Potential for cheaper hydrogen through use of nanoparticles

According to this article, nanoparticles could make hydrogen for fuel cells as cheap as gasoline. People could potentially extract hydrogen at home from water.

Today after church I was sitting at a restaurant with a couple friends, lingering after everyone else had left. (We had arrived a bit later than the others because we had been setting up a flat screen television in the nursery.) As we engaged in random conversation ranging from the finer points of audio speakers to the practical realities of IT work, I was struck by the profound joy of such seemingly ordinary moments. And it occurred to me that it is so many simple yet priceless things like this that I will be giving up as I uproot and move to a new job and a new life in a new city. While I can hope to discover new moments and new sources of joy, I know that they will inevitably be different in character from what I have come to be familiar with here in Chicago. Thus, even if my new life turns out to be wonderful, it is nonetheless the case that the elements of my life here in Chicago will be lost, save the occasional reunion and the vagaries of an ever distant memory.

In a study released last August, University of Washington researchers found that babies between 8 and 16 months recognized an
average of six to eight fewer words for every hour spent watching
videos.

Is Barack Obama the clear front-runner?

According to Chuck Todd of MSNBC, Hillary Clinton needs to win 55% of all the remaining pledge (elected) delegates to catch up to Obama's pledge delegate total. Assuming Obama will win at least some of the remaining primaries, Hillary Clinton would have to win by a margin of 60-40 in states she hopes to win in order to tie Obama in pledge delegates. (Chuck Todd's comments begin at around the 1:50 mark of the video clip below.)

Here is Howard Fineman discussing the Clinton strategy in light of this delegate math.

Stories like this make me sad. It's discouraging to realize how bigoted people can be, without even realizing it.

Here's an excerpt:

-------------------------------------------
After a few months on the trail, I'm
starting
to worry that there are national-security swing voters out there who
will be suspicious of someone who has ANY links to the Muslim world--as
irrelevant as those links may be. I wish it wasn't true, but over the
past two months, I've had at
least a dozen people respond to my rote question--What do you think of Barack Obama?--by
worrying aloud about his "Muslim background." I'm always quick to tell
them that he's not a Muslim, but it rarely makes a difference. Take
Vicki Hercsky, 47, a teacher from Boca Raton, Florida. "Obama, I don't
even know how he got where he is," she told me after a Rudy Giuliani
event late last month. "Why do you say that?" I asked. "He's
Muslim," she replied, matter-of-factly. I stammered. "Well, um, his
father was raised Muslim but was an agnostic by the time Barack was
born," I said. "Obama is a Christian." Hercsky wasn't swayed. "Yeah,
but he has it
in his blood," she said. "You can't take
away what's given to you. It's given to you for a reason, and that's
who you are. That's who he is." I'm not sure what she meant by "it," or
"who he is"--and I'm not sure I want to know.
-------------------------------------------

As an Orlando fan, I would like to see the Magic pursue this trade:

Rashard Lewis for Lamar Odom

It works on the ESPN trade machine, so the salaries are close enough.(Lewis is not a base-year player because he was acquired via sign-and-trade.)

Odom
would give the Magic a much better power forward option than Lewis.
Odom isn't heavy, but he's long and a good defender, and has been
effective at the four. He's turned into a decent rebounder (certainly
better than Lewis). Odom is versatile enough to play both forward
spots. He's got excellent ball handling skills for his size.

After their trade with Memphis the Lakers now have Pau Gasol, who is similar to Odom in terms of being a versatile forward, but a bit
taller and with more of an inside game, more a PF-C rather than a PF-SF
like Odom. Lewis would give the Lakers a different dimension in terms of three-point shooting and being a more
natural small forward, who's game probably meshes better with Kobe,
Gasol, and Bynum, as Lewis can spot up and take perimeter shots,
particularly three-pointers (something the Lakers could use). Odom's game really never meshed well with Kobe's, because they both like to slash to the basket and create.

Meanwhile,
Turk and Lewis are both really small forwards. If the Magic had Battie
healthy, you could shift Turk to the two and be OK, but even that's not
really ideal.

Furthermore, the Magic would get out from
under Lewis' ridiculous 6 year max contract. (The Lakers an afford to pay the luxury tax.) Odom's is a little less, and it only
has one more year. The Magic could re-sign him, or pursue a free agent.

I think Lewis for Odom is a trade that could work for both teams.

When I first heard that Hillary Clinton had loaned $5M to her campaign back in January, one of my first thoughts was that it was a publicity stunt designed to encourage her supporters to donate more money. It appears that view may have some merit. It was also reported that some Clinton staff members might be going without pay for some period of time. It turns out that period turned out to be less than one day, as it was revealed that the Clinton campaign had raised $7.5 million online in the first week of February, $6.4 million of it in the 30 hours following reports of the $5M loan, and the staff would not be going without pay after all.

Independent voters may have been underreported in California.

Some may have been mistakenly denied ballots for the Democratic primary. Some may not have realized one had to ask for a Democratic ballot, otherwise a nonpartisan ballot would be provided. Also, independent ballots in L.A. county required one to bubble in that one was voting in the Democratic primary in order for the ballot to count. Many independents may not have bubbled in that extra bubble. Read more about it in the LA Times and the San Diego Tribune.

Yes We Can music video

I saw U2 3D on IMAX last night.

I highly recommend it if you're a fan of the music of U2, especially if you've never been to a concert.