*michael parekh on IT*

ON A COOL HOT SAUCE

AGAINST ALL ODDS
Not too often does one see a full feature in the New York Times on something as prosaic as hot sauce.  Unless of course, the sauce in question happens to be Sriracha hot chili sauce, something that's been a staple for me for a long time.  For those not familiar what's special about the sauce and the company behind it, some background may be in order:

"Some American consumers believe sriracha (properly pronounced SIR-rotch-ah) to be a Thai sauce. Others think it is Vietnamese. The truth is that sriracha, as manufactured by Huy Fong Foods, may be best understood as an American sauce, a polyglot purée with roots in different places and peoples..."
"Sriracha has proved relevant beyond the epicurean realm. Wal-Mart sells the stuff.
So do mom-and-pop stores, from Bristol, Tenn., to Bisbee, Ariz. Sriracha is a key ingredient in street food: The two Kogi trucks that travel the streets of Los Angeles, vending kimchi-garnished tacos to the young, hip and hungry, provide customers with just one condiment, Huy Fong sriracha. "

Do read the article for the full flavor and history of this remarkable product, and the founder behind it.  And  of course try some if you haven't already. 
If you're already a fan, you may want to try a hot chili garlic sauce by Huy Fong that's also become a staple for me. 
One special feature of that sauce, is it's zero calories...but of course a ton of flavor and zest.

ON DEALING WITH STAR TREK

EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

With the new Star Trek movie in theaters this weekend, it was inevitable that Star Wars fans would get their  dander up. 

Looks like they're getting their revenge in this little bit as Wired Magazine explains:

"Stormtroopers celebrate after the Death Star vaporizes the Enterprise in the clip...

Mike Horn’s fan footage pits the two high-tech war machines against each other in the sci-fi franchise faceoff. As with his 2008 masterpiece “Death Star Over San Francisco,” the reel above was probably made on Horn’s computer using nothing more than After Effects, Final Cut and his fertile imagination. And an obvious preference for Star Wars over Star Trek."

It all makes sense in this Aliens vs. Predators world. 

Happy Mother's Day all.

ON A PLAN B FOR SPACE TRAVEL

FINAL FRONTIER

There are a lot of questions of late as to what NASA should really be focused on over the next few years, especially under the new Obama administration.  This piece in the Orlando Sentinel recently reviewed some of the pragmatic options.

But reading this op-ed by Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute really got me thinking different about what our space efforts might be focused on.  First he takes us back to the reality of space that many of us might not have thought about since childhood:

"The fastest rocket ever launched, NASA’s New Horizons probe to Pluto, roared off its pad in 2006 at 10 miles per second. That pace would be impressive in the morning commute, and it’s passably adequate for traversing the solar system, something we’ve done and will continue to do.

Combustion rockets, like New Horizons, can deliver you to the Moon in a matter of days, Mars in a matter of months, and the outer planets in a matter of years. But a trip to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star beyond the Sun and 100 million times farther from us than the Moon, would consume a tedious 800 centuries or so. You’ll want to upgrade..."

The piece then goes into the technical, monetary and biological hurdles to take us to where we've really wanted to go ever since we first started to gaze at the stars.

And it gets depressing just like when we first found out there is no Santa Claus.

But he then starts to talk about the glass half full:

"But there’s another technology that’s developing at a breakneck clip, and with which our grandchildren could make virtual trips to other solar systems. It’s called telepresence — a collection of technologies that extends vision, hearing and touch far beyond the corporeal confines of our nervous system.

Consider that in 1965 the Mariner 4 spacecraft made the first fuzzy photos of Mars with a black-and-white TV camera boasting 40,000 pixels. The HiRISE camera now operating onboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter sports 200 million pixels. It can snap photos of objects just three feet across.

That’s resolution comparable to what’s on Google Earth, which many people use to examine remote parts of the globe or inspect cities known only from the nightly news. Google Mars takes advantage of the high-quality imagery being collected by our robotic orbiters, enabling armchair astronauts to peruse the red planet in considerable detail without the angst of transporting their delicate protoplasm 34 million miles into space.

Photography from the Mars Exploration Rover is so good that the data have been interpreted in an IMAX film, giving audiences a near-lifelike experience in strolling the red planet’s rusty, dusty desert. The Phoenix Mars lander has sent back pictures of individual sand grains. In other words, it’s already possible for anyone to make a rigorous reconnaissance of another planet — even though not a single human has yet stomped his boots in the Martian dust."

Almost like being there, no? 

The whole piece is worth reading.  And then maybe it may make sense for President Obama to think about this more pragmatic mission for NASA. 
Who knows, even Google may want to help.

ON A SOLAR ADVENTURE

GOOD FUN IN THE SUN

Like millions of kids before me, I was enthralled by Jules Vernes' Around the World in Eighty Days.  So of course this modern-day version of sorts caught my eye.  Wired.com explains in this piece titled "Around the World in a Solar Boat":

"A seafaring band of scientists, engineers and yachtsmen with an obsession for Jules Verne and clean energy are building what they call the largest solar boat in the world, a $13 million catamaran they hope will take them around the world next year.

Construction is well underway on the 98-foot-long vessel, which will feature 5,059 square feet of photovoltaic cells. The project is being funded by Rivendell Holding AG, a Swiss firm that invests in renewable energy, simply to prove it can be done and the shipping industry can reduce its dependence on fossil fuel.

The team plans to circumnavigate the globe at the equator in 120 days at an average speed of 10 knots. Should they succeed, Planet Solar will set a maritime milestone. Solar electric pleasure boats have been tooling around lakes for awhile now, solar electric ferries are increasingly common and a solar electric catamaran called Sun 21 crossed the Atlantic in 29 days. But so far no one's made it around the world in a solar electric boat..."

"Solar boats are a viable form of transportation for the future,"  Delia Collardi, a spokeswoman for the project, told Wired.com. "Our society is too dependent on fossil fuels, which are in limited supply and which are causing measurable negative effects on the earth's atmosphere. It's now time to demonstrate the potential that renewable energies have to offer in the area of mobility."

The piece goes on to add:

"Collardi says the vessel will have enough power to carry skipper Raphael Domjan, the 37-year-old founder of Planet Solar, and navigator Gerard d'Aboville. Both men are accomplished sailors and adventurers who, according to a press release, "want to be the Phileas Fogg" of the 21st Century.

Fogg, of course, was the adventurous main character Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne's novel about a man who travels by train, balloon, steamer and even elephants to circle the globe in record time and win a bet."

The project goes on to add a grand historical gesture:

"Verne's great-grandson Jean Verne has signed on to the project, which organizers say represents "humanity's hope for a better future."

The route for the trip is still being finalized, but it's supposed to come through New York.  Can't wait.

ON GOING FROM TWITTER TO FLUTTER

FUN & FICTION

A couple of days ago, I wrote about how Twitter's 140-character "micro-blogging" limit was critical to it's overnight success.  Now Slate takes this idea further in a "mockumentary" and introduces us to "Flutter":

Part of what makes this so funny of course is how close it is to something that could very much be real, especially the bit about text streaming across one's glasses.

ON COMEDY AND NEWS

PROJECT RATINGS

It's April Fool's Day and so time again to take everything we encounter today with an extra grain of salt.  But it's  hard to be impressed by pranks these days when it seems almost everyone we watch on TV is pulling one almost every day.  Steven Colbert of the Comedy Channel highlights one such "prank" by Fox personality Glenn Beck around his project 9/12, in a hilarious bit on his show:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The 10/31 Project
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

It's all good fun, but Glenn Beck may be having the last laugh.  His approach seems to have garnered him strong ratings a scant two months out from his new perch at Fox.

ON TRYING TO BE PRICELESS

FREAK AND FUNK

Visa keeps making headway in making TV commercials with broad appeal, as this latest "Super-Freak" ad illustrates:

Not quite the "Priceless" campaign by MasterCard, but not bad.  My favorite Priceless ad still is this "Back to School" ad from a year ago, played to "We Want the Funk":

Still don't get tired of watching that one.  Did you notice the Visa ad ends with the word "Funky"? Priceless.

ON GRASS-ROOTS ADVERTISING

FROM THE HEART

With the exploding popularity of social networks and social tools to leverage them, the question arises...what if consumers produced their own ads for products or services they really cared about? What would these "user-generated" ads look like?

Certainly, this movement has already started a few years ago, with marketers in recent SuperBowls fielding ads conceived by users.

But what if it was even more grass-roots than that? Might it look something like this ad done by a fan of Trader Joe Supermarkets? With his Blackberry? Take a look:

Who knows, the song may even become a standalone hit, like some of the tunes from those Apple commercials.  And they'd give a whole different twist to Fan Pages on social networks like Facebook.

ON A NEW USES FOR LASERS

WHY NOT?

Forget swatting flies with a cannon, or sharks with "frickin' lasers".  Some rocket scientists, are apparently working on a fusion of those two ideas.  The Wall Street Journal reports:

"A quarter-century ago, American rocket scientists proposed the "Star Wars" defense system to knock Soviet missiles from the skies with laser beams. Some of the same scientists are now aiming their lasers at another airborne threat: the mosquito.

In a lab in this Seattle suburb, researchers in long white coats recently stood watching a small glass box of bugs. Every few seconds, a contraption 100 feet away shot a beam that hit the buzzing mosquitoes, one by one, with a spot of red light.

The insects survived this particular test, which used a non-lethal laser. But if these researchers have their way, the Cold War missile-defense strategy will be reborn as a WMD: Weapon of Mosquito Destruction..."

"...The scientists' actual target is malaria, which is caused by a parasite transmitted when certain mosquitoes bite people. Ended in the U.S. decades ago, malaria remains a major global public-health threat, killing about 1 million people annually..."

"...The mosquito laser is the brainchild of Lowell Wood, an astrophysicist who worked with Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb and architect of the original plan to use lasers to shield America from the rain of Soviet nuclear arms."

The piece goes on to explain how all this came about, along with other creative efforts to come up with a solution against mosquitoes. 
But none of them hits the inner Dr. Evil as a frickin' laser for mosquitoes.

On the other end of the spectrum for innovative use for lasers, how's this from Thomas Friedman:

"What if a laser-powered fusion energy power plant that would have all the reliability of coal, without the carbon dioxide, all the cleanliness of wind and solar, without having to worry about the sun not shining or the wind not blowing, and all the scale of nuclear, without all the waste, was indeed just 10 years away or less? That would be a holy cow game-changer.

Are we there?

That is the tantalizing question I was left with after visiting the recently completed National Ignition Facility, or N.I.F., at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 50 miles east of San Francisco.
The government-funded N.I.F. consists of 192 giant lasers — which can deliver 50 times more energy than any previous fusion laser system. They’re all housed in a 10-story building the size of three football fields — the rather dull cover to a vast internal steel forest of laser beams that must be what the engine room of Star Trek’s U.S.S. Enterprise space ship looked like."

Mosquitoes or fusion energy power...didn't know lasers had this much versatility.

* Image source.

ON A BELEAGURED TREASURY

NO FUN TIMES

Humor sometimes best works when a kernel of truth, sometimes uncomfortable, is wrapped around the attempted satire.  Last night's Saturday Night Live opening monologue seems to hit that mark:

Of course this bit merely reflects the recent media criticism on the perceived indecisiveness of the Obama administration in the face of an unprecedented economic crisis, however fair or unfair that might be.  As the New York Times points out today, our Treasury Secretary is trying to do his job with a number of personnel shortages.

"Compounding the strain on the Treasury, almost all the top posts beneath Mr. Geithner are still vacant. Though he has hired about 50 senior advisers — about half the number he hopes to recruit — the White House has become so worried about potential tax problems and other issues in the backgrounds of candidates that it has nominated only a handful of people..."

"Of the four major federal departments — state, justice, defense and the Treasury — the Treasury has had the fewest nominees even though it is dealing with probably the most significant problems facing the government..."

"With the economy plunging into its deepest recession since the early 1980s, the Treasury has been put in charge of vast swaths of the economy, including rescuing the financial system, the housing market and the automobile industry. The strains are showing. Many top Treasury aides often look haggard and acknowledge they are getting by on only a few hours of sleep a night. They often have to split their attention among wildly different projects."

Not funny at all. 

Yet, one can see how next Saturday's opening SNL skit featuring our poor, beleaguered Treasury Secretary, almost writes itself.