The Long Lead Time of Innovation

Bill Bixton of Business Week (himself discussing a monograph by Chris Anderson) discussed the notion that it takes a long time for an idea to catch on and be successful.

This seems to be obvious to some, but equally obvious counter examples are easy to find, like the iPhone or Tickle-Me Elmo. How about The Dark Night Batman movie? Prozec?

On the other hand, in the chemical industry it is taking longer and longer to make a break-though mass market innovation. The long induction time of Kevlar comes to mind, and it is still a specialty. It has taken over ten years for polylactic acid PLA to get to the minor share of the polyester market it has today -- is it even 1%.

In my division of BASF we joke about business forecasts with huge volume upswings, and we call them "Hockey Sticks" because of their shape. More often than not the huge growth does not materialize, and people debate on whose fault that was.

The time was when a new polymer or even a new molecule could storm the world. In Pharma I think that is still true today, but blockbuster drugs are getting rarer and rarer. Once something gets regulatory approval, we can see a fast ramp up, often even faster when the patent goes off.

In basic chemicals, the pace of innovation has slowed. I think because the state of knowledge has advanced over the last century, and the basic, generic product is less inferior to the new version. I understand that a new top 50 chemical has not been introduced since the sixties.

On the other hand, there could be new chemicals ripe for commercialization if we had the creativity to realize it. There could be a whopper, but we just don't know. Another Post-it or Velcro.

This reminds me of Clayton Christianson's Disruptive Technology, which might be the subject of another post. He claims that incremental innovation can never give "hockey stick" growth, only new, generally low cost innovations.

Lung Cancer

Lung Cancer can strike with deadly force, and when it strikes it kills over 60% of the time. It has the potential to take one from happy and oblivious to near death fast. Lung cancer kills 31% of all those who die of cancer. The chance of an American getting lung/bronchus cancer before the age of 60 is 1:92 -- surprisingly high. The chance between birth and death is a whooping 1:12. Link

The chance of getting all forms of cancer between birth and death is 50:50.






There were 160,000 deaths due to lung cancer in 2007, and about 2000 in Michigan. The greatest incidence of lung cancer is in Arkansas, and the lowest in Utah. Of course, smoking is the biggest factor in cancer incidence. Lung cancer is most common in African American men; least common in Asian & Hispanic women.

Lung cancer like fatal car accidents and other serious illnesses underscores the fragility of life -- something we all know, but don't think about.

Nassim Taleb in Fooled by Randomness discusses his version of the alternate world hypothesis where chance events take place differently. He says the value of a life is the average of all the possible worlds. Taleb is primarily talking about high finance, but I think the notion applies to disease survivors and victims as well.

The Christmas Tree

Every year I put up a Christmas Tree, for whatever reason, I always do this instead of my wife. After twenty years of discussion with her, I bought an artificial tree. She always complained about the needles in the living room, and thought that it was environmentally bad to get a natural tree. I never believed that natural trees were harmful, since they are a renewable resource, but I got worn down. I also hated driving the old tree to the dump.

The tree that I bought was a "9' GE Just Cut Aspin Tree," which appears to be made by GE, but is actually sold by a company called Santa's Best Craft in Wisconsin. I suspect the tree was made in China, but it did not say so in the packaging. "Santa's Best" is an actual brick and mortar company in Manitowoc (Wisconsin). The tree is made of PVC, and seems to be dioctyl phthalate-free. It has flexible molded PVC tips and less expensive PVC roll-stock garland branches inside. The PVC is not flammable, so it is safer than a natural tree. Since I used to work in phthalate-free plasticizers, I am interested in what plasticizer they are using, probably something like trioctyl trimellitate, but I'm guessing.

I bought the tree at Lowes, and it was on sale Thanksgiving weekend. The following weekend, Lowes had their whole Christmas stock on half-off -- a new example of rushing the season. I got it on sale. I was thinking about deflation while I was buying it -- if I would have waited another weekend I would have saved more.

After I put the tree up, I did not like it. The tree seemed too even and perfect. When I am right up next to it, it looks artificial. The new tree looks better from across the room than close up.

Reflate This Economy Now

Now is the time to combat inflation.

I know that Ben Stein is a comedian, and that you can't take him seriously, but I am telling you: Take this seriously. See his post on yahoo/finance. The world economy is falling apart, and falling prices are the problem. Gas prices are down; housing prices are down; stock prices are down; Commodity prices are also down. Today the Wholesale Price index was down in October.
Here is a graph of the price of oil from forecasts.org.




See how dramatically prices have fallen. Gold is the same:



As Ben Stein says, all the spending now is "FREE." because there is no risk of inflation. The government needs to simply print money.

Plasma Globes

The plasma globe was invented by Bill Parker who was playing with neon and argon as an undergraduate at MIT. Later as an artist at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, he made a larger one for display. See more in C&E News for Oct 27, 2008. The site is down this weekend, so I can't put in a link. Of course, the original invention of the glowing plasma was by the great Nicoli Tesla in 1894. It seems Tesla never gets proper credit for anything.

Electrodes ionize the gases, which flow inside the globe and form a current. It is important to have AC current so the gases & current actually flows inside the ball. The current flows from the center electrode to the glass, and then through whatever path to ground. (Some of the current flows out into the globe, and then back to the center electrode when the field reverses.) Voltages vary from 3000 to 30000V depending on the size of the ball and plasma. The gases are between 2-10 torr, or about 1% of atmospheric pressure.

The plasma is attracted to your finger when you touch the ball, and that is the fascinating thing about them. Your finger provides a better path to ground than the surrounding air. Wikipedia has more details.

There are also some interesting non-globlular plasmas at: http://www.plasmarama.com/



The above caught my eye. It is by Morgan Crook, and is called God City.

Virtual Reality News on Election Night

I was taken by the unabashed use of glitzy visual effects on election night. One of the flashiest was the bar-chart that popped up from the floor in beside Ann Curry on MSNBC and NBC. She is in a virtual room where the signage changes reflecting the subject matter. The columns and the walls are all virtual. I understand the panning of the camera around the room required dense computing power.

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MSNBC was tame compared to the Holographic Girl on CNN. Jessica Yellin appeared superimposed electronically in the studio with a glowy halo around her like Obiwan Kanobi. She was photographed from 360 degrees by 35 cameras, digitized and then electronically pasted into the frame. Her image was oriented based on the camera position in Wolf Blitzer's studio. In this case, it had novelty value only. It is better to see a correspondent the field, or even the anchor at the news event. I don't need to see the field correspondent in the studio -- who cares about the studio? This technology might be better for an interview subject rather than a reporter. 

Wired Magazine has details.

Auto Sales Crash, Lowest in 25 Years

Having moved to the Detroit area, and having bought real estate here, I can't help feeling awful about the auto industry.

This town would be so much nicer and more prosperous if the US Auto Industry would hit better times.

I know that automobiles are not going away, so that even though cars may be downsized, somebody will have to make and buy them. I was hoping that the weak dollar was going to help them. With the dollar back up to $0.79/Euro, that is less and less likely.

Some say that the US does not have any distinctive, competitive advantage over other countries. I am not sure that's true because the US competes in airplanes and other mechanical equipment. In addition, these companies are not really national companies because they are so global.

I hope our new President takes on US competitiveness issues.

November 4, 2008 Election Day

At long last the election is here. Hasn't this been counting down for 100 weeks?

In my Michigan neighborhood, I am worried about how long the line will be at the polls. I have an early morning meeting at work, and I'll have to vote near closing time. I am going to bring an ipod and a Blackberry. There is good chance the winner will be declared before I get home.

Circus Contortionist Holds Herself Up by the Teeth

Here is Maria Sarach (18) at the European Youth Circus Competition holding up her whole weight with a mouth-piece. The picture describes this better than I can.

After I saw this, I looked on Google, and it seems there is a Youtube clip of her whole act. The act starts slow and artsy, and the above stunt is about six minutes in -- in case you want to skip to the end.

Zombie Quiz

This stuck me as the right tone between strange and serious. It fits my mood this evening. 

Bird Flies 8 Days, Non-stop, Alaska to New Zealand!

I was amazed when I heard about a bird that flies 6200 miles, non-stop across the Pacific Ocean from Alaska to the tip of New Zealand. I get tired running after half an hour. Can  you imagine flapping your wings for that long?

Equally amazing is the navigational feat. Finding New Zealand is hard enough, but without landmarks over 6200 miles of distance is very hard. Clearly the bird is using some avian tricks to guide its way. 

Credit goes to Robert Gill of the US Geological Survey for the banding experiment. The bird was a bar-tailed godwit, limosa, lapponica. 

Announcing the Debut of Depth of Processing: Food & Wine

I have always thought that I should put some recipes online -- if only to make myself write them down. I know how little traffic I get on this site, but it is more for me to keep track. If I really wanted someone to find them, then allrecipes.com is a better place.

The special site means that a year from now I can still find my recipes.

Anyway, here is the link. http://depthofprocessingfoodwine.blogspot.com/

Let's see how it goes.

Religulous

Just saw Religulous (click here for my review), and it deserves more comment than its value as a movie. This is pop entertainment and not a comparative religion study.

One interesting part was the parallels between the Egyptian god Horus and Jesus. Maher said that both had a virgin birth on December 25, had twelve disciples, got crucified, and rose from the dead. Most of these are wrong on their face: no scholar believes Jesus was really born on December 25 - the Romans moved it to the day of their Saturnalia festival; the Romans invented crucifixion, and lots of ancient deities rose from the dead.

Wikipedia is its own world. It is interesting that someone has purged the Horus entry of all Jesus references. One finds this Jesus-Horus stuff mostly in pop religion movies (or here.)

I have decided that the Jesus/Horus parallel is not a serious topic. The Horus myth is pretty creative for example his mother sewed his father's severed body together so that she could conceive Horus.

My Mom's Eightieth Birthday

My Mom is having her eightieth birthday party in two weeks. I am collecting birthday pictures to make a slideshow.

Here is a link to all the pictures<<

Depression (Prozac) Turns into Fear of Depression (Hoover)

The relentless fall of the stock market this week has bridged over from disappointment, through depression (personal Prozec depression) to fear -- fear of a Hoover-style depression. Not simply the fear of losing money, but the fear that the economy could possibly enter a decades-long economic depression.

The money supply is contracting quickly as billions of dollars of stock market value slips away into nothing. Everyone feels poor, and who is going buy something expensive? Everyone is going to wait, and the whole nation -- perhaps the whole developed world will sink into a a fearful sulk.

Those of us who live in the Detroit metro area can be afraid that our housing values are going to crash even further if the auto companies go bankrupt. As the recession began, at least we could console ourselves that export markets were strong. With the dollar on the mend, and the foreign economies crashing also, it is hard to be upbeat.

Picasso Peace Scarf - Picture of the Day

This scarf by Picasso was done in 1955 in Berlin. It is in a London art show on Cold War Art. I like the playfulness of Picasso's work. This is so simple, but still interesting.

Now Open, A Robot Store In Ann Arbor

I love how Amy Sumerton dead-pans her jokes about robots. "What do you mean you don't have a robot, is yours in the shop?!"

826Michigan is the local chapter of a non-profit writing and tutoring group for kids. I might need to get one of the Robot Repair T-Shirts.

My Business: Liberty Street Robot Supply

Fantastic Contraption

Here is a diversion that will take your mind off your problems. 

I think these are interesting puzzles and clever software. 

They call this a "physics" game, but I think that insults physicists. This is really an engineering game.  

Fun either way though. 

401K Value Decline and Can You Endure it

A guy at work told me that he switched 100% of his 401k money into CDs, and he did this when the Dow was 35% higher than it is. First I am not sure this is true. Second, if he can do this twice, he should be running a mutual fund, and not working at BASF. Third this made me feel like, "Am I stupid, why did I not sell out too?"

One reason I did not sell is because I finished reading, Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Intelligent Asset Allocator by William Bernstein -- two academic economists. They keep repeating that the average active investor does not consistently beat the market. They would say that it is foolish to try to "time the market," and that these kind of events just average themselves out. Nassim Taleb says that just because the market is gone down, your percent ownership in the companies is still the same -- which feels kind of hollow.  

I heard a news report that most mutual funds misread the recent downturn and are down worse than the main indexes. 

William Bernstein would have one sell safe bonds, and use them to buy beat-up stocks. One knows at some point that will make sense. 

Finally, if the guy at work had sold his stock, and the strategy had not worked, he never would have told me about it. One only brags about successes. One hides failures, usually even from oneself. 

Pinot Grigio Update

Today I rechecked the Pinot Grigio juice density, and found it had dropped to 1.074. I think that the juice warmed up, and also some wild yeast fermentation. 

I decided to add some sugar. After a great deal of thought I bought some apple juice concentrate. I added two 12 ounce cans of Old Orchard frozen juice concentrate. The secret is that I used Apple-Cranberry and Apple-Cherry instead. Not very traditional or legal for a real wine maker. All juice though. I also added 100 grams of sugar. This should get me 10-12% of alcohol. 

Wine Alcohol Content Table

I have been wondering about whether I need to add more sugar to my Pinot Grigio to make it more robust; that is to say higher alcohol content. I want my wine to burn a bit and be a little astringent. 

This table is lifted in whole cloth from beekmanwine.com . The original source is truthinwine.com . 

Beekman rages about how the measured alcohol content is actually lower than the government standard, and that the additive levels are too high. I would want to know more about how the tests were run before I would say that. I am certain that the large mega-wineries know their alcohol content to the hundreth place, and that there is no product manager that wants to go to jail or wreck the reputation of the company by watering down the wine. 

	Alcohol	Alcohol	Sugar	Sulfites	Polyphenols	Catechins	Resveratrol
	Actual %	Labeled	%	ppm.	mg/gram	mg/175g	mg/liter
RED WINES TESTED
Yellow Tail Merlot	11.1	13.5	0.5	103	3.26	102.4	2.00
Rosemount Shiraz	10.9	14	0.2	104	3.22	84.7	2.01
Columbia Crest Merlot/Cab	10.8	13	0	99	3.20	93.6	0.60
Clos du Bois Merlot	10.8	13	0	140	3.24	93.1	2.28
Blackstone Merlot	10.7	13	0.4	152	3.05	116.9	1.11
Beringer Founders Cab	10.5	13.3	0	198	3.62	83.6	0.39
BV Coastal Cab	10.5	13	0	122	3.40	69.5	0.43
Rodney Strong Cabernet	10.5	13.8	0	140	3.76	77.3	1.19
Concha y Toro Merlot	10.3	13	0.4	231	2.77	78.4	5.95

	Alcohol	Alcohol	Sugar	Sulfites	Polyphenols	Catechins	Resveratrol
	Actual %	Labeled	%	ppm.	mg/gram	mg/175g	mg/liter
WHITE WINES TESTED
Woodbridge Chardonnay	11.2	13.5	0	224	0.41	58.3	0.14
Fetzer Chard	11.1	13.5	0.4	184	0.39	39.8	0.11
Kendall Jackson VR Chard	11.0	13.5	0.6	201	0.48	26.4	0.22
Ch. St. Michelle Chard	10.8	13	0.1	208	0.40	39.5	0.09
Lindemans Bin 65 Chard	10.7	13.5	0.3	241	0.52	58.9	0.34
Vendange Chard	10.7	13	0.6	215	0.39	34.6	0.29
Corbett Canyon Chard	10.7	13	0.6	174	0.36	27.9	0.09
Glen Ellen Chard	10.6	13	0.5	154	0.30	27.9	0.09
E & J Gallo Chard	10.6	13.5	0.7	153	0.27	15.4	0.09
Duboueuf Francais Blanc	10.4	12	0	287	0.47	28.5	0.29
Sutter Home Chard	10.0	13	0.9	205	0.42	36.1	0.09
Bella Serra Pinot Grigio	9.7	12	0.3	308	0.34	13.5	1.66
Bolla Soave	9.7	12	0.2	199	0.30	9.8	0.16
Cavit Pinot Grigio	9.6	12	0.4	276	0.35	14.4	0.09
Almaden Mt. Chablis	9.4	11.5	0.8	233	0.33	7.3	0.09
Franzia Chablis (5L box)	8.8	11	1.1	212	0.35	10.2	0.09
Livingston Cellars Chablis	8.4	10.5	1.1	240	0.33	10.7	0.09
Carlo Rossi Chablis	8.2	10.5	1.6	172	0.32	15.2	0.09

My Pinot Grigio should turn out at about 9.5% which is almost on top of the Pinot Grigio in the table. This does not include any alcohol that is already in the grape juice, which must be measurable. Based on this I will probably leave it alone. 

Having said that I would have expected Pinot Grigio at 11-12%.  I am a little tempted to add some apple juice concentrate for some fruity flavor and a little extra uumph. 

2008 Pinot Grigio

I was pleased with how the Merlot is going so I started my white this week. The truth is that I wanted White Zinfandel, but they were out. Pinot Grigio will always remind me of the movie Sideways.

The juice is 6 gallons from Lodi Gold in California. The juice just tastes wonderful. I hope the wine tastes as good. I have transfered it to a clean container for the initial fermentation, and put in the sulfite.

The initial density is only 1.072 g/ml, so I am a little concerned that this wine will be too weak. I may need to add some sugar, or perhaps some sweet fruit juice. This will make a wine of 9.2% alcohol, as compares to over 14% for my Merlot, which itself could be higher. 

2008 Merlot Wine - 1 Week Update

I started the wine by killing the native yeast last Saturday with potassium metabisulfite. On Sunday, I added a yeast Saccharomyces bayanus from Lallemand, which is a powdered yeast. The theory being that this yeast will give me a nice high alcohol conversion, better than the native yeast. I also added both yeast nutrient and yeast energizer from Carlson.

The density and the underlying sugar content dropped quickly over the first 24 hours. 

Density Date

1.091 g/ml 22 Sept

1.022 23 Sept  Big drop

1.012 24 Sept

1.011 26 Sept

1.010 27 Sept

Today I washed out the demijohn, and transfered the wine in with a siphon. I put the trap on top, and it was bubbling. I have a video of it, but it was a little dull, so I did not post it. The demijohn was about 2L too big, so I topped it off with some Yellow Tail Merlot.   

Wine Making: 2008 Merlot

I have been toying with making wine for a few years. I made wine about five years ago.

I went in to Detroit to California Grapes on Fort Street, to an old, family run place that sells wine grapes, and indeed juice. I could write a posting just on this store. It is old, traditional and it smells like wine must, but it is also a regular business with the names of the owners painted on the side of building. Definitely not like Walmart.

After pricing the wine press and grape crusher -- I decided to buy a 6 gallon pail of Merlot juice. I have enough equipment to buy as it is, next year I can get a grape crusher, and then perhaps in two years the wine press.

I am going to do a whole wine making procedure in a future post. Today the important thing is to kill the natural yeast with metabisulfite, and then to put another strain of yeast in. My grandfather used to try to encourage the nature yeast for more flavor. I have regarded yeast strain selection as elitist in the past. On the other hand, many people say it is important, and so I was persuaded to use Saccharomyces bayanus from Lalvin.

Right now it is in the basement with a gentle bubbling from the yeast. It has been about 12 hours. The idea for the next week or so, is to let the primary fermentation take place in a plastic pail. Happily I had an eight gallon pail that works great.

The big question now is whether to make another 6 gallon pail. I know I want to try a lighter white wine, but I also know that I don't drink wine that fast.

Deregulation Fails American Financial Markets; Crowd Psychology Dominates

A generation of financial policy based on deregulation has passed away. The Reagan era supply-siders who created huge budget deficits and who de-regulated industry after industry are waking up discredited. Another generation of financial pros will grow up with this as the signature event of their time. 

Everyone who said that we should have known better is wrong. The housing market crumble followed by the mortgage loan crash was unforeseeable except in hindsight. This is because the "markets" are not so knowledgeable as the financial theorists proclaim. They are big crowds subject to crowd psychology. The premium that goes to independent action is sometimes delayed by decades.

Having said that, this type of market crash and buyout will never happen again. That is because the hundreds of thousands of financial acolytes are learning a lesson this week.

Second, housing assets were too expensive at a time when personal incomes were not growing fast enough. The housing bubble was puffed up with cheap money, and just a little monetary deflation caused the bubble to shrivel.  Blame can be cast at supply side policies slighted the middle class for slight faster short term growth. 

The buy-out will speed the healing of the market. It probably will be paid for in ten years of increased inflation. Inflation is the real cure for the house price problem. I don't think a central banker will every utter that sentence because the Fed cannot be seen to be encouraging inflation. On the other hand, buying 500 billion in bonds will certainly inflate the money supply and the economy. This will cause new lows for the dollar. 

Katie and Wyatt's Wedding

We went to a my Niece Katie's wedding last weekend (Sept 6.) It was a non-traditional wedding with the minister dressed like Dracula. As you can see the groom's jacket was inspired by a confederate officer's uniform, but I give low reviews to the pants. 

Most of the guests knew what to expect. Weddings are ordinarily so traditional, and Katie and Wyatt broke some new gound in my family. On the other hand, this was not that counter-cultural, political, strange or Goth. I don't think anyone was too stressed by the tradition-bending.

There are many more pictures on my .me site.

Rohm and Haas and Dow - Six Weeks On

Dow's acquisition of Rohm and Haas is a great opportunity for Dow to Rohm & Haas's hot electronics chemicals business. Dow has never been able to run a specialty business itself, and when the commodity market is hot, it uses its cash to buy some growth. Unfortunately it comes along with some currently profitable, but slow growth businesses, like coatings polymers and table salt.

This merger is interesting because the cultures are quite different, and commodity companies almost never manage to run specialty businesses well. I suspect that the internal focus of the former Rohm and Haas will make them poor competitors in the near future.

Let Me Tell You How Much I Hate Excel: Mac 2008

This is not a review for Excel, but it is an expression of my frustration.

I hate Excel for Mac 2008 not because of what it does, but because of what it does not do. I hate it because of how it failed to be the program that it could have been. Excel X was a fine program with all the functionality of the Excel 2002 for XP product and somewhat more style. This latest version is a reason to buy a PC. I can't believe it how poorly it handles Macros and it does not even have the "statistics toolpack."

There should be a law against companies taking good software labels and putting out diluted lite versions in their place. This is like movie sequels: Clone Wars of software. You can't stop them.

Quicken Online is the same story.

I want to close with an anti-commercial for OpenOffice. Yes OpenOffice works OK, and it does kinda run Excel Macros, but its not ready for prime time either. Having plunked down my money for this castrated version of Excel, I see no reason to run OpenOffice -- except perhaps residual frustration with Bill Gates.

Debut of Depth of Processing: Movies

I have been reviewing all the movies that I see since 2001. I do it because it helps me remember them more slearly, and I suppose I enjoy it more.

I appreciate that few people ever read my reviews, and that my reviews are mostly for me. If you look at the traffic to my site, you can see that it is mostly me. Of course my opinions about movies are as valid as anyone's.

Anyway, I created a new Blogspot site, and I am going to try to link them together pretty well. Blogspot is far easier than my old movie blog that I hosted on homepage.mac.com. Although .mac was a good server, the upload rate was not good. The last straw was when I lost about six months of reviews during a service outage. (See my Heavy Lifting Post below.)

It took some time to import the html from the old site, but Blogspot does not support a lot of tags, so I ended up editing in simpler and simpler styles. For example, I couldn't paste the tables into Blogspot, and then the Blogspot importer inserted lots of redundant tags.

An upgrade that I want to do, is links to movie art - that is movie posters. I can't seem to find a good source for that. IMDB pictures are embedded in some active code, and I can't extract the image only.

Leave me a link if you know how to do that.

Heavy Lifting Delivers Faster Comcast Service

Our internet is working again after a multi-week battle with Comcast. Our cable TV worked the whole time, but the upload portion of the internet service was barely working. That means we lost about 40% of outgoing packets on a Ping test. Speeds were fast and slow, but the packet loss on uploads meant the internet did not work well. I run a Mac, and if you do too, then use Network Utility in the Utility Folder. 

I talked to the Comcast people three times, but they took me seriously when I had some speed test results. (I like CNET and SpeedTest.Net (Columbus, OH.)) I had the Comcast field tech out twice and he replaced every cable wire in the house. After talking to his boss twice, they agreed the problem was elsewhere. The following Monday I got a call saying that yes, others in my neighborhood were also having slow service, and then suddenly it was faster. I don't know if it was a problem with a buried cable or a problem with a Comcast Server. 

The Comcast people were all friendly, although not always helpful. 

We are now up to 23,000-24,000 kbps upload and 2100-2200 kbps download, which is somewhat faster than the service we are signed up for. 

US Bungles Georgia Crisis

This article is critical of the State Department during the crisis, and some of this is a cheap shot because the Georgians turned out to be cowards. 

Link to My Movie Site

I have been blogging on movies for almost 6 years now. This is a link to the page for 2008, which has more links going back. 

Depth Of Processing

Depth of Processing is deep thinking that people do when they learn something. This blog is called that because I learn about what I am doing by writing about it. The ideas crystalize the thoughts in my mind.