Tag: science

Bookmarks for August 10, 2010

  • CSI | Bridging the Chasm between Two Cultures
    Some good stuff in here – a clear articulation of why the language of skepticism does not get through to the people it most needs to, and how we can do something about that.
    Tags: culture, science, religion, skepticism
  • Verizon-Google Legislative Framework Proposal
    One to write about later. Short version: I have used Google's mantra of "don't be evil" as a yardstick that I feel they often fail to live up to, mostly through lack of thought. This document, and the changes it proposes are not that. They are active "evil", a very sign of corporations laying the groundwork to maximise their own revenues at the expense of their customers. Whatever Google's founding principles may have been, they are just another corporation now, and worse, they're one who have decided to throw their very considerable weight behind practices that will make life less fair for the consumer. I really, really hope the FCC steps in to stop this – essentially what they doing is saying that "the public internet" should be neutral, and then not properly defining "the public internet" thereby leaving them free to define "the private internet" as anything they want.
    Tags: politics, google, netneutrality

Bookmarks for July 28, 2010

  • aardvarkonsea.com/letterpress
    My boss turned this up on a routine vanity search for our company name (Aardvark Media), and immediately ordered a couple of the posters, from of all this, a Tea room in St Leonards-on-Sea. I am quite tempted to order one of them for myself for home as well. Any manifesto which begins "Kill your TV" and includes "Make Stuff", "Drink Tea", "Bake Cake", "Grow You Community" and "Champion the Underdog" is kind of tailor made for me, and, I would imagine, a number of other people reading this.
    Tags: posters
  • Daring Fireball: An Improved Liberal, Accurate Regex Pattern for Matching URLs
    I bookmarked Gruber's previous efforts on this front, and I will move to using this improved pattern in the future.
    Tags: programming, regex, url
  • Fish in a barrel – Neven Mrgan's tumbl
    A comparison of Apple's iMac website with the websites for Dell and HP's primary desktop machines. I'm genuinely not posting this to cheerlead for Apple, I'm actually posting it as a reminder to self in a "what not to do" kind of way, because I suspect a lot og my work falls closer to HP and Dell than Apple.
    Tags: design, apple, webdesign
  • Quantum time machine 'allows paradox-free time travel' – Telegraph
    My brain hurts. Of possibly it will hurt in the future, and the quantum-level changes have moved back in time. In any event, I eagerly await being given a quantum supercomputer to play with.
    Tags: science, physics, timetravel

Bookmarks for June 17, 2010

Bookmarks for January 19, 2010

  • Dino Snores | Natural History Museum
    I urgently need to borrow five or more children, ages 8-11.
    Tags: dinosaurs, uk, museum
  • Homeopathy: There's nothing in it | The 10:23 Campaign
    Just in case anyone reading this has been dropped on their head recently, here's a campaign aiming to raise awareness of the quackery of homeopathy masquerading of "complementary" medicine. Of particular relevance is the "what's the harm?" link, because that'' explain *why* we need to make sure people understand that this crap is a scam to part the gullible from their money, just like Reiki and other similar kinds of bullshit. I all for holistic treatments, and accepting the western medical science does not yet have all the answers, but I also believe it's vital to know where the lines between "we don't know why it works", "we're not sure if it works" and "we *know* it doesn't work" are drawn.
    Tags: science, activism, homeopathy, pseudoscience, quackery

Bookmarks for January 12, 2010

Bookmarks for October 6, 2009

Bookmarks for July 20, 2009

  • Difford's guide
    The best cocktail guide in the world is now available in searchable on-line form. Result!
    Tags: cocktails, drinks
  • Quote For The Day
    "Memory, being a phenomenon of emotion and magic, accommodates only those facts that suit it…"
    Tags: memory, quotes
  • Amazon's Orwellian deletion of Kindle books – Boing Boing
    And this, right here, is why I will not buy a kindle, or purchase ebooks in a DRMed format. I would be incandescent if something like that happened to music I own, but the thought of it happening to a *book* I owned would give me an aneurysm. I mean, it's a *book*.
    Tags: drm, amazon
  • BBC Confirm Steven Moffat/Mark Gatiss Sherlock Holmes Drama | Bleeding Cool Comic News & Rumors
    I await this with some interest. The words "dynamic superhero" to describe Holmes aren't totally out of keeping with the character, assuming it's handled right, and I loved Moffat's Jekyll, and well, it's Sherlock fucking Holmes.
    Tags: tv, holmes
  • E-merl.com – Four Derangements
    Daniel Merlin Goodbrey was my collaborator on Rust, the Eagle award nominated webcomic I wrote some time around 2000. Rust was never finished, and he has since gone on to much bigger and better things, which is fitting, because he possesses far more talent and discipline than I do. He remains one of the only people I know with an genuine interest in webcomics as *web* comics, works that truly use the full toolset afforded by the possibilities of the web, instead of just treating the web as the distribution medium for a print comic – his webcomics are genuine hyperfictions that could not exist offline. He has produced a new webcomic here, and it is as good as ever. Go. Look. Learn.
    Tags: webcomics, hyperfictions
  • Charlie's Diary: What have the Romans done for us …?
    I know some people who are ambivalent about the space program. This concerns me slightly, as they give the outward signs of being normal human beings, and then they indicate that their brains are a bit strange by holding views like that. Well, here is a link explaining why basically, without the space program, we'd be living in a very different world.
    Tags: science, space, invention

Bookmarks for July 2, 2009

  • BBC – Earth News – Ant mega-colony takes over world
    I for one welcome… etc.
    Tags: awesome, science, environment, ants
  • Shownar
    The latest public project from Schulze and Webb, beloved of this parish for basically being much cleverer than me, is site that tracks the word-of-mouth buzz around BBC TV and Radio programs. Yes, it skews populist, for obvious reasons, but I can think of ways round that, and in an iteration or two, might be a really good way of tracking good telly that one would otherwise miss.
    Tags: bbc, prototype, schulzeandwebb, trends
  • Lifehacker – TrueCrypt Now Available for Mac, Too
    Bit of a note to self – with the loss of my laptop, I am kind of aware that had I gotten around to putting proper encryption on the thing, I would not have had to bother with the hassle of changing every single bloody password I use. If you use a laptop, or notebook PC, and don't encrypt the entire HD, then you're running the same risk as I did. (Hell, it's true of desktops, too, but they're not begging to be lost of stolen on a daily basis.) You can find software that will do this for you linked from the link above, whatever OS you use.
    Tags: osx, encryption, freeware

Bookmarks for June 25, 2009

Bookmarks for May 22, 2009

  • Tiny Art Director
    I make absolutely not comment on any similarities that may or may not exist between the Tiny Art Director and our clients at work. I will, however note that to date, no client has ever requested a "poo-poo airplane" as part of any work I've done.
    Tags: humour, illustration
  • Oh, for God’s Sake, Newspapers Should Go out of Business
    I know I've linked to similar articles in the past, but I rather like the spin this one is using, and I particularly like the opening paragraph: "Newspapers stopped working a long time ago and a better means of doing their job is readily available. It’s an asinine debate. Who wouldn’t want their news delivered in a form that was searchable, saveable, resendable, which you can talk back to, which is linked to other relevant news, which allows you to read as lightly or as deeply as you wanted to, and which combines text, pictures, and video?"
    Tags: journalism
  • Infinite Summer
    A challenge: Read Infinite Jest between June and September. I've been trying to do this for years, but every time I have a go at it, I find myself distracted by some other book, and not picking it up again. So instead of treating it like a normal book, and trying to read it to the exclusion of all else until I'm done, I think I'm going to try and do it this way, spread out over a three month period. 7 or 8 pages a day should be no problem, and I can read other books on the bus. At least until I become hooked on Infinite Jest, and feel the need to start carting a tome the size of my head around everywhere…
    Tags: literature
  • BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: The harm caused by witnessing rudeness
    Yes: that twat shouting at someone else on the bus really is spoiling your day. Yes: your rude and/or unpleasant co-worker really is lowering everyone's productivity. Yes: Bad manners really are contagious.
    Tags: science, politness