so yesterday I asked Vanessa to marry me and she said yes! I'm so happy and excited, so spread the word...the wedding will probably be sometime in fall of 2008, other than that I don't really have any details yet...

--Mike

I'm engaged

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is changing his party affiliation from "Republican" to "unaffiliated", a move certain to fuel talk that he is preparing for an independent run for president in 2008.

Mike Bloomberg: Registered Independent - The Fix

Steven Tyler is a student at George Mason. He designed a kick ass slice of demo code for your eye candy goodness.

--timball

Plasma Pong

When: Always June 18th

Today is International Panic Day, a day for everyone to be worried and concerned. We're not sure what is so big, and so widespread, to create an international incident of this magnitude. But, here it is on the calendar folks......an international day of panic.

At Last! Let the flesh-eating-robotic-bunnies break their fast!

International Panic Day - June 18th

Physicists of the DZero experiment at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have discovered a new heavy particle, the Ξb (pronounced "zigh sub b") baryon, with a mass of 5.774±0.019 GeV/c2, approximately six times the proton mass. The newly discovered electrically charged Ξb baryon, also known as the "cascade b," is made of a down, a strange and a bottom quark. It is the first observed baryon formed of quarks from all three families of matter. Its discovery and the measurement of its mass provide new understanding of how the strong nuclear force acts upon the quarks, the basic building blocks of matter.

If you'd like to read the actual article check this arxiv link

--timball

Fermilab physicists discover 'triple-scoop' baryon

The House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena for testimony and documents from Miers, while the Senate panel demanded the same from Taylor. Both committees also issued separate subpoenas for White House documents related to the dismissals.

"By refusing to cooperate with congressional committees, the White House continues its pattern of confrontation over cooperation," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate panel. "The White House cannot have it both ways--it cannot stonewall congressional investigations by refusing to provide documents and witnesses while claiming nothing improper occurred."

Panels Issue Subpoenas to Former Bush Aides - washingtonpost.com

Don Herbert, Mr. Wizard, has passed away at age 90.

2nd most important science guy in my life when I was a kid... the most important thing was the giant woolly mammoth in the lobby of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. If you put the handset to your ear the mammoth would tell you all about itself AND what new things there were to see at the museum.

--timball

RIP Mr. Wizard

I have consumed a massive amount of Red Bull in the last 2 weeks in a run up to finishing the manuscript for my Ajax Security book. We are talking on average 2-3 a day, with an occasional day of 4. Once there was a day of 5. Just once, and *never* again. At some point you can't really call them "days" anymore. A day is simply a convenient unit of 24 hours that may or may not start at 12:00am.

There is an elusive euphoria stage of Red Bull consumption where you are unbelievably productive and yet task that seemly take hours take only about 27 minutes or so. That was the odd thing. It always seemed 27 minutes later. I like to call this stage "Fry-Time" in reference to that Futurama episode where Fry drinks 100 cups of coffee and time slows to a crawl. Fry-Time occurs only in a narrow band on the line between total exhaustion and caffeine-induced heart attack and is a difficult stage to reach. I've hit Fry-Time maybe 3-4 times ever. 2 of those times have happened in the last 2 weeks.

Then, there is the "attention deficient disordering" stage. This stage occurs beyond Fry-Time and before the caffeine-induced heart attack phase. In this phase, you want to be productive. You are aware of all the work you need to accomplish as well as its importance. You feel motivated and excited about all your projects. In fact, it feels like you are in the Fry-Time stage. But you aren't. You are ADDing. Because as soon as you try to do something. You can't. Halfway through your brain jumps to thinking about another task and you stall. Its like OS scheduler that has so many jobs to do it spends all it time context switching instead of actually making any progress on any of them. This is an extremely frustrating phase because you know what's happening. And the very act of noticing that you are being scattered brained brings to mind all the tasks you still need to do which makes you think about how cool some of them are and suddenly you aren't doing any more work on whatever it was you were working on. You've context switched to another job.

The only thing to do in the ADD stage is wait it out and try to be productive later. The only problem is when you are in the ADD phase you have had so much Red Bull you can't sleep! So you are wide awake, too hyped to do anything, knowing you have shit to do, and losing time that you could be sleeping.

This is exactly what happened to me around 4:00am this morning. On an upside, I got through about 60 pages of Guns, Germs, and Steel. Elonka's cousin sure can write!

Taming the Bull

This course provides a comprehensive and concise review of the neurosciences, with special emphasis on recent and important developments in the field. Topics include basic neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, neuropharmacology, neuroendocrinology, neurochemistry, and neurogenetics. The course is intended for clinical psychologists as well as graduate physicians and residents in neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry.

Video, slides, and transcripts are freely available.

There are a few other seminars you might want to check out, as well:

Introduction to the Art of Venture Valuation

In this e-seminar, Professor Oren Fuerst of Columbia Business School will provide an overview of the main methods of valuation and then demonstrate some of the adjustments that are typically necessary for early-stage technology companies or projects. The e-seminar includes video, audio with slides, case-study examples of valuation, and an interactive final exercise.

Mathematics of Finance

Professor Mikhail Smirnov's Mathematics of Finance is a two-part course on the basics of probability and finance. This course requires a solid understanding of calculus.

In the following lessons, we will explore the notions of derivatives, futures, and options, as well as theories of volatility, arbitrage, and hedging. We will describe and apply the Black-Scholes formula for pricing options and the theory of Brownian motion as it applies to calculating price and risk.

Small Wonders: The World of Nano-Science

The nanoscale, just above the scale of an atom, is the place where the properties of most common things are determined. It is here that the disciplines of physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering meet and conspire. In this e-seminar, Professor Horst Stormer magnifies the wondrous nano-world and reveals its enormous potential to shape our future.

Basic and Clinical Neurosciences

I made a new Tabblo out of some of my last sets of pictures.

--timball

artomatic part deux, kinetic art race, eastern market