Useful Thoughts and Actions Taken

Video: The Story of the Graphing Calculator

It is a nerds nurd story.  Some parts are hilarious and most situations are recognizable as straight out of the land of Dilbert.   What you will find is Mr Ron Avitzur is not from the land of group think.  I like and practice his philosophy of "I live simply"
It's midnight. I've been working sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. I'm not being paid. In fact, my project was canceled six months ago, so I'm evading security, sneaking into Apple Computer's main offices in the heart of Silicon Valley, doing clandestine volunteer work for an eight-billion-dollar corporation.

What is the graphing calculator software?

By Fudgy McFarlen, ago

Asian Hus on First

The characters

  • President Hu
  • Leutenant Hung
  • General Lee
  • Secretary Wee
  • Ambassador Ho
  • Planner Wa
  • Janitor Hee

Two americans spies have bugged the Chinese government meeting room.  The president and some of his staff are in the meeting room discussing top secret topics.

Flynt:   Is that Hu speaking?

Smart:   Wa

Flynt: Is that Hu speaking?

Smart: Wa

Flynt: I really want to know who is speaking

Smart: Wa

Another one of the principles has his turn on the soap box

Flynt: Is he hung?

Smart: How am I supposed to know?

Flynt: Because of his voice!

By Fudgy McFarlen, ago

Video: Ultraconservation and living fossils Mysteries of the Human Genome

Genetic code is reused in exactly the same manner human programmers reuse code.  Thus once some random string of genetic coding is found useful there is a process that preserves it from change.  That change is called survival.  If it is a random string with no purpose then it is swept from the system by error.  Error is death.  Thus if you sequence the human genome you can compare useful portions with those of widely separated animals such as mice and find almost identical code.

Gill Bejerano holds a BSc, summa cum laude, in Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science, and a PhD in Computer Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Twice recipient of the RECOMB best paper by a young scientist award, and a former Eshkol pre-doctoral Scholar and HHMI postdoc. As co-discoverer of ultraconserved elements, his research focuses on deciphering the function and evolution of the non-coding regions of the Human Genome. Gill is currently a postdoc with David Haussler at UC Santa Cruz, and in early 2007 he will join Stanford university as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Developmental Biology and the Department of Computer…

By Fudgy McFarlen, ago