Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Going Back to The Island

Where I was:

Accommodations for Jimmy Buffet concert in BVI

"Tourist season..."

"Wilderness" near Grande Case

Phillipsburg

Maho:

Leigh comes to visit! 2008

Pinel Island:

Wolfram Alpha

It's like a search engine for researchers. No b.s. Pretty helpful on the wards if you ever need hard facts.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Examples:

mortgage 6%, 25 year, $140000 displays, among other things, repayment rates and graphs that represent capital vs. interest over time.
life expectancy france 25 year old male which gives a survival analysis for a person of the given demographic.
boiling point of water at 6 atm which returns a phase diagram alongside the result of 432.6 Kelvins.
lim(x->0) x/sin x yields the expected result, 1, a plot, and the series expansion. The button "show steps" provides a possible derivation of the result using L'Hôpital's rule.^[7]

Wolfram Alpha is also capable of responding to increasingly complex, natural-language fact-based questions such as:

"Where was Mary Robinson born?"^[8]
"How old was Queen Elizabeth II in 1974?"^[9]
"What is the forty-eighth smallest country by GDP per capita?" yields Senegal, $1088 per year.^[10]
"What is the speed of a swallow?" yields the assumption, "Assuming estimated average cruising airspeed of an unladen African swallow", and the result, "there is unfortunately insufficient data to estimate the velocity of an African swallow (even if you specified which of the 47 species of swallow found in Africa you meant)." This is a reference to a joke from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail.^[11]
When asked "What is the meaning of life?", it replies 42. This is a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novel, in which a supercomputer is told to calculate the meaning of life, and it finds the answer to be 42. These and all other "humorous" queries are individually written by programmers and not "understood" by the software on a deeper cognitive level.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Lost - Series Finale

For those looking to "catch up," Kevin Garnett explains the sequence of events in seasons 1-5.

This is pretty neat too:

Der Mensch als Industriepalast [Man as Industrial Palace] from Henning Lederer on Vimeo.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Emergency Cric Kit on Your Keychain?

Can I put this on my wedding registry?
http://www.airstat.org/

Why pens don't work:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3912/is_200201/ai_n9049996/?tag=content;col1

Update: I was able to get one of these devices for demonstration purposes for an LSU lab we are doing in July. Take it off the wedding registry, I'm awesome.

Friday, May 14, 2010

"Something For the Pain" - Paul Austin, M.D.

Great book, a candid look at the extreme difficulties of trying to maintain a caring and open personality while dealing with devastating loss, violence, and exhaustion on a daily basis. Having recently become an ER doc, I'm sure I can "look forward" to many of the dilemmas that he shares in his stories, but hearing how he has managed to handle a family and professional life was definitely motivation to keep moving forward.

Top 23 Ways People Die, and also - bad graduation cakes

From the National Safety Council:

1 in 6 people die of heart disease
1 in 7 people die of cancer
1 in 28 people will die of stroke
1 in 85 people will die in a motor vehicle accident

Lightning and dogs kill more people than earthquakes...

See the rest here.

Also, I can only hope my mom or wife gets me one of these for my med-school graduation. Eight years of community college for THIS?! Seriously?

Monday, May 10, 2010

Old Spice in the City

reference

Thursday, May 6, 2010

A Womb with a View

I have to thank my dad for the comic genius in the title; also for the enormous head that will now be passed on to a third generation... Here's to having a difficult time finding hats, good luck little guy...

One reason to choose St. Maarten vs. Grenada for your Caribbean graduation celebration...

What you should know about pinata violence this Cinco de Mayo

I could have used this for the Behavioral Science on Step 2 - The Bias Song:

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Sky Cake

Are you an 'Angry' man, Henry...?

"I drink your milkshake..." - Daniel Day Lewis is a genius. I recently watched There Will Be Blood, it was some of the best acting I've seen in a long time. It also points out why I don't trust many preachers (or oil tycoons for that matter). When religion is used as a means to have power and influence over people, and how they feel - it is no better than deceiving someone to take their money and trust. While both of these characters are wretched, Daniel has no illusions about who he is, and does not seduce people under false pretense.

Daniel's Baptism (prior to, and mirroring the previous scene - which is the end of the movie)

Nashville

You think it's easy, but you're wrong.

Monday, May 3, 2010

BREAKING: Large Air Spill at Wind Farm

Electron Boy Saves Seattle

My gf's old manager at Hollister at bore a striking resemblance to Emo Alpaca.

Friday, April 30, 2010

His post-kardz do nohzing to convey the humanity... the MADNESS of Wasldo's adventures...

Monday, April 26, 2010

Diagnose 100 people in 4 hours with over 100 viruses at 5-500% cost-savings over the current lab system.

Friday, April 23, 2010

"Stuff White People Like." I have to admit, I do enjoy a good pair of New Balance shoes, indie music, my dog and my bicycle...

Friday, April 16, 2010

Penny-smart and dollar-dumb...

Stephen Malkmus - king of sarcasm (and a great musician)

Friday, April 9, 2010

"And I don't need you to catch my wondering mind.
And I don't expect a Southern girl to know the Northern lights
All I want is your eyes, in the morning as we wake, for a short while."