Most poorly timed promotion of the year, so far

Thank you, AARP. I'm certainly thinking about an Alaskan cruise this night.

More on science

Three quick notes on the ways that science making our lives, um, interesting.

• We've often heard that printer ink is more expensive than human blood. Well, here's a twist: UK scientists have used 3D printers to print human stem cells. It's within the realm of imagination that we could eventually use human blood in printers to make something beyond our imaginations.
• Humans have had a problematic relationship with insects. Some, such as honey bees, do great things for us. Mosquitoes are frog food and carry deadly diseases. We've done battle with chemicals and bazookas.
  Well, insects are fighting back and they've got robots.
• Fish are in schools but, until science showed up, they could never raise their hands when the have an answer to the teacher's question. The Register reports that Fish grow ‘hands’ in genetic experiment.
  
  

  

  Fish testing at Alden Research Lab

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One of a occasional series. A bunch of years ago, I worked for a software company. It was hard work for long hours. At one point, senior management made the pronouncement that the development team needed to focus more on a particular aspect of the product. The QA manager and I agreed that we'd Focused More-ons.

Silicon places

In the early days of the Intertubes, many locations tried to become the next Silicon Valley, if only in name.
We saw Silicon Alley, Silicon Gulch, and a bunch more that are just out of reach of memory.
With this GlobalPost article, Far from San Francisco and New York, Silicon Prairie emerges, marketers are trying to turn corn into silicon.

This Google Trends chart shows the bursts of interest in a few Silicon names.



The best overall list that I found is in good old Wikipedia with its List of places with "Silicon" names. It was there that I learned that Silicon Sandbar (Cape Cod) washed away in 2008.

Bootnote: I've tried various search engines to find a way to search for "Silicon *" as a place name. It was only as I loaded up a search with all of the names that I could recall that I found the Wikipedia page.

More on job searches

A while ago, I signed up with the job search site, Glassdoor. Since then, they've been sending me a list of  suggested jobs in the Worcester area. The jobs, however,  always a great match.

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One of a occasional series. A bunch of years ago, I worked for a software company. It was hard work for long hours. At one point, senior management made the pronouncement that the development team needed to focus more on a particular aspect of the product. The QA manager and I agreed that we'd Focused More-ons.