My brain hurts from trying to figure this out

Fun With Creationist Logic
[Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

I saw this on Fundies Say the Darnedest Things and it’s hilarious. In a forum discussion about stellar distances and the age of the earth, one creationist wrote:

Here is a question you.

So a light year = the distance light travels in a year.

You mentioned the figure 11 million light years away.

So my question is how are we observing this light 11 million light years away now?

I’m not 11 million years old, i’m 20.

When someone pointed out that the light actually left the star 11 million years ago, the poor sap still didn’t get it:

If it takes 11 million years to travel to earth, how can i see it now? I’m only 20.

If it takes 11 million years to travel to earth then the viewer would need to be 11 million years old.

That person, presumably, has the right to vote.

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Hard to know where he got off track so badly.

New Genomics X-prize

New Genomics X Prize: Sequence 100 Genomes of 100-Year-Olds
[Via 80beats]

Insight into long life is one of the new prize’s goals.

In 2006, the Genomics X Prize competition was announced: $10 million for sequencing 100 human genomes in 10 days for $10,000 apiece, to be kicked off in 2013. The idea was to spur innovation in technology by asking the (currently) impossible, the hallmark of the X Prize Foundation.

But while sequencing has gotten cheap, it hasn’t gotten all that much faster in the last five years, and none of the eight teams who signed up have ever gotten to the point where such a short time span could be feasible. So, Archon and Medco, the two companies funding the competition, have revamped the requirements. This week they’ve announced the new, improved Genomics X prize: $10 million for sequencing 100 human genomes in 30 days—but for $1,000 apiece. (Currently, getting your genome sequenced commercially runs about $5000 at the cheapest.) The new version of the competition, which will kick off on January 3, 2013, also has clearer standards for judging: the genomes have to be 98 percent complete and have no more than one error per million nucleotides.

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$10 million is a lot but 100 genomes in 30 days will be tricky, particularly with those error rates.

But wow if they can do it.

Apple’s net income per employee leads everyone

[Crossposted at SpreadingScience]

Apple’s headcount, up 30%, still industry’s most productive
[Via Brainstorm Tech: Technology blogs, news and analysis from Fortune Magazine » Apple 2.0]

With one seventh as many employees as IBM, Apple generates 13 times more profit

In most recent quarter. Source: Google Finance, Apple Inc. Click to enlarge.

As of September, Apple (AAPL) had 60,400 full-time equivalent employees, according to the SEC Form 10-K it filed Wednesday, nearly 30% more than the 46,600 it reported in Q4 2010.

But those employees generate more profit per capita — by far — than any of Apple’s peers in the industry.

In the quarter that ended in September — not its best, mind you — the company generated sales of $28.3 billion and net income of $6.62 billion, or nearly $110,000 profit per employee.

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Amazon generated about $1500 per employee, almost 10 times less than Apple. In fact, as Apple has gotten larger, its profit per employee has increased.

Since 2008, the profits per employee have gone up almost 3-fold.

How many companies make more money per employee even as they grow? Well, Amazon, Dell and HP make the same amount per employee today as they did in 2008. Microsoft shows a little increase – maybe 20%. Not the almost 300% that Apple has.

Only Google has shown anything close to Apple and it is only up 75% per employee since 2008.

Apple really is some different kind of company. It continues to demonstrate the increasing returns that accrue to 21st Century companies. It also indicates that Apple continues to answer the questions Arthur posed in his paper Increasing Returns  and the New World of Business.

I wonder when others will begin to answer them also.

Perhaps an even better version of ‘Moves like Jagger’ using an iPad – with Jordan Rudess!

‘Moves Like Jagger’ arrangement played only on Apple iPads (with video)
[Via MacDailyNews]

MacDailyNews reader Eyal Amir (Project RnL) has shared with us a new video he just released.

It’s an arrangement of the Maroon 5 featuring Christina Aguilera hit “ ,” but played entirely on Apple iPads, using the new Jordan Rudess’ app that just hit Apple’s iTunes App Store.

The song is performed by Eyal Amir, Jordan Rudess ( ) and jazz vocalist and composer Tammy Scheffer.

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I’ve liked the Maroon 5 version as a nice pop song but ….. Jordan Rudess is my favorite synth player for one of my Top 5 bands so this is really cool.

And the comments for GEO Synthesizer are about as ecstatic as any I have seen anywhere. In fact, the comments for all of his apps are very strongly positive.

I might have to check this out.

Fun time-lapse video of Steve Jobs art

Time Lapse video of Steve Jobs white charcoal portrait
[Via Edible Apple]

An incredible time lapse video of someone creating a white charcoal portrait of Steve Jobs. The video comes courtesy of Xiaonan Sun of ThePortraitArt who has an extensive portfolio of impressive charcoal portraits that users can purchase.

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Always amazing to watch art just appear on a piece of paper.

Why Word scares me

Need help with a Word bug
[Via Doc Searls Weblog]

I need help debugging this.

The image on the left is a screenshot of Word 2011 bug effects that are standing in the path of a book am finishing. If you click on it you’ll go to a larger image with mouse-over notes explaining the problem, which I’ll detail here in slightly greater length.

While the Print view looks fine, and clicking on any text shows the correct style in the Styles toolbox, the Outline view has big problems. Lines of normal text, regardless of formatting, show up in the Outline view as Level 1. They also show up as Level 1 or 2 in the Document Map Pane sidebar, which is the pane on the left.

“The Comity of the Commons” is Heading 2. So is “Agency,” though it shows up as something between Level 2 and 3. The other items flush-left are all normal text that Word has elevated to Heading 1, even though they are not.

I use this pane to navigate around the book, which is close to 300 pages and over 80,000 words. Having so many illegitimate Heading 1′s and Heading 2′s makes navigating nearly impossible using the Document Map Pane sidebar.

I can very temporarily fix the problem by clicking on the line of text incorrectly seen by word as Heading 1 or 2, clearing the formatting, and re-formatting it if necessary. But that takes me about an hour each time this happens, and it’s a huge PITA. And then it goes back to this state anyway.

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Word all of a sudden does something unexplained and fixing it takes hours if it can be fixed at all. This seems to happen all the time.

Here we have a professional writer who works in Word as a living. Yet Word hosed his document in a way that he was never able to resolved before having to send it to the publisher.

He had spent multiple hours trying to get it fixed.

I got a call the other week about spellcheck just disappearing in Word documents. I had to spend a while tracking down that problem which just happened for no reason. The solution involved clicking a box in an obscure window where you wold never think to look for spell checking to be.

I find myself using Pages for so much of my own writing. I have not wasted my time at all racking down obscure bugs.

Apple needs it own data network to make its own smart TV

by schmilblick

Assessing the Smart TV Opportunity
[Via asymco]

There has been increasing chatter about a new TV being developed by Apple.

My opinion on the subject was summarized in the post called Tele Vision. I contend that a TV cannot be smart until the content it delivers becomes smart. The logical conclusion is that the value chain needs re-integration so that the component which is not good enough (the content) can be improved along the dimensions that users value. And it cannot be improved unless the direction it needs to go into is aligned with the direction of the disruptive innovator. I won’t repeat the theory here, but it suffices to say that whatever will change television will do so by re-defining the core product not just the tools we use to consume it.

But today I wanted to address another question: how do we value the opportunity? In a back-of-the-envelope manner, can we tell if this business is big enough to try to fix.

The answer depends a lot on the business model of the disruptive entrant. The entry could depend on software or advertising or hardware or distribution, and each would have a different valuation.

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Lots of talk recently about Apple coming out with a TV, that Jobs cracked the nut and they will be  out in 2013.

Sounds really cool getting your TV over the Internet. But some people have worried what the cable companies will do.

They provide TV and also the Internet. To a lot of people. They are not likely to just let Apple take away their TV revenue.

Asymco hit the nail on the head earlier in a post called Tele-vision. He ended that post with this observation:

So as far as having a vision of tele-vision, the answer is not to graft technology onto an archaic value network, but to build a new value network around new technology.

I’ve mentioned that Apple hates other people controlling their future. They do not like being hampered in their own goals because of the goals of other companies.

Much of their disruption in the wireless market comes from the fact they maintain control of their phones in ways no other maker does. The forward progress of the iPhone is solely determined by Apple and not Verizon, Sprint or ATT.

In fact, some of the best technology Apple has do not even need the cell networks, if WiFi is available.

So, how does Apple get around the cable companies, disrupting their model and preventing them from hurting Apple? They need to new way to deliver the Internet to people anywhere.

I think they are working on just that. Having their own wireless network will not only get them around the cell phone makers but also be able to provide the Internet to anywhere.

I’ve written that it could be something like White-fi.

Just imagine such a thing.

It would sure explain why Apple has such a large cash horde. They would need to spend that in order to create a nationwide or global network.

A network that used the same protocols in all countries. A network that would supply high speed wireless calls and high speed Internet to anyone anywhere in the world. No need for cable. No need for the wireless carriers.

I even bet they are willing to work with Microsoft and other high tech companies to make the protocols open, knowing that only a few companies are capable of providing worldwide coverage and support. Only Apple has a retail presence in so much of the world.

Sure, people could still buy an cell phone from ATT, the Internet from Comcast , a TV from Samsung and continue to pay for that luxury and complication. Or they could just buy everything from Apple – where they all just work together – and pay Apple.

That is how Apple will disrupt everything – provide a way for the Internet to be decoupled from the phone and cable companies – and connect it to the high tech comanoies.

[UPDATED} No updates for Android uses

Unlike Apple’s iOS, Android phones not getting updates
[Via AppleInsider]

While Apple rolls out iOS updates rapidly to its iOS devices three years after their release, Android phones often ship with outdated software that is rarely updated, even during the device’s original contract term.

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The chart in the post is very telling. People can load the latest iOS version on phones that are three years old. Not everything will work but it can be loaded.

There are Android phones that are less than 2 years old that are 3 Android OS versions behind and not being upgraded. The user has no ability to update the OS themselves. Those phones are still under contract yet are pretty much obsolete because their OS is so old.

Since Apple controls its iPhones, it makes sure they get uograded. But Google does not own its Androids, nor does it care to. The telecoms own them and they would rather you upgrade  the whole phone – and perhaps sign up for another 2 year contract – than make your current phone more useful.

Google does not really care about the users of its phones. They simply want the most handsets out there to look at ads. They will go along with any plan the carriers use to sell more handsets, even if that hurts the customer. Not rapidly upgrading Androids is a feature, not a bug.

But, of course, all this does is serve to fragment the Android market even more. App developers never really know which version to develop for. And many people will not buy a new phone simply to be able to play a new game.

This is one reason why people flock to the iPhone. They know they will not have a phone that is obsolete before it is even released, as some Android phones were. And that the customer controls the update cycle, not the telecoms.

Apple focusses on what the customer’s needs are. For Android, the customer’s needs get lost to the wireless carriers needs for profits.

[UPDATE: I forgot to add this great quote that really applies to all Apple does. It explains so much.  "Apple’s way of getting you to buy a new phone is to make you really happy with your current one, whereas apparently Android phone makers think they can get you to buy a new phone by making you really unhappy with your current one."

Sprint loves the data-efficiency of the iPhone. Are other carriers simply ripping us off?

Sprint says iPhone most network-efficient smartphone and “worth every penny”
[Via AppleInsider]

Sprint’s top executive said this week that Apple’s new iPhone is its most network-efficient smartphone, using some 50% less data than comparable Android handsets.

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So Sprint can maintain an unlimited data plan because the iPhone is so data efficient. Yet every other carrier got rid of their unlimited plan because the iPhone was using too much data.

Seems much more likely to me that the telecoms are simply milking the data cow for all they can get. Typical.

Apple’s slide-to-unlock patent hurts copy cats

Taiwan concerned Apple’s slide-to-unlock patent could hurt market
[Via AppleInsider]

Government officials in Taiwan have expressed concern that Apple’s recent success in obtaining a patent for the slide-to-unlock gesture on touchscreen devices could hurt competing smartphone makers.

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Give me a break.  Apple came up with a novel way to unlock a device according to the patent office.

There are other ways to unlock a phone. Copying Apple’s way should open them up to lawsuits.

Now that the patent is published, they should do what they are supposed to do ≠ find a novel way around the patent and actually innovate.

Sounds like they would rather fight court battles than come up with something new.

Why I cried at a photo

Wounded veteran improving as protesters urge strike | Reuters
[Via Reuters]

An Iraq war veteran badly wounded in clashes between protesters and police was upgraded to fair condition on Thursday morning as activists called for a general strike against the Bay Area city.

A spokeswoman for Highland General Hospital in Oakland said that former U.S. Marine Scott Olsen, 24, had been upgraded from critical to fair condition overnight.

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This image made me tear up almost immediately but I was not sure why. It did not hit me until I noticed something in the picture that made sense why I had such a strong visceral reaction to the photo.

I was raised Catholic and remember the 14 Stations of the Cross that were often represented on the walls of churches. Actually, I really only remember 3 of them because the images were so vivid to a young child – the Crucifixion, the Descent of Christ’s body from the Cross, accompanied by the Lamentation and His burial in the tomb.

Later, when I was taking art history classes in college, we studied many of the Renaissance versions of these same scenes; seems great artists ere attracted to the same three Stations of the Cross as I was. And the most amazing one for me was the painting by Rafael.

He chose to draw a scene between the last 2 stations and not of any specific one. In fact, he shows us a group of people traveling from one place – Golgotha where the Crucifixion  and Descent took place – to another place – the tomb.

It lacks some of the formal aspects of the other stations which often seem too staged for my tastes. By making this change and showing us a scene between two stages, he had some freedom to introduce some aspects I did not see in any other such representations – extreme emotion and anguish, compassion and love. The emotional impact of this painting – more than any other I remember from the class – is simply heartbreaking.

And it really does not matter that this is a religious painting. The manner in which it is constructed could apply to any death – because its impact is so strongly emotional.

All the living people in the painting but one are in various stages of grief – from nonacceptance to overwhelming despair.

Christ’s body is simply that of a dead man, nothing more. He is being held on a sheet by two commoners, as they do not have halos. They are both unable to look directly at the body.

St. John also cannot look at the body while Nicodemus can only glance at where they are going – the tomb. Christ’s mother, Mary, has fainted and none of the three women with her are looking at the body.

In fact, while eight of the nine living people in the painting are in varying degrees of grief or disbelief or sadness or despair, none can actually bear to look at the body of Christ. That is just too much to ask.

Only one – Mary Magdalene – can look on the body of the dead Christ. Only she can look directly into his dead, unseeing face.

And the look on her face is not one of sorrow, grief, despair or disbelief. It is one of tremendous love and compassion. Of all of the people in the painting, only she can bear to touch the dead flesh of Christ’s hand, which she holds in as comforting a way as seems humanly possible.

She holds dead flesh like it was still alive. Because she knows it soon will be. It is like she, of all the others, knows what is about to happen. She looks at the dead face of her Redeemer with an expression of such deep emotion that I simply cannot understand how Rafael simply painted it.

How did human hands put that emotion onto some swirls of oil paint?

The others all react like we all do in the face of death. She does not.

She sees beauty. She sees truth. She sees something bigger than herself and is overwhelming in her response.

Of them all, she is the only one who really sees that this is not a dead body; that there is something great about to happen and that she is there to witness it.

I tear up every time I see this painting. Even if you do not believe all the religious aspects, it is one of the most emotionally riveting paintings ever done. And the open emotion of Mary Magdalene over the dead body just does me in.

Okay, enough art history. What does this have to do with the Reuters’ image?

It has enough similarities to resonant with my feelings of Rafael’s work.

The people carrying a limp body, on their way from some place to some other place. Everyone is looking away from the body except one. And that one is not only looking at him with compassion but is actually the only one directly touching the limp body.

The lights almost seem halo-like. And finally, what do we see directly behind them? A cross.

The similarity in the images was apparently all it took to make me tear up when I saw the Reuters picture.

I really wonder if the photographer purposefully set it up that way – to mimic Rafael’s work. Maybe not.

And I am not trying to equate any religious or historical aspects to the modern photo. I’m just looking my emotional response to the photo’s image; no other significance.

At least for me, the visual imagery resonated with my memory of Rafael’s work on some level, I think. That explains why I am so emotionally unsettled and upset by this one photo.

Just shows the power of strong visual imagery and how the reappearance of that imagery somewhere else can still provoke a strong response.

Rafael was a genius and this photographer was able to piggy pack on that genius.

David Brin tells us how the history of “class warfare” informs us about today

Contrary Brin: “Class War” and the Lessons of History
[Via Contrary Brin]

One aspect of our re-ignited American Civil War is getting a lot of air-play. It is so-called “class war.”

That’s the tag-line ordered up by Roger Ailes. The notion: that any talk of returning to 1990s tax rates – way back when the U.S. was healthy. wealthy, vibrantly entrepreneurial and world-competitive, generating millionaires at the fastest pace in human history – is somehow akin to Robespierre chopping heads in the French Revolution’s reign of terror.

That parallel is actually rather thought-provoking! Indeed, can you hang with me for a few minutes? After setting the stage with some American history, I want to get back to the way things got out of hand during that earlier 1793 class war in France. There are some really interesting aspects I’ll bet you never knew.

But in fact, “class war” has always been with us. If you ever actually sit down to read what people wrote in times past – for example Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations, or even the Bible – then you know struggle and resentment between social castes was the normal state of human affairs for 6000 years, or much longer. Seriously, randomly choose (or “roll-up”) a decade and locale from across the last few millenia! Tell me who oppressed freedom and competitive markets in that time and place. I’ll wait.

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I find myself just wallowing in so many of David’s essays. I love the range of  his writing, the scope of his history, the richness of his prose.

And the points he makes aren’t anything to ignore. Here he ranged from Adam Smith to FDR to the French Revolution.

All to remind people what happens when oligarchs refuse to pay their fair share. And how revolutionary our own Founding Fathers were with their attempts to level wealth inequalities.

The point is that we never had the kind of violent class war that erupted in France, because our elites were smart enough to avoid it!

We have done this in the past whenever the wealthy class began to overturn our economy. The late 18the-early 19th century. The Gilded Age. The Roaring Twenties.

Will we do so after the Awful Oughts?

It is the context of the positive sum game. (Look it up!) The notion that we can get all the benefits of an enterprise-market system — using the allure of wealth to reward innovators and vigorous competition — while somehow preventing the toxic side effect of wealth… the poison called oligarchy. The same poison that ruined markets and freedom in every culture other than ours, in every other era than ours.

Every time we have worked to reduce the same sort of oligarchy that destroyed France. When we succeeded before, we often entered a time of significant economic growth.

The French Revolution occurred partially because the rich oligarchs refused to pay for the wars France had fought, much like today’s oligarchs refuse to pay for the current 10 year war.

Yet we can fix all of this with a little bit of tweaking – go back to the same tax rates as we had in the 90s, when we had the greatest economic growth of a generation; have everybody pay the same percentage of income for Social Security; re-instate Glass-Steagall.

And I do agree with Brin’s last words:

So don’t fret, Boomers. Your children will rescue America.  Not with violent class war… what are we, French? But with the kind of tweaking we saw from Washington and Lincoln and Carnegie and Teddy Roosevelt and FDR. (Three of them Republicans.) The kind that restores that flattened diamond… while continuing the miracle of competitive markets and freedom.

Mac users get more done

by br1dotcom

Forrester: ‘It’s time to repeal prohibition’ on Macs in the enterprise
[Via AppleInsider]

Mac business users have been shown to be more productive than their PC counterparts, prompting Forrester Research to encourage companies to support Apple hardware in the workplace.

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We are all HEROs –  highly empowered and resourceful operatives – according to the report.

Not only are Mac users more productive because they are less susceptible to viruses, break down less and last longer but organizations that support multiple platforms are necessarily going to be more adaptive and resilient.

They have to be in order to meet the demands of multiple platforms. And thus they will bemuch more likely to be able to deal with disruptive technology in more positive ways than those who only live in a monoculture technological world.

Being diverse is always a selective advantage in any environment, especially one changing as rapidly as ours today.

Why Google losing sight of search comes at a bad time

by AndersP

How Siri Disrupts Search
[Via Daring Fireball]

Rich Mogull, at TidBITS:

Siri doesn’t replace search, but in many cases it circumvents it by directing users straight to integrated partner services. When you ask for the nearest Indian restaurant there’s still a search taking place, but it’s through Yelp, not a generic search engine that would include Yelp plus various other results.

By skipping the search engine and going straight to a designated source there is no place to insert advertising.

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I wrote earlier about the apparent trend of Google to modify search in ways that actually make it less useful. This is a bad time for it to lose sight of its primary product.

Because Siri is about to change mobile search. 2/3rds of mobile search comes from iOS devices. But Siri reduces directed search that Google needs in order to get revenue.

In fact, Siri uses things like Yelp and thus supports their models while Google actually actively works to harm Yelp.

So Apple now has a method to reduce ad revenue that Google is used to getting and to also help Google’s competitors.

I’m thinking that Google shouldn’t aughta have ticked Steve off.

Strange Wall Street doings – Apple and Amazon

Bizzaro valuations: Amazon (P/E = 100) vs. Apple (14)
[Via Brainstorm Tech: Technology blogs, news and analysis from Fortune Magazine » Apple 2.0]

Even after Tuesday’s free-fall, Amazon’s shares cost seven times more than Apple’s

It’s never been adequately explained to me why Amazon’s (AMZN) shares are so expensive and Apple’s (AAPL) so cheap.

Both stocks were punished after reporting their most recent quarterly earnings. Apple fell $23.62 (5.6%) last week when the company came in with iPhone sales that were lower than analysts expected, reducing profit growth to 54%. Amazon fell $10.46 (4.4%) Tuesday after reporting net income down 73% and offering investors the strangest guidance I’ve ever seen:

“Operating income (loss) is expected to be between $(200) million and $250 million, or between 142% decline and 47% decline compared with fourth quarter 2010.”

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So Apple is trading at a PE ratio of 14.4 and Amazon is at 100.2. Yet one has increasing profits and the other one is headed in the other direction.

If they treated Apple like they do Amazon, Apple would be trading at about $2800.

Who says the stock Market is rational? Seems like some sort of manipulation is going on somewhere.