Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Random is as random does This is a bunch of random musings I've been thinking over the past couple of weeks.  This oughta mostly catch me up and I can start having all new thoughts after this.  Whee! The SF police video scandal.  Overblown.  Two cases in point: the black officer eating out of a dog bowl, and the Asian officer riding a bike (badly).  The black officer's nickname is "Dog".  The Asian officer failed a police-biking course.  That's really all I need to know.  This is just good-humored fun, with the people being made fun of, portraying themselves in the videos.  Get over it. Soy, green tea and cancer.  A lot of people have been recommending soy as an estrogen replacement (to treat hot flashes) for women with breast cancer that is hormone-sensitive.  But there have not been any studies (as far as I know) showing that soy is safe where estrogen isn't.  If the body treats it just as it treats estrogen, why would that be any better for women with breast cancer than estrogen itself?  So I looked up online about incidence of breast cancer in Asia, where they have been eating soy (tofu) for ages.  And the incidence is "traditionally very low".  Okay, so maybe soy is safe.  But then I read about how green tea has been shown to "cure" chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a blood cancer.  As you may know, green tea is also an Asian staple.  So maybe soy does raise the risk but the green tea reduces it, and that's why it's so low.  So maybe NOT eating soy, but ADDING green tea, could eliminate cancer risk completely.  Of course that doesn't get rid of the menopausal hot flashes that soy is meant to counteract... I just saw the movie Brokeback Mountain.  Twice.  In less than a week, in the theater.  This is not like me.  But it was so good, I had to go back again.  Star-crossed lovers, man.  The age-old story.  The kissing outside the laundry has got to win some "most passionate screen kiss" awards at some point.  An excellent film.  Go see it. I also just read My Sister's Keeper, but Jodi Picoult.  An awesome book that really highlights the moral issues in specifically conceiving (or even just otherwise having) a child to be a medical donor for another child.  I couldn't put it down.  It seemed kind of all over the place at the beginning, but after one short, key chapter, all the confusion about is-she or isn't-she suddenly makes sense. Nothing is free, invention edition:  There's this invention that is a ramp that generates 10-50kW of electricity as each car drives over it.  But no one is asking where this power comes from.  It's got to come from somewhere, right?  Answer: it probably causes reduced fuel efficiency in the cars that drive over it.  And that means fossil fuels.  Each pass over one of these ramps probably minutely slows the car down, just a tiny fraction, but that means more power required by the car to drive the same distance over time, which means more fossil fuels and paid for by the car's driver.  I would really like to see the flaw in my argument, because like I said, this energy has got to come from somewhere.  It's not coming from waste heat or other by-products. Technology to mimic nature.  This is a very cool idea to keep the internet virtually virus-free.  It works like an immune system for the internet.  First, we need software that can automatically detect and disable new viruses, worms, etc. that it has not encountered before.  Then, this software can be deployed on special "honeypot" computers on the internet, looking for all the world like a naive, unprotected computer that's ripe for infecting.  Instead, when the virus invades, the software analyses it, builds "antibodies" to combat it, and then distributes this "immunity" via all the honeypots to all the computers on the internet.  Simulations show that this kind of system could result in only .001% of computers actually getting infected (this estimate is based on the size of the network).  Now that's cool! Dear Aaron MacGruder.  Does Eddie Murphy know you're using his stuff in your TV show?  Namely, in the Gangstalicious episode, Riley throwing himself down the steps, and thump-thump-thump, "my shoe!".  Also in that same episode, annoying black eyewitness.  "I seent it!  I seen the whole thing!".  I mean, it's cool if he knows about it.  But if not, then beware that some of us watching are old enough to remember the early stuff!  Wow, I can't believe I got all that off my chest.  It's great to unload, isn't it? 8:57:57 PM    Here's what I have to say about THAT! []

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