Old man or man-child?

"It is not some kind of contingent disappointment that physics and biology have not discovered..."

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:17:55 -0500

“It is not some kind of contingent disappointment that physics and biology have not discovered dutyons mixed in somewhere with the bosons and protons, or failed to detect the Rights Field generated by the human body…”

- All Ethics Are Secular Ethics

"In very simplified terms, it is currently understood that, initially, possibly only energy was..."

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:52:00 -0600

“In very simplified terms, it is currently understood that, initially, possibly only energy was present. Then this energy started to partially change into mass, forming first quarks and electrons (mostly). Then heavier particles. Finally, once the universe cooled down a bit more, the first atoms started to form through the aggregation of the particles. It is calculated that atoms would be split between hydrogen and helium with a 3:1 ratio - these are the two lightest atoms.”

- Physics Stack Exchange: Where does matter come from?

"We want to free ships within a short period of time instead of keeping them for a long time and..."

Sat, 19 Mar 2011 10:48:58 -0500

““We want to free ships within a short period of time instead of keeping them for a long time and incurring more expenses in guarding them. We have to free them at a lower ransom so that we can hijack more ships.””

- Reuters: Somali pirates cut ransoms to clear hijacked ships via Freakonomics

"The difference isn’t over the taxes owed, but over who should be sending them to the state...."

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:48:03 -0600

“The difference isn’t over the taxes owed, but over who should be sending them to the state. You might not know this, but if you buy something that’s taxable in Texas, you owe the taxes whether the seller collects them from you or not. That’s true for over-the-counter sales, mail-order sales or online sales. It’s called the use tax, and it’s the state’s levy on purchases from companies that don’t have a physical presence, or “nexus,” in Texas.”

- The Texas Tribune: Texas Comptroller Hunts Amazon for Tax Money

"I wonder therefore if we wouldn’t make more environmental progress if we stopped pretending that..."

Sat, 12 Feb 2011 18:48:28 -0600

“I wonder therefore if we wouldn’t make more environmental progress if we stopped pretending that battling climate change was a nice favor we might choose to do an anthropomorphized planet and instead appealled more directly to people’s self-interest in themselves and their descendents surviving into the future.”

- The Reality-Based Community: The Truth about Climate Change

Strange Maps: How the West Wasn’t Won

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 21:55:26 -0600

Strange Maps: How the West Wasn’t Won

"It’s disrespectful to let writing’s constituent elements bleed into one another through imprecise..."

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 12:52:39 -0600

“It’s disrespectful to let writing’s constituent elements bleed into one another through imprecise demarcations. If you see me “making mistakes with comma placement”, please rest assured that I’m doing it deliberately. In most cases the comma doesn’t belong to the phrase delimited by the quotation marks that enclose it. Placing an exclamation point or question mark to the left or right of a close-quote is a weighty decision! That we violate the atomic purity of quotations with injected commas is an outrage.”

- Manifest Density: everyone has a right to their beliefs

"[Stores] should make a single line feed multiple cashiers. For three cashiers its about three times..."

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:23:21 -0600

“[Stores] should make a single line feed multiple cashiers. For three cashiers its about three times faster than having a line for each cashier. Here’s why: In the single line/single cashier set-up any delay - like a price check - stops the line completely. In contrast when a line feeds to multiple cashiers it’s likely that only one of the three customers in front of you will have a delay - because recall that in Erlang’s model delays and events are distributed randomly - and that means a register will likely be open.”

- Engineer Guy: Why the other line is more likely to move faster

"As I mention in the video, what’s really interesting is that this locksmith was penalized for..."

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:23:05 -0600

“As I mention in the video, what’s really interesting is that this locksmith was penalized for getting better at his profession.”

- Dan Ariely: Locksmiths

Daring Fireball: Title Junk

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 14:09:30 -0600

Daring Fireball: Title Junk:

Gruber’s sentiment is right on:

Most bookmarking tools — the ones built into web browsers, and bookmarklets for third-party apps — do use the page title as the default bookmark name. Tools that help people tweet links to articles use the page title as the default description. So make titles useful. Write them for humans, not search engine spiders.

His technical arguments about whether SEO keyword junk “works” are suspect, but that’s beside the point. What we have here is a tragedy of the commons: some sites realize that by optimizing their HTML document titles for machines, they gain a short-term tactical advantage over their competitors. Never mind that those titles are now substantially less useful for the people who try to use them.

Trust the Googlebot to figure it out.

Don’t trust. Expect. If indeed stuffing the document title full of keyword junk does improve search engine ranking, that is a bug with the search engines. Keyword junk is an exploit, not a strategy. Search engines should do a better job inferring relevance from human optimized content and stop encouraging sites who waste our time and attention.

Yes, it’s a hard problem. That’s why it’s interesting.

Google Books Ngram of George Carlin’s Seven Dirty Words...

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 13:51:37 -0600

Google Books Ngram of George Carlin’s Seven Dirty Words via Hacker News

"“That offer from the Giants was a lack of respect. A total disrespect,” Renteria told..."

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 11:52:16 -0600

“

“That offer from the Giants was a lack of respect. A total disrespect,” Renteria told ESPNdeportes.com Thursday from Colombia.

“To play for a million dollars, I’d rather stay with my private business and share more time with my family,” he said. “Thank God I’m well off financially and my money is well invested.”

”

- Edgar Renteria says Giants’ $1M offer is ‘a total disrespect’ - ESPN

very small array » United States of America Map (via The...

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 14:51:21 -0600

very small array » United States of America Map (via The Volokh Conspiracy)

"What bothers me is not that the kids are kept in prisons, but that (a) they aren’t told about it,..."

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:50:16 -0600

“What bothers me is not that the kids are kept in prisons, but that (a) they aren’t told about it, and (b) the prisons are run mostly by the inmates. Kids are sent off to spend six years memorizing meaningless facts in a world ruled by a caste of giants who run after an oblong brown ball, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. And if they balk at this surreal cocktail, they’re called misfits.”

- Paul Graham: Why Nerds are Unpopular

"So, we both agree that terrorists, in as much as they have a master plan, are not out to kill every..."

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 23:03:00 -0600

“So, we both agree that terrorists, in as much as they have a master plan, are not out to kill every single American. They are, in fact, just out to create fear in us: a persistent, nagging, every day fear that causes us to doubt everything we believe in, a fear that grinds at us until we’ve lost the joy of being Americans, and we’ll finally do anything to stop it.”

- Call Me Fishmeal.: Q&A with TSA Chairman John Pistole

490 - Map of the World’s Countries Rearranged by...

Sun, 28 Nov 2010 23:06:03 -0600

490 - Map of the World’s Countries Rearranged by Population | Strange Maps | Big Think (via kottke.org)

"Here was this blonde guy who wore his hair in his face, so you couldn’t even see him; what was the..."

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 09:22:18 -0600

“Here was this blonde guy who wore his hair in his face, so you couldn’t even see him; what was the point of making a video? He was mumbling something about how it was fun to lose and to pretend, and then he just went, like, nuts, screaming that he was here now and needed to be entertained.”

- Part 1: 1990: “Once upon a time, I could love you” | Whatever Happened To Alternative Nation? | The A.V. Club

"In a democracy, if you don’t attend to the interests of the poor in an efficient way,..."

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 17:07:44 -0600

“In a democracy, if you don’t attend to the interests of the poor in an efficient way, you’ll just end up attending to those same interests in a less efficient way.”

- Robert Frank on Inequality | EconTalk

What the fuck has Obama done so far?

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 11:44:29 -0500

What the fuck has Obama done so far?:

Be careful what you brag about:

Issued executive order to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay

The Executive Order to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay was one of the first things Obama did after taking office in January, 2009.

The order required the prison to be closed within one year. It’s nearly 2011 and it’s still operating.

"A “crotchal” area feel-up is certainly unappealing, there’s no question about it. However, it seems..."

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 11:34:37 -0500

“A “crotchal” area feel-up is certainly unappealing, there’s no question about it. However, it seems that perhaps the TSA hasn’t thought this through entirely. Their little game of molestation chicken could just blow up in their faces.”

- One Foot Tsunami: Meet the Resistance