Author: dabacon

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John McCain v RIM

This morning, John McCain’s top economic adviser made a bit of a mistake:

Asked what work John McCain did as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate’s top economic adviser wielded visual evidence: his BlackBerry.
“He did this,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. “Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you’re looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that’s what he did.”
Al Gore, call your office.
(Courtesy of Amie Parnes, on the trail with McCain)

Great fodder for the late night television hosts, considering the fact that Research In Motion is a Canadian company funded by the Canadian institutional investors. Maybe this is really a foreign policy announcement that John McCain supports invading the 51st state Canada. If he can get this going before the election, I’m pretty sure that his selection of Palin as a VP candidate will be seen as forward looking, because I’ve been told that as Alaska goes, so goes Canada.
But what amazes me more is how quickly wikipedia gets updated.
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Pink Floyd Keyboardist Richard Wright Has Passed Away

For many years, and in particular during my college years, I was a huge Pink Floyd fan. Indeed, I suspect the first trace of me on the internet probably involves a post on a Pink Floyd newsgroup of which I am now quite embarrassed (but my ideas was sound, damnit!). Thus it is with great sadness that I learned today via Quantum Moxie that Richard Wright, keyboardist for the Pink Floyd, has passed away due to cancer.

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Back to Caltech, Back to Unreality

Dum, dum, dum, DUM DUM

No, it’s not the monolith from 2001, but instead Millikan library at Caltech which I’m visiting. If you’re ever around Caltech on Halloween, be sure to check out the pumpkin drop where frozen pumpkins are dropped off this gigantic monolith. I thought I saw a blue spark…
Always a bit strange going back to the place where you spent seven plus years of your life. Especially when it’s a place like Caltech, I suppose.

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Blog Posts With Scientific Content

The new father, he of uncertain principles, has analyzed whether his science posts gain viewership over time. My biggest problem with writing scientific content into posts is that when I do that it totally messes up my google searching. I mean when I do that then I end up finding my own blog post when I search for something I’m trying ton understand. On the other hand, it saves a click because I can be pretty certain that the link to my blog doesn’t lead to the answer I’m looking for (or if it does it’s time to get my memory checked out.)

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LHC Ad: Beware Bears

You may have noticed an ad running on scienceblogs which says “Has the LHC destoyed the Earth?” If you click on it you find a webpage that says in big letters simply “NO”. What’s up with that? Check out the webpage source for the page (http://www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com/).
Update 9/12/08: Check out the comments for more fun and also read the cat projectile analyzers take on how you can click to save the world.
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