Children in the old days were allowed and encouraged to experiment with mildly risky but extremely rewarding activities. Today’s children, on the other hand, are mollycoddled to the point of turning them into unhappy ignoramuses.
Month: May 2007
Quirky human behavior
We are far from being the rational creatures that we like to think we are. When asked to imagine that a laundered sweater had been worn by someone who had contracted HIV through a blood transfusion, most people said they wouldn’t wear it.
Too much Bayes?
it is quite likely that a frequently misspelled word eventually occurs so much in the wild that it is considered a valid word. Maybe Google needs some if statements in their code after all, instead of blindly trusting the popularity contest that is Bayesian analysis.
more like accelerated language development. once a spelling becomes popular, it is the new correct spelling by sheer gravitational pull. go forth and coin those terms 🙂
Extrasolar Map
A full-globe map of the “hot Jupiter” planet HD 189733b. The map reveals a “hot spot” that is offset from the substellar point (high noon) by 30 degrees. The offset may indicate jet stream winds of up to 10k kph.
wow. although, “map“, but still!
Against MBAs
At the same as a number of engineering friends of mine are leaving Google — most common complaint: too big and bureaucratic — MBAs have declared it to be their employer of choice. MBA hiring may be a negative indicator for future performance.
it scares me that all these useless MBA want to come work here
Google Image Labeler
Until now, for each match you got 100 points. But many people realized that they could easily win points if they typed generic tags like “man”, “people”, “photo”. To make the game more exciting and to improve the quality of tags, Google decided to change the way you get points. Now you can get anywhere from 50 to 150 depending on how specific your tag is.
refinements for harnessing slacker energy. maybe this is the long-sought zero-point energy?
The Blue Economy
From new sources of energy and nutritious food to limitless biodiversity and potential settlement sites the ocean is the last great unexploited frontier on earth. This blog is a window into that future.
Best Buy Scams
Ever get signed for something at Best Buy, but you swear that you never signed up for anything. Here is the trick that is used, and that I was taught from a Best Buy manager. When a customer would refuse either AOL, MSN, NetZero, magazine offers, or whatever other D-SUB we had, we’d sign you up anyway.
so basically, MSN / AOL and friends lose money even with these scams to sign up customers.
Encyclopedia of Life
the wiki approach is nice, but how will they scale data acquisition? not everyone has a sailboat like venter to scoop up new species from the oceans.
3D browser globe
cute, although useless because you can barely zoom in to a continent
Gregor J. Rothfuss 