Friday, March 7, 2003

Oderint dum metuant Paul Krugman gets to the heart of the matter - again. A BBC commentator noted that the upcoming war was between two tinhorn dictators. As Nichloas Kristof notes, the world view of the US seems to have suffered serious damage. It is amazing that so much post 911 goodwill could be thown away so quickly in what amounts to a blitzflush. 10:05:33 AM     In OS X browerland Chimera is now Camino and the a new release has been posted (they also offer nightly builds for the more adventurous among you). This is a very nice browser - much better than Explorer on OS X in most respects. Omniweb seems to be fading at this point (but they are promising a comeback based on a new core) and Safari seems to be turning into the browser of choice for many OS X users. Competition is good. 7:15:56 AM     Perhaps the universe will not collapse or expand forever, but instead will rip itself apart. 6:46:54 AM     Another report on hydrogen cars. While it is important to continue to do research and development, it is a misrepresentation to claim that this is a cost effective use of money for any impact in the next two decades. The industry, administration and most of the press are also wrong in claiming that this is an energy source. In fact it takes an enormous amount of energy to create hydrogen (or you have to get it from existing hydrocarbons). It is more of a energy storage mechanim than anything else - much closer to a battery than a fuel. On a two decade time scale urban planning might be more effective than hydrogen research. Moving to a five to ten year time frame encouraging smaller and more efficient vehicles would be much more effective. Of course both of these are DOA in the US. Perhaps it will take something like a surprise during a military/nation building exercise to make oil really expensive. 6:44:41 AM     A great talk on research by Richard Hamming (thanks for pointing this out Jim!) I remember hearing him give the talk at the Arnold Auditorium at Murray Hill. It is difficult to imagine a real industrial research lab these days - certainly not ones that would welcome the likes of Hamming and other luminaries of the old Bell Labs. 6:44:27 AM     Finally word came of the death of Jonathan Eberhart. For those who don't recognize the name, Jonathan covered the space program for Science News from 1960 to 1991 - he was a wonderful science writer and his commentary made the science weekly something that many of us read in school. Reporting at a deeper more imaginative level than was found on TV or regular magazines, he was undoubtedly responsible for interesting many kids in science and engineering. I finally met him about a dozen years ago. It turned out that he was an accomplished folk singer and we heard him sing at the Minstrel Coffeehouse with his sea shanty group The Boarding Party (that concert was remarkable and nearly brought the roof down on the building with its intensity. He was involved in several folk music groups - writing, performing, discovering and preserving. He was far too young - MS is a terrible thing. 6:44:00 AM

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