Sun 13 September 2009 | -- (permalink)

One thing I admire about economist Tyler Cowen is his ability to go beyond the common, obvious ways that the media frames issues, and see things from perspectives I hadn't before. His latest New York Times column is a perfect example. His point: besides the usual complaints about the inefficiency …

Thu 03 September 2009 | -- (permalink)

Spotted today on the irreverent celebrity gossip blog What Would Tyler Durden Do?, an ad for free bibles from the LDS church, next to a promo video by Beavis and Butthead for Mike Judge's new movie Extract.

Pass it on this week in Sunday School. Nothing would make me happier …

Sun 16 August 2009 | -- (permalink)

A picture:

A thousand words (from Slate): Seeking: The powerful and mysterious brain circuitry that makes us love Google, Twitter, and texting.

Sun 14 June 2009 | -- (permalink)

Three years ago, Newsweek writer Daniel McGinn bought an "investment property" in Pocatello Idaho based on some emailed photos and an assessor's report. He knew he was buying a downscale duplex, but only after after visiting the place he'd bought did he realize he'd unwittingly become a slumlord. He tells …

Sat 06 June 2009 | tags: python, -- (permalink)

1. Install the ReportLab pdf creation toolkit from http://www.reportlab.org/downloads.html.

2. Do this a few times:

   ~~~~ {lang="python"}

   from reportlab.lib import randomtext randomtext.chomsky(times=5) ~~~~

   "Presumably, the speaker-hearer's linguistic intuition can be defined in such a way as to impose problems of phonemic and morphological analysis …

Thu 04 June 2009 | -- (permalink)

The LA Times reports on studies that are quantifying and categorizing all the bacteria that live on people. All the time. They're mostly not bad, as it turns out, and you're better off with them than without them.

Here's an LA Times graphic showing where the bacteria like to congregate …

Thu 04 June 2009 | tags: food, heresy, -- (permalink)

At least, according to Slate it does. But then, they're not so big on the kind you buy in tubs from Food4Less, which is what we use when we make tamales. Still, it's nice to see one of my gastronomical heresies get a little love from the media.

Tue 02 June 2009 | -- (permalink)

This post from scientist Seth Roberts deserves to go down as one of the best metaphors ever used to describe higher education.

Sun 03 May 2009 | -- (permalink)

Lots of LSL scripters, even intermediate to advanced ones, have trouble with LSL rotations. I did too for quite a while, until I forced myself to do a series of projects that helped me figure them out. This post is the first in a series to help people understand how …

Sat 21 March 2009 | -- (permalink)

Via Slashdot, an article about the challenges of creating a game AI that's dumb in convincingly-human ways.