At $4million for a 30sec advertisement the Super Bowl is obviously a very special marketing opportunity. Millions of viewers, everyone sitting at home eating wings and wanting to buy shit. Well, once the Denver Broncos fall 35 points behind (even earlier?) what’s a 30second advert worth? I’d guess…a lot less!

A pack of six grey wolves has taken up residence in the grounds of UNM as of late 2013. Spreading themselves around the campus, rather than instill fear into the faculty, staff and students, they infuse the campus with the spirit of the Lobo. These new lobos join the original three found on the southern edge of the main campus. Here’s a photo of the wolf outside the southeast door of Scholes Hall.

Here’s a map of the locations of all nine wolf statues on main campus (click to enlarge). Red dots show new wolves, purple dots the earlier statues.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Click here to see the complete report.

Looking southwest just east of Deming, New Mexico at the Florida Mountains.

This week’s The Economist leader is about Google Glass and the ubiquitous camera. (Link)
A fascinating read, and a challenging topic. With billions (!) of cameras in cell phones, video cameras on motorcycle helmets, surveillance cameras in stores and street corners, cameras on the dashes of police cars and the lapels of policemen, it’s probably hard to go a day without having your photo taken, openly or surreptitiously. The article talks about wearable imaging technology, but the deeper issues center on privacy and security. I can protect myself by photographing the damage to my car, or videoing an altercation at the football match, but would I want to be photographed or videotaped without my consent? And what am I consenting to? What if the video ends up on YouTube? That I might post a dumb photo of myself on Instagram (and maybe sen images through Snapchat that are not so ephemeral afterall,) is one thing, but what about images containing me that others post, and share? Remember the Slate writer’s (in)famous claim that there were no photos of her daughter on the Internet, only to be proven wrong by those with nothing better to do?
The world is a scary place, and we have to be careful, vigilant even. How we manage our own images is a challenge, only to know that these days those are probably outnumbered by the images that we appear in without our knowing, or consenting.
Back to the old rule: if you wouldn’t want it to appear on the front page of the newspaper, then don’t say it, or do it!

Image of Barad Dur from Wikipedia entry, LOR films.

The 34th America’s Cup is over, and after a miracle occurred, Oracle Team USA won!

I give it to the Oracle team, they recovered from the shock of Team New Zealand’s (TNZ) initial skill and speed, and climbed the steep learning curve like a monkey! They were clearly the faster boat by the last week of the competition. It was TNZ’s to lose, and Oracle’s to win, and they did it.

(Here’s a great WSJ article about the series with lots of tech. From late Feb. 2014)

While I was watching the event, I got quite interested in how the boats sail so fast, especially how they “foil” (short for hydrofoil.) But before I learned about that, I had to figure out how boats sail against the wind, and faster than the wind.

How do boats (any and all) sail upwind? I saw a video during the AC34 races where a guy explained it like pinching a wedge shaped object between your fingers. The sail/wing produces a force trying to push the boat over (sort of sideways) but the keel (and did you see how small the keels (rudders and daggerboards on the cats) were) which is slicing through the water having a substantially greater coefficient of friction than air, is exerting an equal force on the boat to make it stand upright. Two squeezing forces. Put a marble between your finger and thumb and squeeze together–the marble launches away. So does the hull of the boat. It accelerates forward. Consider now the forces that must be exerted on the boat to be able to make it move forward at 50mph!

As for foiling, the dagger board is J shaped and so there’s a horizontal surface under the water that produces lift as the boat moves forward. The crew can control the angle of the board to lift the boat (going straight the force is about 7 tons on a piece of carbon fiber the size of a surfboard) out of the water. Less drag from the hull…go faster, produce more lift…oops but not too much! Spithill, Barker and the crews made it look easy, but they must be on the edge every second.

For those of you who never believed I had been to Carhenge, here’s an article about the gifting of the unique landmark to the city of Alliance, Nebraska. I was there many years ago, and I don’t remember the cars being painted all one color (grey) but it was a somewhat mystical place…(like Stonehenge.)

http://www.autoblog.com/2013/09/03/carhenge-monument-becomes-property-alliance-ne-video/

Check out this very informative flyer from Maria Granone (Executive Director of the New Mexico chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association, NECA — and my dear wife!) reflecting on the proper, and improper, use of texting in work and business environments.  I hope you find it as helpful as I did!

Texting for Success!

I have strong feelings about distracted driving. I hate it. Every time I drive my car to and from work, I think about the distracted driver next to me, or behind me, or in front of me, about to do something really bad because they are not paying attention–100% attention–to driving. Driving near me.

Research findings indicate that driving while on a cell phone, or worse, while texting, is equivalent in outcome to driving drunk. Distracted driving might be worse, because many people think that having a cell phone conversation while driving is no different than talking to a passenger while driving, so they do it, all the time. Drunk drivers are vastly outnumbered by distracted drivers. But both are arrogant and selfish.

Famous film maker Werner Herzog was asked by ATT to make a short film about texting while driving. It’s compelling by any measure. Watch it. Please.