October 2011
43 posts
The Internet pries the door open (a bit) in Russia →
Ordinary Russians are using the Internet to come together about issues that concern them instead of having everything run from the center. It’s a small measure of the growth of civil society but good to see.
How to write a Persuasive Essay →
Ruins of a 20th Century Metropolis →
Slideshow of images from Detroit by French photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre. Look at them all.
JP Rangaswami of Confused of Calcutta on Steve... →
A thoughtful appreciation of Jobs, from the very fine Confused of Calcutta blog.
Textbooks of Tomorrow: Infographic
Via: OnlineEducation.net
Maria Popova (Brain Pickings) on what Steve Jobs... →
Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings Blog is one of my very favorites. She collects and publishes a lot of great stuff. Here she tells the story of her own lifelong relationship with Apple. Good piece.
Richard Feynman on Beauty, Honors, and Curiosity →
These videos provide a glimpse of the fascinating mind of Richard Feynman, one of the greatest physicists of the 20th Century. If you enjoy them, I recommend you get hold of Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman
Biomimicry →
“…Biomimicry is innovation inspired by nature. It’s the process of looking at a leaf and trying to figure out how to make a better solar cell.
Biomimicry has been going on for a long time. Think about the Wright brothers looking at turkey vultures to learn about drag and lift in flight.
Now biomimicry is becoming one of the ways that engineers, product designers, and architects do...
Car sharing and other Collaborative Consumption →
Would like to see this come to the US. Given the capabilities of our present and future networks, this kind of sharing of all kinds of goods should grow fast.
Wonders never cease →
Andrew Sullivan will get it occasionally. My god, an honest, open-minded conservative; what’ll they think of next?
Alan Grayson explains Occupy Wall Street →
“The latest edition of Real Time featured one of Bill Maher’s patented balance things out with three Republicans and a Democrat panels, but the Democrat was Alan Grayson. While P.J. fellow panelist P.J. O’Rourke broke out his bathing and hippie jokes, former Rep. Grayson schooled him on Occupy Wall Street.”
Aren’t they tired of the bathing and hippie jokes yet? That’s so...
The contribution conundrum: Why did Wikipedia... →
“…There’s some good food for thought for news organizations in those findings. If you want user contributions, build platforms that are familiar and easy. Lower the barriers to participation; focus on helping users to understand what you want from them rather than on dazzling them. Though gamification — with incentives that encourage certain user behaviors, complete with individual...
Startup Hubs...I want one of those
“…If you look at a list of US cities sorted by population, the number of successful startups per capita varies by orders of magnitude. Somehow it’s as if most places were sprayed with startupicide.
I wondered about this for years. I could see the average town was like a roach motel for startup ambitions: smart, ambitious people went in, but no startups came out. But I was never...
Expendable: Umair Haque nails it →
“…Our songs are the music of futility, nihilism, despair—not the music of love, beauty, and truth. Our books are sets of instructions—to help us execute our function without breaking and fracturing mentally, physically, socially, emotionally. Our lives aren’t lived—they’re programmed, compiled, scheduled, bulleted, recorded. Orphaned by the human world,...
The Anti-Peak Case for Commodities →
Be nice if they’re right about this. I’m pretty gloomy about the future, but I certainly know better than to count out radical, unexpected technological solutions to at least some of our resource and climate problems.
The real problem is that the incentives are all wrong for the kind of innovation - scientific, technological, and financial - that needs to be supported.
Our "efficient markets" in action. →
A 2002 item about United Airlines’ bankruptcy was erroneously posted as new in 2008. It took a good week things to settle down.
I love it when you get all meta...
An infographic that pulls together a bunch of information about…popular infographics patterns!
Infographics Generalized from flowingdata.com
