Kevin Warnock

Mock Trial finalist teams gather for a group shot after their trial on February 23, 2012. The competing teams were from Lowell High School and School of the Arts. Photo includes: Marcus Wong, Negative Nancy, Havel Weidner, Malia Bow, Nico Scoliere, Cristina Rey,Elizabeth Levinson, Lena Gankin and others.

I have had a busy couple of evenings. Yesterday evening, February 22, 2012, I was at the Mentor Mixer for The Berkeley Startup Competition, which I have been involved with for years. The mixer was held at the offices of Morrison & Foerster at 425 Market Street in San Francisco, California USA. I am a mentor to one of the semi final teams this year, and I was at the mixer to meet my team for the first time.

Golden Gate University, 536 Mission Street, San Francisco, California, February 23, 2012. The finals for the 2012 San Francisco Mock Trials were held in room 2203.

On my way home on the Muni Metro, I had the good fortune to meet a very impressive young woman named Devon Ivie. She complimented me on my favorite red velvet jacket. We got to talking and it turns out we attended high school in San Francisco at the same place. It turns out she’s still in high school, though she graduates in May. Ivie told me about her involvement with San Francisco Mock Trial, which is an educational project where students pretend to be attorneys during a fake trial they conduct. She told me the public finals were to be held today, February 23, 2012, just steps from where we both boarded the subway train.

Team coaches for San Francisco Mock Trial 2012 finals held at Golden Gate University February 23, 2012. Left: Eleanor Hicks, Right: Courtney Shaw Huizar.

Devon Ivie playing prosecution attorney talks to student playing defense attorney at the San Francisco Mock Trial finals, February 23, 2012.

I did a Google search when I got home and found the Facebook page for the Mock Trial and asked a question there as to the exact room number where the event would be taking place at Golden Gate University, which teaches law among other subjects.

I received an answer so I decided to attend as a blogger, with the intention of covering the trial as a reporter of sorts.

Moderator for San Francisco Mock Trial 2012 finals held at Golden Gate University February 23, 2012

I brought my Canon 5D Mark II camera with a 135mm telephoto lens, which I used to capture stills and video clips. Tonight after the trial concluded I selected the still photographs you see here. I uploaded to this blog the full resolution 21 megapixels shots and added captions, which took hours. Since it’s late, I don’t have the energy to write a proper article about the trial right now. But I wanted to get the pictures posted tonight so that both teams would be able to see them tomorrow, a Friday.

Both teams talk after the trial. Picture includes: Clifford Yin, Marcus Wong, Negative Nancy, Havel Weidner, Malia Bow, Nico Scolieri, Cristina Rey, Elizabeth Levinson and others. San Francisco Mock Trial finals, February 23, 2012.

I don’t randomly attend events strangers on the train tell me about. I was compelled to attend this event because when I went to high school, the school I attended was named McAteer High School. McAteer was a deplorable educational institution that was so bad the city of San Francisco eventually shut it down. The campus reopened later as The School of the Arts, or SOTA. Devon Ivie is a student at SOTA. She was an attorney for the prosecution in a murder trial at the mock trial tonight. She was outstanding, as were her fellow attorneys.

Witness sworn in by bailiff during San Francisco Mock Trial finals, February 23, 2012.

Ivie told me SOTA was competing in the city wide Mock Trial finals against Lowell High School, which is generally considered to be the best public high school in San Francisco. I was and remain impressed.

Student playing witness demonstrates to Cristina Rey playing attorney for the prosecution how victim was stabbed to death. Mock Trials final in San Francisco, February 23, 2012.

I attended the Mock Trial because I wanted to see SOTA students in action, to witness first hand how a dreadful school can be turned around into a place from where winning teams regularly emerge.

Malia Bow playing witness explains a trial exhibit to Devon Ivie playing prosecution attorney. San Francisco Mock Trial 2012 finals, February 23, 2012.

I had a fantastic evening at Mock Trial tonight. I met a teacher from Lowell and spoke with him for 20 minutes about the state of the education system in the United States. I met two additional SOTA students, including one on the subway coming to the event.

I got to meet one of the coaches for the SOTA team and I got to say hello to my new friend Devon Ivie, shown here in the 4th picture from the top of this post.

Marcus Wong, playing a police officer, is questioned by student playing attorney for the defense at San Francisco Mock Trial finals 2012, February 23, 2012

Within the next few days I hope to be able to write a proper article about tonight. Please subscribe to my blog to keep up to date with this and other stories I write. I am on Facebook, so please friend me there. My status updates frequently provide quick summaries and links to my blog, so friending me is a quick way to stay abreast of my blog without needing to visit it directly.

Marcus Wong, playing a police officer, explains exhibit to Havel Weidner, playing attorney for the prosecution, at San Francisco Mock Trial 2012 finals, February 23, 2012.

I posted these pictures to an album on Facebook. If you know people in these pictures and are on Facebook, please visit my album and tag the people so I can update the captions on these pictures. Thanks!

The judge for the San Francisco Mock Trial 2012 finals, February 23, 2012, Golden Gate University.

[Note: These pictures were tagged on Facebook after I posted them there. The pictures are publicly viewable on Facebook, so I copied the names of the tagged individuals to the captions underneath these pictures today, February 25, 2012. If you are identified on this blog post and prefer to have your last name removed, send me a message and I will edit this post. This post is not meant to invade your privacy. I would be thrilled if it helps you get into college or get a great job.]

Hippie guitarists 2010 sidewalk chalk Flood Grand Rapids June 13, 2010. Photo by Flickr user stevendepolo. Commercial use permitted.

How to date a hippy chick is a funny blog post I discovered the other day when I was trying to figure out how I am going to get a group of people together to go on a road trip with me in my bus conversion.

I hope to travel around California for a month or longer this year, and I definitely do not want to go on the road alone. I did that when I drove my bus conversion to New York City, New York from San Francisco, California in 2002. My girlfriend at the time, Marisha Pecci, couldn’t go with me because she was working full time. Even though I had an Internet connection, via satellite, on my bus conversion, life on the road alone was lonely and boring.

I am 100% certain that I can find 2 or 3 people to go with me, provided I am open to traveling with people outside my normal circle of friends.

I am 100% open to broadening my circle of friends. I have made so many new friends simply by renting out my extra bedrooms in my four bedroom San Francisco house.

When I think about the kind of person that can just take off for a month and might want to live in a bus, my mind drifted over to Haight Street and its hippies.

Hippy couple. Photo by Flickr user Emi PhotoArt.

The hippies I see lounging on Haight Street, which is walking distance from my house, appear to have time for such trips, and they are likely to think my bus conversion is the coolest thing they’ve ever seen with wheels.

There will be four bunk beds and the master bedroom with a full size bed for me, so technically I have room for six including myself if I can find a girlfriend in time. I’m not sure that six is the right number though, as the water supply will run out in mere days with that many people taking showers. But water may be found at every Flying J fuel station, for free, so I am not going to reduce the number if I identify five compatible souls.

It will be an adventure to remember.

The Green Tortoise adventure travel company I believe packs dozens of people on board their buses, and there are many more bunks on their vehicles. Having six people on a 40 foot bus would viewed as the height of luxury by Green Tortoise customers.

If you read Tyler O’Donnnell’s How to date a hippy chick post, you’ll see O’Donnell specifically requires that one own a bus! So I am already part way there should I decide to date a hippy chick. Yes, I probably come across as a serious business person on this blog, but I have more in common with hippies in general than you might guess. I used to be a punk rocker when I was younger, and that experience was formative.

O’Donnell first point from his presumably somewhat tongue-in-cheek blog post:

“Become an artist. No hippy chick is going to get with you if you are a “conformist” suit with a job that involves numbers. Hippies hate numbers! From what I can tell, hippy girls thrive on things that appear unique. I would recommend getting your brain into one or all of the following artistic mediums: drawing, painting, feces smearing, writing or photography.

Other things to keep in mind?

Educate yourself on festivals like burning man and make your own clothes. You might also want to consider gaging your ears. Numerous studies show fornication rates go up drastically after getting this upgrade. It is also a good idea to get tight jeans and then cut them off at the knees…. keep in mind that although you may feel ridiculous, it is imperative to hold yourself with an aura of prestige and superiority. Even if you really aren’t better than anyone else, you must deep down believe you are. This attitude will fuel long conversations with hippy girls about how ignorant everyone else is.”

I am a current fan of the tiny house movement, which I suspect lots of hippies identify with since a central course of action in the tiny house movement is to live in smaller homes to avoid the all consuming work needed to support life in a large McMansion style house.

In essence, I already live in a tiny house since I share my 2,000 square foot home with five other people. That’s just 333 square feet per person.

Life is good.

Fabric for sale at Zimman's of Lynn, Massachusetts, USA. Picture from http://nshoremag.com/zimmans-of-lynn/

The last time I worked for others, I worked for Jeff Zimman, Susan Philpot and Hank Barry.

I was at Cooley, LLP, a powerhouse law firm in Silicon Valley.

Zimman chaired the Document Automation Committee at Cooley, the entity to which I reported in my role as Computer Aided Lawyering Project Leader.

Jeff Zimman is currently the Chair of Posit Science, Inc., which produces software to help build and maintain cognitive function. Listeners to KQED public radio in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live, are familiar with Posit Science because this software is always one of the gifts one may select if one becomes a financial sponsor of that radio station. I love KQED, by the way, and I listen to it almost every day. You may sponsor KQED online at this link.

Even though I have known Zimman for a majority of my professional life, I know little about him as a person. I know the basics – that he’s married to architect Ken Ruebush, the brother of my friend Susan Ruebush. I know Jeff Zimman used to be an investment banker at Lazard before co-founding Posit Science. I know Jeff Zimman used to be a newspaper reporter before he went to law school.

Thanks to Facebook, a currently well known social networking website based in Silicon Valley, I now know something new about Jeff Zimman.

Jeff Zimman’s grandfather Morris Zimman 103 years ago founded a treasure of a retail store named Zimman’s. This store is so lush, sumptuous and glorious that articles have been written about it. Gushing articles so colorful that they make one want to make a special trip to Zimman’s just wander the isles and touch the products.

What does Zimman’s sell? Here’s how their website explains it:

“Zimman’s offers one of the largest selections of decorative fabrics and passementerie, combined with a wonderful assortment of premium furnishings, exquisite accessories, lighting, rugs and custom products.

Located in Lynn, Massachusetts, Zimman’s is the country’s leading fine fabric, furniture, lighting and decorative accessories destination.”

Before today, I had never heard the word passementerie. This is what WikipediA has to say initially about passementerie:

“Passementerie or passementarie is the art of making elaborate trimmings or edgings (in French, passements) of applied braid, gold or silver cord, embroidery, colored silk, or beads for clothing or furnishings.

Styles of passementerie include the tassel, fringes (applied, as opposed to integral), ornamental cords, galloons, pompons, rosettes, and gimps as other forms. Tassels, pompons, and rosettes are point ornaments, and the others are linear ornaments.”

Zimman’s sells fabric.

Perhaps the nicest fabric I have ever seen — have a look at the photograph above.

The only store I can compare it to in the Bay Area is Britex Fabrics. But Britex is a premium priced emporium located in costly Union Square retail space. Prices at Britex are sky high such that it’s a turnoff to even browse.

Zimman’s by choice is located next to a 99-cent discount store, so their rent is affordable. The savings are passed on to customers, which results in Zimman’s being both affordable and magical at the same time.

It’s as if Neiman Marcus moved into a Costco and reused the same shelving to sells its luxury goods. Prices could drop dramatically if they didn’t have to support the exceptionally luxurious stores that they’re famous for.

Michael Zimman, current owner of Zimman's

Here’s what Michael Zimman, Jeff Zimman’s brother, has to say about the store he now rus:

“It’s an unlikely spot for this type of business to evolve,” agrees owner Michael Zimman, grandson of the store’s founder, Morris Zimman. “But it works for us. You need a lot of space, which we have, and we’ve been doing it for 103 years, so we’ve developed a broad reputation.”

Jeanne OBrien Coffey writes:

“With arguably the largest selection of textiles on the East Coast, if not in the country, and a carefully curated array of furniture and decorative items, Zimman’s has become a destination business, surviving the changing landscape of retail by smart specialization and unbeatable prices.

Stepping into Zimman’s can be a daunting proposition. With about 40,000 square feet—nearly an acre—of shopping spread over three floors, some customers, especially those seeking textiles, may not know where to start. After all, Zimman’s has at least 25,000 bolts of fabric in house—but who’s counting? “It might be 50,000. It might be 100,000. We don’t stop to count,” Michael Zimman says. “But that’s part of what makes us unique. We’re for people who want to step back into the way things were and have an experience of shopping in an emporium, putting their hands on textiles and furniture… It’s a throwback, and people really love it.””

I do wonder after reading Coffey’s article if Jeff Zimman also spent a lot of time at Zimman’s while he was growing up, like his brother Michael did. Coffey writes:

“Zimman’s dedication to the old ways has deep roots; Michael learned the business at his grandfather Morris Zimman’s knee. Morris opened the store in 1909, and Michael says he cannot remember a time when he wasn’t involved in the business. In fact, if he wanted to see his father, who worked from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. six days a week, he had to go to the store. While in the second grade, Michael would take the bus from the family’s home in Marblehead to swim at the Boys’ Club on Lynn Commons. After swimming, Zimman would wend his way through back alleys and residential neighborhoods in the waning afternoon light to get to his father’s store for a ride home.”

It is highly unusual for a lawyer to found a company. Jeff Zimman is certainly an entrepreneur. Posit Science is not an easy kind of company to start. They raised tens of millions of dollars in venture capital. They have world renowned scientists like Michael M. Merzenich, PhD on the team (see Merzenich’s extensive WikiPediA entry here). What Jeff Zimman has accomplished makes my head spin compared to what I have done in the software field.

I suspect that it is extremely likely that Jeff Zimman was profoundly influenced by his grandfather Morris Zimman, the founder of Zimman’s. Watching his grandfather build and operate a successful business had to help inspire him to leave the relative tranquility of lawyering and banking to become a startup founder. I run into Zimman only about yearly, but I will ask him about this connection the next time I see him.

Finally, a fun fact near to my heart — Zimman’s used to advertise on the sides of city transit buses. There is an animated graphic that plays as soon as you arrive at the Zimman’s website that shows the bus ‘driving’ from right to left across the top of the website. I was able to capture the bus in a screen shot after a few tries with Snag It screen capture software. Here is the result. As my readers know, I am a huge fan of buses, and I own a bus even larger than the one below, although now it’s a motorhome.

Zimman's home page with bus. Graphic from http://zimmans.com

John Fairfax with his Brittania row boat that he crossed the Atlantic Ocean in by himself in 1969. Fairfax was the first known person to accomplish this feat. He died February 8, 2012.

John Fairfax died February 8, 2012. I had never heard of Fairfax until today, when Reddit featured a link to his obituary in The New York Times newspaper entitled John Fairfax rowed across oceans.

Fairfax was the first known person to row a boat by themselves across the Atlantic Ocean. He accomplished this impressive feat in 1969.

In 1971 and 1972 he rowed across the Pacific Ocean with his girlfriend, Sylvia Cook. They became the first known pair to row across that ocean.

The obituary for Fairfax is colorfully written and entertaining. John Fairfax was quite an adventurer according to Brent Lang writing for The Wrap. Lang writes that Hollywood should make a movie about John Fairfax.

I’m impressed Fairfax was able to convince his girlfriend to row across an ocean in a rowboat. That gives me hope that I’ll be able to convince a woman to travel the world with me in my eco bus conversion, like my Facebook friend Herman Zapp is doing in his 1928 automobile.

Takagi brand tankless water heater

On my bus conversion I plan to have two propane water heaters. These will be low flow on demand models that can heat up to 1.6 gallons per minute. That’s plenty in a vehicle where water should be carefully conserved.

There are two main styles of on demand water heaters in this low flow category.

The first style is vented to the outside via a chimney, just like most on demand and tank style gas water heaters.

The second style, so called vent free, is not vented to the outside. This means all the combustion gasses stay inside, just like when you use an unvented gas fireplace or a Mr. Heater Buddy space heater.

The vent free propane water heaters cost slightly more than conventional vented on demand water heaters. Presumably the extra expense is to pay for the safety features not found on the vented models. The ventfree water heaters have a low oxygen sensor that will shut off the gas flow if there is insufficient oxygen for proper combustion. Improper combustion can produce more deadly carbon monoxide gas, which can kill you if it builds in concentration.

I am happy to pay more for safety. I already have a carbon monoxide detector on board since I use a Mr. Heater Buddy heater while I continue the build out of the interior. That heater also has a low oxygen sensor like the unvented water heater.

About a week ago I had what I think is a bright idea:

Install both vented and unvented water heaters routinely in all buildings that offer hot water to their users.

The reason this is a good idea is that both types of water heaters transfer only a portion of the heat they produce to the water passing through them. The rest of the heat either goes up the chimney or into the room depending on if the heater is vented or vent free.

When it’s cold enough outside that heat is required indoors, then it would be wise to use the vent free on demand water heater. Part of the heat will heat the water, and all the remaining heat will be deposited into the living quarters with the same 99%+ efficiency as if the gas were burned in an vent free fireplace.

When it’s warm enough outside that air conditioning is required indoors, then it would be wise to use the vented on demand water heater. Part of the heat will heat the water, and most of the rest of the heat will be sent up the chimney and out of the air conditioned space, saving electricity that would otherwise be needed to remove the surplus heat from a vent free water heater.

This could be complicated to set up and control, but not if one does the following small amount of extra work.

Run separate hot water lines from each water heater to the fixtures. Under the counter where the faucet valves are, install a three way valve before the hot water faucet valve.

Buy two faucets, and make sure they are the kind where you drill three holes in the counter top and mount three separate parts into their respective holes. Such faucets are called widespread faucets.

You’ll want two faucets because you will need nice looking matching knobs for my system. You’ll need to modify the second hot water valve and handle so that the part that’s above the counter line is unchanged, but the part that’s below the counter line will be mated to the three way valve I specified above.

This extra knob will control which on demand water heater is used when you turn on the hot water. If you set the three way valve to position A, then the vented water heater will be used and the vent free heater will stay off. If you set the three valve to position B, then the vented water heater will stay off and the vent free heater will be used.

If you need a greater amount of hot water, you could put the three way valve in its middle position, which would cause both water heaters to be used simultaneously.

This proposed system gives built in redundancy in case one heater fails.

Such a system would work for houses and offices as well, with a big benefit for water savings. Vent free water heaters only deliver 1.6 gallons of water per minute, so this would limit how much hot water a user can waste. If users insist on mimicing the flow of a normal tank style water heater, more than one 1.6 gallon per minute vent free water heater could be installed in parallel such that they would all start when the hot water faucet is turned on. That is provided code permits this, of course.

Both styles of water heater are available in propane and natural gas versions, so what I suggest here can be applied to all manner of installations, providing of course that building codes where you are permit such a system. Here’s a natural gas traditionally vented model that at the time of this writing sells for USD $175.99.

I care about such efficiency because I am building my bus conversion to be a model of efficiency. For example, I am installing triple pane windows with steel insulated window shades, for a total of 5 unbroken surfaces separating the indoors from the outside when the shades are drawn at night. I am also installing 8 inches of foam insulation on the roof, for an R rating of almost 60. I am hoping to be able to heat and cool the interior just with solar energy. I will have the propane water heaters on board for use when it’s too cloudy to warm enough water with the rooftop solar hot water collectors I plan to build.

White brown and green chicken eggs from hens kept by Kevin Warnock

My cousin Cnynthia Christensen gave me a Marans hen when I visited her farm in Oregon when I was in Oregon for my grandmother’s 100th birthday party. That was in December 2011. I carried the hen back to San Francisco in a box in the backseat of my car. The Marans was not yet old enough to be laying eggs.

Yesterday, February 13, 2012, my Marans hen gave me a present — her first egg. I know the egg in the coop was from her because she is my only Marans, and my other hens will not lay dark brown eggs when they start laying.

Sadly, three of my original batch of chickens were eaten by raccoons that live in my neighborhood. I saved an egg from each of those hens and photographed today the egg from my Marans alongside the others.

You should be able to see easily the striking colors of these four eggs — the Marans egg is in the lower left. The green egg in the upper left is from an Ameraucana. The brown egg in the upper right is from a Brahma chicken and the white egg in the lower right is from a Houdan chicken.

The Marans egg is somewhat spotted. The Brahma chicken is a dual purpose chicken that can be for eggs or meat. I wonder if that’s why that chicken was so large, and why it’s eggs were the largest from chickens that I have ever seen.

I wonder if my Marans knew today was Valentine’s Day and she wanted to give me something special? I could have had a tasty breakfast of one fresh egg this morning.

I love my chickens.

vi.com webpage as of February 13 2012

I read with interest on Techcrunch this morning that the two character domain name vi.com was just sold for USD $325,000.

I jumped as I wondered if vi.com was the latest entrant into the online document editor business.

Vi, short for visual editor, is the default editor in the UNIX operating system.

UNIX and its descendants like Linux power much of the Internet.

Sadly, Vi the editor will not soon be visualized at vi.com.

Instead, on July 14, 2012, the pricey vi.com domain will be used by ViSalus help people visualize how they can lose weight.

So Vi is simply short for ViSalus.

According their website, the firm ‘ViSalus is the No. 1 weight loss & fitness Challenge platform in North America—rewarding those with the best 90-day transformations over $25 MILLION each year in free products, prizes, and vacations.’

In a way ViSalus is to weight loss what SaveUp is to fiscal fitness.

This story made me cry. Here’s an excerpt:

“Authorities say the Tennessee River’s current was swift when 25-year-old Christopher Heaton jumped in the water to rescue his girlfriend.

Heaton, of Jasper, Tenn., had driven to Bridgeport, Ala., to meet his girlfriend Tuesday evening. He arrived at their meeting place near a boat ramp to see her car sinking as it was swept down the river, said Jackson County Chief Deputy Rocky Harnen. Witnesses told police Heaton immediately dived into the water.

But the woman — whom police haven’t named — escaped from the car and was helped from the water by fisherman at a ramp only 20 yards away, Harnen said.”

It’s so sad that his girlfriend was alive and well just 20 yards away!

I know how powerful love can be, and I might well have jumped in the river as Heaton did had I discovered my ex-wife’s car sinking in the river. When I was married to her I was so in love with her that I believe I would have thrown my normal caution to the wind. Now that I’ve divorced her I don’t know how I would react, as she’s less important to me now. But that doesn’t mean she is unimportant to me and that I would definitely not jump in, because part of me still loves her.

Brief excerpt from paper 'Hamilton-Jacobi equation' by Robert L. Warnock

I like to think I am a smart and inventive guy.

I have two professional claims to fame:

I created the first online document assembly website (Hotpaper) and the first online office suite (gOffice).

Both of these categories of software proved to be quite popular.

In the United States, LegalZoom and Rocket Lawyer now dominate the online document assembly business.

In the United States, Google Docs and Zoho now dominate the online office productivity business.

I am proud that I created the first versions of these significant components to the fabric of the Internet.

While my contributions to the Internet may not have the sex appeal of the social network Facebook or the political influence of the micro-blogging website Twitter, my contributions do allow people to get real work done online.

Getting work done is important to the advancement of humanity. Friending and Tweeting also help advance humanity, but the importance of writing and communicating well with the help of productivity software and document assembly software should not be discounted. How long could you go without Microsoft PowerPoint, Word and Excel or their new online competitors? Probably not long if you are a white collar worker.

I bought a nice house in San Francisco with the spoils of my inventions, and I believe I lead a comfortable and richly satisfying life.

I am shockingly happy. I am surprisingly happy for Google, Zoho, LegalZoom and RocketLawyer — despite their making more money from my innovations than I did.

However, I am not smart like my father Robert Warnock.

Yesterday I learned that my father’s paper Hamilton-Jacobi Equation is included on the peer-reviewed ScholarPedia website.

ScholarPedia is a WikiPedia like website for scientific papers.

Creating an online office suite like I did is a piece of cake compared to what my father works on. Many smart 20 year olds today could build the software I was first to build. But I don’t think any 20 year old could write the papers my father writes, no matter how hard they tried.

Don’t think I am putting myself down by this post.

I am simply showing you how outstandingly bright my father is. My mother is also outstandingly bright, and I’m certain I got my smarts from them.

I regard myself as quite smart.

I continue to invent things on a weekly basis. My mind is frequently dreaming up improvements to many everyday problems. I will never have the time to implement even a small portion of all the crazy ideas I come up with. The best I can hope for is to write a minority of them down and publish them to this blog, where hopefully others will find and then implement them.

I am devoting considerable energy to developing ideas to improve the efficiency of living, including heating, cooling, food production and water usage. Look for many more thoughts from me on these subjects over the coming years. My hope is that my ideas in these areas will have a profound influence on the state of the human condition by the end of my life.

As a side note, I am impressed that Scholarpedia uses Web Fonts to display math equations. That means you can copy and paste the mathematical equations in articles published on Scholarpedia. You generally can’t do this on WikiPedia, where equations are entered as LaTeX source code but then converted to image files for display.

I found the following video on Digg. This is a ‘sponsored ad’ meaning Acura paid to place this ad on Digg. Normally I would never clutter up my blog with a paid ad, but this one is funny and meaningful to me. This video shows Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld vying to be first in line to purchase the new Acura NSX.

When the Acura NSX came out I wanted one. I was sad when I discovered I am too tall to fit inside one. I tried to find a shop that would modify the seats to lower them, but no shop would touch the project, citing worry I would sue them after a crash if the modified seats came loose. I was prepared to buy a new NSX, and the dealer would not help me find a way to make the purchase work for me. I never even test drove the car because I had to bend my head over at an angle just to even sit in it.

I don’t know why Acura couldn’t have provided more head room. I fit with room to spare in the much smaller Lotus Elise.

Perhaps the new NSX will have more headroom than the earlier models. However, I don’t particularly care for the pictures I’ve seen of the new NSX. I much prefer the Lotus Evora or the Ferarri 458 Spider.

I’m not in the market for a new car anyway, as I just got a really nice silver BMW 528i with a 5-speed stick shift transmission. I have wanted a stick shift 5 series for years. They are rare compared to automatics. My BMW has the best feeling stick shift I have ever driven, even better than in the Lotus Elise and the Mini Cooper S, which both have outstanding stick shifts.

BMW 5-Series E39 sedan similar to the one I just bought. Photo from Wikipedia.org.

My new BMW is not brand new. I don’t buy new cars and I never plan to buy a new car, as they represent a poor financial transaction to me. But my new to me car is so shiny and lovely that my neighbors asked me if it was an actual new car! To top things off, my new BMW has fold down rear seats with a pass through area for skis. Now I can bring back 12 foot lengths of steel and aluminum from Bayshore Metals without having to cut them in half with a hacksaw in their parking lot.