dramatic and disturbing video of fake bomb detecting devices

via Gizmodo LINK

Update: Canada to US air travel security restrictions

Canada has loosened it's carry-on restrictions for travel to the U.S. Information here (via OneBagOneWorld.)

Looks like I can carry both my Tom Bihn Ristretto and Aeronaut . . . just barely.

Report: Canada #YVR to US air travel security w/ @tombihn laptop bag

Before my trip to Canada I had a very hard time finding good information about the new travel restrictions for travel by air from Canada to the United States. The general statement of "no carryons" isn't quite right. A comprehensive of permitted items is now listed at the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (PDF). The confusing distinction is that they permit laptop bags but not briefcases. Here's what I observed from my experience traveling today through Vancouver airport security:

• wheeled luggage of any size, even if it's laptop bag, is definitely not allowed
• carryons that can be shown to be designed to carry laptops are allowed
• My Tom Bihn Ristretto (a small over-the-shoulder satchel) was allowed through. I had packed in it a small Lenovo, an accessories zipper pouch, Bose headphones, a camera and a Kindle.
• I saw a woman with a Zero Halliburton style attache case. She appeared to get through. She was not carrying a purse in addition.
• Standard, generic, "Dell-style" laptop briefcases for 14-17" style larger laptops were getting through but they appeared to be lightly packed.
• Many people were carrying laptops in slipcases or "naked".
• Women were being turned away with large purses (my guess is anything that's really stuffed and is larger than ~14 inches long).

At 5:30 am on a Monday the lines were short but slow. By 5:45 they had lengthened considerably. The procedure at YVR now is that you drop your checked luggage some distance before you go through security--it used to be adjacent--so if you have to return to put something in checked baggage it will be a bit of a walk. The security personnel are taking as much time as they need. It appeared that in addition to the X-ray screening, all luggage was also being hand searched.

fuel efficient station wagons

The most fuel efficient wagons are a little easier to parse from the EPA website than 5+ passenger/4wd vehicles. The Jetta and A3 tops the list in its diesel form of course. Everything else falls far short in terms of fuel economy. If you haven't taken a look at a Jetta lately, it's grown a bit and might fit you now. Combined, city, highway below:

34/30/42 VW Jetta and Audi A3 (they use the same engine)

28/26/32 Toyota Matrix (and its better looking twin, the Pontiac Vibe, if you can find one before they're gone as Pontiac is vaporized)

After that you've got the Suzuki SX4, Kia Soul, Dodge Caliber, and, surprisingly, the VW Passat, which is so much bigger than the others. Now if only they'd relaunch the diesel version of that VW . . .

25/22/31 VW Passat (note that it wants premium unleaded)

fuel efficient 4wd and fuel efficient 6 or 7 passenger vehicles

Several people have asked me variations on these questions over the last few weeks: (1) what are the most fuel efficient 4 wheel drive vehicles? (2) what are the most fuel efficient 6 or 7 passenger vehicles? and (3) what is the overlap of these two sets?

As a corollary to my wagon listing (LINK) here are the answers, best as I can figure them out (with help from the EPA fuel economy website).

First, the most fuel efficient 4 wheel drive vehicles, in descending order with the combined fuel economy number first, then city, the highway:

29/30/28 Lexus RX450h Hybrid
29/30/27 Ford Escape, Mercury Mariner, Mazda Tribute Hybrids (triplet vehicles with different badges)
26/27/25 Toyota Highlander Hybrid
25/23/29 Suzuki SX4 (variable auto)
26/23/31 Subaru Legacy Sedan (variable auto)
25/23/28 Jeep Compass and Patriot (manual)
25/22/30 Audi A4 and A5 (manual)

25/22/30 Suzuki SX4 (manual)

24/22/29 Subaru Outback Wagon (variable auto)
24/21/29 Audi TT
24/21/28 Audi A3 (gas, auto)
24/21/27 Toyota Rav4 4cyl
23/20/28 Toyota Venza 4cyl
(I've skipped a whole bunch that won't count for the overlapping set)

22/19/26 BMW X5 Diesel

20/18/24 Mercedes-Benz R350 Bluetec Diesel

20/17/25 Audi Q7 Diesel

Second, the most fuel efficient vehicles that can seat more than 5, in descending order with the combined fuel economy number first, then city, the highway:

26/27/25 Toyota Highlander Hybrid

24/22/28 Mazda5 (manual)
24/21/27 Toyota Rav4 4cyl
23/21/27 Mazda5 (auto)
22/20/27 Kia Rondo 4cyl
22/19/26 Toyota Sienna 4cyl (estimate)
22/19/26 BMW X5 Diesel
21/18/26 Kia Rondo 6cyl
20/18/24 Mercedes-Benz R350 Bluetec Diesel
20/17/25 Audi Q7 Diesel
20/17/25 Honda Odyssey (variable cylinder management version)

Third, the overlapping set:

Image via Wikipedia

26/27/25 Toyota Highlander Hybrid
24/21/27 Toyota Rav4 4cyl
22/19/26 BMW X5 Diesel
20/18/24 Mercedes-Benz R350 Bluetec Diesel
20/17/25 Audi Q7 Diesel

thoughts on left vs right

I've found myself recently unable to shy away from mixing my personal, professional and political lives.

Global warming deniers infuriate me (and not just because my brother is a prominent climate change scientist). Sarah Palin strikes me as one step removed from fascism (and yes, I know that's her perspective on Obama). In railing against these things I seem to automatically get tarred with an anti-capitalist, big government brush. Why do those things have to go together? Why, for example, is acceptance of the evidence for anthropocentric global warming, and therefore the belief that policies should be enacted, necessarily connected to a belief in big government?

A long time ago--I think at Bush 43's second election--I told my one employee at the time that I'd just voted. He told me that he'd also just voted . . . and that his votes had probably cancelled mine out. I was shocked. Here in my own midst was someone who'd voted entirely for the other side and I hadn't realized it because we seemed to have so much in common. Since then he and I have become good friends and we've learned that our political views are much more alike than they are different. But when he goes to ballot box, he throwns down on the side of candidates who appear to espouse economic freedom and small government, regardless of their other positions. When I go to the ballot box, my litmus test has to do with individual liberties like gay rights and issues like healthcare reform, regardless of whether the candidate has the sort of business perspectives I favor. Friends like him see the threat more from government regulation of economic affairs than a tendency to favor a blend of church and state. I on the other hand bite my tongue around big government approaches to healthcare and climate change because I'm terrified of the merger of religion and politics and of "no regulation" as a cover for corporatism.

What amazes me is how this group of people--our group--can't find common ground in the political establishment. For example, every venture capitalist I know voted for Obama. That doesn't mean that every VC out there voted for Obama but I'd think my largely New England sample would be a little less uniform. In fact, you'd think that a group that exemplifies rabid capitalism would en masse steer clear of the Democratic Party. But like me they simply couldn't stomach voting for a ticket that included a woman with a dim view of science and a highly favorable view of the value of the laying on of hands. (I'm convinced that without Palin, many people I know would have considered a McCain ticket. Biggest mistake of his life.)

A top VC, Fred Wilson, recently wrote a post called "Stuck in the Middle" articulating his support of Obama. The first comment on the post is a comprehensive critique. The comment states derisively that the current administration has drawn only 10% of its inner circle from people who have any private sector experience. Another commenter, sympathetic to the critique, declares that the pendulum is swinging back to an era where individual freedoms are favored (I think he's referring favorably to tea baggers and all that). There's that divide again: either you're from the public sector OR you believe in individual liberty; either you believe the evidence points to such a high probability of anthropocentric climate change that public policy is warranted OR you're against big government; either you believe in healthcare as a fundamental right that must be made available to all OR you're an advocate of small businesses and entrepreneurship. It seems that in the popular press and in the mainstream political establishment you can't be both sides at the same time: you can't be a believer in anthropocentric climate change AND a believer in small government; a believer in universal healthcare AND an advocate of small business. And THAT is just wrong and dangerous for our future.

Long ago I was taught that the ends of the political spectrum meet at the same point. I believe that the most radical position is in the middle and that the best of America exemplifies that position. Let's hope we can stay centered and don't fly apart.

Reasons to buy a Kindle or a Nook

People have been asking me whether I like my Kindle and whether they should buy one. Two reasons to buy plus some downsides.

First, it's single purpose. For those generally in touch with gadgets, the buzz is that the Apple "iTablet" is going to launch and therefore, shouldn't you wait for that device because surely, like the iPhone, it will have a free Kindle application? Maybe. It will be hard to justify the cost of both a single purpose Kindle and the iTablet. It seems likely that the iTablet will launch, sooner or later, or at least that Apple will be launching a higher resolution version of the iPhone on which book reading will be even better than the current iPhone. But the key to the Kindle is that it does one thing that the iTablet will never do: not everything. The beauty of the Kindle is that it's single purpose. When you're using it you don't have the seduction of the WWW. Your world is restricted to the multi-tasking afforded by having a multitude of books at your fingertips. If you want to read books on a multi-purpose device, you can read them quite well on your laptop. The PC version works very well and a Mac version is coming soon. When I don't have my Kindle and I can't resist the allure of a place like Brakebills, my laptop is ready to serve.

Second, it's the future today. Why not stick with paper books? I love paper books. I'd love a library room in my house with floor to ceiling bookshelves, chairs for reading, silence and the right light. But those books would be largely decoration. And my house is already overflowing with paper books and I don't even have a dedicated library. I like the idea of having fewer physical possessions, not more, and being able to carry the world of knowledge in a little device that can slip unnoticed into my bag. In the future--the not too distant future--we'll have devices with screens indistinguishable from paper that are just a few millimeters thick, perhaps can be rolled up, and can carry tens or hundreds of thousands of books. I look forward to that day! Functionally, the Kindle comes close enough to be able to taste that future now.

Downsides? You can't share books on the Kindle (you can on Barnes & Noble's Nook). The data is stored at Amazon. Sure, if they vaporized you'd still have the books on your Kindle. But still, it feels a bit like owning them on long-term loan from Amazon instead of really owning them. And the freaky echoes are still resonating of Amazon pulling back Orwell's 1984 from people's Kindles when they realized they didn't have the copyright for that edition worked out.

Review: Altered Carbon

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Old news for anyone who regularly reads science fiction, this book is certainly in "classic" category. It's the first of three, about a world five hundred years in the future where bodies and minds are entirely separable. This one is brilliant. The other two are less so but still highly readable. Highly creative, unexpected, imaginative stories about a black ops soldier gone rogue. My biggest negative is the sex scenes which at first are good but, after reading all three books, you realize happen with a staged repetitiveness (two per book), perhaps appropriate to the style and mood of the character but the scenes bring the novels down a notch by their predictability.

View all my reviews >>

Review: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

The Magicians by Lev Grossman


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Well worth reading if you like fantasy. Sort of The Rachel Papers (Martin Amis) combined with "Harry Potter at college", it has a depressive protagonist who, instead of growing on me, became less and less sympathetic. Brilliant concept. A thread of execution was missed in the weave. Not for kids!

View all my reviews >>

I LOVE and WANT the Copenhagen Wheel

I LOVE and WANT the Copenhagen Wheel . . . maybe next Christmas.



via Copenhagenize. The Copenhagen wheel is a collaboration of the city and MIT. If this can't force me to buy an iPhone, nothing can.

a possible outcome of not understanding scientific method . . .

Bloody brilliant . . . as they say on that side of the Atlantic

Musings on homeopathy and His Dark Materials

A challenge when debating homeopathy practitioners is that they simply don't understand how the science industry works, they don't realize that if there were a shred of possibility that homeopathy made any sense there would be an ARMY of scientists all over it, elbowing each other aside for the fame and the glory ... and the probable Nobel. The whole homeopathy thing exists in an utterly different universe and therefore no Nobel is available. The quoting by homeopaths of a study here or there as evidence that homeopathy works would be simply laughable if it wasn't used as justification for a whole industry created out of magic cloth. You can't make something real by using stray threads that aren't repeated by further studies; stray threads are insufficient to make a whole cloth.

It all makes me think of the Philip Pullman series His Dark Materials. In these novels you learn that there are parallel universes where the laws of physics, chemistry, biology behave differently and magic is real. The first book exists in one of those parallel universes. Later in the series you learn that our world does indeed exist within the story and that with a special knife--the Subtle Knite--you can cut the barrier between the worlds and slip from one to another. Perhaps homeopathy does work but in some different world, and all the true believers are escapees from that world, unable to comprehend this world and the realities of science here.

spirited ramblings with a homeopath

read from bottom to top, of course (LINK to the same stream on Twitter)

The silliness of the statement about acetaminophen and surgery is particularly striking. It is true that acetaminophen isn't entirely understood. There are aspects of how it works that are still being explored. But that's science! Unlike with homeopathy, there is a rigorous, ongoing series of peer-reviewed studies and debate, all within the context of the laws of physics, chemistry and biology. As to surgery, double blind surgery is a standard practice. It's just that it's done with animals rather than humans, for obvious reasons.

Runway test for solar powered aircraft

via Wired LINK

war = stimulus = healthcare reform // They're all about US$1 trillion

The war, the stimulus, and healthcare reform all are each about US$1 trillion, give or take. Debatably the war is the largest trillion, because it has the least long-term economic benefit and was based on false intelligence and therefore was of highly questionable utility. The stimulus may or may not, in the long lens of history, be judged cost effective, after the effects of not doing it are calculated. And healthcare reform--if anyone looks at it objectively--is unquestionably cost effective to the nation if the legislation that passes does indeed bring down our unconscionable national cost/benefit equation to be more in line with other developed nations. So who is a fiscal conservative? Someone who votes for the war, the stimulus, or for healthcare reform? And where, therefore, do you place an Obama, a Bush, a Palin, or a McCain on the grid below? Does healthcare reform count as $1 trillion? Does the stimulus? Even conservatives, at least when they're running their own businesses, invest via debt.