Power Pal

You just don't get big, creative dance sequences in American movies anymore. The closest thing to a musical you get these days are Disney movies. I recently had someone forward me an old Bollywood clip . I don't know what time and place this is from, but I want to go there.

I came across these two new technologies from Microsoft and Google today. Microsoft Surface - It's a 30-inch tabletop display that allows several people to work simultaneously using just their hands without a mouse or keyboard. You can grab data with your hands and move information around between objects using gestures and touch. I've seen various versions of this in development. The new iPhone has some of these features as well where you can modify photos using touch. Apparently this is going to reach the market in Winter 2007. Pretty cool. Google Street View Maps - Google added an additional feature to their maps application where you can get a "street view" of a location that you've mapped. It's essentially a 360 degree view from street level that you can rotate and walk along. I think Microsoft Live Maps had something like this where you could virtually drive around a city, but this is much cleaner, much faster, and far better executed than Micros...

I read a book review in the Wall Street Journal a week ago that was pretty interesting. I'm going to put it on my reading list as it seems both educational and fun. The book is called The Sushi Economy . The subtitle is "Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy". It's about the rise of the sushi industry worldwide and the many far-flung impacts it has (including the creation of a global supply chain and global demand for tuna).

I read an editorial in the Wall Street Journal a week ago titled "The Poor Get Richer" . It was basically about how the poorest part of our society has in the past 10 or 15 years increased their earnings more than any other segment of society. The findings are based on a study performed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The CBO said that the main causes of the surge were a combination of welfare reform, expansion of the earned income tax credit (where people need to work to get the credit), and wage gains from a tight labor market. Cash welfare fell as a percentage of overall income while earnings from work rose after the welfare reforms put into place in 1996 under Clinton. Graduation rates have also been good for families with breadwinners, including those with women as the head of the household. There is still a real problem with chronically poor families though. But it's very encouraging to see that the welfare reforms are paying off.

Saw an episode of the Discovery Channel show Future Car and my jaw was dropping the whole time. In dealing with the sustainability issue of energy for transportation, you have to look at both sides of the problem - the source of the energy and the use of the energy. Two particularly impressive design concepts that we'll likely see in the coming years to use energy and resources better were the following: Loremo - a car that gets 157 miles per gallon of diesel. It could drive from Denver to L.A. (1000 miles) on around 7 gallons of diesel. That would take about 42 gallons of unleaded gasoline in my car. Unbelievable. The core idea here is that there is no point in driving a 150 lb human around in a 1.5 ton vehicle that is specifically designed in a way to be resistant to the wind. There is no need for the vehicle to be that big. So, make the vehicle as light as possible (while maintaining sturdiness) and make it as aerodynamic as possible. Great idea. Could be a bit scary driving i...

Been reading the book "tuesdays with Morrie". I haven't gotten all the way through it yet, but wanted to capture a few quotes that I thought were interesting. "Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, 'Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?" (p81) I think I fail to reflect and meditate on life on a regular basis enough. It was one of my goals a while back, perhaps I should try it out. "Learn how to die, and you learn how to live" (p83) My take on this is that once you really truly accept that you're going to die, you also can start making choices about how you want to meet that end and all the things you want to do leading up to that. "Looking back makes you competitive" (p120 I love this one the most. If you really think about it, you really get competitive when you start thinking about how two people could have started at the same star...