The New York Times posted this interview with Pat Metheny. The conversation centers around the music that Pat feels most influenced him. Good stuff.

Wow, this guy is amazing. A genius explains is all about Daniel Tammet, an autistic savant. He's amazing with numbers, but unlike other savants, he's able to communicate how he thinks.

Daniel Tammet is an autistic savant. He can perform mind-boggling mathematical calculations at breakneck speeds. But unlike other savants, who can perform similar feats, Tammet can describe how he does it. He speaks seven languages and is even devising his own language. Now scientists are asking whether his exceptional abilities are the key to unlock the secrets of autism.

Firefox, one of the best things to happen to web browsing in a long time, recently hit 25,000,000 downloads. That's pretty damn huge, and is yet another wake-up call to Microsoft that their self-proclaimed "dominance" of the web browser market thus far has been largely due to them practically forcing Windows users to surf the internet with Internet Explorer and nothing else. Blah, everything coming out of Microsoft is a bunch of marketing nonsense, but it's nice to see the masses exercising their ability to choose something better.

I got a copy of Now, Discover Your Strengths and took the Strengths Finder test online. Here are the Strengths Quadrants for each of the different strengths.

My top 5 strengths are:

• Achiever: People strong in the Achiever theme have a great deal of stamina and work hard. They take great satisfaction from being busy and productive.
  
• Learner: People strong in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. In particular, the process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.
  
• Relator: People who are strong in the Relator theme enjoy close relationships with others. They find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal.
  
• Individualization: People strong in the Individualization theme are intrigued with the unique qualities of each person. They have a gift for figuring out how people who are different can work together productively.
  
• Connectedness: People strong in the Connectedness theme have faith in the links between all things. They believe there are few coincidences and that almost every event has a reason.
  

This is the latest article showing that cell phones impair a driver's ability to concentrate and react ("Cell Phone Use Ages Young Drivers"). Some interesting highlights below...

A report from the University of Utah says when motorists between 18 and 25 talk on cell phones, they drive like elderly people moving and reacting more slowly and increasing their risk of accidents. "If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone, his reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver," said David Strayer, a University of Utah psychology professor and principal author of the study. "It's like instant aging." And it doesn't matter whether the phone is hand-held or handsfree, he said. Any activity requiring a driver to "actively be part of a conversation" likely will impair driving abilities, Strayer said.

Motorists who talk on cell phones are more impaired than drunken drivers with blood-alcohol levels exceeding 0.08, according to research conducted in 2003. Strayer said they found that when 18- to-25-year-olds were placed in a driving simulator and talked on a cellular phone, they reacted to brake lights from a car in front of them as slowly as 65- to 74-year-olds who were not using a cell phone. The study found that drivers who talked on cell phones were 18 percent slower in braking and took 17 percent longer to regain the speed they lost when they braked.

The new research questions the effectiveness of cell phone usage laws in states such as New York and New Jersey, which only ban the use of hand-held cell phones while driving. It's not so much the handling of a phone, Strayer said, but the fact that having a conversation is a mental process that can drain concentration.

I just read about Netezza, a company that is rocking the large-scale data storage world. They've got a very cool idea, and it seems to work.