Greg In The Desert

• Study: Cat Parasite Affects Human Culture | LiveScience – A parasitic microbe commonly found in cats might have helped shape entire human cultures by manipulating the personalities of infected individuals, according to a new study.

  Infection by a Toxoplasma gondii could make some individuals more prone to some forms of neuroticism and could lead to differences among cultures if enough people are infected, says Kevin Lafferty, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

• Breath-test ruling jeopardizes thousands of state DWI cases – TwinCities.com – Minnesota may be forced to drop thousands of driving-while-impaired cases and change the way it prosecutes others in the wake of a state Supreme Court ruling Thursday, prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed.

  The state's highest court ruled that defendants in drunken-driving cases have the right to make prosecutors turn over the computer "source code" that runs the Intoxilyzer breath-testing device to determine whether the device's results are reliable.

• This is Your Brain On Caffeine – Researchers from the University of Vermont College of Medicine and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine sought to investigate the biological mechanisms of caffeine withdrawal in a paper published recently in the online edition of the scientific journal Psychopharmacology. They looked at brain electrical activity and blood flow during caffeine withdrawal to examine what was taking place physiologically during acute caffeine abstinence, including the likely mechanism underlying the common 'caffeine withdrawal headache.'
• Apache Junction subdivision basks in solar savings – Hill and her neighbors are the prototypes for greener living, according to officials with the Habitat for Humanity of Central Arizona and Salt River Project, who celebrated on the bright day with 18 families living in homes powered by the sun.
• Star Trek: The Experience Expected To Re-open In 2010 Part 2 of ST:TE Documentary | TrekMovie.com – Star Trek The Experience closed down at the Las Vegas Hilton last September, but since October we have been reporting that it may have new life at a new location in Vegas. According to the best info we can gather, it looks like a new STTE will be back in 2010 at Neonopolis in downtown Las Vegas. More details below plus a new entry Vernon Wilmer’s STTE Documentary.
• The mantii have hatched! – Duke City Fix – After many years of trying (9 to be exact) I have finally succeeded in capturing a praying mantis hatch moments after it happened! Our yard has tons of the old egg pods all over the place — mostly under our portal and on the apple tree branches — and every year I intend to find an unhatched one and watch it for the day it hatches. Somehow I always miss it. Sure, we're able to find baby mantii all around the yard which is really cool, but I keep missing the big hatch moment — until today!
• DailyTech – Intel Invests in ASM International to Secure Nanometer Process Technologies – Intel Capital, the investment arm of Intel Corporation, has bought 4 percent of semiconductor equipment manufacturer ASM International (also known as ASMI) through open market transactions.
• Now bankrupt, Coyotes could end up in Canada – Less than an hour before the National Hockey League commissioner planned to broker a deal to sell the Phoenix Coyotes and strip team owner Jerry Moyes of his duties Tuesday, Moyes filed for bankruptcy to sell to his own buyer.

  Moyes, as part of a Chapter 11 reorganization filing, agreed to sell the team for $212.5 million to a BlackBerry wireless magnate who plans to move the team to a yet-to-be determined location in southern Ontario, Canada.

• Top excuses and tactics: Why haven’t you started your own business? « I Will Teach You To Be Rich – As a coach who works with lots of corporate employees with entrepreneurial urges and an author of the book on the topic, I totally agree that starting a business is a great idea in this economy.

  Today, I wanted to share some advice for those who might need a tiny bit more guidance on working through your business ideas and fears.

• Texas police shake down drivers, lawsuit claims – CNN.com – Now Daniels and other motorists who have been stopped by Tenaha police are part of a lawsuit seeking to end what plaintiff's lawyer David Guillory calls a systematic fleecing of drivers passing through the town of about 1,000.

• www.KOB.com – Economy gets blame for rising drug arrests – Tough times are leading to desperate measures for some people in Bernalillo County. Deputies say they're busting a lot more first time drug dealers who are looking to make a few extra bucks.

  “We're finding that we're arresting a lot of first time drug dealers, and these aren't young kids," said Undersheriff Sal Baragiola.
  Baragiola says ever since the slouch of the economy, drug users have turned into low level drug dealers.

• ‘Jailbird’ ruffles feathers in Colombia – CNN.com – A carrier pigeon in Colombia gave new meaning to the term "jailbird" when officials discovered that it was trying to smuggle cell phone parts into a high-security prison, a news report said.
• How I Came to Get a PC and Not a Mac – Microsoft Watch – Desktop – I don't buy new computers very often, and for a long time I slightly favored Macs over Windows PCs. So no one perhaps is more surprised than me that my now four-month old laptop is a Sony and not an Apple. I found my decision process to be similar to Lauren and Giampaolo, the protagonists of the first two Microsoft "Laptop Hunters" commercials. Microsoft got something right about the buying process, something many people on the Mac side of the debate are overlooking.
• Landfill For Sale, One Piece At A Time – Duke City Fix – If you've never been to Coronado Salvage, and you don't mind getting down and dirty, you're in for a mind-blowing experience. Coronado, which is located on south Broadway, is New Mexico's leading wrecking company. These are the guys that will knock down your unused structure, scrape it all into a big pile and leave the site as a tabula rasa ready for the next project. I don't know if they've ever done a huge job like the towering casinos you've seen falling in Vegas, but they've definitely done their share of demolition. They claim to save anything of value, "We schedule a salvage crew to a job site prior to demolition to remove any and all reusable items which are then sent to our 30 acre facility, where we allow the general public to shop six days a week for anything they might be able to re-use."
• FOXNews.com – Former ‘Power Rangers’ Actor Sentenced to Death in Yacht Killings – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News – A judge sentenced a onetime child actor to death for murdering an Arizona couple by tying them to an anchor and throwing them overboard from their yacht off Southern California.

  Orange County Superior Court Judge Frank F. Fasel on Friday imposed the sentence recommended by the jury that convicted 29-year old Skylar Deleon of killing Tom and Jackie Hawks of Prescott, Ariz.

• Johann Hari: You are being lied to about pirates – Johann Hari, Commentators – The Independent – Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" – from 1650 to 1730 – the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage Bluebeard that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often saved from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains Of All Nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence.
• Thousand Yard Stares: Ruins and Ghosts of the Battle of Peleliu, 1944, 2008 « The Wired Jester – Between September and November 1944, it was the site of an incredibly fierce battle between US and Japanese armed forces. Peleliu island is about 14 square miles of terrain; during the three months of fighting, the casualty rate worked out at just under 1,000 men killed per square mile of island. Close to 1,800 American servicemen died; of the 11,000 Japanese soldiers defending the island, only 202 were captured alive.
• Intel Begins Applying ‘Stars’ Ratings to Microprocessors – News and Analysis by PC Magazine – Will you choose a PC's processor like you choose a hotel? Intel has already bet that you will.
  Years after microprocessor vendors launched "model numbers" to try and provide buyers with a simpler way of evaluating microprocessor performance, on April 1 Intel began placing point-of-sale placards and other promotional materials in stores displaying between one to five stars. The company has also jazzed up its chip logos, adding a bit of color to the almost-uniform Intel blue.
• ASU to honor Obama with scholarship, but still no degree – Arizona State University is taking a different approach to honoring this year's commencement speaker, President Barack Obama.

  The university on Saturday announced in a statement it will name and expand its most important scholarship program in Obama's honor.

  The scholarship program will be called the President Barack Obama Scholars. It will provide financial assistance to thousands of students.

• Obama deserves ASU honorary degree | Opinion | eastvalleytribune.com – no president of the United States has been deemed worthy of ASU’s recognition, not even the nation’s first black president. It’s an odd gap that besmirches the image of an excellent institution.

• Single home building permit issued in Chandler last month – Only one home building permit was taken out in Chandler in February, the lowest monthly total since the city started keeping records 17 years ago and a far cry from the 300 to 400 monthly home construction permits before the recent downturn.
• Employees sue Eclipse over termination – Two former employees of Eclipse Aviation are suing the company, claiming they were laid off without the notice required by law.

  Varela worked at the company's Albuquerque headquarters, and Dimura worked at an Albany, N.Y., service facility. Both were laid off when the company stopped operations in February.

• Forgotten Albuquerque: Santiago/Ghufoor Pueblo – Duke City Fix – We’re standing just outside the location of one of the middle Rio Grande valley’s most historically and archaeologically important sites. Or, rather, we are standing just outside the former location of the site, greed and apathy having resulted in its irrevocable destruction some half-a-century ago. The site is that of a Tiguex pueblo called Ghufoor, which the Spanish pronounced “Alcanfor” and later renamed “Santiago.” In an ironic footnote, the subdivision that now occupies the land is also named Santiago.
• Eclipse Aviation Critic NG: Finally, Eclipse Aviation Corporation is no more – It is in many ways, for many people, a very sad day. The end of a genuine attempt to change almost every aspect of how a small jet is designed, built, sold and maintained or a failed business plan that became a scam. Either way, I'm sure we'll be debating many aspects of EAC for a long time to come.
• Is one diet as good as another? U of I study says no and tells you why | Science Blog – Any diet will do? Not if you want to lose fat instead of muscle. Not if you want to lower your triglyceride levels so you'll be less likely to develop diabetes and heart disease. Not if you want to avoid cravings that tempt you to cheat on your diet. And not if you want to keep the weight off long-term.

  "Our latest study shows you have a better chance of achieving all these goals if you follow a diet that is moderately high in protein," said Donald Layman, a University of Illinois professor emeritus of nutrition. The research was published in the March Journal of Nutrition.

• Pure fructose frequently confused with high fructose corn syrup | Science Blog – The American Medical Association in June 2008 helped put to rest a common misunderstanding about high fructose corn syrup and obesity, stating that "high fructose syrup does not appear to contribute to obesity more than other caloric sweeteners." Even former critics of high fructose corn syrup dispelled long-held myths and distanced themselves from earlier speculation about the sweetener's link to obesity in a comprehensive scientific review published in a recent supplement of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
• the physics arXiv blog » Blog Archive » Were gravitational waves first detected in 1987? – In 1987, Joe Weber, a physicist at the University of Maryland, claimed to have detected gravitational waves at exactly the same moment that other astronomers witnessed the famous supernova of that year, SN1987A.

  His equipment consisted of several massive aluminium bars that were designed to vibrate in a unique way when a large enough gravitational wave passed by.

  His claims were ignored largely because other physicists calculated that gravitational waves ought to be several orders of magnitude too weak to be picked up by this kind of gear. (And he’d made several similar claims throughout the 60s and 70s that others had failed to repeat.)

• Sunset Point Rest Area set to open after revamp – Interstate 17's popular Sunset Point Rest Area is expected to reopen this month, after more than a year of renovations.

  Work at the scenic overlook located north of Phoenix focused on utility and infrastructure updates.

  "A lot of what we did was underground," said Bill Williams, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Transportation. "You won't necessarily see the improvements."

• Head-to-Head: Parallels Desktop for Mac vs. VMware Fusion – With virtualization, like what you'll see in Parallels Desktop for Mac or in VMware Fusion, you can run not only Windows, but other x86-based OSes alongside the Mac OS, getting the best of both worlds. For many, this may mean running the virtualized OS in a "window" on your Mac. Both VMware Fusion and Parallels Desktop also have the ability to run Windows applications even more transparently, but we'll leave that for another article.

  The Big Question

  So which virtualization product do you choose? Which solution is faster? Should you run Windows XP or Vista? 32-bit or 64-bit? One virtual processor or more? In short, there are different answers for different people. It all depends on your needs.

• Why I employed a felon – We didn’t know John was convicted of infecting 250,000 computers with bots when we hired him. We have a rigorous hiring process at Mahalo, in which each candidate must go through an average of five to eight interviews, and in which at least three, but more typically five, references are checked. Our CTO, and one of my oldest friends, Mark Jeffrey, did all of this with John, and he passed with flying colors.

Johnny Mango has a terrific story on Duke City Fix about the restoration of the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe railroad locomotive 2926. The locomotive sat in Coronado Park in Albuquerque from 1956 to 2000 and was a jungle gym until they surrounded it with chain link fence and then finally moved it in 2000.

They are trying to get the train restored in time for the statehood centennial in 2012. They need another $500,000 to complete the project in time.

killbox has a number of pictures of this train on Flickr.

• Schwartzman’s Meat Plant – Duke City Fix – Today myself and another photographer snuck to Schwartzman’s Meat Plant, which has been abandoned since the late 1970’sWe found all kinds of neat things to photograph. This is the plant where our older borther Tony worked for many years. He now works in a butcher shop in Amarillo, TX. Working at a meat packing/butcher plant is a hard way to earn a living, testament of the hard life Tony has lived. So yes Tony is now gone, the animals are now gone and only decay remains.
• UFO Quotes from Presidents, Astronauts, Senior Military and more. UFO Cover Up? These people say YES. – While we are used to frequent reports on UFO sightings, I think it’s important to display a list of reputable names who believe in UFOs. This isn’t the crazy lady down the street saying she’s seen a UFO – these are quotes from our Presidents, NASA Astronauts, retired military personnel, the former Head of Foreign Technology at the Pentagon, CIA directors and many more.
• Roll-n-Glow – Tale of an Amish Space Heater – NYTimes.com – FOR a people who make up less than a tenth of a percent of the country’s population, the Amish loom large in the American imagination as simple-living, God-fearing country folk who keep the pre-industrial past alive. We know them as farmers and skilled craftspeople, with high standards and an unfussy sensibility that they bring to the barns they raise, the baked goods they sell at greenmarkets and the quilts and furniture they produce.
• Legal Guide for Bloggers | Electronic Frontier Foundation – The difference between you and the reporter at your local newspaper is that in many cases, you may not have the benefit of training or resources to help you determine whether what you’re doing is legal. And on top of that, sometimes knowing the law doesn’t help – in many cases it was written for traditional journalists, and the courts haven’t yet decided how it applies to bloggers.
• Newspapers – I started my career as a reporter/photographer in broadcast journalism. I loved that job more than every other one I have ever had. We did a pretty good job back in the mid 60’s to mid 70’s before the so called “news consultants” came in to tell broadcasters that we needed to make our newscasts ‘happier.’ What you see today with the white toothed young reporters and anchors is the result. (My old colleague Dick Knipfing excluded) There is not much experience there because looks are everything. Most of their stories are straight off the wires or from the Associated Press. Here in Albuquerque the Journal is the biggest source of story ideas for these folks.
• Apartment Therapy The Kitchn | Is a $15 Can of Tomatoes Really Worth It? – I was tempted when the importers of the tomatoes and pasta offered a 50% discount but it was only when I remembered my vow to have people over for dinner more often (even if I have to serve pasta and tomato sauce) that it all came together. I decided to have a dinner party where my friends would blind taste this ‘worth it’ pasta along side a few other, less expensive pasta and tomato combinations. Read on for the tasting details and our winning choice!
• Southwest to begin testing in-flight Wi-Fi – USATODAY.com – Southwest Airlines, a pioneer in no-frills flying, said Monday it will begin testing in-flight Wi-Fi Internet.

  The Dallas-based airline said a satellite-based system has been installed on one aircraft and will be turned on Monday. Three more planes will be equipped with the service by early March   

  The Internet service, which is available to passengers with their own Wi-Fi enabled laptops or smartphones, will be free during the test period. Southwest didn’t specify what the charge will be once the test period ends.

  But in an interview with USA Today late last year, Row 44’s CEO John Guidon said its service will cost less than $10 a day. “Everybody is hoping for a low price. Row 44 agrees and we can provide low price,” he said.

• Microsoft Live Sync allows for Mac, PC data synchronization | MacUser | Macworld – I loaded up the software to give it a try and I have to say it worked pretty smoothly, which makes me a little nervous (I did run into one minor problem where I set up something to sync to the wrong folder—the web interface for setting up the syncing could use a little work). But still: that kind of ease is just not what I expected from Microsoft. There must be some sort of catch, right? Well, if there is, I can’t find it so far.
• Palm OS, she is dead – Palm CEO Ed Colligan just pulled the plug on Palm OS, destroying the hopes and dreams of millions of Palm lovers around the world. As a former Palm programmer, let me tell you that this news saddens yet cheers me: Palm OS is in a better place now. Colligan also mentions that the Pre will have an app store and Palm will have no control over the content. The Pre will hit other carriers in 2010 and that they’re not too worried about Apple’s patents (famous last words.) Luckily, Palm has 1500 patents up its sleeve and sees little problem in implementing multi-touch in the new OS.
• ON YOUR OWN; When Your Ski Boots Become a Pain in the Ankle – New York Times – Bob Gleason, owner of the Boot Doctor’s ski shop in Taos, N.M., cautions against insoles that are too hard or too soft. A hard insole will not provide the shock absorption needed for comfort. A soft insole will not support the foot so that pressure is applied evenly from edge to edge.

These are my links for February 10th through February 11th:

• Red Light Camera Contract Faces Opposition – Albuquerque News Story – KOAT Albuquerque – "This red light contract is an illegal contract. It was done without any public process, without any bids. This is a no-bid process that ties the city for another five years without the city council even being involved. I think it is illegal in any number fronts," said Albuquerque City Councilman Michael Cadigan.
• A Modest Change in our Tax Code = 3 Billion Gallons of Water per Year – Duke City Fix – Over 6 billion gallons of water are used for growing hay in Bernalillo County each year.
• ABQNews: 7:15am — Gang of Railroad Bandits Sought – Lawmen, BNSF Railway looking for five men targeting shipments between Barstow and Belen. Shades of the wild, wild West! Law enforcement officers and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway are asking citizens to be on the lookout for five rail bandits operating along Interstate 40 who are targeting high-value electronic rail shipments that travel between Barstow, Calif., and Belen, the Gallup Independent reported.
• Why Stock Option Compensation Will Kill Your Company – However, to pay anyone else in the organization in stock or options separates pay from performance. Over the long term, stock prices are determined by the earnings and returns that employees generate, but in the short and intermediate terms stocks can move for reasons entirely unrelated to a company's performance. Nothing makes investors cringe more than when a CEO or CFO predicts how high a company's stock price is going. As people paid to forecast where stocks are going to go, we know how inherently unpredictable the stock price for any one company is; too many exogenous factors influence prices.
• The Associated Press: Intel to invest $7B on factory upgrades – Intel Corp. plans to spend $7 billion upgrading its U.S. factories over the next two years, a sign that the recession hasn't extinguished chip makers' lust for cutting-edge equipment and engineering talent. Intel said the $7 billion will pay for new machinery at factories in Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico, which will be outfitted to produce chips based on 32-nanometer technology. The most advanced chips are currently made with features as small as 45 nanometers.
• Intel invests in Rio Rancho, Part II – Intel could produce 1,000 to 1,500 new “temporary” construction jobs over the next 18 months, state and company officials said Tuesday.

  “We usually have journeymen and advanced types of construction workers who are able to do the advanced piping as well as electrical,” Hendry said. “Typically the type of construction workers we have on the site are very highly skilled to be able to work in the environment we them ask to.”

• Intel construction in Chandler to begin by mid 2009 – The factories called Fab 22 and 32 at the Ocotillo campus will be converted into one giant facility called Fab 32. Fab 22 opened in 2001, and Fab 32, in 2007.
• The Associated Press: Circuit City seeks incentives for wind-down – Circuit City Stores Inc. is asking a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge to allow it to give incentives to executives and other workers to stay with the company during the wind-down process, according to court filings.
  The company said the bonuses are needed to dissuade the 154 employees from leaving before what was the nation's second-largest consumer electronics retailer closes for good.
• A Modest Change in our Tax Code = 3 Billion Gallons of Water per Year – Over 6 billion gallons of water are used for growing hay in Bernalillo County each year.

The APS Police (they call them police not security?) had a sick out today because they APS policy committee recommended that they not get to carry around guns. So, they all felt that Albuquerque school children would be much safer if the people who are suppose to protect them were all home sick, or if they had guns.

nice

Update: Here’s a post on Duke City Fix from Johnny Mango on this subject.

The declines were greatest in the cities of Albuquerque and Rio Rancho. In the Duke City, 223 permits were issued in March compared with 524 in March 2006. For Rio Rancho, just 124 permits were obtained this March compared to 336 a year ago.

New home permits plunge by more than 50 percent – New Mexico Business Weekly.

Flicker added some new features recently. Besides better grouping of tags, it added a “Interestingness” feature, that tells how interesting a photo is. You can see which of your own photos are interesting and which of the photos from all of Flickr are most interesting.

Several comments on Metafilter suggested that photos they thought were most interesting were at the top of there personal most interesting list. My experience is different, my most interesting photos were not at the top of my most interesting list. So how the heck is Flickr determining what makes a photo interesting or not?

I think I’ve sort of figured out the general formula. Seems the major weight is put on who has marked a photo as a favorite, then the number of comments and finally number of views. But not just the number of views but the time between individual views, so the more views of a photo in a short amount of time has more impact than more views over a longer period of times. Thus, The only way one can show up on the main interesting page is to have lots of eyes looking at it. I also believe that somehow having tagged the photo with more popular tags has an impact as well.

To test this theory I started adding my photos to some pools. Most of them are low membership pools (Albuquerque, Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, Duke City Fix, New Mexico, Arizona all have less than 200 members) then added my related photos to these pools. I then joined 1 high membership pool, JPG Magazine: 1 photo a day, no borders (greater than 3000 members), and added 1 photo. That photo has jumped from the middle of my personal interesting list to the number 2 position. There has been less than 10 views and 1 person marked it as a favorite. Proving that marking a picture as a favorite has a big impact on the “interestingness” of a photo.

This photo which has had more views and 1 comment is still low on the list. This means that unless you are actively displaying your photos, you don’t have a chance of getting it in the interesting list on Flickr. I suspect there are quite a few interesting photos on Flickr that just don’t have a chance because the users are not promoting them. The good news is, at least, the photos that are showing up on the list are pretty interesting.