Consecutive Vowels

Not laser vision, but...

Laser Pointer Vision*

SUPERUSELESS SUPERPOWER: Laser Pointer Vision*
Your gaze isn't strong enough to burn through anything, just strong enough to point things out. Makes prolonged eye contact particularly awkward and painful during romantic dinners and job interviews.

From Superuseless Superpowers

Washington as Venture Capitalist

Updated January 26, 2011, 10:53 AM

Bruce Fuller, a former World Bank sociologist, is a professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

The president argued persuasively -- with rousing tones of economic nationalism -- that more agile and productive workers are required if America’s economy is to combat the rising challenge from East Asia. “We need to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world,” Mr. Obama said.

If the president is serious about innovation in education, Washington can't simply be a pallid regulator with rules and punishment.

It’s “our generation’s Sputnik moment,” he said, referring to President Kennedy’s investment in education, science and new technology. Ronald Reagan deployed a similar storyline in 1983 -- with the nation in economic doldrums -- when his White House task force warned of “being overtaken by competitors throughout the world.”

What’s fresh about Mr. Obama’s education strategy is that he doesn’t want to just pour money “into a system that’s not working.” Instead, he wants the federal government to create incentives for innovation within the public schools -- Washington as venture capitalist.

It fits nicely with the president’s wider narrative about the future of government and rekindling America's creative spirit: he sees a leaner and smarter set of public efforts aimed at inducing corporate titans to build a greener, sustainable economy, while motivating educators to deliver more able human capital.

Read more from Grading the Education President.

Masked vigilante Phoenix Jones suffers broken nose

Phoenix Jones, the masked superhero vigilante protecting the streets of a small American town, has had his nose broken and was threatened at gunpoint over the weekend.

Phoenix Jones patrols the streets of Lynnwood, a town of 35,000 people just outside Seattle, Washington Photo: CBS

4:22PM GMT 11 Jan 2011

The incident has prompted police to ask that he and others stop dressing up in costumes and instead notify the authorities.

Jones, who wears a black and gold costume, patrols the streets of Lynnwood, a town of 35,000 people just outside Seattle, Washington.

Last week, The Daily Telegraph reported that he had recently prevented a car theft but on Saturday night he suffered a broken nose when attempting to break up a fight.

Jones told local television that he called police and put one of the men in a headlock while waiting for them. Another man then pulled out a gun and when the superhero let go of the man he was holding, the man kicked him in the face and broke his nose.

Nabokov Butterfly Theory Is Vindicated

Roger Vila

A male Acmon blue butterfly (Icaricia acmon). Vladimir Nabokov described the Icaricia genus in 1944.

By CARL ZIMMER

Published: January 25, 2011

He was the curator of lepidoptera at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, and collected the insects across the United States. He published detailed descriptions of hundreds of species. And in a speculative moment in 1945, he came up with a sweeping hypothesis for the evolution of the butterflies he studied, a group known as the Polyommatus blues. He envisioned them coming to the New World from Asia over millions of years in a series of waves.Vladimir Nabokov may be known to most people as the author of classic novels like “Lolita” and “Pale Fire.” But even as he was writing those books, Nabokov had a parallel existence as a self-taught expert on butterflies.

Few professional lepidopterists took these ideas seriously during Nabokov’s lifetime. But in the years since his death in 1977, his scientific reputation has grown. And over the past 10 years, a team of scientists has been applying gene-sequencing technology to his hypothesis about how Polyommatus blues evolved. On Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, they reported that Nabokov was absolutely right.

Read more.

Wildlife Bridges!

ARC Web Page!

ARC: International Wildlife Crossing Infrastructure Design Competition from ARC on Vimeo.

Jack goes to lunch...

...and when he comes back, he finds this at his desk:

Colbert MLK

I know I just pinched a Colbert bit recently, but skip to 2:15. You will be glad:

Tucker Plays Better Than Me!

We Are Not Safe

Thank god someone had the balls to say something. Here, the case is made as well as I will ever make it.

VC Rugby Girls Lift Car

Stock Trading in Private Companies Draws S.E.C. Scrutiny

BY PETER LATTMAN

Saeed Khan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A red-hot trading market has developed in the shares of the world’s leading social networking companies: Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and LinkedIn. What is unusual is that none of the companies are listed on a public stock exchange. Each is privately held.

Now, the Securities and Exchange Commission wants to learn more about the business of these stock trades. The agency has sent information requests to several participants in the buying and selling of stock in these four companies, according to two people with direct knowledge of the inquiry who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about it.

It is unclear exactly what has piqued the agency’s interest. An S.E.C. spokesman declined to comment on the matter. But the S.E.C.’s interest comes as a crop of new exchanges is popping up to facilitate these trades.

At the same time, Wall Street brokerage firms have begun forming investment pools to buy these companies’ shares.Over the last year, several private exchanges have matched up buyers and sellers of shares in these fast-growing companies. Though the volume remains thin, the number of transactions is increasing each month.

Driving this activity is the social networking phenomenon, which has created the hottest, and most hyped, segment in Silicon Valley in years.

Businesses like Facebook, the social networking leader, and Zynga, a popular maker of online games, already generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Twitter has more than 150 million users, and just received $200 million in venture financing. LinkedIn, another social networking site, has become a Facebook for professionals.


Read more.

and more...