Muli Ben-Yehuda's Friends
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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
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| Friday, December 25th, 2009 |
patrissimo
|
10:47a |
fight the urge
I wrote up a post on climategate b/c I saw some posts on it that reinforced my prejudices, but then I deleted it. Yay! (tentative new years resolution: don't post about climate or genetics in 2010) |
| Thursday, December 24th, 2009 |
grrm
|
6:01p |
Merry Christmas
Here's hoping all my friends and readers have a merry Christmas. And you other people too. Current Mood:  happy |
brad
|
3:12p |
Doing Hos is Hard Work
Etch-a-Sketch doesn't involve much hill climbing. GPS-a-Sketch in San Francisco does, however:  Merry Christmas from me and ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) whatever_art to you! *In other news: not going anywhere for Christmas. Staying in San Francisco, hosting a 10 person orphan dinner. But then going to the Caribbean on a 7 night cruise over New Year's with parents, Sierra, my brother Cole and his girlfriend. Should be fun. :) |
spacefem
|
4:26p |
IMSAFE
think I'm going to write about flying, without flying, because I'm like that. Monday I had a plane scheduled but didn't go up. Winds were on the borderline, and the instructor who was supposed to approve me was maybe not going to be around, so I gave up. I had a cold. Not a huge nasty cold, just a mild one, which also contributed to my not really wanted to try hard to fly. I didn't feel like THE SICKNESS I was just sort of annoyed. They say you're not supposed to fly with a cold. Well here's what they really say: You are definitely not allowed to fly if you've had cold medicine, there are very few cold medicines (if any) that don't slow you down and pilots should not be slowing down. Part II of that advice is that if you feel like your cold is bad enough that you want to take medicine, then you probably shouldn't fly anyway, you're too sick. The acronym they teach us is I'M SAFE: Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol, Fatigue, Eating. Those are the big things to consider before jumping into an airplane. Some of the things like Medication and Alcohol are obvious, but others like Stress are kinda iffy, I think. Anyway instead of flying on Monday I went to work out, with my mild cold, and it freaking kicked my ass. I did the elliptical and was just winded to DEATH after 20 minutes, usually I do 30 I feel great. I felt like I was gasping for oxygen right there on the ground. Which made me think, maybe it's okay that I didn't fly. Maybe it's good that I've had a zillion hours of training because I'm starting to learn more about these limits. I thought the E in Eating left a lot of room, I could eat lunch, jump into a plane at 5pm, and adrenaline would keep me from noticing it was dinnertime until 8. Of course I'd land and feel like eating the furniture but I figured that was no big deal. Well later on we did stuff like steep turns where there's actually some G-forces there and I'd REALLY notice the difference between doing them after breakfast and doing them with no blood sugar whatsoever. It's like anything you do that's mental and physical, except with safety being a major issue we have these systems to think about how to get your brain in just the right zone. It makes me think of track again, when we were trying to be these tuned machines. There, we learned that it's not always about how much sleep you get the night before, but the night before that really comes into play. And you have to eat what you crave. I was really good at this, for a while. |
elodea_2
|
11:55p |
Extinction never felt so good...
אחותי הכירה לי להקה חדשה והשירים שלהם תפסו אותי מיד. הם מאד אינטילגנטים, והמוזיקה מהירה ורועשת, כמו שאני אוהבת (הם גם חובבים, אבל זה לא רלוונטי). שני שירים שלהם תקועים אצלי ב repeat בסלולרי. עם הראשון אני מזדהה כי פעמים רבות מדי בחיי אני נתקלת במצבים בהם אין לי ברירה אלא לזמזם את הפזמון החוזר של השיר הזה ( רק מילים למאותגרי רעש). את השני אני אוהבת כי הוא אמנם מדבר על תעשית המוסיקה האמריקאית, אבל אני, אישית משליכה את המילים על פסטיבל ספציפי ( רק מילים, שוב). והנה השאלה - מה זה אומר עלי אם במקום לקרוא ברכבת אני מעדיפה לשמוע שירים על אידיוטים ודינוזאורים? |
theferrett
|
4:39p |
It's a Christmas Miracle!
So here's a weird question which, yes, I AM discussing with loved ones (though not that type of love): What's an orgy? I mean, okay, my personal definition is "More than four people, I guess.". Clearly, it's some gathering of multiple people - but three and fours are threesomes and foursomes. But it just seems like a foursome is orgyISH, but not if you go into it with two established couples. So there's kind of a nebulous definition going. Honestly, I'm not sure if I've been to one. So how do YOU define it personally? Where's the cutoff line between consensual fun and whoo, ORGY!?
I acknowledge this is a fully ludicrous question. Merry Christmas. Posted via LiveJournal.app. |
jwz
|
1:35p |
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langbeheim
|
10:39p |
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yrk
|
9:50p |
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patrissimo
|
9:56p |
The failure of biotech to produce cures
Article in Fast Company, via Seth Roberts. I ask former researcher Manuel López-Figueroa, a rock-star-looking vice president at prominent biotech VC firm Bay City Capital and a manager of a major academic research consortium, to tell me what genome-related treatments or tests are emerging in the field. He thinks for a minute. "As far as I know, nothing," he says, finally. "People were very optimistic about DNA studies, but I can't recall anything that has come out of them. Time will tell whether we'll eventually get there or not, but would I put money into them? Philanthropic and government money, yes; investor money, no."
I also look up all of the gene-focused companies mentioned in nine longish miracle-of-the-genome articles that ran in The New York Times and Boston Globe between 1998 and 2002: Of the 14 companies described as leading the way to remarkable new drugs and tests, all but one are out of business by virtue of having either folded, melted away in an acquisition, shifted to third-party gene-testing services, refocused on conventional drug development, or stooped to selling controversial direct-to-consumer products.
...
The simple fact is we still just don't know very much about genes, says Craig Venter, who famously spearheaded the push to sequence the human genome, founded Celera, and remains a driving force in genetics research. "We don't know what most genes do, and we certainly don't know what the variations are in most people. The idea that we can design custom drugs around genes, or change genes, is just silliness and science fiction."
...
The gene most strongly linked to intelligence accounts for less than 0.4% of the observed variation, while the top six intelligence genes together predict 1% of the variation. A 2009 study of about 6,000 people came up with a technique for predicting a person's height by looking at the 54 height-related genes; the results turned out to be one-tenth as accurate as averaging the heights of both parents and adjusting for sex, a technique introduced in 1886 by statistician Sir Francis Galton.
...
The one corner of the genome-focused biotech industry that's thriving is the one churning out equipment and services to support researchers in their endless hunt for gene links.
...
None of this is to say we shouldn't have bothered with the genome, or that we should stop working on it now. But we shouldn't base our decisions to invest in the science or in the biotech that comes out of it on an incomplete understanding of how long a task we're facing. |
xach
|
10:39a |
Lispy 0.5 released
Here's how Matthew Kennedy describes his Lispy project:
Lispy is a library manager for Common Lisp, written in Common
Lisp. All of its dependencies except for GPG (with which signed maps
and releases are verified) are written in portable Common Lisp. With
this approach you should only need a Lisp implementation installed
to get started. The Lispy project has two goals:
- Implement an easy to use, portable library manager.
- Provide a wealth of ready to install libraries.
He just released version 0.5 yesterday, so if his goals sound good to you,
go give Lispy a
try.
Last year Jochen Schmidt wrote his impressions of Lispy, so check that out too.
|
kerri9494
|
9:01a |
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theferrett
|
8:34a |
In Which I Am Unique In A Way That Is Totally Not Unique
I started in the same way that most of you did: totally ignorant. Some of you - I suspect most - had this rite of passage foisted upon you before you really had any choice in the matter, dandled over a father's knee while my mortal enemy played upon the tube. You were lost before you knew it. As the years crept on, it wasn't anything I set out to avoid; had it shown on TV while I was drinking Jaegermeister and Schlitz with my friends, I certainly would have lost my strange virginity. But it didn't, and by the time I was twenty-five I recognized my status as a statistical anomaly. So, I decided, I will go to my grave pure. This is why, at the age of forty, I have never seen It's a Wonderful Life. Nor will I. I walk out of the room when it's on, now, avoid parties where it might be shown. I've gone half my life without seeing this American classic, and since I've covered this distance inadvertently I intend to reach the goal purposely. Thing is, I don't think I'm missing much. I did get to thirty without seeing Gone with the Wind, which I considered a lesser triumph - but when Gini found that I'd never seen it, she said, "WELL, YOU'RE GONNA!" and sat me down for four hours. And lo! The burning of Atlanta was actually more impressive than people had said. So I don't regret having her pierce that celluloid hymen. But It's a Wonderful Life? I ask, "Is it worth breaking a four-decade fast?" and they hem and haw and go, "WeeEEEllll.... It's pretty good..." And I walk on. I have no time to waste on an okay movie. So I stand alone. Others have not seen It's a Wonderful Life, I am sure, but I am the only one I am aware of who has made this a principled stand. You cannot make me see It's a Wonderful Life. You cannot break me. I will tumble into the soft earth of my grave with my eyes clean, to be greeted by a wingless angel. Of course, I do have nightmares sometimes. I see myself in the old-age home, decrepit, bound to a wheelchair so I do not fall out. I am wheeled in front of the television to placate me, and just as the nurse deposits me before the screen, I hear through enfeebled ears, "THIS CHRISTMAS, TBS PRESENTS THE 'IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE' MARATHON! TWENTY-FOUR HOURS OF THIS AMERICAN CLASSIC!" I rattle in the chair. I have no dentures, and I must scream. |
patrissimo
|
6:32p |
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patrissimo
|
3:58p |
Glee!
Someone out there on the internet convinced me to try Glee, and I just watched the pilot episode, it was awesome!!! Cheesy, dramatic, soulful, musical...everything a high school show glee club TV show should be. I see why Joss Whedon listed it on his top 10 things he's grateful for in 2010. I think many of you will like it, but xleste for sure! |
themoniker
|
12:12p |
Conan vs. The Justice League by Guy Dimet
Originally published at Distractions. You can comment here or there. 
posted on Facebook by my brother, a tribute to the Marvel Conan comics of our childhood:
The comic I wish I had as a kid. Conan VS the Justice League.
Ever since I saw an amazing Conan cover mockup by the incredibly talented Shane Glines it reminded me of how much I loved those comics as a kid
|
choiceful
|
1:41p |
Keep me posted!
In response to capitalism_yeah's inquiry to how things are going with the surrogacy in India adventure: Pretty boring, in a good way, at the moment ;) Driving is extremely dangerous, but we're used to that now, and we've hit most of the sight seeing attractions at this point. I've gotten fat, just started working out again ;) We go to the hospital every other day, for ultrasounds and blood tests and shots, and on alternate days I give the shots to myself. Its much more timely to give the shots here than it was in Panama, because they gave me a big needle to suck up the solution to mix it in Panama, whereas here I only have a medium needle, so I spend a lot of time trying to suck that last little drop out of the viles when mixing them. Today is day 9, and the doc said that the eggs are actually developing a little faster than scheduled, so it might only be 11 days instead of 12 to 14. My prolactin levels are still through the roof thanks to Risperdal. I'm not quite sure what the negative consequences on egg extraction that has, but the doctors are concerned about it and have been increasing my dosage of anti-prolactin meds with every blood test. I'm still over 200: 200 is the most that the test goes up to. |
| Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 |
zaitcev
|
11:41p |
in which Jeff Garzik outsmarts me
When I set out to hack on tabled, I expected that storage clouds would be built from racks of 1U servers or possibly blades, piles of storage appliances, etc. In such "Thin Chunk" model, application (e.g. tabled) is responsible for redundancy, and chunkserves are easily brought online and are expendable.
The setup seemed all too natural to me, so I was surprised (at the least) when Jeff suddenly decided to support a "Fat Chunk" model and introduced an API that permits several applications to share a chunkserver (he called these partitions "tables", to make our terminology more confusing for extra fun).
But in a couple of weeks after that, a mysterious early adopter decided to give our wares a try on a field of 140 500GB drives in 10 servers. Although they were not interested in fine slicing of chunkservers, they certainly deployed a Fat Chunk (just all of the same color).
Apparently, it's cheaper now to throw 24 SAS drives into an enclosure than to procure 12 1U servers. It was a news to me.
Now, headaches start. Firstly, a RAID becomes needed, or else any kind of disk failure causes tabled to re-replicate 7TB. In the best of times it takes 2 days, and current tabled is probably a magnitude off in performance, if that. In the Thin Chunk, every half a terabyte or so gets its own Gigabit wire, but not so here. Secondly, tabled really needs to pay attention to the placement of data now (currently it doesn't, only selects random chunkservers). There may be other problems, like bad hotspotting, interference from self-checking, and whatnot.
But oh well. If aggregating disks is the current trend in hardware again, software has no choice but to adapt. I'm just wondering, how did he know ahead of time that it would end this way? |
cambler
|
7:58p |
Almost Done!
The super secret project for which all the SQL learning I've been doing is in beta, we're about to move it to the second pass, and I'd guess that I'm less than 4 or 5 days away from quietly opening it to anyone who wants to look, short of its "public" launch after the new year. Just one more pass on the database work. Now... any of your SQL hackers interested in a quick outline of the tables I'm working with and the queries and algorithm I'm using, to take a look and give me your opinion? I'm not asking in a "give me free consulting" way as much as wondering if anyone is just naturally curious and interested in giving me their impression of my take on this, if you're an experienced SQL person. If so, respond with your email address and I'll be composing an overview tomorrow. All comments screened. |
jwz
|
6:41p |
|
baconmonkey
|
5:12p |
Why my Desk can beat up your desk
I have finally completed my Desk Project of Doom. My desk now has the following features: 2 1080p LCD monitors mounted on double-arm wall mounts attached to the rear of the elevated printer shelf. 1 CRT monitor under the glass desktop for color accuracy check on video and graphic design A wireless keyboard and mouse that are run through a KVM to allow easy switching between using them on desktop, laptop, and PS3 A filing cabinet/drawers/cubby unit that puts the laptop at ideal viewing height. 12x9" wacom intuos artists tablet. printer, USB hard drive, and esata hard drive up on the printer shelf - Hidden on the backside of the printer shelf are the following: An ethernet hub with cables for both desktop and laptop for large data transfers when wireless is not fast enough. A hard-mounted 10 outlet power strip for all peripherals. powered USB port for printer, keyboard, external drives, etc. all related cabling it coiled and managed decently. oh yeah, and the whole thing has wheels, so accessing behind it is a breeze. Still todo: get long HDMI cable so that 4th video output can pipe signal to TV on other side of room. |
theferrett
|
6:51p |
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xach
|
1:46p |
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xach
|
1:11p |
fiddling
I'm toying with a proof-of-concept web app for anonymizing pictures
by pixelizing them. Here's
an example. Can you figure out who the person in the picture is?
You can drag around the pixely part.
Without viewing source, can you guess how it works? I'll give you a
negative hint: no HTML canvas or plugins involved. Don't read the comments if you don't want to see a spoiler...
|
fdmts
|
11:35a |
News from India
I've been meaning to comment on the news in India. I very much enjoy reading local papers when I travel. Here are four articles that I liked a lot, all from the 16th of December in the Times of India, Kolkata edition: ( Read more... ) |
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