or she would increase power to electrodes on the left side of the craft and vice versa for moving to the left. Electrodes on the bottom of the craft would power its lift, whereas those on top would bring the craft back down to Earth.

Assuming Roy's WEAV prototype gets off the ground next year—and that's a big if—it could prove useful in a number of ways. What makes the WEAV potentially appealing as a way to power spacecraft is that it relies on electricity (from a battery or some other power source) rather than combustion—a process that requires oxygen, which is in short supply outside Earth's atmosphere, Colozza says. Still, the WEAV's biggest fans are likely to be in the U.S. military, who would use the craft as a drone for gathering intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance information.

Roy has been working with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, since 2001 to study how plasma could be used to control the flow of air—pushing air in different directions—and thereby the vehicle's movements. "If plasma (flow) is turned on the right way, I can blow air any direction I want to blow air," says Doug Blake, deputy director of the Air Force Research Lab's Air Vehicles Directorate, of the craft's ability to push air away from itself. "If I have a jet coming out of the bottom of this, I can create a helicopter with no moving parts. Things that you would use a helicopter for, you could use this for."

But this does not mean the Air Force is ready to order a fleet of Roy's flying saucers. "We have worked with (Roy) on plasma studies but there are no concrete plans in place that I'm aware of to explicitly support the development of this device," Blake says.

At this early stage, and without a clear decision on how the craft will be powered, Roy says it is unclear how much a WEAV might cost to build and operate. Still, he is optimistic. "All of the materials needed to make this aircraft currently exist," he says, "and plasma is the most abundant form of matter in the universe. If we can somehow tap into that in the future we should be able to fly anywhere."

Colbert to Class of 2008: Don't change the world

2008-06-05T20:47:00.001-04:00

“Gandhi said, ‘you must be the change you want to see in the world,’ ” Stephen Colbert told an audience of thousands at the Class Day ceremony this afternoon. “But may I also point out he drank his own urine, so let’s not go overboard on his advice.”

The host and executive producer of “The Colbert Report” and a one-time presidential candidate in his home state of South Carolina, Colbert drew laughter and applause from the assembled senior class and their families as he poked fun at Princeton traditions and urged the class to maintain the status quo after graduation.

Though the Class of 2008 “can change the world,” Colbert said, he pleaded with its members to “please don’t do that.”

“Some of us like it the way it is,” he explained. “Personally, things are going great for me right now.”

Colbert also pointed out that making a meaningful difference in the world will not be effortless.

“The job of savior looks like a really hard one,” he said. “I mean, Jesus only took the job to please his dad — and he reminded us that if you wanted to be like him, you had to take up the cross and follow him.”

“To me, that thing looks kind of heavy. Wouldn’t it be easier for you to take up your remote control and follow me?” he added.

Colbert did finally acknowledge the seniors’ potential for achievement, calling the Class of 2008 “a virus that will soon be unleashed upon the world with an unstoppable drive and infectious enthusiasm.”

“And you will reproduce — I’m fairly certain you know how to do that by now,” he added.

Colbert also advised the graduating class not to worry “about making a difference … with your lives,” explaining that “one of the things that stays the same is that you are going to change things, and there’s nothing my generation can do about that.

For example, “Aaron Burr certainly changed the way we think about the office of vice president,” he said. “After that it was completely acceptable for [the vice president] to shoot someone in the face.”

Colbert also alluded to the political significance of 2008 as a presidential election year, noting that the Class of 2008 would be the last class to graduate with President Bush still in office. When audience members began to applaud, Colbert said, “Don’t hide your grief.”

“Many of you are calling this election a change year,” he said. “Obama has said, ‘We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.’ ”

“Well, if that’s true, what are we clearly good at? Waiting. I say we go with our strengths and just keep doing it,” he added.

Colbert recalled former Secretary of State George Shultz ’42’s speech at his own graduation from Northwestern University. “I don’t remember anything interesting about him,” Colbert said, except that “he had a tattoo of a tiger on his butt.”

“I’m just going to assume that we all have them, and I hope there will be a show and tell later,” Colbert added.

After concluding his speech by warning the seniors that “no one will understand that totalitarian salute you do, so keep that to a minimum,” Colbert received a standing ovation from the audience.

The senior class officers presented Colbert with a Class of 2008 beer jacket and “The Class of 2008 Understandable Vanity Award,” which consisted of a sketch of Colbert and a mirror.

“I loved the mirrored award,” Colbert said in an interview after the event, adding that he would put it right next to his other mirrors. The sketch of himself, he said, “has a feline quality to it.’

As for the beer jacket, he said it “will be great for bootlegging” and “sneaking stuff into concerts.”

When asked by another reporter whether writing a graduation speech is like writing an episode of his show, Colbert explained that one of the hardest things about “doing a speech like this is I don’t know who is invited to this: me or the character.”

“My show is an ongoing argument with my audience,” Colbert explained. “That’s what this sort of is: It’s a call to inaction.”

Though the Class of 2006 had invited Colbert to speak at Class Day, he declined since his book was due the weekend of commencement two years ago. Former president Bill Clinton spoke at that event instead.

Class Day is the second of three graduation ceremonies, following Baccalaureate and preceding Commencement, and serves as an opportunity to honor members of the graduating class and to award several athletic, academic and service prizes.

President Tilghman opened the Class Day ceremony, telling the assembled members of the Class of 2008 “when you came here, your purpose was to acquire an excellent education and that is what you did — in spite of grade deflation.”

Tilghman emphasized the importance of the “collective experience” and shared memories she hoped would remain with members of the graduating class, noting that “it is together that you will go into world tomorrow as members of the great Class of 2008.”

Student speakers included senior class president Tom Haine, who delivered an inspirational address, and seniors Mark Bur and Chelsea Carter, who each spoke humorously about aspects of their time at Princeton.

Seniors Sarah Vander Ploeg and Landis Stankievech were recognized for their receipt of the Moses Taylor Pyne Prize, the University’s highest academic honor, which they had been awarded at Alumni Day in February.

The Priscilla Glickman ’92 Memorial Prize for community service was awarded to Jessica Gheiler and Josh Loehrer.

Thomas Lipp received the Harold Willis Dodds Prize, Katie Lewis-Lamonica received the Allen Macy Dulles ’52 Award, former USG president Rob Biederman received the Class of 1901 Medal, former Class of 2008 president Grant Gittlin received the W. Sanderson Detwiler 1903 Prize and Anna Almore and Sian OFaolain received the Frederick Douglass Award.

Director of Athletics Gary Walters ’67 awarded athletic prizes to Stankievech, Mike Moore, David Nightingale, Meagan Cowher, and Diana Matheson, Ted Gudmundsen, Michael Honigberg and Lewis-Lamonica.

The senior class officers then inducted the five other honorary members of the Class of 2008: Dining Services Director Stu Orefice, Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Students Rachel Baldwin, University trustee Shelby Davis ’58, history department undergraduate administrator Etta Recke and Richardson Auditorium production supervisor Christopher Gorzelnik.

How to pack Everything You Own in One Bag

2008-05-11T18:22:00.002-04:00

While I consider myself relatively light packer, this website, OneBag.com, has shown me many areas to improve. OneBag.com is a valuable resource on what to pack and how to pack. There tutorial on folding, sample packing lists, etc are quite instructive.

WSJ: Reproducing Babbage Difference Engine (Mechanical Computer)

2008-05-08T16:44:00.003-04:00

Former CTO of Microsoft commissions a cabbage differencing engine (mechanical computer).

Five-axis Robotic Arm Ride

2008-04-07T15:55:00.001-04:00

Reporting from Rio de Janeiro

2008-03-15T05:17:00.004-04:00

My Portuguese phrasebook and my extended rush-hour taxi drive into Rio de Janeiro combined to become portuguese lesson 2 (first was in plane). The Brazilians I have talked to have all been very nice and tolerant of my experimenting with their languange.

It´s been cloudy and drizzling since I got here, so there not many people at the beach in Copacaban. So I´ve spent most of my time exploring (eating). So far, I ate galeto (spring chicken) for first lunch and second lunch (first by myself and then again after my cousin & uncle arrived). This galeto gives yakitori a run for the money (i have photo of place will upload later after get back home).

For dinner, I had a churasco. The meat was excellent, but it was a bit of a challenge to get the waiters to stop cutting more meat onto the plate. Regretably, the phrasebook did not contain the phrase I´m full -- so I improvised and said something that was eventually understood (I think I said ´Nao mais comer qual falar´ ) and miraculously they brought us these buttons with green ´obrigado´on one side and red ´nao obrigado´ on the other.

Looks like I chose the wrong week to quit meat...

I managed to try the national drink of Brazil, Caipirinha, which was a little too strong for my taste.

The Most Curious Canned Goods Found Online

2008-03-07T18:11:00.003-05:00

Gallery: The Most Curious Canned Goods Found Online

By Jenna Wortham

10.18.07 | 12:00 AM

Afternoon Delight — Silkworm Pupae

Literally meaning pupa or chrysalis, beondegi are popular Korean street snacks, often dished out by the cupful to eager passers-by. The stewed and seasoned silkworm treats come highly recommended as bar bites. Next time you crave a quick mouthful on the go, grab a can of these crunchy chrysalises.

Clive Thompson on How DIYers Just Might Revive American Innovation

2008-03-05T02:35:00.002-05:00

This Wired article on the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mentality reminded me of a key aspect of the Toyota Way and an aspect that seems to be often neglected in its emulation. The founders of Toyota wanted their "engineers to have to wash their hands before eating their lunch." In Toyota Japan, all engineers spend a few months working on the assembly line. For the unionized US big 3 and other union manufacturing companies, a similar training regimen would lead to a pile of grievances.

What a mess. I'm sitting on the floor of my apartment, surrounded by electronic parts, a cigar box, a soldering gun, and stray bits of wire. I'm trying to build my own steampunk-style clock — hacking a couple of volt meter dials to display hours and minutes. It'll look awesome when it's done.

If it ever gets done — I keep botching the soldering. A well-soldered joint is supposed to look like a small, shiny volcano. My attempts look like mashed insects, and they crack when I try to assemble the device.

Why am I so inept? I used to do projects like this all the time when I was a kid. But in high school, I was carefully diverted from shop class when the administration decided I was college-bound. I stopped working with my hands and have barely touched a tool since.

As it turns out, this isn't a problem just for me — it's a problem for America. We've lost our Everyman ability to build, maintain, and repair the devices we rely on every day. And that's making it harder to solve the country's nastiest problems, like oil dependence, climate change, and global competitiveness.

The decay has been rapid. Only a few decades ago, most serious adults were expected to be fluent in basic mechanics. If your car or stove or radio broke down, you opened it up and fixed it. "Magazines like Popular Mechanics in the '40s and '50s would publish projects like an automated pig-feeding trough, and they assumed you had the tools and skills to make it," says Dale Dougherty, editor and publisher of Make magazine.

But as we migrated to an information economy, those skills began to seem as quaint as, well, mechanical clocks. America's bright future, we were assured, wasn't industrial. It was in the hands of "symbolic analysts" — folks who sat at desks and thought for a living. In the '90s, the rise of the Internet sent this post-mechanical age into a sort of giddy overdrive. Remember Nicholas Negroponte urging everyone to "move bits, not atoms"?

But when we stop working with our hands, we cease to understand how the world really works.

You see this on a personal level. If you can't get under the hood of the gadgets you buy, you're far more liable to believe the marketing hype of the corporations that sell them. When things break, you toss them and buy new ones; you accept your role as a mere consumer. "I think it makes you more passive as an individual," says Matthew Crawford, a former motorcycle repair-shop owner (and postdoctoral fellow in cultural studies) who's writing a book on the demise of mechanical aptitude in America.

It might even screw up our brains. Neuroscientists have shown that working with your hands exercises different parts of your cerebrum than sitting and cogitating. Ever wonder why Detroit isn't producing 100-mpg cars? One reason might be that the engineers there spend all their time tinkering with CAD software — developing design concepts in a purely virtual sense. They aren't ripping open cars to see what's possible, the way those amateur ultra-mileage Prius hackers do (some of whom, by the way, have modded their hybrids to get 100 mpg).

I'd argue there are even larger political effects of our post-atom age. Take the epidemic of corroded highways and collapsing bridges. The basic mechanics of how bridges and roadbeds work are so beyond us that we don't have any sense of urgency about the issue, and we don't put anywhere near enough pressure on our politicians to prioritize infrastructure upgrades.

The good news? A counterrevolution is afoot. The past few years have seen an uprising of DIY hobbyists, people who've realized that making stuff is not only cognitively empowering but also a lot of fun. Dougherty's Make magazine — which publishes plans for building cardboard guitar amplifiers, board games, and VCR-powered cat feeders — has been a surprise hit, selling 100,000 copies each issue. Weekend robot-building societies are cropping up everywhere. And I can't turn on the TV without stumbling across some extreme home-renovation show, complete with a hyperactive host and loving descriptions of how to, y'know, mix concrete. In prime time!

Notably, all this is happening outside our broken educational system. America is healing itself at the grass roots — rediscovering the mental joy of making things and rearming itself with mechanical skills.

And, hey, I'm doing my part. After a couple dozen tries, I finally get my soldering technique back up to scratch. The clock is telling time — and I made it.

Japan Travel Advice

2008-02-28T01:11:00.006-05:00

I've been asked for Japanese travel advice on a few occasions. I figure there's already gigabytes of information already in these tubes called the internet. So to prevent clogging, I'll just post my advice as a summary of foods that should be consumed on any trip to Japan:

good for breakfast:
    donburi restaurant (anything on rice), and miso and egg breakfast, natto (fermented soy beans)
     yoshinoya is a donburi chain that can be found near any train station
    Mr. Donuts - got to check out this donut chain, check out the different donut variations (notice soy sauce donuts)
good for lunch (fast, cheap and everywhere):
   ramen
       lots of different ramen variations in broth
            shoyu-soy sauce broth
            shio   - salt broth
            tonkotsu - pork broth
            miso   - miso broth
       ramen restaurants also serve dumplings called gyoza which are pretty good. if you decide you like ramen, then you might like to check out this ramen museum in yokohama (really close to tokyo). it's pretty busy during lunch time though, there were lines when i went. the museum has 6 or so different famous regional ramen restaurants inside.   these restaurants ship there noodles and broth stock over daily to keep it true to the original. it was pretty cool. there is also this fake robber that runs around inside and if you spot him and tell the fake cop you get a ton of free ramen stuff.
   kaiten zushi restaurant (conveyor-belt sushi)
       different color plates cost different amounts, just take what you want off conveyor belt
   Japanese fast food
       Japanese native M.O.S. burger (try the vegetable burger it's really good),McDonalds (they have a teriyaki burger) , KFC...
    Japanese interpretation of Italian food is interesting, especially pizza
dinner
    yakitori (grilled, skewered meat)
       japanese barbecue, probably smoky and loud, but really good. you order by the skewer, and for each cut, there are two standard sauces shio=salt or tare = sauce. two favorite skewers are negima which is a chicken and spring onion skewer and tori-dango which is a chicken ball skewer. If you're not about to hop on a flight, I would also recomend toriwasa, mostly raw chicken with a dab of wasabi. Also try some edamame (salted steamed soy bean pods) and some japanese beer.
    okonomiyaki
           japanese cross between a pizza and a pancake - cook on griddle, also try yaki-soba at this kind of restaurant
    soba (buckwheat noodle) - i like cold zaru-soba dish, there are also hot soba bowls
    udon (thick wheat noodle)

I forgot to mention Akihabara. Akihabara is a section of Tokyo crammed with electronics stores. I believe Akihabara is a stop on the Circle Line. There is also a transportation museum near there. I'd also check out Roppongi hills. Shibuya and Harajuku are interesting places to walk around. I bought a sweet suit that I haven't worn yet :-(

I also recommend exploring Asakusa Kannon temple and surroundings.

You can also check out a tour of Yebisu/Sapporo factory right near Ebisu station.
The gardens of the castle grounds are also good. This is the one place It might be fun to take the monorail to the Tokyo island Odaiba. A good daytrip would be to Hakone, I've never been there but I hear it's good.  http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e5200.html
Also avoid traveling during rush hour, especially in Tokyo.

If I remember correctly, there is a Japanese National Tourist information booth at Narita airport which has lots of english language brochures and maps. There is also a branch of Japanese National Tourist office in one of the rockefeller square buildings and you can pick up information from there too. I think there website is www.jnto.org

Also in Kyoto check out the train station and the escalators up to nowhere (wasteful boom construction). I got a haircut at one of the barbers in the basement of Kyoto station and it turned out ok, so if you need a haircut you should check that out.

Also, at train stations, hotels, and tourism related things like that you will be able to order in english, but a japanese phrase book might be useful at restaurants.

Other random things to check out, vending machines (esp. ones that sell beer, food, warm or cold sake, etc), convience stores called conbini with takeout bentos, Japanese stationary shops, Japanese department stores (the basements normally has a supermarket like set up and the top floors have different restaurants and the middle floors sell clothes, appliances, cookware and lots of random things). Oh, try green tea ice cream, mattcha aisu creamu.

Let me know if this helps...

Unbelievable Landing

2008-02-14T20:48:00.001-05:00

Chinese Food On Christmas

2007-12-10T16:26:00.001-05:00

Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747-400 Cockpit View

2007-12-09T22:19:00.000-05:00

Here Comes Another Bubble - The Richter Scales

2007-12-06T16:34:00.000-05:00

NYC Manhole Covers

2007-11-27T18:47:00.000-05:00

Humanoid robot

2007-11-21T19:12:00.000-05:00

What will it be used for?
Maybe it can play with the roomba.

Flying is AWESOME

2007-11-13T14:15:00.000-05:00

My latest obsession = flying
And this video explains it all:

Meek geek seeks fame and fortune

2007-09-25T16:50:00.000-04:00

I'm pretty sure I've seen this guy around campus. Good luck!
Sounds like good premise for a reality tv show:

Green is one of the 20 contestants on the fourth season of "Beauty and the Geek," a reality TV show produced by actor Ashton Kutcher that pairs "gorgeous but academically impaired women" and "brilliant but socially challenged men," according to the show's website.

Video of Debris Created by China's Anti-Satellite Test

2007-09-11T13:13:00.000-04:00

Princeton Versus Yale (According to google trends)

2007-07-05T23:41:00.000-04:00

Proof is in the google searches!!

WSJ: A Small Firm Takes on Chinese Pirates -- Chicago Maker of 'BraBaby' Travels to Asia to Hunt Down Companies Selling Knockoff

2007-07-05T22:33:00.000-04:00

A small firm hunts Chinese pirates
Jonathan Cheng
The Wall Street Journal
Jul. 5, 2007 09:00 AM

When Robert Engel's 10-year-old son asked him recently what he was doing online all day, Mr. Engel explained that he was playing a new computer game: BraBaby Pirate Brigade.

It isn't a real computer game - but it's all too real to Mr. Engel. The 43-year-old Chicago entrepreneur is battling rampant piracy of his company's BraBaby, a plastic cage that looks like a Wiffle ball and prevents bras from getting tangled in the spin cycle. What he is really up to on that computer, four hours a day, is tracking Chinese companies selling knockoffs of BraBaby online at cut-rate prices.

It's not difficult to find the impostors, Mr. Engel says. Many of them brazenly use the name BraBaby, sometimes with a slightly different styling from the rendering Mr. Engel uses. They often appropriate Mr. Engel's logo and his promotional photos - including shots of his wife, Laura, BraBaby's creator, cradling the product.

"You think the hard part is coming up with a great product, but then you find out the hard work has just begun," Mr. Engel says. He compares his fight to a game of Whac-A-Mole - shut down one company, and another springs up.

Multinational companies like Walt Disney Co. and Nike Inc. have long lost business to Chinese knockoffs. Pfizer Inc. employs full-time counterfeit investigators to clamp down on phony Viagra. But Mr. Engel's crusade illustrates the enormous challenge a small business faces trying to protect its intellectual assets in China.

Mr. Engel, whose Angel Sales Inc. boasts a staff of just eight besides himself and his wife, doesn't have investigators or crack legal teams to fight sophisticated pirates well-versed in the cat-and-mouse game. "If I don't do the policing, who else is going to do it for me?" he asks, adding: "I now see this as a cost of doing business."

Mr. Engel says he has seen his BraBaby priced as low as 38 cents, compared with its normal $1.25 wholesale cost. An Australian company recently backed out of a deal with Angel Sales after discovering the cheaper knockoffs on the Internet. The company accused Mr. Engel of selling the product above "fair market value," he says.

With the help of his lawyers, Mr. Engel has already sent cease-and-desist letters to 71 Chinese companies. A few have stopped, but the rest have plowed ahead, replacing Mr. Engel's promotional photos with their own or simply ignoring him.

Uphill battle to fight off imposters

The uphill battle has even strained Mr. Engel's relationship with his wife, who invented BraBaby two years ago and as vice president manages its marketing. "The pressure doesn't stay here at work. It's going through my whole life," says Mr. Engel, a jazz trumpet player and jujitsu enthusiast.

Laura Engel, 41, adds: "We'll be so mad at each other for a day or two, and it's not fun, because we have to go home to dinner together."

Before the BraBaby came along, the Engels had created a small business by developing and selling household products such as key-chain racks and gardening tools, mainly through mail-order catalogs and online sales. They never had a big seller until BraBaby, which became a hit - selling up to 10,000 items a week - after television personalities Rachael Ray and Tony Danza promoted it on their morning talk shows.

BraBaby began airing on home-shopping networks last spring. Mr. Engel says Chinese companies immediately began advertising their knockoffs, printing the familiar red "As Seen on TV" logo on their boxes and ads to drum up sales.

Earlier this year, Mr. Engel signed a deal licensing BraBaby's retail-distribution rights to oneCARE, of Alpharetta, Ga., which plans to brand the product with Procter & Gamble Co.'s Tide logo and sell it at big-box retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and Bed, Bath & Beyond Inc. Mr. Engel wants to nip the copycats in the bud and make sure his partners don't get spooked by a flood of cheap knockoffs.

Worldwide threats to his product

China is hardly the only intellectual-property battleground in the world, as threats to BraBaby from South Korea and

Turkey attest, but it is among the world's riskier markets. So Mr. Engel has taken the fight to the pirates. In April, he arrived in Guangzhou for the Canton Fair, China's largest export trade show, carrying a briefcase stuffed full of trademarks and design patents. His mission: to scour the fair's 30,000-odd booths for the Chinese companies selling knockoffs of his product to importers at cut rate.

It didn't take Mr. Engel long to find China-Base Ningbo Foreign Trade Co. selling tens of thousands of the item for as little as 45 cents apiece. After posing as a potential buyer and asking a few questions about the product, Mr. Engel walked off with a brochure and stormed into the fair's Intellectual Property Complaints Office, where he learned he lacked the proper documentation to prove his identity. A few days later, in Beijing, he consulted with the lawyer who had helped him register BraBaby in China and got no more satisfaction. The lawyer told him his application was backlogged - a typical problem in China, where trademarks often take up to three years to be registered.

When Mr. Engel returned to Guangzhou and nearby Hong Kong for a second round of sleuthing, he found another eight trading companies exhibiting the BraBaby for sale into overseas markets. All told, he logged 35 hours of flight time on his recent scouting trip.

On his next foray into China, Mr. Engel says, he'll have all of his paperwork ready, including original copies of forms linking him with his company.

In the tangled world of intellectual-property claims, Mr. Engel himself isn't immune to challenges. An Austin, Texas, company called BraBall holds an earlier U.S. patent on a product similar to the BraBaby, though BraBall part-owner Jack Lander, a past president of the United Inventors Association, says there are no immediate plans to challenge Mr. Engel's product in court.

"We're competing on quality," he says.

Battle is like \"chasing ghosts\"

OneCARE, the company that bought the retail distribution rights for BraBaby from the Engels, says it doesn't comment on intellectual-property rights but is launching the BraBaby in the fall at major U.S. retailers.

Thus far, Mr. Engel says, he has spent about $125,000 registering the BraBaby for patenting, copyright and trademark in the U.S., the European Community, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as in China. But copycats are legion and capable of dissolving quickly and reforming under another name.

"It's like chasing ghosts," Mr. Engel says.

Occasionally, the ghosts materialize. While scouting one of the fairs on his recent trip, Mr. Engel came across a familiar name: Bingo Hu, owner of Ningbo Bingo International Co. and two other companies based in Ningbo, a city on the East China Sea.

"I've been sending you love letters and you haven't been replying," Mr. Engel says he told Mr. Hu at his booth, where something called the BraSaver was displayed.

After Mr. Engel confronted him, Mr. Hu says, he immediately contacted his suppliers and told them "not to give me any more trouble." He says he has since ceased shipping the BraSaver.

"Don't you care at all about what you're doing to my item?" Mr. Engel says he asked Mr. Hu at his booth. "He didn't seem the least bit scared."

IPhone-Free Cellphone News

2007-07-05T22:23:00.000-04:00

Because the iPhone news/hype this T-Mobile Hotspot @Home news got drowned out. This service by T-Mobile will for $10 allow you to connect your cellphone through your wi-fi connection and dial for free rather than cell-towers. It also allows for seemless switching between cell-tower and wi-fi links.

Good Time Management System - Printable CEO Series

2007-06-26T17:01:00.000-04:00

I'm going to try this out. Looks like it may prove useful.
To the right is an example of the printable CEO from David Seah's website:

Instructables - Step by step collaboration

2007-05-11T07:42:00.000-04:00

Lost Gamble: How Japan's Attempt To Slow Nuclear Work In North Korea Failed --- It Pushed Pachinko Halls To Adopt Cashless Cards To Curb Export of Fun

2007-02-10T14:34:00.000-05:00

TOKYO -- Mitsubishi Corp. and Sumitomo Corp. were badly burned trying to get a piece of the action in Japan's national pastime, the pinball game called pachinko. The two giant trading companies, which had developed magnetic cards to replace cash in pachinko halls, admitted in May they took a total loss of $588 million when counterfeiters copied the cards.

The debacle was widely viewed as a case of Japan's criminal element preying on a business venture. But behind the card caper lies a much bigger tale, of how a government plan to impede North Korea's suspected nuclear program backfired.

The story begins with a visit to Tokyo by a team from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, according to Mitsuhiro Suganuma, who then headed the North Korea division of Japan's Public Security Intelligence Bureau. Mr. Suganuma says he and other Japanese spymasters met with the CIA officials in the spring of 1991 at the security bureau's main conference room. At the meeting, one of the Americans played a videocassette that showed grainy satellite footage of a building that the CIA identified as a nearly completed nuclear reactor in North Korea.

Within a few years, Mr. Suganuma says the Americans predicted, the facility would be able to produce nuclear weapons that the Pyongyang government might deploy against Japan and South Korea and also sell to various Mideastern forces. The Japanese, who had regarded North Korea's alleged nuclear ambitions as an expensive pipe dream, were stunned.

In addition, many Japanese and American intelligence people viewed the pachinko industry as a major source of funding for the suspected North Korean program. And they came up with a plan. By leaning on pachinko halls to convert their machines to take magnetic cards rather than cash, they could more easily trace where pachinko revenue was going. And, they hoped, they could disrupt the flow of money to North Korea.

...

The message was clear: "Unless you switched to the cashless machines," Mr. Aoyama says, "you were going to bring enormous financial damage to your business." Police precincts in Tokyo's Ota ward, where Aoyama Kikaku operates its halls, decline to comment.

By late 1994, about 70% of the pachinko industry had adopted the card system. Sales generated by the card affiliates of Sumitomo and Mitsubishi, which distribute the machines and administer the network, skyrocketed in the year ended March 1994 to a combined 4.1 trillion yen ($40 billion at today's exchange rates) from 14 billion yen the previous year.

Then, in 1995, the city of Kobe was devastated by its earthquake. Although there was little looting, a lot of cashless pachinko machines were stolen from vacated halls, according to an official of NTT Data, the telephone-company subsidiary that developed the cards. By dismantling the card-reading mechanisms, he says, forgers cracked the encryption codes and produced their own cards.

Within a year, counterfeit cards were circulating widely, at a fraction of the price of real ones. Because the computers couldn't distinguish between real and forged cards, Mitsubishi and Sumitomo were refunding hall operators for counterfeit cards as well as their own. The companies' losses were much higher than the $588 million they reported, industry insiders believe. NTT Data, Mitsubishi and Sumitomo all declined to be interviewed.

Japanese officials say they have their suspicions, so far unproved, that Pyongyang is behind the counterfeiting and, as a result, is getting even more money. An official of the Korean residents' association looks dismayed at the suggestion that North Korea would engage in counterfeiting. Then his face softens as he contemplates the embarrassment and losses at the alliance of official Tokyo and corporate Japan that he believes tried to muscle in on the ethnic Koreans' turf.

"It is quite ironical, the whole situation," he says. "And I like it very much."

A Princeton Lab on ESP Plans to Close Its Doors

2007-02-10T14:17:00.000-05:00

PRINCETON, N.J., Feb. 6 — Over almost three decades, a small laboratory at Princeton University managed to embarrass university administrators, outrage Nobel laureates, entice the support of philanthropists and make headlines around the world with its efforts to prove that thoughts can alter the course of events.

But at the end of the month, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory, or PEAR, will close, not because of controversy but because, its founder says, it is time.
The laboratory has conducted studies on extrasensory perception and telekinesis from its cramped quarters in the basement of the university’s engineering building since 1979. Its equipment is aging, its finances dwindling.
...

I remember passing by the PEAR lab on the way to the machine shop. I wonder if the vibrations from the machines influenced their telekinesis experiments more than the human participants??

Bugging out

2006-11-13T23:58:00.000-05:00

WSJ: Is There a Bug in Your Juice?

Food makers may not want to dwell on it, but the ingredient that gives Dannon Boysenberry yogurt and Tropicana Ruby Red Grapefruit juice their distinctive colors comes from crushed female cochineal beetles.

Too much information? Some consumers would say there hasn't been nearly enough.

Bug-Based Food Dye Should Be ... Exterminated, Says CSPI

Thesis V0.09

2006-04-20T17:24:00.000-04:00

Long-awaited Thesis V0.08!

2006-04-03T18:20:00.000-04:00

So here's what I'm trying to map out:

Here's a close-up of the map the program generated:

I also have the camera-laser apparatus mounted on an r/c car I can control from the computer:

GM Shoots Itself in the Foot

2006-04-03T17:05:00.000-04:00

GM launched a make your own commercial website for the Chevy Tahoe, but not all the commercial made are so favorable...

Chevy Tahoe Commercial

Thesis v0.07

2006-03-26T00:02:00.000-05:00

Working on creating a map that consolidates all the laser profiles taken from different positions. The robot is not actually moving, just simulations for now.

Thesis v0.06

2006-03-25T02:19:00.000-05:00

Lab Setup

2006-03-23T23:59:00.000-05:00

NASA Pic of the Day

2006-03-23T23:29:00.000-05:00

This stunning false-color picture shows off the many sides of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, which is made up of images taken by three of NASA's Great Observatories, using three different wavebands of light. Infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope are colored red; visible data from the Hubble Space Telescope are yellow; and X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are green and blue.

Located 10,000 light-years away in the northern constellation Cassiopeia, Cassiopeia A is the remnant of a once massive star that died in a violent supernova explosion 325 years ago. It consists of a dead star, called a neutron star, and a surrounding shell of material that was blasted off as the star died. The neutron star can be seen in the Chandra data as a sharp turquoise dot in the center of the shimmering shell.

Yet Another Thesis Screenshot

2006-03-23T23:15:00.000-05:00

It's running in realtime too off a firewire camera at 640x480!!

Thesis v0.04

2006-03-23T22:42:00.000-05:00

Notice the white dots over the laser (might be hard to see), they follow the main laser (not the reflection). I can use a single laser profile to detect steep slope changes in that plane slice. So using just that, the robot can identify the drop-offs on the sides of a ramp or the ends of a wall.

To differentiate between a wall and a ramp, however, profiles from various positions must be compared. And that's what's next... Just have to put this on wheels!

Scott

Thesis v0.03

2006-03-23T19:49:00.000-05:00

Patently Silly

2006-03-23T15:27:00.000-05:00

Homeland Security Patents:

Hmm, now where can I pick up one of these umbrellas?

Also this patent by airbus is pretty good, notice the trapdoor for terrorists and the blinding lights etc...

Thesis Time

2006-03-15T21:23:00.000-05:00

Screenshot of long awaited Thesis v0.01:

So I'm able to take two video feeds in!! Now to process them.

More Dolomite Pics

2006-02-06T06:39:00.000-05:00

Crazy mountain drive in a fiat Ducato

Helicopter landing on Mt. Marmolada (3342m)!! Look, the blades aren't even blurred -- a fast shutter I guess.

Venice and Dolomites

2006-01-31T14:14:00.000-05:00

NSA's Security-Enhanced Linux

2005-12-23T21:48:00.000-05:00

I wonder what NSA's ulterior motive in developing an open-source "security-enhanced" version of linux. But this quote from the download page isn't too reassuring:

Warranty Exclusion

You agree that this software is a non-commercially developed program that may contain "bugs" (as that term is used in the industry) and that it may not function as intended. The software is licensed "as is". NSA makes no, and hereby expressly disclaims all, warranties, express, implied, statutory, or otherwise with respect to the software, including noninfringement and the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.

I wonder what "industry" the NSA's referring to there?

The War on Eggs

2005-12-11T01:43:00.000-05:00

I went to get some breakfast at PJs. I was shocked when my order for 2 eggs sunny-side up was rejected. Apparently, no restaurant in Princeton is now allowed to serve these.

Princeton's finest is doing egg busts, and heard next they're going to ban sushi.

Extreme Diving

2005-12-06T05:42:00.000-05:00

I just had this random thought. So current altitude limits on diving into water is limited by max-speed descent into water before killing yourself. What if you had an airfoil shaped diving capsule that was hydrodynamically shaped to mimize drag in water for gradual deceleration? With a properly engineered capsule, could you then do a dive from 35,000ft into water safely? Would people pay to do this?

Alright, I'm going to go back to bed. Invention hours over.

E-Tracking May Change the Way You Drive

2005-12-06T05:38:00.000-05:00

Here's the exceprt from slashdot:

"ZDNet.com is running a story about a runaway idea of a tracking automobiles via GPS. Not to be confused with the Canadian project geared towards anti-speeding ideas, this one does in fact have the goal of tracking your vehicle. 'The U.S. Department of Transportation has been handing millions of dollars to state governments for GPS-tracking pilot projects designed to track vehicles wherever they go. So far, Washington state and Oregon have received fat federal checks to figure out how to levy these 'mileage-based road user fees.' However, the article goes on to talk about how there is no provision in place to prevent the uncontrolled surveillance of motorists without a court order."

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/12/06/0147250.shtml?tid=158&tid=215

Cadaver Exhibit and The True Meaning of Thanksgiving

2005-11-25T01:59:00.000-05:00

So I'm taking a post-Thanksgiving dinner stroll with my family through the NYC's South Street Seaport and pass by a new entrepreneurial "science exhibit". It was closed for Thanksgiving, so I didn't see the lines it probably generates, but from the window I saw two pictures of "skinned" humans. This exhibit has 22 "whole-body specimens".

Now I'm not one who sickens easily, I mean I took AP bio in high school with Ms. Strasser, and had my fair share of fetal pig dissections and formaldhyde inhalation. Hell, I practically watch 160lbs Tumor and other TLC operations while I eat my Wheaties, but walking past this "exhibit" (sideshow) really affected me. From seeing the pictures on the outside of skinned humans, I could tell that the cadavers were all Chinese. Suddenly, this and some video of Chinese executions coalesced in my mind. I imagined perhaps these young male cadavers passed away from trying to bypass Chinese government webfilters, or some other freedom I take for granted. That didn't feel right. Perhaps I stumbled on the meaning of Thanksgiving?

Upon later internet reading, it turns out these 22 young male cadavers were dubiously obtained. The for profit company that runs this "exhibit", Premier Exhibitions Inc., paid $25 Million total for 23 cadavers from a Chinese university. A university that was previously implicated in using executed prisoners for comercial benefit.

At $24.50 for adults and $18.50 for children aside, I would not attend this exhibit. Not only is this exhibit a sideshow of questionable educational value, it also profits from execution of people who were probably not serious criminals or criminals at all (in the American sense at least). Anybody else take offense to Premier Exhibits Inc's profiteering from unjust executions?

Friend Center Renaming

2005-11-13T21:04:00.000-05:00

Why do they call it the friend center? I mean it's not central to anything, and there's nothing friendly about it's windowless basement clusters.

So, I suggest we rename it Enemy Periphery.

War of the Wheels

2005-11-11T16:06:00.000-05:00

"What I don't want, is the best programmer winning the race." (The National Hot Rod Association, drag racing's de facto governing body)

--Too late buddy!

Rocket Propelled Bike... I need one of these!!

2005-11-10T00:49:00.000-05:00

The Rocket-Propelled Bicycle
One rocket scientist’s idea of a father-daughter project.
PM Reader Project Award: Sarah Pickens and Tim Pickens

It’s only natural for a guy who builds rocket engines for a living to want to feel the thrust of one of his own creations. “For years we test these things--but it’ll be a long time before any of us go into space,” says POPULAR MECHANICS subscriber Tim Pickens, president of Orion Propulsion, an aerospace company in Madison, Ala. “So I do things that are earthbound to have some fun.” Such as? Building rocket-powered bicycles with his 13-year-old daughter, Sarah.
Pickens outfits the two-wheelers with hybrid rocket motors, which keep the solid fuel and liquid oxidizer separate until the last moment. His bike, whose front brake control has been turned into a throttle, burns roofing tar with a boost from nitrous oxide (yes, laughing gas). It spews a yellow-white flame and hits 60 mph in 6 seconds. Sarah’s pink chopper releases cold carbon dioxide and can go 30 mph. Says Dad: “She can’t have fire until she’s 18.”

It's interesting that he used a tar nitrous hybrid. I think the winner of the ansari-x prize, Scaled Composites' Spaceship One, used a similar fuel combination. It seems like a good "enthusiast" rocket fuel, because alone neither the oxidizer nor fuel is particularly dangerous. Nitrous, AKA laughing gas, is non-toxic and non-flammable (by itself). And tar is organic and not pretty innocent as far as fuel goes. That being said, I would do a few things before taking a ride on it. Namely reinforce the anchoring of the rocket to the bike. From the photos I've seen, the connection looks pretty weak and if it were to come loose it would surely hit the passenger.

Unfinished Business -- Prospect 11

2005-11-04T23:44:00.000-05:00

In the spirit of the Cake song "Going the Distance", Princeton's DARPA Grand Challenge team went the distance this fall break.

As they speed thru the finish the flags go down.
The fans get up, and get out of town.
The arena is empty except for one man,
Still driving and striving as fast as he can

The sun has gone down and the moon has come up,
And long ago somebody left with the cup,
But he's driving and striving and hugging the turns,

Over this week we won our own challenge. In span of a few days we proved our car capable of completing the 2005 and 2004 challenge. We logged close to 300 miles of off-road autonomous driving with Prospect 11.

Many of my teamates and I feel a void now that the Grand Challenge has been completed. Deadlines (even if met late) gave a sense of urgency and pulled this car together. What this team needs is a new challenge that could hold our interest. How does highway driving sound? Gumball 3000? Rally racing? This will probably be decided at a China Star East buffet or bbq...

And here are some photos:

Crime and Punishment

2005-09-28T22:47:00.000-04:00

So the first problem set of MAE 324 is due at 12:30 at the beginning of class. I have only a half-hour for lunch and I ran a few minutes late to class and with a few fellow students. I was probably less than 5 minutes late and hadn't changed a word. At first she refused to take it, but I said how much time I spent on it and how silly it would be to get no credit for being only a few minutes late. At that point she at least agreed to accept the homework, but was unsure whether she would give us credit or not.

Here's the magnanimous resolution:

_______________________________________________________________

Dear Nir, Gordon, Scott, Valentin, and Michael,

While in future I will expect you to adhere to the 12:30 pm sharp deadline for homework in order for it to be fully graded, given further information and thought, we have decided to examine your homework and give you a maximum of 8 points out of 20 rather than zero.

I do not like being asked to bend the rules, as it is unfair to all the other students who manage to come on time and/or turn in homework early (i.e., playing by the rules). I will not bend the rules again, now that you fully understand my policy (even though it is clearly stated in the syllabus and was clearly stated in class). You need simply to make sure to be in class on time and turn in the homework on or before 12:30 pm as it states in the syllabus.

I expect that you will consider this to be a fair compromise, and consider yourselves duly alerted for the rest of the term.

Sincerely,
Prof. Carter

________________________________________________________________

Bored randomness

2005-09-23T20:17:00.000-04:00

When you get down to it, we're all just molecules. Some people forget this.

Review chemistry for material science class...

Cool alarm clock

2005-09-22T21:38:00.000-04:00

Prospect 11

2005-09-20T07:11:00.000-04:00

Stress testing

2005-09-20T07:08:00.000-04:00

How many rolls does it take to break a iPod Nano??

No Above Ground Computer Clusters

2005-04-17T19:20:00.000-04:00

Princeton has probably 15 computer clusters, but all of them are in windowless basements.

Princeton needs some less bunker-like computer clusters.

Soup Nazi Coming to Princeton

2005-04-02T02:34:00.000-05:00

The soup nazi is opening shop in Princeton.
NY Post: From Soup to Shops

IF you don't know who the soup nazi is be a real person and watch more Seinfeld.

48 Hour Midterm = World-of-Pain for 48 hours

2005-03-31T01:15:00.000-05:00

It's 1:19AM Wed morning in the Friend 017.

Two weeks after "midterm week", my automatic controls professor decides to give us a 48-hr take-home midterm. This test violates the Geneva Convention in a number of ways:
1. 48-hour tests cruel and unusual punishment
2. Questions with a, b, c, d, e, f, g parts

The clock started Tuesday at 5PM and will end Thursday at 5PM. For this test we are allowed to use our notes and the textbooks (one of which I decided not to by because it sucks) and this program called matlab. I expect it will take the full 48-hours, some of which I already wasted sleeping and going to class....

What's sorta weird is we actually have control lecture during the test. I'm not sure what that's going to be like, but I might not find out...

Bike Japan

2005-03-25T15:04:00.000-05:00

Since reading Hokkaido Highway, a book about this Canadian joker who hitchhikes along the path of blooming cherry blossoms, I thought attempting something similar by bike would be fun. And last summer, when I was traveling around Japan last summer I met a few people who were biking the whole length and I talked to them for a bit and I think I still have their email address.

From what I gathered from these people I met at youth hostels, Japan is well suited for bike touring because even without a support van you can travel very lightly. No matter how rural, you are never too far from a circle K or 7-11. And in rural and urban areas when you can't find a youth hostel, you can cheaply crash in a park. You could get away with carrying only the essentials: one or two light changes of clothes, some sort of sleeping sack without any insulation, and a few repair tools. It might be hard to convince some friends to do this with me though.

I found a good site on cycling japan, ignore the cheezy opening video. They have recommended routes, directions, photos, etc.

Advice for Japan

2005-03-18T15:15:00.000-05:00

My cousins, aunt and uncle are going to Japan. This is what I recommended they try while they were in Tokyo:

good for breakfast:
donburi restaurant (anything on rice), and miso and egg breakfast, natto (fermented soy beans)
yoshinoya is a donburi chain that can be found near any train station
Mr. Donuts - got to check out this donut chain, check out the different donut variations (notice soy sauce donuts)
good for lunch (fast, cheap and everywhere):
ramen
lots of different ramen variations in broth
shoyu-soy sauce broth
shio - salt broth
tonkotsu - pork broth
miso - miso broth
ramen restaurants also serve dumplings called gyoza which are prettygood. if you decide you like ramen, then you might like to check out this ramen museum in yokohama (really close to tokyo). it's pretty busy during lunch time though, there were lines when i went. the museum has 6 or so different famous regional ramen restaurants inside. these restaurants ship there noodles and broth stock over daily to keep it true to the original. it was pretty cool. there is also this fake robber that runs around inside and if you spot him and tell the fake cop you get a ton of free ramen stuff.
kaiten zushi restaurant (conveyor-belt sushi)
different color plates cost different amounts, just take what you want off conveyor belt
Japanese fast food
Japanese native M.O.S. burger (try the vegetable burger it's really good),McDonalds (they have a teriyaki burger) , KFC...
Japanese interpretation of Italian food is interesting, especially pizza
dinner
yakitori (grilled, skewered meat)
japanese barbecue, probably smoky and loud, but really good. you order by the skewer, and for each cut, there are two standard sauces shio=salt or tare = sauce. two favorite skewers are negima which is a chicken and spring onion skewer and tori-dango which is a chicken ball skewer. Also try some edamame (salted steamed soy bean pods) and some japanese beer.
okonomiyaki
japanese cross between a pizza and a pancake - cook on griddle, also try yaki-soba at this kind of restaurant
soba (buckwheat noodle) - i like cold zaru-soba dish, there are also hot soba bowls
udon (thick wheat noodle)

I forgot to mention Akihabara. Akihabara is a section of Tokyo crammed with electronics stores. I believe Akihabara is a stop on the Circle Line. There is also a transportation museum near there. I'd also check out Roppongi hills. Shibuya and Harajuku are interesting places to walk around. I also recommend exploring Asakusa Kannon temple and surroundings.
The gardens of the castle grounds are also good. This is the one place It might be fun to take the monorail to the Tokyo island Odaiba. A good daytrip would be to Hakone, I've never been there but I hear it's good. http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e5200.html
Also avoid traveling during rush hour, especially in Tokyo.

If I remember correctly, there is a Japanese National Tourist information booth at Narita airport which has lots of english language brochures and maps. There is also a branch of Japanese National Tourist office in one of the rockefeller square buildings and you can pick up information from there too. I think there website is www.jnto.org

Also in Kyoto check out the train station and the escalators up to nowhere (wasteful boom construction). I got a haircut at one of the barbers in the basement of Kyoto station and it turned out ok, so if jeremy or gavin need a haircut you should check that out.

Also, at train stations, hotels, and tourism related things like that you will be able to order in english, but a japanese phrase book might be useful at restaurants.

Other random things to check out, vending machines (esp. ones that sell beer, food, warm or cold sake, etc), convience stores called conbini with takeout bentos, Japanese stationary shops, Japanese department stores (the basements normally has a supermarket like set up and the top floors have different restaurants and the middle floors sell clothes, appliances, cookware and lots of random things. Oh, try green tea ice cream, mattcha aisu creamu.

Also from Kyoto, Himeji castle is worth checking out.

Spring Break

2005-03-18T14:58:00.001-05:00

Spring break has been pretty relaxing (ie haven't done any work yet).

I was in Quebec for the first few days, skiing with Alex, Rob and Joel which was awesome. It was the best east conditions I've ever skied in, it was just around freezing, snowing but not too overcast. We crashed with Alex's relatives who were very cool. Snow made the end of the drive up hard. The backroad to Alex's relatives seemed unplowed which made for exciting driving in the teal caravan.

I filled out this bb tourney with the other mae (mechanical and aero eng) and have wakeforest winning, well see if that comes true (but there's no money on the line).

On a technical note

2005-03-18T14:52:00.000-05:00

On a technical note, I have decided to forward scottns.com directly to this blogspot blog, rather than host the website, blog and photos on my laptop. I decided to stop hosting because I don't like leaving my laptop on 24/7 and also slows the computer down. Before this switch, I was hosting the website on my ibook and had a program update the DNS server periodically to account for changing ip address. I also had a workaround to avoid using standard webserving port 80 because my home cable internet provider blocks that port.