The New Bay Bridge

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Engineers love bridges. I think it is because they appear so simple, but engineers appreciate how much thought and calculation are required.

Living in the Bay Area, we have two of the most impressive bridges in the country. It’s a great time to be here because they are currently rebuilding the Bay Bridge, designed to last 150 years and withstand a whopping 8.5 earthquake. Check out this short video showing how awesome it will be:

And for those of you that haven’t seen this famous video of how not to build a bridge:

Nerd note: In engineering classes we were taught that the reason the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed was because the wind provided a periodic frequency that matched the natural frequency of the bridge. (Non-nerd note: think of a parent pushing a child on a swing – the parent (the wind) is providing a periodic push of the child (the bridge), who is moving back and forth at a frequency. If those frequencies match the kid will swing higher and higher.) The real cause was aeroelastic flutter – aerodynamic forces, not periodic wind gusts, that matched the natural frequency of the bridge. There is a startup that created a tiny wind powered generator using this principle.

Introducing Auctions in Unexpected Places

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Google didn’t become the behemoth that they are by having the best technology. They didn’t invent a faster computer to retrieve the most accurate search results in .15 seconds. They became the leader in search and online advertising by being creative – and they did it through auctions. Yes, Google is the world’s largest auction company.

Have you noticed the advertisements that come up whenever you do a common Google search? They show both on the top and side of your search results (see image) and match incredibly closely to what you are looking for. Have you ever thought about how Google decides to place the accurate ads? Behind the scenes a genius little auction is held for every search that takes place.

Advertisers place bids for what they would be willing to pay to show up next to search terms that they believe are close to their product. Google also ranks the relevance of the ad using a complex algorithm. These two pieces of data are combined to rank each potential advertisement. Then a Vickrey auction is held to determine the price each advertiser must pay and the order of the ads. I highly recommend this extremely concise explanation from Wired magazine (only 226 words).

Well that isn’t so complicated, how much money did they make with that idea? Sure one step of the process is technologically complex, but even if their relevance ranking was created in one day, it would be able to get the job done. The real genius is applying an automated auction system to online advertising, optimizing for price and relevance while allowing the advertiser a high degree of control. So that begs the question – where else can I apply an efficient auction process that will make me billions of dollars?

Of course there are a lot of reasons Google is where it is today, I don’t mean to oversimplify things. But this simple auction is a good chunk of the $24 billion in revenue they made last year.

More:

  • Descending-clock auction for electricity – Trade Electricity Like Pork Bellies
  • Terrific full Google article in the Wired magazine issue – Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability

Rethinking Clothes – Fashion and Cleanliness

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Photo: Chet Thomas

I watched a fair amount of the cartoon Doug on Nickelodeon as a kid. Doug wore the same outfit every day. In fact, he had a closet full of the exact same outfit. And the best part about this dream world – no one seamed to notice or care! *

Why is it that we change outfits entirely from one day to the next? Why is there a social stigma that you shouldn’t wear the same thing two days in a row, or even two days in the same week? I am blessed that I am not the smelly kid in the class (you know who you are, I hope) – do I have to play by the same rules as everyone else? If I put on clothes to sit in front of my computer all day, they certainly aren’t going to get dirty. Regardless, the next day I have to get out a completely new set of clothes that will once again stay perfectly clean while I sit still for 90% of the day.

I believe this is an antiquated approach – not so long ago people sweated a lot more than today. There was much more physical labor, but now we have machines that can do it at a push of a button. There was a time when clothes were made of heavy wool, but now we have incredibly breathable fabrics. There was a time when a hot day was unavoidable, but now we have air conditioning to keep our environment at a constant 72 degrees. We even have air conditioning in our cars!

If we don’t sweat as much, the clothes don’t get dirty nearly as soon, so we don’t have to wash them after every use. And yet isn’t this the norm for most articles of clothing? And if we don’t have to wash them at the end of the day, why don’t we just lie them out and wear them the next day? Assuming you are going to be in a similar environment, it doesn’t make any sense to put outfit A back into your closet, and scrounge around the next morning to come up with outfit B. Then you have the difficulty of keeping track of how many times you have worn outfit A to know when it should be washed. Alternatively, if you wore it 3 days straight, then you could just throw it straight into the wash!

I can see two main arguments against this – 1) fashion and 2) cleanliness. Some people enjoy picking out a cute new thing to wear every day to impress their coworkers. I don’t and feel I am in the majority, at least for guys. Rather than having the minority impose their will on the majority, why doesn’t the majority band together to make it socially acceptable to wear the same thing multiple days in a row? As for cleanliness, you are either washing your clothes too often because that is what you were taught to do OR you are the smelly kid. Smelly kids should continue to wash their clothes after every use.


I do remember one episode of Doug where they dealt with clothing. For some reason Doug’s characteristic green sweater vest ensemble became the hot new fashion trend. So hot in fact that the entire school showed up one day wearing it. Doug was just one of the crowd, and no one believed him that he had been wearing it for years. Then the next fashion trend came and the whole school ditched the green sweater vests – except for Doug! Everyone thought he was a dork for wearing the old trend, and no one believed him that he had been wearing it all along.

Bruce Lee – All That is Man

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It is my pleasure to introduce you to the “All That is Man” series. The concept is simple – posts dedicated to the manliest of men throughout history and share some of their amazing feats and abilities. My rationale is equally as straightforward – it’s no secret that today’s males are uber-pansies compared to the rough and rugged men of yesteryear. While I am not an advocate of returning to our manual labor roots, I think it is important to acknowledge the great feats that men have been able to accomplish.

This first installment focuses on Bruce Lee, the star of just about every classic kung fu movie worth watching. He was the quickest little dude and trained ridiculously hard to keep his body in top notch physical condition, which culminated in some absurd feats and abilities. But what really set him apart may have been his philosophy.

Quick background. Bruce was actually born in San Francisco (not China), spent his childhood in China, but returned at the age of 18 to attend the University of Washington. Along the way he became a martial arts expert and dropped out of college to teach martial arts.

Bruce Lee taught what he called “the style of no style” becuase he thought traditional martial arts were too rigid and didn’t translate into chaotic street fighting. This philosophy would later be called “Jeet Kune Do” or the “Way of the Intercepting Fist.” However, rather than opening a chain of karate schools like most martial arts experts, he decided the best way expose his ideas and philosophies was through film.

Unfortunately Bruce Lee and died at age 32 from a sensitivity to a muscle relaxant in a painkiller, just before his latest movie made him an international superstar. Who knows, if he lived longer maybe Kung Fu movies would be mainstream today, right up there with comedies and dramas. Maybe Walker Texas Ranger would have had an Asian fusion.

Strength:

  • Lee performed one-hand push-ups using only the thumb and index finger.
  • “When he could do push ups on his thumbs and push ups with 250lbs on his back, he moved on to other exercises”. -Jesse Glover
  • Lee could thrust his fingers through unopened cans of Coca-Cola. (This was when soft drinks cans were made of steel much thicker than today’s aluminum cans)
  • Lee could take in one arm a 75 lb barbell from a standing position with the barbell held flush against his chest and slowly stick his arms out locking them, holding the barbell there for 20 seconds.
  • Lee performed 50 reps of one-arm chin-ups.

Keep reading…

Genetic Inherited Trait Mapping – Would You Want to Know?

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Photo: Horia Varlan

Here’s a common quandary for you – if you could know exactly when you are going to die, would you want to find out?  For me the answer is pretty easy – no way Jose!  I don’t want to live my life neurotically counting down to my death.  But what if you draw the line a little farther back?  What if you could know the likelihood that you will have a certain disease in your lifetime?  Or even the trivial: would you like to be told some of your insignificant traits that you may otherwise never even know?

Is this even in the realm of possibility?
If you recall from the pea pod example in junior high, each gene is made up of two alleles – with each allele either being dominant or recessive. To show the recessive trait both alleles must be recessive.  But for humans it is rarely this simple.  These genes combine in incredibly complex ways to make you who you are – most characteristics are determined by more than one gene.  Even though it is incredibly complex, I think it just a matter of time until every conceivable human trait is identified – it should be possible with enough data and large enough computers crunching the numbers. (geek tangent)

Affecting your lifestyle
What would I like to know?  Areas where I could potentially take action to prevent a calamity before it strikes, rather than just worrying for worrying’s sake.  The obvious example are lifestyle diseases such as lung cancer, skin cancer, heart disease, and stroke.  Am I in the top 1% of the population for genetic risk of heart disease?  If so you better believe I would be extra careful to watch what I eat and make sure I exercise.

Keep reading…

The Opposite of Eradication – Preserving Global Agriculture Seeds

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Photo: Mari Tefre

Yesterday I posted about the process of permanently eradicating a specific disease from the face of the earth. Today is quite the opposite, how are humans able to be ensure the global survival of plant life through major catastrophes? What if a huge fire or flood ravaged all land containing asparagus – we need to make sure that even if this happens the species will not be gone forever!

Buried 400 feet into the side of a mountain, only 810 miles from the North Pole, is a bunker that stores seeds from all over the world. There are over a half million seeds being stored there at zero degrees Fahrenheit – at this temperature most seeds can survive for hundreds of years. Even if the A/C broke, the surrounding rock is only 27 degrees. If the sea level rose several hundred feet it still wouldn’t reach the bunker. Earthquakes and volcano eruptions aren’t a concern due to the vault’s position in the middle of a tectonic plate.

Ok ok, while these doomsday scenarios are certainly interesting, they are not the primary reason for the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The real reason? To protect against the loss of plant diversity. Think of dogs – even though all domestic dogs are the same species, it is obvious there is absurd diversity amongst them. If let to their own devices we would end up with all dogs being mutts.

Plants are the same way. There are potentially seeds for a specific plant that grow taller, are more resistant to cold, or taste differently just to name a few. Seed banks all over the world store backups here in case the seed lineage is accidentally misplaced or destroyed. As you can imagine preserving this biodiversity is much more important than creating a dog that can fit into a purse – one of these plants may hold the secret to curing cancer or other horrible diseases. It all comes full circle.

The Concept of Infectious Disease Eradication

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Photo: Sari Dennise

There is a big difference between eradication and elimination when it comes to diseases. Disease eradication is when the global number of cases reaches zero. Even if there is a vaccine available for a specific disease, eradication means no one will ever be in need of using that vaccine again. Elimination is not as stringently defined – it can refer getting rid of the disease in specific regions or diminishing the cases to a negligible number of unlucky and impoverished people.

There have been a total of seven global attempts to eradicate human diseases. 4 failed (hookworm, malaria, yaws, and yellow fever), 2 are ongoing (polio and guinea worm), and only 1 was successful (smallpox).

Smallpox
In the early 1950s roughly 50 million people a year contracted smallpox with a mortality rate north of 10%. Shockingly, only 30 years later the disease was declared completely eradicated.

The first vaccine for smallpox was discovered in 1796. By giving someone the similar cowpox virus, they were then immune from contracting smallpox (fun fact: the word vaccine has the Latin root vaccinus meaning of or from cows). Unfortunately this was before the advent of FedEx so a timely delivery of the vaccine all over the world was not possible. Thus, the disease persisted for another 170 years.

In the 1950s and 60s a global initiative to eradicate smallpox began. Any outbreaks were immediately quarantined and everyone who lived close by received a vaccination (I imagine it was just like the movie “Outbreak”). Why did it take over 170 years from known vaccination to complete eradication? It was as much a communication and education initiative as a medical one. Any outbreaks of smallpox had to be immediately identified and a quick response was necessary to keep it from spreading. This was simply not possible in the 1800s.

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The 27 Club – Not a Club You Want To Be a Member Of

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Photo: Feliciano Guimaraes

There have been so many rock stars who have died at age 27 that there is a club named for them – the “27 Club”. Not only did they all die at age 27, but they died under some shady circumstances.

  • Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones “drowned in a swimming pool” … or was he murdered? Ironically 27 Club members number 2 and 4 dedicated tributes to the deceased star.
  • Jimi Hendrix took way too many sleeping pills and asphyxiated on his own vomit (which contained mostly red wine).
  • Janis Joplic OD’d on heroin because her dealer gave her too potent of a stash. A good dealer always checks his potency.
  • Jim Morrison died of “heart failure” and no biopsy was preformed. Or was it another heroin overdose?
  • Kurt Cobain died of a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the face. But was he able to pull the trigger with 3 times the lethal dose of heroin in his bloodstream? If so that is an impressive tolerance.

Statistically this is an anomaly. But is this just a weird coincidence or could there be an explanation behind it? Is it plausible that successful musicians take absurd, suicidal risks at age 27, after becoming wildly popular? If that isn’t weird enough, is it true that Kurt Cobain aspired to be a member of the 27 Club as a kid? (As claimed by his sister in his biography Heavier Than Heaven.)

Open Source Development for Creating Laws – Introducing Wikilaw

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Photo: Brian Turner

A couple days ago I posted about the intriguing notion that anyone can write bills, which with a little hard work and a lot of luck can become a law.

Open Source Movement
I just started reading the book “Drive” which examines the motivation for human beings to behave the way we do. The hypothesis is that a simple cost benefit analysis is not enough to explain human behavior – there are other factors that must come into play because we do not always act in our own best interest.

An obvious example of this is the current trend of open source software. Why would anyone spend 20+ hours a week of their free time to work on open source programs? THEY AREN’T PAID FOR IT! But they do feel challenged, get the feeling of contributing to something larger than themselves, and develop their programming skills. Sometimes this is enough to convince a software developer to contribute.

A Wiki For Writing Bills
Let’s take the whole concept of Wikipedia and apply it to laws. Anyone can contribute to bills on the Wiki and therefore the whole responsibility does not rest on any one person. A mother in Ohio may work on one section, a farmer in California another, and a retired lawyer in Florida can make sure the wording is correct. By combining our efforts we can accomplish much more than individually and hopefully patch up the holes in our legal system.

This is inherently more difficult than Wikipedia – whereas Wikipedia is based on facts, Wikilaw is based on opinion. But this could be the best part about it! Your goal should be to produce bills which both Republicans and Democrats support. This can best be achieved with a bipartisan effort working together online on the same bill. Once the bill is complete, the community can vote on it – if it passes it is time to find a sponsor, if not it is back to the drawing board. Continue reading →

You Can Write Laws for the United States of America – How to Propose Bills in Congress

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Photo: Hobvias Sudoneighm

Out of all the repetitive junk we were taught in school as kids, it is pretty interesting what actually stuck in my brain. One of the things I remember learning back in the day is that anyone can write a bill for Congress. This means you, despite never running for a political office in your life, have the opportunity to write laws for the United States of America.

Writing the Bill
Once you know the law you want to impose upon your fellow Americans, you have to put it down in writing. This is the easiest part of the process, and it isn’t exactly straightforward. Bills can contain hundreds of pages of lawyer language, making them very hard to understand for those who are not well versed in it. I don’t blame the members of Congress for not reading every single bill that comes to vote.

So the first step is familiarizing yourself with how similar bills are formatted and the language they use. Take a look at OpenCongress.org and imitate what you see – don’t worry, it’s not plagiarism. It is probably a good idea to have a lawyer take a look to change wording as necessary.

Introduction to Congress
This is where it starts to get difficult. Even though you wrote the bill, it must be formally introduced by a member of Congress. So the first step after writing the bill is to convince a Congressman to propose it.

Keep reading…