Gerald Pollack’s water theories January 31, 2008
Posted by Niels in : Personal , 4 commentsI was invited to attend Gerald Pollack’s talk Water, Energy and Life: Fresh Views From The Water’s Edge at the University of Washington yesterday. It was the 32nd annual UW faculty address and as I was already on campus for steel drum practice, I dropped by.
It was an interesting talk with some compelling evidence under certain very common conditions, water behaves like a gel. In fact, if Pollack is correct, it’s possible that most of the water in the universe is in a gel form, rather than a solid, liquid, or gas.
Obviously, if true, this would be revolutionary research, which may be part of the reason I have reservations about the talk. Most of the people who saw the lecture with me were skeptical as well. Without the weight of an academic institution behind it, the research sounds straight up pseudosciency. But his results have been published in peer-reviewed journals and independently confirmed.
The biggest question for me is if this is really a paradigm shift in how we think about water, why isn’t anyone at the more prestigious universities looking into it? A number of people suggested that academia is slow to embrace new ideas, but my experience at Berkeley was the opposite - professors get really excited at the opportunity to jump on new research topics.
Your thoughts?Self-employment fears January 30, 2008
Posted by Niels in : Work , 3 commentsCraig just finished reading Steve Jobs’ biography, in which Jobs fails spectacularly to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars before striking it huge and becoming a billionaire. It does make me feel a lot better about failure and pursuing my own career - what I can’t figure out is financially how to stay afloat in the meantime.
I have a number of ideas that could potentially turn into a profitable career, but they all have a fairly long time horizon. In the meantime, I’ve got about 10 weeks before I’m going to have to tap into my investment accounts, which is not something I want to do with the stock market currently plunging. I’m getting really worried.
In the meantime, every dollar I make keeps me solvent a little longer. I think the solution is to focus hard on my best opportunity for short-term profit, i.e. public speaking. I’m speaking at Gonzaga in a week and half and it’s essential that I parlay the event into more gigs.
That, or fail spectacularly. Hey, it worked for Steve Jobs.
Your thoughts?Harrybu McCage is not Pearl Jam. Or are they? January 28, 2008
Posted by Niels in : Personal , 4 commentsOn Saturday, I went to what could have been a Pearl Jam secret show. The Showbox here in Seattle was advertising a show featuring “Harrybu McCage, featuring Matt Cameron of Pearl Jam”. A quick Google search revealed that Harrybu Mccage didn’t really exist, though the opening bands did, so we hoped it was actually a Pearl Jam secret show.
Walking in, the venue was nearly empty. Apparently it was a very secret secret show. As the night went on, though, some hardcore Pearl Jam fan did begin to show up, as hopeful as we were.
As it turned out, Harrybu Mccage did in fact exist, and played a strange jazz-electronic-drumming-noise set that was very very much not Pearl Jam. And in my humble opinion, was very much not… good. The high point of the evening was the palpable air of disappointment and the crestfallen looks on every single person’s face. It’s not often that I get to see so much disappointment in one place.
The night ended well, though, as we headed to friend’s birthday party, where I happened to run into other people I met at the Bellevue Fashion Week event I snuck into (three months in Seattle and my social circles are already intersecting?!), through whom I met the guy (Bay Raitt) who coded Gollum’s face for Lord of the Rings who also happens to be both friendly and hilarious and thus I finished the night eating chocolate ice cream cake at 3am with a bunch of strangers.
Your thoughts?I love Seattle winter! January 23, 2008
Posted by Niels in : Personal , 1 comment so farToday was beautiful. I can see the mountains, far off in the distance from my living room window. Went downtown to pick up some books on PHP, swung by the Dahlia Bakery for the world’s greatest coconut cream pie, stopped at Kerry Park for an incredible view of the Seattle skyline with Mount Ranier looming in the distance, and now it’s off to steel drum practice.
The one drawback is losing feeling in my fingers and toes when I go biking, but I’m reasonably certain that’s solvable.
Your thoughts?Back to my roots January 22, 2008
Posted by Niels in : Work , 1 comment so farI’ve got an idea for a Facebook app, so it’s back to my programming roots. I haven’t done any serious programming since high school. PHP, be gentle.
I put together a “Hello world” Facebook application with the assistance of Facebook’s tutorial. It only took about four hours, though a bunch of the time was due to discovering the hard way that my webhost’s online document editor is buggy. Damn you and your GUI, siteground.com! I think I’ll be switching to bluehost eventually…
Your thoughts?