seattle
sporte | August 26, 2008Last night we went to a pub to hear about some new technology for diagnostic testing. A wonderful speaker, Karen Hedine from Micronics came and told us about the work that her company is doing. She brought along a demonstration machine and passed the machine and several plastic test chambers around the pub so we could all take a look.
The technology, microfluidics, is fascinating stuff. I've written about it a little before( "From Louis Pasteur to "Lab on a chip"").
A biological sample (blood, poop, urine, saliva, a vaginal smear) is drawn into the card. Molecules move into the card via…
pontiff | July 22, 2008For those of you interested in TiddlyWiki and who happen to live in the great city of Seattle, there will be an informal meetup for TiddlyWiki enthusiasts this Saturday, June 26. For details see: TiddlyPac.
pontiff | June 27, 2008This spring/summer has been particularly cloudy in the northwest. But today it is sunny and looks to get to the pleasant high 70s. This, obviously, is due entirely to the fact that Bill Gates controls the weather and today is his last day at Microsoft. Seattle is of course, introspective on the man who certainly changed the region dramatically. Here are some of the more entertaining Gates articles.
Would you have invested? Speaking of which why isn't someone working on face recognition software to predict future business success. I mean, come on, if that picture doesn't say "creators of…
sporte | June 21, 2008Arrgh. Fremont is just crawling with Pastafarians.
Photos below the fold.
More Solstice parade pictures.
pontiff | June 20, 2008One of the most amusing things about writing a blog is that people you've never met form an impression about you from your blabberings, and then, often, when they actually meet you they are astounded that you aren't "an old grumpy guy" or whatever image they had in their mind. So, in order to confuse you even more, here are some things which I've been reading and thinking about and doing while not working on efficient quantum algorithms for the hidden subgroup problem.
Spanish Treasury to Exclude Italian Government Bonds. Could this be an indication of problems ahead for the Euro?…
sporte | April 24, 2008Bill Gates, Eric Lander, Maynard Olson, Leena Peltonen, and George Church fielded questions last night at a fascinating panel discussion on personal genomics at the University of Washington.
We were fortunate to be in the audience. I'll share some of the questions and answers, in some cases shortened and paraphrased.
The room in Kane Hall at the UW was already warm when we arrived last night (yes, I do go to evening seminars). A student handed us cards and cute little pencils for writing our questions and we sat down. We fought the impulse to write "What's the air speed velocity of a coconut-…
sporte | March 16, 2008Things move off of our entry page pretty quick sometimes. If you missed this post from Bioephemera, go take a look.
She has great pictures and a fascinating story about one Seattle's favorite places.
pontiff | February 22, 2008The man on the lift chair at Stephen's Pass asks me my occupation. Professor, I tell him, at the University of Washington.
Oh, he offers, My daughter is a fourth generation Husky. I was in the class of 1972. Or, well I would have been if I'd graduated, but I knew what I wanted to do didn't need a degree. If I'd wanted to work for IBM or Honeywell or something, then I guess it would matter.
Seattle, he continues scratching some snow from his mustache, used to be such a great city. But now, the traffic is crazy. My wife and I went on a trip and couldn't find a city more messed up than…
pontiff | February 11, 2008Mike Huckabee calls the state of Washington the Soveit Union. Of course, this is old news to anyone who has been to Fremont:
pontiff | February 8, 2008As a native Californian, my sworn enemy is the state of Texas. Thus it gives me great pleasure to see that the state of Washington is tied with Texas in venture capital funding. Soon, Seattle, will rule the world! Okay, maybe not. But I love Oren Etzioni's comment on comparing Silicon Valley to Seattle:
Mr. Etzioni says Seattle has at least one advantage over its storied counterpart in California. "People aren't distracted by too much sunshine," he said. "They sit in their offices or garages and get creative."
pontiff | January 23, 2008Fortune has put out its list of the top 100 companies to work for. The Google Monster is number one. Washington state does pretty good, as it is in a tie for fourth in the total number of companies on the list with headquarters in the state. (Per capita it comes in third, losing to Delaware and D.C.)
Looking through their article on "10 fascinating Googlers" I found Wei-Hwa Huang. Hey, he was in my class at Caltech! Indeed Wei-Hwa was responsible for one of my favorite stories about the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory. Huh?
Wei-Hwa, you see, is a world class puzzle…
sporte | December 16, 2007Maybe there's something a little bit odd about having a gingerbread construction contest to raise funds for researching juvenile diabetes.
Maybe these gingerbread houses aren't environmentally proper or particularly sustainable.
But they are impressive.
If you're in Seattle over the holidays, you can see them at the Sheraton Hotel until Jan 2nd and even help fund research on juvenile diabetes.
Some more examples are below.
pontiff | November 29, 2007From the magazine Seattle Metropolitan, comes the article "Smartest city ever: 50 ways Seattle will change the world." I hope the claim is true, but like all magazine articles from rags denoted entirely to a city, the lens is more than a little biased.
What I find interesting about Seattle, and Washington state in general, is that the state has the most engineers per capita of any state, while for the number bachelors granted in per capita of people age 18-24 the state is ranked 37 out of 50 states (and 38 out of 50 in percentage of bachelors which are in science and engineering.) While the…