July 2009
112 posts
So far, all my tweets have been exactly 140 characters, but lately I’ve been thinking of going in the other direction: zero characters each.
How Tetris Taught Me to Cope with Modern Life - ... →
A blog entry by one of Shige’s friends that begins like this always deserves a link:
To succeed in Tetris, you have to act quickly and decisively. If things build up, you have to figure out how to fill in the gaps. The more layers you address, the faster the pace goes until finally you hit a stage where you can’t react fast enough and, laughing, you randomly move the pieces until they...
If they make a horror movie about Watsuji Tetsurō, there should be a scene where “the call of conscience is coming from inside the house!”
Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man -... →
Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.
The use of the term “artificial intelligence” in this...
“But white people get harassed by cops too” -... →
An interesting look at one of issues in reasoning about the questions around the arrest of Prof. Gates.
Another good piece came out by Stanley Fish that talks about when they were both working at Duke. Apparently even then Gates had problems where construction people would mistake him for help and not the owner of his house. He also got a disproportionate number of complaints from other people...
Via tinycartridge, a great cover of...
Traders Profit With Computers Set at High Speed -... →
It is the hot new thing on Wall Street, a way for a handful of traders to master the stock market, peek at investors’ orders and, critics say, even subtly manipulate share prices.
It is called high-frequency trading — and it is suddenly one of the most talked-about and mysterious forces in the markets.
Powerful computers, some housed right next to the machines that drive marketplaces...
The only zoos in the world where the animals are... →
About the zebras in the Gaza zoo:
“It’s really a painted donkey,” admitted Mahmud Berghat, the director of Marah, when asked about the creature. Making a fake zebra isn’t easy—henna didn’t work and wood paint was deemed inhumane, so they finally settled on human hair dye. “We cut its hair short and then painted the stripes,” Berghat explained behind...
Fake Steve Jobs - I'm really thinking maybe I... →
A guy in China lost (or possibly sold?) a next-gen iPhone prototype, and his company (Foxconn) started pressuring him (torturing him?) to get it back. So, he committed suicide (was murdered?) by jumping off a 12 story building. Fake Steve Jobs takes the news hard:
Well, this is the world we are living in. These are the people we are dealing with. This is how we have to deal with them. We...
“The most careless girl in the class had the most exquisite body,
the constant...”
– “The Most Careless Girl in the Class Had the Most Exquisite Body” - Erica Ehrenberg
Arrested for BPWB: Being a Professor While Black →
Police arrived at Gates’s Ware Street home near Harvard Square at 12:44 p.m. to question him. Gates, director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard, had locked himself out of his house and was trying to get inside.
He was booked for disorderly conduct after “exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior,” according to the Cambridge...
WatchWhat with all the Luniversary business going around, I figure now is as good a time as any to remind people that African-Americans made it to the moon years before white NASA.
Japan mellows as its population ages - Daniel... →
Japan doesn’t particularly want to import new citizens, but it doesn’t seem to want to manufacture them, either. It’s become harder to support a family on a single income, and young people are living at home for longer. And Japan isn’t particularly friendly to working mothers—pre-K day care is not widely available, and the phrase work-life balance doesn’t seem to...
William Pfaff - From Midas to Modern Crisis →
William Pfaff continues to be so far left that he has to live in Paris. Interesting though:
Until money, an individual’s possible possessions had to be
tangible, useful, and necessarily limited enough to enjoy and
control. One can directly possess only so much property, herds,
ships, or enjoy so much food, sex, honors, reputation, and so on,
before being satisfied (or sated). But...
Kottke - The giant Apollo 11 post →
A number of Apollo 11 links
WatchMoral of the story: Astronauts are awesome.
“Bruce McCandless, who was assigned to communicate with Armstrong and Aldrin...”
– HonoluluAdvertiser.com
How boring was the Eighteenth Century?: Its great wit and party animal is famous for spending nine long years working on his own dictionary.
