Westin's Space

Once nicknamed "The Most Electrifying Man In Sports Entertainment", Duane "The Rock" Johnson has continued to wrestle his way into movies.

I'll say it: love him or hate him, Mr. Johnson is entertaining.  Queue him up.  If he plays his cards right (or at least his agents do) he could remove "Sports" from his once nickname.  Good luck, Duane, good luck.  I'm a fan.

Or watch 'Race to Witch Mountain' Trailer


Walt Disney Pictures resurrects one of their time-honored franchises with this family adventure about two children (AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig) with psychic abilities whose search for their origins gets them caught up in an adventure with a cab driver (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) and a UFO specialist (Carla Gugino).

NatureMill PRO Automatic Composter - Green/ Black

I am fascinated by alternative payment systems.  I love RFID payment systems.

Here is a photo I snapped of an RFID payment receiver on a vending machine at a Seattle hospital:

I encountered a cell phone payment system used for parking in Seattle via a company called Verrus.

Really neat idea.

Here is a photo I snapped:

I own individual stocks as part of my financial portfolio.  Because of this I receive shareholder proxy voting notices, where I am supposed to vote for members of the board, approve of an auditing company, and approve, reject, or abstain from voting for shareholder proposals.  

Usually the shareholder proposals are fascinating.  They are often aggressively progressive calls to report on environmental citizenship, human rights activities, or other community involvement.  Sometimes they are futile calls for "transparency", sometimes they are needed forms of accountability not currently exhibited. 

Regardless, most of the shares of a company are owned by large funds such as mutual funds or pension funds.  These are the "institutional owners" that make up the percentage of "institutional ownership" in the company's stock profile.  Each fund votes all of its shares the same.  In some cases a handful of institutions, and occasionally 1 owner will decide the outcome of these votes. 

I haven't done a search for this, so my outstanding question is: does it matter?

The only reasonable way I can say yes is that if anyone ever does a historical analysis of these votes they may draw conclusions.  However, if few people think as I do and just vote the boards recommendations, the data that would come of such an analysis would be inconclusive.  This is likely the case.

So, I tempted to treat proxy notices as junk email, and feeling an ache in my democratic sense of duty when I decline an opportunity to vote. 

It happened today.

No unread mail.  Hasn't happened in years. 

I love FolderShare. They updated it this week for the first time in a long time.

Check it out:

http://www.foldershare.com

I use it to synchronize and therefore backup photos between all of my PCs.

Fascinating read, about 10 minutes: http://www.inhabitat.com/2006/03/29/the-la-river/

It’s about the concrete straight-jacketed Los Angeles river.

It seems like this discussion is indicative of a larger rebellion brewing in the U.S. psyche about roads and car infrastructure being a sign of prosperity, particularly in California.

California has lead the nation in emissions regulation and concrete production: a conflict of intention that seems like it will come to a head this decade.

I want to be able to buy things with my cell phone.

This does not mean I want to surf the web and buy things on my cell phone.

It means that I don't want to carry a credit card or cash. I just want to carry my phone and use that as the equivalent of cash, and I want to be able to refill it easily, perhaps via my banks ATM.

Other countries have this together, why can't we?

Maybe we could just enable cell phones with the same technology used in American Express's ExpressPay.

Allen is in Chicago to give one of his daylong seminars, for which several hundred people will pay nearly $600 each for help putting GTD, as his method is known, into practice. Many readers of Getting Things Done apply one or two of the book's tricks, like the process Allen recommends for emptying an overstuffed email inbox, and then they stall. Some of them come to seminars like this. Allen himself is unsure if it helps. He realizes that his system can be difficult and that he's often accused of going overboard with elaborate schemes. He responds with a shrug. "Look, the workings of an automatic transmission are more complicated than a manual transmission," he says. "To simplify a complex event, you need a complex system."

Here is the show's site: http://www.fromscratchradio.com

Here is their RSS feed, if you are hip to that sort of thing.

500-pound squid found

July 11: A giant squid washes up on remote beach in Australia. Scientists say it's one of the largest ever found. MSNBC.com's Dara Brown reports.

I love this. I love it when humans put their focus on something that seemed inevitably irreversable.

I know that the logging industry was hit pretty hard from the spotted owl campaign, and this resulted in increasing the demand for foreign logging that is more environmentally damaging.  So this resurgence of U.S. species may just be primarily a result of outsourcing environmental problems, but it is something. 

My hope is that, if we can do it here, we have precedent, and we humans can replicate these approaches elsewhere.
Bald eagles coming off threatened list

A while back a friend of mine got me a pair of shoes for a gift. "Shoes" are a bit of a stretch. There are a pair of Vibram's FiveFingers. They are a real trip. The idea was to have as little on your foot as possible while still providing maximum surface protection and shock absorption.

I highly recommend them, particularly if you do a lot of boating. There are tons of articles about running in FiveFingers.

 I love these devices.  They represent temporal device art.
 
Video: pythagora switch

Sony Ericsson's new Bluetooth watch has reinvigorated my hope for Personal Area Networks (PAN).

A while back I used a MSN Direct watch.  It was overpriced and a little too clunky, and I was skeptical.  However, the interface and the data it provided and the way it provided it was surprisingly useful.  I didn't have to configure my channels, they just showed up. The watch told me the current weather, which was surprisingly useful.  And it situations where I was sitting idly, casually glancing at news headlines was incredibly useful and pleasurable.  It was also really nice to receive messages on my watch such as "I'm running a few minutes late" or "meet me at such-and-such address."  I wanted a smaller watch and I wanted my subscription to apply to multiple devices.  For example, I wanted the same information to trickle across the dashboard of my car, the face of my wall clock at home in addition to my watch, all for the same annual subscription fee.

The new Bluetooth watch from Sony Ericsson is an interesting step in a different direction.  As Engadget says, "[the watch] shows incoming caller and notifies you of new SMS messages. If receiving a call, you can tap a button to silence the phone ringer, twice to reject the call, while another button handles play/pause and track skipping on your music player."  I like this because it allows a simpler more human interaction of glancing at a wrist before deciding to maniacally dig through one's pocket or briefcase to find the cell phone or strap on the headset.

This beautiful, albeit large, device is potentially nice addition to the reasonably growing collection of devices in a typical road warrior's personal area network, which now includes:

• Cell Phone
• Headset
• Laptop
• USB thumb drive
• Charging system

This is so handy.

http://www.weemscreeksolutions.com/ 

Thanks for the link, Ramon.