I always like reading about the Westinghouse science award winners, except that now it’s called the Intel Science Talent Search. But I’ll always think of it as “the Westinghouse”. This year someone from almost my hometown (OK, the town next door) won for a project titled “Conductance Quantization in Gold Nanocontacts.” I want to hear more about the fifth place winner, who did a physics project: “Violin Bridge: Will the Stradivarius Legend Continue?” Michael Theprathan Hasper “tested the properties of 11 bridges that he made of wood, metal or other materials. He concluded that no single bridge created the best sound for each of the four violin strings.” Hmmm, maybe he’s got a website.

From Wired/Reuters: “We humans owe our unique color vision to our primate ancestors.” Scientists observed primates in Uganda and discovered that they use red and green vision to find the most nutritious leaves. Yellow/blue vision is used to choose the best fruit, but when fruits are out of season, leaves are an important source of nutrition. There are more color blind humans than monkeys, however, so we’re no longer selecting out this particular trait.

I knew something must be going on at Handspring on Monday because their lot was overflowing and cars were parked up and down the street. So I figured the rumors must’ve been true and indeed they announced their Visor Edge. I don’t like the “proving that thin is in” ad slogan, though. But I guess having to qualify your ad statements makes them lose their effectiveness. “Visor Edge, proving that thin is in for electronic items that you want to carry around with you (so if you’re overweight please don’t take this as a jab at your self esteem, OK?)” They must be quite pleased with their efforts because the place was rocking with loud music when I got out of work in the evening.

Salon has a nice interview with Norton Juster, author of “The Phantom Tollbooth”. He’s 72 now and he talks about the creation of the story and character of Milo. And he realizes that some kids these days have never seen a tollbooth, though his original intent was that it was a common experience for most kids. He also discusses how children will read the book again as they get older and find more levels of understanding. And there are adult readers who discover new things. I love that concept of finding different layers of meaning, not because a thing has changed, but because you have. As you are altered by your continued experiences, your perception changes with you. (via Robot Wisdom)

I keep asking my fiance, who has been through two economic downturns in “the valley”, what we can expect. I confess to an over-eagerness to see housing prices come down so I can harbor realistic dreams of a big kitchen, front and back yards. I have no wish to continue to see friends lose their jobs and potentially their health insurance. I would love for traffic to get better. But I don’t want the already struggling non-corporate bookstores to give up their last gasp. So, I guess I’m hoping the economy reaches a sane equilibrium. But everything depends on everything else, so the economy rises like a house of cards and falls like dominos.

Dot-com in a nutshell: First day on the job, a guy gets laid off. It’s not that interesting of a story, really, but it had that surreal ring to it. There are those who have put their heart and soul into companies. Then there are those who kinda thought they would kinda give it a try, everyone else is doing it. Sometimes you don’t get out what you put in. As my father always told me, life isn’t fair.

You know you live in Silicon Valley when… A coffee shop needs wireless ‘net access to stay competitive.

You know you live in Silicon Valley when… Your definition of a romantic evening is playing Diablo II with your S.O. — by candlelight.

You know you live in Silicon Valley when…
Your trackball doesn’t support the latest greatest operating system running with dual CPUs and when you complain about it to your S.O., he/she offers to write a new driver for you.

A posting at Larkfarm reminded me that I had wanted to do an online search for airline playing card collections. I inherited my first two sets of airline cards from a relative. One was from the old glory days of TWA and another one celebrated an anniversary of some sort for another airline. I can’t remember which one exactly because, to my dismay, someone borrowed both sets on a Girl Scout camping trip and I never saw them again. I wish I hadn’t been so careless with them, because I do consider them collector’s items. Now all I have is a pack of different TWA cards I got on my first airplane flight in 1977, when we flew from JFK (or was it LGA?) to LAX for my brother’s college graduation. Anyway, I found a site that sells old airline cards and other airline memorabilia like sets of silverware (just what you always wanted!). Here is someone’s collection of airline cards. And the National Museum of Jewish History has some interesting El Al Airlines cards with biblical figures. AirlineCollectibles.com has an article on the ins and outs of collecting airline playing cards. I’ll save my TWA pack for future generations. It may be a forgotten name one day.