Loud

"EARTH—Former vice president Al Gore—who for the past three decades has unsuccessfully attempted to..."

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:51:06 +0100

“EARTH—Former vice president Al Gore—who for the past three decades has unsuccessfully attempted to warn humanity of the coming destruction of our planet, only to be mocked and derided by the very people he has tried to save—launched his infant son into space Monday in the faint hope that his only child would reach the safety of another world.”

- Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source

"And of course, we should not forget the wider social context: food has become the bollocks du jour,..."

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:00:53 +0100

“And of course, we should not forget the wider social context: food has become the bollocks du jour, with no regard for accuracy whatsoever. As I said last week, this stuff has become so prevalent I have given up trying to document it: the Daily Telegraph was printing advice from a self-declared nutrition therapist on folic acid in pregnancy that may actually increase the risk of disabling neural tube defects in babies, in the same week that it ran a news story telling women that red wine prevents breast cancer when actually it increases it, and the sofas of daytime television are filled with self-declared nutritionists, because they give us what we want to hear: technical, complicated, sciencey-sounding health advice.”

- Bad Science » Blame everyone but yourselves

Reykjavík Pollution Continued

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:49:38 +0100

Mikil saurgerlamengun í Tjörninni í Reykjavík - mbl.is

Linked is an Icelandic news item on a government report on the small lake in the city centre. The lake (ironically called “the Pond” in English) is pretty much the heart and soul of the city centre, a landmark that everything else is built around.

The report states that the investigators found the lake to be so polluted with e. coli and heavy metals that one of them was quoted to say that she wouldn’t let her kids stand downwind from the place.

Derek Powazek - 10 Ways Newspapers Can Improve Comments

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:47:00 +0100

Derek Powazek - 10 Ways Newspapers Can Improve Comments

"This JAMA paper indicates several problems around medical reporting. That journalists do not..."

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:05:00 +0100

“This JAMA paper indicates several problems around medical reporting. That journalists do not remember previous health stories (even if they are widely cited), that reporters do not have the time, skills or inclination to critically evaluate a scientific paper, and the public can be misled to thinking there’s a wonder cure out there when the data suggests the opposite.”

- Dr Petra Boynton I Blog I Women, depression and Viagra - what you need to know

Húshólmar (via baldurbjarnason)

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:40:49 +0100

Húshólmar (via baldurbjarnason)

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:40:15 +0100

Húshólmar (via baldurbjarnason)

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:39:48 +0100

Húshólmar (via baldurbjarnason)

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:39:13 +0100

Húshólmar (via baldurbjarnason)

"Should I say I am grateful for the chance to teach at Harvard? I am. Should I acknowledge the many..."

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:07:28 +0100

“Should I say I am grateful for the chance to teach at Harvard? I am. Should I acknowledge the many fine exceptions it was my privilege to instruct? I do, with pleasure. But the sedulous banality of the rich degrades teaching into a service-class preoccupation whose chief duty is preparing clients for monied careers. The liberal flattery of the student is both sentimental and irrelevant. If youth is wasted on the young, is teaching wasted on students?”

- Times Higher Education - All the privileged must have prizes

"But if you’re afraid to fail, you’re afraid to take risks, which begins to explain the final and..."

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:48:17 +0100

“But if you’re afraid to fail, you’re afraid to take risks, which begins to explain the final and most damning disadvantage of an elite education: that it is profoundly anti-intellectual. This will seem counterintuitive. Aren’t kids at elite schools the smartest ones around, at least in the narrow academic sense? Don’t they work harder than anyone else—indeed, harder than any previous generation? They are. They do. But being an intellectual is not the same as being smart. Being an intellectual means more than doing your homework.”

- The American Scholar - The Disadvantages of an Elite Education - By William Deresiewicz

lulz!

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:03:42 +0100

lulz!

"Despite the utter-bullshit so much of the Anderson’s long tail has proven to be, the core idea that..."

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:03:33 +0100

“Despite the utter-bullshit so much of the Anderson’s long tail has proven to be, the core idea that everything finds an audience should be held up and remembered. Clung to fastidiously; A life raft for the ignored, for the invisible.”

- Big Contrarian → Tacky.

Missing the Point

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 16:38:31 +0100

Rob Fahrni:

Open source has its place and if you want it to become the dominant force in the software world here’s a tip, write better software. Write it for folks like my grandmother, not for me. That means paying attention to all the little things, just like Apple does. Remember guys, the user interface IS the application to the end user, they could care less about the cool algorithm you implemented under the hood. Seriously.

True. Although I am driven to add that anybody who uses the phrase “write it for my grandmother” is a part of the problem.

Do not, ever, ever target a non-prospect. The idea that grandmothers will suddenly take up computing in droves because it’s suddenly easier is a fallacy.

Create elegant and effective interfaces for the knowledgeable computer user and they will thank you for it, whether they are grandparents or not.

Why Dudes Love Hulu: Free Porn

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:54:49 +0100

A commenter on Silicon Alley Insider said this here thing:

Actually Hulu is being used by these ‘young men’ to watch porn/nudity. If you check the most popular movie clips almost all are nudity/sex scenes from movies!

Huh. Mainstream media boosting up ratings through softcore porn? Unheard of! You could knock me down with a feather.

"I could explain algorithms to you, but you probably hated high school math too much to understand...."

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 13:42:08 +0100

“I could explain algorithms to you, but you probably hated high school math too much to understand. And that’s why Sergey and Larry are rich, have a 767 as their private plane, and you’re fretting about gas prices and paying $15 baggage fees to the airline.”

- Lefsetz Letter » Blog Archive » Check This Out

"There’s a blatant switcheroo that Seth (and almost everyone else) makes when explaining the..."

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:06:45 +0100

“There’s a blatant switcheroo that Seth (and almost everyone else) makes when explaining the Long Tail. In pocket #1 of the curve, Seth talks in terms of a creator of a work. In pocket #2 of the curve, he also talks in terms of the creator. But then when he gets to the long tail, he switches away from a creator, to talk in terms of an aggregator of other creators’ work. Why is that? What happens to the creator? The creator is dropped when we get to the long tail “pocket of profit” because the long tail is not profitable for the creator. It’s profitable only for the audience and aggregators.”

- Kevin Kelly — The Technium

How Iceland Went From Blood Feuds to Geothermal - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:06:16 +0100

How Iceland Went From Blood Feuds to Geothermal - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog:

Probably my last comment on this matter, it hasn’t appeared in the freakonomics comments thread as of this writing but here it is:

I’d like to take the time here to point out some of the points of agreement between myself and Bjarki.

Namely, that Iceland’s current situation where our economy is markedly worse off than the European average (dramatically higher interest rates and price inflation, amongst other things) is something that our ruling parties could have avoided and in many ways is due to their folly.

Also the point that we need to work on industries that produce things of value instead of just shuffling paper around is something I heartily agree with, especially in light of the ongoing disaster that is our financial sector.

We disagree on heavy industry, not as zealots or idealists, but because we simply assess the gains versus losses the industry offers Iceland as a nation and as an economy in different ways. I think other export industries such as software, media and design could offer the economy much more for much less investment and much less environmental damage.

I’d guess that Bjarki would say that it isn’t an either/or situation, we could do both, and the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

My feeling hinges on a simple fact. Heavy industry isn’t aspirational. If we are to have any sort of ambition as a nation we need to aim much higher than just becoming a cheap place to process energy intensive basic commodities.

Addendum: I feel like I’ve had this debate a thousand times with almost every single Icelander I’ve met who isn’t in the media or software industry.

I think I’ll just have to accept that most of the rest of Iceland disagrees with me and the surge of heavy industry in Iceland will continue unabated and unopposed.

How Iceland Went From Blood Feuds to Geothermal - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:39:58 +0100

How Iceland Went From Blood Feuds to Geothermal - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog:

More of me arguing on the freakonomics weblog:

Bjarki, cheaper financing (“cheaper” here being one of those unfortunate, non-distinct kind of words that understates the deal they are getting) is “a dollop of money” that’s the whole lesson behind the current worldwide economic malaise, money has been borrowed and lent into existence.

I don’t know if you remember the economists debating the Kárahnjúka plant when it was about to go into production but the gist of their message was that the production, loans, added credit—-the entire enterprise—-would create massive inflationary pressure on the Icelandic economy. That the government added to that by loosening banking regulation and driving up the housing sector just meant that they were compounding the initial inflationary mistake. And the amounts involved in the entire enterprise combined are anything but miniscule. In my haste earlier I did make it sound like the government-backed loans were the primary inflationary force (for that I apologise) but they were key in getting the project approved and going and warrant in my view being highlighted as such.

There is a reason why the heavy industry debate is sparking up again here in Iceland, they plan to reinflate the economy the same way they inflated it last time.

Aluminium smelting does not create “things of value”, it creates commodities only differentiated by price. Creating things of value would be if we didn’t export pure aluminium but built an industry on designing aluminium products and exported that. Value creation is in the design and manufacture of end products, not in non-distinct commodities.

Yes. I don’t want to work in a smelter. They may offer paid jobs but that doesn’t take away the fact that if jobs were the only criterion we could have created 800 jobs with a fraction of the investment and none of the environmental and political damage that the Kárahnjúka plant caused.

"I’m not usually speechless but I’m ecstatic to report that the Senate just passed PEPFAR..."

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:05:22 +0100

“I’m not usually speechless but I’m ecstatic to report that the Senate just passed PEPFAR without the Sessions amendment, and Senator Biden, who managed the bill, just said they will probably avoid a conference with the House and send the bill forthwith to the president’s desk. Barring some unforeseen event, the HIV Travel Ban - a relic of the days when HIV was a source of fear and stigma and terror - is finally over.”

- The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan