Sam Kornstein

Yellowstone National Park

Posted on June 27, 2011June 30, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in Photography, Travel

I was completely blown away by Yellowstone. I expected lots a trees, some lakes, some animals, and a big geyser. But it turned out to quite possibly be the most impressive natural landscape I’ve seen. Apparently much of the park was created by a supervolcano eruption that occurred 640,000 years ago. The explosion essentially ripped a hole in the Earth, exposing active geological phenomena that would normally be hundreds, if not thousands of meters underground. But that’s about the extent of my understanding of the whole thing. So take a look: Gas containing lots of sulfur spews out of rocks next to a frozen lake: A grizzly bear spotting: This is where the bear came from: Buffalo milk: A gigantic pool of gray clay:

Yeast, Unite!

Posted on June 26, 2011June 26, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in Beer, Current Events, Science

Two of my favorite topics are evolutionary biology and brewing. It’s rare that they overlap in the same article. It looks like brewer’s yeast has been coaxed to evolve to do more than make beer: IN JUST a few weeks single-celled yeast have evolved into a multicellular organism, complete with division of labour between cells. This suggests that the evolutionary leap to multicellularity may be a surprisingly small hurdle. Multicellularity has evolved at least 20 times since life began, but the last time was about 200 million years ago, leaving few clues to the precise sequence of events. To understand the process better, William Ratcliff and colleagues at the University of Minnesota in St Paul set out to evolve multicellularity in a

My Favorite Economic Dashboard

Posted on June 25, 2011June 25, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in Charts & Data, Current Events, Economics, Markets

An update of one of the simplest and most useful economic dashboards I’ve seen. You need to click through, but take a quick look: I would still love to see a dynamic version of this, updated daily. It’s not quite as relevant as it could be when it’s released June 22nd with data as of May 31st. Nonetheless, I like it.

Joe Biden

Posted on June 24, 2011June 24, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in Cartoons

Via xkcd:

How Many Households Are Like Yours?

Posted on June 24, 2011June 24, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in Charts & Data

Via Chartporn, the NYT will tell you many households are like yours: I’m not sure why, but if I were a betting man, I would have guessed that more than 0.2% of the households in the country were like mine.

Here’s a Real ‘Computer’ Game

Posted on June 23, 2011June 23, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in History, Technology

Via Ezra Klein, the first version of ‘The Oregon Trail’ game: “With no monitor, the original version of Oregon Trail was played by answering prompts that printed out on a roll of paper. At 10 characters per second, the teletype spat out, ‘How much do you want to spend on your oxen team?’ or, ‘Do you want to eat (1) poorly (2) moderately or (3) well?’ Students typed in the numerical responses, then the program chugged through a few basic formulas and spat out the next prompt along with a status update. ‘Bad illness — medicine used,’ it might say. ‘Do you want to (1) hunt or (2) continue?’ Hunting required the greatest stretch of the user’s imagination. Instead of

Charging with Fire

Posted on June 21, 2011June 21, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in Technology

Outdoorsy Japanese Cooking Pot Charges Phones Over a Campfire:

Summer in the City

Posted on June 21, 2011June 21, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in General

Via James Fallows, Timbuk2 has a new “Corona” ad featuring my temporary home:

Cowen: How Would A Greek Transition Out of the Euro Go?

Posted on June 21, 2011June 22, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in Current Events, Economics

Tyler Cowen has some thoughts: Forget about the macroeconomics for now, I am thinking about the sheer mechanics of it. If Greece announced it was leaving the euro, it might declare a bank holiday. For some number of days, no one can pull their euros out of the bank (otherwise all euros leave the Greek banking system). The government would have to put a money stamping technology in place fairly rapidly. Once the banks are reopened, withdrawn money gets a stamp and it is now a “Greek euro” or “drachma euro,” trading at a lower value of course. Is there an indelible, irreversible money stamping technology and how long would it take to distribute it to every Greek bank? How

Strawberry Canyon

Posted on June 20, 2011June 20, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in Travel

Over the weekend I took a trip out to Berkeley to hike along Strawberry Canyon. Two quick thoughts: 1. I’m still blown away by the number of amazing hiking trails that are right in the Bay area. Quite a few of which are accessible by public transit. 2. It made me happy to learn that the Lawrence National Laboratory at Berkeley has a herd of 350 goats living on the property for the sole purpose of eating brush to help prevent wildfires. I’m not kidding. I shot a video: They were all very busy. Here are a few other shots from my phone: