And you thought you had all the flashlights you need

Coleman 2AA LED flashlight

One of the things I got for Christmas was an LED flashlight.  I already had an “Extreme Series” 10-LED flashlight I got a few years ago from Cabela’s, a couple of hand-cranked never-need-batteries flashlights, and an assortment of Maglites in sizes that range from pinky to “Driver’s license, registration, and insurance.”  And I’m ignoring the old-school flashlights I’ve stuffed in the corner of the coat closet, like the one with that huge lantern spring battery.

What I got for Christmas was a Coleman’s 2AA LED flashlight, and it’s become my favorite.  Its single LED (a Cree XR-C, whatever that is) produces twice the light of the 10 LEDs in my Cabela’s and is lighter by two-thirds (though in defense of the Cabela’s I’ll note that the latter’s hefty case also doubles as a hunter’s coup de grâce weapon). And something else I’ve grown to like: the on/off button is on the back, parallel to the bulb, so you hold it CSI-style (like a javelin instead of like a frying pan) and turn it on with your thumb.

Grooming on facebook

Here’s an interesting article from The Economist about facebook.  It points out that Facebook features such as commenting on photos or posting on walls are an online equivalent to the grooming behavior observed in primates, and the vast amount of data you make available to Facebook is likely to be studied with that in mind.  It also supplies some statistics, courtesy of Facebook’s “in-house sociologist“:

• 120: the average number of friends in a man’s Facebook network (women have “somewhat more”)
• 10: how many of a woman’s friends actually get that woman to respond to any of their postings (for men the number is 7)
• 26: for a woman with 500 Facebook friends, how many of them on average get that woman to respond (for men with 500 friends, the number is 17)

So as you grow your network, you’re mostly enlarging the number of people you monitor passively.

Taxes

Started 2008 taxes on turbotax online. 25% off from Fidelity. Anything better out there?

Replacement for Obama’s BlackBerry

BlackBerry addict Barack Obama is replacing that device with a more secure version:  the Sectéra Edge (a.k.a. the BarackBerry), available from General Dynamics for $3,350, according to CNN.

General Dynamics calls the BarackBerry the only smartphone “that switches between an integrated classified and unclassified PDA with a single key press” though I suppose the Secret Service will want Obama to cover that button (the “Unclassified PDA key” at bottom left) with a label that says “Don’t press this button”…

April 2009 update:

Three months later, we find out that Obama had not replaced the BlackBerry with the Sectéra Edge but was instead using the two together in some secure but clumsy way. That interim solution is about to be replaced by a custom BlackBerry 8830 loaded with software from Genesis Key. Fast Company says the software is called SecurVoice and the bespoke-for-spook BlackBerry  won’t be ready for Obama for a few months.

Pumpkinification

Apparently “pumpkinification” is a word, one with a meaning that is impossible to guess if you’re as ignorant as I am of the history of the Roman Empire.  “Pumpkinification” is a satire of someone otherwise undergoing an elevation to divine status (i.e. undergoing an apotheosis).  “Pumpkinification” is the English translation of the first word in the title of the book Apocolocyntosis divi Claudii, written by Seneca the Younger that satirizes the Roman emperor Claudius I.    Pumpkinification’s obscure meaning only makes sense if you known an ancient language or two, since “apocolocyntosis” is a play on the word “apotheosis.”

So I guess SNL was engaging in Obama pumpkinification back when Hillary supporters seem to dominate SNL and Tina Fey made her “Bitches get stuff done” comment.

Bad Apples at Work

This American Life (TAL), the podcast and long-running public radio show, did an episode recently called “Ruining It for the Rest of Us.”  The main story was about an outbreak of measles in San Diego among infants and unvaccinated children; patient zero was at a charter school where 10 percent of the children were not vaccinated because of parental concerns that the vaccines themselves are worse than the risk of the disease.

What I want to focus on is the episode’s prologue, as summarized at the TAL website:

A bad apple, at least at work, can spoil the whole barrel. … Will Felps, a professor at Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands, [looked at] what happens when a bad worker joins a team. Felps divided people into small groups and gave them a task. One member of the group would be an actor [hired by the professor to behave] either like a jerk, a slacker or a depressive. And within 45 minutes, the rest of the group started behaving like the bad apple.

Felps does think there’s some evidence that there may be a way to counter the bad apple’s poison pill effects (to mix metaphors). Listen to the first 13 minutes of the stream available here for an entertaining story about the problem and the potential antidote. You can also get the drier versions online by searching for “Felps bad apple”…

Winter ales and other grown-up beverages

I tasted over a dozen winter ales and a couple of meads this past week and have a few to recommend:

The Agave Mead from Mountain Meadows Mead was pretty good.  A little bit sweet, but with something more complex in the smell and the taste that complemented the sweetness.  The Mountain Meadows meadery is located near one of my favorite national parks, Lassen Volcanic NP.

Beer-wise, one group of good beers were overdrive versions of beers available at retail.  Two I liked in that category were Mirror Mirror Barley Wine from Deschutes (11.5% ABV, IBU 90) and Oaken Bomb from Golden Valley (8% ABV, IBU 45).  One that let me down in that group was the Pyramid Snow Cap(‘n and Tennille) (7% ABV, IBU 47), which was aged with cacao nibs, an idea intriguing in theory but not in practice.  I didn’t get a chance to try Deschute’s other overdrive beer, Big Red Double Cinder Cone (ABV 9.8%, IBU 75).

World’s First Vacuum Decanter

If you don’t know what to get for Christmas, here is an idea. Metrokane claims this is the world’s first vaccum decanter. I have not searched to see if this is true but if you know of others please post a comment. Reviews seem to be mixed on this unit. Main comments are around ease of use. In any case I would be interested in test driving this unit. As for the price, retail is set at $80 but you can find it on Amazon for $60.

Watch House outside the house

If you missed House, you can catch-up at http://www.hulu.com/house. Hulu posts the latest episodes. You will have to wait 8 days or so to get last week’s episode. With high-speed internet, the quality is decent. You will have to watch a few 30 seconds adds.

Digital cameras and Moore’s Law

Quotes from Michael Reichmann at his website, The Luminous Landscape. His experience with the Canon PowerShot G10 leads him to conclude we’ve reached another major milestone in the digital camera industry:

No one could reliably tell the difference between 13″x19″ prints shot with the $40,000 Hasselblad and Phase One 39 Megapixel back, and the new $500 Canon G10…In fact it was the H2 system’s narrower depth of field that occasionally was the only clear give-away.

These comparisons fall down when prints over about 13″x19″ are made. Once the output resolution drops below 200PPI the advantages of a 39 Megapixel sensor over a 15 Megapixels sensor become evident. And, even when smaller prints are made, cropping becomes an issue.

Also, though on prints up to 13X19″ differences are almost impossible to see, on-screen at 100% one can fairly easily tell which files are from the G10. There are artifacts visible at the micro-detail level and one can easily see other hints of what one is paying for.

But, … in medium-sized prints it’s been almost impossible for experienced photographers who I’ve shown these comparison prints to to tell the difference. Scary.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/kidding.shtml

Reichmann concludes:

As Ray Kurzweil has illuminated in The Singularity is Near, once Moore’s Law states to kick-in in earnest the rate of change becomes almost exponential. That, my friends, is what we’re now starting to see in the camera industry.