Wh"Y" not X?

I hope my wife is not reading my blog. "Y" you ask? I now have the perfect argument when she says I'm wrong (which happens a lot):

"You're the prettier gibbon, lipstick and all, but hey...I'm more evolved!!"

Research, presented in no less a journal than Nature, shows that while the Y chromosome (half the size of the feminine counterpart X), much maligned over the years as being responsible for men behaving badly, has actually been very very busy ... evolving!

While the rest of our human genome (X included) differs from chimps by only about 2%, the champion Y has been found to be 30% different. More impressive, this has happened in short order!! Only 6 million years!!

My earlier theory on the higher evolutionary status of the male was based on the fact that men invented pockets (in pants) first (women have to carry handbags, etc.) - but, for some odd reason, that argument has been summarily dismissed by all females that have encountered it (I guess all men know who really wears the pantsuit in the house!!)

Quoted:

There's no word yet on if the phrase "men are pigs" will have to go out of style; I don't think swine chromosomes were rooted out.

So - now ... the new argument rings irrefutably true, and I don't have to spit to prove it: 23 IS me!

Of mice and men ... and cell phones!

Gotta start off 2010 with  positive news!! Good findings beyond coffee ... apparently cellphone radiation, much-maligned in the past as being potentially carcinogenic, has been identified as being a great way to protect against alzheimers!!

Florida scientists have discovered that phone radiation actually protected the memories of  mice programmed to get alzheimer's disease!

Quoted:

If older Alzheimer's mice already showing memory problems were exposed to the electro-magnetic waves, their memory impairment disappeared.

The mice in the study were exposed to 2 hours of (cell phone) radiation a day for 9 months!

The exciting discovery is that electro-magnetic field exposure could be an effective, non-invasive and drug-free way to prevent and treat Alzheimer's disease in humans. Apparently, these mice mimic some of the symptoms of Alzheimer's in people, so this is hopefully for mice and men! Further, this could also help treat traumatic brain injuries, as in soldiers during war!

Also quoted:

We don't recommend spending 24 hours a day on a mobile phone - we don't know the long-term effects, and bills could go through the roof.

In other words... get off your Nexus One after a couple of hours!

Less lean and mean, but more green!

Today, last day of the decade, I decided to clean up the garage: a set of boxes conspicuously occupy the center of the third garage (that's for the Tesla when I can afford one) - so they get my attention - boxes with stuff from my earlier jobs, and books, papers, patents and presentations from my research days.

I decided I could no longer decipher the papers and made the hard call to recycle them - cache coherence is no longer coherent, and snooping on the bus seems to be just wrong! Papers on fancy machines, like the BBN Butterfly, Sequent and the Connection Machine (Jurassic Park) went the way of the dinosaur - right into the recycle box! Systems, such as Willow and Dash, V and Presto, passed messages to each other right into the shared memory of the Friday truck. Venerable names, such as Hennessy, Agarwal, Levy, Archibald, Gupta and Goodman, printed on many papers in black and white, had to be bid adieu. Gray and Kennedy caused a moment of darkness ... a moment to ponder the meaning of life...

Fond memories of graduate school - soccer in the rain at Rice with the Calzones (remembering Zefarino, the Mexican math-student-soccer-Jedi-master), parties at the Graduate House, Valhalla, beer-bike, walking with my colleagues to Pike Place in Seattle during a conference, the depressing moments thinking I'd never finish my Ph.D. ...a little smile broke when I saw the graduation documents. Was the degree worth it? That's when my hair began graying!

Projects and presentations went right (recycle), expense reports and old perf evals went left (shred) - a couple of decades left to waste! Oooh - there was a photo of a chip I'd designed! My Chip - with my name etched in the silicon! I have it somewhere - it looks good as a paperweight in the clear MOSIS plastic container.

We spend so much of our lives studying, working and achieving something that's as intangible and transient as ... a network packet! Dunno about you, but it leaves me with a sense of loss. Some gained, so much lost!

Decades pass ... I know less and less ... but now, with so much recycled, it's a greener me!