Which one of these two buildings was built by slaves? The one built 4000 years later. Protester disrupts Westminster Abbey service marking 200 years since slave trade abolished – International Herald Tribune
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Apple TV at one tenth of the cost and 90% of the functionality: A long cable.
Adam Curtis’ (The Power of Nightmares) latest documentary is currently being shown in the UK. It traces libertarianism to the Cold War, number theory and the rise of the self. The title refers to a version of the prisoners’ dilemma developed by John Nash who is interviewed in the documentary and was the inpiration behind Ron Howard’s clawing ‘A Beautiful Mind’. Part 1 is below, the remainder of the series hasn’t yet aired. The Trap: What Happened to our Dreams of Freedom? | smashing telly – the best full length free tv programs on the web, updated every day
Tit for Tat is widely acknowledged as being the most successful strategy in game theory, that this is true is important since it directly affects big things – like foreign policy. It seem clear that human beings have a capacity to harbour grudges over generations, and that these grudges tend to stem from retribution being aimed at the wrong person, or an innocent person who is a member of a perceived group through no choice of his or her own. This creates positive feedback, such that any person who has been a victim of mis-applied retribution is likely to feel injustice and seek revenge, which can also be mis-applied ad infinitum. Tit for Tat models that I have seen imply perfect information flow, whereas the real world case of in-group/out-group mentality and grudges could be simply modelled by adding noise to the system. I believe it would be simple to…
Chris Jordan does some fantastic art pieces that represent quantitative information visually. Amount of money spent per hour in Iraq as a giant picture of Benjamin Franklin made out of dollar bills. Number of people admitted to hospital for painkiller abuse as an abstract shape made from the same number of Vicodin pills etc. Thanks Cori. current work
According to a British Coffee Association spokesperson (with a vested interest), its 4.5 cups a day: “a wealth of scientific evidence suggests that moderate coffee consumption of four to five cups per day is perfectly safe for the general population and does have a beneficial effect on alertness and performance even in regular coffee drinkers” BBC NEWS | Health | Coffee ‘no boost in the morning’
Swiss Army Invades Liechtenstein. 170 troops wandered accross the border during night time exercises, by mistake, causing much embarassment. Perhaps the US government will accuse the Swiss of harboring Weapons of Mass Destruction in the form of Swiss Army Knives?
Seven reasons why stretchy web site layouts are dead (in the manner of a del.icio.us post): 1. Although designed for the increasing plethora of screen sizes, few people open their browser fullscreen on a massive display, so you don’t need to design for that variety. 2. Most stretchy design templates behave in unpredictable ways for some content, making them look ugly. 3. Most stretchy designs allow for text that is unreadably long. 4. They are a way to show off technology (CSS) rather than make things ergonomic. 5. If something is right with a certain layout – stick to your convictions and make that option the default, thats what Apple do. 6. Imagine flexible layouts in famous paintings. Would Da Vinci have used fuzzy felts? 7. The Etsy guys recommend not to use them.
Oh My God, Please Stop This Fucking War Ty and Renee Ziegel’s Wedding Ty and Renee before Ty’s accident. via Kottke
There are currently 34,000 news articles in Google News warning of Global Warming, but Matt Drudge has found the one that doesn’t. “Climatologist Calls Global Warming Fears ‘Greatest Deception in the History of Science’…” That’s all fair enough, except that the article doesn’t seem to warrant the front page of one of the most widely read news sources in the US. It is written by Tim Ball, a former Geography professor who works for an anti-global warming consultancy that refuses to deny that it is funded by energy companies. I have no problem with people denying Global Warming – I don’t believe in censorship and think that freedom of speech gives a greater chance of the truth. However, Tim Ball does believe in censorship, or he would reveal the source of his backers. My main problem, however, is Drudge, who through ultra selective reporting also believes in censorship. Reporters in…
The Boston Tee-Hee Party The Mooninite bombscare gets more and more surreal by the minute. It’s rather like someone had decided that traffic lights look like bombs, in the manner that one of Oliver Sacks patients famously mistook his wife for a hat, but because bombs are more serious than hats we have to take it all seriously. Yes all bomb scares have to be taken seriously, but everything does not seriously constitute a bomb scare, or we would have no resourses to deal with bomb scares. Mad people are always warning about bombs and the end of the world and imaginary demons, part of the role of authorities is to filter out mad people that think everything is suspicious. Things that do not constitute suspicious devices, include traffic lights, lamp posts, blinking movie signs and the same blinking street art that has been in NYC for more than a…
Last week a real saint died. Abbe Pierre, was the type of Christian who was in direct opposition to Fox News watching, Christian abortion that is the evangelical right. In other words, he was not the type of person who was more interested in protecting a particular brand of western suburban lifestyle from anyone different, rather than actually helping the unfortunate. After saving the lives of thousands of Jews and political refugees, working with the French Resistance during WWII, he dedicated his life, as a Catholic priest, to helping the homeless, when he found a destitute, pregnant woman, lying on the mud floor of a shelter in Paris, with two dead children next to her. He admitted breaking his vows on more than one occasion, saying that the hardest thing to resist was the tenderness of a woman. He survived both a plane crash and a shipwreck. As an atheist,…