Protophore

The article cited in the NY Times: http://tinyurl.com/6ol8fk Is a bit absurd. While I agree that in some instances it is beneficial to test drugs without a placebo group, the placebo effect has been demonstrated repeatedly.

I can't seem to find a link to the article, but I recall reading one recently in which people were given the same painkiller but told that it the price anywhere from $0.10/pill to $10/pill (or something along those lines). People taking the "expensive" painkillers rated their level of relief much higher than those taking the "cheaper" pill.

Sure, in some situations (Cancer, AIDS, etc) we may want to do away with a placebo group, but they are still very useful in many situations.

Those are some odd looking little things.

It's not hard to imagine that some creatures would be able to withstand the conditions in outer space given the extreme conditions under which some animals live on earth (see extremophile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile)

I also found this interesting: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.h...

apparently humans can survive for a very short time in outer space unprotected. No explosions or boiling blood as portrayed in movies and such.

Japan has very well defined and strict laws on drug use. When entering the country customs will take any drugs you have that are not prescription (and in your name). They also ask if you have any porn.

I find the punishment for the death of the pedestrian to be light, but perhaps he was ruled not at fault? If you're driving at the speed limit and actually paying attention, not texting or reaching for something in the back seat, and someone runs out in front of you and you have no time to stop, and they're killed, should you really be punished?

Here's link with a few photos: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7595475.stm

I was lucky enough to catch a Sumo tournament in Kyoto a couple years ago while I was there. Very interesting sport to watch. I think that I actually saw Roho in action while I was there.

I caught a baseball game in Tokyo as well and that was another great experience. Baseball in Japan is quite amazing from a spectators point of view. Each team has songs and cheers that the fans all know and they sing them when their team is up at bat. No booing or fighting between the fans of the different teams, it's all very respectful.

While I have to agree with the author that execution is very important and that without great execution you're invention probably won't work out (at least for you), I have to disagree that innovation is a "social disease". The United States and capitalism in general are very innovation driven. Innovation is very rarely a bad thing.

Wow, that's amazing. It looks so life-like! Those engineers got it right on this one like they made it out of some spare human parts.

Is there any reason why a successor to Kim Jong-Il could not take this place if he actually did pass away? It's not like the populace of North Korea is just waiting for him to die so that they can revolt. Or that the communist party would have to worry about losing power in an election to choose a new ruler.

The only reason I can see for North Korea to enact such a ruse would be to maintain the guise of a strong North Korean leader to the rest of the world while they groom a successor. I can't see many internal reasons why they would need to act in such a manner.

Seems like an odd idea to me, but what do I know?

They need to have the option to speed up the rate at which the text is displayed. It was going way too slow for me and I was getting bored waiting for the next line to show up.

Interesting article, but it seems to me that this is one of those instances where science takes nature farther than it might go on its own. I can't see that these tests prove anything other than that we can induce a reaction between prions from one animal brain protein from another. I don't believe that this alone can be used as a predictor of real life occurrences. There are a lot of things that we can force to occur in a test tube that would never occur by themselves.

Kinda cool, but also kinda weird. That had to have taken a lot of time. It takes a certain kind of person to go to the effort to put something like that together.

Sorry, but I'm going to have to disagree with you. Props for putting together a good service but you can't have a bare bones website these days. That doesn't say that you're too busy to make a good looking website it says that you're not thinking about the marketing side of your business.

A potential customer might take a look at the site and think, "what's this? If they can't make a decent looking site why should I believe they can make a decent product?"

Taking the time to make a great website might not be something you're interested in, but find a friend or pay someone to make it for you.

I agree that the guy is being way harsh, but after looking through some of the sites I wasn't too impressed.

If I were an investor I'd want to see a little something more than what I saw today.

Very similar article to what was posted yesterday: http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/09/03/energy-ball-by-home-ener...

"Keep in mind that each of the 70 startups on this list paid $18,000 to get on stage"

Are these the only two conventions around that promote start-ups in this manner? $18k isn't completely absurd but it still seems pretty steep for a few people working out of a garage to pull together. It seems to me that while this set-up might help out some start-ups that it mostly helps out the people that organize it. I would imagine that the VC firms have to pay some kind of attendance fee as well.

Seems to me like someone should set up a similar conference that offers a much lower entrance fee for start-ups, or maybe even eliminate the fee all together.

It's about time they work out a plan to move forward and add some stability to these two companies and the market. I don't like the idea of having the taxpayers foot the bill for all of this mess, but the alternative is even worse (doing nothing and letting the market continue to its downward trend). I would imagine that in this day and age the majority of people have some, if not all, of their retirement money in the stock market either through 401ks or through private brokerage firms. Either way the the common American gets to pay for this mess - through depressed stock prices or through taxes used to bail out Freddy, Fannie, and others like them.

It's got to suck for anyone how owned shares of either of these two firms. Down something like 80% this year. Ouch!

It would be nice to have the option to buy a small wind turbine for your house. I wonder if this would help drive residential solar prices down.

Another interesting wind power solution: http://www.magenn.com/

Interesting story, but where does all of their non-organic waste go now that the waste dump is gone? They probably just have to walk further to throw it away somewhere else.

Does anyone have data on the economic feasibility of setting up plastic, glass, etc recycling plants in 3rd world countries?

It looks like Google is removing some of the EULA wording: http://www.dailytech.com/Google+Removes+Big+Brother+Clause+i...

We should convert our society from the current system of easily transferable electronic money to one based on large heavy cinder blocks as currency. No longer will a spammer be able to access your bank account electronically and siphon off your funds. You will have a large cave or other storage area where you accumulate your cinder blocks.

It could work! See "Burkina Faso" http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Burkina_Faso Currency: Giant Stone Wheels, Bananas

I bet they didn't have any email spam.

Chrome certainly looks very promising. However it is still lacking many features. Until they get it all put together I doubt that I will be switching.

I've also read that IE8 has some nice features that Chrome does not have or doesn't do as well. I'd prefer to avoid IE8, but you never know, maybe MS got something right this time around??

I've never been asked something like this in an interview. How much time do they give you to answer something like this?

Is it just me or are most of those ideas a little boring? I don't see anything that would make me get excited as an investor.

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFDnT_xgqJ0 Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwMNlJJBVZk

Interesting that there's already a company making wallets to block RFID signals: http://www.rfidblockr.com/

They've recently opened a Tesla showroom on El Camino just north of the Stanford Mall. I wonder if they have any cars to test drive.

Nice read. I hadn't considered the idea of vesting for the founders before. Sounds like a good idea though.

Unless I'm mistaken I don't believe that Comcast even offers a way to track your usage. How are you supposed to know when you get close to their cap?

Seems like a bad polocy for all users to me. "The new system should only impact some 14,000 customers out of Comcast's 14.1 million users (i.e. the top 0.1%)". That may be true now but as people start to download more movies, videos, photos, etc I can see that percentage going up. I say it's time to start boycotting Comcast if/when this goes into effect.