First Snow!

It wasn't much, but NJ had it's first snow of 2007. Hooray!

Apple changes the world again

Steve Jobs, in today's keynote speech, alluded to Apple's ability to change the way we do things. They certainly did it with the Mac in 1984. They did it with the iPod. And will this next endeavor, did they do it again?

It's an iPod, it's a phone, it's a web browser... but is it revolutionary? I hope so, because everyone has been talking it up so much... without ever knowing what it really was. With touch screen technology, it seems versatile enough to grow and be copied and be wanted... badly. Seems like all the ingredients that helped the last two revolutionary devices.

The really nice thing was making the technology work with something we already have... fingers. No need to keep track of your stylus or key in with tiny buttons. No, instead use fingers and gestures.

When I was at school at the University of Delaware, there was a Computer Engineering professor who was working on exactly this technology. He wanted to make a keyboard without keys. One where cutting and pasting was like gesturing a grab and a drop. The coolest part was how he had figured out how to identify each finger, so that an index + middle finger touch was different than a index and pinky finger touch.

I'm not sure if this professor's work ties in at all with the Apple iPhone, but it sure seems like it's similar.

As I hear more and more about this phone I am stoked! It's running OS X! It's got a 2 megapixel camera! It's really so much more... a new way to call people.

Holy shit... it's just getting cooler.

NCAA Football

Congrats to Florida for trouncing Ohio State. I didn't care who won the game, but I was happy to see the unpredictable nature of football at play.

For those who care, here are my thoughts on college football for the moment:

1) Playoffs. Just get it done. Get the coaches and presidents together and make it happen. Enough is enough, just get it done. Bowl committees - your time has passed. Get over it.

2) Timing. Stop pushing games later and later (this applies to the NFL's Super Bowl too). By the time teams play post-season college football, everyone has forgotten why they should care about them. Fans of individual schools will always watch their team's games, but if you want "Joe Football Fan" to tune in, you can't let him forget about why these teams are worth seeing. Keep the momentum of an exciting regular season going by leading directly into playoffs.

3) Stupid rules... yank 'em. The rule that has the clock start on the kickoff instead of the kickoff's reception is just plain dumb. Designed to make games move faster, I was still dumbstruck by how long these last few games took. Television networks are jamming more and more ads in, and cutting to commercials more often. I think the last four BCS games took over 4 hours each... no joke. Keep the integrity of the game, and cut the dumb clock-killing rule. And then limit the TV timeouts.

No one is talking about this, but can we please get rid of the arcane rule of when a college player is down? This is football. A player should only be down by contact. I'm tired of watching guys slip in the open field and not being able to get up and continue running. The play should be over when the defense says it's over, not when wet grass impedes traction.

4) Ridiculous naming conventions. Division I. Division I-AA. You and I know what they mean. I don't however know what a Football Bowl Subdivision and a NCAA Football Championship Subdivision mean. The NCAA needs to regain control of the football post-season and just keep the division names. The only people who like bowls are on the committees or work for TV networks. The division I championship should be a Division I Championship, a division I-AA championship should be a Division I-AA Championship. Note the use of capital letters. It's important, because it makes them official titles. Oooooo.

That's it for now. Unless you have more to add.

A case for donation

In Law & Order Episode 382, "Remains of the Day", Dick Wolf's crew explores an interesting issue: organ donation and the black market for it.

It is supposed to be based on the death of Daniel Wayne Smith, although in the end, that was just a shell of a plot encasing the greater issue of health care and it's availability to America's rich and poor. While the message tip-toed around universal health care, it got me thinking about something else: what happens to our bodies when we die.

I've often wondered (usually when passing a graveyard) when we might reach the tipping point when more of the earth is dedicated to space for the dead then it is for space for the living.

Briefly, what happens in this episode is that a doctor illegally harvests bones and organs from deceased people, and the transplants result in cancer and other fatal diseases being contracted by the recipients. The DA argues that the doctor has murdered these people by performing surgery that could lead to his patient's death, because he can't legally determine the deceased person's health history.

The problem here is that not enough people are able to get the transplant organs they need, as there are not enough donors. Also, the surgery remains too expensive for many, and partially due to a high demand, organ and tissue is highly priced in both legal and illegal markets.

After watching all of this play out in the episode, I began thinking to myself... self... why do we care what happens to our physical bodies once we die, anyway? Most religions profess that we don't take our bodies with us into an afterlife. Our souls or spirits live on without a body. The flesh and blood is returned to the earth, fertilizing new life, presumably.

Well, religion aside for a moment... why shouldn't it be universally true that everyone would be a donor? I'm not saying that a bone cancer patient should automatically become a bone donor upon death, but given a favorable health history, and a knowledgeable doctor, shouldn't all of us be potential donors when we die? Wouldn't this reduce the supply/demand burden, lower the cost of donated organs, and ultimately allow more people to live longer, more productive lives?

It seems to me that the only reason that we put ourselves in the ground sans donation is to appease the living. Others feel some sense of closure when they see someone's body at a viewing. There are, of course, those who believe that a body cannot be touched after death, as it is involved in their religion's afterlife beliefs. This should be the only reason that anyone should be exempt from donation.

And then there is the "they'll take your stuff before your dead" argument. Well, for one, I just don't believe it. I don't think that this really has happened enough to be even measurable. Second, if the supply for donated organs went up, because virtually everyone was a donor upon death, then there would be a far smaller incentive for criminals to harvest organs prematurely.

This should be a touchy enough subject to get some good discussion going. Seriously, why isn't it a law that all persons should become donor candidates upon death (given a religion exemption)?

Doon doon.

Another guy named Ben

Whenever I meet people named Ben or hear of a famous Ben, I find some intrigue in what that Ben has in common with this Ben. How is that person different? What have they done that I would do? What have they done that I wouldn't do? What have they done to contribute to the namesake of Ben?

Well, Ben Schott is one of those Bens who seems to be raising the stakes for the other Bens. A terrific holiday gift I received this year was his book, Schott's Almanac for 2007. It is filled with facts and observations from the year that was 2006. Some seem useless. Some seem impotant. Others are just plain out of left field. It makes a great little bed-side book, coffee table book, or conversation starter.

Ben's other book that I own is Schott's Original Miscellany. This book is seemingly more random in it's subject matter, but is just as thrilling. Each time you open it, you have another opportunity to be wowed by the connections in the data and observations he makes.

I just came across an interview that Ben Schott did with Radar Magazine. It was interesting to me to read how he views his own work and that of other news organizations, almanacs, blogs, and sources of information. He doesn't shy away from the fact that his work is his opinion. He describes it as a filter:

I tend to write it quite selfishly. I don't think you can write for a particular audience. I tend to look at any news story and say, Well, what do I need to know? Who are these people? Has this happened before? What's increasingly interesting about modern media is its filters: if you actually look at websites, technology from TiVo to iPods to blogs, it's all about filter. What we mean when we say we like a blog or we like a website is that we like somebody's filter. And we have several filters for different things. Of course our friends are filters. Word of mouth is the ultimate filter. So what I try to do is act as a personal filter. When I say personal, I don't mean political or partisan, I mean, What's the Schott's Almanac take on this? It's almost a sort of character.

This intruiges me because it is a way of saying that all facts are subjective and that no one person will ever really see the same piece of information in the same light.

Way to keep us thinking, Ben!