Bill Mill

"[The academic publishing] model is incredibly inefficient under every perspective, and results in a..."

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:41:49 -0400

“[The academic publishing] model is incredibly inefficient under every perspective, and results in a colossal waste of public funding, and forces researchers worldwide to waste countless hours that could be devoted to better research (or to have fun with family and friends). It is a system deeply rooted in the past, oblivious to the advent of the Web and related new forms of communication, information sharing, social networking and reputation.”

- Publish and perish: why the current publication and review model is killing research and wasting your money - Fabio Casati, Fausto Giunchiglia, Maurizio Marchese

"Marey’s chronophotographic gun was made in 1882, this instrument was capable of taking 12..."

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:31:16 -0400

“Marey’s chronophotographic gun was made in 1882, this instrument was capable of taking 12 consecutive frames a second, and the most interesting fact is that all the frames were recorded on the same picture, using these pictures he studied horses, birds, dogs, sheep, donkeys, elephants, fish, microscopic creatures, molluscs, insects, reptiles, etc. Some call it Marey’s “animated zoo”.

”

- Étienne-Jules Marey - Wikipedia

"I suppose people will think I am advocating moral relativism. Actually I am not making any sort of..."

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:12:53 -0400

“I suppose people will think I am advocating moral relativism. Actually I am not making any sort of moral argument, my argument is aesthetic. I am celebrating the existence of times and places that are rich and strange worlds unto themselves, whether it be 17th century Venice, 18th century Tahiti, 19th century London, or 21st century Tokyo.

I hate how our discussions of “the far” always implicitly assume that we are right and they are wrong. If East Asian culture is more puritanical than us in some respects, we are to believe that they are Objectively Wrong. And if in other respects the very same society is less puritanical, well they are also Objectively Wrong in those practices.

”

- The arrogance of the here and now - Scott Sumner

"The rising incidence of Type 1 diabetes may be due, in part, to the current practice of protecting..."

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:24:00 -0400

“The rising incidence of Type 1 diabetes may be due, in part, to the current practice of protecting the young from sun exposure. When newborn infants in Finland were given 2,000 international units a day, Type 1 diabetes fell by 88 percent, Dr. Holick said.”

- What Do You Lack? Probably Vitamin D - Jane Brody

"#8220;The heart of the problem is, perhaps, that no one really knows how to organize and maintain..."

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:15:25 -0400

“#8220;The heart of the problem is, perhaps, that no one really knows how to organize and maintain large systems that rely on locking” admonished Nir Shavit recently in CACM. Which gives rise to the natural follow-up question: is the Solaris kernel not large, does it not rely on locking or do we not know how to organize and maintain it?”

- Concurrency’s Shysters - Bryan Cantrill

"In cinema and theater, we often hear about method acting, a technique by which actors try to create..."

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 00:31:08 -0400

“In cinema and theater, we often hear about method acting, a technique by which actors try to create the situations, emotions, and thoughts of their characters in themselves in order to better portray them. In creating Cow Clicker, I rather felt that I was partaking of method design, embracing the spirit and values and ideals of the social game developer as I toed the lines between theory, satire, and earnestness. The Internet is paralyzing because it contains so much potential information. Even over the few days I spent developing Cow Clicker, I found myself watching people play, listening to feedback, and imagining changes. I “listened to my players” and made enhancements far beyond what was reasonable for a work of carpentry or a simple parody.”

- Cow Clicker - Ian Bogost

"In such a situation, rational egoists – the individuals posited in much of orthodox economic theory..."

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 15:06:39 -0400

“In such a situation, rational egoists – the individuals posited in much of orthodox economic theory – will free ride, leaving it to others to bear the costs of collective action, which will therefore not take place, even if it would foster the interests of all involved. Hence the possibility of a delightful paradox: the very markets in which Homo economicus, the rational egoist, appears to thrive cannot be created (if they require the solution of collective action problems, as in Chicago) by Homines economici.”

- An Engine, Not a Camera - Donald MacKenzie

"Innocent defendants may plead guilty in return for a shorter sentence to avoid the risk of a much..."

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:07:14 -0400

“Innocent defendants may plead guilty in return for a shorter sentence to avoid the risk of a much longer one. A prosecutor can credibly threaten a middle-aged man that he will die in a cell unless he gives evidence against his boss. This is unfair, complains Harvey Silverglate, the author of “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent”. If a defence lawyer offers a witness money to testify that his client is innocent, that is bribery. But a prosecutor can legally offer something of far greater value—his freedom—to a witness who says the opposite. The potential for wrongful convictions is obvious.”

- Rough justice in America: Too many laws, too many prisoners

Rough justice in America: Too many laws, too many prisoners

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:22:41 -0400

Rough justice in America: Too many laws, too many prisoners

"[David Foster Wallace] defines something as malignantly addictive when “(1) it causes real..."

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:05:42 -0400

“[David Foster Wallace] defines something as malignantly addictive when “(1) it causes real problems for the addict, and (2) it offers itself as relief from the very problems it causes.””

- Art of the Game - Morgan Meis

"From a distance, Comte’s approach might seem to invite the creation of secular religions, complete..."

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:14:00 -0400

“From a distance, Comte’s approach might seem to invite the creation of secular religions, complete with updated versions of holy texts, uniforms and inspiring songs. But there is, perhaps, a more plausible and less kitsch moral to be drawn. Rather than founding new religions, Comte prompts us to consider the effects of the disappearance of beliefs, a process comparable to a tongue rolling over the gummy pocket of an absent molar. His utopianism could inspire us to revisit a range of religious concepts that could enrich or invigorate secular life, in areas such as education, community politics, travel or marriage.”

- Not The Messiah - Alain de Botton

"37signals can build simple — almost trivial — software and earn three million customers because they..."

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:08:29 -0400

“37signals can build simple — almost trivial — software and earn three million customers because they absolutely will not compromise on their philosophy of simplicity, transparency, and owning their own company, and that’s something millions of people respect and support. Competitors could build trivial web applications too (as Joel Spolsky is fond of saying, “Their software is just a bunch of text fields!”), but without the single-minded obsession it’s just software with no features.

To remain un-copyable, your One Thing needs to be not just central to your existence, but also difficult to achieve. Google’s algorithm, combined with the hardware and software to implement a search of trillions of websites in 0.2 seconds, is hard to replicate; it took hundreds (thousands?) of really smart people at Microsoft and Yahoo years to catch up. 37signals’ ranting platform — a blog with 131k followers and a best-selling book — is nearly impossible to build even with a full-time army of insightful writers.

”

- Startup Competitive Advantages - Jason Cohen

"Crime did not rise in every city where housing projects came down. In cities where it did, many..."

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 11:54:55 -0400

“

Crime did not rise in every city where housing projects came down. In cities where it did, many factors contributed: unemployment, gangs, rapid gentrification that dislocated tens of thousands of poor people not living in the projects. Still, researchers around the country are seeing the same basic pattern: projects coming down in inner cities and crime pushing outward, in many cases destabilizing cities or their surrounding areas. Dennis Rosenbaum, a criminologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told me that after the high-rises came down in Chicago, suburbs to the south and west—including formerly quiet ones—began to see spikes in crime; nearby Maywood’s murder rate has nearly doubled in the past two years. In Atlanta, which almost always makes the top-10 crime list, crime is now scattered widely, just as it is in Memphis and Louisville.

In some places, the phenomenon is hard to detect, but there may be a simple reason: in cities with tight housing markets, Section8 recipients generally can’t afford to live within the city limits, and sometimes they even move to different states. New York, where the rate of violent crime has plummeted, appears to have pushed many of its poor out to New Jersey, where violent crime has increased in nearby cities and suburbs. Washington, D.C., has exported some of its crime to surrounding counties in Maryland and Virginia.

”

- American Murder Mystery - Hanna Rosin

"If you start making junk-ridden charts just because the long-term recall is better then I’m afraid..."

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 10:39:03 -0400

“If you start making junk-ridden charts just because the long-term recall is better then I’m afraid you are missing the point of what data visualization is about. In a corporate environment, where you have to use dozens of charts every single day, you just can’t make them all stand out (it’s like the absurd idea of exploding all the slices in a pie chart). People just need the god damn chart to learn something. They don’t want to remember it three weeks later.”

- Memorable Charts? Forget About It! - Jorge Camoes

"The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental..."

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 23:31:00 -0400

“The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.”

- Hermann Minkowski’s address to the Assembly of German Natural Scientists and Physicians in 1908

"Old Al, he came out the blue and said, “Not only do rays move at c if what puts them out is..."

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 23:15:00 -0400

“Old Al, he came out the blue and said, “Not only do rays move at c if what puts them out is held fast or not: they move at c even if you are held fast or not.” Now that may not look like such a big deal on the face of it, but hold on. What this says is that you can move as fast or as slow as you want, and rays will go by you at c all the time. You can have a pal run past you and when you both look at a ray go by at the same time, you will both see the same ray go by at c! That is a bit wild, no? You, back in that void, you just can not say if you move or not — with the lamp or no. Not that you can’t tell: it can’t be said. It’s moot!”

- Short Words to Explain Relativity - Brian Raiter

"Part of the “Incapacitation” strategy Frum celebrates involved putting the maximum number of arrests..."

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 20:57:34 -0400

“Part of the “Incapacitation” strategy Frum celebrates involved putting the maximum number of arrests and maximum penalties on marijuana smokers. A 2600% increase in New York, with significantly more detainment and jail time for minorities. Broken Windows isn’t about being harder on murderers. It’s about a radically more aggressive enforcement of minor misdemeanor laws, such as those surrounding marijuana, because by not enforcing those laws disorder will set in and increase the potential for future crimes. Today’s pot smoker is tomorrow’s hardened criminal.

That’s insane, but so is our criminal justice system.

”

- Legalizing Pot and “Incapacitation” - Mike Konczal

"That’s why I don’t trust Julian Assange. To date, all he’s given us is a strange sense of importance..."

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:59:27 -0400

“That’s why I don’t trust Julian Assange. To date, all he’s given us is a strange sense of importance in himself by convincing us that the world’s out to get him. Take a look at the Wikileaks wikipedia page from a year ago. You’ll see that a year ago, Assange was barely a mention on the entry but the current version is much more focused on Assange. No organization like Wikileaks can survive a cult of personality, or one person’s delusions of grandeur.”

- Why I Don’t Trust Julian Assange - Clay Johnson

"In case you hadn’t noticed, the goalies on your teams use their hands all the time. Hardly..."

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 21:59:16 -0400

“In case you hadn’t noticed, the goalies on your teams use their hands all the time. Hardly anybody ever scores a goal in soccer so obviously this works. And Uruguay’s Luis Suarez, who plays the position of “thwacker” or “slacker” or something, used his hands to defeat Ghana and was carried off the field in triumph. (Why a triumph over Ghana was a cause for celebration I’m not sure. Poor Ghana has been triumphed over by British, Portuguese, German, Dutch and Danish colonialists, the Kwame Nkrumah regime, a CIA-sponsored coup and at least four other coups just since the 1900s. But I guess this is a separate question from why people don’t use their hands in soccer.)”

- As the World Cup Ends, How to Make Soccer Less Boring - PJ O’Rourke
I post just because I find PJ O’Rourke funny, not because I dislike soccer (I’ve watched nearly every WC game…)

"Ironically, when Aristarchus proposed the heliocentric model, his contemporaries dismissed it, on..."

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 21:27:29 -0400

“Ironically, when Aristarchus proposed the heliocentric model, his contemporaries dismissed it, on the grounds that they did not observe any parallax effects… The heliocentric model would have implied that the stars were an absurdly large distance away.

Which, of course, they are.

”

- The Cosmic Distance Ladder - Terence Tao
This is the single best presentation I have ever read. It has no equations, but it has history and science, and is extremely well written. It’s also by Terry Tao, hero among men, so please go read it. I promise you will enjoy it and you will learn something.