‘The Da Vinci Code’: Is it worthy? “Experts can’t figure out how Dan Brown’s so-so writing has produced such a blockbuster.” The success of the Da Vinci Code has nothing to do with the writing, but the fact that it is a mutation of a very successful and ancient meme. There is another book that is inexplicably successful, depite being an incoherent mishmash of styles, often not that well written and full of plot inconsistencies and contradictions – the Bible. Of all the possible stories that resonate with the human mind, the Bible does so very successfully, giving the appearance of its success being testament to its truth, something that is obviously very helpful for a book based on teleological argument. To suggest that the Bible is the truth because it is so successful, however, is the result of looking the wrong way down the funnel of time. The fact…
John Resig has a very nice RSS to JSON converter. We’ve been working on a JSON output to Solr (Lucene) for Wists’ search and I’m now convinced that JSON is the way forward for RSS and webservices in general. John Resig – RSS to JSON Convertor
Architects are good at building brands without people noticing that thats what they are doing, but mostly bad at capitalizing on them by doing mass produced items, such as furniture collections or hardware elements. The Slate article below covers a very interesting topic but the conclusions are completely wrong. “neither Foster nor Piano has a house style; their designs vary considerably from project to project” If anyone has a house style, it is Foster. When I was there someone nearly got fired for not specifying the wrong door handles on a building – they weren’t Elementer. The main reason that Foster or Piano buildings vary in style is that they didnt design them all – if you are a big architecture practice its just not possible for the founder to design everything. That not deception, just a function of scale. What keeps the integrity of design is precisely the house…
There are a number of ideas why DNA is base 4, but it seems obvious that the principal reason is that it provides a very elegant redundancy mechanism built into the process of replication. By being in base 4 DNA provides its own backup, which is very important in an environment which thrives on mutation in the long term but also needs to regulate mutation in the short term. Given that the process of replication can be used as a method for performing calculations, I wonder if it could be abstracted in a non-parallel computing scenario such as a digital computer. I hate having to deal with backups and bug fixes. Quaternary system dna – PDF file
I’m currently re-reading Christopher Alexander’s classic ‘A Pattern Language’, whose deterministic design approach is the antithesis of Jane Jacobs’ in many ways, but less unfashionable than other rules-based systems due to its common sense approach. I’ve noticed that Alexander’s notion of using pools of light to define spaces virtually is born out with alomost any feature. In New York, where the sidewalks are rarely cleaned, one way to measure people flow quantitatively is through the dark spots on the pavement that chewing gum makes. It seems that people will hang around pretty much any pole, lamp-post etc. One the other hand the pole must be high enough to provide ‘virtual’ shelter, there tends to be much less chewing gum around fire hydrants.
link » tags: [weird] posted via Wists: permamark
The film Supersizeme made a good case for why a diet consisting entirely of McDonalds food could transform your body quicker than Robert De Niro in Raging Bull. Recently evidence suggests that the main culprit may not be fatty food, but sugared, caffeinated water. The beverage industry is scheduled to announce today that it is voluntarily removing high-calorie soft drinks from all schools. This may not be entirely fair. An average 12 ounce can of cola typically contains 120 calories. However its not just sodas that pack in the calories, fruit juices have more and the same size serving of grape juice, an elementary-school lunchroom staple, contains a whopping 165 calories. It doesn’t really matter how healthy, natural or traditional the drink may seem when you are eating or drinking too much. Despite marginal differences in the way we digest different foods, the bottom line is that calories in =…
On the subway yesterday there was a guy preaching love in the name of Jesus, at the top of his voice. He seemed pretty angry – but he was preaching ‘gods love’ so I guess that was supposed to be OK. Then he started talking about what should happen if a woman were to lie down with another woman etc. (i.e. encouraging people to murder gays) as it says in the nasty, brutish book that people call the holy bible. I don’t tolerate this kind of aggressive religious intolerance – so I told him to shut up. This made things very uncomfortable, nearly everyone in the carriage now looked at me as the devil incarnate and rallied in support of the preacher – saying amen after everything he said. If I mentioned that it was in Harlem and on a Sunday, and that therefore the whitey in a very religious…
888 Holdings is a $1.5billion company built on spam. Last year, prior to their CSFB underwritten IPO I noticed that a large portion of the comment spam on my own site was from them and called them up in their gangster den in Gibraltar (largely for a laugh). Their share price is holding up nicely, after all, blog spamming etc. is far too geeky and seems too trivial for people to listen to. I would argue that 888’s revenues, and certainly their initial competitive edge, are significantly dependent on spam. Recently one of their own industry organizations, the International Gaming Affiliate Marketing Initiative, IGAMI, has blacklisted them because of spamming. If this had been a company employing the same techniques in traditional marketing, their IPO would have been pulled and some of its employees would likely have ended up in jail. But no investigative journalist has so far covered the…
Why settle for a one bedroom Manhattan Apt the size of an Oklahoma McMansion's garage when you can get something as big as Disneyland, with as many turrets. Here's a wists list of fantasy real estate for sale in Europe.link » tags: [real_estate] posted via Wists: permamark