Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Greg Fish - World of Weird Things - How order comes from chaos - True/Slant

Greg Fish - World of Weird Things - How order comes from chaos - True/Slant: "Sarah Palin’s official resignation speech this past weekend was a haphazard swarm of words trying to merge into sentences with the hope of masquerading as a coherent thought."
"An 80GB Intel X25-M costs just under $600 – about 30 (!) times the price of a similar sized conventional hard drive."

Technology@Intel · Why would a 32GB SSD cost more than an 80GB SSD?

http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2009/05/why_would_a_32gb_drive_cost_mo.php: "These two analogies are exactly what's different between the two types of flash. The same shotglass (or cell), is holding either a 1 or a 0 in SLC, or 11, 10, 01, 00 in MLC. It takes a bit more work to fill that second glass. It's not that hard to read between the lines, but filling... that's a harder story."

Intel Contracts TSMC to Make Langwell Chipsets | CENS.com - The Taiwan Economic News

Intel Contracts TSMC to Make Langwell Chipsets CENS.com - The Taiwan Economic News: "Intel will launch the Moorestown platform next quarter. The platform design has integrated graphic core and memory control devices with the Atom family of processors codenamed Lincroft, with NAND and USB control chips, CE-ATA hard-disc interface, MIPI CSI mobile interface, audio code, and wireless network and power management ports to be built into Langwell chipsets"

Partial Penetrance - How Evolutionary 'Leaps' Might Have Happened

Partial Penetrance - How Evolutionary 'Leaps' Might Have Happened

Qualitative changes from one form to another can proceed through changes in the relative frequencies—or penetrance—of those forms

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Monster Merger: IBM Buys SPSS For Approx. $1.2 Billion In Cash Deal

Monster Merger: IBM Buys SPSS For Approx. $1.2 Billion In Cash Deal

IBM says it will continue to support and enhance SPSS technologies while allowing customers to take advantage of its own product portfolio. SPSS will become part of the Information Management division within the Software Group business unit, led by Ambuj Goyal, General Manager, IBM Information Management.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Why Do We Rape, Kill and Sleep Around? | Print Article | Newsweek.com

Why Do We Rape, Kill and Sleep Around? | Print Article | Newsweek.com: "The discovery of genes as young as agriculture and city-states, rather than as old as cavemen, means 'we have to rethink to foundational assumptions' of evo psych, says Miller, starting with the claim that there are human universals and that they are the result of a Stone Age brain. Evolution indeed sculpted the human brain. But it worked in malleable plastic, not stone, bequeathing us flexible minds that can take stock of the world and adapt to it."

quote

“I’m just another one of the prophets that went to jail for the Gospel”
-evangelist Tony Alamo found guilty of taking girls as young as 9 across state lines for sex

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

First Concert at Camelback Ranch – Glendale Features Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp & Willie Nelson | Camelback Ranch - Glendale: Spring Training Home of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chic

First Concert at Camelback Ranch – Glendale Features Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp & Willie Nelson | Camelback Ranch - Glendale: Spring Training Home of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chic: "Seating is first-come, first-serve, allowing fans to seat themselves in stadium seats or on the playing field grass. Gates open at 5 p.m."

Quote Details: M. Cartmill: As an adolescent I... - The Quotations Page

Quote Details: M. Cartmill: As an adolescent I... - The Quotations Page: "As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
M. Cartmill"

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Apple drops to 5th position in US computer sales

Apple drops to 5th position in US computer sales: "Apple has shipped 12.4% fewer computers than it did last year, falling to 1.21 million Macs. Its market share will remain the same at 7.6% but will have"

DBMS Musings: Announcing release of HadoopDB (longer version)

DBMS Musings: Announcing release of HadoopDB (longer version): "Our paper (that will be presented at the upcoming VLDB conference in the last week of August) shows that HadoopDB gets similar fault tolerance and ability to tolerate wild fluctuations in runtime node performance as Hadoop, while still approaching the performance of commercial parallel database systems (of course, it still gives up some performance due to the above mentioned tradeoffs)."

TechCrunch publishes 'hacked' Twitter secrets | News | News.com.au

TechCrunch publishes 'hacked' Twitter secrets News News.com.au: "TechCrunch has obtained sensitive internal documents belonging to microblogging site Twitter, including financial projections, sent to them by an unidentified hacker.
It reported that a hacker had gained 'easy access' to hundreds of pieces of internal Twitter information - from pass codes to meeting minutes to job interviews - and then forwarded all of the data to the news website.
'We are going to release some of the documents showing financial projections, product plans and notes from executive strategy meetings,' TechCrunch founder and co-editor Michael Arrington said."

The Gap Widens in Online Population - Digits - WSJ

The Gap Widens in Online Population - Digits - WSJ: "Asia’s share of the world’s online population will swell to 43% in four years, while North America will represent just 13% of Internet users, according to a new report by Forrester Research"

Monday, July 20, 2009

Metamagician and the Hellfire Club: More on H.E. Baber's piece in The Guardian

Metamagician and the Hellfire Club: More on H.E. Baber's piece in The Guardian: "I do believe that religion should be challenged publicly, and I'm frankly amazed at the suggestion that nothing turns on the question of whether the epistemic content of the various religions is actually correct. Much, very much, turns on it. The Catholic Church and other religious organisations claim to be in a position to speak with great epistemic and moral authority. This enables them to pronounce in public on all sorts of issues, including abortion rights, censorship, gay rights, stem-cell research, IVF, and on and on. I can think of no more important issue for public consideration than whether or not these organisations really do possess the epistemic and moral authority that they claim - and which politicians and journalists are all too ready to assume they actually have."

The Technium: Increasing Diversity

The Technium: Increasing Diversity: "The invention of life greatly accelerated the diversity in the universe many fold. From a very few species 3.8 billion years ago, the number and variety of living species on Earth has increased dramatically over geological time to the 30 to 100 million now present."

The Technium: Was Moore's Law Inevitable?

The Technium: Was Moore's Law Inevitable?: "Consider the recent history (for the last 10-15 years) of the cost per performance of communication bandwidth, and digital storage.

The picture of their exponential growth parallels the integrated circuit in every way except their slope — the rate at which they are speeding up. Why is the doubling period in one technology eight years versus two? Isn't the same finance system and expectations underpinning them?"

Tom Paine's Ghost

Tom Paine's Ghost: "The real hurdle to unleashing the floodgates of the 'Saudi Arabia' of wind power that exists all over our fruited plains is an effective means of energy storage and transfer. If"

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Roger Ebert's Journal: Archives

Roger Ebert's Journal: Archives: "I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting. My lifetime's memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris."

Sunday, July 05, 2009

Paul Begala: Sarah Palin Turns Pro

Paul Begala: Sarah Palin Turns Pro: "Her statement was incoherent, bizarre and juvenile. The text, as posted on Gov. Palin's official website (here), uses 2,549 words and 18 exclamation points. Lincoln freed the slaves with 719 words and nary an exclamation; Mr. Jefferson declared our independence in 1,322 words and, again, no exclamation points. Nixon resigned the presidency in 1,796 words -- still no exclamation points. Gov. Palin capitalized words at random - whole words, like 'TO,' 'HELP,' and 'AND,' and the first letter of 'Troops.'"

Saturday, July 04, 2009

Summer reading: Killer thrillers | Salon Books

Summer reading: Killer thrillers | Salon Books: "What's summer without a big, fat vampire novel? 'The Strain,' by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, doesn't have the Old World moodiness of Elizabeth Kostova's 2005 bestseller, 'The Historian,' but what it lacks in misty Carpathian landscapes and haunted libraries it makes up for in apocalyptic action and supersize portions of gore."

Carrie Fisher, "Wishful Drinking" | Salon Books

Carrie Fisher, "Wishful Drinking" | Salon Books: "Maybe I shouldn't have given the guy who pumped my stomach my phone number, but who cares, my life is over anyway."

Friday, July 03, 2009

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Part of Sarah Palin's irresistible appeal to her fundamentalist base is her ability to look at the camera with utter conviction and declare black to be white.

The ability to lie well is a valuable part of the fundamentalist psychology. My son isn't gay, he just hasn't found the right woman! Those rocks aren't 50 million years old, they just look like it as a test of our faith! My sexless marriage isn't foundering, it is filled with God's spirit! The minister isn't molesting little Maria, they're just very close! It isn't torture, it is being tough on terrorists!

Fundamentalists can recognize a truly audacious and talented liar from miles away. Instead of running the other way, as you might expect, they gather around the powerful liar, for they know that their own lies will be respected and protected by a leader who understands the paramount importance of preserving their whole system of denial.

Science, religion and our shared future | Madeleine Bunting | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Science, religion and our shared future | Madeleine Bunting | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: "'Transformed knowledge,
which is an unknowing,
it is the way of transparent knowing,
it is the way of unselfconsciousness.

When you learn this,
you can learn everything,
and return to everything,
and praise everything'

translation: if you forget the things you know based on evidence, you will be able to believe in anything, and it will give you the illusion of knowing everything."

Resp:

And if you don't understand the point Eckhart was making about 'transformed knowledge' being an 'unknowing', then it might be a good idea to actually study Eckhart seriously. And I would also point you to the sources of information that I suggested to Foolfodder. Once you've got a good grasp of the subject matter then you might actually be in a position to debate it seriously.

I wouldn't dare to rubbish the fundamental tenets of mathematics or physics because quite frankly my understanding of it is limited. But you feel that it is perfectly valid to throw around cynical, ignorant comments about things you clearly don't grasp.

Quotations

Quotations: "We may be confused about the distinction between tolerance and the refusal of evaluation, thinking that tolerance of others requires us not to evaluate what they do.
Martha Nussbaum
--Cultivating Humanity"

About Butterflies and Wheels

About Butterflies and Wheels: "it is never a good idea to allow one’s political, ideological and moral commitments to infect the judgements that one makes about truth-claims which have nothing to do with such considerations."