Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Author: fish1964

  • Wait But Why Meets Elon Musk

    I’ve linked to waitbutwhy.com before, in particular the Fermi Paradox article. In his latest post, he describes Elon’s Musk’s assistant calling him to ask if he’d like to meet with Elon.

    The post, Elon Musk, The World’s Raddest Man, appears to be the first of at least three. It’s great.

    This guy has a lot on his mind across a lot of topics. In this one lunch alone, we covered electric cars, climate change, artificial intelligence, the Fermi Paradox, consciousness, reusable rockets, colonizing Mars, creating an atmosphere on Mars, voting on Mars, genetic programming, his kids, population decline, physics vs. engineering, Edison vs. Tesla, solar power, a carbon tax, the definition of a company, warping spacetime and how this isn’t actually something you can do, nanobots in your bloodstream and how this isn’t actually something you can do, Galileo, Shakespeare, the American forefathers, Henry Ford, Isaac Newton, satellites, and ice ages.

    And the deep thoughts:

    — He’s a pretty tall and burly dude. Doesn’t really come through on camera.

    — He ordered a burger and ate it in either two or three bites over a span of about 15 seconds. I’ve never seen anything like it.

    Just read it…

  • Headline Fun

    Of course the NY tabloids are having fun with the latest on deflate-gate. The NY Post is never subtle:

    The NY Daily News went with it for the front and back covers.

    Front:

    Back (and my favorite):

    A headline writer’s dream…

  • Worth the Wait

    This is the blog post the Elon Musk was linking to, Test Drive of a Petrol Car. It is written from the perspective of someone who has never been in a gas car and has only driven electrics.

    There are amusing points from the very beginning:

    Automakers do not sell the cars themselves, only through independent car repair shops as middlemen. It may sound like a bad omen to buy the car from a car repair shop that you want to visit as seldom as possible.

    It goes on from there and is quite amusing…

    One could hear the engine’s sound and the car’s whole body vibrated as if something was broken, but the seller assured us that everything was as it should.

  • Elon Musk Takes Down Website

    Elon Musk has over 2 million followers on Twitter. His posts aren’t that frequent so followers pay attention.

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/595208771716059136

    Immediately following that post, the Sweden Tesla club’s website died…

  • Virtual Reality

    Like all group projects… (courtesy SMBC)

  • Baltimore Riots

    I am not close enough to this story to really comment. No one approves when protests turn violent.

    But last September, the local paper The Baltimore Sun published an in-depth report called Undue Force. The opening paragraph:

    The city has paid about $5.7 million since 2011 over lawsuits claiming that police officers brazenly beat up alleged suspects. One hidden cost: The perception that officers are violent can poison the relationship between residents and police.

    Perhaps more people should have read this…

  • A Sweater and a Beer, Apparently

    More Wisconsin centric visualizations (though I can’t embed this one). Apparently Wisconsin leads the country in heavy drinking (heavy is defined as more than one drink a day for women and two a day for men).

    North Central Wisconsin has the heaviest concentration. I’ve spent time there. There’s not much else to do. Though northern Minnesota isn’t as bad, and that seems basically analogous.

    Minnesota didn’t need as many sweaters either…

  • I need a sweater

    Via fixr.com, the top import for every state. Apparently in Wisconsin, the most important thing (from outside the state – beer, cheese and bratwurst don’t need to be imported) is a good sweater…

  • Forcing My Music

    I’ve mentioned how much my girls like our Amazon Echo for music. But tonight they were being bickering sisters and couldn’t agree on a station. And they were arguing over a Demi Lovato station vs. an Ariana Grande station.

    I mean, seriously, how different would those stations be?

    So I said, “sorry, I choose the station”. They said, “no jazz” (because that’s what I really like). I know they like old Elton John (Crocodile Rock) so I said “Alexa play Elton John station”.

    We got old classics. I skipped some marginal songs, but made them listen to anything really classic.

    • Eagles, Hotel California (they grumbled at the beginning, but was ok)
    • James Taylor, Fire and Rain (too slow, but also ok)
    • Crocodile Rock (finally actual Elton John, danced along)
    • Bee-Gees Staying Alive (they totally knew this one and totally danced)

    I had to skip some more and exceeded my skip limit, so we switched to the Pandora Elton John station:

    • Elton John, Candle in the Wind (too slow, and me explaining who it was about didn’t help, since they have no idea who Marilyn Monroe is).
    • Journey, Don’t Stop Believing (Danielle knew this one and liked it)
    • Van Morrison, Brown Eyed Girl (they vaguely recognized it, and liked it)

    So total bickering turned into an old classics dance fest. Pretty fun.

  • Supplements from Hell

    I knew dietary supplements were completely unregulated, but when a study finds that 4 out of 5 don’t even contain the ingredient on the label, it’s worse than I thought.