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Showing posts from August, 2011

Why aging is caused mostly by degredation and is only modulated differentially by physiological factors

In an article recently posted about a talk given by Michael Rose, an analysis is performed of his theory that aging may not be caused by acquired systemic damage over time. I give him dap for standing up for his view but I'll bethttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif my hands (my most important body parts) he's wrong. Aging must be due mostly to a cumulative degenerative process. The simple answer comes from analyzing something I am sure Michael hasn't factored into his analysis and that is the relative difference in the number of translation and transcription events (ie places where mutations can happen) that exists between a fly and a human being. When you are as short lived as a fly, with a short cycle of cell recycling it becomes easy to have physiological effects dominate the longevity of an individual if well controlled (the results Michael got by controlling diet) but over the longer term the organism still is subject to mutations that slowly build up and lead t

Google buys Motorola: Analysis

Google buys Motorola Major bold play by Larry Page and co. As explained in his letter this is a great move for giving Android a premium handset maker to showcase it's latest capabilities. It also enables Google to directly make it's own handsets, to have control over a hardware division that can cater handsets to any of the major carrier delivery protocols as well as create their own. The best part of this though is the fact that from now on Motorola instead of or in addition to HTC will be Google's go to company for create thttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhe reference models for the latest and greatest from Android (the Nexus sets) and these will tell the market where to go as they'll likely have the newest stuff first. Also, Google surely realizes the importance of leading on volume to gain market share. They used the volume play to define their main search business (to make money on ads) and they used that play again when they open sourced Android and gave it awa

A wealth of empathy in the poor and the poor empathy of the wealthy.

I came across this article recently and thought of a simple thought experiment that explains using a simple appeal to resource constraints and energy conservation why i is so. It makes perfect sense that empathy would work this way, a thought experiment in which one starts with a group and the necessity to share available resources in short supply (food,water..etc.) reveals it. Now take away one individual after another from the group while keeping the resource supply fixed, as the number of individuals goes down the necessity, nay even the *thought* of sharing reduces in scope. As the available supply of the still limited resource to the lower number of individuals actually goes UP anyway. Eventually, removing the n - (n - 1) th user leaves one person with all the resources and zero ability to even express empathy (as the resources are all theirs to hoard). Running the mental program of "I need to figure out how we will share this" when there are individuals around is do

To Keynes or not to Keynes...is no longer the question.

I was sent by a friend on Facebook to this article and started writing a response, it was getting involved so I decided to blog it instead. First, note his use of the terms "insufficient deficits" he's putting words in Krugman's mouth by equating (conflating) the idea of spending in order to boost employment and thus help kick the economy out of the duldrums with an amorphous general idea of a "deficit" which every one agrees is a bad thing from the sound of it. However, the spending of mere few billion that was done nation wide in the early 50's on the US highway program (which aided the deficit as they were spending without an immediate eye to profit) returned in the succeeding decades trillions of dollars....in fact the facilitation of the inter continental commerce industry boosted the US economy and continue to explain much of it's success in comparison to nations that do not have such a built up commerce infrastructure. "Do K

The merits of marketing by influence in the internet age.

A recent article got me to thinking about the power of networked influence in democratizing access to potential success in a service or product business. http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/02/amazons-appstore-youll-make-0-when-we-give-your-app-away-and-youll-like-it/ The relatively new mathematics of network theory has been showing this with elegant equation after the next. That it is more important who you are connected to than to how many. In this case the who is a hyper connected distribution engine like Amazon's app store, the how many comes by hierarchical association through the store for any apps hosted and given featured placement there in. Once that brand recognition is made it is as if the company and product were validated by Amazon itself, the power of that influence...granted as quoted above for 0% rev. share could be invaluable to a company just getting started. It enables the quality of the product or service on offer to forgo the need of being absolute best of class (it