Why Technology Is Awesome: Part 184

I feel like the daily deluge of information from newspapers (always digital (except for the WSJ), sometimes important things, depending on which one I've been reading), internet (omg cute cat pictures and more videos of otters doing adorable things? Yes please.) and magazines (always in paper, wtf is wrong with me?). But every now and then I get really excited about all the interesting things that I'm reading. And every now and then I get really excited because instead of reading about terrible things (gunmen killing innocent people, the unemployed people trying to get by) I find some truly inspirational things in the news that assures me that other, more positive things are still happening. Which reminds me not to be depressed about the way that society is going. So I got that going for me...

• We're trying to help the environment. As a society, we're moving toward meatless meat according to The NY Times, which is interesting (I watched a TedTalk about the upside of moving from meat (cows, chickens, pigs) to insects (that's right) as an alternative form of protein since it takes an inordinate amount of (increasingly) scarce water to produce even a pound of meat. Meatless sales have hit $550M market volume, which is impressive. Additionally, a lot of the new players are not only trying to move away from meat, but to make something that's actually better than meat by taking out saturated fats and lowering total fats. Maybe we won't end up like the fat people wheeling around in Wall-E after all...
• What. The. Hell. People. So Brendan Eich contributed $1,000 to Proposition 8 (anti-gay rights). When this was found out, some two weeks into his new tenure as the CEO of Mozilla Firefox (yup, that Firefox) people went on rampage. OkCupid put up a landing page that asked users to switch browsers if they tried to access using Firefox, developers clamored for him to rescind his donation and bloggers lit it up like New Years Eve. I can see one side of this-- it's actually no one's business who he decides to donate money to in his personal life. It's actually kind of an infringement of his privacy for people to be going through his personal affairs like that. However, on the other hand, you are a public figure Brendan Eich. If you really want to donate, make your donations anonymous. Particularly if it's a hot-button issue. Particularly if you live in California, a traditionally more liberal state. Particularly if you're located in Silicon Valley, where your reaction to Proposition 8 is almost a foregone conclusion. I mean hell, even my mom doesn't support Proposition 8. I'm not saying you can't do whatever you want in your private life, but please, for the love of, take precautions to make sure that you do them privately. If you did, you wouldn't have needed to step down
• Amazon announced the Amazon Fire TV, which will be $99 and will be there move to basically put a cash register in every person's living room. This isn't a surprise. I feel like the TV craze has been going on for awhile now and although Apple entered to small amounts of excitement, all the buzz after the CE show in Vegas that focused on the amounts that could be made through the TV from people at home (my generation's version of the home shopping network, pretty much) pretty clearly shows us what the future holds. Strangely, Bezos wasn't on hand for the announcement (very different from the era of Steve Jobs-esque announcements). However, TV as a cash register won't be successful until access is easy (that means integration from multiple sources, much like what any, say, PS3 does now, except better), content is deep and varied (that means sports-- c'mon Amazon, you know your demographic. At least get your offerings up to the number of sports options that are available on Roku) and it's got to be affordable. So they got that going for them
• Rumors continue to circulate about Apple moving toward mobile payments. Passbook and a given group of established customers that are used to the user interface already through iTunes make a convincing argument

And finally... I forgot that Dita Von Teese existed. I also love that she was married to Marilyn Manson. Don't ask me why, but I was Googling her the other day because I kind of forgot she was a thing, and I stumbled on a bunch of her quotes. They made me laugh. I posted my fave up above. Though I like to imagine her saying, "You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world... and there's still going to be somebody that just fucking hates peaches." (insert shrug)

Life Is Not Exactly Rocket Science

What should I be doing right now? Sleeping, doing homework, studying for my finals or writing my final papers. What am I doing right now? Ordering new glasses (because I lost mine), doing half-ass yoga (I haven't talked to my best friend in like, a month, and she doesn't mind it when I mouth-breathe into the phone as long as I can recap how my life is) and reading about loggerhead turtles. Why? Because, well. Turtles. Also, because I'm a second year business school student. Which, if I may make such a bold statement, is pretty much like having senioritis in high school, except you can drink now.

So you can't really laugh and lightheartedly call them "senioritis spasms" or whatever. Because, technically, they're really more like, "well-intentioned benders" or "brief expressions of your love of drinking" if you're feeling particularly artsy about it.

ANYway, I'm late to the game but Wired released their "101 signals" list late last year (August 2013, I know, I know I'm stretching the definition of "late last year", but it makes me feel better) which covers the 101 most interesting blogs and channels for a variety of categories like science, design, government, etc. I'm a big fan of most of them, I think it's a pretty effective way to get my news and learn new things, and I've remembered now how much I like Digg.

Also, I have it to thank because now I know that, until recently, baby sea turtles disappeared for years between hatching, crawling into the ocean (palm sized) and then re-emerging years later with shells that were up to 2 feet wide. And now we've chipped them with solar-powered, acrylic-sealed adhesive GPS locators, and now we know that they potentially hitch rides on floating temporary landmasses. So. Yup. Turtles. At my new favorite blog: Phenomena: Not Exactly Rocket Science.

The Truest Thing Known to Man

 

Thanks Doghouse Diaries.

Interesting Things I Learned Recently

Things I've learned recently:

The first thing isn't really something I learned so much as it is something that I never really thought of before. My first exposure to character differences was when we were coding the back end system for a client and, since the client needed the data to flow through from multiple countries (i.e. multiple languages), the character spaces needed to be different. Normal Cyrillic or Latin characters typically take up one bit to code. However, Asian characters require double-bit coding because the characters are a bit more complex. "This 78-character tweet in English would be only 24 characters long in Chinese." True fact.

Why is this interesting? Because this partly explains why micro-blogging has caught on so well in China. In a study on the verbosity of languages (fascinating, I know), romance languages tend to be the most verbose. Funnily enough, the most frequent European languages in the Twitterverse after English is Spanish and Portuguese. This has led to a whole new sub-language for Twitter-- in Portuguese for example, "bjs" stands for "beijos" and "abs" means "abracos"-- kisses and hugs.

In "Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful" (I think The Economist is letting the interns title the articles again, btw) studies have confirmed that attractive women are more likely to be promoted than plain-Jane colleagues. Because people tend to project positive traits onto them, such as sensitivity and poise, they may also be at an advantage in job interviews. However, surprisingly, they found when sending applications with or sans headshot of an attractive women, it took attractive women longer (11 applications before an interview request) than plainer colleagues (7 applications). Strangely, for men, it played out as planned-- hunks were more likely to be called when they included a photo, unattractive men were more likely to be called when they did not include a photo.

How to explain this? At first, researchers had the "dumb-blonde hypothesis", assuming that people associated beauty with stupidity. But since the study also had rated photos on the intelligence level of the candidates, this may not hold. So what else could cause this discrimination? Couple thoughts: HR departments are usually staffed mostly by women--maybe women discriminate against pretty candidates? Who knows. Let's just chalk it up to penance-- let it be harder for the pretty ones. Haha (just kidding! Kind of...).

Knowing that you are paid less than your peers has two effects on happiness ("Pay, Peers and Pride"). The well-known one is negative: a thinner pay packet harms self-esteem. The lesser-known one is called the "tunnel" effect: high incomes for peers are seen as improving your own chances of similar riches, especially if growth, inequality and mobility are high. Interesting.

Here's something more interesting because it means men just can't win--men retiring a year early lower their odds of surviving to age 67 by 13%. Wah wah wah.

John Carter fail. In "How to Make a Megaflop", Schumpeter outlines the way to make things fail out the gate. So here's some characteristics.

1.       Slaughter a Sacred Cow: A la Coca-Cola when they took away classic Coke, causing outrage among the caffeinated and obese everywhere. They brought it back. Everyone keep their pants on.

2.       Mix Oil and Water: Trying to make things that shouldn't be... For example, trying to turn Hamlet, Lolita and Ernest Hemingway's drunken last days into musicals. In other words-- the McDonald's up-market burger-- the Arch Deluxe. More examples? Ford producing a truck for the luxury market, Bengay stretching its heat rub brand into the aspirin market, Colgate making TV dinners. 'Nuff said.

3.       Produce a Genuinely Awful Product. The Ford Pinto catching fire every time it was rear-ended for example. I can see how that would upset people.

So here's what I've done for ya today folks. Social media future trends, the trials of pretty people and some tips on how not to make a megaflop. Don't say I never did anything nice for ya.

Clash of the (Tech) Titans

Things are getting contentious in the emerging technologies space. Yahoo followed up on its threat of suing Facebook (initially issued last month) and has filed papers on patent infringement on a number of things including social networking, customization, privacy, advertising and messaging. The advertising bit is probably one of the more interesting ones, because there were four alleged patent infringements, three of which are related to "Method and system for optimum placement of advertisements on a webpage" and one that is related to the "System and method to determine the validity of an interaction on a network". Considering that Facebook generates a ton of revenue off of their super-targeted mini ads, these allegations could severely impact their advertising business. 

In a statement, Facebook said, "We're disappointed that Yahoo, a longtime business partner of Facebook and a company that has substantially benefited from its association with Facebook, has decided to resort to litigation. Once again, we learned of Yahoo's decision simultaneously with the media. We will defend ourselves vigorously against these puzzling actions."

So let me translate.

In a statement, Facebook said, "We think that Yahoo is resorting to suing us because they are having issues internally and are grasping at straws to revive their company by resorting to petty litigation such as this to draw publicity to their cause and propel themselves as a victim against the big bad Facebook. We would like the public to disregard the embarrassing fiasco that they faced earlier this year when they fired their CEO in the worst way possible and basically admitted that they were in deep trouble in terms of strategy and vision for future products. Instead, we would like to remind the public at this time that they used us to drive up their click through volume by 300% since partnering with us, and that we think it's ridiculous that they don't have the decency to tell us about their crazy announcements ahead of time like everyone else in this industry. Now that they have made Facebook angry, we will crush them under lawyers and legal clauses. We spit on them. Thank you."

In other news, Nokia also decided to axe its Mobile Financial Services unit. As one of the first admissions that late-comers are not welcome in the fast-paced mobile payments space, Yankee Group's senior analysts have commented that, "While the rewards are potentially high for a well-timed mobile money initiative in developing markets, as witnessed by the phenomenal success of M-Pesa in Kenya, the time for new entrants may have passed and certainly some countries, such as India where Nokia chose to place their interests, are already well served by existing money services..... It may be that Nokia is simply cutting back to core interests that are more central to its position as a handset manufacturer, but its mobile money backpedalling goes to show that even a name as internationally recognized as Nokia cannot immediately guarantee success in the fiercely competitive mobile payment landscape."

Initially, the MFS unit was established to manage their Nokia Money product that was launched in mid-2009 with a focus on emerging economies. The service promised P2P transfers, basic transactions, merchant/utility payments and prepaid SIM card top-ups (very, very similarly to M-Pesa). Nokia introduced this service with Obopay, which is invested $70M in early 2009 and things were looking good while they were forging partnerships with India's Yes Bank and Union Bank, but the company struggled to expand past the land of the great "I" (that's India for all the people not in the know). 

Oh yeah, and Paypal is going to launch a competing dongle (in your face, Square!). This is interesting because it goes in line with PayPal's disdain of the NFC hype. They recently announced their pilot with over 2,000 Home Depots across the U.S. where users can check out with PIN/mobile device or special PayPal card. I actually think this is the right move for PayPal, as a company that was founded in intangible payment/commerce services, it makes sense for them to balance their portfolio by simultaneously developing more tangible solutions. (Especially when all of their competitors are flocking to the NFC silver bullet.) Oh PayPal, one day we will be together again.

One MILLION EEE-VIL Dollars

I read an article recently in Popular Science about the future of energy. One of the more interesting ideas was the possibility for space-based solar power. Here's the reasoning: solar power has limitations because solar cells right now are still being developed and the efficiency of these cells has not reached optimal levels yet. Not only are they not as efficient as possible, they also have physical limits-- they can't be charged at night, sometimes it's cloudy or it rains. In 2007, a study by the National Space Society estimates that a half-mile wide band of photovoltaics could be used in geosynchronous orbit (read: will orbit in a way so that is never has to be on the dark side of the planet) could generate the energy equivalent of all the oil remaining on the planet over the course of one year.

Let me repeat that because that statistic boggled my mind a little bit. All the oil on the planet. Add it all up. Would be generated in a single year if we used these space-based photovoltaic cells.

Of course though, there are some questions. How do we  get the power that is generated in space back down to earth? How do we store it? Is it safe? (I have mental images of Dr. Evil's  EEEE-vil space laser right now, not going to lie.) Initial plans indicate that satellites outfitted with solar panels would gather sun's energy 24 hours a day, and then convert that energy into an infrared laser beam (some energy would be lost-- the prediction says that the laser will be able to convert about 80% of the energy to ground-based receivers).  What's more, the DoD estimates that there could be military applications of being able to beam energy into the battlefield, since transporting fuel can reach $400/gallon in those delivery situations.

For those who have concerns about how beaming a giant infrared laser through our atmosphere to a giant receiver (9700 square foot receiving stations) might affect our environment or the safety of the living organisms on the planet, no worries! Because of the wavelength of the laser, the beam should not damage any animals that might stray into the path of the giant (EEE-VIL) laser. 

More fun facts:

• Project annual global energy consumption by 2030: 220 billion kilowatts
• Amount of solar energy available from a single orbiting satellite: 1 to 2 gigawatts
• Width of a power transmission beam: 60 feet
• Potential size of satellite: 500 square feet
• Initial pilots: In 2008, physicists beamed 20 watts at microwave frequencies from a mountain on Maui to the island of Hawaii (a distance of 92 miles)

And Now a Few Words from a Guy Who Probably Embrasses His Kids a Lot

You probably don't recognize the guy in the picture above... but... he's kind of a big deal.. probably only to nerds like me, but nonetheless. His name is Lawrence Krauss, and if you have a strange hobby of being obsessed with theoretical cosmology and physics like I do, then he cuts a pretty impressive figure. in 1995, he and his friend Michael S. Turner (from the University of Chicago) theorized that there must be some sort of cosmological constant that was holding the universe together like a fly caught in honey-- moderating its expansion and (very slow) expansion/explosion into nothing. A few years later, they coined the term "dark energy" by discovering the cosmological constant that was very slowly accelerating the expansion of the universe as we know it. You know, no big. The important thing to take away from this discovery is that it proved that nothingness was, in a way, both nothing and a very big something simultaneously (I mean, it's exploding our universe, that's all).

Dr. Krauss is back now with some new questions to warp your mind. Maybe it's just because I've only just returned from vacation, but my mind has recently been consumed with a larger mix of big questions-- "Why am I here? How am I here? Am I making the right decisions?" along with my daily #firstworldproblems "How did my friend get nutella on my white coat? How did she get it on the inside armpit?!".

In a New York Times Article entitled "There's More to Nothing Than We Knew", Dr. Krauss introduces his new question to the universe (Ba dum dum! Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week-- tip your waitress). As a strong opponent of creationist theory, Dr. Krauss is asking "Why should we assume that nothingness is more natural than somethingness?"-- to put it in other words (from an equally reputable nerd, Alan H. Guth from MIT), "The universe could be the ultimate free lunch!".

The reasoning is this-- creationist theory is founded on the idea that the universe is so perfect-- a culmination of such precise and perfectly compatible conditions that there must be some sort of "intelligent design" or interference from an otherworldy source (you may have seen him around-- white robes, long white beard, had a nice kid named Adam...answers to "alpha and omega", and (if you're into the Old Testament) he also warned of fire and brimstone before his anger management classes). Dr. Krauss believes that there are three types of nothing: emptiness of space (a very ancient method of thinking popularized by the Greeks), a nothing that lacks even space and time and a third type where even the laws of physics are absent. Here, he asks another mind-blowing question, "Where do the laws come from? Are they born with the universe, or is the universe born in accordance with them?". To answer, he reverts to multi-universe (string) theory, where everything that has happened and everything that will happen are all simultaneously happening. So not to scare the OCD-ers out there, but maybe quantum randomness really is the root of existence...

So. Not to alarm anyone, but it is 2012, and here's this guy who is basically saying that although something could be a more natural resting state of existence than nothingness, nothingness will eventually get us at both ends. Think of time/space as a candy. The somethingness is the creamy nougat in the center which we are enjoying currently, but it's capped at both ends with nothing and wrapped in a whole lot of nothing. Once this brevity of existence if over, the universe could potentially revert back to an empty, chocolate-smeared nothing wrapper in an existential (nihilist? haha...) trash can. Add in the multi-verse theory and your mind should now be swimming in a container truck of these little existence candies...His depth of thinking is really quite succinct, and I can't articulate it better than the New York Times already has, so...

"The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not," Dr. Krauss writes. It gets worse. If nothing is our past, it could also be our future. As the universe, driven by dark energy-- that is to say-- the negative pressure of nothing-- expands faster and faster, the galaxies will become invisible, and all the energy and information will be sucked out of the cosmos. The universe will revert to nothingness. Nothing to nothing. One day it's all going to seem like a dream. But who is or was the dreamer?

Can you imagine having this guy as a dad? This is how I imagine it:

Krauss: "What are you doing today son?"
Son: "Nothing, just hanging around."
Krauss: "Well, you've technically been doing nothing and everything haven't you?"
Son: "Dad!!! Can I just have my allowance?"
Krauss: "In another universe, I've already given it to you..."
Son: *grumble* "I'm going to the mall."
Krauss: "You're already there!"
*vulgar hand gesture from son*

The Future of Cars

 

So cars have been on a bit of a down swing recently in my mind... After catching XXX on FX tonight (it's not a dirty movie, it's a really terrible moving starring Vin Diesel as an adrenaline junkie who saves the world from chemical warfare. Yup. You read that right.) I was thinking about the differences in the ways that we thought about cars back when I was a youngin' (read: 9 years ago). The movie vaguely centers around impressive sports and muscle cars- and, shocker, Vin Diesel never asked about the mpgs on that GTO once. Go figure.

Nowadays, things are a little different, which I think is actually a good thing. We're much more cognizant of the environmental impact than ever before, which I like. But, coupled with the economic struggles that we've had (as a country) recently, it seems as though the car industry is stuck in a bit of a conundrum...On one hand, they're under a lot of pressure to make cars cheaper than ever to compete with all of the foreign disruptors, yet, but on the other hand, they're not given a lot of credit for quality cars anymore- it is commonly accepted that "really nice" luxury cars will be foreign ones. It seems that the approach that they've taken is to emphasize the patriotism of buying "USA-made" (not going so well for them) and to continually try to innovate faster than the other guys to make sure that they're products get more miles per gallon, and that consumers have cooler navigation and safety features. 

Pinching pennies and trying to get more miles per gallon might not be very sexy, but it doesn't mean that there hasn't been some awesome things going on in this field. I recently was flipping through some backed issues of my Popular Sciences and I found a couple new engine designs that I thought were particularly interesting. 

The OPOC engine, for example, (short for the opposed-piston, opposed-cylinder) increases efficiency by decreasing the amount of wasted energy (heat and friction) from the combustion chamber. They borrow some know-how from diesel engines (diesel engines, contrary to popular misconception, are actually very fuel efficient. This is because diesel engines form a 16:1 combustion ratio instead of approximately a 8:1 ratio of a non-diesel engine....Oh the things you learn owning a diesel!) and build on the increased power by improving the gains per single engine cycle. This basically means that for every engine cycle, the engine will produce power twice instead of once. Funded by Bill Gates and VC God, Vinod Khosla (Stanford Grad, btw), OPOC producers expect to produce a car that could deliver a 100 mpg car that can generate up to 300 horsepower. Pretty cool!

So the moral of the story for me is that these innovations could be the path for America to shed its stereotype of producing sub-par cars, could be an opportunity for new industry, will produce more environmentally friendly machines and, more importantly, shows that the US is still in the game in terms of scientific R&D. I don't really see a downside here for the US to invest a little bit more in these types of projects. (My feelings on private investments vs. government funded projects for science is a completely different post.)

Oh. And if you've never watched XXX with Vin Diesel, it's worth it. Why not relive the early 2000s?

Sociobiology, Kin Relationships, Altruism and Humans

 

I read a very interesting article in Discover recently about inclusive fitness and it got me thinking, but first, some background. In 1975, biologist E.O. Wilson published Sociobiology, a refinement of evolutionary theory that claimed that social behaviors were often genetically programmed into species to help them survive. He claimed that  altruism (although it is technically a self-destructive behavior performed for the benefit of others) actually ensured that your genes would be passed on through "inclusive fitness", which basically meant that because your altruism helped others (typically your family), then your whole family would benefit and have their genes pass on to the next generation. This theory went on to become quite popular, and by the 1990s was accepted as a core tenet of evolutionary psychology and biology.

Now, however, Wilson is  taking back his findings and claiming that altruism does not drive evolution, that in fact, altruism would emerge whether or not you were protecting your kin. He claims that when people compete against each other they are selfish, but when group selection becomes important, the altruism of human societies would automatically kicks in, claiming that humans may be the only species intelligent enough to strike a balance between group and individual level gains.

I think this theory (and the recent change) is interesting because it basically claims two things: altruism is an inherent characteristic in humans that emerges when we sense that group "fitness" is necessary, and secondly, that humans may be the only species that can not only distinguish when this need occurs, but also distinguish between when individual needs (with a selfish approach) or group needs (with an altruistic approach) is necessary. When I look at the workplace, I can tell you that this happens, but I don't know if it's called altruism any more. In the same vein that humans are smart enough to determine when there is a need to act for the good of the group, it seems that they also know when there's a benefit in acting for others in order to better themselves. For example, you typically compete with your colleagues in the average workplace, but if the colleague realizes that a project is due and you will all need to work well together to finish on time, they may give encouragement and praise to others on the team to make a better working environment. I'd argue that this is not necessarily altruistic (they still want to finish the project on time so that they don't get in trouble), but that's also not necessarily bad.

I think that in the case of the workplace, having this type of mentality (helping the group for the good of one) is probably more frequent than helping the group for the needs of the group, although I do think that they can be cooperative needs. And why not? It might actually be better (at least in the workplace) if altruism informed less of our decisions and we were slightly more selfish- then there is less of a chance that altruistic behavior would color other actions- that might actually be detrimental in the long run (altruism in hiring/firing/promoting if that person isn't ready, for example). So....I say, selfish or not- whatever you want to call it- just make sure you keep end goals in mind. At least in the workplace.

Because Everyone Needs More Rube Goldberg in Their Lives

Time for a little bit of a break since it's a Friday. There's more to life out there than just cranking out work and doing things that make you money. How about doing things that don't necessarily give you monetary gains but provide happiness instead? Wouldn't it be great if you could do both? I don't think it's possible to find another company that embodies this motto better than Synn Labs, recently featured in Fast Company.

Known for creating great contraptions that fascinate the mind (Cue "OOOoOoo" and "Aaahh..." noises), they've worked with everyone from Google, Disney, Sears and the band OK Go (See clip above for their music video "This Too Shall Pass"). They describe themselves as "A drinking club with an art problem", but I think my favorite quote in the magazine comes from cofounder and designer Doug Campbell, who said, "We've shot flame balls in the air, trained hamsters, played with Slinkys, and built rockets. That's a week at the office."

The magazine notes that the flame balls were strictly for their own amusement.

Happy Friday!

$75K Can Make You Happy!...Right?

I just thought this picture was funny (terrible sense of humor, I know). People say that you can't put a price on happiness. That happiness is some sort of magical concoction of intangible feelings and  uncontrollable, outside forces that impact your life all at the same time.

In a recent article released by Time, a new study from Princeton University claims that maybe there is a number for happiness. That number happens to be $75,000. The study, which drew on more than 450,000 Americans polled by Gallup and Healthways in 2008 and 2009, claim that the further a person's household income falls below that magical $75K level, the unhappier he/she is. However, no matter how much more than $75K a person makes, it doesn't give them positive, correlated gains. For example, if I make $40K, my unhappiness is greater than my incremental happiness above "normal" if I made $120K.

I have to note though that the study also mentions that there are different types of happiness- there's the changeable, day-to-day mood and then there's the level of satisfaction you feel about the overall direction of your life.It seems like it's this second type of happiness that is most strongly correlated with income. This kind of makes sense considering income probably affects the way people think about how their lives are going- it's difficult to find any other metric to compare yourself against if you wanted to figure out how you stack up against the guy standing next to you.

The study believes that it's not low income that makes people sad, but more that less money makes people feel more ground down by other issues- like health, relationships, etc.(You know, the harder, more tangible problems- not just whether your stocks will vest in time or whether or not the funds you've put a few thousand in are showing positive gains.) Among divorced people, about 51% who made less than $1,000/month reported feeling sad or stressed the previous day, while only 24% of those earning over $3,000 a month did. At that magic number of $75K though, this discrepancy disappears, and individual temperament and life circumstances (age, education level, job, etc.) more significantly affect how a person feels. Economist Angus Deaton believes that it's because at this $75K level, people begin to feel like they have the expendable income to do things that make them feel good- like going out with friends.

All of this is interesting for many reasons. The thing that intrigues me the most is that the data was collected at possibly the worst part of the economic recession, so I wonder if the data would be slightly different now. (And if it was, would it be higher or lower? Higher than $75K signifying that people realize that money makes them feel much better than originally thought? Or lower, which would mean that people no realize that they can live on much less than they originally thought, and would be happy living simpler lives in light of the destruction the recession has caused?)

Finally, the study mentioned that money is closely tied to self-esteem (something that has a strong relationship but not to be used synonymously with happiness). The study showed that no matter their income level, people feel their life is working out better with each raise they receive, which means there's no harm in reaching for that next big thing!

Let's Play: Guess the Future

Working in mobile for awhile now, I can say that there are certain questions that reoccur in discussions with company leaders, subject matter experts and users of the actual devices. If I had to sum up the top reoccurring questions, I would say these are the most common ones:

1. Why do I want to move users to the mobile channel? How can I improve customer adoption with minimal risk/investment?
2. What is going to be "the next big thing"? 
3. What type of returns on investment can I expect (customer loyalty, retention, increase in cross-sell, etc)?
4. What are the limitations of this channel? Or, what is the best way to utilize this channel?

I've been pondering that last question in particular recently because, as all of the numerous announcements come spilling out- T-Mobile and AT&T, Google and their NFC love, pilots going on everywhere- this last question becomes increasingly critical as companies try to adapt and offer the best experience possible for their customers.

I think it's a pretty well accepted idea that mobile will have limitations, not in physical capability, but in what makes sense to actually do on a mobile device. For example, you might use your cellphone to download the Zillow app if you were looking for a new house, which overlays real-time real estate information (cost of homes in the area, estimated rent for the area, homes that are for sale in the area, etc.). You could use this app to walk around and house hunt, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood and being able to make instant decisions based on the information being fed to you ("Too expensive.", "Maybe better to rent here."). You could even send homes you like to your significant other, so they can see the same things you're seeing (in case you decided to divide and conquer). This use case is great because it hits on some critical triggers for successful mobile operations:

1. Convenient Usage (app is easy to install and automatically syncs with existing GPS in phone) (critical)
2. Real-time information (critical)
3. Compelling value proposition to the customer (i.e. cost/comparison information) (critical)
4. Ability to share and otherwise "use" the data acquired (critical/optional depending on industry)
5. ROI for Consumer (app is free) (optional)
6. ROI for Companies or Participating Partners (receive info about potential home buyers) (optional)

 On the flip side of this equation, it's most likely not very feasible to have someone fill out a mortgage application on their mobile device- the screen is too small, there is a lot of information required (much of it sensitive information like SS#) and this is a function where the average consumer would feel more comfortable doing it in a branch (maybe online) where they would have ready access to a customer rep to ask questions.

So now I get to the crux of my thought process. If the definition of "mobile" was expanded to include more than just these devices (blocky, brick-like, small, inflexible pieces of plastic) to encompass something else-this is when we could really start doing some interesting things. I'm sure everyone's seen the iPad2 mania, and although exciting, I was most interested in the add-on stand ($40) that was offered with the new iPad2, which allows my colleagues to position their iPads wherever they are to be optimal for their viewing pleasure- on planes, hotels, whatever. After a riveting conversation where two of my newly iPad-ed colleagues discussed the finer points of how to position their stands for plane use, I was shocked to realize that this add on still didn't change the fundamental issue with hardware-it's hard.

Mobile, stereotypically is associated with mobile phones- blocky, inflexible, small pieces of hardware that continually get new features (cameras! GPS! apps that quote Borat!) but they're limited! What if our fundamental concept of what mobile is were to change? If, physically, there was a change in the stereotype of what mobile could be, wouldn't that really begin to open up the opportunities for what mobile can do? I'm not suggesting that the mobile phone would go away, but I'm arguing that the way we utilize it will change. Enter the FlexUPD. By layering the screen polymer, necessary transistors and substrate on a piece of glass that allows for removal after integration (inspired by Taiwanese pancakes), producing a flexible, fully functional screen.

Gone could be the days of "my screens not big enough"- just whip it out of your pocket, plug it into the adapter on your phone, project and interact with the bigger screen as you normally would! Want to use your phone as a mobile workstation? Sure, lay out the sheet on a specialized rack and pull up a "desktop" interface that allows you type and view things just as if it were on a real computer. Watch a movie on your plane? Why not? Just detach the polymer from your book, where it was doubling as a book cover and attach the sheet to the back of the chair in front of you through specialized hooks that adhere to the fabric without leaving a mark!

This next step could take the great things about mobile and combine it with the flexibility and versatility of paper, giving us an expanded mobile channel that allows for limitless functions. (Could it power itself up when it's "off" through solar power? Could it change color to alert you if you have emails or messages? Could it be integrated into clothing to double as a fashion accessory since it will be on you all the time? If it did, could it double as a heart rate monitor or health meter?)

Opportunities are endless. Let's get to it!

Dark Matter, Dark Energy and Particle X

Let's clear up some terminology from the get go. Ready?

Dark Matter is defined as: Scientists believe dark matter exists throughout the universe because based on our best calculations using Einstein’s equations of gravity, the universe should be much more massive than what all the observable stars and other bright objects would weigh; therefore, scientists believe that there must be more matter out there, we just can’t see it. Thus the name dark matter, and its mysterious nature, since our only tool for observing distant matter is light, so if matter does not emit light, we can only make indirect observations and inferences about its properties.

Dark Energy is defined as:  the unexplained force that is drawing galaxies away from each other, against the pull of gravity, at an accelerated pace.Dark energy is a bit like anti-gravity. Where gravity pulls things together at the more local level, dark energy tugs them apart on the grander scale. Its existence isn't proven, but dark energy is many scientists' best guess to explain the confusing observation that the universe's expansion is speeding up. Experts still don't know why this occurs, but the quest to learn more about dark energy is one of cosmologists' top priorities.

Not to be confused with Anti-Matter, which is: another strange concept in physics - but unlike dark matter, it’s one which we’ve actually observed in labs. In a nutshell, antimatter is matter that has the opposite charge of matter. For example, an electron is a matter particle which has a negative charge, while a positron (also called an antielectron) is an anti-matter particle which has a positive charge. The cool part about this is that when these two things come into contact with each other, they annihilate each other and release massive amounts of energy.

Particle X is: a supermassive particle that was half of what was created in the Big Bang. (There was also anti-X.) Equal amounts of X and anti-X were created in the Big Bang, and then decayed to lighter particles. Each X decayed into either a neutron or two dark-matter particles, called Y and Φ. Every anti-X converted to an anti-neutron or some anti-dark matter.

The most popular candidate for dark matter is a theoretical weakly interacting massive particle, or WIMP, that connects only with the weak nuclear force and gravity, making it undetectable by eyes, radios and telescopes at all wavelengths. Based on current theories, WIMPs are expected to be about 100 times as massive as a proton, and to be their own antiparticle — whenever two WIMPs meet up in space, they annihilate each other.

I think this is interesting, because even as we ponder on what the first moments of the universe might have been like, we still try to give it some sort of order. Scientists predict that if the universe was originally created from matter and anti-matter, then there must be some sort of asymmetry there (likely on the matter side I would predict, but even that can't be proven) or else they would have annihilated each other, and nothingness would still reign.It makes me feel better to know that some of the smartest people in the world still try to impose their control on things outside of their logical control. Even in quantum physics, one of those gray sciences that continually plays in the gray between strict, quantifiable science and theory, it's easy to see the "human-ness" reflected in the science.

Looking at the image above, its strange to see what lengths we go to in an attempt to find scraps of information on what happened before-before (before time began for their to be a "before"). To detect neutrinos and decaying protons (signatures of Particle X), physicists paddle around the Super Kamiokande detector in a rubber raft as it fills with water how low/high tech.

Cement from Thin Air

Meet Brent Constantz. In a recent article featured in Popular Science's Innovations of the Year ("Cement from Thin Air"). I was able to read about the great things that this man is doing.

He seems to be one of those people that inherently make you feel inadequate. He has had a history of starting multiple companies, has more than 60 patents and invented a way to utilize the way coral grows to find a way to naturally mend bone. Now, he's on to something new, by utilizing that same method to create cement. The way it works seems simple (although I'm sure it's not)- basically, engineers spray mineral rich or brine water through the fluegas of smokestacks. The calcium in the water bonds to the pollution to form cement, much like the way coral combines calcium and bicarbonate (naturally occurring in seawater) to form their exoskeletons.

Brent estimates that his new company, Calera,can produce up to 1,100 tons of cement a day and in doing so, sequester 550 tons of carbon dioxide (which would otherwise be released into the air!).

I love being amazed at the capacity of human ingenuity. He has my vote for innovation of the year!

Is There Space for God in Science?

In college, one of my roommates and best friends was a devoted Catholic and theologian. She was also incredibly intelligent and we had conversations sometimes about the precarious line that she walked- being someone that strongly believed in the benevolence and awesomeness of God and at the same time, still believing that we lived in a science driven, logical world where things like evolution and growing organs in a lab were things to be celebrated and not feared.

Discover Magazine recently had a great article about the face-off occurring between science and the divine. It follows the story of the particle physicist, John Polkinghorne, whom has since become an Anglican priest. Polkinghorne is one of the key stakeholders right now in the discussion of the "proper" place and/or existence of God in science. His focus has specifically centered around quantum physics, which is where I come in, because I am also (building on my last post) secretly very interested in quantum physics.

I personally see these experiments as largely academic, mostly because divine intervention, if it does exist, is by definition going to be hidden from plain view. One of the key interviewees, an atomic/optical physicist named Paul Ewart put it best when he noted that "It would be like proving the reality of an invisible, tasteless, odorless, silent, intangible tiger lurking in your garden. Short of God materializing in the lab and shouting "Look at me!" it is difficult to think of any incontrovertible proof."

That being said, it is interesting to look at the many things that aren't explainable in quantum physics- as these characteristics, even if you don't believe in God, could point to the resolution that maybe there is something fantastic out there- even if it's just the unexplainable nature of incredibly advanced science. One of these characteristics is:

1. Entanglement- In quantum physics, two particles can become twinned in such a way that the measurement of one always determines the properties of the other, no matter how far apart they may be. For example, if Alice and Bob each have "twinned" particles, let's say coins in our example, and Alice flipped her coin in China and  Bob flipped his coin in some gravitationally-intact spaceship in a different universe, they would both get heads or tails, EVERY SINGLE TIME. 
• Interestingly, in a test to show that twinning is affected by something outside of space-time, they deployed twinned particles in beam splitters, and used acoustic waves to modify the perception of space-time on these two particles. (side note: this is based on another very popular theory, the theory of relativity, where Einstein basically said time depends on how quickly you're moving. For example, Alice and Bob could be in two space shuttles moving in different directions, and they could both claim to have flipped their coin first and BOTH be right, depending on perspective. This is important for the experiment because, if you put the twinned particles in a situation where essentially BOTH are being deployed first, then the reaction would truly be unbiased, and there cannot be some sort of cooperation between the two particles.)
• However, on every run, the two photons stayed twinned, meaning that they continued to behave the exact same way on every single iteration of the experiment.

So at this point I'm sure you're wondering so what? Even if this does show an existence of something outside of space-time that affects outcomes (at a particle level at least) that still doesn't show the existence of God. It simply shows that there's something that exists outside of what is typically quantifiable through science. My thought is this- during this experiment, there are many objections that it still doesn't prove the existence of God. My thought is this: even though it doesn't prove the existence of a guy in a robe and a white beard, it does show us something that we can't explain, something that is still awe-inspiring and distinctly unique in this crazy universe we live in. Maybe that mix of intrigue, that feeling of humbleness that there are things larger (or in this case, much, much smaller) than us that are  capable of unexplainable awesome things- maybe that is God. At Catholic school, they always said that "God is love", but maybe God can be other things too- the drive to keep pushing boundaries, exploring, learning- in essence, he IS the human experience?

Some thoughts to ponder if you're interested in these types of things- guess they can't prove that this is undeniably wrong...