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If I had this kind of cash, I would be of the same opinion:

Myhrvold’s friends, like Myhrvold, seemed to be of the opinion that there is no downside to having a CAT scanner, especially if you can get it for twenty-nine hundred dollars.

The New Yorker has a very interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point about Intellectual Ventures, a company that does nothing but think up inventions. They occasionally call sessions to which smart people are invited to talk and come up with patentable ideas, hand them to lawyers and then sell the patents.

There's a small chain of taquerías in the Bay Area called Taquería Pancho Villa. At the San Mateo location this evening I noticed a plaque commemorating the revolutionary general. I took picture of it and translated it when I got home:

In tribute to Pancho Villa (Doroteo Arango [Arámbula, his full name]) To 119 years of his birth (San Juan River, Durango) And 74 years of his death (Parral, Chihuaua) San Mate, California 1997

I recently got a bluetooth headset to use with my Motorola Razr and it works wonderfully, with the one drawback that having bluetooth enabled on the phone all the time reduces its battery life from 5-6 days standby, to 3-4. I thought that turning bluetooth on and off was a pain, requiring navigating 6 menus deep to do so, until I saw the option for shortcuts in another configuration menu. Shortcuts are easy to setup and make doing anything, including enabling or disabling bluetooth, a snap.

To setup a shortcut, you simply navigat to the menu option you want as a shortcut, in this case Settings > Connection > Bluetooth Link > Setup > Power. Then, highlight 'on' and hold down the menu key (top middle button) until a popup asks you if you want to assign a shortcut. Say yes, and then assign it the key '1', the default. Do the same for 'off' in the bluetooth power menu, assigning it the key '2'. Now, you can simply press the menu button and then 1 or 2 to turn bluetooth on or off. Shortcuts can be altered from the Settings > Tools > Shortcuts menu. I'm very happy that Motorola included the shortcuts feature, in particular because the Razr's interface is so blindingly slow.

I just finish reading Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation, which is a very good book. At one point he notes that the bible stipulates Pi is exactly 3. I wondered how such a book would lay out mathematical constants, but it's pretty straightforward:

The sea was then cast; it was made with a circular rim, and measured ten cubits across, five in height, and thirty in circumference. Under the brim, gourds encircled it, ten to the cubit all the way around; the gourds were in two rows and were cast in one mold with the sea.

Kings 7:23-24

He also made the molten sea. It was perfectly round, ten cubits in diameter, five in depth, and thirty in circumference

II Chronicles 4:2

I must say that it's a weak argument, because they could be simply approximations by an observer, but it's funny nonetheless.

I found the archives of the GQ Style Guy today, which has answered numerous style questions I had. It's also peppered with some serious wit:

The only people doomed to pulling off pills [from a sweater] one by one are those in hell who, while they were alive, washed my cashmere socks in hot water and then put them in the dryer.

I've been reading Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh, an excellent history of all cosmology. The book starts with the very beginning of astronomical exploration, such as Eratosthenes who was the first to estimate the Earth's diameter. I'm nearing the end of the book (the mid 1900's, shortly after the Big Bang theory was created) and ran across this, George Gamow's version of the bible's Genesis:

In the beginning God created Radiation and Ylem. And the Ylem was without shape or number, and the nucleons were rushing madly upon the face of the deep.

And God said: "Let there be mass two." And there was mass two. And God saw deuterium, and it was good.

And God said: "Let there be mass three." And there was mass three. And God saw tritium, and it was good.

And God continued to call numbers until He came to the transuranium elements. But when He looked back on his work, He saw that it was not good. In the excitement of counting, He had missed calling for mass five, and so, naturally, no heavier elements could have been formed.

God was very disappointed by that slip and wanted to contract the universe again and start everything from the beginning. But that would be much too simple. Instead, being Almighty, God decided to make heavy elements in the most impossible way.

And so God said: "Let there be Hoyle." And there was Hoyle. And God saw Hoyle and told him to make heavy elements in any way he pleased.

And so Hoyle decided to make heavy elements in stars, and to spread them around by means of supernova explosions. But in doing so, Hoyle had to follow the blueprint of abundances which God prepared earlier when He had planned to make the elements from Ylem.

Thus, with the help of God, Hoyle made all heavy elements in stars, but it was so complicated that neither Hoyle, nor God, nor anybody else can now figure out exactly how it was done.

So, what causes weather radar to do this?

I just read some interesting stories about those "exit bag checks" that many stores have implemented in the past few years, namely, Best Buy. Unsurprisingly showing your receipt to the goon at the door and letting him inspect your purchase is entirely optional, from a legal standpoint. The store's only powers to detain you are if they suspect you of shoplifting which requires that they:

1. Have seen someone approach, take, and conceal the merchandise
2. Observe the shoplifter continuously
3. Verify that they fail to pay for it
4. Apprehend the shoplifter outside the store.

The guy at the door can't possibly do all of this; he's stationed by the door and, assumedly, doesn't leave his post. After reading these stories, I'm inclined to test these systems every chance I get; it'll be an interesting day the first time I'm accosted as a shoplifter.

So, I knew it was going to be cold on Thursday when the NPR 5 minute news brief, which sticks to big stories like terrorists taking control of Israel or massive protests by fundamentalists, had a guy from the National Weather Service on saying, "This is going to be the first arctic air burst we've had all year; it's going to be quite cold."

This probably isn't that interesting, but I'll may find it good to look back on at some point. A simple picture of my desk while I'm working on a project on the laptop and the right screen (I just got the LCD for Christmas); you can also see the massive queue of books I needed to get through at that time. That little plastic shelf almost broke.