Bad Bank

If you haven't listened to This American Life's coverage of the banking meltdown appropriately called Bad Bank, run, don't walk to your nearest iTunes or Web browser and give it a listen. In less than an hour, you'll understand how we got into this situation and what the main possible treatments are -- and why the government has yet to decisively chose one over the over.

Like that? I thought you would.

If you liked that show, listen to This American Life's two other great episodes about the financial crisis:

• A Giant Pool of Money
• Another Frightening Show About the Economy

If you liked all three of those, subscribe to NPR's Planet Money audio podcast. And if you just can't get enough of this stuff and want more advanced reading, try the Baseline Scenario blog.

I firmly believe that financial literacy -- or illiteracy, as the case may be -- has a role to play in this all-too-frightening debacle.

A teaser: here is a graph mentioned in Bad Bank. In this century, there have been only two years when US personal household debt has exceed the GDP. Yup, you guessed it: 1929 and 2007.

Stem cell research

President Obama is moving to lift the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

Regardless of whether you consider the embryos we use to get these so-called pluripotent stem cells are human yet, I wanted to highlight a few things which the mainstream press is not covering much -- presumably because it's easier to tell this story as a "liberal Obama vs. conservative Bush" story. (I was reading the Wall Street Journal's coverage this morning, and it seems typical.)

• New technologies are turning adult stem cells into pluripotent stem cells. Scientists have had recent successes turning adult stem cells (the ones you and I have in abundance) into pluripotent stem cells -- that is, cells which can turn into other types of cells. Pluripotency is one of the main things which got scientists excited about embryonic stem cells in the first place. (If you the Wikipedia link is a bit too dry, try this article in Nature.)
• Stem-cell therapies working today. Stem cell-based therapies are working today to treat blood problems such as leukemia. Most the media attention is focused on embryonic stem cell research which will take years to develop into effective treatments (if ever), and I thought it worthwhile to remind people that therapies based on adult and umbilical cord stem cells -- neither of which require destroying embryos -- are working today.

US News and World Report has an article by Dr. Bernadine Headey which provides some more context than the typical mass media story.

Also, update on 3/9 -- here is a CBS news story on regrowing body parts, which I learned about, of all places on Twitter via @tonyrobbins. Yes, that Tony Robbins.

Close up of the cake

The older I get, the more I appreciate the more subtle nature of cakes made by Chinese bakeries. This was a mango cake, and everything: the cake, the mousse, the fruit, and even the chocolat shavings and petals (around the edge of the cake) are 1-2 steps tamer (less sweet, less buttery, less dense) than the similar cake turned out by your typical neighborhood bakery. Yum!

Katye turns 6

Our princess turned 6 this past week. The whole gang is into giving each other -- and cakes and so forth -- bunny ears in their photos, so this is how they wanted to remember the occassion.

Interestingly, only Colin (and mommy and me, of course) really enjoyed the cake, which I got at the Sheng Kee Bakery near work. Cameron would have have been just as happy with the fruit, and Katye liked the idea of a cake better than the cake itself. I wonder if that will change as they grow older.

Wonderful short film on YouTube

I subscribe to a video podcast called The Best of YouTube, and it faithfully deposits YouTube videos onto my iPod so I can watch them when I'm traveling.

Most of the videos are what you'd expect: clips of cats pretending to be Slinkys, people sandboarding in the Sahara Desert, the world's shortest escalator, and so forth.

But on my last trip to Texas, I saw a wonderfully made short film that I just had to share. I defy you not to smile at the irrepressible hero.

Camdyn's birthday party

We were delighted to join Camdyn for her first birthday party at the Moonstar Restaurant in Daly City. It's an Asian buffet right by the Koi Palace where Fedora and I had our wedding banquet. Here's a rare pic of me and the boy by Christine Szeto. Yes, that one.

Thanks to Brad and Christine for the kind invitation.

Favorite things:

• Colin: the sushi. Colin is of the "any sushi is good sushi, even the sushi at the buffet restaurants" school.
• Katye: the face painting. As you can see, she didn't stop with just her face. Stay tuned for the photo of the panda-on-her-hand you can't see in the picture below.
• Cameron
• The playing (had to explain that there was not much playing at the restaurant)
• The chips (had to explain those came from church the nigh before)
• The french fries and chicken nuggets (ah ha: he did actually have these at the restaurant, but I have to point out this was an Asian buffet)
  

It was great to see some folks we haven't seen in a while, including Brian and Christine, Roland and his family, and Anson and Lil.

Here is the promised panda painting on Katye's hand. Oh, and a shout out to Wilson for gifting me his old 50mm lens from his film camera days. Since he's switched to the Canon DSLR, I was the lucky recipient of an awesome lens. Thanks, Wilson. I've never had this fast a lens before (geeky photo word for "wide aperture" so you can do these arty blurry background shots):

Finally, we had never been to the Moonstar Restaurant in Daly City before. It's definitely a step up from the Todai's, and sports a few things you don't see at your typical Asian buffet:

• The melted chocolate fountain (though you can see this at the U-Buffet in Belmont, formerly Indulge Buffet -- alas, this place has gone downhill since the name change)
• The cotton candy machine (though this wasn't actually churning out cotton candy at lunchtime)
• A real ice cream bar, including strawberry, mango, and a gray-colored-but-very-tasty sesame along with your choice of toppings such as cookie bits and sprinkles
  
• Fried American fast food, including waffle fries and chicken nuggets

Gotta love the multicultural vibe of the Bay Area.

Oh, almost forgot: the rest of the pics are on Smugmug.

Lake Tahoe

Our friends Brad and Christine kindly hosted us at their parents' place in Tahoe. The kids had such a good time in the snow that Colin declared this morning that he was moving to Tahoe -- or Alaska -- when he grew up. And Cameron had his first experience trying to taste the falling snow.

We got to see a lot of snow. Mostly we spent the days having snowball fights, sledding, and trying to build snowmen. We had planned to take skiing lessons with the kids, but it was snowing too hard for that.

Given that the drives up and back were challenging, the relaxed pace of cabin life was the perfect counterbalance.

So: thanks to Brad and Christine and all the other families who made this the first ski week vacation where we actually saw snow.

Next year, we'll have to try and get everyone in the group picture. Though I have to say, it was enough of a challenge getting the partial picture above. :-)

More pics at Picasa Web Albums.

First weeks with Windows 7

I've been running the Windows 7 Beta at home now on an old Dell desktop and Dell laptop. I must say I am impressed with how stable and snappy the software is. Put that side-by-side with my mostly positive experience with my HP MediaSmart server running Microsoft Home Server (which I just installed for my parents), and that's two kudos for Microsoft. Is the world coming to an end?  (Well, yes, but that's another topic for another time.)

I don't have much to add that the blogosphere hasn't already said about Windows 7. But here's my personal experience after using it for about 2 weeks:

• Windows 7 is really Vista Service Pack 2, and it will be a travesty if Microsoft is going to make people fork out for an upgrade.
• Windows 7 is Vista as it should have been: compatible with a wide range of devices, snappy, and stable. Particularly impressive are boot time, appliation launch time, standby and resume times -- all the things you want to be speedy since you do them so often.
• The Control Panel has gotten incrementally better. Vista was a big step forward, and Windows 7 advances the ease of use.
  
• There are some nice UI touches which show that the design team in Redmond hasn't fallen asleep at the wheel: the ribbon makes it into Wordpad and Paint, the taskbar has been nicely refreshed (mostly ripped off from the Mac OS X dock with some nice preview effects), there are some nice animated effects throughout which improve the fit-and-finish of the system, and the activation area in the bottom right corner of the taskbar masks most of the incessant "approve me", "no, approve me", "no pay attention to me" dialogs in Vista.
• But the usability biggest improvement, IMO, is around windowing behavior. Favorite example: drag a window to the left or right edge, and the window sizes itself to take up half the screen. Great for side by side comparisons on wide screen monitors, now the default for most configurations. Also great for throwing two Windows Explorer windows up to move stuff between folders. (Though why neither Apple nor Microsoft has solved the "make it easier to copy stuff between folders without two Finder or Explorer windows up" problem is beyond me.)

My heretical bottom line: if Windows 7 were available at the time I bought my Mac, I might not have switched. I'm not saying I regret my switch; it's just that in a lot of ways, Windows 7 is "good enough" compared to the gold standard Mac OS X where Vista wasn't even close.

I also agree with the bloggers who are saying this is going to raise the bar on what's needed from Linux distributions to entice more people over to the Linux camp. Ubuntu 8.10 feels stale by comparison. (Yeah, I said it, and I'm sure to get flamed for it.)

BTW, before you make the switch to run the beta on your main machines, be aware that it has interoperability problems with the Mac that Vista didn't. And some software won't work (I've had trouble with some freeware which makes ISO files look like CDs or DVDs). So proceed with caution.