CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-04-25 21:45:09 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Now that's rocket Science

2013-04-21 16:03:57 (11 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Why you can't rely on Google Maps

Amazing, some addresses aren't in Google map. That's why MapQuest seems to be the most reliable mapping resource. Try searching for 2790 Marvinga Lane, Fallbrook, CA 92028 on Google Maps, it says it doesn't exist, but Mapquest has no issues finding it.

2013-03-16 02:39:26 (176 comments, 13 reshares, 56 +1s)

Giving up on Android, going back to the iPhone

After 6 months of waging battle with Android and getting even the most basic phone functionality to work, i finally decided to call it quits and revive my iPhone. Why I am going back:
1) Tired of calling voice mail like on an old flip phone, the AT&T visual voice mail app just doesn't work. 
2) Tired of running out of battery power by 3PM in the afternoon
3) Tired of the stupid phone having bad WiFi reception and not being able to tether from one WiFi access point to the next. It keeps holding on to the weaker systems. 
4) Tired of being unable to receive picture texts. I stopped being able to get pictures when the SD card decided to crap out. 
5) Oh yes, the SD card stopped working. 
6) Tired of having to open two E-mail apps just to get to Gmail and my other E-mail accounts
7) Tired of having ause... more »

2013-02-21 18:26:12 (7 comments, 1 reshares, 10 +1s)

Why I stopped using Google's instant photo uploads

Yes it's free, but have you ever tried to manage your instant uploads? The Google plus web photo interface is very primitive you can't even find any photos that you uploaded say 6 months ago. The whole Google Plus interface is only good for anything superficial. If you ever try to do anything with it to have some depth, you're out of luck. Organizing circles? Forget it. Organize your photos? Forget it. If anyone has a good alternative photo service they can recommend for managing photos, let me know. 

2013-02-18 19:45:10 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

2013-01-29 20:56:32 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

Buy Someone a Goat and make them happy

2013-01-25 20:11:23 (1 comments, 5 reshares, 10 +1s)

Loving Kindness Meditation is good for your happiness and health, and it's good for your family, friends and fellow humans as well

This article outlines great research showing the effects of loving kindness meditation on the brain. If you're interested in loving kindness meditation, this is what you do:

Take someone close to you that you love very much, from whom you have benefited much, or for whom you have been a benefactor, and wish well being and happiness for them:

May you be happy, may you be at ease
May you be well
May you be safe from inner and outer dangers
May you be at peace
May you be free from suffering
 
Then, extend this to extended family and friends, all the people in your community that you like very much and repeat the same wishes. 

Then, try to do it for someone neutral, people you don't knowor ... more »

2013-01-25 19:41:08 (4 comments, 1 reshares, 9 +1s)

Can Quantum Biology Account for adaptations that defy chance?

People often seem to polarize across two extremes: 1) life forms as we know it today have evolved via Darwin's principle purely by chance production of mutations. 2) Life forms were created by God via intelligent design. Well, I don't buy either and I agree with +Jera Wolfe that these are not the only two options.

bacterial cultures have been observed to evolve clever responses to lab toxins at speeds that – just like the emergence of DNA from a primordial soup – defy astronomical odds. The new field of quantum biology tries to address some of those discrepancies.

http://hplusmagazine.com/2009/06/01/spooky-world-quantum-biology/

2013-01-24 02:14:38 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 9 +1s)

NEOLIBERAL ECONOMIC THEORY CURRENTLY DETERMINING ECONOMIC POLICY A TOTAL FAILURE
The 30 year experiment to achieve prosperity for everyone by untaxing the rich, dismantling protections for workers and cutting back on wealth redistribution has achieved exactly the opposite effect of grotesquely further enriching the wealthy and impoverishing the rest of us via driving us into debt to make up for decades of falling incomes.  Despite this obvious failure of theory that has been no “impediment to its repetition” which British columnist George Monbiot says “has nothing to do with economics. It has everything to do with power.”

There are solutions left unused on the table and it requires some attention be paid to economic theory and its link to common sense and a sense of justice.  Neoliberal theory masquerades as common sense but it has betrayed all of us and especially the ordinaryfolk who ... more »

2013-01-24 00:57:53 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

Here's an open source printable humanoid robot. It sports voice commands and speech. More information is about it here: http://inmoov.blogspot.com/

#robotics   #opensource  

2013-01-23 21:32:30 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

Even Buddhism is not immune to the mega Church syndrome

Every religion has the potential to get perverted, and Buddhism is no exception. The attached article was first published in the Bangkok Post and describes a religious fanatic movement within Thai Buddhism that incorporates everything from salvation to Satan along with missionaries, a recruiting system, a solid hierarchical power system and a plethora of superstitious beliefs. After all, it's not possible to create an efficient religious meme without these ingredients.

It is the abbot Phra Dhammachayo who has created this discourse, she adds. According to this genesis, there was nothing but empty space. Then emerged white and black energy. The white camp has retreated to planet Earth and created humankind, an ethereal body which is a source of knowledge to fight evil.

The White Dhammakaya, teaches PhraD... more »

2013-01-21 23:31:15 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Social Art via mobile devices connected in real time

http://www.html5report.com/topics/html5/articles/323581-kaazing-ekito-create-mobile-social-art-application.htm

2013-01-21 20:11:15 (2 comments, 2 reshares, 5 +1s)

The Daily Show Summarizing the absurdity of the gun laws in the US and the corruption of congress paid off by the NRA

http://www.thedailyshow.com/collection/422810/the-daily-show-covers-gun-rights/422986

2013-01-21 04:16:54 (10 comments, 1 reshares, 13 +1s)

Police Officer abuses his power, gives a cyclist a ticket for arguing, cop gets investigated

This is a classic case of police abuse of power. This officer has no respect for people, all he cares to do is to abuse his power as a police officer. 

The actual Youtube video is shared below, not the KTLA newscast.

VENICE, Calif. (KTLA) — A Los Angeles Police Officer is under investigation after a YouTube video went viral showing him pulling over and ticketing a bicyclist with little cause on a Venice Beach bike path.

See http://ktla.com/2013/01/20/lapd-officer-in-hot-water-after-giving-bicyclist-ticket-for-arguing/

Stupid Cop doesn't know what he's giving me a ticket for. Pretty damn funny.

2013-01-21 03:39:19 (32 comments, 2 reshares, 26 +1s)

2013-01-21 02:04:07 (8 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

Pseudo-Scientific Religious Babble

I have to admit that I have serious issues with science being abused to the sakes of pushing a religious and emotional agenda. I make a distinction between the realities of science, which present a common truth based on reproducible empirical results, and the realities of our inner world, which are highly subjective. Just because two or more people have the same "inner experience" doesn't make it real in a scientific sense.

Scientific results hold no matter what the person's inner world might be. It doesn't matter what a person believes or feels. The results are the same. However, inner "truths" are highly subjective. It's true that certain inner phenomena are relatively universal. Such reproducible inner truths fall within the realm of psychology.

While the results of science can be awe... more »

2013-01-18 21:02:30 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 8 +1s)

2013-01-18 18:37:57 (12 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Welcome to Comcast Customer Support Hell

All our services went down yesterday, no internet, no phone, no 911, and we are in a rural area outside of the Bay Area. After speaking to +Comcast customer support for three hours, still no resolution.  Meanwhile I burned up a chunk of my wireless plan minutes. They farmed out their customer support to some foreign country, either the Philippines or Mexico, and the tech support people have no clue.

Then, they said we would get a tech person to come out this Morning between 7-8AM, but no one showed up. When we called back in, they said the tech visit was scheduled for Saturday. Lovely. After an escalation, they promised to come out this afternoon, we are crossing our fingers. But based on Yelp reviews, chances are slim they will actually show up.

We agree with all the Yelp reviews. 549 reviews with a 1 1/2 star justdon... more »

2013-01-16 17:04:03 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Temps at the heart of the freeze last Sunday Morning

2013-01-16 16:54:59 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Last Morning of the 2013 great California freeze

The upper atmosphere has already warmed, so despite calm winds and low dew points, the lapse rates have inverted, and higher elevations are running several degrees higher than the bottom of the valleys this Morning.

2013-01-16 05:32:18 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 8 +1s)

Bringing it all together: Theory of Brain Function, Quantum Mechanics and Superstrings

Warning: dense reading, but it's truly fascinating to see these three fields overlap. 

http://george-eby-research.com/html/quantumphysics.pdf

2013-01-15 20:13:29 (0 comments, 15 reshares, 10 +1s)

Brain Plasticity: Use it or loose it

Great article from +Andrea Kuszewski  Your brain is like a muscle, gotta exercise it to keep it healthy.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/03/07/you-can-increase-your-intelligence-5-ways-to-maximize-your-cognitive-potential/

2013-01-15 19:33:22 (14 comments, 4 reshares, 11 +1s)

Yet Another Cult

2013-01-14 23:59:26 (5 comments, 4 reshares, 11 +1s)

The whole universe is instantly informed about what happens in it

Perhaps our notion of time is artificial and limited by what we can perceive. We experience a time-constrained "causal" horizon, but that does not mean this causal horizon can't be overcome.

This is a cool article about the intersection of string theory and cosmology. This passage in particular is the most interesting and seems relevant to pantheist interests. it also seems in line with Buddhist cosmology, which talks about the birth and death of many universes.

In eternal chaotic inflation, the big bang was not the beginning. Rather, it was a beginning—only one of many. "We no longer can say there was one single moment for the whole universe when this happened," says Linde. "It could be that different places were created at different times." ECI views our universe,t... more »

2013-01-14 21:36:32 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Sneutrinos Anyone?

Now if we do discover super symmetry, can someone please re-name the  snot particle to something more noble sounding? Snot doesn't exactly elicit the nature of fermions. Meurino sounds better, what do you think?

+Jonathan Langdale mentioned super symmetry as one way to verify string theory, and Scientific American says "Show me the money". I am curious about life beyond LHC. What's going to be next?

I suppose I should let people know I spent the first year of grad school working on L3, an experiment at CERN, so I am not much of a theoretical physicist. And I barely survived Kip Thorne's mandatory general relativity class at Caltech because I think I must have an allergy to tensors. Having spent countless numbing hours running Monte Carlo simulations using FORTRAN code with ugly common blocks hasn't helped me either. Id... more »

2013-01-14 03:19:40 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

California on the verge of a deep freeze

It's 7PM, and many locations are already near or at the freezing mark. There isn't s single cloud in the sky, dew points are running in the low 20's. The low humidity combined with crystal clear skies are making for super clear visibility. The downside of that is that these conditions also maximize radiative cooling processes. It's going to be a long, long and cold night. There will most likely be damage to the citrus crop by tomorrow Morning. Even Southern California locations sheltered from northerly winds are heading into sub-freezing ranges. 

We can all thank the greenhouse effect and the associated stratospheric warming over the North pole that is pushing cold air down to lower latitudes. Ironically, warmer air at the poles is causing the massive arctic air outpour around the world. The cold air has made it all the... more »

2013-01-14 03:16:12 (18 comments, 2 reshares, 11 +1s)

California on the verge of a deep freeze

It's 7PM, and many locations are already near or at the freezing mark. There isn't s single cloud in the sky, dew points are running in the low 20's. The low humidity combined with crystal clear skies are making for super clear visibility. The downside of that is that these conditions also maximize radiative cooling processes. It's going to be a long, long and cold night. There will most likely be damage to the citrus crop by tomorrow Morning. Even Southern California locations sheltered from northerly winds are heading into sub-freezing ranges. 

We can all thank the greenhouse effect and the associated stratospheric warming over the North pole that is pushing cold air down to lower latitudes. Ironically, warmer air at the poles is causing the massive arctic air outpour around the world. The cold air has made it all the... more »

2013-01-13 18:00:33 (4 comments, 19 reshares, 25 +1s)

We don't need the govt going after young people who download research articles illegally from a non-profit who doesn't mind sharing the articles anyway

This is absurd! Why is our govt trying to prosecute someone for wanting access to research articles from JSTOR? Taxes pay for most research anyway, and there is no harm done in making this research available. This is not only wrong, it's crazy and stupid. These people don't belong in office if they can't use their judgement as to who to prosecute.

2013-01-13 17:45:22 (9 comments, 5 reshares, 11 +1s)

Insight Meditation and The Brain

Insight meditation is a particular style of Buddhist meditation that calls for paying attention to all inner phenomena so that one isn't driven by mind conditioning, but is able to act with full consciousness. Brain MRIs show that in fact, the brain of long term insight meditation practitioners are thicker than non-practitioners. There is a very clear change in the make up of the brain. It's clear that brain plasticity doesn't disappear after childhood. 

This is one article of many that demonstrate verifiable neurological changes from meditation practice.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc1361002/

2013-01-13 07:28:34 (13 comments, 2 reshares, 10 +1s)

Why Upgrading to OSX Mountain Lion was a mistake

Instead of Microsoft's blue screen of death, I get Apple's gray screen of death, and it happens relatively frequently. This is one messed up OS, I never had any problems until I upgraded to Mountain Lion. And don't believe the 2459555 sec since last panic report, it happens more often than that. I get crashes that don't even give me a panic report.

2013-01-11 21:51:06 (5 comments, 2 reshares, 22 +1s)

The next best Android Device, the water-proof, shatter-proof Sony Xperia

Dang, I should have waited for this one. 

http://youtu.be/gWysHOjl95E

2013-01-11 21:33:04 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

1) It's Snowing in Israel and 2) Israel is moving way over to the right

http://www.theworld.org/2013/01/a-new-right-in-israel/

2013-01-11 21:14:07 (2 comments, 4 reshares, 7 +1s)

Australian Businesses Are Switching to Solar Power

Because not only does it curb carbon emissions, but it's good business sense.

http://cleantechnica.com/2012/10/18/australian-businesses-switching-to-solar-power-because/

2013-01-11 17:45:43 (17 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

This Morning is a Real "weenie shrinker" in Los Angeles

And if anyone has watched "LA Story", you know how Southlanders cope with the cold:

Gail, News Anchor: And what a surprise this weekend when the weather turned unseasonably low. Here's Harris Telemacher, our "wacky weatherman" with a report.
Harris: And when the weather dropped down to 58 degrees this weekend, how did you cope? 
Man: I went to make sure all the windows were shut.
Harris: And, what about your pets? Were they outside? What happened? 
Man: Well, the cats were out till around ten. But it got a little too cold for them and they came in. 
Harris: The cats were out till around ten. But it got a little too cold for them and they came in! Well, that's how L.A. coped with that surprise low of 58 degrees thattu... more »

2013-01-11 17:08:16 (9 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

Burrrr!!! Freezing Weather on the West Coast this Morning, it's heading East, so be ready

2013-01-11 07:24:17 (21 comments, 2 reshares, 5 +1s)

String Theory: Physics or Religion?

CERN's LHC does 14E3 GeV,  that's within the range of the standard model, but string theory deals with 10E18GeV, which isn't within the range of any experimental physics for eons to come. So am I correct in assuming that pretty much all of string theory is completely untestable, and the primary appeal is that it's the only thing we've got that gives us a unified quantum field theory of gravity.

This is why I was originally never interested in string theory. Feynman path integrals and diagrams seemed to work just fine, and the standard model does a fine job at bringing together the three main particle forces. What if trying to take Einstein's idea of making gravity geometrical doesn't apply to the other three forces? Granted, I see the appeal, but on the other hand, the basics I've seen so far suggest that allth... more »

2013-01-10 23:46:51 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

Dance, Monkeys Dance! Looks like Matt finally settled down with a girl, see the end of the video


Where the Hell is Matt? 2012

2013-01-10 21:32:16 (14 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Youtube doesn't work on the sticks

I just got my Imito MX1 last week, and finally it's fully functional. To my dismay, I discovered that some genius at Google decided to remove the full screen button on the Youtube app and relies on the tilt API instead to get the app to do full screen. Well, sticks can't be rotated unless you want to rotate your entire 48 inch TV. So no more full 1080p video from Youtube. 

So if you're buying an Android stick for watching Youtube, forget it, at least until Google fixes the lack of a full screen button.

2013-01-10 21:03:21 (11 comments, 1 reshares, 9 +1s)

Bringing Android into my Living Room

Having +Android in our living room is great, but there are some major, major limitations. Here is second review of the Imito MX1 HDMI stick now that I've had a chance to use it. In order to get the best experience, I finally bought an ethernet USB dongle. Along with a bluetooth mouse and keyboard, our Android TV is fully up and running and it runs amazingly well. However, there are some major, major downsides, none of which come from the Imito MX1 itself, but all come from the Android ecosystem. 1080p video is generally not available because all of the Android apps are designed for max tablet resolution experience, and even Youtube actually doesn't provide full screen viewing experience on the device. It's great for internet access and music, but forget it for video, it won't provide you with any 1080p HD television.

Audio... more »