Traditionally if you wanted to invest in oil, you would have to invest indirectly in oil related companies, or have gallons of crude decorating your front yard. In the UK a stock is about to be released which will be directly linked to oil prices. If oil drops below $50 again, I’ll be buying it.link » tags: [peakoil] posted via Wists: permamark
Andrew Orlowski writes: “A new study conducted at Cornell University suggests that we think in analog, not digital. It’s a bold claim which, if true, threatens to make thirty years of linguistics and neuroscience metaphors look very silly indeed.” The fact that our cats can calculate the required muscle flex and velocity to leap onto a table with food, but don’t understand the meaning of ‘no’ and can’t do simple arithmetic has always puzzled me. However it makes sense that any system based upon learned statistical reaction to sensory input would create sophisticated responses without understanding them. In this instance ability to extract logical rules would be based upon a enormous amount of analog input that produced binary certainty as an emergent phenomenon. The Reverse Turing test or ‘captcha’, usually contains a noise filled image of a password with warped fonts is used to filter humans from computers, to stop…
All films with Bill Murray in are very funny. Having religiously watched Jacques Cousteau's deep sea adventures with aahttreeehjus accent as a kid, The Life Aquatic is very funny, and it hits you even more the next day – like a bad curry.link » tags: [fav=movie] posted via Wists: permamark
PBS’ Guns Germs and Steel documentary took an hour and several tons of jet fuel to explain, well nothing. The documentary merely stated, but neither explained nor tested the hypothesis. A great shame, because the book is still a hypothesis worthy of testing. I saw Jared Diamond talk about a year ago, and he had plenty of new evidence to add. P Z Myers says it best: “The information density is appallingly low, and what we got in an hour was the equivalent of reading a handful” of pages from the book.”
I received a boat-load (very small boat) of email about me moaning about political blogs. So just to redress the balance, the mainstream media is crap too. Bah Humbug. As an example, I always had a feeling that Wall Street Journal opinion pieces were written by cub hacks, or even cub scouts, rather than the editor. Its an otherwise excellent newspaper, ruined by painting by numbers editorial. As Josh Marshall points out, today’s is a particularly side-splitting classic of obsequious, foppish garbage, worthy of the court of Louis XVI: “Wall Street Journal headline: “‘Karl Rove, Whistleblower.’” Translation: Rove told the truth, shower him with medals, everyone else has no integrity and is wrong. Marshall: “… can you blame them? Most of the kids there want White House jobs or other GOP-based promotions.” Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall
When 911 happened, most people hadn’t heard of bloggers or Wikipedia, there was no Feedster or Technorati, Google News did not exist*, there was no Flickr and people did not have camera phones. These products and services are not a result of 911, but this was the event that created one facet of what is now an unshakable trend, real-time, ubiquitous, truly democratic media. The second phase of the web, where people could publish as easily as they could browse, was being born. The thing that people used to laugh at when we pitched it originally while at Moreover, actually happened. After the attacks last week in London, I thought that this would be the point where image sharing reached mainstream awareness for news gathering. Camera phones with ability to post via the web are more widespread than in the US and photo sharing has reached an inflection point. In…
New Scientist Premium- Evolution: Blink and you’ll miss it – Features “commercial fishermen use large-meshed nets to spare smaller fish… working on the principle that by reducing their haul this way, they can keep fish populations vigorous and healthy. But they could be making a terrible mistake. It is becoming increasingly clear that such well-meaning strategies may actually have the opposite effect to what the fishermen intend.”
People usually claim that London taxis are prohibitively expensive and that driving in NY is impossible, however these conclusions wouldn’t be the same if they were based purely on relative costs: Suppose you lived two miles from the center of New York City or London and wanted to go to the town center for a one hour lunch by cab, subway or car, how much would the travel cost: Cab: London: $27.60 NYC: $15 [54% of London price] Subway: London: $8 New York: $4 [50% of London price] Car: London: $21.50 New York: $2.75 [13% of London price] This is based upon the following data: Cab: 1 mile cab ride (with 1 minute waiting time), excluding tips: London: $6.90 (noon), $9 (midnight) http://www.transportforlondon.gov.uk/pco/fares-detailed.shtml New York: $3.70 (noon), $4.20 (midnight) http://www.ny.com/transportation/taxis/ Car: Toll for driving in city center: London: $14 http://www.cclondon.com/ New York: $0. Gas price per gallon London: $7 http://www.yrl.co.uk/tony/fuel2/fuel2.html…
In light of today’s attacks and me being increasingly annoyed with both right and left wing ‘bloggards’, I thought I would pick out a sample piece and fact check it: Instapundit writes: “UPDATE: Here are some interesting observations about the location of the attacks in London. “I have talked to a few people who have pointed out that Edgware, Aldgate (and Moorgate) and King’s Cross all are in or adjacent to Muslim communities. King’s Cross is the locale of The School of Oriental and African Studies, a highly respected institution teaching and researching Asia, Africa and the Middle East. It is possible that the attacks were as much directed at the Muslim population as much as the city at large.” 1. There are many other stations that are near SOAS, such that Kings Cross is certainly not the local tube station to it. Also, SOAS’s remit not Islam – hence…
I have been reading political blogs to try and find out what makes particular ones good meme spreaders. One the left I looked at Eschaton and DailyKos and on the right Instapundit and Little Green Morons. Conclusions: The left is full of crop circle paranoids. The right is full of stupid angry people. The sheer volume of information in both does manage to strip things to bare bones facts, but not by virtue of intelligence, just volume – like a colony of bacteria feeding on a corpse. Analysis still seems to be better in MSM – so I’ll be sticking to my favorite publications for the moment: The Economist and Atlantic Monthly.
link » tags: [sevenseven] [news] posted via Wists: permamark
Great New York Metro piece on Judy Miller from a while back: “…when there is trouble, it appears she