Author: Dave

I went to give blood today and apparently the attendant working with me was new. He ended up puncturing my vein on my right arm ("hematosis" they called it).

They asked if I wanted to wrap it up or try the other arm. For some weird reason, I told them to try the other arm. Fortunately, it worked this time.

And thanks to Twitter, I was able to live blog the entire thing. Wow.

Click picture to view larger image.

[Via Discovery News – Earth Impacts Blog]

A few photos from my visit to the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park last week.

So Washington Mutual goes under last week (which is my bank) and their CEO Alan Fishman will get an $18 million dollar severance package.

I can only hope that one day I will have the opportunity to run a company into the ground and be paid handsomely for it.

I sent an email to Speaker Pelosi earlier today…

Dear Speaker Pelosi,

I am a registered Democrat and a resident living in San Francisco and reside in California’s 8th district. I am writing you today about my opposition to the bailout proposal that Congress is currently working on.

While I understand the dire conditions of the economy (and have witnessed the effects first hand – I was laid off from my job one month ago), I do not think it is fair for the tax payers and ordinary Americans to shoulder the burden of bad financial investments made on behalf of our banking and lending institutions.

I also understand that some sort of action is needed, but giving $700 billion dollars to Secretary Paulson carte blanche seems dangerous and irresponsible. Would it not be better to give the Treasury a smaller amount of money (such as $100 or $150 billion dollars) and ask them to come back and justify further requests for cash?

As a registered Democrat, it has been frustrating watching our legislative branch repeatedly cow towards pressure from the White House on funding for the Iraq war, FISA and offshore oil drilling. I urge you and your fellow members of Congress to not do the same with a significant amount of our tax payer dollars and the economy on the line.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Dave Schumaker

I took some photos this morning at the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park.

[Via TUAW]

It’s an incredibly thick book that I’ve been reading for what seems like ever, but I’ve finally finished Walter Isaacson’s great biography on Albert Einstein.

The following is the review I posted at GoodReads, a nice social networking website related to books:

Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson

My review

My Rating: 5 of 5 stars
A fascinating look into Einstein’s life. Definitely more aloof than I would have suspected, but seemed like such a genuine and friendly character.

It was also interesting to see how he was always “raging against the machine” as a young student (which helped him to expand on his theories of relativity) and then become more conservative in his thinking as he was older (as evidenced by his frustrating and unsuccessful search for a unified theory).

View all my reviews.

I shot a bunch of photos this evening along the Embarcadero and San Francisco’s waterfront districts. It was a beautiful night and I haven’t had a chance to use my wide angle lens in San Francisco much.

Twitter is one of my favorite social networking / news sites and easily the site I visit the most during the course of a day.

Recently, Ben Walker participated in a challenge: 50 songs in 90 days. One of the creations was this song about Twitter. Amazing.

An art installation was installed near Crissy Field, in the Presidio of San Francisco in August, featuring over 100 globes to raise awareness about global climate change. The installation is called “Cool Globes” and will move on to San Diego in October.

And here is a picture I took of the Golden Gate Bridge yesterday.

Via the Washington Post:

I was reading some blogs in the geoblogosphere and came across this excellent post regarding the current controversy over McCain’s political advertisements.

[T]he McCain/Palin supporters were getting a little worried about the two-week lying binge they’ve been on (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

Seriously … if I were an undecided voter (that’s who they are trying to persuade at this point) I would be offended. Do they think people are that stupid?

Wasn’t John McCain about honor, integrity, and straight-talkin’? It’s actually quite sickening to watch. And they keep doing it even as the media (finally) catches on. It will backfire … the independents and undecided voters I know are fiercely against partisan sleaze shenanigans. Aren’t they running on reform now? You know, ending the “politics as usual”? (pssst … their campaign is run by lobbyists).

And Jeffrey Zeldman makes this point:

If you’re selling toothpaste, your claims must be vetted by legal and medical professionals. But not if you’re selling a candidate.

If you’re selling a candidate, not only can you lie about his record, but more to the point, you can lie about his opponent.

Here is the latest ad from the Obama campaign, calling McCain on his outright lies.

I often wonder why advertisements are designed in specific ways and what their target audiences are. While browsing through the PhysOrg website (a great science news website), I noticed the following textual advertisement from Google.

Two things come to mind. First, Google Ads are supposed to work by scraping the page they will be displayed on for keywords. The main things displayed on this page were about black holes, Large Hadron Colliders, dust devils on Mars, iPhone patches and how early whales potentially used their “hind legs” for swimming. So how would that apply to someone concerned about their looks?

Secondly, why is the word humiliated in quotations? Is the theoretical person who was called fat, not really humiliated? Just “humiliated?” The quotations seem absolutely out of place. Now, instead of worrying about my weight and whether or not a loved one called me fat, I myself (of a scientific mind no less, like many others who read that site) am wondering why the quotations were around the word humiliated, and not “fat” or “fast” or even “husband.”

Who wrote the copy for that ad?

AP interview with Matt Damon on the possibility of Sarah Palin being President of the United States.

“I need to know if she thought dinosaurs were around 4,000 years ago.”

[Via Daily Kos]

Great website:
Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed the World yet?

I can almost start a new blog dedicated exclusively to iTunes issues. I’d call it “iTunes Errors” or “Fun with iTunes 8” or something similar. In fact, it’s already been done with Adobe products.

Anyway, here are five screens just from today!

Despite my recent rants, I really do love Apple products. Really!

This one was posted awhile ago, but someone brought it to my attention again. XKCD nails it.

A recent post on Twitter after yet another dropped call from my iPhone 3G.