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Ted Anderson's del.icio.us Bookmarks

  WikiLeaks and Julian Paul Assange : The New Yorker Fascinating look at the man behind Wikileaks and details of how the helicopter video from Iraq was prepared for release. Wikileaks journalism secrets Assange leak documents Iraq video Khatchadourian
  On Hand for Space History, as Superpowers Spar - NYTimes.com Reminisce by John Noble Wilford of his reporting on the Apollo program. Good summary and historical context. Interesting observation: perhaps Apollo 8 more significant for leaving than Apollo 11 for arriving. Apollo space history Moon exploration NASA
  Behind the Scenes: Tank Man of Tiananmen - Lens Blog - NYTimes.com Stories from four photographers in their own words of how they got a shot of an iconic moment of resistance to armed force. photo China tank journalism history photography
  More on Google, Craigslist, and who's killing newspapers - James Fallows A pithy summary quoted by Fallows of what is ailing newspapers and what they aren't doing about it. "If this is what someone not in the writing biz can crank out at 4:40am ..., maybe [newspapers] have even more to worry about from web-based competition than we thought!" newspaper advertising Google Craigslist journalism
  Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War, by H. Keith Henson Very interesting discussion of how our ancestral evolution environment (ie hunter gatherers) dealt with resource limitations may explain out specie's inclination to warfare and what the triggers for war might be. Interesting quotes from Patty Hearst, Jane Goodall and others. Evolution Henson meme war history
  Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction Taking a logical and reasonable look at the economics of measures that reduce the risk of extinction of our species. Contains a big section on discounting strategies sometimes used to compare current costs and future benefits, which is murky when extinction events are considered. Gives examples of asteroid detection and deflection. asteroid extinction risk human security
  Extract from Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: Is there such a thing as pure genius? | Books | The Guardian Provocative debunking of the idea that genius is born. Instead massive amounts of practice and the opportunities to invest that time are what separate the elite from the good in any field. genius practice talent intelligence
  The Back of the Envelope Interesting introduction and good sounding premise. todo programming estimate engineering software
  The Why of Y Richard P. Gabriel derives the Y combinator using currying (turning multi-argument functions with nested functions on one argument) and abstraction using factorial as the example. scheme lisp Gabriel recursion lambda LambaCalculus programming ComputerScience
  32 Sci-Fi Novels You Should Read | How To Split An Atom Interesting mix of old and new. Also the comments contain more recommendations. scifi fiction novel book lists ScienceFiction science literature
  Google Code - Summer of Code 2008 - Organization Information -OpenAFS List of approved summer projects for OpenAFS with students and mentors listed. AFS OpenAFS opensource Google education
  Walk of the Hawk - traveling by foot across seven continents An inspirational idea. I wonder how hard it would be. What would it be like if a lot of people did this? walk world exercise Hawk
  LIVE REAL TIME SATELLITE AND SPACE SHUTTLE TRACKING some kind of google maps mashup Google satellite map space shuttle
  Whimsley: Mr. Google's Guidebook Google the helpful butler guiding us on the path to what we want. Google LongTail search
  Advice to a Beginning Graduate Student or What is Research? - Manuel Blum Suggestions for thinking and research and starting and working on a PhD PhD research thinking ComputerScience Blum
  eigenclass - A better backup system based on Git A system for doing backups with Git Git todo backup
  Bill Clementson's Blog: Emacs Fortune File Lots of great quotes about lisp, programming, software. programming quotes Lisp Scheme language software humor
  The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986 - 2007 - The New York Times Clever graphic display of movie revenue over the last 20+ years. Also has links to reviews. flash movie economics video
  Japanese Roots | Human Evolution | DISCOVER Magazine | Jared Diamond Daimond's resolution of old controversy on origins of Japanese language and culture. How closely are they related to the (hated) Koreans? How old is their culture? Diamond anthropology Japan language agriculture Korea history culture
  OTEC History « Shamcher Beorse Some good background on this important and innovative energy source. I got a great in-depth introduction to OTEC from "The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps" by Marshall T. Savage. Check it out. energy OTEC OceanThermal desalination
  OTEC News - What is OTEC? Quick OTEC description and links to news and background papers. energy OTEC OceanThermal desalination
  The Associated Press: Main Reasons Conservatives Oppose McCain Wow, great campaign material for McCain! I must not be a real conservative: most of these positions sound reasonable. Perhaps the key is the word "reasonable". If I could just get an analogous statement on Obama and Clinton, I'd be ready to vote. politics McCain campaign president conservative liberal
  The World is Flat 3.0 by Thomas Friedman Talks about his book of the same name. Globalization levels the playing field allowing individuals to compete world-wide. Everything that can be done will be done. Now having a Green party, not a revolution. Change your leaders, not your lightbulbs. Green globalization Friedman FreeTrade energy economics trade internet
  Cruise Ship Calendar links to ports, ships and webcams travel webcam cruise
  The Airport Security Follies - New York Times Blog by Patrick Smith Enormously sensible critique of the airport security silliness. Almost all of the shenanigans at required before you can fly anywhere are best described as "security theater". They are just for show and contribute virtually nothing to the public safety. airport security government travel airline politics terrorism
  Is Space Exploration Worth the Cost? Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog Comments in favor of space exploration by 6 advocates. No attempt at providing contrary opinions. Surely some rational and reasoned critics could be found. Also check out the good comments. space exploration science government research future economics
  MIT World video : The Second Law and Cosmology by Max Tegmark Addresses dual questions of why they observable universe's entropy is so large and why it is so small. gravity Plank entropy cosmology BigBang inflation video Tegmark MIT
  MIT World video : Copyright, Fair Use, and the Cultural Commons Address the copyright problem from the standpoint of criticism and education. Documentary producers have written guidelines for fair use with surprising influence in legal and insurance areas. Discusses the major problem of chilling and self-censorship. video MIT copyright FairUse license culture education documentary Ableson Gordon Quinn Aufderheide
  One Laptop Per Child by Ivan Krstic - 12-April-2007 Google Tech Talk video Overview of OLPC. Mentions interesting aspects of educational philosophy, power management, viewable source ("everything is in python"), GUI, security, networking and more. Google laptop OLPC education child Linux Python video
  Marvin Minsky - Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind Discusses ideas from his long career in artificial intelligence, specifically those covered in his recent book. AI ArtificialIntelligence Minsky MIT emotion thinking video
  Edge: HERETICAL THOUGHTS ABOUT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY By Freeman Dyson I'm very happy that we have smart people like Dyson thinking and writing about the really tough problems we face. On CO2: 1/10th inch of new top-soil per year is all it takes. On prediction: don't miss anecdote about Francis Crick at the end. Dyson heretic Gold climate biosphere environment GlobalWarming humanist
  Space Exploration: The Next 100 Years Panel of Newman, Chaikin, Chakrabarti, Binzel on the future of space. Some consensus on low-cost access to space and improvements in educational access (inspiring the next generation). space exploration NASA Newman Chaikin Chakrabarti Binzel education MIT asteroid video
  MIT World : Collective Intelligence Panel with Malone, Pentland, Lakhani on harnessing people and computers to act smarter together than they can individually. Many valuable points and questions. Wanted to ask how CI relates to Minsky's Society of Mind at a higher level of abstraction. CollectiveIntelligence MIT Malone Pentland Lakhani AI Minsky Wikipedia Threadless Google video
  GnuPG Celebrates 10 Years [LWN.net] A Short History of the GNU Privacy Guard. GnuPG pgp history crypto cryptography PublicKey
  Threadless T-Shirts - Designer Clothing Submissions - Tees, Tshirts and T shirts! Collective intelligence for T-Shirt design and marketing CollectiveIntelligence OpenSource t-shirt marketing
  Best picture quality with 6 megapixels! Describes how pixel size impacts picture quality. Image sensor pixel size should be >3um to avoud noise and diffraction problems. Acute with tiny sensor of compact camera with >6megapixels. Includes photos of sensors from various cameras. DigitalCamera camera photography pixel image megapixel
  Pushdo - Analysis of a Modern Malware Distribution System - Research - SecureWorks Concise description of Pushdo based on some deconstruction. Not too long, not too low level; pretty easy to read and understand. A worrisome sign of what is to come, I suppose. It would be interesting to learn more of the methods of analysis. malware network security rootkit botnet
  Nanosolar - The Third Wave of Solar Power Technology overview for Nanosolar's printable thin-film photovoltaic cells. solar energy electricity green power renewable
  Infringement Nation: Copyright Reform And The Law/Norm Gap, by John Tehranian Makes several good points. Once arcane copyright issue is now in the public consciousness. Spread between the law and social norms is wide and growing: e.g. his everyman racking up $12M/day infringement liability *without* P2P file sharing. copyright sharing P2P law music
  perl.com: Programming is Hard, Let's Go Scripting. by Larry Wall The development of the architecture of Perl6. Not compatible with Perl5, which permits fixing the many warts that accreted over time. Good to see lots of ideas from other languages. programming Perl language software script
  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Fourth Assessment Report, 2007, Synthesis Report, Summary For Policymakers Executive summary in 23 pages. A little hard to read but important and sobering. The strategy here is to report on consensus by combining and normalizing a large number of reports by different groups. environment climate weather SeaLevel ice polar flood energy efficiency
  Ivo Vegter - whoami blog Ivo blog
  Rescorla -- Is finding security holes a good idea? (via Crypto-Gram 8/07) Addresses full disclosure question by suggesting that when fixing bugs doesn't improve reliability, it may be safer not to report them at all. Presents supporting evidence that isn't inconsistent with the hypothesis of infinite bugs in large systems. security programming defects quality Rescorla RTFM
  Google Code for Educators - Google: Cluster Computing and MapReduce Short course on distributed computing for Google interns Google cluster computing ComputerScience distributed MapReduce
  Long Bets A collection of predictions and bets with real money associated with them and long time frames. Many topics for interesting reading and discussion. A bit like Robin Hansen's idea futures. bet prediction future money IdeaFutures
  Why is the violin so hard to play? Article reveals several surprising things about bowed violin string vibration. It isn't harmonic at all but a traveling V shape, called Helmholtz motion. Also explains the source of the famous screeching sound caused by too much bow pressure. music violin Helmholtz vibration harmonic string
  Google Patents US patent search search and display. Even displays patent drawings and images on Linux in Firefox. patent Google Linux Firefox drawing
  Is There Anything Good About Men Excellent and readable essay exploring the implications of the fact that today's population is descended from twice as many women as men. This evolutionary perspective on gender can provide plausible explanations for many traditional feminist issues. evolution men women feminism culture gender psychology sociology anthropology
  Amazon.com: A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (Princeton Economic History of the Western World): Books: Gregory Clark See also http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html sociology anthropology IndustrialRevolution England wealth Malthus subsistence literacy violence
  A Farewell to Alms, by Gregory Clark - NYTimes review by Nicholas Wade Clark describes theory of how wealth was able to grow faster than population starting about 1800 in England. Detailed historical research shows a link between wealth and off-spring, literacy and decreasing violence starting the industrial revolution. sociology anthropology IndustrialRevolution England wealth Malthus subsistence literacy violence
  Slap in the Facebook: It's Time for Social Networks to Open Up It's annoying that I can't follow links to facebook entries without signing up. But does that mean we need an open standard to represent relationships? I'm tempted to just blow it off for a few more years. facebook SocialNetworking OpenStandard friend myspace Wired
  Can you name all the U.S. Presidents? - sporcle A test of presidential popularity. Got only 29, missing most of the 19th century except around the Civil War. Oh well. presidents quiz USA
  The Lisp Before the End of My Lifetime Nine useful ideas, many from lisp or lisp-based languages, that might be combined to provide the perfect programming language. programming Lisp Haskell software
  Tutorial on Haskell I'm trying to get a rough feel for Haskell without really trying. From this I gather it is a bit like scheme or perhaps lambda calculus (functions only take one argument) with a syntax a bit like python (note that I don't actually know python). All defi programming language Haskell Scheme LambdaCalculus recursion
  Accelerating Future » Top 10 Transhumanist Technologies Summary of 10 technologies that will change our lives. Hits the key points made my futurists of all stripes. Not too long but long enough to sketch the ideas and includes useful links for more info. AI transhumanism future technology nanotechnology SpaceDevelopment population robotics
  The New Yorker: Unstrung - String theory, the best of times, the worst of times Describes the sociology of string theorists and their domination of the theoretical physics community. Also a review of books by outsiders Lee Smolin and Peter Woit. physics StringTheory string TheoryOfEverything TOE quantum gravity Smolin Woit
  Why Poor Countries Are Poor - Tim Harford | March 2006 | Reason Magazine A good description of why corruption is making more people poor than any other reason. The trends described here at also true to a (surprisingly) significant extent in the US Virgin Islands. economics education corruption economy government law Cameroon poor
  We are meant to be here - Review of Paul Davies' "The Cosmic Jackpot" by Steve Paulson Q & A format discussion with Davies about his new book. Suggests that observations by humans may be responsible in some way for influencing the universe's laws of nature to make them compatible with life. Davies cosmology physics life universe origin
  The Travel Junkie - How To Fly Without ID by Joby Weeks A success story, but does it still work? travel passport identification
  The new age of ignorance | Tim Adams | The Observer July 1, 2007 Thoughts on the divide between Science and Humanities. Update on CP Snow. Review of The Canon by Natalie Angier and John Brockman's The Edge website. science humanities education Snow Angier Brockman culture
  Long Now: Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine by Danny Hillis Stories about Feynman's involvement with Thinking Machines Corporation Feynman Hillis ConnectionMachine multiprocessor programming physics history software
  How I home-built an electricity producing Wind turbine Do it yourself wind generator for any out of the way place that is windy and doesn't need too much power. Lots of interesting details on cobbling the pieces together. wind power generator electricity off-grid camping
  This Is Your Life (and How You Tell It) - New York Times How a person tells the stories of their own life says things about how they cope with it. For example using third-person perspective or first person. psychology self story narative self-help
  Hurricane Planning | Hurricane Preparedness :: OneStorm todo todo
  Marriage in America | The frayed knot | Economist.com In depth article about the benefits of marriage. It looks at the question of whether successful people are more likely to get married or whether getting married really helps make people more successful. Long but informative. marriage economics education Economist
  Neatorama » Blog Archive » The Strangest Disaster of the 20th Century. On 22-Aug-1986 a volcanic crater lake in Cameroon ejected a huge volume of CO2 gas and killing at least 1750 people. To prevent recurrence the lake must be de-gassed using a perpetual fountain powered by the volcano itself. volcano lake crater CO2 gas suffocate disaster Cameroon
  A critique of democracy in the television age, Al Gore A sensible and reasonable description of some of the problems facing democracy when the economics of television and science of public opinion reduce the quality and quantity of citizen participation. television democracy politics AlGore culture internet media
  How to keep trolls and other problem people from taking over your online community The answer seems to be to empower to social-adepts that are experts at moderating forums with all the geek-tools they can use. trolls moderation discussion forum culture sociology
  Slo-Mo Home Depot at Improv Everywhere A group of hackers shop in a Manhattan Home Depot for 5 minutes in slow motion and then 5 min frozen. The story, pictures, video and interviews. Sounds like it would have been a blast to be there. art mime theater HomeDepot Manhattan ImprovEverywhere
  The Story of the PING Program Some deep background how the first ping program was written by the original author: Mike Muuss. As an added bonus it includes the great review on Amazon.com on "The Story About Ping" by Marjorie Flack, Kurt Wiese. computing history ping Yangtze Amazon ICMP network humor Unix
  Names really do make a difference | UK News | The Observer Choosing names with low femininity scores significantly improves the odds that a girl will follow traditionally male-dominated subjects like math and science. The effect of names is important in more general estimators of success education names success femininity language culture sexism
  Dow 13K and the Second Great Depression A sobering look at the economy as it appears to the younger generation that is going to or just graduating from college. Is college worth the staggering cost? By Michael Nystrom economy education college youth
  Justin Timberlake - Culture - Hollywood - Idea Lab - New York Times Culture generally and the "next big thing" specifically exhibit chaos and are instances of the butterfly effect. The authors describe an experiment that contained eight independent universes that illustrated that popularity is unpredictable and merit has NetworkEffect longtail marketing popular economics
  Amazon.com: Ridin' the Storm Out: Music: REO Speedwagon todo
  Ten lessons of an MIT Education A biased look at why an education from MIT is much better than most college educations. There are some excellent general points about education and life and is worth reading. mit education lists excellence college mathematics
  Humans hot, sweaty, natural-born runners Supports the idea that endurance running is a survival trait for us. I have heard stories about Navajo runners in the southwest and others that travel incredible distances with little rest. This provides some scientific and evolutionary support for thos human hunting running endurance marathon evolution anthropology biology
  Jeremy Allison's programming advice to his younger self Six pearls of wisdom that should make a programmer happy and wise, if not wealthy. programming advice wisdom career OpenSource
  Python as a First Language Avoid discouraging students with hours spent puzzling out the mechanics of the language and get straight into the program design and implementation. programming scripting language education Python ComputerScience teaching
  Andart: Colorful Academic Genealogies Several graphic displays by Anders Sandberg of the history of relationships between concepts in western thought based on data by Mike Love. philosophy visualization thought history ideas
  Webcomic on dreams of strong AI Part of a series of about sixty issues. webcomic technopagan humor Penrose Searle Smolin
  Who Can Name the Bigger Number? A fun article on big numbers and mathematical paradigms. Good description of Ackermann numbers and the uncomputably huge busy beaver numbers. computability Ackermann numbers mathematics Turing
  Andres' thoughts - Top ten things ten years of professional software development has taught me Very good and sensible list of software development insights. Not a list of coding methods, but how to make the process work. software development programming lists TopTen
  free university lectures - computer science, mathematics, physics Lots of courses from MIT, UCBerkeley and many others. Courses include SICP and many other interesting sounding courses. lecture course online university education DistanceLearning
  TaxGeek06 Homepage Open source US Federal income tax form program. T opensource tax 1040 forms money finance
  Sudoku Solver by Andrew Stuart lots of strategies explained sudoku logic puzzle solver strategy
  Robin Johnson's blog: Hamlet - The Text Adventure Shakespeare Hamlet adventure javascript
  Stroustrup: FAQ Okay, the whole FAQ, mostly on C++, is pretty interesting, but I really liked the one about shooting yourself in the foot. programming C++ Stroustrup FAQ
  Vienna Wireless Society - Balloon Flight VWS-2 This group launched a largish helium balloon carrying a pair of wireless digital cameras to 98,000 feet altitude. Looks like they had a really fun day! wireless balloon camera photography aerial GPS
  towboat Do not try this at home! humor flood photography tugboat bridge
  13 Photographs That Changed the World An interesting list. Many comments that follow usefully provide links to other photos that didn't make Riggs' list. photography lists media history art
  Should Google Go Nuclear? Clean, cheap, nuclear power (no, really) - Google Video Dr Robert Bussard (of Ramjet fame) describes his breakthrough in inertial electrodynamic confinement for controlled fusion. To my well-practiced ear he knows his physics and is still very sharp. Discussion of US Govt funding realities also rings true. Bussard fusion energy physics video nuclear atomic EMC2 Google
  Day 1 (Sam Harris): Why Are Atheists So Angry? | Jewcy.com A debate in 4-parts (each) where Harris and Prager took shots at each other and mostly missed. Harris Prager atheist religion faith God
  The Reality Club: BEYOND BELIEF A discussion by participants in a Salk Institute conference on Science and Religion. As usual they are talking past each other, but Atran makes some useful and interesting points in responding to the calls by Dawkins and Harris for more rationality and l atheist Harris Dawkins Atran religion faith reason SalkInstitute
  Why Won't God Heal Amputees? A rational argument for why religion is a delusion, focusing mostly on Christianity and the Bible. Long and detailed arguments arranged in many sections. I like the "What It Means" part, especially ch 32 on the big question. God philosophy religion atheist Dawkins Harris faith life death
  Ten Commandments for Living a Bold Life Good common sense. commandments bold lists life
  Bug 347226 - there is no firefox crop circle Fortunately, this bug has been resolved Google GoogleEarth GoogleMaps CropCircle Firefox advertising marketing
  DARPA Selects IBM for Supercomputing Grand Challenge IBM wins the DARPA HPCS Phase III competition along with Cray, knocking out Sun. This is a 4 year project funded at about $250 million for each company. Sun IBM PERCS Cray DARPA HPCS supercomputer PressRelease
  Gmaps Pedometer Plots trips on Google maps giving distances. Good for checking walking distances. Google map pedometer walk hike
  Who Writes Wikipedia? (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought) Swartz provides some evidence that contradicts the common claim that only a handful of active users do most of the writing. Instead he suggests that there are two classes of contributors: the regular editors and the occasional content contributors. Wikipedia emergent knowledge wiki encyclopedia author expert collaboration
  Delusions of immateriality by Nathalie Jeremijenko: doors6 - Jeremijenko - Transcript Some interesting ideas on making information concrete, real, even a social experience. cyberspace information