Author Archives: GadgetNate

Around…Not Over

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I was pretty excited yesterday.  Deep into John Grisham’s book “The Associate” (audio book version) and I thought I had found the solution to waking up in the morning and going running.  Check out “The Exercise Excuse Combo” post to learn more.   I would have loved to reported that I sprung from my bed at 6AM, donned the headsets, pressed play, and started my exercise routine.  Instead, the alarm went off, I was in the middle of some dreams, and felt I would be better off waiting until 7AM to get up.

This is may seem like failure, but I don’t think it is.  Some people are morning people, and some people are evening people.  Many people are forced to be on one schedule or the other.  But if you have a choice, then perhaps you should choose the path of least resistance.  Perhaps it would be better to follow your nature on somethings, rather than stick to some preconceived notions on what we should be doing.

Instead of trying to exercise at 6AM, how about exercise at 8AM.  The kids are dropped off.  I haven’t pushed myself to get up against my nature.  It is still early enough in the day that I can do it consistently, and at a time when it isn’t too hot in the summer.  Plus it allows for me to start off the day with that sense of accomplishment.

Sometimes the best way to the other side of the mountain is to go around instead of forcing ourselves to go over.

The Exercise Excuse Combo

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The night before going to bed, I envision myself waking up and going on a 3 mile jog.  How great will that feel?  Finally getting in shape.  I set the alarm for 6AM.  That will give me an hour to get up, get going, and complete the 3 mile circuit that is in the heart of my subdivision.  With that empowering thought that the next morning will be the start of something great, I slip in to bed, and fall asleep.

The next morning the “BEEP BEEP BEEP” of the alarm clock jolts me awake.  I look at the time.  SIX O’CLOCK!!!  What was I thinking?!!??!!  An hour of sleep will do me soooo much more good than getting up and exercising.   I turn off the alarm, reset it for 7, and then go back to sleep.

I would love to tell you that this has happened only once.  I would love to report that one of these two thoughts has won out… that there is no difference between my evening self and my morning self.  But the truth is that there has been a continual struggle between my evening  & morning selves for how to spend the hour at 6AM.  In reality I am not getting the rest nor the exercise that either self would like.  It would be far better to just decide to sleep in and be done with it.  OR to have the discipline to get out of bed and go for a jog like my evening self would like.  Buy in the evenings I am filled with hope and enthusiasm.  And in the morning, I am not inclined to get up early.

Today, I think I have figured a way out of this cycle.  It is by combing this problem with another problem I have.

Let me tell you about my other “problem”.  It started during Thanksgiving week when my family and I drove to Ft. Davis in west Texas.  To entertain ourselves on the way there we got John Grisham’s “The Litigators” on CD.  We were enthralled and the miles slipped by.  On the way back we purchased The Racketeer which we were not able to finish on the trip.  In an attempt to finish this audio book, I wasted a lot of time lounging around the house looking for ways to look busy and have the time to listen to the book.  I would listen in the car, and would find myself missing turns, and dragging out trips to get through one more chapter.  I finally finished this audiobook.   On a recent trip to the library my wife picked up “The Associate” on audio book.  And now I am in the same problem.  Looking for any excuse to be doing something while listening to the audio book.

I had the idea of combining running and listening to the audio book.  It is OK to listen as long as I am exercising.  This morning around 10 AM I went on that 3 mile jog.  I didn’t even think to much about me exercising.  And now I think I have the solution for the 6 AM problem tomorrow morning.  I’m going to call it the Exercise Excuse Combo.

This is the idea of combining my need for an excuse to listen to an audio book while also using that time to do exercise.  I’ll let you know how it works out.

End of China’s Demographic Advantage

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In 1965, about 80% of China’s population would be considered dependent.  The vast majority of this is children.  China introduces the one child policy that reduces the number of children over the next few decades.  This frees up more people to work, frees up more resources, and allows for China to compete with the rest of the world on low labor costs.  In 2010, the decreasing “dependent” population changed direction.  That was the lowest year of the dependent population, and from here out China will see an increasing dependent population.

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However, the growth in this group comes from “elders”.  People who are retired.  People who no longer and will be unlikely to participate in the labor force again.  Here is the projection from WikiStrat.

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The “elder” population will slow China’s growth.  They will consume more resources than the previous dependents population that was made of children.  And unlike children which could be expected to start contributing to the labor pool as early as 10 years old.  The elder population are not expected to enter this pool.

The elder population while not likely to contribute to the labor pool, their experience and knowledge could drive the transition from a labor based economy to a wisdom based economy.

Cypress Coffee Club – stories from the trenchies

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Each Tuesday morning a few of us in the Home Happiness Industry get together to swap stories, share ideas, and figure out how to help people have a happy home experience.

But sometimes the stories of home unhappiness are more interesting to share.  Blake the inspector talked about issues he has had with his home builder.  He also talked about home inspections in unsafe neighborhoods where agents suggested his CHL would come in useful.

This lead into a discussion about visiting vacant homes only to find squatters in them.  And even one story of a home under construction where a dead body was found.  A murder on a property is something that has to be disclosed (if known).  And it can negatively affect home value.  Not so many people are OK with the thought of a death taking place where they live.  The house in question was in the framing stage.  The builder figuring they would loose more by finishing construction and having to report the murder, decided it was better to tear down the house and start over.

This lead to another discussion about a foundation being backwards and it was discovered in the framing stage.  builder got a crane, picked up the framed house, moved it to an adjacent lot.  Re-poured the foundation. and then put the framing back on it.

Jim also bought an interesting relationship tidbit.  Apparently in relationships where chores are split 50/50, there is a higher divorce rate.  This lead into all sorts of discussions about why that might be, and a discussion on how the method of doing chores varied between each of us and our spouse.

We had a really good time, and it was worth while!

Death by Numbers

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Numbers are powerful things.  They allow for you to compare things easily, and talk about how something is a specific amount more than something else.  We use them all over the place.  To keep track of how much we earn and spend.  To keep track of the days, hours, minutes, and seconds of our lives.  We measure how much people know or have learned using GPAs and test scores.  We can even talk about how strong or fast one person is compared to another using them.

I was over at a friends house a few weeks ago.  He told me that he stopped counting.  Stopped counting!  What does it mean?  And why would you do it?  He says that he has tried to stop using numbers in his daily life as much as possible.  Just live life.  He might be on to something.

Every experience a person might have has been packaged up, quantitatized, and monatized.  Rather it be from having a pleasant meal, to entertainment, even to have someone take that personal touch and listen to you.  All of it can be bought, sold, and traded like so many thing a bobs.

And it become infectious.  Now instead of just enjoying the vegetables from our gardens we start to think about how much these would have cost at the grocery store.  Instead of enjoying that meal made by our loved ones, we calculate how much better and cheaper it was than getting it from a restaurant.

Even a blog like this.  Perhaps it would be best to have only one person read this that I could connect with.  Instead of having hundreds of strangers that I will never interact with on any meaningful way.

Numbers are a powerful tool.  Like any tool, they should be use with great care.

Molecular Databases

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Organismal Databases

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Organismal Databases
  • International Working Group on Taxonomic Databases. International Union of Biological Sciences.
  • TreeBASE. A database of phylogenetic trees and data matrices published in the primary systematic literature.
  • Cladestore. An electronic source of data matrices from published cladograms. University of Bristol.
  • Species 2000. An effort to index the world’s known species.
  • BIOSIS. The world’s largest collection of abstracts and bibliographic references to worldwide biological and medical literature.
  • Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS). On-line list of biological names focusing on the biota of North America.
  • National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII). An electronic gateway to biological data and information maintained by federal, state, and local government agencies, private sector organizations, and other partners around the nation and the world.
  • TimeTree. A database of species divergence times. Penn State and Arizona State University.
  • WildFinder. Mapping the World’s Species. A map-driven, searchable database of more than 30,000 bird, mammal, reptile, and amphibian species worldwide. World Wildlife Fund.
  • Global Invasive Species Database. IUCN/SSC Invasive Species Specialist Group (ISSG).
  • uBio – Universal Biological Indexer and Organizer. A system of client and server tools that interact with the Taxonomic Name Server (TNS), which serves authoritative taxonomic opinions within a multi-classification framework. The Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole.
  • OBIS.   Ocean Biogeographic Information System. A globally-distributed network of systematic, ecological, and environmental information systems to communicate biological information about the ocean.
  • World Data Centre for Microorganisms. Provides a comprehensive directory of culture collections, databases on microbes and cell lines.
  • InfoNatura. Birds and mammals of Latin America. Association for Biodiversity Information in collaboration with the Natural Heritage Network.
  • Fauna Europaea. A database of all European land and fresh-water animals.
  • Kingdoms Project’s Natural Sciences Databases. Collaborative project of the Illinois State Academy of Science, the Illinois State Museum, and the Weizmann Institute of Science.
  • Man and the Biosphere Species Databases. Databases of vascular plant and vertebrate animal occurrences on the world’s biosphere reserves and other protected areas.
  • Species in Parks: Flora and Fauna Databases. Databases of vascular plant and vertebrate animal species reported to occur within lands managed by the U.S. National Park Service.
  • Threatened Animals of the World. A database maintained by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre.
  • Base de Dados Tropical (BDT). Tropical Data Base of the André Tasello Foundation, Brazil. A variety of databases providing biological information of environmental and industrial interest.
  • Biota of North America Program (BONAP). Data for all vascular plants and vertebrate species (native, naturalized, and adventive) of North America, north of Mexico.
  • MaPSTeDI. A collaborative effort between the University of Colorado Museum, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and Denver Botanic Gardens to convert separate collections into one distributed biodiversity database and research toolkit for the southern and central Rockies and adjacent plains.
  • German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures (DSMZ). An independent, non-profit organization dedicated to the acquisition, characterization and identification, preservation and distribution of Bacteria, Archaea, fungi, plasmids, phages, human and animal cell lines, plant cell cultures and plant viruses.
  • The Fossil Record 2. A near-complete listing of the diversity of life through time, compiled at the level of the family. University of Bristol.
  • The Paleobiology Database. Providing global, collection-based occurrence and taxonomic data for marine and terrestrial animals and plants of any geological age.
  • PaleoBank. A relational database for invertebrate paleontology.
  • NMITA: Neogene Marine Biota of Tropical America . An online biotic database containing images and data for taxa used in analyses of Tropical American biodiversity over the past 25 million years.
  • PaleoBase. An illustrated, relational database of invertebrate fossils for education and research. The Natural History Museum, London.
  • Brain Biodiversity Bank. National Museum of Health and Medicine, Michigan State University, University of Wisconsin.

Catalogue of Life

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Found a website that lets you drill down from Kingdom all the way to species called the Catalogue Of Life: www.catalogueoflife.org/annual-checklist/2012/browse/tree

 

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King Phillip Cried Out For Good Soup

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At least that is memory aide that I learned in high school to remember the different layers of biological taxonomy.

Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Order
Family
Genus
Species

Each species is grouped into genus by a common traits.  The genus are group into family.  Family into Order.  Order into Class.  Class into Phylum.  And finally Phylum into Kingdom.  There are different number of kingdoms depending on who you talk to, how they define life, and when they learned taxonomy.  Let’s look at six of them.

Archaebacteria, Eubacteria, Protista, Fungi, Plantae, Animalia

We humans are under the Animalia Kingdom.  Here is how it maps out for us:

Domain Eukarya

  • Kingdom Animalia
  • Phylum Chordata
  • Subphylum Vertebrata
  • Class Mammalia
  • Order Primates
  • Family Hominidae
  • Genus Homo
  • Species sapiens

What I am looking for is a website that will let me click on Animalia, and see the different Phylums.

I found a highly scientific tool at the NCBI called Taxonomy Browser.   But it only includes single celled lifeforms.  And it is targeted at the specialist.

Any ideas?