I heard on the radio that the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in NY acquired the @ sign for its department of architecture and design as a great example of modern design. The @ sign is of course ubiquitous today, with e-mail taking a role of ever-increasing importance as a means of communication.
The surprising news however is this is not a new symbol - it was being used since the middle ages to signify the preposition "at" while using fewer pen strokes. Venetian and Portuguese merchants in the 17th century used the symbol to signify "unit price". In the 20th century it was being used by accountants and had found its way into the teletype keyboard when it was "discovered" by Ray Tomlinson (a computer scientist) in 1971. He had been contracted by the US government and was working on what would eventually become e-mail. He used the @ symbol to make the e-mail address shorter and boosted this once-obscure symbol into modern day consciousness.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
The US Post Office is swimming in red ink.
Repeated postage price hikes over the last few years have not managed to bring a balance to the equation and it is now facing budget deficits approaching $4B.
Meanwhile, the amount of mail in the system is decreasing, as people have switched to electronic delivery of documents and are using online tools such as e-banking.
One approach being considered is to eliminate Saturday mail delivery.
I mention this because it is one of the most obvious differences when I compare my mail experiences in the US vs. say in Greece.
Eliminating Saturday mail delivery may be slightly less convenient, however it will bring the experiences of people in the US closer to those of people in other parts of the world.
It will also save a bunch of money and will actually provide the Post Office with a smaller carbon footprint.
I think I can live with that.
Repeated postage price hikes over the last few years have not managed to bring a balance to the equation and it is now facing budget deficits approaching $4B.
Meanwhile, the amount of mail in the system is decreasing, as people have switched to electronic delivery of documents and are using online tools such as e-banking.
One approach being considered is to eliminate Saturday mail delivery.
I mention this because it is one of the most obvious differences when I compare my mail experiences in the US vs. say in Greece.
Eliminating Saturday mail delivery may be slightly less convenient, however it will bring the experiences of people in the US closer to those of people in other parts of the world.
It will also save a bunch of money and will actually provide the Post Office with a smaller carbon footprint.
I think I can live with that.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Water II
Water is a strange and marvelous substance. It is an amazingly powerful solvent and scientists tell us that life on Earth is due to the existence of this simple molecule in wide abundance on this planet. We humans are made up of about 70% water and depend on water for our survival, but too much water can lead to various catastrophes, such as floods for example (see my previous post titled "Water" or today's news about the Red river flooding).
Is Global Warming real?
If so, we may see a dramatic change in the Earth's shorelines during our lifetimes, due to rising sea-levels, fueled by the melting of ice. This might also be explained as the release of many, many water molecules which were previously kept frozen in ice and "out of circulation" so to speak.
Futurists tell us that as the global population continues to grow, clean water will be in short supply at some point in the future. Water conservation efforts are under way all over the US and the days when a large, lush, dark green lawn was a highly desirable status symbol may soon be behind us (and I for one, will not complain about that).
As I take another sip of water from my glass, marveling at its clean taste, I wonder where the various water molecules in that glass of water may have been since they were created. As Lawrence Krauss describes in his book Atom:
"... It (an oxygen atom located in a water molecule) could have been in a drop of sweat dripping from Michael Jordan's nose as he leapt for a basketball in the final game of his career, or in a large wave that is about to strike land after traveling 4,000 miles through the Pacific Ocean."
It could just as easily have coursed through the veins of a famous person - or more likely, if you embrace the laws of probability - those of one of the many, many types of insects that roam this Earth.
Wherever the molecules of water may have been in the past, I hope all of us can aspire to maintain a supply of abundant, clean water for generations to come.
Is Global Warming real?
If so, we may see a dramatic change in the Earth's shorelines during our lifetimes, due to rising sea-levels, fueled by the melting of ice. This might also be explained as the release of many, many water molecules which were previously kept frozen in ice and "out of circulation" so to speak.
Futurists tell us that as the global population continues to grow, clean water will be in short supply at some point in the future. Water conservation efforts are under way all over the US and the days when a large, lush, dark green lawn was a highly desirable status symbol may soon be behind us (and I for one, will not complain about that).
As I take another sip of water from my glass, marveling at its clean taste, I wonder where the various water molecules in that glass of water may have been since they were created. As Lawrence Krauss describes in his book Atom:
"... It (an oxygen atom located in a water molecule) could have been in a drop of sweat dripping from Michael Jordan's nose as he leapt for a basketball in the final game of his career, or in a large wave that is about to strike land after traveling 4,000 miles through the Pacific Ocean."
It could just as easily have coursed through the veins of a famous person - or more likely, if you embrace the laws of probability - those of one of the many, many types of insects that roam this Earth.
Wherever the molecules of water may have been in the past, I hope all of us can aspire to maintain a supply of abundant, clean water for generations to come.
Water
The weekend came and is (almost) gone, the cold rain keeps falling, but the flooding that was widely expected seems to have spared us.
The record-breaking snowfall from the last few weeks has finally melted and the landscape is no longer a monochromatic white.
The cleanup is ongoing. In my yard today I was trudging through the cold mud, collecting the large branches that had been splintered-off the trees by the massive weight of the snow we received. I cut them into meter-long pieces and bundled them together at the curb, so the trash collectors will pick them up (if you don't make it easy for them, they may just leave them there).
Pittsburgh is, among other things, called the city of three rivers, since the Allegheny and the Monongahela meet right by downtown Pittsburgh to form the Ohio river. Well, the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers are each fed by all the snowmelt from the region and each is at - or near - flood stage. Add to this the fact that we have been experiencing a steady rainfall since Friday night, which of course adds to the water load on the rivers, and you can understand why our mayor declared a state of emergency for the city on Friday. He may, at 30 years old, be one of the youngest mayors of a major American city, however he seems to have a team of wise advisers to give him guidance.
It appears then, that the region managed to avoid any major flooding.
Many people who live in flood-prone areas will breathe a sigh of relief.
Those who spent hours preparing for a potential invasion of angry water can now stand-down.
The state of emergency should be lifted soon.
Better to have been safe than sorry they will say.
The record-breaking snowfall from the last few weeks has finally melted and the landscape is no longer a monochromatic white.
The cleanup is ongoing. In my yard today I was trudging through the cold mud, collecting the large branches that had been splintered-off the trees by the massive weight of the snow we received. I cut them into meter-long pieces and bundled them together at the curb, so the trash collectors will pick them up (if you don't make it easy for them, they may just leave them there).
Pittsburgh is, among other things, called the city of three rivers, since the Allegheny and the Monongahela meet right by downtown Pittsburgh to form the Ohio river. Well, the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers are each fed by all the snowmelt from the region and each is at - or near - flood stage. Add to this the fact that we have been experiencing a steady rainfall since Friday night, which of course adds to the water load on the rivers, and you can understand why our mayor declared a state of emergency for the city on Friday. He may, at 30 years old, be one of the youngest mayors of a major American city, however he seems to have a team of wise advisers to give him guidance.
It appears then, that the region managed to avoid any major flooding.
Many people who live in flood-prone areas will breathe a sigh of relief.
Those who spent hours preparing for a potential invasion of angry water can now stand-down.
The state of emergency should be lifted soon.
Better to have been safe than sorry they will say.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Fix It!
I came across this website called SeeClickFix that proposes a radical concept: allow people to document non-emergency problems in their community and have those problems reported to the authorities that can take care of them.
With the proliferation of camera-equipped and GPS-enabled smartphones, the concept is simple:
- download the SeeClickFix application for your smartphone
- when you see a problem, open the application, snap a picture and it is Geo-tagged and e-mailed to the appropriate city authority for the location where the picture was taken
- check the website and see how many complaints are received for the same problem and how soon it is fixed
What types of problems are people reporting?
It started with potholes in the streets - a problem we are very familiar with here in Pittsburgh after the snowplows try to clear the streets of snow - and has progressed to anything people find offensive: garbage, graffiti, damaged streetlights, etc.
This tool gives citizens a means of quickly highlighting what bothers them and it also allows city departments to rapidly get a feeling for what the citizens find most offensive. In other words it is a "win-win" situation in my mind: citizens get engaged and city planners focus their limited resources on what bothers citizens the most - what a concept!
With the proliferation of camera-equipped and GPS-enabled smartphones, the concept is simple:
- download the SeeClickFix application for your smartphone
- when you see a problem, open the application, snap a picture and it is Geo-tagged and e-mailed to the appropriate city authority for the location where the picture was taken
- check the website and see how many complaints are received for the same problem and how soon it is fixed
What types of problems are people reporting?It started with potholes in the streets - a problem we are very familiar with here in Pittsburgh after the snowplows try to clear the streets of snow - and has progressed to anything people find offensive: garbage, graffiti, damaged streetlights, etc.
This tool gives citizens a means of quickly highlighting what bothers them and it also allows city departments to rapidly get a feeling for what the citizens find most offensive. In other words it is a "win-win" situation in my mind: citizens get engaged and city planners focus their limited resources on what bothers citizens the most - what a concept!
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