15 Nov 2006
Coach's son gets big payoff to quit

And people still wonder why I think college athletics are a sham and a waste. Here we have a little nepotism, with outsiders ("boosters") stepping in to pay the incompetent boob (nominally a state employee) better than half a million dollars to quit! And once he quits he keeps drawing his paycheck until next August!

No wonder I gag every time I hear the word "amateur" applied to college sports.

Florida State offensive coordinator Jeff Bowden received a $537,500 payoff from the school's boosters to resign following several seasons of declining production.

(link) [CNN]

20:52 /Politics | 1 comment | permanent link

Intel Releases 4004 Microprocessor Schematics

I remember this chip, and the wave of homebrew stuff that followed in magazines. A friend and I actually built a calculator in '72 or '73 from a 4004 and a schematic we found in Popular Electronics - he'd picked up a sample 4004 from a buddy who was an intern at a GM plant in Indy, and we got to experiment. They were pretty expensive when first released, if I recall correctly. Hard to believe it's been 35 years.

Intel is celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Intel 4004, their very first microprocessor, by releasing the chip's schematics, maskworks, and users manual. This historic revelation was championed by Tim McNerney, who designed the Intel Museum's newest interactive exhibit. Opening on November 15th, the exhibit will feature a fully functional, 130x scale replica of the 4004 microprocessor running the very first software written for the 4004. To create a giant Busicom 141-PF calculator for the museum, 'digital archaeologists' first had to reverse-engineer the 4004 schematics and the Busicom software. Their re-drawn and verified schematics plus an animated 4004 simulator written in Java are available at the team's unofficial 4004 web site. Digital copies of the original Intel engineering documents are available by request from the Intel Corporate Archives. Intel first announced their 2,300-transistor 'micro-programmable computer on a chip' in Electronic News on November 15, 1971, proclaiming 'a new era of integrated electronics.' Who would have guessed how right they would prove to be?

(link) [Slashdot]

07:41 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke causes respiratory symptoms in healthy adults

OK, boys, here's the question: if smoking rates are going down (and they are), and smoking in public places is being banned (and it is), and if other forms of air pollution are vastly reduced from previous levels (and they are), why are we suffering from an asthma epidemic?

Wouldn't it be logical to see a decline in rates of COPD as we "improve" the environment by eliminating not only second hand tobacco smoke, but air pollution, dust, fungi and molds from habitats? Yet we're clearly seeing an increase in such disorders.

Could it be that our ultra clean, smoke free and disinfected urban environments are actually contributing to the problem, rather than being the solution? I'm always pounding the table that "correlation does not equal causation", but you have to admit that there is a startling correlation between the rise of the anti-tobacco movement and the increase in asthma.

Inquiring minds want to know: but who'll fund the study? And if the study showed a real link, who'd dare publish it in this political climate?

Over time, inhaling environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) -- a process often called "passive smoking" -- can cause otherwise healthy adults to develop chronic respiratory symptoms.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

07:34 /Politics | 5 comments | permanent link