During a long bike ride yesterday, I noticed several road signs calling attention to a fine of $101 for driving without a seat belt. I’d noticed these signs before, but while traveling at the glacial pace my winter legs permitted, I read them a lot more than once 😉 Upon passing of House Bill 1460, […]
I don’t watch much television , but when I do, it’s because my Tivo’s found something cool. Like: last night’s introduction to RFIDs by Dr. Chris Diorio, chairman and CEO of Impinj[5]. His presentation is available online[1], so I will just summarize some of the things I learned. Who wants them? Business! Among the benefits:
I have to agree with Elizabeth that the whole taking a phone call in the middle of a meeting is off-putting. Some of my coworkers are notorious about this, often jumping to address a quadrant 4 domestic issue. I do try to ignore any calls until after the meeting’s over. One exception is if my spouse’s
Back in February, I’d mentioned how researchers were using computational fluid dynamics to understand the physics behind swimming. Though I didn’t come out and say it, my product is used in the post-processing of the results. With the interest in Michael Phelps’ potentially achieving eight gold medals (including a nail-biter today), there has been more
I’ve been having a lot of fun reading “How to Fossilize Your Hamster“[1], an entertaining and enlightening collection of quirky science questions and experiments one can do to observe the the principles. It’s very conversationally written with abundant humor. For example, in answering the best way to get ketchup out of the bottle, where they
Cyclists will especially appreciate this public service ad. (It’s an update of a topic I enjoyed at Vis 2006.)
Inattentional blindness demo modernized Read More »
I was going through Statistics Hacks and came across Benford’s Law, which states that in naturally occurring numerical data, the distribution of the first, non-zero significant digit follows a logarithmic probability distribution described as: P(D1 = d) = log10 (1 + 1/d) In other words, first number is much more likely going to be a
As soon as I exited BART at the Powell Street stop, I remembered what else San Francisco is famous for: aggressive panhandling. In the two blocks to my hotel, I was hit up eight times. The hotel’s close, but my room is five floors above the edge of the street. All night I can hear
Let’s get geophysical Read More »