a bunch of stuff

"here’s a toast to Alan Turing born in harsher, darker times who thought outside the container and..."

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:20:37 -0400

“here’s a toast to Alan Turing
born in harsher, darker times
who thought outside the container
and loved outside the lines
and so the code-breaker was broken
and we’re sorry
yes now the s-word has been spoken
the official conscience woken
– very carefully scripted but at least it’s not encrypted –
and the story does suggest
a part 2 to the Turing Test:
1. can machines behave like humans?
2. can we?”

- A poem by Matt Harvey, in response to the British government’s formal apology for hounding Alan Turing to death. It’s only a so-so poem, by my tastes — very Philip Larkin — but I love that last couplet a lot! I’ve actually been sort of writing around that question in my journalism for a loooong time … though sometimes the proposition is inverted: In what situations would we humans behave more morally if be behaved more like machines?

"There’s no such thing as information overload but filter failure,” said Mr. Crowley."

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:13:13 -0400

““There’s no such thing as information overload but filter failure,” said Mr. Crowley.”

- Great comment by Dennis Crowley of foursquare, in a story about location-based tech.

"the Kindle lets readers down with respect to one subtle but powerful element of the traditional..."

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:07:28 -0400

“the Kindle lets readers down with respect to one subtle but powerful element of the traditional book’s appeal: its role as an identity marker. Pulling out a particular book on an airline flight or in a doctor’s office can mean staking a claim to being a particular kind of person. Likewise, the books lining your living room or office can tell others about your interests and background. But on the Kindle, no matter what you’re reading, all anyone else will see is an unchanging plastic device.”

- Nice point about the Kindle …

Is your handwriting going to hell in the age of the keyboard?...

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:08:46 -0400

Is your handwriting going to hell in the age of the keyboard? Mine sure is. I’d always figured my horrible handwriting was the result of some deep moral flaw, but these authors argue — in this superbly graphically-crafted and thought-provoking New York Times op-ed piece — that the problem stems from the inherent limitations of “Palmer” cursive writing, which was intended to be beautiful but also slow and clumsy … a rough ergonomic analogue of the QWERTY keyboard.

"In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes claims he does not know that the Earth revolves around the sun, as..."

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:34:24 -0400

“In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes claims he does not know that the Earth revolves around the sun, as such information is irrelevant to his work solving crimes. Directly after having heard that fact from Watson, he says he will immediately try to forget it. He says he believes that the mind has a finite capacity for information storage, and so learning useless things would merely reduce his ability to learn useful things.”

- Sherlock Holmes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From the Get Your War On blogger: “What can I say? If...

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 10:22:44 -0400

From the Get Your War On blogger: “What can I say? If you’ve ever wanted to watch a gelfling-starchild perform “Kids” on her mini-keyboard from the future while hiding out in a record-store basement(?), then you’re pretty psyched right now. I am counting the days until we hear this young woman in an iPod commercial.”

"iTunes sells a lot of music that you can get for free on the internet, so they’re not really..."

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:56:48 -0400

“iTunes sells a lot of music that you can get for free on the internet, so they’re not really selling the music, they’re selling the service of getting the music without having to muck about with P2P software and unsure quality.”

- This precisely describes why I’ve subscribed to Rhapsody — $15 a month — nonstop for five years now. (From a great piece by Cory Doctorow about Chris Anderson’s new book Freei>.)

A clever idea, recently patented by Samsung, for packing a full...

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:05:39 -0400

A clever idea, recently patented by Samsung, for packing a full QWERTY keyboard into ever-smaller modern mobile phones.

I’ve seen a lot of alternative “chording”...

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:59:10 -0400

I’ve seen a lot of alternative “chording” keyboards over the years, but the “Alphagrips” is straightforwardly the weirdest.

"Action is more generally understood than words. Like Chinese symbolism, it will mean different..."

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:27:33 -0400

““Action is more generally understood than words. Like Chinese symbolism, it will mean different things according to its scenic connotation. Listen to a description of some unfamiliar object — an African warthog, for example; then look at a picture of the animal and see how surprised you are”.”

- Charlie Chaplin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This watch is so awesome. Why does it have to cost $450? Sigh.

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:31:08 -0400

This watch is so awesome. Why does it have to cost $450? Sigh.

Wow — the Ford hybrid Fusion has explicitly game-like...

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 19:56:24 -0400

Wow — the Ford hybrid Fusion has explicitly game-like incentives on the dashboard: The “greener” you drive, these little green vines grow in the corner of your sightlines. (I love this given that I just wrote about game-like incentives in everyday life …)

I don’t think Cavafy would have much liked Twitter or...

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:23:59 -0400

I don’t think Cavafy would have much liked Twitter or Facebook. This version of the poem is from Daniel Mendelsohn’s superb new translation.

"Let me make this very clear. No one can learn to think without having something to think about. If..."

Tue, 12 May 2009 16:50:33 -0400

“Let me make this very clear. No one can learn to think without having something to think about. If you try to teach someone how to think in the abstract, you are not going to get anywhere. If you try to make education “easy”, by removing the content, you are cheating your students out of the most important thing you have to offer: the chance to do something hard. Only by mastering a difficult body of knowledge can a child develop into a confident, thinking adult. The point is, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the same difficult body of knowledge that the child’s parents learned.”

- Fascinating conversation on whether it’s cognitively good or bad for students to rely on the math-software Mathematica.

"Alexithymia is condition where a person seems devoid of emotion because they are functionally..."

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:55:12 -0400

“Alexithymia is condition where a person seems devoid of emotion because they are functionally unaware of their emotions. By extension, alexithymics are also unable to appreciate the emotional motivation of others, and generally find emotions of others to be perplexing and irrational. Such a person may be pleasant and highly intelligent, but will be humorless, unimaginative, and have some unusual priorities in decision-making.”

- http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=80

"So what is 2D Boy’s next title? According to a comment at the end of the lecture, it’s..."

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:18:00 -0400

“So what is 2D Boy’s next title? According to a comment at the end of the lecture, it’s going to be *The Sophomore Effect: An Intentionally Mediocre Game.*”

- Ahahahahahahah

"Imagine an RTS where you can send your units back in time to destroy your opponent’s units..."

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:56:43 -0400

““Imagine an RTS where you can send your units back in time to destroy your opponent’s units before he’s even built them,” opened Chris Hazard, thoroughly confusing everyone in the audience, a confusion that never quite seemed to lift.”

- A description of Achron, an upcoming experimental game presented in the incredibly-cool-sounding “Experimental Gameplay” session of this year’s Game Developer’s Convention, written up here by Simon Carless on GameSetWatch.

Most awesome Master of Science thesis ever.

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:52:34 -0400

Most awesome Master of Science thesis ever.

I had to ask! I was investigating getting DirecTV for my new...

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:10:38 -0400

I had to ask! I was investigating getting DirecTV for my new office when I saw this pop-up window …

"From an acoustical perspective, music is an overstructured language, which the brain invented and..."

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:54:53 -0400

““From an acoustical perspective, music is an overstructured language, which the brain invented and which the brain loves to hear.””

- Basics - In One Ear and Out the Other - NYTimes.com