My mom asked me if I was sick with swine flu. I told her no, I wasn't. In fact, I had got the shot a month ago, when I saw a sign "H1N1 shot $18" while I was driving in the parking lot of my local grocery store. I looked at the time, realized I had some to spare, and said, "Why not?" Obama said I should get one after all.

If you really want small government, shouldn't you elect a weak president? In which case, Ron Paul would fit the bill, because he seems like he'd make a terrible leader (he'd just stand up there, cite Austrian economists and veto most bills). That, and there's a frailty in his voice that is very un-Presidential.

If Obama says I should get a flu shot, I'll get it. After all, I voted for the guy. (Yes, it's okay to tell people who you voted for). But, maybe there's a problem with electing a strong leader. Doesn't it make us, as individuals, weaker? If anything, Bush taught us to not rely on the President (and by extension, the federal government) for hope. I was reminded of this idea by The Week, which in its roundup of international reactions to Obamacare's passage, quoted The Register:

By using "every stick at his disposal to beat his parliamentary party into submission," Obama has become an "elected dictator...I cannot see a freedom-loving people putting up with such a figure for long."

It is true, that as the effectiveness of a president increases, the more like a dictator he becomes. Hmm.

Further on the topic of healthcare reform, I had a very fortuitous meeting with a health insurance agent today! Yes, today! The day after health care reform was signed, I had a representative from American Republic in my room, selling me on a new health insurance plan.

But before we dig into the details of that meeting, let's go back to the beginning, all the way back to June of 2007, when Sicko came out. That was, in my opinion, when this current health care thread actually started. It made health care one of the main election issues for 2008, and for me, it planted the thought that a healthy, middle-class guy like me could have a tragic run-in with the insurance industry, being bankrupted through rescission or claims rejection.

So since I'm not the kind of person who just prays and hopes things get better, I decided to embark on reforming my own health care. Unfortunately, while Sicko gave me all this energy and enthusiasm back in 2007 (not unlike the enthusiasm that ushered in Obama), due to a number of procrastinations and internal filibusters, nothing got done for many months. My excuse is that I was busy fixing my personal economy (finding not just one, but two new jobs). Until finally, a month ago I set an appointment with an agent from American Republic. There was small snag, though, as I had to get ready for the SXSW mega-festival, and so this meeting got pushed back a couple weeks (just as Obama was pushing back his Asia trip). Until coincidentally, I met with the agent today, twenty-two hours after Obama signed the health care bill twenty-two times.

After the handshakes and pleasantries with the agent, whose figure hinted at former High School football glory, our meeting immediately struck one ironic note after another. He began by asking me why I wanted to switch insurance companies in the first place. I replied, "Well, I saw the ratings for my current health insurance provider, and they were really bad, and I just didn't want to end up like those horror stories on—Wait, does that even matter now? Do I even have to worry about this?" The agent started shaking his legs anxiously, which I could tell he'd been doing for most of the day. He then pointed out that with my current insurance provider, the wording of my plan says I'm covered for "reasonable hospital care" which he said was code for, "we're going to squeeze you out as much as possible." I replied, "But I read online that Obamacare includes an appeals process for this." He then answered, "Yeah, sure, you'll get an appeal, but they'll argue that an extra day at the hospital isn't reasonable, and so you're still screwed."

So far so good. Fielding questions from this customer who does his homework (i.e. the customer from hell) is no easy task. Feeling confident, he started up-selling me some options. He asked me whether I wanted to lock-in my premium for three-years for only 8% more (annual inflation rates are around 3.5%). I smirked and said, "Well hell yes I want to lock those in. Aren't premiums supposed to go up after Obamacare?" Which, after I said that, I realized how much of a Rorschach test this whole meeting was. If I truly was an Obama fan, wouldn't I trust the Democrats who said premiums would go down?"

To the agent's (and American Republic's) credit, he humored my curiosity, as I took about an hour of his time not only working through the implications of Obamacare, but also in trying to finally understand non-self-explanatory terms like coinsurance, deductible, and first-dollar coverage. The only term that didn't need much explaining Cadillac, used in the context of "comprehensive medical coverage" plans, which brought up another thought, "Wait, I heard Obama is going to tax those?"

After describing all the plans, the agent urged me to sign up, at least partially so I could be processed by underwriting, to which I replied, "Wait, will underwriting even be necessary? I mean you can't deny me for pre-existing conditions." "Those protections don't take effect until 2014, actually." Touché.

"Okay, I'll think about it."

If this was a few months ago, when the odds of Obamacare passing were lower than 50%, I probably would've signed right then and there, with twenty-two pens even. Instead, I can sit comfortably with an improved peace-of-mind, knowing now that its very unlikely I will ever go bankrupt for a medical reason or that, despite the crappy ratings of my current insurance provider, I'm protected somehow.

While everybody should think about their health insurance as much as I do, the presence of Obamacare lets us relax a little. But is this what we really bought into? To be under the calming effects of a great dictator?

I highly recommend you check out my new blog, Phil Dhingra. It's more focused on business, technology, and design. I've been getting positive feedback from my friends on this one, and I see good things coming out of it.

Some highlights:

• Move where the puck is going: Imagine a world with no marketing
  
• Marketing Strat: Do not give me a reason to Google for alternatives
  
• What else can Google do to be less Evil?
  

I've had an iPhone for a year and a half and have developed apps for the App Store. I switched to the Droid a few weeks ago, and during my honeymoon period with the device, I wrote a list of 20 Things I Like About the Droid.

In the interest of fairness, though, here's the opposite list. And by "Droid," I'm referring to the total experience of Google Android, Verizon Wireless, and the Motorola Droid device. Because, most new and prospective Android users right now will be on the Droid with Verizon.

Android-Specific

1. Removing Apps requires too many steps. Actually, I shouldn't refer to it as "Removing Apps," but rather use the Android terminology, "Uninstalling Apps," which is appropriate because it feels like a more involved process.
   
2. No built-in screenshot button combination.
   
3. I miss the slingshot feedback from the iPhone when you scroll past the edge of the screen. Otherwise, when I have a list that takes up the whole screen, I can't tell whether my screen is stuck or there are no more entries.
   
4. What's up with all the buttons? The iPhone has one button and it's fine. What's especially annoying is the Menu button. When you're in an App, and you're staring blankly, hunting around for a feature, it finally hits you, "Oh, maybe there's something under the Menu button." Lame.
   
5. Along the same vein, the back button is ambiguous. When you press it, you wonder, "is this going to take me back a view, or exit me out of the app?" The problem is there's no consistent indicator as to what "back" means. On the iPhone, the back button almost always has a dynamic label indicating what you're backing up to.
   
6. This is not really Android's fault per se, but I dislike the lack of excitement and camaraderie that the iPhone has. I bought an iPhone around the same time that a lot of my friends were buying it, and I felt there was a lot of sharing of Apps and tips. I'm pretty much alone with an Android phone, and I have no idea what's good on the Market. I haven't had one of those, "Ooh, did you try this yet?" conversations.

Android Market-Specific

7. Not all apps are required to have screenshots. As a result, only about a third of the apps I check out have a screenshot. I'm really taking a leap-of-faith getting an app without even seeing how it looks like.
   
8. You can't really shop from your desktop. There's an Android Market website, but it's not comprehensive. When I had an iPhone, I bought about two-thirds of my apps from the desktop since I could more easily look at descriptions, reviews, and even videos.
   
9. Oh, and when you buy an app, it doesn't ask you for a password. There's probably a setting for this, but man, as a default, this is a major security fail.
   
10. When you purchase an app, there's a series of yellow warning signs saying things like, "This application has access to System Tools: modify global system settings, change Wi-Fi state, change network connectivity, change your UI settings." Every time I see these, I have an "Oh Crap" moment, when I just pray that the hive vetted this app thoroughly.
    
11. The overall quantity, quality and polish of Android Apps isn't as high as the iPhone. For example, the best Twitter app for Android is nowhere near as good as Tweetie 2 on the iPhone. And some of my major favorites on the iPhone, like the Kindle app, don't exist. When using Android apps, I sometimes get the feeling like I'm back in the Blackberry or Windows Mobile world—i.e. in a world where apps aren't made with passion.

Verizon-Specific

12. Call quality doesn't seem as good as on the iPhone-AT&T.
    
13. After having gotten used to Visual Voicemail for the iPhone, the lack of it with Verizon makes me feel like I'm using old technology. There's a Visual VM app that you can download, but you have to pay $2.99/mo. Fine, so I tried to do that today, and bam, got a message along the lines, "Sorry, but the service you're requesting is currently not available." Fail.
    
14. This is an obvious one: not being able to use 3G Internet while you're on a phone call. When I'm on a long phone call, it's like I'm in a digital cone of silence, unable to know if I'm getting any new mail.

Droid-Specific

15. One of the first major annoying things I noticed was that it takes much longer than the iPhone to charge up, especially when you try to charge from a computer. I've never had enough patience to wait for it to get fully charged when plugged into my Macbook.
    
16. The battery cover slips off intermittently, especially when trying to pull it from your pocket. This is a major fail in my opinion, and Droid probably shouldn't have shipped with this problem.
    
17. Proximity detection is not as accurate as on the iPhone. About a third of time when I draw away from a phone call, the screen remains blank. I have to then fiddle with the power button and otherwise fumble around.
    
18. Screen refresh rate is lower than the iPhone.
    
19. I was disappointed that there were no earphones bundled with the device. I tried my iPhone earbuds (both the 3G and the 3GS ones), and the buttons on them didn't work. I wish I could answer a call or stop a song from them.
    
20. I don't care that much for haptic feedback. It doesn't really add much to the usability, and what you get in return are these sensations that are like stings or little shocks. As a result, every time you press the screen, you have this subtle anticipation that you are about to tap something that might buzz you.

Overall, I'm very happy with the Droid. I bought it partly for business reasons, and partly because AT&T was dropping calls at my new place. There's many many things that the Droid can do that the iPhone can't (true to the advertisements). For example, I typed a first draft of this post on the Droid's physical keyboard, something I couldn't have done on the iPhone. So I really feel like I have a device that I can do some serious work on.

For some reason, I procrastinated in watching the Showtime series Californication. When it first came out, there was a lot of buzz over its treatment of sexual addiction, and so I immediately assumed the show would be filled with gratuitous scenes involving infidelity. Naturally, a sex addict's victims must include innocent, committed women, otherwise he'd have trouble getting his fix. And I realized I was sick of seeing scenes and imagery of infidelity on television. Maybe it's because both my parents are conservative immigrants (dad from India, mom from Philippines—countries where divorce rates are in the single digits), that somehow I have a natural revulsion to the casual way in which American television handles cheating.

For a while now, movies and TV shows that involve cheating would repulse me in the same way a bloody car wreck would. It's like I'd have to cover my eyes. For the longest time, I stayed away from watching Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which was marketed as a story about committed women who "get in touch with their inner soul" through flings with European dudes, simply because that gets under my skin.

But, alas, in watching Californication, I discovered something more disturbing than the infidelity. Surprisingly, it wasn't the sexual sin that bothered me the most. That was actually reasonable, as the main character Hank (played by David Duchovny), is a washed-out sex junkie, and his sexual adventures seem like sordid affairs, rather than wondrous escapades. *Phew*. Instead, what bothered me the most is the depiction of his twelve-year-old daughter Becca. Becca was born out-of-wedlock to Hank's ex-domestic partner, who Hank is still courting (even after twelve years!). In the pilot episode, Hank and his ex-domestic partner are called into school and told that their little angel is getting fondled by boys. That's not disturbing to either parent, but then the teacher says that Becca, when scolded, replies, "How else am I supposed to get boys to like me?"

Fast-forward ten minutes into the episode, and we find Hank rescuing Becca from a house party in Hollywood where threesomes and cocaine are behind random doors. When Hank reaches Becca poolside, she's just about ready to take a hit from the marijuana pipe.

And that's what got under my skin. That's the new car wreck for me. Because when I see that situation, I think of the most frustrating problem imaginable: How do you deal with a child who is over-eager to lose his or her innocence? Most solutions do not work. Let's consider the options. Okay, you can discipline the kid, right? Nope, that doesn't work. That just backfires and makes them resent you. Okay, you could move to Whitopia somewhere, maybe some Mormon community in Utah? Nope, that doesn't work, as study after study shows that they sin as much in Utah as anywhere else. Plus, kids have an amazing sense of skepticism toward the meticulous sheltering that their parents construct. It just inspires a backlash. Think of all the depressed cutters in stultifying suburbs ("But honey, I thought we were moving our family to paradise. What happened to my little angels?").

You don't understand how much this frustrates me. In those brief moments, seeing Becca willfully defy adult expectations, I had this harrowing sense of impending doom. Little voices entered my head, "Your daughter's gonna grow up and become the town bike," or "Your son's going to be a baggy pants-wearing gang-banger." My friend—who is aptly named "Guru"—consoled me, "You should seek out professional help tomorrow and tell them 'I'm concerned my unborn, un-conceived, no-mother-assigned yet, daughter will smoke pot and have sex at ten years of age.' Bet your average town psychotherapist hasn't seen that one yet."

But I think I have the answer, and I think it's full-proof. This comes not only from my personal experience, but mainly based on how my aunt and her husband have been raising their three daughters in Palos Verdes, a wealthy neighborhood in Los Angeles. The eldest is seventeen, and the youngest is ten, and somehow these kids have grown up well-adjusted and remained oblivious to the temptations that assault LA's youth. By observing them, I've developed a unifying theory for parenting.

The first thing you'll notice is that all of them have excellent relationships with their father. This is backed by studies showing that the date when women lose their virginity is correlated to how good of a relationship they have with their dads. If the relationship is good, the daughter is more likely to postpone wooing boys in High School, and instead focus on getting into a good college. Only then, will she grow up sexually toward the end of college or shortly thereafter. Okay, fine, but how are my cousin's father-daughter relationships so good? Well, for one, the dad works at home as a computer programmer. So he's always there. He's also interested in doing activities with his daughters. He's the dad with the fanny pack and the camcorder, taking his kids to Disneyland and music lessons. He's a soccer dad. He's dedicated. You'll never see him drinking with buddies, blowing off his family. In addition, both parents are still together. That's key, as that maximizes the total time spent in parent-child interaction. The parents don't have to trade visitation dates with each other, and instead they have family dinners with their kids, night-after-night. No parent comes home so late from work that they have to slip their kids some bills to fend for themselves at the local McDonald's.

So what you see as the recurring theme in this picture is "time." The number one thing you can do to raise your children well is to spend time with them. Lots of time. Talk to them. Don't put Baby Einstein on the TV. Don't delegate parenting to someone else. As Chris Rock said, "You know your daughter's going to become a stripper if she calls her grandma 'Mom'".

Be in front of them, all the time. Be their TV. Pour constant stimulation and inherent wisdom. Don't worry too much about teaching lessons or active parenting. My parents rarely scolded me. Instead they smothered me with conversation. I couldn't escape! They talked to me like an adult, and they talked all the time. There were barely any "timeouts," as that would separate me from them. Even as I got busy with the Internet in the late 90s, locked in my room surfing for hours, I still had every meal with my parents, and often with my grandma, and we'd talk about everything, from politics to business. To this day, even though I live a thousand plus miles away from home, there is no distance between me and my parents.

The worst case scenario, if you follow this plan, is that your kids become so occupied with their homework and the time spent with you, that they'll have no time to wander into mischief.

So thank you Californication. In spite of all of the show's raunchy titillation, there's a treasure trove of moral lessons.

Over at the Phi Council, I created an interesting chart that I hope galvanizes people into thinking about our prison population and what it means about shaping this country into something that reflects our values:

I decided I wanted to adapt Rave Light to the new Compass features of the iPhone 3GS. While as the original Rave Light had a RGB model (Red was acceleration in the x-axis, Green in the y-axis, and B in the z), Rave Light S uses a HSV model, where the Hue is a color wheel with magnetic North being Red, SouthEast being Green, and SouthWest being Blue. The amount you shake it for adjusts the value.

Click here to check out this app on iTunes ($0.99)

Now, most people don't have iPhone 3GSs, but at the very least you can enjoy this video:

I like how the thread turns individual self-deprecation inside-out to reveal communal indignation. Here are some choice comments:

• I love Windows Vista.
  
• I shop at Best Buy and fucking love it.
  
• Twitter
  
• I refuse to recycle.
  
• My desktop has an icon in every available space.
  
• I have an aol account
  
• I really enjoy typing your instead or you're or you're instead of your. I also really enjoy typing its instead of it's.
  
• I have a website with 5 iframes on the main page. I also use tables.
  
• I've never had any complaints about Internet Explorer, and have never used Firefox.
  
• I watch Jon and Kate Plus Eight, for the adorableness, not the irony.
  
• I buy drinking water in 12 ounce plastic bottles. My cats drink it, too.

Five years ago, I was inspired by George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant, which offers suggestions to progressives on how better to frame political debates. Immediately it is clear that he uses his own advice as he refers to his audience as progressive instead of the smear-word liberal. The book was a cult hit when it came out, but unfortunately the advice was too late for John Kerry's election.

Right now, the conservatives are winning the war of words on healthcare, but we can turn the tide. Here are five message control suggestions for healthcare reformers:

1. When they mention socialist medicine, you mention unregulated, profit-driven, fragmented, capitalist medicine

When the opposition mentions socialist medicine, almost every time it kills the conversation. But it doesn't have to play out that way. Just as socialism evokes Stalin, Mao, and Che, why can't you evoke the robber-barons of the early 20th and late 19th centuries? Just as Americans are suspicious of socialist icons overseas, they're also suspicious of capitalist pigs at home, from Enron-types to Big Oil and Big Pharma.

The opposition is getting away with being the underdog party that will say "No" to socialist medicine. So it's our duty to reveal what they're implicitly for, which is essentially profit-driven, capitalist medicine. Ask the rhetorical question, "Why should providing health insurance be a profit-driven enterprise?" "Would you want to face an insurance company that has all the money and incentives in the world to deny your claims?"

2. Stop using the word public

When the opposition talks about privatized healthcare, they're subtly playing on Americans' fears about privacy invasion. When they talk about public healthcare, they're invoking Americans' fears of public services, like the DMV or welfare. Instead, try to appeal to patriotism using terms like National health insurance.

3. Stop referring to Europe and Canada

70% of Americans do not have passports. So in the average American's mind, the grass isn't greener on the other side, precisely because they've never seen it. The European label was political death for John Kerry in his failed 2004 bid for president. Likewise, Michael Moore didn't endear anybody by showing how Cuba's healthcare is so much better.

If you have to mention a comparative system, maybe mention Australia, a country that the cowboy types of America can identify with. And say something along the lines of this:

Health care doesn't have to be exclusively socialist or "capitalist". The Australian system is a good example. Everyone is provided with free public health care and about 40-50% also have private health insurance. You have the benefit of efficient, effective "capitalist" healthcare, and the safety net of the public system if something like what you described were to happen.

(source)

4. Instead of focusing on healthcare reform, start talk about insurance reform

The opposition has been playing on many Americans' fears that Obama is just causing too much change too much fast. The opposition talks about healthcare reform in terms that have nothing to do with Obama's proposal. It's almost a fact in conservative talk that Obama wants to put doctors on government payroll or that Obama wants to run the healthcare industry like he's "running" GM.

Also, the fact is most Americans are happy with their healthcare. That is probably the number one hurdle in changing the hearts and minds of Americans on this issue. It's the Lake Wobegon effect, where the average American believes their healthcare is above-average.

However, by referring to what Obama's reform plan is mostly about—insurance reform—you can localize the scope of the change. I think ordinary people have an intuitive sense that the insurance industry as a whole is corrupt and needs reform.

5. Instead of universal healthcare, talk about comprehensive healthcare

You have to tip-toe around people's fear of health welfare. Expanded coverage is something people agree with publicly, but in private, they would rather save their tax dollars.

By mentioning comprehensive healthcare, you invoke ideas of better health quality for individuals, which is actually very much a part of this. Small business owners, for example, who have been providing limited or no health insurance to their employees, have been clamoring for precisely this kind of reform.

Plus, you also remind people that perhaps their coverage may be limited. How many of you, when choosing your health insurance plan, had to make compromises and trade-offs? With national, comprehensive health insurance you won't have to do that. Rather you get more freedom and choices. What can be more American than that?

I really enjoy rhetoric, and if anything motivates me about being a political-news junkie it's seeing how different groups tweak their messages to control the agenda.

My blog features some catchy suggestions for message control on healthcare reform:

• Stop talking about Europe. Start talking about Australia.
• Call the opposition profit-driven, unregulated, capitalist medicine.
• Pose it as a David-and-Goliath battle between Obama and the robber-barons of the healthcare industry.
• Talk about how expensive and inefficient capitalist medicine is.

There's many more ideas to come, and I hope that you will eventually become an evangelical for healthcare reform.

"Everything is becoming software," Graham argues. "Saying there are too many software companies in 2009 would be like saying that there were too many companies related to words after Gutenberg invented the printing press."

If you've never heard of Paul Graham, here is is a mini-CV: He holds a Ph.D. in computer science and has formal training as a visual artist. Before starting Y Combinator, his new VC fund, he founded Viaweb, an e-commerce software company, which he then sold to Yahoo for $49 million. After Yahoo, Graham created a new programming language and practically invented spam filtering.

Outside of the VC-world, Paul Graham is mostly known for his essays, which read like Malcolm Gladwell's writing—i.e. they put you in a temporary reality distortion field where seemingly disparate ideas achieve a sudden gestalt of connectedness and irrefutability. He is also known for his witty catchphrases. For example, he coined the expression "ramen profitability," to describe a start-up's ability to make enough money to cover the austere lifestyle of its founders.

Paul Graham at OSCON 2004

Photo credit: D. Story/J. Blanchard/O'Reilly Media

Like Buckminster Fuller of a previous generation, Paul Graham embodies the model, modern dilettante. Two of his essays that I enjoyed, which garnered huge play in the blogosphere, are Hackers and Painters and Cities and Ambition (both of which sound like the seeds of best-selling pop-nonfiction titles, like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel.) In Cities and Ambition, Graham strikes a holistic pose and shows that the purpose of your city co-mingles with your own desires and either produce sterling start-ups (Silicon Valley) or brilliant literary types (Boston).

If I could sum up Graham's philosophy in two words it would be "consider everything." If you're a computer scientist, why not try painting? Why not try poetry at an open-mic? Why not work in Spain? The entrepreneur is intelligent in both breadth and depth, and his key skill is in synthesizing everything he knows to produce a product or bottom line.

But Graham is more than his accolades and words. He is a cult icon and star among young entrepreneurs. The average age of founders that Y Combinator funds is 25!

Paul Graham with some founders

The Paul Graham phenomena sheds light on the politics of programmers, and by extension portends a generational shift in political views. His essay Inequality and Risk is telling. In it Graham talks about the importance of low taxes, and how the prospect of becoming really wealthy is what motivates start-up founders to go through all the risks inherent in the field. The essay also has undertones of American exceptionalism, which is somewhat based in reality since we don't see other countries starting up Googles, Yahoos or Microsofts. Having lived in Silicon Valley myself for six years, I can tell you firsthand that there's a veritable self-important and pseudo-conservative streak to the region.

This attitude also bespeaks of a spirit of individualism that is prevalent among programmer types. For example, the prototypical nerd community slashdot has a libertarian bent (check out their poll). There's no way to know what causes this, but perhaps it has something to do with the do-it-yourself attitude of programmers (Paul Graham would prefer the term hackers). Programmers have a knack for manipulating tools to make their world more efficient. They also have a shared personal story of being outliers in academic settings.

(thanks to kottke for the profile tip)

Unfortunately, the marketing isn't quite right. See, gamers are keen arm-chair technologists, and so they're always going to be skeptical toward over-hyped technology.

This is why it's ever-crucial that game companies show actual gameplay footage in their trailers. Gamers need to see exactly how it will work before shelling out $59.99 for a game or $89.99+ for a game-plus-new-controller. Gamers will trust a grainy, homemade YouTube before trusting an HD marketing video from Microsoft.

Likewise, the thought on many gamers' minds while seeing Project Natal is, "Yeah Right." You can make any controller look "game-changing" in a studio. Plus, we've all seen game companies try to "change the way we play" only to be sorely disappointed.

I did some research to see how it works. Apparently it consists of a Wii-like horizontal sensor with a built-in RGB camera, depth sensor, and multi-array microphone (from wikipedia's entry on Project Natal).

Reading that far, I was still skeptical. "Big whoop," I thought to myself. Then digging furthur, I found that it uses a time-of-flight camera. This is a camera that measures distance by illuminating a scene with short light pulses, then measures the time it takes for the light to reflect back. The longer it takes, the farther it is. Now, light travels realy fast, but recently processors have become fast enough to make what amounts to a 3D Scanner cheap enough for consumers.

The technology in Project Natal was created by 3DV Systems, which Microsoft bought in March 2009. Their website is still up, and it has some pretty awesome videos:

These are the kind of low-quality, but trust-worthy, videos that make you really think "Wow." They give you a sense of how precise the time-of-flight camera technology is. By showing how it works, it makes Project Natal seem like something that could actually happen.

Still, I'll believe it when I see it.

Update: Andy Baio sent in this link from someone working on Project Natal whose testimony further grounds this project in reality.

Today and last night I did a lot of technical searching, specifically for Movable Type-related help. I'd instinctively hit the Firefox keyboard command Ctrl+K to get to the search box, type my string, then hit enter, and forget for a moment that the search was set to Bing.

About two-thirds of the time, I couldn't find what I was looking for. I started to get worried. I started to not trust Bing. And so I'd sneak in the same searches on Google. To my surprise, I couldn't find what I was looking for there either. So, that's one positive point for Bing. If I can't find it on Bing and Google, then, given the expectations for Bing, that's a point in its favor.

However, the search results between the two were vastly different. This made me suspicious. Because I've trusted Google so much, it made me wonder if Bing was incomplete. It would be very hard for Bing to create the impression that it was the other way around.

I expect that I'll eventually switch back to Google and use it for every search. There was a time, maybe 2000 and earlier, when the smart searcher would visit a variety of search engine's (AltaVista, Yahoo, and Google) to get the best results. Now, there's just so much trust that if it ain't on Google, it's assumed you won't find it elsewhere.

It seems the narrative Bing is running with is that it's close-enough to Google. By doing so, users will be less likely to switch from their default IE home pages. And then Microsoft will play the same game it's always played, by working its OS-monopoly.

I created a new project wherein I take the Twitter search feed for the word "overheard" and return the results. Here's a sample of some good ones:

"Kennedy was an overrated white guy. Like many white guys of his generation."

"humans are better than monkeys and dogs arent as adaptable as wolves."

"y'know what's the best? Setting aside 15-20 min and watching cat videos on YouTube."

"i can't go antiqueing without my sunglasses."

"There are a lot of people here. A lot of people like cats. I hate cats..."

"I wanna have a menage a trois with Ben and Jerry!"

"Mommy, cream cheese doesn't work as glue."

"Don't sit on my hand." "Move your hand then, I'm on my period."

"Hey, man...let me call you back. I've got a hamburger in my pocket."

"Ted Danson is NOT a C-list celebrity. He's a B+. Maybe even an A-."

Having said that, what tips do you have for driving while drunk? Since drunk driving is so prevalent (apparently 1 in 10 drivers in Austin between 10pm and 4am is drunk), should we teach drivers tips on how to be safe even if you have to drive home drunk? What if I told you I had a pamphlet on tips for drunk driving that decreased drunk-driving related accidents by 50%? Would you want to hand that out at the DPS offices?

No, that would be absurd.

But then, isn't it absurd to talk about protected sex among teenagers? Isn't it absurd to hand out condoms in middle and high school?

I'm not saying I side with the Christian Right on this one, but I think it's a challenging thought experiment. What does it mean to be offended by one conversation but not by the other?

I like the way this one article from boston.com starts:

Human civilization will heat up the planet.

The rest of the paragraph ultimately talks about ways to prevent warming. But without the context, that sentence just seems like a blunt fact, and one that I believe.

I'm sensing that global warming skepticism has finally gone passe. Maybe it's because Bush isn't in charge. Either way, I don't hear the voices of skepticism in power anymore.

Having said that, when will we start talking about what to do in the event that Global Warming takes place? Are we prepared for it? Do we have disaster prepardness funds in place for an accelerating pace of Katrina's? Should we be creating a Noah's Ark to respond to the mass extinction we're causing?

While the "inconvenient truth" of global warming is finally sinking in to the hold-outs, when will the environmentalists contemplate the inconvenient truth that we don't have enough collectivist willpower to adequately prevent global warming?

And true to form, I've behaved consistently with reverse psychology. I've since delved heavily into the world of men's rights.

My first thought when skimming "men's rights" material is, "Hmm, thinking this way seems like an easy way to not get laid."

But then I thought, "If early feminists shyed away from women's rights because they thought it'd make them appear less attractive, that would have been really unfortunate."

In exploring gender issues, I also noticed the phenomena of the random counter-feminism monologue that comes from a female. These tend to be one of the most popular kind of artifacts that get traded around in discussions about gender issues, and they resurface at least a handful of times each year.

Jodi Kasten's "Equal Rights for Men" is a new contribution, albeit written in a bloggy-tone with "social media-friendly" tidbits:

Bob and Jane are a middle class couple. They have two children. They get an amicable divorce. There is a custody hearing. Both of them are good parents. Both of them want to be the primary custody holder. Who gets the children? Seriously, every single time, unless Jane lights up a crack pipe in the courtroom she will get physical custody. Bob is expected by society to be happy with every other weekend and two weeks in the summer.

Jodi's post garnered an enormous response on reddit (2434+ comments). Which leads me to what I really want to highlight with this post. cartouche had a really poignant comment that I strongly agree with:

I think at this point, in American society at least, it's no longer accurate or productive to generalize that women have it best OR that men have it best. The fight for gender equality of the 20th century was a big-picture fight, but the fight for gender equality of the 21st century needs to be a details fight.

Read the whole thing.

Wikipedia's List of unsolved problems.

Found via reddit's wikipedia subreddit.

My selections:

chemistry

On-water reactions: Why are some organic reactions accelerated at the water-organic interface?

Feynmanium: What are the chemical consequences of having an element, with an atomic number above 137, whose 1s electrons must travel faster than the speed of light?

What is the structure of water?

cognitive science

How much human intervention is needed to produce a cognition?

What is love?

Why is the 'hard problem' of explaining subjective experience so hard?

computer science

The existence of one-way functions (useful in cryptography).

Design a skilled go-playing program.

economics

What caused the Industrial Revolution?

What is the proper size and scope of government?

Why is it that observed average annual returns on stocks over the past century are higher, by approximately 6 percentage points, than returns on government bonds?

What causes the variation of income among groups? In many countries different groups have significantly different average incomes. This disparity arises even among groups that have never been discriminated against.

linguistics

Is the human ability to use syntax based on innate mental structures or is syntactic speech the function of intelligence and interaction with other humans?

Animals and language: How much language (e.g. syntax) can animals be taught to use?

An overall issue: Can we design ethical psycholinguistic experiments to answer the questions above?

Garden path sentences.

Is there an objective gauge for the quality of translation?

mathematics

I do not understand any of these.

neuroscience

Perception: How does the brain transfer sensory information into coherent, private percepts?

Neuroplasticity: How plastic is the mature brain?

Cognition and Decisions: How and where does the brain evaluate reward value and effort (cost) to modulate behavior?

Diseases: What are the neural bases (causes) of mental diseases like psychotic disorders (e.g. mania, schizophrenia), Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease or addiction?

philosophy

Essentialism: A chase scene, for example, may be appropriate for motion pictures, but poorly realized in poetry, because the essential components of the poetic medium are ill suited to convey the information of a chase scene. ... What, after all, is the medium of poetry?

Molyneux's problem: if a man born blind, and able to distinguish by touch between a cube and a globe, were made to see, could he now tell by sight which was the cube and which the globe, before he touched them?

Pyrrhonian regress: Philosophy has essentially continued to operate on the principle that knowledge is justified true belief. The obvious question that this definition entails is how one can know whether one's justification is sound. One must therefore provide a justification for the justification. That justification itself requires justification, and the questioning continues interminably. The conclusion is that no one can truly have knowledge of anything.

Perception of color: Assume two people ("Fred" and "George" for the sake of convenience) see colors differently. That is, when Fred sees the sky, his mind interprets this light signal as blue. He calls the sky, "blue." However, when George sees the sky, his mind assigns green to that light frequency. If Fred were able to step into George's mind, he would be amazed that George saw green skies. However, George has learned to associate the word, "blue" with what his mind sees as green, and so he calls the sky, "blue", because for him the color green has the name, "blue." The question is whether blue must be blue for all people, or whether the perception of that particular color is assigned by the mind.

Moore's disbelief: The statement "Albany is the capital of New York, but I don't believe it" is false. However, there is nothing in the structure of the statement that renders it false.

physics

Vacuum catastrophe: Why does the predicted mass of the quantum vacuum have little effect on the expansion of the universe?

Hierarchy problem: Why is gravity such a weak force?

Entropy (arrow of time): Why did the universe have such low entropy in the past, resulting in the distinction between past and future and the second law of thermodynamics?

Inertial mass/gravitational mass ratio of elementary particles: According to the equivalence principle of general relativity, the ratio of inertial mass to gravitational mass of all elementary particles is the same. However, there is no experimental confirmation for many particles. In particular, we do not know what the weight of a macroscopic lump of antimatter of known mass would be.

astronomy

Accretion disc jets: Why do the accretion discs surrounding certain astronomical objects, such as the nuclei of active galaxies, emit relativistic jets along their polar axes?

statistics

How to detect and correct for systematic errors, especially in sciences where random errors are large (a situation Tukey termed uncomfortable science).

Meta-analysis: Though independent p-values can be combined using Fisher's method, techniques are still being developed to handle the case of dependent p-values.

Sunrise problem: What is the probability that the sun will rise tomorrow?

Right now, Reddit gives us the code to embed a little badge that says how many upvotes we got. But why not let me embed all their comments on my site? If anything I write gets Redditted heavily, my page will get maybe a handful of comments, but the Reddit page will get between 10 and 50 times that amount. I'd rather just outsource my commenting functionality to Reddit. They have a community-base already, a system with karma and such that already works, a good anti-spam system, and moderators.

Even though I have comments enabled on my site, I had to create special features to block spam. I'm also behind on my Movable Type updates so it takes a while to submit comments. Plus there's no user notification, no threading, and no karma voting. But most importantly, there's no traffic!

At the very least, I could see a transitional embedding, whereby in addition to showing how many Upvotes or Diggs on a badge, you also show how many comments it received.

Nancy Gibbs writing for TIME highlights a Gallup study showing how abortion attitudes have shifted:

In 1995, when Gallup started asking the question, the split was 56-33 in favor of abortion rights. Now the lines have crossed, and 51% call themselves pro-life while only 42% say they are pro-choice.

People under 30 are more opposed to abortion than those who are older.

In my early 20s, when I became politically aware and liberal, I had felt that I was on the right side of history, and that it will just take a generational shift to bear out the correct worldview. Then, after seeing the abstinence-fetish vampire flick Twilight and observing how gaga people are over it, I've since become jaded. Plus my young techie cohort in places like digg and slashdot are really into libertarianism and lean to the right (though everybody hates Bush). I'm starting to feel left out.

This is from danah boyd, social media researcher extraordinaire, answering questions about teens and Twitter:

@SavvyPriya: what is one thing that teens are passionate about?

This varies across teens, but God comes up a lot. The only thing that really competes is friends. Family is also important to some teens. School and sports are also important to some teens. And then some teens have particular hobbies or activities that they love. But God and friends really dominate the passion list.

(via waxy)

This was certainly not the case when I was growing up. God is sooo cool right now!!! YAY, school spirit!