Solar eclipse on Mars

Wow, check this out.  A picture of a solar eclipse on Mars taken by the Mars Curiosity rover.  You can see the oblong shape of the Martian moon Phobos as it passes across the sun.

Jeff Bezos buys the Washington Post newspaper

This is interesting.  Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, purchased the famous Washington Post newspaper .   When I first heard this my reaction was that "It makes sense that Amazon would buy this to integrate into the Kindle" and their content distribution system or something similar.  But that would be an incorrect impression.  Note that Jeff Bezos individually purchased the paper - not Amazon, and from the sound of things it's more the case of a rich benefactor stepping in to save one of the most respected papers in America from it's financial difficulties.  

Per Bezos:  “But the key thing I hope people will take away from this is that the values of The Post do not need changing. The duty of the paper is to the readers, not the owners.”

Here's an article musing about some of the plans Bezos might have for the Washington Post and includes the observation that a) when you're marketing to folks it helps to intimately know that person's interests - and a relationship with the post could aid that, and b) e-commerce hasn't really been implemented effectively in a newspaper (other than lots of banner ads).  Could the Washington post be a forum to try something more effective?  There are other cool thoughts here also.

Brazil Nuts just aren't very good

Thought this was funny. I don't like Brazil Nuts all that much and often there are lots of them in the cans of mixed nuts at the store - and there tends to be lots of them left at the bottom of the can after I've eaten all the other types.  Apparently  I'm not alone - here's an informal survey indicating they're one of the least favorite nuts.

I'd assumed they were cheap and just there to take up volume, but according to this (at least at the time of the sample) Brazil nuts cost as much as many other nuts (Almonds, peanuts, Walnuts, and Cashews are all less or similar in cost). My favorites - pecans - are quite a bit more expensive which likely explains their scarcity in the mix.

But seriously - if Brazil nuts cost about the same as Almonds, Walnuts, and Cashews - then please substitute.

Digital Evolution

Here's an interesting simulation looking at complexity vs. fitness as measured by ability for these little digital programs to find their way through a digital maze using a limited number of sensors. From The Loom

Cancer Study

Here's an interesting study on chemotherapy survivability in mice. The researchers found ways to increase survivability in mice to 50-75% in what were otherwise lethal chemotherapy doses. quote: In the study, 50-to-75 percent of the mice treated with the molecule survived otherwise lethal doses of chemotherapy. All of the mice that did not receive the molecule died, Geng said.

From garden today

got a nice little batch of okra today - probably make a couple panfulls for frying. Got another good bunch of tomatoes - I'm falling behind eating them as it is. Got just a few beans. Got another cucumber today too. I'm going to have to start eating the cucumbers faster - they're starting to pile up on me. I think I've got 4 in the fridge right now.

Test Ignore

Ignore this - I'm practicing some code Test clickable image code to go to GOG. Picture should be clickable

More garden 07-13

A few pictures from the garden today pickings

okra bloom from a few days ago - I thought they look kindof cool

4 o'clocks

Surgery Center that posts prices

Check this out: A surgery center that posts guaranteed all inclusive prices - in Oklahoma City. They claim prices well below half the prices that most hospitals would charge. Might be worth a scheduling a trip if you're paying out of pocket - but they don't take Medicare or Medicaid. quote from the site: "If you have a high deductible or are part of a self-insured plan at a large company, you owe it to yourself or your business to take a look at our facility and pricing which is listed on this site. If you are considering a trip to a foreign country to have your surgery, you should look here first. Finally, if you have no insurance at all, this facility will provide quality and pricing that we believe are unmatched." originally saw this on Marginal Revolution site

Garden

Some picks from the garden

The garden

Some close-ups - okra, cucumber, beans, squash

Little tomato plant coming up from where one of last year's plants was

Symbiosis

This was an interesting article about minimal DNA genomes - and bacteria being able to find ecological niches where they only have to do one thing really well, and count on the surrounding organisms to do the rest. Kind of like economic specialization. How Simple Can Life Get? It's Complicated

National Security and Noise in the data

I was thinking about the problems with so much security data being electronic and the apparent ease of electronic file theft, and it made me think back to some studies of the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1942. After the fact, historians can go back and try to piece together info saying that the warnings/clues were there, but before the fact it's all very noisy. Hindsight enables us to see the important info. That same principle applied on 9-11. Even when you might have some clues about an attack that may be coming - it's very difficult to put all the pieces together in advance. It makes me think maybe one of the best things we could do with national security data (or for corporations - critical corporate data) is intentionally seed the data with all sorts of bad data - making it so noisy that the info would be very difficult to use by spies. In the case of an insider like Snowden, perhaps make it so that some folks working with the data may not know whether it's real or not - despite the layers of encryption. My guess is alot of this already happens - allowing spies to capture intentionally false designs and bad info but allowing them to think it may be real. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks some leaks of this nature are probably intentional just to see what happens.

Interesting Observation on gridlock and it's wider effects

I saw this article on congressional gridlock in the Washington Post Today. quote: "But much happens amidst congressional gridlock. It just happens in other, often less accountable, branches of government." It's an interesting perspective/observation: things keep happening even when there's gridlock, it's just that the people elected to legislate aren't making the decisions when they can't agree on anything. Other branches of the government keep doing what they do - like the Supreme Court or regulatory agencies - but these other branches can't do what congress can do to address issues - so the efforts are tangential and oblique. And often these other arms of government become the target of blame when congress itself has the ability to correct things if they were less gridlocked.

Social Breakdown and Overpopulation - a study with mice

I don't know how I ended up finding this - but here's an interesting study from 1978 that that creates a closed ecosystem of mice that removes most external threats and resource limits and studies what happens when overcrowding conditions develop. Here's the link to the paper: Death Squared by John B. Calhoun. The study documents the social breakdown of the mice, who eventually lose ability to properly socially interact and maintain their social structures. The entire group of mice was on the way to extinction when the study ended despite a top population of over 2000 mice from early in the study. The contrast of instinctual and learned behaviors are far fuzzier than I would've expected. At the end, even when removed from the crowded conditions remaining mice were socially unable to form a social order and/or reproduce. They had been biologically "broken" absent proper socialization throughout their lives.