Obama's Record
Posted 6:19 AM

"Economy near collapse? Less than a month after taking office, President Obama signed a record $787 billion stimulus package. Comprehensive health-care reform? Obama succeeded, after a grueling year-long legislative process, where predecessors going back decades had failed. Credit-card reform? Check. Student loan reform? Done. Financial regulatory reform? Close." (CSM, 7/13/10)
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Free Legal Forms
Posted 5:15 PM

The web is filling up with spam and search engines are failing to keep up.

For example: in a search for "free legal forms", you'll find almost nothing of value on either Yahoo, Bing or Google. Or "apartment lease form", or any other legal form search... you'll get expensive paid subscriptions and sites filled with popup ads that have absolutely nothing of real value.

In "real life" you can go to a library, photocopy a few, and leave... for free and for real. I could host free legal forms for pennies a month, and make money from innocuous ads... and I'm sure someone (perhaps a nonprofit) just done that. But they are impossible to find... because there's too much money to gain by spamming search engines and suppressing more generous competitors.

The more generous the site, the less money they have to spend on promotion.... so you can't find them.

The problem is search engines. They are being "gamed". (And the problem with the engines is that they should, by now, be using a distributed trust network...)

The best site I've found so far is www.ilrg.com. If anyone knows a better one, let me know.
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Airbender's Clumsy Vibe is its Charm
Posted 12:40 PM

After the film, over Sushi, I glanced at "MLB.com" on the big-screen TV and commented to my son, "too many highlights". My mom replied, "Yeah, everything's overproduced." That's something Airbender got right.

"The Last Airbender" is *not* a slick Hollywood movie. Not only that, it completely failed to capture either the campy-humor of the show, or the kung-fu fast-pased vibe of a proper anime-to-big screen remake.

So why, five minutes after the film, were we calling each other "sushi benders" and having so much fun? It was precisely because of the "old school" fantasy-flick vibe that we enjoyed it. The dialogue was stilted, good performances from Patel, Peltz, and Toub were wildly overshadowed by very, very bad performances and miscastings of the from minor characters. The "northern army" looked like a high-school marching band....

And yet, we all had a good time. It was a light, simple film ...with the production quality closer to a reality show than a blockbuster.... but I won't miss the next one.

Warning to M. Shyamalan. Don't do that again. Spend a nickel or 2 on a writer to help you with dialogue, better extras and minor characters, get some top coreogrpahy on the fight scenes, etc. Millions of cult-anime fans are willing to put up with a cute-but-clumsy first movie, but not a second.
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Obama Bush
Posted 8:31 PM

I always thought they looked a bit alike, especially the eyebrows, ears, eye-shape.
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Free Single-player RPG Games
Posted 7:15 AM

Multiplayer RPG's have the "I was here first" problem that gamers are escaping reality to *avoid*. So here's some single-player RPG's that are free and fun:

World of Pain 3 - Anime-style combat. Concentrate on one stat or style of fighting... and you'll beat the game in a day. It's nice to have a game with the right balance of puzzle, fight, and a clean win just before you get bored of it. (Online/Flash)

Arcuz - Run around, gain exp and level up. Be careful how you use your gems, they don't come easy and you'll kick yourself if you mess them up. Don't try to save-reload a mistake... it doesn't work. I stopped playing after I lost my sword doing that. (Online/Flash)

Shadowreign - Top down, semi-real-time combat style... like diablo, nice tutorial. Almost too fun to play for a free game. The skill tree is fun to explore. Also has a winnable conclusion. (Online/Flash)

Heros Arms - Zelda-style adventure. Very fun - quick start and good balance.

Castaway - slash & level anime-like RPG with a fairly linear story. Save very often. The game starts easy, but quickly can lead to big setbacks if you forget to save. An autosave when resting would be a nice feature.

Chibi Knight - Real time combat. Very cute, but not RPG-enough for me! (Online/Flash)

Dink Smallwood - Snarky puzzle-solving RPG. Fun storyline. Old-school. (Download/Windows)
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How to Fix Medical Research in One Law
Posted 8:18 AM

The #1 reason why companies won't research or develop a drug or treatment - even if it works or has proven mechanism - is if they don't think a patent will hold.

If the drug is a pre-existing compound, or was published in research literature by a University... this will often preclude development.

This problem was illustrated quite nicely in a recent Newsweek article, but the author came to a rather backward conclusion.

The right solution is simple. The company that pays for the clinical trials and gets FDA clearance for a drug or treatment should receive an exclusive right to develop or license that precise treatment for several years - even if it is not patentable.

In other words...if you do a trial on Vitamin-C infusion as a cancer cure... and prove it, and get clearance to use that treatment.... then your company becomes the only company allowed to to advertise and sell Vitamin-C cancer treatments for 3 years.

Sure, lots of people will "off label" buy their own Vitamin-C and use it. But a good marketing team with an exclusive on a working treatment is worth its weight in gold.

A simple law like this would be extremely beneficial to the industry. Billions of dollars are wasted every week on developing new, less-effective drugs, when effective solutions already exist... merely because pre-existing drugs aren't patentable.

An incentive for innovative treatments - without needing to develop new drugs, would work wonders. Literally.

Labels: biotech, politics

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Why doesn't Cu/ZnSOD affect lifespan in mice?
Posted 10:10 AM

Superoxide dismutase is a critical factor in reducing damage to cells. So why isn't more better?

Looking at the pathways, it's possible that overexpression of SOD in mice merely creates a bottleneck at the pathways for conversion of hydrogen peroxide. In other words, in accordance with Kascer's enzyme activity predictions, without overexpression of GSHPx (and others perhaps) no lifespan increase need be observed. This was proposed by Kurata, et al in 1993 (1)

This argument is sound, but there's more to it.

There are multiple pathways of aging. Just as a single enzyme's activity cannot predict the flux of a pathway, so too a single aging vector (mitochondrial damage) might not impact the overall lifespan of a complex organism. If the mitochondrial damage doesn't kill you the advanced glycation end-products will.

I would image that the more complex the organism, the more pathways of aging there are. Thus the more "multipath" an intervention would have to be in order to have an effect.


(1) HUANG et al. (2000) "Ubiquitous overexpression of CuZn superoxide dismutase does not extendlife span in mice"
(2) Kurata, Masatoshi Suzuki, et al (1993) "Antioxidant systems and erythrocyte life-span in mammals"

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I completely love this site
Posted 12:16 AM

I mean...

1. A HOWTO for DNA extraction.

2. A step-by-step guide for building a gele electrophoresis chamber

3. Animated tours of DNA basics

How can you resist? I'm going through the whole thing with Noakai (he's 5). We both like it a lot.
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Please Support Net Neutrality!
Posted 8:23 AM

Opponents of net neutrality say it will suppress "innovation". Since its inception, the internet has been neutral. Now, all of the sudden, companies are trying to give preferential access to their partners, friends and associates.

There is nothing "innovative" about big companies doing favors for other big companies in order to push out competition from small or new businesses.

I run a web site, I don't have political connections. On my website, I sell products that compete with the likes of WalMart and QVC. WalMart and QVC have negotiated with Comcast and Verizon so that my website is slower than theirs... even though I pay much more for bandwidth per gig of transfer - than they do. They are able to do this because of their political and social connections, and because there's no law to stop them.

This is "innovation"? No, it's abuse of power. And I'm surprised at how many people are on the clearly wrong (meaning morally) side of this debate.

Can a phone company in Chicago who owns a brokerage firm prevent or harrass you when you call a competing firm? No... it's illegal. And that's partly why the U.S. phone system works so well. The Internet should work that way too.
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Will Work for Praise
Posted 2:31 AM

I'm involved in several open source projects and free services that people seem to use. The SMX web development language, a couple CPAN modules, some tools at google code, a captcha generator, etc.

Most of them I built because I needed them, and open sources because of shameless self-promotion. I've noticed that, after releasing code, I completely ignore it unless either a) someone (usually me) needs new feature/fix or b) someone emails me and says they like it.

Praise is, apparently, the bigger motivator. After someone emails me to ask for a patch/fix... I fix it, sure. But after I get praise... I find myself, usually within a few weeks, adding things like testing suites, transaction support, plugins.... or some other major overhaul. Not sure *why* I do that. But after 10 years, I've noticed a pattern.

Labels: politics, programming

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