Entries by Rodger Donaldson

I attended a talk by Don Eigler, an IBM Fellow today; one of the things it reminded me of (other than Science is Cool) was how much I’ve come to loathe the notion of the “ideas man”.

Dr Eigler, twenty years ago, became the first person to assemble something by moving an atom at a time; his most recent work is on a potential breakthough in replacing conventional silicon transistor techniques: he and his colleagues take carbon monoxide molecules and assemble them by standing them up in the (to use his metaphor) egg carton shaped surface of a slice of copper; by building a particular array of them, they can create a logic gate than provides all the logic and storage functions that can be produced with silicon transistors. Very, very interesting; and very impressive—this technique allows them to fit a single logic element that can produce AND, OR, and majority logic in a 12 nm by 17 nm space (for refence, the current smallest commercial silicon is around 45 nm for the smallest trace). If they’re successful in solving a variety of outstanding hard problems (this is, after all, basic research, not engineering), then it has the potential to offer as much as five order of magnitude improvements in computing density and power consumption over existing circutry.

Possibly the coolest thing about the talk, though, was that Don started out by explaining the logic gate in terms of dominoes, discussing how you could use domino fans to create AND and OR gates. I thought this was a metaphor, but no: the carbon monoxide molecules, as I mentioned earlier, are stood upright on the carbon, one atom atop another. If they’re in a pair, they form a stable, upright construction. Add one, and the tower falls over, knocking down the next tower, and the next, and the next, and so on, until your atom-sized dominos have collapsed into the result you want. Dominoes aren’t a metaphor, dominoes is exactly what they’re doing—tiny poisonous dominoes.

(Star Trek fans would doubtless be delighted to know that Dr Eigler could, when discussing real-world use of left-spin molecules to create cloaking devices, referr by name to the Federation-Romulan treaty which prevents the Federation from utilising cloaking technologies.)

In 15 to 20 years, you might be able to buy something based on it. If everything goes well.

Which takes me to the point I opened with. Ideas were tossed around about the sort of things you could do with this kind of improvement in computing densities: since we’ve had demos of using human cell processes to power electronics, a five order of magnitude improvement in power/computational density could presumably make meaningful (by today’s standards) computers be something that can be embedded in the skin and powered by doughnuts.

Ideas are cheap. Ideas are easy. The kind of person who says, “I don’t do these things, I’m an ideas man” is not only most often a total waste of space—worse in fact, since the injection of “ideas” usually wastes the time of people with work to do—but is perversely proud of doing nothing, as though producing nothing more than a few suggestions places one above the hoi-polloi.

But here’s the thing: Don Eigler was making major advances in the science of the very small twenty years ago, is still doing it today, and could easily work on solving the same group of problems for decades longer. His advances are a result of doing work-hard work that takes time, knowledge, and skill. A room full of moderately intelligent people who work in technical professions can listen to his lucid, articulate explanations of the principles of his work and feel that we understand it but, really, we wouldn’t even know where to begin to actually reproduce it, still less build on it.

Ideas are cheap. Results are gold.

Je fauchée ma clavicule à judo la semaine denier; mon médecin mourait. Il n’est pas mauvais, ma fille gagner un prix por joueuse la jour á le foot!

You know, when your staff leave a child with second degree burns you’d think you could at least, I don’t know, proffer an apology to the parents and the kid and not, say, delete the negative review from a supposed restaurant review site (which makes me wonder; if Ernesto can get a review about them crippling a customer yanked, what else will DineOut pull? If you aren’t allowed to say bad things, what’s the point of the site?[1])

I don’t think I feel like playing Russian roulette with Ernesto any more; we’ve been there in the past, but when your response to leaving someone burnt enough to need morphine is to... attack the victim for posting a negative review, I don’t have any confidence that they give a shit about the safety of their staff or customers.

Since they’re next to Espressoholic and over the road from Scopa, that’s not too hard.

[1] Hoovering up donations from people under the misapprehension they provide a useful service, I guess.

A la semaine prochaine j’appris un nouveau lancer en judo; cette semaine ne pas venir à cause des gobelins du morve.

Ada started working on the concept of a will recently; while she’s had the book Down The Back of the Chair for a while now, she’s clearly been mentally eliding the reference until she focused suddenly on it in the weekend. What is this “long-lost will of Uncle Bill”? How does it relieve the problem of not being able to afford to fix the errant car? After some explanation (“When people die, they don’t need their money any more, and they sometimes leave it to people”) the principle was firmly grasped.

A little later in the weekend, Ada sidled up to me and said, “I wish we had a long-lost will. You would be able to stay at home more and play with me.”

One of discoveries Sunday’s first excursion into the wonderful world of kiddy football was unexpected side effect of having spent three or so years working on concepts of playing nice (sharing, taking turns and so on), which is the furious, pitiable wailing that accompanies the discovery that in competitive sport you have to take your turn, not wait for it.

Much howling, a mix of self-pitying and righteous indignation, ensued. This is, the coach/referee assured me, entirely normal with three years olds, and I guess it would be. But still: an unexpected side effect; it encourages me in the belief, though, that the whole business is a good thing, not least because while “playing nice with others” is a life skill that’s valuable, so is “I’ll go get it myself, no-one’s going to give it to me.”

Other than that, and a plaintitave “I’m too cold, I want to go home”, swiftly fixed by another layer of jacketing, we had a ball, and Ada managed an absolute gem of a perfectly-executed tackle, timing a textbook interception of another player on his run into her goal.

After the game Ada worked on her dribbling some more, controlling the ball through 90 and 180 degree turns, and frustrating her mother’s attempts to regain control of the ball. I’m looking forward to see how she’ll handle next week.

Ada veut faire du foot. Je ne sais pas; mais toute façon papa, je aide.

Aujourd’hui nous faisons du coursé; nous sommes rentré avec protege-tibia et beaucoup petit les chaussures de football.

Of all the Pythons, John Cleese depresses me the most. His wholehearted embrace of Americanisms—therapies, marriages up the wazoo, self-help, management videos, you name it—seems in some way the second most appalling fate of any member of the troupe.

I think it’s because so much of his finest humour flowed from venting his spleen at the most hateful characteristics of the Little Englander, the crawling, craven middle-class Englishman who licks the boots of his social superious, the uptight neuroses of the stiff upper lip. It was the high-octane hate that so brilliantly powered Faulty Towers. Now, it’s not really healthy to hold onto that, and I imagine that had Cleese spent the next thirty years doing so the results would be less than healthy.

But I have to wonder if replacing the quintessential English middle-class neurosis he grew up around with the quintessential SoCal neurosis is really that much of a win.

This story annoys me more than a little.

Health Minister Tony Ryall said the “inequitable geographic provision” of the surgery was concerning.

Well, this is hardly the only surgery that’s targeted. Premature birth? You’ll fly to the nearest regional centre for care. We don’t have surgeons and nurse specialists in every hospital in the country. Seriously ill child? Move to Auckland, because they’ll be going to Starship. There is a never-ending list of procedures you won’t get in Patea, or Hawera, or New Plymouth, or even Hamilton. Unless the health budget is infinite, or unless fat advocacy has gained enough clout we’ll start running down other medical care options to fund it, obesity surgery is no different. Perhaps that’s where the money saved by slashing mental heath services, in a country that traditionally tops lists for suicides, will end up; unless Ryall’s ministerial wishes are backed by increased funding.

“It’s terrifying that I’ve got a life expectancy of five years.” The Whanganui woman, who has been morbidly obese since she was 16, has been told she will be dead by 30 without bariatric surgery.

That is fucking terrifying. I guess that’s why:

In February last year the minister stood alongside Health Minister Tony Ryall as they announced that the Government was removing the healthy-food requirement for school tuckshops. The policy had been put in place by Labour and required schools to sell healthy foods and limit the sale of the likes of donuts, sausage rolls and meat pies.

I guess Tony can work out how to make DHBs spend more on morbidly obese 25 year olds, but he’s unalterably opposed to doing anything useful about it when they’re teenagers.

She said she could move to the catchment in Counties-Manukau. “But that’s a huge thing – to leave all the support of my family and friends – and not to mention costly, for only a possible `maybe’.”

At this point I’m afraid I lost all fucking sympathy. If my daughter got sick enough to need care only available in the Starship catchment area and I refused to move to get her treated, would we get loving newspaper articles about hard done by we were? Would we fuck. We’d be vilified for being unwilling to endure a little hardship to save our daughter’s life, and rightly so. And if you aren’t willing to move cities to have a shot at saving your own life, well, that says it all, really.

…players, viewers, and journalists from the part of the world that gives us such stadium spectacles as St Pauli’s, Ultras or such charmers as these Spurs creations, or squabbling over whether it’s worse to play sing-a-long-a-paedophile or mock the dead. None of which quite hold a candle to some charmers from the Netherlands.

But those very same people are such shrinking violets they want plastic trumpets banned?