Archive

Tapatio Tastes Food Tour

A tasting tour of Guadalajara

Decentralized Science (DeSci) at SynBioBeta 2025

Accelerating Scientific Development Using Crypto Networks

A Smarter Way to Track Your Diet: An App Proposal

How to design the ultimate diet-tracking app for busy people

Age and Leadership: Analyzing Successes and Failures in American History

How important is age and experience?

Biohacking and Shifting Science

Exploring the historical and contemporary shifts in scientific paradigms, and the phenomenon of biohacking.

Get Your Shots!

If you're pro vaccine,shouldn't you want as many as possible?

Lessons from FDR

FDR was among the most polarizing figures of his time

How ProdromeGlia™ Affects my OpticareAI Cognitive Risk Score

How does a plasmalogen supplement affect my cognition?

Opticare Analysis

Retinal age and fundus image evaluation day-to-day

Joseph Foster: Tukwila Founder

The history of Joseph Foster, one of the first non-Native settlers in Tukwila, Washington, who homesteaded on the Duwamish River in 1852.

Food Experiment: GlucoTrojan

How well does a new food additive my glucose spikes?

Food Experiment: Good Idea Drink

How well does a new soda help prevent my glucose spikes?

Personal Science Week

A weekly newsletter for people who use science for personal reasons.

Do blood donations cause my low ferritin?

How do my blood donations track ferritin levels?

AI

All about AI and LLMs

How I think about large language models

How I expect to be using AI Large Language Models in the future.

Study my nutrition

A detailed analysis of my nutritional needs

[book] How Emotions Are Made

An intriguing scientific case for why emotions are not real

Testing my COVID-19 Antibodies With Serimmune

Results from regular antibody testing

#DeSci

Decentralized Science (#DeSci): how blockchain, DAOs, and NFTs are disrupting scientific research and funding.

AI Plagiarism

I've been plagiarized by an AI.

Personal Science Cookbook

Step-by-step recipes to study your own data

Personal Science Guide to the Microbiome

The definitive guide to microbiome testing

Viome Recommendations

R code to compare Viome food recommendations across multiple tests and track changes over time.

Microbiome

Richard Sprague's microbiome research and personal science experiments tracking gut bacteria over hundreds of tests.

Microbiome Reviews

Richard Sprague's hands-on reviews of microbiome testing services including Bristle Health, ZOE, Viome, and DayTwo.

My Results

Full microbiome test results from Richard Sprague's hundreds of gut health tests across Tiny Health, Bristle, ZOE, and other providers.

Podcasts

Podcast interviews with Richard Sprague on microbiome science, personal science, and gut health.

Science

Microbiome science experiments and detailed analysis by Richard Sprague, including kombucha studies and academic research.

Cumin Club: Indian Food Meal Kits

My experience with an Indian Food meal kit

The Limits of Expertise

Why motivated individuals can rival career experts. Examining the replication crisis, overconfidence research, and personal science advantages.

Mercer Island Social Capital

Local implications of a Harvard sociology study

Read Bristle Health Raw Data

R tutorial for reading Bristle Health oral microbiome data, creating tree maps, and comparing with 16S mouth microbiome samples.

Rate your favorite nootropics

Nootroflix lets you rate nootropics and get personalized recommendations. But are the results just placebo effects and effort bias?

Toward a definition of personal science

Defining personal science: prioritizing direct experience over authority, humble curiosity, and self-experimentation in the Quantified Self tradition.

Hypnosis is just another way to get into the Flow

Stanford psychiatrist David Spiegel reframes hypnosis as a flow state. Overview of the science, the Reveri app, and Huberman Lab episode.

[book] A Short History of Chinese Philosophy

Notes on A Short History of Chinese Philosophy by Feng Youlan — key ideas from Confucianism, Daoism, and beyond.

Counter-arguments against web3

Moxie Marlinspike's critique of Web3: most dApps rely on centralized services like Infura and Alchemy, undermining decentralization claims.

Why most psychological research findings are not even wrong

Anne Scheel's paper on how underspecified claims in psychology research make most findings impossible to evaluate or replicate.

Does the COVID Vaccine Affect My Heart Rate?

Tracking resting heart rate with Apple Watch before and after Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine doses. Result: no significant heart rate change.

I just want to find something useful in my self-collected data

Why self-trackers inevitably build their own tools, and the challenge of finding truly actionable insights in personal health data.

Clinical comparison of Apple Watch and Amazon Halo

Testing Apple Watch and Amazon Halo heart rate accuracy against a clinical ECG during a treadmill stress test. How accurate are wearables?

Home-Cooked Meals with Shef

Testing the Shef meal service

Red Town Trail Coal Creek Then and Now

Tracing the history of a popular Bellevue hiking trail

Comparing Amazon Halo to Apple Watch

Head-to-head comparison of Amazon Halo and Apple Watch for heart rate, sleep tracking, body fat, and tone analysis using R.

Reheated Rice Doesn't Significantly Affect My Glucose Levels

Testing rice preparation methods with a CGM

Leaving Evernote

Migrating 35,000 notes from Evernote to plain-text alternatives. Comparing Joplin and Obsidian for future-proof note-taking.

Mercer Island local election results

How to calculate Mercer Island precinct-level 2020 presidential election results using R and King County CSV data.

Keto Experiment # 2 (October 2020)

Second attempt at inducing ketosis through a low-carb diet, with tracking and results from October 2020.

COVID-19 and its R-Squared Relationship to GDP Change

R analysis of the correlation between COVID-19 death rates and GDP decline by country, computing R-squared from Our World in Data.

Lengthening my Deep Sleep With SleepSpace

Can an app improve my sleep?

Using Autocorrelation (Tutorial)

R tutorial on autocorrelation analysis for personal health data, using resting heart rate and weight time series to find hidden patterns.

Keto Experiment # 1 (July 2020)

10-day ketogenic diet experiment tracking ketones, glucose, macros, and blood panel results showing dramatic triglyceride drop.

[book] 2030: Today's Biggest Trends by Mauro Guillén

Review of 2030 by Mauro Guillen on demographic megatrends, aging populations, emerging markets, and technology disruption ahead.

Mask-Wearing: How to Lie With Statistics

How the same COVID-19 data can prove opposite conclusions about mask mandates, demonstrating chart manipulation and statistical bias.

Testing myself for COVID-19

First-hand experience with at-home COVID-19 testing through the Seattle SCAN study, including kit unboxing, nasal swab process, and results.

New results from Viome

In-depth Viome review covering transcriptomics technology, clinical trials, and personal experience using FODMAP diet to treat post-surgery SIBO.

Quick look at Psomagen GutBiome+

Detailed review of Psomagen GutBiome+ whole genome sequencing microbiome test, including gut health scores, metabolites, and dietary advice.

Was it SIBO?

Personal experience recovering from bowel obstruction surgery with suspected SIBO, treated with a low-FODMAP elimination diet.

That wasn't fun

Why I spent four nights in the hospital

Coronavirus and the microbiome

Evidence linking COVID-19 and the microbiome, including GI symptoms, fecal virus detection, loss of smell, and the Prevotella hypothesis.

How effective is the flu vaccine, really?

Analyzing CDC flu vaccine effectiveness data for the 2019-2020 season, showing 45% efficacy and what it means for healthy individuals.

My Favorite Resources for COVID-19

Curated collection of COVID-19 resources: tracking dashboards, scientific research, data sources, projections, and local info.

Nature Outlook special microbiome issue

Key takeaways from Nature Outlook's January 2020 special issue on microbiome science, diet, and future microbiome-based medicines.

Microbiome testing with Psomagen

My experience using the Psomagen Gene and Biome test

Super-easy ad blocking

How to block ads on your Mac

Understanding my heart rate

How to optimise exercise through monitoring your heart rate

MITM Proxy to see my phone's traffic

China is looking at my phone traffic?

Prolon Fasting Mimicking Diet Experiment

An easier alternative to full-on fasting.

Prolon Fasting Mimicking Diet Day 5

Prolon FMD day 5 finale: high ketosis at GKI 2.52, 5 pounds lost, and reflections on completing the fasting mimicking diet.

Prolon Fasting Mimicking Diet Day 4

Prolon FMD day 4: deep ketosis at GKI 2.74, back pain resolution, 3 pounds lost, and managing social meals while fasting.

Prolon Fasting Mimicking Diet Day 3

Prolon FMD day 3: ketones at 1.2 mmol/L with GKI of 3.56, reduced hunger, lower back pain side effects, and glucose tracking.

Prolon Fasting Mimicking Diet Day 2

Prolon FMD day 2: entering ketosis at 0.9 mmol/L, keto flu symptoms, brain fog, and tracking glucose ketone index (GKI).

Prolon Fasting Mimicking Diet Day 1

Day 1 of the Prolon fasting mimicking diet: 1100 calories, meals, and continuous glucose monitor data showing carb spikes.

Gideon's Wisdom of Crowds Experiment

R analysis of a wisdom of crowds experiment where Google+ followers guessed cheerios in a jar, with outlier detection and plots.

How to make an R Package

Step-by-step guide to creating an R package with documentation, unit testing via testthat, data storage, and RStudio workflow tips.

Viome and DayTwo Updates

Updated 2019 results and dietary recommendations from Viome and DayTwo microbiome-based personalized nutrition tests.

R-tude: Read OneDrive Excel files

How to download and read Microsoft OneDrive Excel files into R data frames using readxl and curl_download.

[book] Conscious by Annaka Harris

Review and notes on Conscious by Annaka Harris, exploring the hard problem of consciousness, panpsychism, and free will.

Tajin spice

A simple vegetarian dinner with sauteed eggplant, sweet potato, and Tajin chili-lime seasoning for a unique flavor kick.

[book] Ball Lightning by Liu Cixin

Review of Ball Lightning by Liu Cixin, a Chinese sci-fi novel about a boy obsessed with understanding static lightning after tragedy.

[book] The Longevity Diet

Book summary

What is Health Nucleus

Overview of Health Nucleus (formerly Human Longevity Inc), Craig Venter's genomic health screening service now available from $5,500.

Does my heart rate predict earthquakes?

Apple Watch heart rate data shows a curious spike 15 minutes before a 4.6 magnitude Seattle earthquake while sleeping in July 2019.

Personalized Nutrition Summit 2019

Summary of the 2019 Personalized Nutrition Summit covering genomics-based diet startups, microbiome testing, and nutrition tech devices.

Genopalate genetic-based diet recommendations

Genopalate's DNA-based diet recommendations using nutrigenetic scores to personalize food choices based on 28 nutrition-related traits.

Popular new foods

Trending food flavors and restaurant trends from Datassential research: Levantine cuisine, Asian sweets, regional Japanese, and more.

Viome Presentation at Personalized Nutrition Summit

Notes from Viome CSO Momo Viyusich's presentation at the 2019 Personalized Nutrition Summit on transcriptomics and diet predictions.

Could my gut microbes change my blood type?

Exploring Flavonifractor plautii, the gut bacterium whose enzymes can convert Type A blood to Type O, with personal microbiome data.

Improve sleep through force of will

Self-experiment showing how wearing a sleep mask and staying in bed a full eight hours dramatically improved watch-measured sleep duration.

Studying back-to-back microbiome results

Comparing back-to-back gut microbiome samples to study day-to-day variability and the effect of Reducose on gut bacteria composition.

Reducose Experiments

Personal experiments with Reducose (mulberry leaf extract) to reduce postprandial glucose spikes, with CGM data analysis.

Comparing CGM with Finger Prick

Accuracy comparison of Freestyle Libre CGM versus Contour Next finger prick glucose meter, testing food response after whole wheat bread.

CGM Product Summaries

Overview of continuous glucose monitoring products including Medtronic Guardian, Nutrino FoodPrint, and the OnDuo diabetes platform.

NYTimes thinks glucose testing isn’t helpful

Response to NYT claim that glucose self-testing is unhelpful, arguing continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) provides far more actionable data.

Blood testing with Baze

Review of Baze at-home blood test kit measuring zinc, vitamins D, E, B12, omega-3, and other biomarkers for personalized supplements.

R-tude: Labels on a ggplot chart

Quick R tutorial showing how to add text labels directly on a ggplot chart using geom_text with microbiome colon cleanse data.

[book] Bearing False Witness

Book review of Rodney Stark's Bearing False Witness, challenging common myths about the Inquisition, Crusades, Dark Ages, and more.

R-tude: My Bifido Levels by month

R tutorial creating a calendar heatmap visualization of Bifidobacterium gut microbiome abundance levels tracked over multiple years.

Reevaluating my sleep experiments

Statistical reanalysis of self-tracked sleep data testing whether potato starch, alcohol, or Vitamin D supplements affect sleep quality.

Continuous Glucose Monitoring

Pointers to everything I know about CGM

23andme vs. Helix

Comparing SNP results from 23andMe, Helix, and Psomagen genetic tests to check consistency across consumer genomics platforms.

R-tude: Averages and Standard Deviations

Interactive R tutorial exploring how averages, standard deviations, and subpopulations shape normal distributions with Shiny visualization.

[book] From Priest's Whore to Pastor's Wife

Book review of Marjorie Plummer's history of clerical marriage during the early German Reformation and the end of priestly celibacy.

R-tude: counting my sleep locations

R programming exercise using tidyverse to analyze and visualize sleep location data tracked over several years in a personal spreadsheet.

Who moves to Seattle?

R analysis of Washington driver's license data showing which states send the most people to King County, normalized by population.

Viome and DayTwo Updates

Comparing updated food recommendations from Viome and DayTwo microbiome tests, including major changes to personalized diet advice.

Tails I win

R simulation of a counterintuitive coin-toss probability puzzle: why heads-tails takes fewer flips than heads-heads.

A dictator can’t be too careful

What can spy agencies learn from microbiome analysis? Examining gut bacteria linked to mood and personality, from Kim Jong-un to Mao Zedong.

My nose microbiome throughout the seasons

Tracking 50+ nose microbiome samples over three years to find seasonal patterns in nasal bacteria like Corynebacterium and Moraxella.

Convert uBiome files to Phyloseq with Actino

How to convert uBiome microbiome data to R Phyloseq objects using the Actino package for advanced gut microbiome analysis.

Measuring sample variability: uBiome BioRxiv paper

Analyzing uBiome's BioRxiv paper on gut microbiome sample variability and reproducibility, with independent replication using 25 duplicate samples.

Easy oyster mushrooms

Grow your own mushrooms

How to think about microbiome diversity

Understanding microbiome diversity metrics like Shannon Index, Inverse Simpson, and alpha vs beta diversity for gut health analysis.

Sonification of the microbiome

Listen to a year's worth of my microbiome results.

Monte Carlo and Team Performance in R

Monte Carlo simulation in R showing how a small skill advantage between two teams leads to outsized winning percentages.

An interesting high fiber experiment

Analyzing Prashanth Rao's self-experiment comparing gut microbiome changes from high-grain versus high-vegetable fiber diets.

What little I know about nutrition

Brief overview of what I know about nutrition science

Which microbes go with each other?

Using R and correlation analysis on daily gut microbiome samples to find which bacterial genera rise and fall together.

Sprouted black beans

Make your own

My Microscopic Fellow Travelers To China

How international travel to China affected my gut microbiome, tracked through daily sequencing samples during the trip.

What’s happening to my mouth microbiome?

Mysterious Streptococcus species shifts in my oral microbiome detected through regular 16S testing of cheek, tongue, and lip sites.

Sleeping better on a different diet

Exploring the connection between dietary changes, gut microbiome composition, and sleep quality through personal tracking data.

Analyzing my sleep and diet in R

Analyzing sleep data in R to compare rest quality on a low-carb high-fat diet vs regular diet using ggplot and t-tests.

Watching Microbiome Changes in Mexico

Tracking gut microbiome shifts during travel to Mexico, observing how diet and environment change bacterial composition.

Does kombucha change my microbiome?

Personal experiment testing whether drinking kombucha produces measurable changes in gut microbiome composition over time.

Deep learning and the microbiome

Summary of links about how to apply AI to studying the microbiome.

My Philosophy of Food

Personal food philosophy covering sugar avoidance, carb reduction, exercise balance, and practical tips for healthy eating.

Do Probiotics Really Work For Me?

Testing whether probiotic supplements actually change the gut microbiome by tracking daily samples before, during, and after use.

Just say no to ‘No MSG'

Why MSG fears are a myth — the science of monosodium glutamate, umami flavor, and why glutamate is safe and natural.

Just say no to ‘No MSG’

Why MSG sensitivity is a myth — the science behind glutamate and why fears about monosodium glutamate are unfounded.

Ochrobactrum Sniffles

Tracking nose microbiome changes before, during, and after a rhinovirus cold using daily 16S sequencing with uBiome data.

Testing my blood glucose

Self-tracking blood glucose levels after sugar water using a Contour Next EZ monitor and plotting results with R and ggplot.

[book] Win Bigly by Scott Adams

Book review of Scott Adams' Win Bigly on Trump's persuasion techniques, cognitive dissonance, and the Master Persuader theory.

How a Citizen Scientist Will Win a Nobel Prize

How democratized data and citizen science are transforming hypothesis generation, enabling breakthroughs beyond traditional research.

Frozen blueberries are better for me

DayTwo microbiome analysis shows frozen blueberries score better than fresh for my gut, backed by anthocyanin research.

Best Academic Papers About the Microbiome

Essential academic papers on microbiome science, including the Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio debate and key research reviews.

Soylent and my microbiome

Tracking my gut microbiome daily to see how drinking Soylent affected my Bacteroidetes/Firmicutes ratio compared to a clinical trial.

Richard Sprague Clifton Strengths Inventory

Results from the CliftonStrengths personality assessment: Input, Intellection, Analytical, Responsibility, and Strategic.

Best references about 23andme

Curated guide to the best resources, tools, and utilities for analyzing your raw 23andMe genetic data and SNP results.

Calculating regressions from a physics experiment

Linear vs quadratic regression in R applied to physics ball-toss data captured with the Video Physics app.

My favorite books about the microbiome

Ranked list of the best books about the gut microbiome, from beginner introductions to advanced science and practical guides.

Koji and aged ribeye

Use fermentation to improve the flavor of meat

Clabbered milk

How to make clabbered milk by leaving unpasteurized milk at room temperature — a traditional fermented food and leavening agent.

Aggregating Mercer Island local election results

Using R to analyze 2016 presidential election results by precinct on Mercer Island from King County data.

Taller Than Me

A heartfelt eulogy for my brother Gary — remembering his diligence, family devotion, and the bond we shared growing up.

Recommended books about nutrition and health

Annotated list of the best books on nutrition, diet, and health including paleo, fermentation, and germ theory of disease.

Trying new blog software

If you came here hoping to find my latest blog entries, try this link instead: http://richardsprague.com I'm trying to rebuild a personal site using my own software and…

Experimenting with a gut cleanse

Your gut microbiome changes constantly in response to everything from diet to exercise, so when looking at multiple uBiome test results side-by-side it can be complicated to figure…

Hunter-gatherers sleep like me

Anthropologists Gandhi Yetish, Hillard Kaplan and their colleagues just published the results of some experiments that show hunter gathers get much less sleep than the eight hours we…

Microbes on my skin

For some reason I haven’t had good luck getting uBiome to process my skin microbe samples. I swab the skin under my ear, just as directed, back and…

I'm a secretor

The Gut Guardians podcast interview with Alanna Collen included an interesting reference to the FUT2 gene, which the podcast hosts says has been linked to response to high…

Measuring my uBiome diversity

While there are few agreed-upon standards for what constitutes a good or bad microbiome, nearly everyone agrees that a diverse microbiome is better than one that is less…

My activity data

A year of food and exercise tracking analyzed in R to find patterns in activity and health data.

For potato starch, maybe less is more?

A friend who is enthusiastic about the affect potato starch had on his sleep, suggested that maybe my less-than-stellar results were caused by the amount I had been…

A gut bacteria for caffeine metabolism?

23andme says I’m a slow caffeine metabolizer because I have the AC genotype at SNP rs762551 . You’d think that means I’m extra sensitive to caffeine before bedtime,…

Seth Roberts Rules for Self-Experimenters

Digging through the blog of the late Seth Roberts , I find many gems. Here is his concise summary of how to do self-experimentation. He mentions intending to…

[book] The Gluten Lie

View on Amazon Most people will think Alan Levinovitz , a Professor of Religion, an unlikely author of a diet book, particularly one like this that refutes many…

[book] The Gluten Lie

Don't read other health books until you read this one

My QS Seattle Talk: Cholesterol and my Microbiome

My presentation at the July meeting of Quantified Self Seattle , with more details about the A/B experiment I wrote about on the uBiome blog . Embedded content…

My QS15 Slides

Here’s the presentation I made at the Quantified Self Conference in San Francisco last week. It doesn’t include audio, but the full text of the transcript is embedded…

Inside Cell Block 7

Signs all over said leave your cell phone in the car, so I have no photographic evidence, but we spent our morning at the Cell Block 7 Prison…

Overselling the microbiome

Here’s the cover of a magazine I saw yesterday in the grocery store checkout lane: I thought about submitting it to Jonathan Eisen's list of Overselling the Microbiome…

Which species do I track?

At the Microbiome breakout during last week’s Quantified Self Conference , several people were interested in the list of organisms I track. Here’s the list, along with my…

Fact-checking should be a business

From Vulture.com : By tradition and by default, books aren’t verified to anything near the standard of a magazine piece. I am continually amazed at how often mainstream,…

[book] Epidemic of Absence

View on Amazon Ecosystems go all the way up and all the way down. Just as humans affect -- and are affected -- by the bigger world of…

What I learned at Quantified Self 2015

I’m back from two jam-packed days at the QS15 (the Quantified Self Conference ) held at Fort Mason, in San Francisco, and I have a few impressions. There…

Zocdoc vs OpenTable

The idea behind ZocDoc is brilliant: a modern, super-easy web site that lets you book a doctor appointment as easily as OpenTable lets you book restaurant reservations. ZocDoc…

Bacteroides plebeius and me

Japanese people are able to digest sushi better than other people thanks to enzymes in Bacteroides plebeius , a bacterium that was first discovered in 2005 and later…

Bacteroides plebeius and me

How I found Bacteroides plebeius in my gut microbiome despite having no Japanese ancestry, likely from years living in Tokyo.

My gut diversity through time

Clark Ellis posts a nice summary of his uBiome results over at the uBiome Blog and now, with more detail at The Self-Taught Author blog . A long…

A year without Seth Roberts

Hard to believe it’s been a full year . http://www.seth-roberts-memorial.com/

Potato starch doesn't help my sleep

I've been experimenting with the relationship between sleep and resistant starch, taking a few tablespoons of Bob's Red Mill potato starch, which some people think improves sleep by…

Upcoming talk: Your Microbiome, Your Health

If you’re in the Seattle area on April 29th, I hope you’ll come to a talk I’ll be giving for The STEAM Vent , a local science event…

Yup, statins make me smarter

After a fifteen day test , I’ve concluded that 20mg of simvastatin daily has a major effect on my results on Seth Robert’s Brain Reaction Time (BRT) test.…

Data is not a substitute for strategy

When I was in grad school, my data sciences class assigned us this incredibly complex optimization problem where we were supposed to recommend the best place to locate…

I’m rich!

The uBiome blog posts the results of a large (n>500) study of their users that shows a fascinating relationship between household income and a large change in a…

Will statins make me smarter too?

For the next two weeks, I’ll conduct a new test to measure the effect of simvastatin on my Brain Reaction Time. Two or three Kirkland fish oil pills…

What potato starch really did to my gut

As suspected, there was a glitch in my latest uBiome results . Apparently a server hiccupped, so the scientists there recomputed my sample and sure enough, the new…

A mistake in my fourth uBiome sample?

[ Update : uBiome recomputed my results, which are now much closer to what I expected. I'll update with a more detailed post soon.] After all that analysis…

Did raw potato starch wreck my gut?

What if you were in New York City and somebody gave you a list of the GPS coordinates for every coffee shop in the area. If you knew…

The bare minimum

Minimalism is wonderful. Why clutter your life with stuff you don’t need? Here, from t he golden sayings of Epictetus are words from the original Stoic himself: Take…

Looking into my mouth microbiome

The gut biome is interesting enough, but bacteria colonize just about every part of the body, so recently I’ve been studying my uBiome mouth test results . The…

Fish oil, even when it's not a pill

An interesting result when I measured my BRT today: Note how today’s result was noticeably higher than for the past few days. I've been traveling, and I didn't…

Fish oil makes me smarter

Fish Oil Makes Me Smarter We all feel more “alive” on some days compared to others. Some people call it “being in the zone”, or “flow” , where…

Using tools to analyze my uBiome results

To study my uBiome samples more carefully, I’ve written a few tools that you may find helpful too. You’ll need to know a little about the statistical programming…

How to analyze a uBiome sample in Excel

Although I’ve done three samples at this point, I’m by no means a uBiome expert, but hopefully the following guide will be useful to others who are trying…

[book] How We Learn

View on Amazon Who doesn’t want to be better at learning? Learn faster, more efficiently, with better recall…that’s this book, by Benedict Carey, a journalist who has long…

My uBiome third sample

Eventually it will be possible, perhaps routine, to get regular real-time updates to what’s happening among the bacteria crawling all over our insides, but for now the best…

Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room

It’s as impressive as you’d expect: full-blown Probat roaster right out in the open, a long line of Clovers at the main bar, As a tourist attraction it…

[book] The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Book review of Ben Horowitz's The Hard Thing About Hard Things with notes on management debt, CEO types, and startup culture.

[book] The Rise of Superman

The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance by Steven Kotler is mostly about extreme sports — the people behind really crazy activities like kayaking…

Comparing uBiome data through time

Like I said previously , the data (and tools) at the uBiome site are fantastic, and it’s taking me a long time to understand what meaningful conclusions I…

[book] Missing Microbes

Another fantastic book, by Martin Blaser , professor of microbiology at NYU: Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues . Microbes, a word…

What's in my microbiome?

Although I was an early customer of 23andme, I found the results unsatisfying because there is so little that is actionable . I mean, you don't need a…

Why review dentists?

Searching for a new family dentist I checked the normal reviews on Yelp and Google, searched a bit on the internet, transferred my records from the previous dentist,…

Apple Watch: the first wearable good enough to criticize

The Apple Watch launch event was so popular that the livestreamed version I saw kept breaking down, but I saw enough to be impressed. My overall takeaway, to…

Notes on Seth Roberts Memorial Symposium

I had a long-planned family reunion in Maine the week of the Ancestral Health Symposium in Berkeley this month, so it was just not possible for me to…

Keep this in mind when viewing the news

An excellent piece by a former AP reporter, discussing how news organizations report about Israel , but I find this point to be true about nearly all news…

How I use Evernote

I keep everything in Evernote. Well, not everything — my files and photos are kept mostly on OneDrive — but everything else, anything I might need in a…

My sleep genes

I’ve tracked and analyzed my sleep for years, and of course I also have a long-time interest in understanding my genome , but I’ve been unable to combine…

Breaking refrigeration anxiety

The New York Times ruined an otherwise fascinating overview of refrigeration in China by spinning it as an article about climate change ("What Do Chinese Dumplings Have to…

“Aw heck, I don’t keep track of stuff like that anymore."

My grandmother’s reply to the doctor who, looking for signs of disorientation, asks her if she knows today’s date.

Alternative cancer therapies

I’m reading a fascinating book, Outsmart Your Cancer , that summaries dozens of “alternative” cancer treatments, some of which I’ve heard of (e.g. laetrile, Mexican cancer clinics), and…

What's the point of a PhD?

Reading an o ld Slate article about why MOOCs (online classes) devalue the importance of a one-on-one relationship between professors and students, I have a few thoughts: Sure,…

Don't eat fake sugar

Here’s my theory: artificial sweeteners affect the body the same way as the real stuff. Although your taste buds may think a sucralose-flavored beverage tastes sweet, your brain…

Learning Nascar

I’m in Michigan this weekend, experiencing as much authentic America as I can. After too much of a lifetime spent out of the country, I need to raise…

Are potatoes good for you?

Diabetics, and anyone watching the glycemic load from their food knows that potatoes, with their large amount of starch, raise blood sugar levels. The otherwise high nutrient value…

Hold the ice

Food vendors in the US seem to put ice into every drink, whether you want it or not — a habit that has long annoyed me. Don’t people…

[book] All Natural

The subtitle of this book by Nathanael Johnson explains why I read it: "a skeptic's quest to discover if the natural approach to diet, childbirth, healing, and the…

The lazy way to review a Quantified Self product

When I attend software product review meetings, there are inevitably times when I’m too busy to read or study the product specs beforehand. In a roomful of people,…

Where are the starfish?

We’re on vacation this week in Coastal Maine, and yesterday at low tide we saw this on a beach south of Belfast: Sadly, west coast starfish are victims…

College degree expiration dates

My daughter is thinking about the essays on the Common Application the long standardized form that most colleges now require as part of their admissions process. These essays,…

On Covetousness

The Ten Commandments are supposed to be a summary, directly from God, of the most basic moral code. Most of them are obvious “biggies”: Kill, Steal, Adultery, disobey…

Do you believe in evolution?

Keith Blanchard makes an excellent point. Writing in The Week under the title "Why you should stop believing in evolution”, he says: So if someone asks, "Do you…

Why the war on cancer has failed

In spite of a gazillion dollars spent on cancer research over the past 50 years, overall cancer deaths really haven’t changed much. Look at this chart from John…

How short are the PreCheck lines?

According to the TSA’s John S. Pistole, as quoted in the New York Times , about 1M passengers/day are enrolled in PreCheck. There are about 800M passengers/year (2-3M/day…

Another difference between China and the rest of the world

From Evan Osnos’ new book Age of Ambition, quoting the work of Yingiang Zhang and Tor Eriksson: They found that in other developing countries, parents' education was the…

What's worth reading in the news?

We like to think that, of course, keeping up with the news is important. “Citizens of a democracy need to stay informed about current events.” But how well…

Sauerkraut (Take 2)

It’s been a year, but finally I get over my laziness and have the time to attempt another batch of homemade sauerkraut . The probiotics fad is pushing…

Personalized genetic analysis

The biggest problem with all the great new self-measuring tools is the torrent of data they produce. You could devote your life to analyzing your results and not…

What else driverless cars will change

When, in the near future, robots can reliably move people and stuff, our lives will change in more ways than just the obvious “Now I don’t have to…

How to be mean (or nice)

I don’t believe there are very many truly mean people in the world, certainly not in professional situations where long-term reputations matter. But just because somebody doesn’t have…

Is grape juice bad for you?

Our kids love grape juice, but there’s some controversy in our household whether we should indulge their taste or steer them to lower-sugar fruit juices instead. After all,…

What's the appendix for?

My appendix was removed when I was five years old, at the hands of a well-meaning country doctor who thought it would cure my chronic childhood tummy aches.…

Y-Combinator Sam Altman's Future Predictions

From this week's Econtalk podcast Sam Altman, president of startup accelerator Y Combinator, mentions three interesting startup investment trends: wearables (it's inevitable that we'll all have computing devices…

Microbes over time

Lawrence David, at Duke University, tracked two people’s microbes for a year , offering a rare peek into how the makeup of the gut changes over time. Similar…

Break out the sriracha

Seth Roberts often came up with hunches, reasonable hypotheses, about various foods or habits. But don’t pick the hypotheses randomly; base it on something, make sure it fits…

Everyone an Emperor

Kevin Kelly asked via Twitter for people to offer, in 100 words, their vision for the future. Today he published the first 23 responses . I don’t have…

[book] War! What Is It Good For? by Ian Morris

As with his seminal “ Why the West Rules ”, Stanford Professor Ian Morris’ new book makes you repeat “Aha!” as he explains the big picture of history…

Please join the Seth Roberts Community

Another big thing I miss about Seth Roberts is the interesting new links he always seemed to uncover from around the web. He discovered most of the links…

How accurate are food labels?

We take for granted that a label printed with calorie and other nutrition information is accurate, but is that true? A short 6-minute documentary and editorial published last…

Using the AliveCor Heart Monitor

Every few months, I feel a slight flutter in my chest, almost like a cough but coming not from the lungs or throat but from something deeper inside.…

Who has the most accurate health news?

The independent site Health News Review evaluated nearly 2000 health-related news articles since 2006, ranking their accuracy and usefulness according to these criteria: cost, benefits, harm, veracity, exaggeration,…

The future of reading

The future of news is an important piece of the future of technology, so this leaked writeup from Nieman Labs on an innovation post-mortem from the New York…

My favorite books about diet and health

Making a list of favorite books is hard because your favorites change over time, often due to reading something that becomes a new favorite. Perhaps it’s easier to…

Maybe Japan is not really lost

Japan’s decline has become such conventional wisdom that you pick up a book like this and immediately expect an explanation of Japan’s “lost decade” (now turning into two…

Call it processed milk

Our middle schooler came home from school yesterday and noticed for the first time that our family drinks whole milk, not the skim milk that her teacher had…

[book] Proust and the Squid

View on Amazon I can’t remember who recommended this book to me, but as you’ll see by the end of this post, I feel compelled to write down…

Seth liked people who think for themselves

Some people have an influence that is difficult to see in the usual standards of pageviews, book sales, citations. Seth Roberts , I think, was one of those…

Remembering Seth Roberts

Like many people, I first heard about him back in 2006 through a chapter in the best-selling book Freakonomics . His strange habit of tracking various aspects of…

Paleocon

I liked John Durant’s book (recommended by Steven Pinker) The Paleo Manifesto so when I heard about his new PaleoCon conference, I had to check it out. Today…

[podcast] The Second Machine Age

My favorite podcast, Econtalk, is always worth a listen. Here are my takeaways from this week’s interview with Erik Brynjolfsson of MIT and co-author of The Second Machine…

Sneaking into the Macintosh launch

The Apple Macintosh was launched 30 years ago, which seems like ancient history because of course it is, but it’s fun to reflect a little on it because…

Chinese cities bigger than Los Angeles

My favorite way to give a sense of the size difference between the US and China is to ask this question: the biggest city in California is the…

Track my speech

You can take the Wisconsin boy out of Wisconsin but you can’t take Wisconsin out of the boy. This New York Times dialect quiz guesses which part of…

I'm a Stimulator? or a Mover?

Top Brain, Bottom Brain by Kosslyn and Miller I didn't like this book, but having taken the trouble to read it, I'll at least try to summarize what…

[book] Manage Your Day-to-Day

View on Amazon This is a short, easy-to-read, summary of tips for how to be more productive and more creative. The bottom line: focus. Here are some of…

[book] How Asia Works by Joe Studwell

View on Amazon Long-time journalist Joe Studwell ( The Economist , Far East Economic Review , etc.) and now "mid-career PhD at Cambridge University” (what I’d love to…

[book] Last Days of the Inca

Having just attended the excellent Peru exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum, I was inspired to finally read this highly-recommended book detailing the Spanish conquest. If you've read…

The real reason for the 40-hour work week

Why do Americans work Monday through Friday and take weekends off? Labor unions say we should thank the rise of organized labor in the early 20th century, whose…

Doug Lemov’s Tips for Teachers

A few notes from Econtalk’s interview with Doug Lemov , founder of Uncommon Schools, who gives several practical tips on how to be a better teacher.Since we all…

A few hardware links to get started

I've been playing with hardware now for a year or so and this may be a good time to summarize some of the interesting products I've found. I…

The FDA needs to be more Bayesian

John Wilbanks is one of my favorite open science geeks (I even met him once in person, when he did a presentation for Microsoft Research). In a blog…

Is there such a thing as a "generic" apple?

When you eat any food, shouldn't you care more about the particular piece you are eating, rather than the generic values listed in an app or book about…

More rational optimism

I can’t help being an optimist about technology and the future. Some of my favorite books are : The Rational Optimist- How Prosperity Evolves (P.S.) . Or Ramez…

The Post-Pasteurian world

As a long-time fan of food writer Michael Pollan (read more here and here ), it was inevitable that I’d read his latest, Cooked- A Natural History of…

[book] The Goal

This book came recommended by none other than Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and he’s right: it’s one of the better business books I’ve ever read. Written in a…

The argument for regulating information

When Nobel Peace prizewinner Liu Xiaobo was imprisoned by Chinese authorities, his captors were unafraid that he alone, a single individual without guns, an army, or even military…

Sustainable online education

Anant Agarwal, the president of EdX, MIT and Harvard’s massive open online course (MOOC)provider thinks the future of education doesn’t need have to maximize revenue: “It’s not at…

Is the FDA the only source of experts?

An SFGate blog, supports the FDA’s decision to prevent informed consumers from having our genes sequenced halt the marketing of 23andme: Silicon Valley whines any time regulators bog…

Sun exposure and health

People born in the Fall tend to live longer than those born in the Spring. That’s the statistically significant conclusion based on a dataset of over one million…

Computers make humans better

The Wall Street Journal [sub] has an example from chess. In 1997, a computer (using what today we’d consider antiquated technology) defeated the world’s best chess player, forever…

Why they failed: Zeo, Green Goose, 100Plus

Zeo was, for many of us, our favorite QS company : great, consumer-oriented low-cost hardware that measured something useful (sleep) to give insights we couldn't have had otherwise.…

Are public schools better than private?

The Atlantic has a short interview with University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign professors Sarah Theule Lubienski, and her husband Christopher A. Lubienski: “a new book argues that public…

[book] Wealth and Power

View on Amazon I read this because, with all the recommendations I'd received, well, I had to. When I first moved to China and was looking to start…

Charts of RAW data

The Density Design Lab at Politecnico di Milano just released a cool new (free) web site , called RAW, for very simple data visualization. It’s roughly similar to…

The Clover of Brewing Machines

Five years ago, the Clover Coffee Equipment company was hand-assembling high-tech, excellent automatic coffee-making machines for the super high-end market. At tens of thousands of dollars each, they…

[book] Adam Grant’s Give and Take

View on Amazon Seth Roberts blogged that this book is “the best in psychology in many years” and I think I agree. It’s similar to books by Malcolm…

Don’t brush after mealtimes

Advice from the WSJ health column : "When you eat or drink something acidic, the pH in your mouth goes down and can take some time to go…

BodyMedia and Me

My data for the past week, presented using Excel's graphing functions. Can't believe, after all these years, there's no easy way for Excel to save this in resolution-independent…

Krugman on Microsoft and Apple

Paul Krugman is mostly correct: Back in the 80s, Microsoft and Apple both had operating systems to sell; Apple’s was clearly better. But Apple misunderstood the nature of…

Homemade sauerkraut

As already noted , I’ve become interested in the role of microbes in our bodies, including the value of fermented foods. First yogurt (which I still make regularly),…

Sleep Times: BodyMedia vs. Zeo

Most of those wrist-style activity monitors try to tell you how well you slept, but I’ve found the technology isn’t particularly accurate . Lately I’ve been trying the…

Why I’m skinny

I weigh about the same today as I did in college: 160 pounds. In my entire life I’ve never weighed more than 170. Maintaining my weight has been…

Thoughts about WWDC 2013

My takeaways from today's WWDC announcements (in no particular order): The UI changes for iOS7 are gorgeous, of course, and I can't wait to make the switch. I…

The future of college

View on Amazon College is such a critical part of modern life that sometimes we forget the difference between “college” and “education”. Now that my children are closing…

A Bite of China

After months of recommendations, I finally watched my first episode of the CCTV documentary A Bite of China (舌尖上的中国) and I was not disappointed. It’s a well-produced, professionally…

[Book] Epidemic of Absence

View on Amazon Ecosystems go all the way up and all the way down. Just as humans affect -- and are affected by -- the bigger world of…

Notes from Puget Sound

We went today on a five-hour Pacific Marine Research cruise through Puget Sound operated by MarineScienceAfloat.org and I highly recommend it. The class was very well-structured, with trained…

A humbling look at the future of Los Angeles

In 1988, the Los Angeles Times Magazine interviewed dozens of experts and published their predictions for what the city would be like in 2013. Many of their predictions…

My Facebook Word Cloud

Summary of my wall posts from Facebook (computed by Wolfram Alpha )

The Great Firewall really censors trade

My favorite weekly China-related podcast, Sinica, answered one of my questions on their latest episode, "Revenge of the Call-in Show". Hosts Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn, who are…

[Book] Restless Empire by Odd Arne Westad

View on Amazon This is one of the best books I've read about China in a while. It helped me think about China’s modernization as a long, still…

Comparing China and 70’s high-growth Japan

Interesting chart via Financial Times Alphaville from a presentation by C.H. Kwan at Nomura's Institute of Capital Markets Research: The right-hand column (ICOR – incremental capital output ratio)…

LINE and more Facebook/Twitter Asian Competition

Before you start to think Facebook will take over the world, look again at new competitors emerging in Asia, including this one originally from Japan and now boasting…

Great Spragues in history

Too bad that, as far as I know, I am no relation to Frank J. Sprague (1857-1934), an assistant to Thomas Edison. According to the Edison Tech Center…

[book] Makers by Chris Anderson

View on Amazon "Hardware is the new software". I'm not sure if that exact phrase is in Chris Anderson's new book , but it should be. It's a…

[book] Daniel Pink on Selling

Business author Daniel Pink first impressed me on an Econtalk episode a few years ago with his ideas about what motivates people (the subject of his book Drive…

Easy homemade yogurt

Among the many important aspects of health that science can’t yet explain is the role of microbes , zillions of them in every part of your body, with…

My first Arduino project: a temperature sensor

I've been saying for two years now that hardware is the future of software , and one center of action is the world of Arduino programmable microcontrollers. You…

Printing in 3D

There is a wonderful online tool, tinkercard , that lets you easily and quickly build simple 3D models entirely in your web browser. It's a competitor to SketchUp…

Decentralization in the ancient world

The Terra Cotta warriors of ancient Xi’an are an impressive legacy of the early centuries BC, and they better be: during that period, something like 10% of the…

Michael Crichton’s last book: Micro

[I sent this from the iBooks app from my iPad] From the first chapter, in a discussion about how children now are raised without an appreciation for how…

(Almost) leaving China

Bubbles are fun! I lived in Tokyo for most of the late-80s and early-90s, Silicon Valley during the dot-com days, Seattle during the real estate peak of the…

The inevitability of human enhancement

I watched a TED talk by Juan Enriquez ( Will our kids be a different species?) that wasn’t particularly informative if you’re up to date on biology, but…

Medicine and Anti-Fragility

Black Swan author Nassim Taleb in his highly-anticipated upcoming book uses the term anti-fragility to describe systems that are the opposite of fragile. He coins the term after…

Asymco's Dediu in China

Horace Dediu's asymco.com (Twitter: @asymco ) is one of the best mobility analysis sites out there, so I was excited about his recent trip to China, hoping that…

Calibre for books

A mazon Kindle has become my main way to buy books, which of course is incredibly liberating because nowwith the Kindle app I can put every book on…

Mike Daisey and the fight to keep people in crummy jobs

I listened to the riveting This American Life podcast retracting its January episode "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs", featuring the dramatist Mike Daisey, who misrepresented himself…

The Fat Years [Book]

View on Amazon China deserves to be number one. That's an unstated premise of this book, which is all the rage among intellectuals and others interested in what…

What little we know about China

An observer from Outer Space might raise eyebrows at the apparently irrational way that Americans pick their Presidents, but at least the process itself is transparent. Does China…

Coming apart from my children

Americans during my lifetime are becoming unequal and divided, not by class or income, but by something much more serious: a difference in values and interests. This has…

Impressions of Burma

Burma (aka Myanmar ) is changing quickly. Political prisoners are being released, draconian rules are being relaxed, and if this continues I expect tourism will explode from tens…

Let's call it Burma

The United States government (as well as the UK and most other European democracies) officially refers to it as “Burma” , a perfectly fine name for the country.…

Gregory Slayton on Innovation

Dartmouth Tuck School of Business Adjunct Professor Gregory W. Slayton was in Beijing this month to give some talks about innovation. Although creativity and innovation are of course…

Zeo vs. the motion sensors

I don't have a Jawbone UP . I tried to buy one earlier this month but Best Buy wasn't stocking them until the kinks have been worked out.…

I'm sleeping better, but why?

I love my Zeo Sleep Manager , a cool device that measures my brain activity in order to help understand the quality of my sleep: the amount of…

Worse than a robot

I’m back in the US for a few days, a good time to order items that I can’t get in China, and that means borrowing the address of…

Don’t study engineering or science

Thomas Friedman writes today in his column, One Country Two Revolutions if one result of the downsizing of Wall Street is that more of America’s best and brightest…

What happened to me?

I just spent eleven nights in the hospital – four of them in ICU. I’ve always been a pretty healthy guy. What happened? The short answer: a bowel…

[Book] 1493

View on Amazon The New World was created, not discovered, says Charles C. Mann . The impact of Columbus’ historic trip was felt worldwide, ushering in the Age…

The Chinese Twitter (English version)

Now available on the US App Store: Sina Weibo 微博 download here: http://itun.es/igk6zp then follow me at http://weibo.com/2140336255 and see why 200M users like it. Note: to create…

Books versus Conversations

There are two major ways we humans express ourselves: books and conversations. A well-written book has the advantages of being an exhaustive treatment of a complex topic, but…

Facebook’s addicting even if you don’t admit it

It’s a few minutes before the next meeting. Or maybe it’s right before dinner is ready. Or there’s a commercial on TV. Or it’s time to go to…

Hard to know for sure

I keep running into this problem of the limitations of knowledge. Today, a professor friend of mine reminded me how the one thing you take away from earning…

You’ll never understand China

This week’s Sinica podcast notes how a foreigner will never be accepted as a China expert, that Chinese people will always claim that true understanding of China is…

Weibo: The Chinese Twitter++

I bet at least 50% of my work friends check Facebook every single day. For those under age 30 it's probably closer to 100%. Twitter isn't nearly as…

“The Fat Years”

Chan Koonchung (陈冠中) author of 2013, The Fat Years (盛世：中国2013年) spoke at the Beijing ex-pat bookstore, The Bookworm recently. The book’s premise of a dystopian near-future where China…

Anonymous Exchange

Human progress depends on specialization, which in turn requires successful cooperation, often among people far away and unknown to each other, referred to by the economist John Nye…

An Apple File Store

How often have I been annoyed because I forgot to sync something on my iOS device before leaving the house. I store a lot of data in the…

Britannicans vs. Wikipedians

Attach a label to a political discussion and people immediately take the same, tired, positions that quickly devolve into heated discussions that more resemble “politics as entertainment” than…

Mac needs a half-way decent blog editor

Say what you want about Mac versus PC, but if you are a blogger there’s no question: Windows7 PC is better. I’m writing this sentence on a Mac…

CEO as Editor (Jack Dorsey)

I often listen to Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast , but there's a particularly good one this month with Jack Dorsey. Best known as the co-founder of Twitter,…

"If you loved it, you'd be doing it"

Great one-hour video/podcast by Ken Robinso n, public education expert. I liked this part (about 43 minutes in) when he relates a conversation he once had with a…

The coming wave of sensors

I want my mobile device to have a ton more sensors. The iPhone’s GPS, compass, gyroscope, and accelerometer are just the beginning. How about some additional built-ins like:…

Unexpected future history

Most -- maybe all -- of the interesting changes that happen in history are completely unexpected. Well, maybe not completely , and there will always be people after…

You're fired

In 1841, the Chinese negotiator Qishan was ordered dismissed and executed for agreeing to a treaty that ended hostilities with the British in exchange for Hong Kong and…

Banned in China

I’m not sure most of my non-China friends (whether “real” or “Facebook”) understand what those of us in China must do when we get on the internet. Here…

Re-reading James Fallows and China

I re-read parts of James Fallows’ short book of China essays Postcards from Tomorrow Square because I was trying to remember his conclusions. I respect Fallows because I…

Alvin Toffler predicts China's impact on the future

CNReview summarizes the China implications from Alvin Toffler's 40 predictions for the next 40 years . Prediction No. 2 Nation-state power around the globe will be increasingly ‘multi-polar’…

Kindle Singles and the future of publishing

The print publishing industry thinks a lot has changed in the past 20 years, but they haven't seen anything yet. The transformation from print to all-digital publishing will…

I like trucks

Steve Jobs is right : When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to…

Having a bad day

The sheep in this video, taken during our trip to Harbin last week, probably woke up thinking everything in his life was going great: plenty of food, attention…

Don't share your dreams

In this new TED Talk , Derek Sivers (the guy who made that viral video on how to start a movement ) gives reasons to walk the walk,…

How to use an iPhone over Ethernet

Okay, you're not really doing iPhone directly over Ethernet, and you'll need a Mac close by to do it, but this is a trick I find handy in…

Treason by the book

View on Amazon A few thoughts about China in the 1700s while reading this excellent book by Yale Professor Jonathan Spence. First, note that China in those days…

[Book] When China Rules the World

View on Amazon I don't recommend this book. The author, a journalist, read widely about China and I appreciate his excellent summary of sources at the end of…

Testing, testing

Is this thing on? One unfortunate part about switching to Mac last year is that I've been unable to use the excellent Windows Live Writer blogging software (cuz…

Is it safe to drink Beijing tap water?

The water in our Beijing apartment looks, smells, and (yes I risked it) tastes just fine. But is it safe to drink? Nearly everyone I know -- foreigners…

I’m still here

If you’re trying to find me, and you looked at this blog hoping for some updates, you’ve been disappointed. I’m still updating, even more frequently than before, but…

The Cloakbox Catch

The verdict is in: I’m pretty happy with my Cloakbox VPN router . I love being able to surf as though I’m on a computer in San Francisco…

Testing the Cloakbox VPN router from Witopia

The internet is a chaotic place, where packets of information swim all over the world, ready to be scooped up, peered at, or blocked by anyone (or any…

Break my back

Long ago, I used to make fun of people who complain of back or muscle problems. Lazy complainers I said. Then about seven or eight years ago I…

A Switcher with second thoughts

I'm a veerrry long-time Mac user. I had one of the first 128K Macs. I dropped out of college for a while with some friends to develop one…

Summer Hail

It’s the Summer Solstice, longest day of the year, first day of summer and all that…and what do we get? A hailstorm! The kids and I went for…

I’m a builder

I was devastated to read, in the latest Atlantic , that one of my favorite female writers, Sandra Tsing Loh, is divorcing. In an excellent summary of several…

Politics as entertainment

I know very little about Iran, other than the headlines I read in the mainstream US press. I bet you don't know much more than I do, though…

Moving to China

I’ve been a little quieter than normal online the past few months. There were a bunch of changes happening at work that were keeping me busy and it…

Fix your windshield for cheap

Several months ago I found myself behind a gravel truck on the freeway, and before I could maneuver out of the way a tiny pebble flipped onto my…

Sharpen your lawnmower blade

You’re supposed to do it once a season, but Consumer Reports says that 25% of owners never sharpen their lawnmower blades. I’m happy to report that I no…

Andy Raskin’s book tour at Queen Anne Bookshop

Andy Raskin and I first met in graduate school, where both of us were interested in Japan, and over the years we somehow keep bumping into each other,…

Digital socialism = capitalism.

In the Jun 2009 issue of Wired, Kevin Kelly uses the loaded term "socialism" to describe how the fragmentation of everything is giving us access to more choice…

I (heart) technology

Embedded content from flickr.com Heart CT Originally uploaded by sprague At my annual physical this week, my doctor suggested that I get a $99 CT Cardiac Score to…

Move over Mercer Island

The weather has finally changed enough that I can close my eyes and imagine it’s springtime, and that’s a good time to think about adjusting a bunch of…

The many faces of me

I’m a blog social media hobbiest. I do this for fun, not for a living. But as more people come on line, both friends and work-related colleagues, and…

How many books in your house?

We must have thousands of books in our house, on top of the hundreds (thousands?) we’ve donated to libraries and various book sales over the years. But are…

Meeting Online friends

Today was the first time I’d ever met Ken Camp and Sheryl Breuker . For real, at least. But I feel like Ive known them well for a…

Twitter helps lazy people express themselves online

I think I finally understand the appeal of Twitter and why it’s making it harder and harder for me to get excited about blogging. For all the talk…

Better stay away from cocaine

A new study reported on the 23andme blog shows a link between cocaine-induced paranoia and the SNP rs9387522. Turns out that I have the TT variation of this…

No more Vitamin D shortage

Late last Summer at my annual physical, my doctor tested my Vitamin D levels and found that, like most residents of the Northwest, I was well below optimal…

Write like me

I’ve hate handwriting. I’ve been using keyboards since I learned to write and my fingers just don’t want to use a pen. But there are too many occasions…

Where are the Spragues?

I often run into people who, upon hearing my last name, ask if I’m related to so-and-so other Sprague they know. Usually the answer is no. Our family…

Chevy Suburban Drivers Get Fewest Tickets

Quality Planning, an auto insurance validator, did a survey of traffic violators that summarizes which types of cars get the most tickets. Leading the list is the Hummer,…

Do It Yourself Biology in Seattle

I finally was able to attend one of the DIYBio meetings this weekend, and now my mind is reeling from all the interesting possibilities I heard. DIYBio is…

Worst economy since the Great Depression

From the Jan 13th issue of Time Magazine: The slump is the longest, if not the deepest, since the Great Depression. Traumatized by layoffs that have cost more…

American Creation [book]

We want to believe that the present is messier and more dangerous than the past. Why can't we live in a time with a Jefferson or an Adams…

Steven Pinker on Personal Genomics

The Jan 11th edition of the New York Times Magazine has a cover story by my favorite thinker describing his experiences with genome testing, and he finds the…

It’s Twitter’s Turn

Every great new social phenomenon has a "fad" phase , where zillions of people join in because, well, because zillions of others are joining. A few years ago…

Is Netflix worth it for me?

Here’s what Feedflix says:

My blog graphically

from: http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.richardsprague.com What do the colors mean? blue : for links (the A tag) red : for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags) green : for the DIV…

Anniversary Cards are for men

How come there are more anniversary cards addressed “to wife” than “to husband”? At the Hallmark store yesterday I counted 25 cards designed for men shopping for their…

The reading habits of George W. Bush

I’m skeptical whenever mainstream consensus settles on an opinion about somebody or something, especially when it’s a subject that lends itself to very little first-hand, direct, up-close experience.…

Mercer Island snow and ice

Our weather is awful: thick ice and snow everywhere, with no prospects for clear roads for at least another week. I’ve been following the details on the Cliff…

McCafe is not worth it

On my long and dangerous journey through snow to Seatac this morning, I swung into McDonalds to try those new coffee beverages they’ve been advertising. They give out…

Snow and Ice

Island roads have been terrible since the Big Snow hit on Thursday leaving many of us stuck in our homes, afraid to take our cars up and down…

Mercer Island’s most accurate weather forecaster

Surrounded by Water took a walk to see how the island is coping with all this snow today, but some of us are wondering when it will let…

Let it snow

My backyard tonight.

The only way to improve schools

This week’s New Yorker is required reading of anyone interested in improving education. An article by Malcolm Gladwell (author of “The Tipping Point”, “Blink” and other books) points…

41st district election results by city

The complete official results of the November 4th election have been posted ; I haven’t had time to do the analysis I did for the primary , but…

Don’t miss me

I’ve been blogging regularly for close to five years now, but I still can’t seem to get my Mom to read me. When I talked with her (and…

Obama’s slave ancestors

The country is justifiably excited at the thought of a first lady in the White House who is the descendent of a slave . Michelle Obama’s great-great grandfather,…

Fooled by Randomness [book]

View on Amazon In many ways this is better than Taleb’s more popular book, The Black Swan, which I’ve already noted is one of my favorite books of…

Greenspan Recants (or did he?)

The current financial crisis is an interesting real-life experiment to free market fans like me. It’s far too early to draw conclusions, but much of the generally accepted…

Maxwell wins

Many of us have been watching the shifting return counts since election night, but now it’s official: Marcie Maxwell won the election for 41st district state representative over…

Civics test: 90%

Ouch! I’m disappointed that I got three answers wrong on a new 33-question civics test created by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute , giving me a score of 90.1%.…

Cheap Gas

What’s going on with gas prices? Look what I just paid at a 76 station right off the freeway near Ellensburg: (That’s a ‘1’ at the beginning of…

Purple toes in Zillah

There are no wine lovers in the San Francisco Bay Area (or in Seattle for that matter) who haven’t been to Napa Valley. But comparatively few people know…

Worst President Ever

I'm a big fan of Black Swan theory , which says that although leaders are measured by the Big Things that happen, they are rarely given credit for…

Free coffee at Starbucks

I dropped in on West Mercer Elementary school this morning: and then I went downtown and got one of these for free: Incidentally, I disagree with the idea…

Sign Waving to Commuters

If you want to say something to Mercer Islanders, you can’t beat the intersection of Island Crest Way and 40th as a place to publicize your message. A…

Litzow vs. Maxwell at the PTA

The Mercer Island Legislative Team of the PTA sponsored a discussion recently between the Washington State 41st district legislative candidates, Democrat Marcie Maxwell and Republican Steve Litzow .…

Prius Gas Mileage

I’m having fun computing the long-term gas mileage for my 2007 Prius Touring Edition . It’s now just under two years old, and here’s the chart for my…

Prius Flat Tire

Work has kept me so busy lately that I haven’t had time to do much of anything, so imagine my frustration when I heard that tell-tale “pop” noise…

Confidence in Fred Jarrett

I think there are at least two kinds of politicians: the "populists" and the "wonks". Too many politicians are populists, who treat government like a popularity contest: a…

Kenmore Airlines to Camp Orkila

As far as I know there’s no law forcing us to do it, but for some reason it seems like all Mercer Island fathers enroll in the Y-Guides…

Seattle Times Endorses Steve Litzow

The Seattle Times endorsed Steve Litzow in the race for 41st State Legislative District . You have to chuckle at their follow-on comment His opponent, Democrat Marcie Maxwell…

Flights around the world

Whenever I’m on a flight, I like to imagine how many people must be in airplanes at the same time all around the world. My favorite flight info…

Last day this year for Farmers Market

The Mercer Island Farmers Market closes for the winter after today, so my six-year-old and I rode our bikes there one last time to stock up on fresh…

What’s in my genes? Results from 23andme

My DNA test results arrived much sooner than I expected. They tell you six to eight weeks, but it was more like two or three. The company that…

Mercer Island Meetup on Fri Oct 10

It’s time for us to meet face-to-face. Anyone who reads this blog is welcome to meet me at the Tully’s on the north end of Mercer Island on…

Reichert said no to the bail-out

Mercer Island’s congressman, Dave Reichert, voted against the $700B bail-out of the financial industry. A bunch of my friends are getting ready to jump out windows over this…

Konga at Trabant Coffee

Mike at Trabant Coffee and Chai saw that I was looking for more Ethiopia Yergcheffe Konga coffee (it’s sooo good!), and let me know that a new batch…

The Battles of Tim Eyman

Although I first heard about this documentary film back in February, when the director Paul Fraser came to a Global Warming lecture at the Mercer Island library, I…

Robert Shiller and the Subprime Solution

With an endorsement from Nassim Taleb on the cover of his new book , and a mention in an excellent Econtalk podcast last week, I just had to…

Taleb thoughts on the financial crisis

I already told you that The Black Swan is among the best idea books I have ever read, and I find it even more interesting when I look…

Comparing teacher experience between Mercer Island and Bellevue

Good teachers deserve to be paid a lot more than they are, and if it were up to me there’d be a huge bonus pool, with big fat…

Salaries for Bellevue and Mercer Island Teachers

Public employee salary information is public record -- as it should be, since you and I pay for it through our taxes. Bellevue public school teachers went on…

Education voters: Litzow or Maxwell?

Continuing my slow, on-going look at the results of the August primary for the Washington State 41st Legislative district, this week I've been trying to answer the question…

Shy teachers

I think the Bellevue teachers strike is horrible. I don't care what the issues are in this dispute, the real competition is global, with kids in other countries…

My Vitamin D shortage

We don't get nearly enough sun in the Northwest, but we continue to read and believe advice from the rest of the country about the dangers of too…

District 41 Primary Results for Litzow and Maxwell by city

Washington state's mail-in based election system unfortunately means that in a close race you can't get a good read until several weeks after the election, when every ballot…

Finally, sun at the farmers market

My 6-year-old and I biked this afternoon to the Mercer Island Farmers Market , taking advantage of today's unusual sunny weather to stock up on fresh fruit and…

Bellevue Teachers Strike

While my kids are busy packing for their first day of class here in Mercer Island public schools, their friends in nearby Bellevue get to take the day…

Bad year for blackberries

The empty lot near my house is always chock full of invasive Himalayan blackberry bushes , and each August my kids and I enjoy picking bucketful after bucketful…

Best home espresso machine

I'm still using my humble Starbucks Barrista, purchased almost ten years ago and still going strong, faithfully producing my raw milk latte every single morning. A friend who…

Time to analyze my DNA

Our local public radio station, KUOW, aired a program on Personal DNA Testing that convinced me to finally get off my duff and order my own DNA testing…

Konga Co-op from Terroir Coffee

There is no point drinking bad coffee if you live in the Seattle area. In fact, some would argue there's little point living here period, in all this…

Mercer Island Farmers Market: The Video

It's finally here! I was out of town during last week's opening day, but the first thing I did upon arriving back was to head over to Mercerdale…

[book] Fast Food Nation

View on Amazon I liked this book, which gives a nice behind-the-scenes overview of the conditions under which we get much of our food. It's not nearly as…

October 1973: worst month in American history

When I hear people talk about gloom and doom and how the world is coming to an end, I remind them to look back to 1973 and count…

Our historical blind spots

It seems to me that each of us has a blind spot in our understanding of recent history that makes us unable to fully appreciate many of the…

Supporting Mercer Island Tent City

We all care about homelessness. Every one of us. But caring is easy; helping is hard. It occurs to me, now that Tent City 4 has moved into…

Family reunion at the Mayflower

We brought the kids yesterday to Plymouth, Massachusetts to see the Plimouth Plantation , and the full-size replica of the Mayflower. My wife's family can trace itself back…

League of Education Voters Endorses Marcie Maxwell

Marcie Maxwell picked up an endorsement this week from the League of Education Voters Political Action Fund , an important advocacy group focused on K12 issues for Washington…

Cell phone calls from airplanes

A very smart, well-read, highly-educated friend of mine is convinced that the "standard explanation" for 9/11 is a hoax. As one proof, he points out that you can't…

Life keeps getting better

Two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas write a nice summary (in The American magazine) of how much things are improving . They show how, when…

Doubts about sun exposure and skin cancer

The Seattle Times today points out that Washington State ranks fifth in the country for Melanoma (skin cancer), right up there with other northern long-winter places like Rhode…

The appeal of downtown

The latest New Republic repeats an idea I first saw in the Atlantic Monthly in March : the cool people are moving out of the suburbs and back…

Municipal League Rates Maxwell and Litzow

It's dangerous to vote if you don't know what you're doing, and it can be hard to get facts if you're a normal person. You can read the…

Does more funding help schools?

Washington state Governor Christine Gregoire poured huge amounts of new money into education in the past four years: about $2.46 Billion. Most of this (80%) went to pay…

Count me in

The new August 2008 issue of Wired describes the Personal Genome Project, an upcoming ambitious attempt to collect DNA and more from 100,000 individuals. Of course I immediately…

Visiting Lithuania in Sixteen Years

Sixteen years ago this week, I was traveling in my family's ancestral home of Panevezys, Lithuania. A New York Times travel writer visited there now , searching for…

Test Driving the Miles Electric Car

Mike Cero, always looking for cost-effective ways to help the environment , invited me to help test drive an electric car now available for sale from MC Electric…

Who is Steve Litzow?

As I keep saying, local elections are more relevant than national ones, and for Mercer Island you need to know about the choices for 41st district state legislature,…

Best place to watch fireworks

Surrounded by Water asks the best place to watch fireworks on Mercer Island and my answer is: your back yard! Here's the view from my house on the…

Mass transit vs. green alternatives

Mass transit is always good, right? It's way more efficient than all those cars clogging up the roads. I loved my years in Japan, where trains come and…

I'm (about) as smart as a third world tenth grader

The people behind Two Million Minutes, that film about high school education in China and India, released an online test that lets you get a sense of what…

One good reason to keep your bottled water

Today's Seattle Times describes bottled water and mentions that many of the the nation's mayors are suggesting we use tap water instead. But missing from the discussion is…

Chasing the relative decline in Mercer Island incomes

One of the many ways people get frustrated with me is that I have a very skeptical view of statistics. Numbers are so easy to manipulate -- and…

Who is Marcie Maxwell?

Besides the presidential race, there's another election in November, one that will affect your house, your schools, and your neighborhood more directly than anything that happens in Washington…

Your future as a classics major

As I continue thinking about the whole Yong Zhao discussion , Mercer Island resident Keith Pleas sent me a pointer to an interesting study mentioned on the Economist…

Not enough jails in this country

When I arrived home from Vashon late last night, our mailbox was still there, but sometime between then and mid-morning, some jerk pulled it out of the ground…

From Kurtwood cow to me

Nothing beats the taste and nutritional value of raw milk : fresh, not cooked unpasteurized, from cows grazing on real pasture -- the kind I drank as a…

The Namesake [film]

View on Amazon I can't remember how I heard about this film, but somehow it ended up on my Netflix list and I'm not disappointed. It was an…

Why you should not vote

Newsweek calls them "Low Info Voters" , the people who don't know or apparently care what issues are at stake in an election. They base their preferences on…

Why Yong Zhao is wrong

While working at Apple Computer long ago, I became good friends with Andy Van Schaack , who later received his PhD in Instructional Technology and knows way more…

Grandma and Me

I spent last week with my 92-year-old grandmother. A lifelong dairy farmer, she grew up in a cabin with a dirt floor, deep in the woods of rural…

Brown your teeth with Crest Pro-Health Rinse

Image no longer available About two months ago, I bought one of those special giant Costco boxes of a mouthwash from Crest. I've been long convinced by the…

PTA Advocate of the Year

Look who was recently honored with this year's PTA Outstanding Advocate Award: Quite an achievement, but believe me, you don't know the half of what she advocates.

In Defense of Food [book]

View on Amazon "Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants." That's the summary, and I'm a believer. Since reading Omnivore's Dilemma , I've been quite the fan of…

Ranking high schools

I received this email from a person who graduated from Mercer Island High School in the 1970s. (he can identify himself more fully in the comments if he…

Real fixes to global warming

This month's Wired magazine (June 2008, not yet available on-line ) is an absolute must-read for anyone seriously concerned about global warming and what can really be done…

Seattle Cheese Festival

We love cheese as much as we like good tofu , so of course we also dropped in on the Seattle Cheese Festival , held this weekend at…

Seattle's Best Tofu

Most of my friends don't like tofu, and I don't blame them. The stuff you buy at the grocery store is so dull it tastes rancid. But I…

Marxist teachers at Mercer Island High School

Oh dear, looks like I've seriously underestimated the challenges facing Mercer Island schools . Not only are we underfunded, but look at what one blogger uncovered about our…

David's Picks for the Weekend

My long-time work friend David Burd has a reputation as the guy around the office who always seems to have something fun planned for the weekend. He's lived…

2 Million Minutes [film]

Watch on YouTube Life's biggest challenges involve knowing which questions to ask. Once you know the right questions, schools in China and India are great at teaching students…

Cirque Du Soleil

This weekend we took the kids to Cirque Du Soleil , which is showing till June 1st in Redmond's Marymoor park. I must say, although I've been many…

Yong Zhao on how to use technology in the classroom

The Mercer Island education community is talking about Yong Zhao , a professor at Michigan State University with ideas on how to improve schools global competitiveness. He'll be…

What's good about McDonalds

Everyone loves to pick on McDonalds , but a paper by Adrian Tschoegl from the Wharton School of U-Penn shows how dramatically the hygiene standards improve in a…

Switch to P-I

I skim the Seattle Times print edition each morning because it's there on my driveway each morning, but otherwise virtually all my news about the world comes from…

Edible Magazine

Image no longer available "I want farmers to be as famous as rock stars", says Jill Lightner, the editor of the new foodie quarterly, Edible Seattle . As…

Of all nights to forget to put the car in the garage

I woke up to see the neighborhood blanketed with snow. It's April 20th, for crying out loud. Puh-lease, will somebody turn up the heat? This is making me…

Leap for Green

it was hard to find a parking place between all those SUVs, minivans, and BMWs parked at the Mercer Island Community Center this morning for the Leap for…

Mike Cero's Carbon Challenge

Mercer Island City Councilman Mike Cero has always been a strong supporter of the environment, especially where it really counts at the local level. On every issue, from…

Compare my school

I'm always interested in school rankings , since competition is the only way to be sure your school is performing as well as it could be. Here's another…

Michael Crichton Next [book]

View on Amazon Although I typically like anything related to future biology, especially the "consumer biology" that I expected Crighton to highlight, this book was too meandering and…

I'm so much better than you

After my eco-tour of Costa Rica , and in honor of our globally warmed weather this weekend, I loaded up my Prius with garbage and dumped it at…

Jesus Christ lizard and the bugs of Costa Rica

Everywhere in Costa Rica, all the time, there's something interesting to look at or hear. One of our days was spent on Rio Frio, watching some of the…

Volcanoes in Costa Rica

Spectacular volcanoes are another reason Costa Rica is like Hawaii , only cheaper. The best example of this is the Arenal volcano , as seen from the window…

Alex Alben on presidential power

High tech executive and Former Mercer Island resident Alex Alben writes an excellent summary of the limits of Presidential power in this week's Seattle Times: For a candidate…

Interesting facts about Costa Rica

We're back from our trip -- a very busy, jam-packed, hectic vacation in Costa Rica. This was my first time to visit the country, and as I always…

I'm outta here

I'll be offline for the next week without internet access somewhere in the jungles of Costa Rica. See you when I get back. (For those of you who…

New Mercer Island School Superintendent Gary Plano

You have to respect a school administration official who cares enough to personally pound the pavement, waving a sign for our school levies. Well tonight the school district…

Watch me at the Small Business Summit

I'm doing a demo of Response Point , the super-easy phone system for small businesses, this morning (Tuesday) March 24th at the SB Summit web cast . It's…

Competition for Public Schools

Why would any parent drive their kid across the bridge through heavy traffic every morning just to go to one public school over another? Seattle Times finds a…

Clover Coffee Sells to the Man

The good news is that soon we're likely to see Clover Coffee machines everywhere, now that Starbucks and the Clover Equipment Company have announced plans to merge .…

Mercer Island Chess Tournament

For the past several years, Kate Elliot Smith has organized a wonderful Mercer Island-only chess tournament for kids in grades K through 6th grade. I like it because…

1,670 Naysayers

Although it was important to show our support, the last minute work of sign-wavers probably didn't make much difference since the Capital Projects Levy passed by a 68.98%…

Theo Chocolate Factory Tour

This month is my turn to host our local Y-Guide boy's club, so I arranged for everyone to visit the Theo Chocolate Factory in the Fremont Area of…

Coffee shops and women

Caitlin Knowles Myers from the Middlebury College Economics Discussion Grou p reported last September on a study of about 300 transactions at Boston-area coffee shops concluding that female…

I am a wimp

I don't like email. I started this blog many years ago partly because I'm too lazy to forward to my friends every interesting thing I find on the…

Inoffensive fifth grade art

Among the excellent exhibits at last night's 29th Annual Fine Arts Showcase at Mercer Island High School: Apparently, this fifth grade class had prepared an exhibit that included…

What's in the school levy?

For the past year or two, I've been part of the Mercer Island School District's Technology Advisory Committee, which studied and commented on the $6.74 million of items…

Why you should support the school levy

Mercer Island is holding a special election on March 11th for a proposition to authorize the district to levy in the amount of $9,994,000 for the district's Capital…

How CAFE standards hurt the environment

I never understood the argument for CAFÉ (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) , the law that forces auto manufacturers to increase the miles per gallon fuel efficiency of their…

Mercer Island Survey Results

The City of Mercer Island commissioned a study of 400 registered voters in late January, and the results are now posted on the city web site. Some top…

Lunar Eclipse

Lunar Eclipse Originally uploaded by JHallgren Jason Hallgren posted this great image of last week's lunar eclipse, taken from Mercer Island. Thanks to some unusual clear weather in…

Campaigning for the school levy

Oh boy, finally I get my chance for sign-posting Mercer Island fame. I'm going to be at the corner of Island Crest and 40th on Friday morning starting…

United States Mission canvassing Mercer Island

We just got back from a fun ski trip and around 6pm I got a knock on the door from a stranger who introduced himself as "Jimmie". Very…

Speak up about Softcare Dental Bellevue

A friend, somebody I trust, says she was intimidated by a dentist, Softcare Dental, in Bellevue Washington. It's making her think twice now about posting reviews on the…

I'm a Tull

If there's no Espresso Vivace or Trabant , I'll much prefer Tulley's over Starbucks . [see Crosscut posting about what your taste in coffee vendor says about your…

Selling Mercer Island

Windemere mailed us their Mercer Island 2007 Year in Review (full color, glossy summary of the local housing market) which notes that median sale prices on Mercer Island…

Lake Washington Sunrise

Lake Washington Sunrise Originally uploaded by Da Beej Nice photo, but I'm not sure exactly which part of Mercer Island it was taken from.

National trends don't count

Read with a big grain of salt the Washington Post reprint on today's Seattle Times front page: Girlhood Gone Wild: Drinking and Drug Use Grow . It's riddled…

New Mercer Island blogger

Please welcome to your blogroll the new Surrounded By Water: A Mercer Island Blog . I don't know the author, but I can't wait to learn more about…

No I didn't bother

Did you? I heard it was crowded. Huskywonk posted videos of the GOP caucus at Islander Middle School . (Although somewhat edited, at 7minutes it's way too long…

Challenging Global Warming Skeptics

" Facts are stubborn things ", Ronald Reagan reminded knee-jerk ideologues with advice that applies to many of the people gathered at the Mercer Island Library for last…

Healthy ways to school

There's a wonderful debate going on about school transportation at ourmi.wikispaces.com , a community web site organized by new city council member Bruce Bassett . Bruce and school…

Realtime 911 dispatches

The City of Seattle has a web site where you can see constantly-updated reports emergency 911 dispatches . The site Public911 also mashes that same data onto a…

Mercer Island Carjacker

Recognize the woman in this photo? The guy who delivers my newspaper each morning was minding his own business outside Covenant Shores last Sunday when her friend pulled…

Organic vs. Conventional food on Mercer Island

Another reason to support a farmer's market : a new study of 19 kids from Mercer Island Elementary schools shows significant levels of pesticide residues in kids who…

How safe is that bridge?

Neal pointed me Bridge Tracker, a site that uses Virtual Earth to let you know the level of safety (or danger) for public bridges near you. Here's what…

Obama and Mercer Island

It's been widely reported locally that Barack Obama's mother, Stanley Dunham, spent two years on Mercer Island during high school. Yesterday's Seattlest blog links to this 2-min Youtube…

Bloggers and libel

It's fun, though a bit annoying, to watch inept PR firms try to shut down free speech in the name of "libel". One of my favorite foodie blogs,…

[book] The World Without Us

View on Amazon Although I'm fascinated by the subject of the book -- how the world would fare if humans suddenly disappeared --I was too lazy at first…

$20,000 coffee machines from Japan

Jason pointed me to a NY Times article from last week about high-end coffee machines , including the siphon pot from Japan. Also see a much more detailed…

520 Bridge falling apart

I live on an island, and I don't own a boat, so I'm completely dependent on the bridges that get me from home to everywhere else. What happens…

Are we in a recession?

Everything I know about macro-economics I learned in classes from my old finance professor Jeremy Siegel , so I basically trust everything he says, and he says no…

Take Flouride out of our water?

The January 2008 Scientific American does a summary of the rethinking about flouridated drinking water, Second Thoughts on Flouride : Researchers are intensifying their scrutiny of fluoride, which…

Northwest Food and Wine

Celebrating Food and Wine in the Northwest is a short (9-min) podcast from NPR last week worth listening to if you like food. From the description: Weekend Edition…

Mercer Island Farmers Market

A group of citizens are trying to create a farmers market for Mercer Island , an absolutely wonderful idea that is long overdue. I can't make it to…

Hillary wants government bloggers

Hillary agrees with me : "We should even have a government blogging team where people in the agencies are constantly telling all of you, the taxpayers, the citizens…

I need a bigger living room

I'm at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, enjoying all the latest cool gadgets, including this one: Okay, it's just a prototype for now, but how long till…

[book] The Price of Privilege

Why are rich kids often so screwed up? Can you blame it on the parents, whose dog-eat-dog obsession with work and competition makes them "successful" in business at…

Get your TV converter box coupon

My family dumped our cable TV last Spring , relying strictly on DVD and over-the-air broadcasts of HDTV for the few hours minutes a month of TV-watching we…

Tea and Taiko at Sponge

Want to expose your kids to a foreign language while they're very young -- the best time for their young brains to soak up the sounds and grammar…

Amazon Fresh Morning

We returned from a long trip last night and, knowing we'd arrive late with no food in the house, I decided to try Amazon Fresh and their pre-dawn…

Another coffee shop, please

Mercer Island enjoys plenty of nice coffee outlets, but why do I have to drive to Seattle for the really good stuff ? Slate this week makes a…

Blue State Blue Streak

When I'm online, whether sending emails or posting content, I know that my kids may be reading, so just as in real life I think it's important to…

Clover Factory

A big treat today: while visiting Seattle I stopped by the world headquarters of the Coffee Equipment Company where Zander Nosler gave me a personal tour of their…

[book] The Black Swan

View on Amazon This is one of the best books I've read in a long time and I'm sure I'll be referring to it for many years. It…

Fred the Switcher

Several people have asked me what I think about the decision by our state representative, Fred Jarrett to switch to the Democratic Party . The problem is, I…

Darcy Burner's Toys

Darcy Burner , Democratic contender for our district's congressional seat, is running a brilliant campaign gimmick appearance this week. Rather than give speeches or hold boring "meet the…

Goodbye Anita

Very sad news in my inbox this morning. Anita Rowland, a blogger friend, passed away yesterday after a long bout with cancer. Her death is especially sad because,…

Chess Tournament

The Seattle area enjoyed a rare sunny day on Saturday, so what better way to spend it than at a chess tournament. Thinking I would have more time…

Mercer Island Schools Don't Make Gold

Unlike several of our neighbors, Mercer Island schools are not in the top 100 nationwide, according to a new ranking by U.S. News and World Report . Mercer…

Water Conservation with HydroLogics Software

Asheville, Oregon has help from software when they try to manage their water conservation. According to last week's Citizen-Times of Asheville Called OASIS, the software was developed by…

How to Improve Schools

The (always interesting) Seattle Public Schools blog points to an Economist article from last year about a large McKinsey world-wide study, " How the world's best-performing schools come…

Poison Oak

For me, it was an annoying couple of pimples on my hand. Itched a lot, but nothing to get worried about. My eight ten -year-old, though, broke out…

Cero vs. Judge (by precinct)

The final, certified election results are in for Mercer Island , so I spent a few minutes looking over the detailed precinct-by-precinct results in the City Council race…

Simple Majority on Mercer Island

4204 results by precinct Originally uploaded by sprague The vote has now been certified, so it's interesting to look at the results by neighborhood. Overall, Joint Resolution 4204…

Coolest Internet access ever

I'm here in the Boston airport now, accessing the Internet on my laptop: Big deal, people do that all the time right? Take a closer look. That gadget…

Insect invasion

Eric LaGasa, State Entomologist for the Washington State Department of Agriculture was the speaker at last night's Scarab meeting . Boy does this guy know his bugs! He…

Moonlight at Hood Canal

We spent our Thanksgiving in a remote cabin north of Tahuya, facing Hood Canal. Last night we stayed up late to catch the low tide, which turned out…

School Board Blogger

Janet Frohnmayer, who recently won election to the Mercer Island School Board, has a blog . " Bookworm - Big Ideas for Busy People" is where she summarizes…

Craig Venter

Best known as the guy whose private company, Celera, single-handedly beat tied the international government-funded Human Genome Project in the race to sequence human DNA, Craig Venter stopped…

Clover Coffee

After reading the writeup in this week's Economist , I just had to try coffee made on one of those high powered Clover machines . Made by a…

How to win a local election

Congratulations to Mike Cero, who claimed victory in his City Council election, a notable upset considering the huge lead in endorsements and high-power Democratic party backing enjoyed by…

I look like who??!?

Here's a site that lets you upload a photo of yourself, which it then compares mathematically to a bunch of celebrities in order to guess who most resembles…

Renters and property taxes

Despite the close call, Simple Majority looks like it will pass , which is a HUGE relief to those of us who care about public schools and can…

Christine Gregoire

We moved into a brand new office building today this morning and look who was there to greet us: I was waiting in line at the espresso bar…

Election Day

Unfortunately I'm on a plane today and will miss much of the fun, but so far it looks like Mercer Island is winning. What do you think? Will…

Meeting Bruce Bassett at Starbucks

Local elections should be about local issues , so why waste your vote on somebody you've never met, or who isn't already a friend of somebody you know…

Schools Foundation

We moved to Mercer Island from Los Altos, California a few years ago because we thought the similar demographics would mean that people have the same high standards…

Blue Fin Seafood

Why do people classify sushi as ethnic (Japanese) cuisine, rather than seafood, which is what it really is? Some of the more high-end seafood places already classify it…

Jump Start Your Prius

I was out of town all week, so apparently just sitting in the garage was enough to run down the puny 12-volt battery inside my car . A…

Kathleen Who?

The Seattle Times endorsed somebody named Kathleen for Mercer Island city council. Anybody know who he/she is? I'm sure that these editorial boards have a thorough vetting of…

Amazon Fresh in Bellevue

I saw this truck on 156th street in Bellevue this week: After doing a trial rollout on Mercer Island for the past few months, are they expanding to…

Transcripts of Voters Forum

Thank you to everyone who responded with their comments letting me know about last week's Voter Forum . I can listen to the the whole podcast on the…

Accidents and Campaign Signs

I'll be glad when the election is over and the candidates start to clean up their litter, but sometimes I wish it weren't illegal to remove some of…

Don't let that wine leave the house

An oenophile friend bought a place near Zillah to grow grapes and make their own wine. Is it legal for them to give some to us? It appears…

The Compexity Behind Simple Majority

I’m a long-time supporter of EHJR 4204 , the proposed change to the Washington State Constitution to allow school levies to be approved by a simple majority (50%+1)…

Here we go again

Argh, today's big storm caused the power to go out earlier this afternoon and now my neighborhood is in the dark again, just like last December , and…

Voter Forum

Much as I wish I could have attended all of tonight's Mercer Island Voter Forum , my day job has kept me far too busy lately and I…

Mercer Islanders for Mike Cero

I've been critical of how the City Council campaign for Mercer Island newcomer Maureen Judge is financed almost entirely by non-residents and special interest groups. Several people have…

Why does he bother?

El Jahncke, Mercer Island resident since 1978, is running uncontested for reelection to the City Council. He has raised exactly $0 for his campaign. By all accounts, he…

The Inevitable Thaw in Global Warming

As I've said before , it is an indisputable scientific fact that the world is getting warmer, that the trend is likely to continue, and that humans are…

Democratic Candidate Maureen Judge

Okay, here it is in black and white about what Maureen Judge supporters think about the supposedly non-partisan City Council election: The Democrats are building a deep, deep…

Million Dollar Quartet

We endured rain at the Issaquah Salmon Festival again this year (in spite of my previous experiences there) to attend a performance of Million Dollar Quartet at the…

Camera truck on Mercer Island

Look at the cameras on top of this truck, spotted near the middle of Mercer Island yesterday. If you peer closely through the tinted glass, you can see…

City Council Blogger

Randy Corman, Renton City Councilman for 14 years, has a blog that he updates nearly every day . Many people think Mercer Island could use televised city council…

Reading list for September

So much to write, so little time. Several good friends have asked me about what interesting books I've read lately. I say "check out my blog", but now…

Moles

Lately a new feature has begun to appear in our back yard: Little divots, randomly scattered throughout the lawn, as though a golfer or a kid with a…

Blog your way to city council

Brian Seitz is a Microsoft employee who happens to be running for a seat on the Redmond City Council. I don't know anything about him, but if I…

Bug Jam

Last night we went to the Bug Jam , sponsored by the Scarab Society and hosted at the University of Washington Burke Museum I was surprised at the…

Forecasting Global Warming

Image no longer available Scott Armstrong is a professor of marketing at Wharton who I remember as the geeky Decision Sciences instructor. He's an expert on forecasting, an…

I'm an Indian!

A few months ago I asked my 90-year-old grandmother to rub the inside of her cheek with a soft cotton swab, and then I sent it to the…

Case Dismissed

Remember that speeding ticket I got driving north from Seattle earlier this summer? I was annoyed about it because I’m proud of my spotless record (not one scratch,…

Burke Museum Bug Blast

The Burke Museum sponsored their annual Bug Blast at the University of Washington today. Ciscoe Morris from KIRO 710 radio was there too, giving a talk about his…

City Council Partisanship

Many people have been responding to my observation that much of the campaign money for Maureen Judge comes from off-island special interests -- nearly as much as she…

National Issues, local governments

As I wondered about why non-locals would care about a Mercer Island city council election, one conspiracy theorist pointed me to an article called "They Won't Know What…

Bellevue traffic map

Everybody knows that the Washington Department of Transportation web site has a detailed traffic map , updated in real-time to show how long your commute will be. That's…

More on Maureen Judge Campaign Donations

Many people have emailed about my recents posts about the off-islanders behind Maureen Judge's campaign for city council. I was out of town this weekend and I'm finally…

Road Narrows

This sign greeted us when we returned from last week's vacation: It's on a street not far from our house. The neighbors, especially those with children, have been…

Sell your photos

We take more photos than any family I know, enough that our kids probably think their parents have lenses attached to our faces. When you take that many…

Thank you Maureen

She pulled her signs today, right after I received a response from a friend of her campaign insisting that she has every right to keep them up. Off-island…

$50 Maureen Judge Signs

I laughed so hard that my camera phone shook too much to get a good photo: The sign in the middle is one of the Maureen Judge campaign…

Out-of-Staters for Steve Litzow

If you are impressed with the off-island campaign contributions to Maureen Judge , you will be astounded at the success of Steve Litzow, current Mercer Island City Councilman…

How societies grow and innovate

My new job puts me back in marketing, doing a new phone, but one special thing about the team is that I'm part of Microsoft Research . My…

Recommendations for a visit to Sunriver

If you're thinking of a visit to Sunriver, Oregon, here are some recommendations: There aren't many good places to eat so definitely get a place with a kitchen…

Off Islanders for Maureen Judge

Maureen Judge did quite well in the August 21 primary election, winning 1300 votes -- 300 more than the next-highest candidate Mike Cero. No doubt part of her…

Raw Milk

After reading that NYTimes article last week, plus follow-up at http://www.rawmilk.com and the What To Eat blog , I just had to try raw milk for myself. Well,…

City Council Position # 3 Debate

Too bad City Council is limited to only one person in Position 3 because I liked all the candidates at tonight's debate at the Mercer Island Library. The…

Hostile interview training

I'm going on a press tour soon, something I haven't done in a while, so this week I attended a special training class that our agency conducts for…

Ignite Seattle is tonight

Shoot, I'm missing it again! My friend Lesley points me to Ignite Seattle web site: The next Ignite Seattle is August 8th at the CHAC . The evening…

Early morning deliveries from AmazonFresh

Here's a great reason to use AmazonFresh (looks like they want you to spell it as one word): 4-hour delivery windows. It's past 10pm right now and I…

Steven Pinker and Genealogy

Steven Pinker's new book, The Stuff of Thought , will be out next month (I just pre-ordered it on Amazon) but he doesn't discuss it in his recent…

The ultimate status symbol

What to get for the couple who has it all? Salon as a nice discussion of that NPR piece about how the big trend among rich people is…

Amazon Fresh

I see their trucks regularly, and now apparently the full news has been leaked to TechCrunch and even the Wall Street Journal: Amazon delivers groceries to Mercer Island.…

Call me

I've been playing with a new service from Google called GrandCentral . They let me select a phone number from any area code in the U.S. (I picked…

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Originally uploaded by sprague Come watch at the Youth Theatre Northwest , starting August 3rd. Order tickets online or at the door for…

How will they ban this from airplanes?

This credit-card size stainless steel tool can do a lot: knife, bottle opener, wrench, and more. But it fits in your wallet and only costs $5 from Fishboy.com…

Mercer Island needs more places like Cellar46

Did you know that Washington's wine country and the French Bordeaux region are both located at 46 degrees latitude? That's the inspiration for Cellar46 , that fancy wine…

[Podcast] Matt Ridley

Matt Ridley doesn't say much new about genes and the environment in his interview with Moira Gunn and David Ewing Duncan , but I enjoyed the conversation anyway.…

Shiv Khemka on Knowledge@Wharton

Our old classmate, Shiv Khemka, is featured in a podcast from the 2007 Wharton Economic Summit. He's VP of the SUN Group, a family business that invests in…

Electrical Problems Solved by The Circuit Detective

For the past several years, we suffered through some strange, but highly intermittent troubles with the electrical sockets in our kitchen. It only affects a few plugs, and…

Mercer Island Summer Celebration

Here's a short (3-min) video summary of what's happening today at the Mercer Island Summer Celebration . Watch the parade, including the Mercer Island Preschool Association. Pirates of…

Who's the other registered voter at my address?

Sound Politics runs an online tool to look up registered voters in Washington State . They show three people registered at my address: my wife and I, plus...who…

Speeding Ticket

After how many decades of perfect driving (not one scratch, not one ticket), I was stopped last week by officer M684 on motorcycle at Milepost 202 on I-5…

Private Weather Station for Mercer Island

Looks like somebody's been publishing a personal weather feed for Mercer Island since mid-January 2007, which I found via that Google Maps interface I've been watching . This…

Reading Omnivore's Dilemma

The Roman writer Livy warned in 14 A.D. that a society is in danger when its chefs are aggrandized and of course that's exactly describes America today, whether…

Rugose video

Here's a video version of the Sinodendron Rugosum we have in our yard: Watch on YouTube

Stressed out students

Speaking of Suniya Luther's research at Mercer high school, Stanford News reports on the Stressed Out Students conference last month featuring Madeline Levine, author of The Price of…

Better pay for better teachers

Image no longer available Think about the worst teachers you know: the ones who haven't updated their lesson plans since the 1980s, or who let the kids watch…

Sinodendron Rugosum

Sinodendron Rugosum Originally uploaded by sprague One of the most unusual bugs in America has its home right here on Mercer Island. Commonly known as the Rugose Stag…

Prius-powered house

PG&E is showing off something I tried doing during our big power failure last December: use my Prius as a cheap generator for the house. There is at…

Defend your online reputation

When your name is Googled, do people get an accurate picture? or is there some pesky item in your past that you'd like to see go away? The…

How much profit do small businesses earn?

New York magazine puts a few economists on the trail of various small businesses in Manhattan to identify their business models and see exactly how much money they…

How to eat sushi

My brother-in-law sent me this 10-minute introduction to the correct way to eat sushi: Watch on YouTube Note especially the advice on how much of a soy sauce…

Waiting for kindergarten

The New York Times Magazine has a long survey about the practice of "redshirting", waiting an extra year to enroll children (usually boys) in Kindergarten. The article is…

Best Acupuncture

Thankfully, in spite of my poor posture and otherwise lack of concern for my musculo-skeletal system, I do not suffer from any out-of-the-ordinary back pain or neck pain…

Prius Check Engine Light

Yesterday, on the hottest day so far this year, my Prius check engine light came on. It was still on in the morning, though it mysteriously turned itself…

Local real estate prices

Trulia is another real estate site, recently funded for $10M by Sequoia and based in Silicon Valley. They have great up-to-date stats for Mercer Island , like this…

The Most Practical Foreign Language

Ted sent me a whole bunch of reasons why I should have studied French. Did you know: France has the sixth largest economy in the world after the…

Over the air HDTV

We turned off our Comcast subscription because we rarely watch TV, but now my daughter decided that we absolutely have to see the American Idol finale tonight and…

Prius MPG update

Prius MPG over 60 I was a little disappointed in my initial gas mileage on my brand new 2007 Prius. For the first several months I had been…

Better than Captain Underpants

My 7-year-old is just becoming interested in books and of course I want to encourage him, but lately he's been reading the truly awful Captain Underpants series on…

All-you-can eat

Here's a great idea for those all-you-can-eat restaurants: charge a fixed price for the meal, but add a surcharge for any leftovers. That's what they're doing at Sushi…

Coffee roaster

I'm happy with Espresso Vivace, but if I ever decide to go the next step, Cooltools recommends this Coffee roaster from Sweet Marias : Costs less than $100,…

Seattle Public Schools

A group of activists and parents has put together a fairly active blog to discuss Seattle Public Schools . From their banner: Joining together across Seattle to fight…

Bottled Water vs Tap

A four-year study by the NRDC (whoever they are) concludes that bottled water is mostly good stuff, but rarely better than tap water. They claim that the water…

Head lice

This five-minute podcast from Sound Medicine at Indiana School of Medince should be mandatory listening to everyone with a child enrolled at Mercer Island elementary schools. Based on…

Luthar featured on KING5

Seattle NBC affiliate KING5 has a short news segment t about Suniya Luthar's presentation to Mercer Island parents last week. Nothing new in the broadcast, though it's always…

Mercer Island and Suniya Luthar

Here are my big takeaways from the Luthar talk on Monday night: When it comes to risky behavior like cigarettes, alcohol, or drugs, Mercer Island kids versus national…

Tweens buying power

Apropos of the Luthar presentations is this NYTimes article from 4/22 about the huge increase of buying power among kids aged 8-15: Wendy Liebmann, president and founder of…

Are rich kids more stressed?

The Seattle Times writes (and Melissa blogs at SaveSeattleSchools ) about an upcoming study on anxiety among affluent kids, by Suniya S. Luthar , professor of psychology and…

Literary magazine for kids

While browsing with my 10-year-old in the children's section of the Seattle Public Library today, I stumbled into Stone Soup , bimonthly literary magazine targeted at kids under…

Why ranch style houses are disappearing

Nine of out ten new houses built in 1950 were those one-story "ranch style" homes with big front picture windows, tiny lawns, and open kitchens framed with wood…

Best places to fix a fender bender

So far we've been lucky not to dent our cars (knock on wood), but to be honest I'm wary of most auto collision shops. They seem to get…

Simple majority for school levies

EHJR 4204 - 2007-08 just passed the state senate (and yes, Mercer Island's Senator Weinstein supported it). This is a proposed change to the state constitution that will…

Counterargument to Al Gore

I'm pretty much convinced that global warming is real, that it is exacerbated if not caused by human activity, and that the next 100 years will see significant…

Future of local news

From Scott Moore, former publisher of Slate, on Frontline In other words, you'd take a pile of money -- not even all that much money in relative terms…

My speech at eTech

Here's the photo they took of me speaking at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego March 26th.

Online books

I've been looking at Scribd , a new Web2.0 company described as "Youtube for documents". They are going to have serious copyright issues if the few docs I…

Skin cream and Kids

For the past million generations, children grew up without much attention to hygiene. No toothpaste, no sunscreen, maybe just a bit of lard soap before a special occasion…

Summer plans with the kids

From an article by Linda Morgan: " Staying School Sharp in the Summer " [ParentMap Summer 2007] Stowe Sprague, a Mercer Island mother of three children, ages 9,…

9/11 Movies

World Trade Center was my favorite 9/11 movie so far, in contrast to United 93 , which took all my will power to watch. Both movies are full…

Mercer Island Chess Winners

The winners of last Saturday's All-Mercer Island Chess Tournament are now posted online , organized by section. That posting lumps Kindergarten and 1st grade together, so just for…

Another try at Yuzen

We visited my favorite Mercer Island Japanese place, Yuzen, again last night. I was happy to see a much larger crowd than on our first visit. As proof…

David Sedaris is James Frey?

The New Republic March 19th issue says humorist David Sedaris plays loosey-goosey with the facts. [Here's the Slate summary] A piece fact-checks the collected writings of essayist David…

Prius vs. Hummer

I knew it! Here's proof that the Hummer is better for the environment than a Prius! I told you: I bought mine for the gadgets and because I…

Area Buick Owner Needs to Get a Life

Obama license plate (WA) Originally uploaded by sprague . Look at the license plate I spotted on this Buick, seen last week driving up 148th Ave in Bellevue.…

Fourth Grade Bedtime is 9:30?

My fourth grade daughter polled her classmates about their bedtimes. Of 24 responses, her data shows the median bedtime is 9:30pm. I remember my childhood bedtime being 8:30,…

Free online viewing of Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore's Oscar-winning movie is available online for free viewing . Is this an official distribution? I don't know, so you better watch it soon.

Anybody know a good tax consultant?

My taxes aren't super complicated -- it's not like I've got second homes and rental property all over the place -- but I'm not a 1040EZ case either.…

Best flight stats site

When my inlaws flew in and out last week it would have been nice to know about this site: http://www.flightstats.com It's the flight arrival/departure stats site for all…

Renton City Council Mtg

As many Mercer Island residents as possible are needed at the Renton City Council meeting Monday Feb 26th at 7:00pm. Unlike MI City Council meetings, you need to…

Prius EPA mileage changes

Starting with 2008 model year vehicles, the EPA will change the way it calculates miles per gallon estimates. The new math is supposed to be more realistic, and…

Don't tell your kids they're smart

Po Bronson (a Stanford classmate, by the way) wrote this article for New York Magazine about how dangerous it is to tell your kids that they're smart. When…

Mercer Island political donations

One nice consequence of campaign finance law is that you can see how much money your friends have donated to political candidates or registered lobbyists. These databases are…

2009 Prius

Here's what Popular Mechanics says it will look like: Image no longer available MPG goes up to 80 and it gets more power.

Walkie Talkies

We just bought a couple of Motorola SX700R Talkabout radios for the family to use while hiking and skiing in areas where cell phones don't work. They use…

Save your pennies!

A serious proposal by the Chicago Fed on how to solve the problem that pennies melted for their metal content are currently worth than one cent: Just declare…

Geek events in Seattle

Friends have recommended the following events: Ignite Seattle : a series of geek nights hosted by people from O'Reilly and Make, among others. The next one is on…

Renton Airport Expansion Info

There was a Big Meeting at the Mercer Island City Council last night to discuss that new Jet Center expansion that Renton is considering . If approved, all…

Renton Jets over Mercer Island

The City of Renton is adding a new jet center, attracting new jet traffic to Renton, flying directly over Mercer Island. This would affect the entire Island, from…

Is my social security number stolen?

Answer: no. Plug your social security number or credit card number into this specialized search engine and it will look through the universe of stolen numbers to tell…

Data Visualization

IBM just introduced this neat data visualization software, Many Eyes , that lets you see dynamic portrayals of information. Reminds me of the new site, Swivel.com that works…

Map of Prius Owners

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Seattle Weird Genius Real Science Fair

Too bad I missed this in Seattle last weekend. SOAP - seattle outsider artist project sponsored a Weird Genius Science Fair. You can see the FlickR photostream here…

"Price Insurance" for plane tickets on Farecast

Next time you buy a plane ticket, use Farecast , a Seattle-based company that has reverse-engineered the algorithms used by the airlines to compute plane ticket prices. Is…

Washington Learns Counter Arguments

Image no longer available State Representative Glenn Anderson has a 20-page "minority report" that counters many of the claims made in Gov. Christine Gregoire's Washington Learns committee report.…

College is over-rated

Charles Murray thinks fewer people should go to college and I agree, though maybe for different reasons. There are two competing forces at work. Tuition costs continue to…

Roast your own coffee

Back in the pioneer days, settlers traveling west would bring green coffee beans that they roasted in a frying pan before grinding. Here's the high-tech modern equivalent: a…

Snow on Island Crest Way

There are cars littered all over i-90, most of them parked quite orderly at the side of the road. Did they just run out of gas in the…

My new car

Finally, I have my new car and I'm very excited. After all the searching (and thanks by the way to the zillions of you who offered suggestions), ultimately…

Complex Google Searches

One of the best things about Google (and part of the reason for its success) is the way its engineers think of themselves as much more than a…

Podcast: Jeff Hawkins

He's the entrepreneur behind Palm, using his fortunes to finance his hobby, a neurosciences institute and a new secret spin-off company Numenta. He's also the author of the…

Podcast: Marissa Mayer

I'm listening to tons of podcast in my car now. Here's one from the head of Google's Product Management, who spoke in July 2006 on " 9 Lessons…

Who is my neighbor?

Our new phonebook arrived today. I can never remember which is the "official" phonebook, because I think Donnelly or somebody makes a competing one. Anyway, this is published…

ConsumerReports changes its mind on car seats

ConsumerReports.org - gained a lot of publicity early this month over their study concluding that car seats don't perform nearly as well as they should. Well, now they…

Amazon's secret price guarantee

I didn't know that Amazon has a secret price guarantee . They'll refund the difference if something drops in price within 30 days after you purchase. There's even…

Cool Tips

Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools site strikes again with some very neat ideas that make life slightly better: My favorites: Get some Wintergreen oil (methyl salicylate) at the drugstore…

Don't open the mail

As my son grows interested in coin collecting, and my daughter starts on stamps, I wonder how much longer the post office will continue dealing in physical, paper…

Peak Oil in Seattle

I told you what I think of the Peak Oil movement (it's hogwash, based partly on simple math errors), so I raised my eyebrows a bit at the…

Why don't they bury our power lines?

After last month's awful storm, many of us wonder why the power lines are above ground. When you lose power for 5 days like we did, and you…

Best Vermont Cheese

When we visited Vermont last summer, I made a note to remember the excellent "Constant Bliss" cow milk cheese, made by Jasper Hill Farms. Also check their Bayley…

French Press

My other favorite Christmas present is this French Press from Bonjour Products: It makes 3 cups of incredibly tasty, rich coffee or tea. Just grind the beans (to…

Handy headlamp

For Christmas this year I received this extremely useful headlamp which I'm now using all the time. The bright LED beam lasts a long time on tiny replaceable…

The Truth Behind An Inconvenient Truth

We finally watched An Inconvenient Truth , which is required viewing for anybody who wants an easy-to-understand introduction to the facts behind climate change. Thankfully, this is not…

No power till Saturday ?!?

It was 47 degrees inside my bedroom when I woke up this morning. And still no sign of a repair crew at the transmission pole that feeds our…

West Mercer Mess

Mercer Island has been without power since Thursday night. This tree fell on West Mercer Way near 46th at about 2am, narrowly missing the big house on the…

I like young people

I just took the Harvard Implicit Association Test , which concluded that I have a strong automatic preference for young compared to old. That's not unusual -- about…

Free tire repair at Les Schwab

Somehow my tire ran over a nail yesterday and, poof, it was flat. I want to sell the car soon, so I'm not interested in a new set…

Most authentic Japanese on Mercer Island

I really want Yuzen to be a success. They just opened on the South End of Mercer Island a few weeks ago, filling a sorely-needed hole in the…

The only time Milton and his wife ever disagreed

Milton Friedman was married to his wife, Rose, for 68 years (!) and when he died last week was eulogised by the Economist as the "most influential economist…

Get out of your cell phone contract

The WSJ has a rundown on companies that will buy your current contract and resell to somebody else, in a legal way to get rid of your cell…

Social networking for kids and their moms

Two new venture-backed startups go after the stay-at-home market. Industrious Kid , founded by former execs at Ascend Communications, just got $6M in venture funding to start Imbee…

The gathering storm

Here's the National Weather Service radar showing what we can expect to hit Seattle later today:

Which cars have best resale value?

The Wall Street Journal has this summary , based on Kelley Blue Book's survey for the 2007 model year: For the first time, Acura beat out BMW for…

Drinking Liberally on Mercer Island

Looks like there's a regular get-together for Mercer Island liberals: http://www.drinkingliberally.org Second and fourth Wednesday of each month (next meeting January 10), 6:30-8:30 pm Roanoke Tavern, 1825 72nd…

Mercer Island School District Survey

You have until December 5th to fill out the Community Technology Survey for the Mercer Island School District. It's open till December 5th. The district is auditing their…

Best coffee in Portland

While spending time here for Thanksgiving, I stumbled upon Stumphouse Coffee Roasters , an excellent cafe with stores in several locations including here in downtown Portland (3rd and…

Google Transit does Seattle

They started in Portland about a year ago, but now Google Transit has a site for Seattle. For example, it says that for me to get from home…

Food advice

Kevin Kelly recommends two source of food advice: Cook's Thesaurus is an online database of substitute foods. All out of oats for some special recipe? Try wheatberries or…

Great Wall Video

Here's a video from my trip to China last week. I went with my boss and another engineer to the Great Wall, at Mutianyu. Most people go to…

Where's the Math?

A local advocacy group trying to improve math standards in Washington State has made the New York Times front page. “When my oldest child, an A-plus stellar student,…

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

I try to keep up with popular movies about Japan, so that explains why this is on my Netflix queue , but oh what a waste. Definitely do…

What really happened in the dot-com bubble?

An upcoming paper in the Journal of Financial Economics studied business plans from the dot-com era and concluded that the "bubble" wasn't much different from what happens at…

Dinner's Ready

Our Y-Guides group made a team visit to Dinner's Ready , a food preparation store in Bellevue. It's a nice idea, perfect for franchising: the store has all…

The LouseBuster

Thankfully, not a problem for my kids (yet), but it's a real scourge in elementary schools. Now Biologist Dale Clayton has invented the "Lousebuster" and written about it…

HD Camcorders

Be still my beating heart! HD video cameras are here at affordable prices. CNet and CamcorderInfo review the new $1400 Sony HDR-SR1, as the " most forward-facing camcorder…

Mercer Island geologic map

The University of Washington has a new map of Mercer Island's geology . I don't see anything particularly unsettling (so-to-speak)about our neighborhood: Image no longer available We're sitting…

Soccer in the rain

It's been pouring all day, but that didn't stop my daughter's team from playing soccer this morning: Embedded content from soapbox.msn.com Video: Soccer in the rain

Steven Pinker on higher education

Steven Pinker thinks Harvard's new curriculum could be tweaked a little: Less Faith, More Reason 1. Adding an ethical tint to the study of science and technology misses…

Find a Quack

Quackwatch is a site that compiles information about possible quack medical claims. [via Wired ]

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Podcast lists

This weekend I listened to several podcasts while doing yardwork and other "dead time" in the car, etc. David Shenk interview: he wrote a recent book about Chess.…

What does Mercer Island do with seized property?

When the owner of a stolen or found item can't be located, the Mercer Island police department sells it at http://www.propertyroom.com You can also register your items at…

Richard Pope is a sleaze: don't vote for him

Until I started to understand the importance of local politics, I never took local elections all that seriously. What difference does it make who wins the race for…

What's a Viiv PC?

Our home PC(s) are getting old and will need to be replaced in order to take advantage of the coolest Vista features. Having a Media Center PC would…

Illycaffe

This week's story about IllyCaffe's Head barista reminded me of that excellent espresso I have every time I'm in Europe. I no longer remember exactly, but it's possible…

My recent podcasts

Here are some of the podcasts I've played during the past few days: Radio OpenSource: I heard Steven Pinker host interviews asking various intellectuals about their most dangerous…

Stepford Wives II

The critics panned it, but I thought Stepford (2004) was a worthy remake of the original, which was terribly out of date and becoming irrelevant. As I said…

Alternate social networking sites

MySpace's New Rivals Are Winning Friends - WSJ.com Lists Piczo (most popular site in Canada), XuQa.com , Hi5.com (with a built-in music player), and Sconex.com (for high school…

Rachel Ray and Me

Since she joined my life, I have never been more than 30 minutes away from dinner, so why is there a web site devoted to her called "…

Elementary-school students shouldn't do homework. By Emily Bazelon - Slate Magazine

Slate has a nice summary of three new books that argue that homework is a waste of time . The books claim that all the studies fail to…

Class sizes don't matter?

I just listened to an interesting 30-min Econtalk podcast interview with Rick Hanushek from Stanford, talking about education and how to make schools better. The most interesting part…

Everyone shops CostCo

See, I knew I wasn't the only one who loves that place. Their prices aren't as i-cant-believe-its-so-cheap (like Fry's) but they usually only stock high quality items, so…

NYTimes suggests best items for your pantry

Here's their list Beans, canned: Goya. Butter: Land O’Lakes unsalted. Chicken broth: Swanson 99 percent fat-free, in a resealable carton. Extra virgin olive oil: Private labels like Master…

New Pace STB at Best Buy

Best Buy is now selling a $299 DirecTV receiver that was made in part by Jeff Phillips, a friend from my MSTV days.

MaximumPC's utilities

MaximumPC (Nov 2006) recommends the following utilities that caught my eye: WinDirStat : to help understan where all your hard disc space went. File Shedder: to completely, thoroughly,…

The Pope versus the World

Reading the New York Times editorial, it sounds like the Pope really put his foot in his mouth, apparently calling Muslims "evil and inhuman". An obvious insensitive remark…

American attitudes toward God

A recent survey by Baylor University ( summarized in today's USAToday ) found that: 28.5% of Americans have read The Davinci Code . 44% have seen The Passion…

Flavorpill city events

The New York Times Magazine (Sep 10) has a gushing review of Flavorpill , a new site for cultural events that is gaining a wide audience for its…

[movie] The Stepford Wives

I know the real reason the wives of the Manhattan suburb of Stepford are so happy. While their husbands work 80-hour weeks, they spend mornings leisurely reading the…

Lose weight on Mercer Island

Today's Pacific Northwest Sunday Magazine in the Seattle Times had us chuckling in the middle of an article on why it's so hard to lose weight : A…

The Economist on Climate Change

Global warming is real, it's caused by humans, and there is much we can do about it. That's the position convincingly argued in a special " Survey of…

What I liked in Wired Sept 2006

ArXiv and PLoS are growing as the way scientists share knowledge. Digital Cameras: They recommend Casio EX-Z600 ($279), Canon Powershot SD600 ($350) and more. All have 6MP and…

Corn Zipper

This looks interesting. A $15 device that claims to make it easy to "unzip" corn on the cob. From FactoryDirect2You.Com Image no longer available I read about in…

Plus Addressing on Gmail

Here's a neat trick to give yourself an arbitrarily large number of email addresses. On Gmail, just use whatever username you normally use, followed by the character '+'…

Feld's 80-19-1 Rule

Brad Feld has the interesting insight that a content publisher should worry most about the 19% who are left after the 1% of people who will actively participate…

[book] The End of Medicine

The End of Medince by Andy Kessler This is another of those "lucky-rich Silicon Valley guy writes a book just for fun" books, with a style similar to…

Mercer Island's #1 real estate agent

Jane Potaschnick is 1 on the Homethinking.com list of realtors on Mercer Island. The site claims they crawl the web for data about number of homes sold, length…

Home Prices on Mercer Island

Today's Seattle Times has a front-page article predicting that home prices nationwide are going to fall. They quote from PMI Mortgage Insurance calculations that show a 50% or…

Pay $10,000 to ride in a Realtor's Lexus?

The New York Times has a lengthy article about pressure on that 6% commision that real estate brokers make, regardless of how much work they do and regardless…

Cheapest gas near the airport

[Kiplinger's Sept 2006 says] check http://www.expedia.com/cars to find the best place to fill up before returning your rental car. Or jump to the source and use http://www.gasbuddy.com (the…

Blogging gets easier with Live Writer

The Windows Live team has just released the best blogging tool ever: Live Writer . I've been using it for a few weeks now and it really has…

Vacation reading list

We're getting ready to head out for a two week vacation back East, which means lots of reading time. Here's what I'm thinking for my pile: The Journey…

Global Warming

There is no serious controversy among scientists over whether the earth is getting warmer or not—it clearly is. People can have legitimate differences of opinion over what (if…

Movie: Nightwatch

NPR had a nice review , saying this Russian-made film based on the science fiction novels of Sergei Lukyanenko is a horror movie with effects like The Matrix…

Unfreeze a hard drive

I've had two hard drives crash over the past few years. The data is (mostly) backed up, so I'm not willing to pay hundreds of dollars to have…

What's interesting in Wired July 2006

Here are the articles I thought were interesting in Wired July 2006 : What kind of genius are you? A theory of genius proposed by economist David Galenson…

Print your own books for cheap

The New York Times today has a survey of the companies that offer print-on-demand for books. When Steve Mandel, a management trainer from Santa Cruz, Calif., wants to…

Online Video: The Market Is Hot, but Business Models Are Fuzzy - Knowledge@Wharton

My alma mater discusses the future of TV , especially given the rise of Youtube and Guba. My old marketing prof says: Fader's view of the future includes…

What's the lowest airfare?

The Wall Street Journal does a summary of new airfare comparison sites . None of these sites actually lets you buy the ticket -- they search through large…

Did Chinese discover America?

The Jan 14 Economist mentions the Zheng He map, supposedly dated 1418, showing the world with remarkable precision. If true, it would be astounding evidence that Chinese sailors…

Are U.S. schools really that bad?

The official statistics seem bleak. High school graduation rates in places like Detroit or Cleveland are under 50% and we all know that American kids score worse than…

Our new Odyssey

After months of thinking about how best to replace our aging Windstar, we finally bought a brand new Honda Odyssey 2006 EX-L. We bought it at Honda Auto…

Espresso Vivace in the Seattle Times

I'm not kidding when I say that a non-zero percentage of the reason I moved from Silicon Valley to Seattle was to be closer to Espresso Vivace, one…

Ford Windstar SE 60K Miles For Sale

I posted my Windstar for sale on Windows Live Expo Image no longer available Only 60,000 miles on a 1999 Windstar SE. Original owner (me) purchased in California.…

Selling a used car through Caralternative.com

CarAlternative.com sounds like an interesting service: you give them their car and they sell it at auction, giving you the proceeds minus a roughly 20% fee. I saw…

Boys are doing better too

According to a large study reported in the Washington Post, boys' test scores are getting better--just not improving as quickly as girls'.

New rules for etiquette

How does etiquette evolve to accommodate new situations, like instant messaging, transgender couples, multi-income relationships? The Urban Etiquette Handbook -- New York Magazine puts together some advice: Can…

Not descended from Genghis Khan after all

I mentioned last week that this news about being related to Genghis Khan is less interesting than it appears, now the NYTimes reports that the accountant in Florida…

Go ahead and melt the North Pole

Patrick J. Michaels seems like a mainstream climate expert, with plenty of credentials (including aPhD in climatology from U-Wisconsin). He thinks people are mispresenting global warming. One thing…

Home values drop 4% when a sex offender moves nearby

According to a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper titled " There Goes the Neighborhood ", your home value drops 4% when a registered sex offender moves…

TV in Japan

Finally, a blog aggregator site that collects interesting videos from Japan . [via WSJ ]

One True Media Home

One True Media Home OneTrueMedia.com is a Kleiner-Perkins-backed startup with an interesting idea: let people edit their videos on line. This is one of those potentially good ideas…

Economist this week

Here are the articles I found most interesting in my weekly read of the Economist June 8th, 2006: More on Amazon's Mechanical Turk Men are better than woman…

Nobody starts out wanting a 30,000 square foot home

VANITY FAIR has a feature article about property values in my wife's home town: On average, the price paid for a house in Greenwich last year was $2.5…

Weekend at Ft. Worden

My son and I are part of the Mercer Island Y-Guides program, in a nice group of boys from West Mercer called the "Screaming Wolves". We spent last…

How I am related to Genghis Kha

How I am related to Genghis Khan - World - Times Online : the fascinating proof from genetics that an accountant in Florida is a descendent of Mongols.…

Test-driving a Kia

My wife and I are not car people. We just want reliable transportation from one place to another, and our 1999 Ford Windstar easily meets our needs. Or…

Get rid of pesky teenagers

Our hearing gets worse as we get older, especially our sensitivity to high-pitched sounds. UK entrepreneur Harry Stapleton turned that problem into a product, called Mosquito , that…

Brain UI isn't as cool as you think

My buddy Paul pointed me to this week's NYTimes article about how Honda Says Brain Waves Control Robot . Somebody at their car labs has a demo of…

Donald Knuth - Stanford Computer Scientist

A nice feature about one of the heroes of computer science, Donald Knuth , in this month's Stanford Magazine. When I was an undergrad, a friend introduced me…

The Marriage of Bill and Hillary

Clintons Balance Married and Public Lives - New York Times : Since the start of 2005, the Clintons have been together about 14 days a month on average,…

sprague channel: Live on the PiXPO Network

I just created a new video channel, Richard Sprague's Kids , on a new site called PiXPO. It's like YouTube, only it streams directly from my PC. That…

Safari Online book sales

Sunday, May 21, 2006 2:33 PM 'Long tail' of online book sales: A recent study by O'Reilly Research provided data, some of which came from Google Book Search,…

Al Gore's lockbox strikes again

Watch it before somebody pulls it: Watch on YouTube

How to lower oil prices

Fareed Zakaria, writing in Newsweek says what I've been saying for a long time: "As consumers, we do not pay for the enormous expense involved in policing the…

Cool Tool: Home Staging

My favorite advice site, Cool Tools, reviews a book about Home Staging . 212 pages of suggestions for how to make sure your house is fit to sell.…

How to Find Lost Objects

How to Find Lost Objects is available from Amazon , but it's also free on line (so you can't lose it). Twelve tips for how to find something…

Freakonomics thoughts on red-shirting

My kindergarten boy seems to have a terrible memory. He can't remember names of classmates he's known for a year, forgets when his birthday is, or even what…

Watch not, want not? Kids' TV time tied to consumerism

Surprise, surprise: kids who watch TV nag their parents for more stuff than kids who don't. Good thing our kids never watch TV. From a Stanford study: Watch…

1491 (book)

[my thoughts on the recent book by Charles Mann] An expanded version of his March 2002 Atlantic Monthly article , this book makes many incredibly interesting claims about…

Mercer Island: 38% of homes sold over $1M

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Even the high-end homes get snatched up quickly : "How good? A Windermere analysis revealed that 47 percent of all homes sold…

No Two Alike [Book]

[my thoughts on a recent book by Judith Rich Harris] Image no longer available This author’s first book, The Nurture Assumption, has dangerously influenced all my opinions about…

WSJ.com - How to Buy a Cheap Seat in First Class

WSJ.com - How to Buy a Cheap Seat in First Class : "Q-up, Y-up and Z fares aren't hard to find or buy, requiring just a few extra…

USA National Gas Temperature Map

USA National Gas Temperature Map

Where do Pentecostals and Jews live?

From AEG : Pentecostals: Jews:

Office 2.0

Office 2.0 Database Nice, thorough summary of Web2.0 productivity apps.

SR in Germany

bit blue blog: I'm not really typing this :: Andreas Bitterer :: talks about using Dragon Naturally Speaking to do speech recognition on his computer, but he should…

Custom T-Shirts for kids (super cheap)

MAKE: Blog: Print a t-shirt cheap enough for one-time use Instructions for how to make T-shirts with your custom designs. Put any photo or design you like. Might…

Fast Food Nation goes to kids

A new kids version of the anti-McDonalds book Fast Food Nation will be coming out soon, says the Wall Street Journal. Better not let it near my book-loving…

Inevitable Surprises

[my thoughts about the book Inevitable Surprises by Peter Schwartz] Predicting the future is not as hard as it looks. If extra rain in the mountains produces a…

March of the Penguins

Emperor Penguins of Antarctica live strange lives. Each year at the end of summer, they walk 70 miles to their breeding grounds, where they mate in monogamous pairs.…

RFID chips in credit cards

WSJ.com - Why Some People Put These Credit Cards In the Microwave The good news is, MasterCard's PayPass credit cards include an embedded radio chip (RFID) that make…

Blog by an Iraqi

Healing Iraq is a blog by an Iraqi dentist, featured in today's WSJ . He originally strongly supported the US invasion, but has since changed his mind.

Baby travel without baby stuff

WSJ.com - Leaving the Baby Gear at Home [subs. required] offers this handy summary of services that let you rent baby equipment instead of lugging it all over:

Stop hiding your opinions

If a journalist holds shares in a company he writes about, you assume ethics would compel him to disclose that fact, no matter how "objective" he claims to…

How much do venture-backed CEO's get paid?

from VentureWire "Northern California continues to lead with the nation's highest paid start-ups CEOs, with median compensation hitting $275,000. Not far behind is the Northwest, where compensation jumped…

Worldmapper: The world as you've never seen it before

Worldmapper: dozens of world maps, with country sizes adjusted for various factors to give you an instant idea of how countries compare on things like population, car ownership,…

Book summaries on line

Business Book Review: is another one of those book summary services, similar to the GetAbstract one I get a work. Image no longer available Today's WSJ [subscription required]…

Where are the world's ships right now?

Ship locations is a site that tracks, in real time, the location of all the world's commercial ships. It lets you immediately see a map of, say, all…

SketchUp Home

Google just bought SketchUp , a company that makes a simple CAD-like drawing program. It normally sells for $495 so I'll wait to see if Google decides to…

FREAKONOMICS on baby test scores by race

Cheers to FREAKONOMICS BLOG » New evidence on racial test score gaps for stepping into a controversial, but vital question at the heart of genetics. We know that…

Pictures of the Prophet

Oh no! After all the fuss over the cartoons, somebody noticed that there are several paintings of the Prophet in several major US and European museums. Image no…

What are blogs good for

Scoble is completely right about why people should blog- Let your friends know what you're up to. When you have a busy life, it's too hard to stay…

What's New Orleans like now?

My sister-in-law, who has lived there all her life sent me this like to answer the question of what's it really like there now? What you see on…

Mel Levine at Mercer Island

Pediatrician and educator Mel Levine spoke tonight at the Mercer Island High School to a sell-out crowd of something like 1000 people . He’s full of anecdotes, like…

Early childhood language lessons

94.9 KUOW broadcast a segment about the Sponge School , run by my friend Jackie Friedman . It's a local language school that gives exposure to the sounds…

The real reason Iraq is such a mess

In "Best Science & Nature Writing 2004, Steve Sailor notes: "In Iraq, as in much of the region, nearly half of all married couples are first or second…

Marble Mocha Macchiato

Hey, they stopped selling the Chantico! My barista says not enough people were ordering them. Argh. But she recommended instead an equally-chocolate heavy drink, the new Marble Mocha…

Why email is over-rated

Sprague WebLog posts my inchoate thoughts about how to do blogging one better.

National Archives on Google Video

Just click here to see a 14-min clip made by the National Archives celebrating the first landing on the moon: The Eagle Has Landed 1969 - Google Video…

The Future of the Blog

I agree with the Business Week article The Future of the Blog : quote from Mena Trott, founder of Six Apart: "To most people, the important things they…

Bunny slope

Chess at Crossroads

Macintoshes never crash

I spent many long, happy years working for Apple Computer, so I thought this movie was hillarious. (a 1-minute rebuttal to those Switchers commercials that Apple uses to…

Web 2.0 Innovation Map

Web 2.0 Innovation Map is a graphical representation of all the hot new "Web 2.0" companies and where they're located. Of course Silicon Valley is chock full of…

It takes a village

Leah, inspired by a project she saw at the Pacific Science Center, builds a tiny house from paper.

Which is the fake smile?

Which of these smiles is sincere? Image no longer available Answers in How Do I Love Thee? in the March 2006 Atlantic Monthly . If you got this…

Seattle Biotech 2010

Seattle Biotech 2010 The IndUS Entrepreneurs sponsored Seattle Biotech 2010: Opportunities and Challenges on Thursday night at the Bellevue Courtyard Marriott. Panelists: Susannah Malarkey (moderator), Exec Director, Technology…

Say "You" not "One"

My High School English teacher dinged me when I wrote sentences like "You should buy this product" Instead, she says I should write: "One should buy this product"…

Sleeping in Seattle

My daughter came with me to Espresso Vivace. Looks like she needs the coffee more...

LibraryLookup: Check Mercer Island library for books on Amazon

You're looking for books on Amazon, but before you buy it you wonder if the same book is available at the Mercer Island library. Well, now it's super-easy…

my mobile blog

This is my first message, and it's a test.

Rainy Day for MIPA

Mercer Island Preschool Association sponsored its annual Rainy Day event today, which ironically was one of the sunniest weekends we've had so far this Winter. I brought my…

Sunday school

Douglas Hofstadter

I'm so envious of Sean , who went to the lecture by Douglas Hofstadter at Stanford on Monday. I read that book in high school and remember attending…

School Levy Passed

The Mercer Island School District levy passed by a comfortable margin : more than 70%. Homeowners like me are very supportive because we know that good schools translates…

Screaming Wolves at the Community Center

Our Y-Guides kindergarten group met tonight at the new Mercer Island Community Center. What a nice place for a get-together, especially for a group of boys who have…

Seattle Weblog meetups

I wish I had time to attend the monthly Weblogger Meetup organized by Anita Rowland . She sends a wonderful writeup after each meeting that summarizes the attendees,…

Share your Wi-Fi bandwidth

It's amazing it took so long for somebody to do this. FON is a Spanish company that is organizing a world-wide list of Wi-Fi access points. Anyone (including…

TCS Daily - Stuck on 1968

TCS Daily - Stuck on 1968 : "The Conventional Wisdom among well-educated liberals in 1968 included the following: Anti-Communism was a greater menace than Communism. The planet could…

Rollyo personalized search

Walt Mossberg writes about the interesting Rollyo search engine. It's kind of like http://del.icio.us , only you search across a space of web sites. For example, search a…

Japanese study on line

Here's a survey of Japanese language study aids and dictionary lookups for mobile phones and web. [via Scott]

gizmag Article: On-product magazines could change the media landscape

Here's an idea: On-product magazines , little magazinelets attached to common grocery store consumer products like bottled water. The pages are designed to withstand refrigeration without going bad…

Glassblowing in Seattle

This Youtube thing is the coolest app I've seen in ages. They apparently support WMV no problem, as long as the file size is under 100MB. Watch on…

HD Camcorders

PCWorld says HD Camcorders aren't yet worth buying. That's what I concluded too, though recently a gadget-loving friend told me that he is loving his new Sony and…

Anorexics unite

Proof that the social networking sites are a force for evil as well as good: A Stanford doctor who studies these things notes that anorexics and bulemics have…

Born Into Brothels

“It’s nearly impossible to photograph in the red light district”, begins Zana, a London-born photographer with degrees in religious studies whose first big project focused on infanticide in…

YouTube

Whenever one generation of apps becomes popular and mainstream, there are people who try to push the analogy to the next level of computing and networking power. Sometimes…

Vote Yes to Mercer Island Schools

Mercer Island has a reputation as a tight community with strong schools. Almost 1/4 of the school budget comes from a property tax allocation called the "general levy"…

Free audio books from Librivox

It's about time somebody started some real competition to Audible.com. LibriVox has an army of volunteers who record public domain classics and other books for free download as…

Investor's Business Daily

The Investor's Business Daily web site is free from Jan 9 - 15th. When I worked at Apple years ago, I told myself to sell all my employee…

Order a short cappucino at Starbucks

They don't advertise it because "there's no room on the menu board", but you may want to ask for a short cappucino instead of whatever you regularly get…

Favorite Web 2.0 applications

Mark Millerton lists his Top 10 Innovative Web 2.0 Applications of 2005 . They all use RSS, AJAX, mash-ups, etc. to give interesting new views on data. Includes…

Freakonomics' KKK article was wrong

Freakonomics blog recants the chapter that discussed a Ku Klux Klan inflitration. Apparently the source of the story has less-than-stellar credibility, and now Leavitt and Dubner take back…

Seattle Bon Vivant: Taste: Oh Chocolate!'s French Hot Chocolate

Seattle Bon Vivant: Taste: Oh Chocolate!'s French Hot Chocolate Oh Chocolate! is a Mercer Island favorite, and it sounds like they sell hot chocolate too. I'll need to…

Future of the real estate market

FREAKONOMICS BLOG � More Bad News for Real Estate Agents mentions the case of Madison, Wisconsin, where recently a critical mass of people have started selling their own…

Read Books for Free Using Google

Read Most of O'Reilly's Hacks Books for Free Using Google :: AO Basically, you search for key terms repeatedly and walk your way through the book.

Attibassi coffee

Uncommonly great espresso coffee from Attibassi , in Castel Maggiore Italy. Image no longer available I buy the whole beans flown from Bolagna to Tutta Bella Neapolitan Pizzaria…

How to board a plane

It doesn't make much difference whether an airline asks people to board at random or by back-to-front seat number, according to this paper just published in Nature. A…

Innocent English

Innocent English has a hillarious collection of mistakes found in church bulletins. Some of these are absolutely butt-gusting: The Fasting & Prayer Conference includes meals. The sermon this…

Yahoo! Open Shortcuts

Check out Yahoo! Open Shortcuts . Turns the Yahoo Search box into a command line, letting you type things like: !my to navigate to "http://my.yahoo.com" !wsf to search…

Looking for people? Argali White & Yellow -

Argali White & Yellow calls itself "the most complete and reliable phone directories search on the Internet" and was featured in today's WSJ . Supposedly it's a great…

La maison du chocolat

La maison du chocolat is the best chocolate on earth. Only $43 per box!

Iraqis disagree with U.S. on withdrawal

It's not on this week's ballot, but finally somebody asked the Iraqis what they think about the presence of coalition troops and whether or not the U.S. should…

Enhance Del.icio.us with Delancey

Unto.net > Delancey is a way to manage your Del.Icio.us bookmarks with an AJAX-style app.

Think Labyrinth: Maze Algorithms

Nathan would love this site that tells you everything you ever wanted to know about Mazes . It points to a free Windows software download that will generate…

Weather using Google Maps

Weather Underground uses Google Maps to show you the weather conditions locally, with pushpins in each location that publishes weather from your area. Unfortunately a search on Mercer…

Ultrasound and babies

Slate responds to the news that Tom Cruise bought his own ultrasound machine and explains why this can be dangerous: the energy has to go someplace and it's…

Cool Tool: Diaper Free Baby

Most of the world's babies are diaper-trained well before the age of 2, but American babies often stay in diapers for much longer. Why? Diaperfreebaby.org tells you how.…

Stanford iTunes

Cool, Stanford offers faculty lectures, interviews and more at Stanford on iTunes .

The Why Do I Love These People? Factbook

Po Bronson, author of several Silicon Valley related books including What Should I Do With My Life has a detailed factbook about the Family . [via Freakonomics ]

USATODAY- Portland as a software hub

USATODAY.com posts a story that claims Portland, Oregon is a new hub of software, particularly open-source software. IBM's lab, Linus Torvalds Open Source Development Lab, and others are…

WSJ.com - Google's Growth Helps Ignite Silicon Valley Hiring Frenzy

WSJ.com - Google's Growth Helps Ignite Silicon Valley Hiring Frenzy : "Google, which saw its revenue increase more than sixfold to $3.2 billion between 2002 and 2004, is…

Goat: the other red meat

No Kidding: Americans Acquiring Taste for Goat - Los Angeles Times Goat experts are quick to cite the meat's nutritional benefits. A 3-ounce serving of roasted goat has…

Ask the Iraqis

House spurns calls for immediate Iraq pullout - Conflict in Iraq - MSNBC.com : "�It is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United…

Camcorder decisions

The Panasonic PV GS400 is reviewed as all-around better than my old DV953 . lowest price = $959.59 Image no longer available Sony DCR-PC350 goes for $789. Image…

Hurricane Katrina: the movie

The National Geographic Online Store Recommended by my Mom, who saw it on TV. The DVD is available starting 11/15/06.

Recall Notice on Panasonic camera

Remember my broken camcorder ? The one I paid $260 to repair, and just received back in the mail? Well now I see this from Panasonic: Panasonic 3CCD…

Stumbling Goat

Image no longer available We visited Stumbling Goat, a bistro on Greenwood Avenue in Seattle, after hearing rave reviews, particularly from foodies who love nothing but the highest-quality…

CompUSA is selling the The Linksys Wireless-B Media Adapter for only $29, so I couldn't resist anymore and brought one home. The Linksys Wireless-B Media Adapter lets you…

Bill Clinton lied about Iraq too

The New York Times says Bush lied about Iraq : It's hard to imagine what Mr. Bush means when he says everyone reached the same conclusion. There was…

More lies about Iraq

Hey Bob , hindsight is 20/20. Now we're pretty sure there are no WMD, but if you had been President in the post-9/11 world, would you have been…

Rewriting History

Now here's a real scandal involving the rewrite of an important part of our history: [via NYTimes] The back cover of this children's classic: is modified in the…

The Google Story -- An Excerpt From David A. Vise's Book

The Google Story -- An Excerpt From David A. Vise's Book : "Over dinner and plenty of wine in February 2005, Sergey Brin discussed the prospects for genetics…

Cheapest house on Mercer Island

NW Cable News did a report on housing prices in Western Washington, including this property they called the cheapest house for sale on Mercer Island: $519K for 4BR,…

Kickstart your private library at Amazon.com

Amazon.com sells The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection: More than 1000 of the Greatest Classics for only $7,989.50 (includes FREE SHIPPING!) Now if they'd throw in free bookshelves...

Whole Foods Market Blog

John Mackey has a Blog : he's the CEO of Whole Foods Market, one of my all-time favorite stores and a wise stock pick I made several years…

Edgeio is about to launch!

Edgeio is about to launch! A potential competitor to Googlebase.

How King County Determines Voter Intent

A team of people in the elections office goes through ballots to determine "voter intent" in close races. [ see Sharkansky ]. But the decisions can be very…

Sound Door Service

Our garage door wouldn’t open, leaving our car trapped inside. We called Sound Door Service at 10pm and got an instant quote and appointment for the next morning.…

Amazon Mechanical Turk

Got a few minutes? Earn a couple cents with Amazon Mechanical Turk . I tried it briefly. They offered me 3 cents to look at five pictures and…

Babies gazing and speech

Watch for the point when a developing baby starts following your gaze. uwnews.org University of Washington News and Information : "UW psychologists Rechele Brooks and Andrew Meltzoff have…

Evangelical Environmentalists

More evidence for my prediction that environmental policy is an issue that favors the Republicans long-term: The NY Times reports on a draft policy statement from the National…

Meteor Shower Nov 5-12

NASA says there's an unusually fiery meteor shower this year. Best time to watch is around midnight, directly overhead in the Taurus constellation. [via Barry Briggs ]

Boutique doctors

In the Seattle Area, Dr. Daniel Frank sends a mass-mailing to us on Mercer Island advertising his "personal physician on retainer" system, where he charges $99/month (in addition…

Environmental Heresies

This is an old one, and I'm not sure how I missed it. Stewart Brand is the California thinker behind the Whole Earth Catalog and a bunch of…

My Son the Fanatic

I watched this movie because I wanted to understand more about the circumstances for how an immigrant family can turn radical. A Pakistani taxi driver loves England, the…

Napoleon Dynamite (Movie Review)

This is probably a good movie to watch with your high school friends. It’s clean but not particularly funny humor focused on an awkward teenage boy named Napoleon…

Apple Computer on a roll

Apple has a new software packaged called Aperture that finally goes seriously after the photo processing market. It's designed for professional photographers, letting you edit photos like you…

The Unshaming of America

Reason: Echo Chamber in the Superdome: A Louisiana National Guardsman explains how he dealt with false rumors being piped into Ground Zero of Hurricane Katrina Lots of things…

BillG talks about economics and inheritance

Fortune.com has an interview with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Some key quotes: GATES: It's too bad that economics isn't taught or a hobby for lots of people,…

EULAlyzer

End-User License Agreements (EULA) are so common these days that few people, if any, take them seriously. When you want some software, you download it, then you quickly…

Camp Orkila

I’m back from a weekend at Orkila , a YMCA campground on Orcas Island that hosted over 300 father-son pairs from Mercer Island. If you do the math,…

Free Internet at hotels

Today's WSJ has a list of the status of Internet access at major hotels. Ironically, Internet is more likely to be free at the low-end "cheap" brands, like…

Obnoxious comments on Freakonomics blog

steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics, is having a problem on his blog with people who post annoying comments. Here's what I said to him: Yes of course you…

Uninterruptible Power Supply

After years of living vicariously, I finally bought myself this APC Back-UPS RS 1500 for my home PC system. The 1500 has enough extra juice to power my…

Waste in Iraq

Gideon wonders why more attention isn't paid to the waste and corruption in Iraqi defense ministry procurement. I wonder what the point of such a story would be:…

Curb Your Enthusiasm

If Larry David had never been co-creator of Seinfeld, this sitcom would be considered the work of a pretty good, though not great, amateur. The improvised acting is…

If you're thinking of Salmon Days in Issaquah...

Issaquah Salmon Days Festival is not as fun as it looks We went there yesterday. It was very crowded, in spite of the threat of rain, so lots…

Sean Crotty: Article catches fire

Sean Crotty: Article catches fire Ebay is an open API that lets you, say, get an up-to-date list of the most popular search terms and add that to…

What if we hadn't invaded Iraq?

Victor Davis Hanson finally answers the questions I've been asking for a while. It's very easy to pick on the U.S. involvement in Iraq [insert all your favorite…

Downfall (movie review)

What happens when an all-powerful man must “think the unthinkable, bear the unbearable” as Hirohito famously told the Japanese at the end of World War II? Adolph Hilter’s…

Buying used books on line

The Book Industry Study Group calculated the size of the used book market and the results are published today in Seattle Times as well as WSJ.com - The…

Kid's Programming Language

Microsoft's MSDN is helping to promote Kid's Programming Language , an easy-to-use development environment meant to give young programmers the kind of start people like me had with…

Seattle bus tracker

Seattle bus tracker is based on Virtual Earth. Looks way better than BusMonster. The best part is you can actually see where the bus is right now.

Fixing a camcorder

I mentioned that my 3CCD Panasonic PV-DV953 camcorder developed some problems. Today after a few phone calls I found that I need to send it for repairs to:…

Eilyon is now ZoomInfo: searching for people

I previously mentioned Eilyon as a place to look for people on the Internet. Apparently they've changed their name to ZoomInfo. They still don't seem to know me…

Pledge a Picket!

Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania has a brilliant way to deal with protesters: Here's how it works: You decide on the amount you would like to pledge for each…

Stay-at-home Ivy League Moms

We already know that a huge proportion of women graduates from top schools suspend their careers to raise children, but most of these appear to have been caught…

Sushi Kyo: Unexpected pleasure

After reading a detailed on-line review , we gave Sushi Kyo a try with our family of five. Clean and cozy, easy-to-find right on 1st ave a few…

(book) On Intelligence

I just finished Jeff Hawkins' book, On Intelligence . I first became interested in computers in the late 1970s because I thought it might be a way to…

Don't buy vinyl lunch boxes for kids

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Toxins (Pail by Comparison) There's an email circulating the Internet warning that some children's vinyl lunch boxes contain lead. It's true. Worse, since there's…

Dig a hole through the earth

Here's another silly Google Maps application. Click anywhere on the globe and find out where you'd end up if you started digging till you reach the other side…

Phone answering machine

We just bought a new digital cordless phone + answering machine, the Panasonic KX-TG2357 at CostCo for $100. Ask me in a few weeks what I really think,…

Roe vs. Wade

Whenever something bad happens, blame it on George Bush. He’s responsible. Whether in the U.S. or abroad, just remember: if it’s bad, it’s his fault. Keep repeating until…

Silver thief

[via Freakonomics ] "The 2005 edition of The Best American Crime Writing offers the year's most shocking, compelling, and gripping writing about real-life crime, including ... a piece…

Good news for my brother

Good news: we were able to make contact with somebody from my brother's neighborhood in Kenner who stayed behind. He'll check out Gary's house (on Champaign Drive just…

Blog from somebody in Kenner

I saw this entry apparently from an EMT who visited Kenner last week : "The official estimate was that the town of Kenner was going to get ten…

How do you pay for a house that no longer exists?

Slate's Avi Zenilman answers the question: How do you pay for a house that no longer exists? FEMA sends you to the Small Business Administration for a disaster…

More New Orleans blogs

Metroblogging New Orleans has an on-going set of first-person observations of what it's like in the area now. They point to blogs.photoblogs.org as another good source of information.…

Summary of New Orleans and Kenner news

I'm still concerned for my brother and his family, who though safe in Houston, have no idea what happened to their house in Kenner (not far from the…

Katrina blog summary

Oh dear, my brother and his family are devastated. Here are some more links I found: Wizbang is a long summary of other blogs, most of them filed…

Katrina Information Map

Katrina Information Map is a great site where people post information on a big map. The sparse info about my brother's neighborhood seems to indicate flooding there is…

Katrina links

My brother and his family live in Kenner, so we are following the disaster with deep personal interest. Here are some links of note: New Media Musings: Citizen…

Snapfish lets you pick up prints at Walgreens

[from MercuryNews.com ] Soon you'll be able to upload your prints, then pick them up at your local Walgreens in as little as an hour, for less than…

New Camcorders

My Panasonic PV-DV953 developed a terrible disorder last week: it no longer can see reds, and the entire image has a greenish tint. It's unclear what it will…

More on Peak Oil

The frenzy over ever-higher oil prices is approaching a bubble, and I bet it is time to consider shorting energy prices. New substitutes will start emerging, people will…

Freakonomics meets Peak Oil

The Freakonomics Blog continues to dissect the Peak Oil arguments: John Tierney wrote a great New York Times column in response to the Maass article on Peak Oil…

Testing Blogjet

Here’s another test of BlogJet, which I am trying to try as a new offline blog editor. I already tested it on my .Text Blog , so now…

Religious values and biotech

In America most Christians are members of denominations (Catholic, Baptist, etc.) that oppose research into stem cells, on the grounds that only God can take a life once…

Target in The New Yorker

Slate summarizes the history of Target , which bought every ad in this week's New Yorker. Some quotes: The now-famous "Tar-zhay" pun, emphasizing Target's exalted place in the…

white coffee

Dave Winer points to Ancora Coffee , in Madison Wisconsin as a place you can get "white coffee". Apparently this is a drink made from beans that were…

Amazon.com: Books: The Rule of Three: Surviving and Thriving in Competitive Markets

Amazon.com: Books: The Rule of Three: Surviving and Thriving in Competitive Markets : "Business school professors Sheth (Emory University) and Sisodia (Bentley College) argue forcefully that competitive forces,…

More Long Tail theory

CSVEN CONCORD has an interesting extension of Chris Anderson's Long Tail argument, how the Internet helps mine business among the vast masses of people underserved by normal commerce.…

More efficient Google searching

Google now supports wildcard searching. The world's largest cheese is in The author of stranger from the depths is from: Google Blog: Fill in the blanks

Woman says 'McDonald's diet' took off weight - Diet & Fitness - MSNBC.com

Woman says 'McDonald's diet' took off weight - Diet & Fitness - MSNBC.com "'The problem with a McDonald’s-only diet isn’t what’s on the menu, but the choices made…

More on PFBLog

More reading of PFBlog has me more impressed. It's an active account of how a normal guy is trying to pursue his financial goals, including his thoughts on…

Pepakura 3D paper printing

Kevin Kelly -- Cool Tools describes a shareware application from Japan called Pepakura (Paper Craft) You enter 3D design information from any popular CAD application and it produces…

Personal finance blogs

Is this a new trend? People seem to bare their souls on blogs, so why not their finances too? PFBlog.com - The Unique Personal Finance Weblog is a…

Amazon wish list

Neat hack I found today, courtesy of Xanadb : My blogspot homepage now includes a graphical listing of my Amazon wish list . (unfortunately there doesn't seem to…

Anti-Choice

Like I mentioned before , sometimes too many choices can be a problem. Stephen J. Dubner describes a famous experiment in behavioral economics where: In an upscale grocery…

Digital libraries

CNET summarizes the state of college libraries going digital , particularly Stanford with its projects with Grokis (aka Grokker) and the TopicMap project from Highwire Press. MIT has…

Why housing is so expensive

Slate has a nice summary of work by Ed Glaeser (Harvard) and Joe Gyourko (of U-Penn) on an alternative reason why housing prices are high, growing, and so…

Getting Things Done

Omar Shahine is a Microsoft blogger who posts a summary of how he improved his personal productivity. Of course personal attempts to organize yourself usually work for a…

TV in bedrooms linked to lower test scores

TV in bedrooms linked to lower test scores a study from the Stanford Report proves that you shouldn't let kids have a TV in their room, but giving…

Bill Clinton agrees with Bush on Iraq

Speaking at the Aspen Institute's Ideas Festival Bill Clinton says: "'This is not Vietnam. I wouldn�t set a deadline [for the withdrawal of troops]. I agree with the…

Cell phone towers

Cell Phone Tower Search is a site that uses Google Maps to show you the nearest cell phone towers around a given location. Unfortunately it appears that Mercer…

Microsoft is more popular than Sony in Japan

Microsoft tops Sony in survey according to Nihon Keizai. Microsoft is 1 in the business survey, 3 in the consumer survey. Toyota is 2, Canon 3. Sony fell…

MercuryNews.com | 07/24/2005 | In the '80s, Japan was the new big threat, like China now

MercuryNews.com 07/24/2005 In the '80s, Japan was the new big threat, like China now This is not an especially enlightening article, but I'm glad somebody agrees with me…

Pacific Northwest accents

An interesting piece on KUOW yesterday morning ( transcript and audio (3 min)) about research at U-W and Portland State on regional accents. To NW speakers, the vowels…

Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism (New York Times)

Why Do They Hate Us? Not Because of Iraq - New York Times : "If the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine are at the core of the…

One Day in September

Last night I watched One Day in September , directed by Kevin McDonald. This Academy Award-winning (1999) documentary is an excellent summary of the events, combining extensive archive…

Kids spend too much time in organized activities

Marginal Revolution: Why are we organizing our kids so much? : "Since 1995, the portion of children ages 7 to 11 who swim, fish or play touch football…

Google maps nuclear explosions

HYDESim: High-Yield Detonation Effects Simulator is an application that uses the Google mapping API to calculate the places that would get destroyed by nuclear explosions in various American…

Why are flies so hard to swat?

Flight of the Fly from livescience.com gives a short explanation, including this video . Gwyneth Card of the California Institute of Technology presents the results of her experiments…

Cool watches

What? Your Watch Only Tells Time? - New York Times suggests Watchreport.com as a place to get info about very cool new watches. Two reliable online watch sellers…

MS Word tip of the day (sorting paragraphs)

WSJ.com - Mossberg's Mailbox has a great tip I'll have to remember. Let's say you've got a bunch of entries for a bibliography or another list that you…

Simply Audiobooks - the NetFlix of Audio books

Simply Audiobooks - North America's Audio Book Rental Company $19.95/mo and you can rent as many audio books as you like. The service works just like Netflix: return…

Business Models on the Web

Business Models on the Web Managing the Digital Enterprise Professor Michael Rappa "A summary of WWW business models by a professor from North Carolina State University"

Car seats are no better than seat belts

From a brand new paper by the author of Freakonomics: "Using data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) on all fatal crashes in the United States from…

Wolfgang Puck self-heating cans

My wife bought me one of those self-heating coffee cans, and now I see that MAKE: Blog has instructions for how to take one apart and use it…

Another Freakonomics idea: does Roe v. Wade make more Republicans?

The recent book Freakonomics popularized the thesis that legalized abortion explains much of the drop in crime that began right when the first descendents of Roe v. Wade…

Child kidnapper's blog

Disgusting! Joseph Duncan, the guy who brutally killed the family of a little girl in Idaho, has a blog . There's a point-by-point summary at The Jawa Report:…

Debunking Super Size Me

Looks like a lot of people have done fact-checking on the Morgan Spurlock movie that I watched this week. TechCentralStation runs a page called SuperSizeCon that is full…

Super Size Me

Directed by Morgan Spurlock Super Size Me is a humorous portrayal of the fast food industry as seen from the eyes of somebody who decides to eat nothing…

WSJ.com - Kodak Sharpens Digital Focus On Its Best Customers: Women

WSJ.com - Kodak Sharpens Digital Focus On Its Best Customers: Women : "When film ruled home photography, women took about two-thirds of all pictures and ordered most of…

The Milkman Cometh

One of the best things we found on Mercer Island is access to this wonderful milk delivery service. Smith Brothers Farms brings us fresh dairy products every Thursday…

What am I reading?

Instead of using this blog to repost links to interesting things I read, I'm going to start clipping them to my Bloglines blog instead. You can subscribe using…

Gourmet coffee reviews

So far I've found nothing in Seattle to compete with my favorite Espresso Vivace , but recently I tried Caffe Del Sol Espresso from Cafe Vita Coffee Roasting…

Johns in Chicago

The Freakonomics blog mentions a web site where the Chicago Police Department posts photographs of men arrested for soliticing prostitutes. The point of the site is to embarrass…

Real Simple | Expiration Dates

Real Simple Surprising Expiration Dates tells how long various things can go before you have to chuck. For example, did you know that honey can keep basically forever?…

SLEEPTRACKER

SLEEPTRACKER - FAQs A wristwatch that claims to watch your sleep patterns, letting you know when it's optimal for you to wake up.

Too much to choose

Which is more important: a wide variety of products so you can find exactly what you want, or a smaller number so you can easily choose? Sometimes overall…

BBC - Beethoven free downloads

BBC - Radio 3 - Beethoven Experience - downloads The BBC is doing an experiment, letting people download all the Beethoven symphonies as MP3 files. For a limited…

Family travel sites

The Wall Street Journal recommends Family Travel Files.com and Family Travel Network as sites to use for planning trips or vacations.

It's one of the most famous images in the world, instantly recognizable by even the least art-knowledgeable among us. Yet few people know that it was painted in…

What time is it?

I bet the kids would like this site that tells the time . It's from Japan.

Odds of Dying

Here's a chart published by the National Safety Council on your Odds of Dying of various causes. 118 people died last year in animal-drawn vehicles. 13 people died…

Black-Scholes invented with ThinkTank

A new biography of Fisher Black notes that he did most of his work in the old outlining program, ThinkTank. Fisher is the "Black" in "Black-Scholes", the options…

Cannibal food

Proof that the Internet makes new businesses possible: Eat Hufu - The Healthy Human Flesh Alternative! $12 will get you "Hufu Classic Strips", designed to feel, smell, and…

Real estate questions

Wired 13.05 asks you to Crack the Real Estate Code by guessing the effectiveness of 10 terms commonly used in real estate ads. I got them all right.…

Tips on ordering wine at restaurants

Vino & Veritas - The Record - Etc. : "And one last price tip I picked up from the Wall Street Journal's wine writers: Restaurant owners will often…

Re: Marginal Revolution: Why satellite radio doesn't make me happier

Marginal Revolution: Why satellite radio doesn't make me happier Tyler needs to try Napster-to-Go. He complains that satellite radio has lots of stations, but none that are perfect…

Edge: online debate between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke

Edge hosts a debate on THE SCIENCE OF GENDER AND SCIENCE between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke, a Harvard psychologist who has been named one of America's Best…

Chicago crime map

We need something like this for Seattle and Mercer Island. The Chicago crime map chicagocrime.org uses Google's Map API to display graphically the location of every crime in…

Movies and Cheap Gas in Seattle

Cheap Gas - Seattle More fun with Google maps. This one shows the location of cheapest gas stations in the area. Also check Movies .

Steven Pinker's Talk on line

I've seen him give this talk twice already, but if you haven't seen Steven Pinker discuss his most recent book, there's a video version on line at: MIT…

Babies Use Their Own Names To Help Learn Language

Babies Use Their Own Names To Help Learn Language : "Texas A&M University psychologist Heather Bortfeld and her colleagues tested babies by having them listen to sentences containing…

CNet: Gates says mobile phones will overtake iPods

Gates says mobile phones will overtake iPods CNET News.com I agree. Remember a few years ago how Palm was the center of the universe for PDAs until technology…

Yahoo ! Music and Napster

Yahoo's Music Rivals Sing the Blues : "But while the music service's opening day was free for users, it cost its competitors dearly. RealNetworks (RNWK ) and Napster…

News from Wisconsin

ABC News: Wis. Man Tells Police He Froze Dead Mother : "LA CROSSE, Wis. Apr 25, 2005 � A man told police he kept his mother's corpse in…

Audio search for podcasts

Podscope is a new search engine (beta), apparently built in cooperation with TVEyes, that does an audio search through podcasts. You type your search query and it tells…

Google Video (Beta) - Video Upload Program

Google Video (Beta) - Video Upload Program Upload your home videos here.

The Party's Over (Book Review)

We’re running out of oil! Civilization will end! If this seems like a non-sequitur, then The Party’s Over will not help you see the connection. The author, Richard…

Angel Capital Association

Angel Capital Association is the best place to start if you're interested in Angel Capital, according to the WSJ.

Children's names don't matter

A study of people's names by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner shows: "Today, more than 40 percent of the black girls born in California in a…

Is the Conclave Held in Latin? - Plus, how will the new pope pick a name? By Daniel�Engber

Is the Conclave Held in Latin? answers the burning question I've had for a long time. They speak Italian.

The Annotated New York Times

http://www.blogrunner.com is now publishing The Annotated New York Times , a site with the look and feel of NYTimes but lets you easily see all the blogs in…

Avoid the post office

WSJ.com - Personal Shipping Accounts Did you know that it's free to open your own UPS or DHL account? Fedex charges only $10. Then if you need to…

Current TV

Current TV is Al Gore's new TV network, with an interesting twist. They are partnering with Google to include news updates based on real-time searches gleaned from the…

Whole grains

Thoroughly Modern Millet - How to eat whole grains. By Sara Dickerman in Slate: Nice review of whole grain history, with links to food historians who discuss the…

How much seafood is okay?

Got Mercury? is a site that explains the dangers mercury in fish, and includes a handy calculater that, based on FDA guidelines, guesses how much of various kinds…

Amazon.com: Statistically Improbable Phrases

Amazon.com: What are Amazon.com Statistically Improbable Phrases? When you search a book on Amazon, they provide a list of Statistically Improbably Phrases (SIPs) that tell you some of…

How car dealers make their money

Selling cars in the U.S. - the inside scoop kuro5hin.org It's been a long time since I bought a car, but I remember wondering how the dealer made…

Anti-Pinker arguments at Harvard

From The Harvard Crimson Online reporting on speakers at a recent event discussing women in science: "Professor of Psychology Elizabeth S. Spelke disputed the findings of various studies…

Preschool options on Mercer Island

Everyone knows that there is a daycare shortage on Mercer Island (" a crisis" written about in the Mercer Island Reporter ), but now finally there's an organization…

College students today

For me, college and grad school were opportunities to see the future; at Stanford we used the Internet 10 years before everyone else, and Wharton let me learn…

Infra Red Webcam

Here's how to convert an old webcam into an Infra Red Webcam . The basic idea is to remove a piece of glass from the lens that serves…

Investment ideas in consumer electronics

Here's my Big Bet: iPod will not be the dominant music player in five years. I'm not sure who will replace them or how, but this market will…

Radio Time: Recorder Software

Radio Time: Recorder Software is well-reviewed by Wired and CoolTools. I've been using Replay-Radio instead, but I should check this out as well. Cons compared to Replay-Radio: $40/yr…

dapreview.net: News

I'll need to add this site to my blogroll: dapreview.net: reports on MP3 audio players, including iRiver.

Interactive Periodic Table

Here is a cool Periodic Table of the Elements that I wish I had known about in chemistry class.

Challenging Chomsky

News : "At the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington DC, the linguist Professor Andrew Wedel of Arizona University challenged the…

Ranking Universities

I always took it for granted that public California universities are great, but how about the University of Washington? Rankings of the top universities show that U-W Seattle…

WORDCOUNT / tracking popularity of words

WORDCOUNT / Tracking the Way We Use Language / Presents an ordered list of the rank occurrence of the 86000 most frequently-used words in English. "Richard" is the…

Great kitchen gift idea