Category Archives: Uncategorized

cutting the bloody cord

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Okay parents and other interested parties…

Storing cord blood for the stem cells. What I have learned:

$2000 for initial collection, plus $125/year, for a total cost at age 21 of around $4600 (assuming the yearly fee remains fixed).

Estimated 1 in 2,700 chance of being useful to the child in the treatment of some illness, 1 in 1,400 chance of being useful to a family member. Even if it were useful, it is not assured that there wouldn’t be other treatments available that are just as effective. American Academy of Pediatrics cites these statistics, and says it can’t recommend storing cord blood.

Embryonic stem cells are more versatile in their use, but cord blood stem cells are less likely to be rejected by the host.

There’s a long list of diseases that are currently treatable with cord blood stem cells, though I don’t know that our family has a history of any of them.

Discuss.

Titravelme

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I watched the move Primer a couple nights ago.

As said, it was a movie custom-made for me. Time travel, stock trading, engineering… if one of the characters had done comedy improv on the side, I would have had to assume I wrote it and just forgot.

But I will admit, I was mostly lost by the end of the film. I had a vague sense of what had happened, but I was totally confused on the details. And it pains me to say it, because I consider myself fairly adept at following time travel stories. I ran the movie back and rewatched it from the point I got lost, and still couldn’t piece together exactly what was happening.

Thankfully, wikipedia came to the rescue where someone had worked out what had happened, and explained it fairly clearly.

They used my favorite time-travel convention, which is that the act of going back in time creates a new time branch splitting at the moment the time traveler from the future appears. This resolves a lot of paradox issues, and you can successfully kill yourself without dying. The writer also created a few other conventions that make for a plausible and dramatic story.

The engineering dialog was extremely good as well. It was all gobbledygook, but it was written such that they didn’t use a term in a way that didn’t make sense, or make up any words. They give you snippets of plausible technical dialog that in themselves are reasonable, but adding them all up gives you nothing but the impression that they’re really working on something real.

Back to the Future failed on both of the above accounts (fading pictures? “flux capacitor”?), and and I spent too much time really smashing those films apart several years ago, in the days before IM. Back to the Future created dramatic situations, but only by sacrificing good time travel conventions and creating plot holes large enough to drive several Deloreans through. Honestly, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure did better on the conventions, and they weren’t really even trying.

Anyway, if you enjoyed Memento, I think you’d enjoy Primer.

RoQuirks

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For some reason, Ro likes to eat his ice cream and ice cream cone separately. By which I mean, put the ice cream in a bowl, eat it, then get a cone and eat it.

Huh.

On an unrelated note, why are the people who created The Land Before Time animated dinosaur movies allowed to live? Just wondering.

The 8 Ball Knows

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A friend suggested I consult the Magic 8-Ball to help decide on a name.

So, let it be known, my daughter will be named Very Doubtful Lucas.

Which is moderately better than Don’t Count On It Lucas, but not as good as Yes! Lucas.

Come to think of it, Yes! is not a bad name1. Talk about a positive outlook.

1 When I was growing up, the next town over changed it’s name to Hamilton!, Ohio (as can attest). In answer, we liked to call our town Fairfield?, Ohio.

The Speed of Read

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inspired me to find out how fast I read.

I did a quick google search and tried this site for a trial:

http://mindbluff.com/askread2.htm

It checks how far you get into a passage during a minute of reading.

My first test was John F. Kennedy’s inaugaral address:

–You read between 350 – 400 words per minute. Well above average reading level. (The average rate is between 200 – 250 words per minute.) It is assumed that you did not skim the words nor fail to understand the meaning of what was read.

I did it again, with The Professor’s House, by Willa Cather:

You read between 350 – 400 words per minute. Well above average reading level. (The average rate is between 200 – 250 words per minute.) It is assumed that you did not skim the words nor fail to understand the meaning of what was read.

So, pretty consistent.

I also tried this site, which tests comprehension as well:

Home

That clocked me at 366 wpm, and 82% comprehension, which makes me (according to them) a “good reader.”

From that site:

Typical reading results

Measurements of speed and comprehension depend upon the text contents and upon a set of questions. Results in the table do not correspond to a specific test but give a general idea of reading efficiencies.
Screen Paper Comprehension Reader profile
100 wpm 110 wpm 50%   Insufficient
200 wpm 240 wpm 60%  Average reader
300 wpm 400 wpm 80%  Good reader
700 wpm 1000 wpm 85%  Excellent, accomplished reader

Research shows that reading is around 25% slower from a computer screen than from paper. This difference generally increases with increasing reading speed. Thus you may slightly increase your results to find your speed when readingfrom paper.

Reader profiles

Hieroglyphics
  • 110 wpm, slow reader, but you have many possibilities for improvement. FReader will provide rapid comprehension and speed increases. You will soon realize that reading can be a pleasure. FReader will give you hours of instructions and training so that you keep improving up to top level reading performances.

  • 240 wpm, oral reader. You may rapidly and significantly progress by suppressing subvocalization. FReader software is perfect for you.

  • 400 wpm, auditory reader. FReader provides several speed reading modes to pace your reading beyond this sound barrier of 400 wpm.

  • 1000 wpm, visual reader. Your reading speed is the gem of your CV. You don’t need FReader but it could certainly be useful to members of your family, who are not such accomplished readers.

Electronic Paper is Here

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I had been waiting for it, and it happened when I wasn’t paying attention.

This product is built using high-resolution e-ink, which is a technology that is basically paper coated with a special ink that can be turned on and off.

This is actually an explosive technology to my way of thinking… I’m surprised I haven’t heard more about it in the news.

Aside from creating superior displays (low power, as readable as regular paper), consider that you can create sheets of paper that can be run through a printer, and then re-run through a printer, and re-run, and so on, each time showing no evidence of the previous print. No ink! No toner! Perfect recycling!

My head spins.

More word limitations

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A while back, I wrote a post about qwerds, words that can be typed using one hand (assuming standard keyboard hand positions).

Lately, thanks to Ro, I’ve been concerned with words that can be formed using a given set of letters. Which is really just Scrabble, with fewer limitations. Namely, what letters Ro has available in is Enormous Alphabet Library.

He has:

  • A mostly complete set of magnetic plastic letters that fit into this device that sticks to the fridge; When you put a letter into the device, it says the letter and what sound it makes. Then it plays an annoying electronic version of the ABC song.
  • A couple sets of those standard plastic letters with the little magnets in them that everybody has probably seen at some point.
  • A set of wooden letters with magnetic paint on the back1.
  • A set just like above, but without the magnetic paint.
  • Wood blocks with letters on them.2
  • Small foam puzzle pieces with letter printed on them, along with Sesame Street characters.
  • Larger foam puzzle pieces with the letters cut out as separate pieces.

I’ve spent some time trying to figure out how to spell ELECTRICROCKET using as few different types of letters as possible.

I’ve been helping Ro learn to spell words using his collection, but until the innovation of the magnadoodle, we’ve been restricted to only certain words. However, the Magnadoodle allows us to make imprints using the wooden letters with magnetic paint, so we can spell anything. ANYTHING.

Well, anything that will fit on the Magnadoodle. And since Ro isn’t hung up on getting the letters in the proper order, or even in a line, we’re usually okay.

—-
This evening, Ro and I are headed off to the Lucas Family Reunion in Tennessee, where we will relax in a mountain lodge with 8 members of my father’s generation, 10 or 11 of my generation, and 7 of Ro’s generation. will be stuck in town, rabble-rousing with and .

This is my second trip flying solo with Ro on a multi-hour trip. It went so well last time, I guess I’m getting cocky.

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1 Did you know you can buy magnetic paint, and basically paint the equivalent of a refridgerator door anywhere you want? Amazing. I really feel there’s something very cool that can be done with that. Maybe just a good prank.

2 Bought, inexplicably, from the U.S. Treasury website. I tried to find the link just now and couldn’t. But at the time, the U.S. Treasury was the only place I could find them. Weird.