How our brains fool us on climate, creationism, and the vaccine-autism link.
This is a fantastic article that everyone should read and take some serious time to absorb!
Bob Frankston on Communications
Computer pioneer who helped create the first spreadsheet, Bob Frankston, is this week's guest.
On a recent episode of Leo Laporte and Tom Merrit’s show Triangulation, they interviewed Bob Frankston of VisiCalc fame. They gave a great discussion of the current state of broadband in the U.S. and how it might be much better. They get just a bit technical in places, but it’s a fantastic and very accessible discussion of the topic of communications that every American should be aware of.
Phrase of the Week: “Disconfirmation Bias”
disconfirmation bias: n. The tendency to accept supportive evidence of a belief uncritically, but to actively refute or discount evidence that challenges that belief.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes, #3
mystery, detective
The Strand Magazine
1892
Kindle e-book
Amazon
Comprising the series of short stories that made the fortunes of the Strand, the magazine in which they were first published, this volume won even more popularity for Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Holmes is at the height of his powers in many of his most famous cases, including The Red-Headed League, The Speckled Band, and The Blue Carbuncle.
The original “procedural”, but in fiction form and focusing on logic instead of high tech science.
Read between January 02 – May 09, 2011
Quotes and Highlights:
You may remember the old Persian saying, ‘There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.’ There is as much sense in Hafiz as in Horace, and as much knowledge of the world.
Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home.
Well, moonshine is a brighter thing than fog, …
…as I said then, that a man should keep his little brain-attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.
“My God! It’s Watson,” said he. He was in a pitiable state of reaction, with every nerve in a twitter.
41% Note: An interesting early use of @Twitter…
I should be very much obliged if you would slip your revolver into your pocket. An Eley’s No. 2 is an excellent argument with gentlemen who can twist steel pokers into knots. That and a tooth-brush are, I think, all that we need.
magnifying lens.
87% First reference to Holmes with a magnifying lens in print that I’ve seen.Like
We describe the evolution of macromolecules as an information transmission process and apply tools from Shannon information theory to it. This allows us to isolate three independent, competing selective pressures that we term compression, transmission, and neutrality selection. The first two affect genome length: the pressure to conserve resources by compressing the code, and the pressure to acquire additional information that improves the channel, increasing the rate of information transmission into each offspring. Noisy transmission channels (replication with mutations) gives rise to a third pressure that acts on the actual encoding of information; it maximizes the fraction of mutations that are neutral with respect to the phenotype. This neutrality selection has important implications for the evolution of evolvability. We demonstrate each selective pressure in experiments with digital organisms.
To be published in J. theor. Biology 222 (2003) 477-483
DOI: 10.1016/S0022-5193(03)00062-6
Synthetic Biology’s Hunt for the Genetic Transistor | IEEE Spectrum
How genetic circuits will unlock the true potential of bioengineering
This is a great short article on bioengineering and synthetic biology written for the layperson. It’s also one of the best crash courses I’ve read on genetics in a while.
Reply to Mythbusters | The Sheridan Libraries Blog
Ever walk past a campus tour and wonder how much of it is true? While most of it is, and we love the plug for “your own librarian,” there are a couple of long-standing inaccuracies that we’d like to put to rest:
“No building on campus can be taller than Gilman Hall because that’s what’s in Gilman’s will.” Wrong. Decisions about buildings’ heights, including that of the library, have been made based on the scale of the campus and the architecture of Homewood House. Stand at the middle of the lower part of the beach, and look through the glass windows of MSEL. Notice anything? That’s right–Gilman Hall is beautifully framed in the center.
Gilman died in 1908, and mentioned nothing in his will about buildings. In 1912, the Trustees began to plan a new “Academic Building.” This was completed in 1915, and formally named after Gilman in 1917.
“The library sank three inches when they put the 2.5 million books in it in 1964.” Wrong again. I often wonder how many parents, when they hear this, would like to end the tour right there. First, there weren’t 2.5 million books in 1964; we didn’t reach that milestone until the 1990s. When the new
library opened on November 15, 1964, there were just over 1.1 million books on the shelves.
Second, no sinking occurred. The weight of the thousands of shelves and books had been calculated into the plan, and the foundation was, and remains, more than adequate to hold the weight.
One thing that is true about the library is that when the hole was dug, an underground stream was discovered, and had to be rerouted before work on the building could continue. John Berthel, the library director at the time, poses in the recently dug hole with some of the books that would later grace the shelves.
Did Winston go down into the new hole for the BLC while they were digging and take a similar photo with a pile of books? The two photos would make great “book ends!”
To do the Math… | Newspaper Blackout
Dictionary: A Malevolent Literary Device
DICTIONARY, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic.
in The Devil’s Dictionary
At Portos Bakery: “Almuerzo”
Porto’s Bakery
Porto’s Bakery
At Portos Bakery: “Almuerzo”
Browsing for a bit… at Americana at Brand
At Americana at Brand: “Browsing for a bit…”
What We Call the Past is Built on Bits
What we call the past is built on bits.
IPTV primer: an overview of the fusion of TV and the Internet | Ars Technica
Profound as it may be, the Internet revolution still pales in comparison to that earlier revolution that first brought screens in millions of homes: the TV revolution. Americans still spend more of their non-sleep, non-work time on watching TV than on any other activity. And now the immovable object (the couch potato) and the irresistible force (the business-model destroying Internet) are colliding.
For decades, the limitations of technology only allowed viewers to watch TV programs as they were broadcast. Although limiting, this way of watching TV has the benefit of simplicity: the viewer only has to turn on the set and select a channel. They then get to see what was deemed broadcast-worthy at that particular time. This is the exact opposite of the Web, where users type a search query or click a link and get their content whenever they want. Unsurprisingly, TV over the Internet, a combination that adds Web-like instant gratification to the TV experience, has seen an enormous growth in popularity since broadband became fast enough to deliver decent quality video. So is the Internet going to wreck TV, or is TV going to wreck the Internet? Arguments can certainly be made either way.
This brief overview of IPTV is about as concise as they get. It’s recommended for entertainment executives who need to get caught up on the space as well as for people who are contemplating “cutting the cable cord.” There’s still a lot of improvement the area can use…
Bill Davenhall at TEDMED 2009 on Geomedicine: How Your Environment May Affect Your Health
Does where you live have an impact on your overhall health? Bill Davenhall believes that the location of our homes is critical to our medical history.
This is a great thing to think about the next time your doctor asks for your medical history. Perhaps with more data and a better visualization of it, it may bring home the messages of pollution and global warming.