how accommodating can you get? « weird things: "One of the accommodationists’ favorite tenants is that religion and science pursue different knowledge so in theory, they should have no problem co-existing. But the reality is very different. Religion is a social construct which exists to perpetuate its traditions rather than actually acquire any new insight. All the knowledge it wants is already contained in its holy books and the lengthy ruminations on them. Those who feel inspired to go out and explore, find themselves in the realm of science, a bureaucratic entity which gathers, documents and sifts through new knowledge. It started off as a nearly blank slate and its entire purpose is to find new information and grow with each discovery.
The conflict between the two spheres happens when scientists discover something that contradicts religious dogma and the people who rigidly follow their holy texts mount a campaign to defend their worldview from the new information. Do you honestly think that fundamentalists are interested in broadening their horizons when their primary concern is to make sure everyone around them does as they say? In the supposed war between science and religion, the actual facts take a back seat. Rather, the debate is about whether we could pick and choose our personal worldview regardless of the facts. Creationists aren’t mad because they did a study that found major contradictions in evolutionary biology. They’re mad because scientists dare to tell the world about evolution and use facts they passionately want to ignore to teach this knowledge in schools.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Stephen Jay Gould, "Nonoverlapping Magisteria," 1997
Stephen Jay Gould, "Nonoverlapping Magisteria," 1997: "I am not, personally, a believer or a religious man in any sense of institutional commitment or practice. But I have enormous respect for religion, and the subject has always fascinated me, beyond almost all others (with a few exceptions, like evolution, paleontology, and baseball). Much of this fascination lies in the historical paradox that throughout Western history organized religion has fostered both the most unspeakable horrors and the most heart-rending examples of human goodness in the face of personal danger. (The evil, I believe, lies in the occasional confluence of religion with secular power. The Catholic Church has sponsored its share of horrors, from Inquisitions to liquidations—but only because this institution held such secular power during so much of Western history. When my folks held similar power more briefly in Old Testament times, they committed just as many atrocities with many of the same rationales.)
I believe, with all my heart, in a respectful, even loving concordat between our magisteria—the NOMA solution. NOMA represents a principled position on moral and intellectua] grounds, not a mere diplomatic stance. NOMA also cuts both ways. If religion can no longer dictate the nature of factual conclusions properly under the magisterium of science, then scientists cannot claim higher insight into moral truth ...
I believe, with all my heart, in a respectful, even loving concordat between our magisteria—the NOMA solution. NOMA represents a principled position on moral and intellectua] grounds, not a mere diplomatic stance. NOMA also cuts both ways. If religion can no longer dictate the nature of factual conclusions properly under the magisterium of science, then scientists cannot claim higher insight into moral truth ...
The Censorship Canard, Again | The Intersection | Discover Magazine
The Censorship Canard, Again | The Intersection | Discover Magazine: "29. Peter Beattie
I’d be happy to defend the position that science has plenty to tell us about how our actual behavior actually affects other people and ourselves. And how science can help us peer into moral gray areas. And tell us about how we make moral judgments in reality, and how that might contrast with how we think we should be making moral judgments. And how are supposed values line up with how the world actually is. And how knowing how the world actually is can help us make better value judgments, and help set priorities among competing values, and how realistic or arbitrary our values are, and so on."
I’d be happy to defend the position that science has plenty to tell us about how our actual behavior actually affects other people and ourselves. And how science can help us peer into moral gray areas. And tell us about how we make moral judgments in reality, and how that might contrast with how we think we should be making moral judgments. And how are supposed values line up with how the world actually is. And how knowing how the world actually is can help us make better value judgments, and help set priorities among competing values, and how realistic or arbitrary our values are, and so on."
Metamagician and the Hellfire Club
Metamagician and the Hellfire Club: "The sad thing about this is that church is, among other things, a way to get together with other people and focus the mind on being good. The religious version of being good is not always on the mark, to put it mildly, but even the opportunity to contemplate goodness seems valuable. This is something it's truly hard to reproduce with secular institutions. Politics seems like the closest thing to a substitute, and it's not a very close match."
Seeing and Believing
Seeing and Believing: Jerry Coyne
Scientists do indeed rely on materialistic explanations of nature, but it is important to understand that this is not an a priori philosophical commitment. It is, rather, the best research strategy that has evolved from our long-standing experience with nature. There was a time when God was a part of science. Newton thought that his research on physics helped clarify God's celestial plan. So did Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who devised our current scheme for organizing species. But over centuries of research we have learned that the idea "God did it" has never advanced our understanding of nature an iota, and that is why we abandoned it. In the early 1800s, the French mathematician Laplace presented Napoleon with a copy of his great five-volume work on the solar system, the Mechanique Celeste. Aware that the books contained no mention of God, Napoleon taunted him, "Monsieur Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator." Laplace answered, famously and brusquely: "Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothese-la," "I have had no need of that hypothesis." And scientists have not needed it since.
...
Scientists do indeed rely on materialistic explanations of nature, but it is important to understand that this is not an a priori philosophical commitment. It is, rather, the best research strategy that has evolved from our long-standing experience with nature. There was a time when God was a part of science. Newton thought that his research on physics helped clarify God's celestial plan. So did Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who devised our current scheme for organizing species. But over centuries of research we have learned that the idea "God did it" has never advanced our understanding of nature an iota, and that is why we abandoned it. In the early 1800s, the French mathematician Laplace presented Napoleon with a copy of his great five-volume work on the solar system, the Mechanique Celeste. Aware that the books contained no mention of God, Napoleon taunted him, "Monsieur Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator." Laplace answered, famously and brusquely: "Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothese-la," "I have had no need of that hypothesis." And scientists have not needed it since.
...
Perhaps what we mean by "religious truths" are "moral truths," such as "Thou shalt not commit adultery." These rules are not subject to empirical testing, but they do comport with our reasoned sense of right and wrong. But for almost every "truth" such as this there is another one believed with equal sincerity, such as "Those who commit adultery should be stoned to death." This dictum appears not only in Islamic religious law, but in the Old Testament as well. (It seems wrong, by the way, to call these truths religious. Beginning with Plato, philosophers have argued convincingly that our ethics come not from religion, but from a secular morality that develops in intelligent, socially interacting creatures, and is simply inserted into religion for convenient citation.)
In the end, then, there is a fundamental distinction between scientific truths and religious truths, however you construe them. The difference rests on how you answer one question: how would I know if I were wrong? Darwin's colleague Thomas Huxley remarked that "science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact." As with any scientific theory, there are potentially many ugly facts that could kill Darwinism. Two of these would be the presence of human fossils and dinosaur fossils side by side, and the existence of adaptations in one species that benefit only a different species.Saturday, June 27, 2009
Pharyngula
Pharyngula: "about the nature of the universe, about our history, about how we function, and then we encounter a conflict: religion keeps giving us different answers. Very different answers. They can't all be right, and since no two religions give the same answers, but since science can generally converge on similar and consistent answers, I know which one is right. And that makes religion simply wrong."
..
Religion, on the other hand, uses a different body of techniques to explain the nature of the universe. It uses tradition and dogma and authority and revelation, and a detailed legalistic analysis of source texts, to dictate what the nature of reality should be. It's always wrong, from an empirical perspective, although I do have to credit theologians with some of the most amazingly intricate logical exercises as they try to justify their conclusions. The end result of all of this kind of clever wankery, though, is that some people say the world is 6000 years old, that it was inundated with a global flood 4000 years ago, and other people say something completely different, and there is no way within the body of theology to resolve which answers are right. They have to step outside their narrow domain to get an independent confirmation — that is, they rely on science to give them the answers to the Big Questions in which they purport to have expertise.
..
Religion, on the other hand, uses a different body of techniques to explain the nature of the universe. It uses tradition and dogma and authority and revelation, and a detailed legalistic analysis of source texts, to dictate what the nature of reality should be. It's always wrong, from an empirical perspective, although I do have to credit theologians with some of the most amazingly intricate logical exercises as they try to justify their conclusions. The end result of all of this kind of clever wankery, though, is that some people say the world is 6000 years old, that it was inundated with a global flood 4000 years ago, and other people say something completely different, and there is no way within the body of theology to resolve which answers are right. They have to step outside their narrow domain to get an independent confirmation — that is, they rely on science to give them the answers to the Big Questions in which they purport to have expertise.
Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends | Brain Blogger
Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends | Brain Blogger: "The closest thing that researchers have been able to identify as a single secret to happiness is successful relationships. High levels of intelligence, social aptitude, physical strength, or mental health mean very little in the pursuit of happiness. Positive relationships — with parents, siblings, spouses, children, friends, neighbors, and colleagues — as early as childhood are the most important predictors of happiness and success as we age. Largely, loving relationships and an appreciation for beauty positively predict life satisfaction."
The Philosophy of Science: Some Verifiable Rational Considerations of Reality
The Philosophy of Science: Some Verifiable Rational Considerations of Reality: "Edward O. Wilson, who describes science as the 'remarkable engine of testable learning',"
Why A Low Calorie Diet Extends Lifespans: Critical Enzyme Pair Identified
Why A Low Calorie Diet Extends Lifespans: Critical Enzyme Pair Identified: "To date, there are only three known genetic networks that ensure youthfulness when manipulated. One centers on the insulin/insulin growth factor-1, which regulates metabolism and growth; the second is driven by mitochondria, the cell's power plants; and the third is linked to diet restriction."
First Image of a Memory Being Made | LiveScience
First Image of a Memory Being Made | LiveScience: "One of the surprising revelations of the new study is that more regions of RNA, a protein-building instruction manual similar to DNA, are required to form the new proteins than previously thought."
Friday, June 26, 2009
Sun CTO douses own cloud in cold water • The Register
Sun CTO douses own cloud in cold water • The Register: "chief technology officer Greg Papadopoulos doubts enterprises will move their existing applications onto this or any other data center in the sky. But Amazon cloud prophet Werner Vogels disagrees.
'I'll pour a little bit of cloud water on this,' Papadopoulos said at the cloud-obsessed Structure 09 conference in San Francisco, California, on Thursday. 'It's generally really hard and expensive and often unwise to be moving your legacy pieces over into something new in computing like this, unless you can really demonstrate what the advantages are."
'I'll pour a little bit of cloud water on this,' Papadopoulos said at the cloud-obsessed Structure 09 conference in San Francisco, California, on Thursday. 'It's generally really hard and expensive and often unwise to be moving your legacy pieces over into something new in computing like this, unless you can really demonstrate what the advantages are."
New chips don't deliver, Facebook says | ITworld
New chips don't deliver, Facebook says | ITworld: "'The biggest thing (that) surprised us is ... less-than-anticipated performance gains from new microarchitectures -- so, new CPUs from guys like Intel and AMD. The performance gains they're touting in the press, we're not seeing in our applications,"
Why Do Atheists Have to Talk About Atheism? | | AlterNet
Why Do Atheists Have to Talk About Atheism? | | AlterNet: "atheists see religion as a lot of things. But for many of us, religion is, above all else, a hypothesis about how the world works and why it is the way it is.
Obviously, we think it's a mistaken hypothesis: inconsistent with itself, inconsistent with reality, unsupported by any good evidence"
Obviously, we think it's a mistaken hypothesis: inconsistent with itself, inconsistent with reality, unsupported by any good evidence"
More on accomodationism : Thoughts from Kansas
More on accomodationism : Thoughts from Kansas: "nsofar as I’m an accommodationist, then, it’s not because I don’t see the incongruity between relying on faith, and looking for evidence, as bases for knowing. Rather, it’s because I know that many very intelligent people are struggling all the time to make their peace with this incongruity in their own way–a peace that works for them. And so long as they’re not messing with what our kids learn–or, again, trying to ram their views down our throats–then good on ‘em."
..
The methods of ascertaining “truth” via faith are either revelation or acceptance of dogma. These methods have produced “truths” like a 6,000-year-old Earth and the Great Flood. Not a very good track record. In fact, I have yet to find a single truth about humans, Earth, or the universe that has come uniquely from faith.
..
The methods of ascertaining “truth” via faith are either revelation or acceptance of dogma. These methods have produced “truths” like a 6,000-year-old Earth and the Great Flood. Not a very good track record. In fact, I have yet to find a single truth about humans, Earth, or the universe that has come uniquely from faith.
Brain mechanisms of hypnotic paralysis : Neurophilosophy
Brain mechanisms of hypnotic paralysis : Neurophilosophy: "In the controls, feigning paralysis of the left hand led to increased activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus, which is known to be involved in motor inhibition. However, hypnotic paralysis did not cause increased activity in this area, and so it seems not to occur as a result of inhibition of motor planning."
The Theory of Abominable Befuddlement « The Sensuous Curmudgeon
The Theory of Abominable Befuddlement « The Sensuous Curmudgeon: "The continued existence of creationists among us can be cited as evidence against natural selection. Therefore, we must boldly acknowledge the Paradox of Creationism: Creationism exists; and if evolution can’t account for it, then what does?"
..
The brain of a creationist is so scrambled that it cannot be the result of natural processes. The Theory of Abominable Befuddlement (AB) holds that certain features of the creationist brain are best explained by an Abominable Befuddler, and not by evolution. It follows as a corollary that ID is the work of AB.
..
Using this creationist-approved method of investigation, a befuddlement theorist studies the output of creationists, and thus is able to determine whether it is the rational product of an evolved brain, or an example of befuddlement.
..
The brain of a creationist is so scrambled that it cannot be the result of natural processes. The Theory of Abominable Befuddlement (AB) holds that certain features of the creationist brain are best explained by an Abominable Befuddler, and not by evolution. It follows as a corollary that ID is the work of AB.
..
Using this creationist-approved method of investigation, a befuddlement theorist studies the output of creationists, and thus is able to determine whether it is the rational product of an evolved brain, or an example of befuddlement.
ScienceDirect - Applied Animal Behaviour Science : Survey of the use and outcome of confrontational and non-confrontational training methods in client-owned dogs showing undesired behaviors
ScienceDirect - Applied Animal Behaviour Science : Survey of the use and outcome of confrontational and non-confrontational training methods in client-owned dogs showing undesired behaviors: "Dogs presenting for aggression to familiar people were more likely to respond aggressively to the confrontational techniques “alpha roll” and yelling “no” compared to dogs with other presenting complaints (P < 0.001). In conclusion, confrontational methods applied by dog owners before their pets were presented for a behavior consultation were associated with aggressive responses in many cases."
10 Barbecue Restaurants Recommended By Bon Appetit - Travel Getaways News Story - WEWS Cleveland
10 Barbecue Restaurants Recommended By Bon Appetit - Travel Getaways News Story - WEWS Cleveland: "Stacy's Smokehouse BBQ in Phoenix at 1650 E. Indian School Road;"
Denim and Tweed: No room for group selection in disease evolution?
Denim and Tweed: No room for group selection in disease evolution?: "Charles Darwin originally proposed it to explain the evolution of human moral systems: in a tribal society, helping your neighbor might cost you, but it might still help your whole tribe to compete against other tribes. So natural selection on individuals within a tribe may act in one way, but be opposed by group selection arising from competition among tribes."
..
trade-off between transmission and virulence [PDF]. Simply put, if it's easy for a disease-causing critter to spread through a host population, it tends to do more damage to its hosts; and if it is less easy to spread,
...
Kin selection takes into account the effect of natural selection on not just the copies of an individual's genes within that individual's body, but also the copies borne by close relatives; if you're a parasite that reproduces inside your host, making more offspring also means making more competitors for your offspring, and thereby reducing the fitness of the genes that you share with the next generation. So, unless it's easy to disperse to new resources -- uninfected hosts -- natural selection can actually favor prudent reproduction by a parasite, which keeps the host alive longer.
..
trade-off between transmission and virulence [PDF]. Simply put, if it's easy for a disease-causing critter to spread through a host population, it tends to do more damage to its hosts; and if it is less easy to spread,
...
Kin selection takes into account the effect of natural selection on not just the copies of an individual's genes within that individual's body, but also the copies borne by close relatives; if you're a parasite that reproduces inside your host, making more offspring also means making more competitors for your offspring, and thereby reducing the fitness of the genes that you share with the next generation. So, unless it's easy to disperse to new resources -- uninfected hosts -- natural selection can actually favor prudent reproduction by a parasite, which keeps the host alive longer.
Total knee replacements increase mobility and motor skills in older patients | Science Codex
Total knee replacements increase mobility and motor skills in older patients | Science Codex: "he study examined physical functioning and gauged outcomes in a national sample of Americans aged 65 and older for up to four years—a longer period than previous TKA studies. Relative to the untreated comparison group, recipients of total knee replacements experienced significant improvement in function, including a 17.5% increase in mobility, a 39.3% improvement in motor skills; and a 46.9% decrease in limitations in activities of daily living such as bathing and dressing oneself."
Thursday, June 25, 2009
South Carolinians for Science Education
South Carolinians for Science Education:
"David Stanton interviewed Governor Mark Stanford on today’s Newswatch. Among questions on the economy and education, Stanton asked a question about Intelligent Design. The following is a transcript, typed as best as can, from the interview:
Newswatch – WIS – TV – January 29, 2006
Host: David Stanton
Guest: Gov. Mark Sanford
DS: What do you think about the idea of teaching alternatives to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in public schools… for instance Intelligent Design.
MS: I have no problem with it.
DS: Do you think it should be done that way? Rather than just teaching Evolution?
MS: Well I think that it’s just, and science is more and more documenting this, is that there are real “chinks” in the armor of evolution being the only way we came about. The idea of their being a, you know, a little mud hole and two mosquitoes get together and the next thing you know you have a human being… is completely at odds with, you know, one of the laws of thermodynamics which is the law of, of.. in essence, destruction.
Whether you think about you bedroom and how messy it gets over time or you think about the decay in the building itself over time. Things don’t naturally order themselves towards"
--
Ah yes, two mosquitoes in a mudhole. Another dumb creationist gets what his non-rational mind brings him-- Crying in Argentina, with his wife & family waiting for him on Father's Day. Got to love these wacko non-thinking types..
"David Stanton interviewed Governor Mark Stanford on today’s Newswatch. Among questions on the economy and education, Stanton asked a question about Intelligent Design. The following is a transcript, typed as best as can, from the interview:
Newswatch – WIS – TV – January 29, 2006
Host: David Stanton
Guest: Gov. Mark Sanford
DS: What do you think about the idea of teaching alternatives to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in public schools… for instance Intelligent Design.
MS: I have no problem with it.
DS: Do you think it should be done that way? Rather than just teaching Evolution?
MS: Well I think that it’s just, and science is more and more documenting this, is that there are real “chinks” in the armor of evolution being the only way we came about. The idea of their being a, you know, a little mud hole and two mosquitoes get together and the next thing you know you have a human being… is completely at odds with, you know, one of the laws of thermodynamics which is the law of, of.. in essence, destruction.
Whether you think about you bedroom and how messy it gets over time or you think about the decay in the building itself over time. Things don’t naturally order themselves towards"
--
Ah yes, two mosquitoes in a mudhole. Another dumb creationist gets what his non-rational mind brings him-- Crying in Argentina, with his wife & family waiting for him on Father's Day. Got to love these wacko non-thinking types..
Sacks_Hirsch_Editorial.pdf (application/pdf Object)
Sacks_Hirsch_Editorial.pdf (application/pdf Object)
Harris et al. note that reactions of assent are significantly
prompter than those of dissent or uncertainty.
This they take to support “Spinoza’s conjecture that
the mere comprehension of a statement entails the tacit
acceptance of its being true,” an almost reflexive, if
provisional, assent, to be followed by a more deliberate
weighing and assessment. Human beings, in other
words, are wired to “accept appearances as reality until
they prove otherwise.” This seems to us to ring true.
Harris et al. note that reactions of assent are significantly
prompter than those of dissent or uncertainty.
This they take to support “Spinoza’s conjecture that
the mere comprehension of a statement entails the tacit
acceptance of its being true,” an almost reflexive, if
provisional, assent, to be followed by a more deliberate
weighing and assessment. Human beings, in other
words, are wired to “accept appearances as reality until
they prove otherwise.” This seems to us to ring true.
TITLE nr | The Reason Project
TITLE nr | The Reason Project: "If I told you that I believed that the H5N1 virus will never become a pandemic, or that string theory will be fully vindicated in the near future, or that complex life first developed on Mars and was later transferred to earth, and I gave as my reason for holding these beliefs that each “makes me feel better,” I am confident that your response would not be this “seems a pretty good reason to me.” Don’t you see how bizarre it is to accept such shoddy thinking with respect to the existence of a personal God or the divine origin of a specific book? A person cannot (or least should not be able to) believe something because it “makes him feel better.”"
TITLE nr | The Reason Project
TITLE nr | The Reason Project: "Enter embryonic stem-cell research. Suddenly, this “life begins at the moment of conception” business becomes the chief impediment to medical progress. Who would have thought that such an innocuous idea could unnecessarily prolong the agony of tens of millions of people? This is the problem with dogmatism, no matter how seemingly benign: it is unresponsive to reality. Dogmatism is a failure of cognition (as well as a commitment to such failure); it is the state of being closed to new evidence and new arguments. And this frame of mind is rightly despised in every area of culture, on every subject, except where it goes by the name of “religious faith.” In this guise, parading its most grotesque faults as virtues, it is granted a special dispensation, even in the pages of Nature."
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
evolution of morals
http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/podos/Lahti_Biopage/Publications/lahti&weinsteinEHB05.pdf
The better angels of our nature: group stability and the evolution of moral tension, BDavid C. Lahtia,*, Bret S. WeinsteinEvolution and Human Behavior 26 (2005) 47–63
Richard Alexander has shown that two related facts are key elements in an evolutionary
understanding of morality. First, humans bevolved to live in groups, within which they both
cooperate and compete and outside of which they presumably failed consistently.
good overview: http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/200510--.pdf
The better angels of our nature: group stability and the evolution of moral tension, BDavid C. Lahtia,*, Bret S. WeinsteinEvolution and Human Behavior 26 (2005) 47–63
Richard Alexander has shown that two related facts are key elements in an evolutionary
understanding of morality. First, humans bevolved to live in groups, within which they both
cooperate and compete and outside of which they presumably failed consistently.
good overview: http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/200510--.pdf
Edge: MORAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF RELIGION: A Talk With Jonathan Haidt
Edge: MORAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF RELIGION: A Talk With Jonathan Haidt: "In what follows I will take it for granted that religion is a part of the natural world that is appropriately studied by the the methods of science. Whether or not God exists (and as an atheist I personally doubt it), religiosity is an enormously important fact about our species. There must be some combination of evolutionary, developmental, neuropsychological, and anthropological theories that can explain why human religious practices take the various forms that they do, many of which are so similar across cultures and eras. I will also take it for granted that religious fundamentalists, and most of those who argue for the existence of God, illustrate the first three principles of moral psychology (intuitive primacy, post-hoc reasoning guided by utility, and a strong sense of belonging to a group bound together by shared moral commitments)."
Edge: MORAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF RELIGION: A Talk With Jonathan Haidt
Edge: MORAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF RELIGION: A Talk With Jonathan Haidt: "Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, practices, institutions, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.
In my research I have found that there are two common ways that cultures suppress and regulate selfishness, two visions of what society is and how it ought to work. I'll call them the contractual approach and the beehive approach."
In my research I have found that there are two common ways that cultures suppress and regulate selfishness, two visions of what society is and how it ought to work. I'll call them the contractual approach and the beehive approach."
BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: The Trolley dilemma revisited
BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: The Trolley dilemma revisited: "something special happens when intention and personal force co-occur,'"
5 Cost-Efficient, Flexible Open Source Resources for Cloud Computing
5 Cost-Efficient, Flexible Open Source Resources for Cloud Computing: "Eucalyptus uses the Amazon command-line tools directly. RightScale has partnered with Eucalyptus to provide management and service solutions for businesses.
Joyent/Reasonably Smart. As GigaOm and OStatic discussed just this week, Joyent has purchased Reasonably Smart, a fledgling open source cloud startup based on JavaScript and Git. '"
Joyent/Reasonably Smart. As GigaOm and OStatic discussed just this week, Joyent has purchased Reasonably Smart, a fledgling open source cloud startup based on JavaScript and Git. '"
20 Real-Life Challenges in Cloud Computing
20 Real-Life Challenges in Cloud Computing: "Cloud are implemented based on hardware virtualization – make sure your grid middleware can dynamically provision such images on demand, i.e. basically start the image (start paying) when certain conditions are met and stop the image (stop paying) when other conditions in your system are met"
Private Clouds: IT Operations Finally Meet Moore’s Law
Private Clouds: IT Operations Finally Meet Moore’s Law: "Apps and infrastructure could remain as incredibly heterogeneous as they’ve always been in the enterprise. As a result, the cloud OS might be only partly software and largely custom code that systems integrators stitch together for each customer. Alternatively, the storage and networking vendors might resist a cloud OS layer that virtualizes and homogenizes each vendor’s differentiating functionality."
IBM, Cray Stay Atop Top500 Supercomputer List
IBM, Cray Stay Atop Top500 Supercomputer List: "Almost 80 percent of the supercomputers on the list run Intel processors"
Monday, June 22, 2009
DB2 on Campus: DB2 9.7 is now available!
DB2 on Campus: DB2 9.7 is now available!: "DB2 Express-C 9.7 includes a number of improvements and enhancements, too long to provide a complete list here. Other editions of DB2 include even more improvements. You can review the 'What's new overview' section of the DB2 Information Center"
LG Electronics adopts ARM processors in TVs — to help with Web 2.0 features | VentureBeat
LG Electronics adopts ARM processors in TVs — to help with Web 2.0 features VentureBeat
LG Electronics, the world’s second largest maker of televisions, has adopting ARM’s processors in its line-up of future digital TVs, one more sign of momentum for ARM (ARM.L).
ARM’s chip designs have become popular in mobile smart phones, because they use little power, and they’ve largely killed chip giant Intel’s ambitions so far in that market. ARM has more than 500 customers who license its microprocessor designs. So today’s announcement isn’t that surprising.
LG Electronics, the world’s second largest maker of televisions, has adopting ARM’s processors in its line-up of future digital TVs, one more sign of momentum for ARM (ARM.L).
ARM’s chip designs have become popular in mobile smart phones, because they use little power, and they’ve largely killed chip giant Intel’s ambitions so far in that market. ARM has more than 500 customers who license its microprocessor designs. So today’s announcement isn’t that surprising.
Munster: Apple sold 750,000 iPhones last weekend - Apple 2.0
Munster: Apple sold 750,000 iPhones last weekend - Apple 2.0: "750,000 iPhones. Munster estimates that Apple sold about 750,000 iPhones over the three-day weekend, 50% more than his initial prediction (500,000) but 25% less than the 1 million iPhone 3Gs Apple sold on launch last July."
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Fun Meme | Actual Analogies from High School Essays
Fun Meme | Actual Analogies from High School Essays: "It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall."
Travels with Darwin: On Sapolsky, and living in interesting times
Travels with Darwin: On Sapolsky, and living in interesting times: "The punchline is that olive baboons, like humans, exhibit maladaptive hormonal responses to social stress. Basically, these hormonal responses (glucocorticoids) release as part of a stereotypical flight or fight response to stress. This response ramps up your ability to flee if a lion is about to eat you, for example. But, as Sapolsky put it yesterday, if you're stressed because need to run away from a predator, your body sends energy to your thighs. Great. But if you're stressed because you're a baboon who's trying to form fragile alliances....your body sends energy to your thighs. If you're stressed because you're on a blind date....your body sends energy to your thighs. Not quite so helpful in these contexts. What's more, your body does this with hormones that can negatively impact your stress levels long term."
Evidence that long-term potentiation occurs within...[J Neurosci. 2007] - PubMed Result
Evidence that long-term potentiation occurs within...[J Neurosci. 2007] - PubMed Result: "Coimmunostaining for pCofilin and the postsynaptic density protein 95 (PSD-95) showed that synapses on pCofilin-positive spines were substantially larger than those on neighboring (pCofilin-negative) spines. These results establish that uncommon cellular events associated with LTP, including changes in synapse size, occur in individual spines during learning, and provide a technique for mapping potential engrams."
"One swallow does not make a summer" ... Or does i...[Epilepsy Curr. 2008 May-Jun] - PubMed Result
"One swallow does not make a summer" ... Or does i...[Epilepsy Curr. 2008 May-Jun] - PubMed Result: "'One swallow does not make a summer' ... Or does it?"
One Laptop Per Child: Vision vs. Reality | June 2009 | Communications of the ACM
One Laptop Per Child: Vision vs. Reality | June 2009 | Communications of the ACM: "Diffusion of IT innovation does not depend only on the nature of the innovation itself. Often, more important is the social and cultural environment in which it will operate.3,26 Information technologies are not standalone innovations but system innovations, the value of which depends largely on an ecosystem that includes hardware, applications, peripherals, network infrastructure, and services (such as installation, training, repair, and technical support). Deployment involves training teachers, creating software and digital content, delivering maintenance and support, and sustaining a long-term commitment. Such capabilities are in short supply in developing countries,7,26 and OLPC simply never had the resources to provide them."
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Protein Essential In Long Term Memory Consolidation Identified
Protein Essential In Long Term Memory Consolidation Identified: "Using taste learning in mice, the researchers found learning-related induction of the protein PSD-95 in the brain cortex 'taste center' during the process of memory creation. However, when the mice were exposed to known tastes, PSD-95 was not induced in this center of the brain cortex"
First Image Of Memories Being Made
First Image Of Memories Being Made: "the first visual evidence that when a new memory is formed new proteins are made locally at the synapse - the connection between nerve cells - increasing the strength of the synaptic connection and reinforcing the memory"
AnandTech: iPhone 3GS Performance: 54% Faster than the 3G, 11% Faster than the Pre
AnandTech: iPhone 3GS Performance: 54% Faster than the 3G, 11% Faster than the Pre: "The iPhone 3GS uses an ARM Cortex A8 processor running at 600MHz, much like the Palm Pre"
Friday, June 19, 2009
Color and Reality | gmilburn.ca
Color and Reality | gmilburn.ca: "Pink! Finally! Note that pink is not on the curved line representing monochromatic colors. It is purely a construction of your brain – not reflective of the wavelength of any one photon."
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Technology@Intel · Intel's New Brand Structure Explained
Technology@Intel · Intel's New Brand Structure Explained:
"I am an Intel shareholder, a 30-year veteran of IT, and when I read about this at Anand Tech I could NOT believe it. This seems to be the most confusing re-branding ever (for most of the reasons already stated)."
"I am an Intel shareholder, a 30-year veteran of IT, and when I read about this at Anand Tech I could NOT believe it. This seems to be the most confusing re-branding ever (for most of the reasons already stated)."
“…we have a complex structure with too many platform brands, product names, and product brands, and we’ve made things confusing for consumers and IT buyers in the process.”
How is that a ‘marketing’ problem? Isn’t that a strategic and executive management problem, a lack of clear vision, and and an unbelievably poor understanding of your customers?
Opera Unite benchmark - Opera Unite HowTo's
Opera Unite benchmark - Opera Unite HowTo's: "Opera Unite can do up to impressive 800 requests per second on reasonably modern home hardware, even with dynamic content."
» A bunch of presentations on scaling websites: twitter, Flickr, Bloglines, Vox and more.
» A bunch of presentations on scaling websites: twitter, Flickr, Bloglines, Vox and more.: "I always love to read scaling discussions,"
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
The Undesirability of Utilitarian Judgements : Pure Pedantry
The Undesirability of Utilitarian Judgements : Pure Pedantry: "The SciAm blog has a great discussion on current research into the neuroscience of morals. Two cool observations. First, while people tend to agree with the calculus of utilitarian moral judgments, they tend to reject them. Would you kill one person to save twenty? Even if you can morally justify that exchange, you are decidedly reluctant to do it. Second, this reluctance to make utilitarian moral judgments is neurologically based in the sense that if you lose a certain part of your brain (the ventromedial prefrontal cortex) you are more likely to accept this calculus."
Azul Systems - Cliff Click Jr.’s Blog
Azul Systems - Cliff Click Jr.’s Blog: "email conversation between myself, David Moon & Daniel Weinreb. For the younger readers: David Moon is one of the original architects of the Symbolics machines, which 20 years ago more-or-less attempted the same sorts of things Azul is doing now;"
Azul Systems - Cliff Click Jr.’s Blog
Azul Systems - Cliff Click Jr.’s Blog: "Very modest gains for HTM; usually <10% (although 2x for some large apps)"
Multi-Tenant Data Architecture
Multi-Tenant Data Architecture: "Building security into a SaaS application means looking at the application on different levels and thinking about where the risks lie and how to address them. The security patterns discussed in this section rely on three underlying patterns to provide the right kinds of security in the right places:
Filtering: Using an intermediary layer between a tenant and a data source that acts like a sieve, making it appear to the tenant as though its data is the only data in the database.
Permissions: Using access control lists (ACLs) to determine who can access data in the application and what they can do with it.
Encryption: Obscuring every tenant's critical data so that it will remain inaccessible to unauthorized parties even if they come into possession of it"
Filtering: Using an intermediary layer between a tenant and a data source that acts like a sieve, making it appear to the tenant as though its data is the only data in the database.
Permissions: Using access control lists (ACLs) to determine who can access data in the application and what they can do with it.
Encryption: Obscuring every tenant's critical data so that it will remain inaccessible to unauthorized parties even if they come into possession of it"
Mapping Applications to the Cloud
Mapping Applications to the Cloud: "The following pages discuss a few ideas for decomposing an application into its basic attributes, and decomposing the Cloud into its basic attributes, to help make decisions as to whether running your specific application in the Cloud is practical."
Cloud Computing Performance, Scalability and Architecture - Java and .NET Application Performance Management (dynaTrace Blog)
Cloud Computing Performance, Scalability and Architecture - Java and .NET Application Performance Management (dynaTrace Blog): "Monitoring, tracing and profiling for Applications running in Cloud Environments – like GigaSpaces – is no longer a missing feature in this new evolving virtual world. They key to success is that a solution like dynaTrace in an environment like GigaSpaces fulfils the following criteria
Easy Deployment
Easy Configuration
Easy Analysis
With the dynaTrace and GigaSpaces integration all these requirements are met:
Deployment can be done as an additional raw-machine and with an additional setup script step on the application servers
The basic configuration is already provided by dynaTrace and GigaSpaces. All Sensor Packs are in place and ready to use to capture the necessary information
Analysis has been made easy with the dynaTrace Dashboard feature that offers automatic analysis of the captured data providing the ability to drill down into individual problematic transactions"
Easy Deployment
Easy Configuration
Easy Analysis
With the dynaTrace and GigaSpaces integration all these requirements are met:
Deployment can be done as an additional raw-machine and with an additional setup script step on the application servers
The basic configuration is already provided by dynaTrace and GigaSpaces. All Sensor Packs are in place and ready to use to capture the necessary information
Analysis has been made easy with the dynaTrace Dashboard feature that offers automatic analysis of the captured data providing the ability to drill down into individual problematic transactions"
Evaluation Criteria for SaaS/Cloud Platform Vendors « Richard Seroter’s Architecture Musings
Evaluation Criteria for SaaS/Cloud Platform Vendors « Richard Seroter’s Architecture Musings: "My company has been evaluating (and in some cases, selecting) SaaS offerings and one of the projects that I’m currently on has us considering such an option as well. So, I started considering the technology-specific evaluation criteria (e.g. not hosting provider’s financial viability) that I would use to determine our organizational fit to a particular cloud/SaaS/ASP vendor."
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
VMware: VROOM!
VMware: VROOM!: "ESX 4.0 also simplifies customer environments without sacrificing performance. In our previous ESX 3.5 results, we pinned the device interrupts to make efficient use of hardware caches and improve performance. Binding device interrupts to specific processors is a technique common to SPECweb2005 benchmarking tests to maximize performance. Results published in the http://www.spec.or/osg/web2005 website reveal the complex pinning configurations used by the benchmark publishers in the native environment."
Your Own Private Internet - Forbes.com
Your Own Private Internet - Forbes.com: "how to communicate privately over the Internet. The researchers, who previewed their concept to Forbes, say their model works like a private Internet on top of the existing public one: People can share information like files and messages via the Internet medium, but without the kind of public-facing personally identifiable information that Internet protocol addresses provide.
'What we've done is taken the idea of a darknet and moved it into the browser platform,"
'What we've done is taken the idea of a darknet and moved it into the browser platform,"
Opera Unite reinvents the Web
Opera Unite reinvents the Web: "Opera Unite, a new technology that shakes up the old client-server computing model of the Web. Opera Unite turns any computer into both a client and a server, allowing it to interact with and serve content to other computers directly across the Web, without the need for third-party servers."
Monday, June 15, 2009
Linking LTP with Learning and Memory -- 2006 (350): tw297 -- Science Signaling
Linking LTP with Learning and Memory -- 2006 (350): tw297 -- Science Signaling: "This result suggests that LTP was necessary for storing spatial information."
The phenomenon of synaptic long-term potentiation (LTP) was discovered more than 30 years ago in the hippocampus. Although it is commonly thought that hippocampal LTP is induced by learning, there has not been a direct demonstration (see the Perspective by Bliss et al.). Whitlock et al. recorded field potentials from multiple sites in hippocampal area CA1 before and after single-trial inhibitory avoidance learning. Field potentials increased on a subset of the electrodes, and these could be specifically related to the learning event. Pastalkova et al. reversed hippocampal LTP in freely moving animals using a cell-permeable inhibitor of a protein kinase. Reversal was accompanied by a complete disruption of previously acquired long-term memory in a place avoidance task, even when the kinase inhibitor was infused only during the consolidation interval.
The phenomenon of synaptic long-term potentiation (LTP) was discovered more than 30 years ago in the hippocampus. Although it is commonly thought that hippocampal LTP is induced by learning, there has not been a direct demonstration (see the Perspective by Bliss et al.). Whitlock et al. recorded field potentials from multiple sites in hippocampal area CA1 before and after single-trial inhibitory avoidance learning. Field potentials increased on a subset of the electrodes, and these could be specifically related to the learning event. Pastalkova et al. reversed hippocampal LTP in freely moving animals using a cell-permeable inhibitor of a protein kinase. Reversal was accompanied by a complete disruption of previously acquired long-term memory in a place avoidance task, even when the kinase inhibitor was infused only during the consolidation interval.
What Intel Can Teach Google About the Cloud
What Intel Can Teach Google About the Cloud: "The future of cloud networking, and the only way to enable the full value of cloud compute cycles, is in WAN optimization. It’s a strategy that has worked well for Intel and AMD — and it ought to work for Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace Mosso, and even Google."
IBM Rolls out New Enterprise Cloud Services Push by PC World: Yahoo! Tech
IBM Rolls out New Enterprise Cloud Services Push by PC World: Yahoo! Tech: "IBM on Monday rolled out a new cloud-computing strategy aimed at large enterprises, formed around the notion of tying cloud services to specific IT tasks.
Two initial services announced Monday focus on application development and testing and virtual desktop management.
Customers will be offered three varieties of development-related cloud services. One is the IBM Smart Business Test Cloud, which is a behind-the-firewall cloud built by IBM on a client's infrastructure.
IBM is also previewing Smart Business Development & Test, which employs its Rational application development software and will run on IBM's public cloud."
Two initial services announced Monday focus on application development and testing and virtual desktop management.
Customers will be offered three varieties of development-related cloud services. One is the IBM Smart Business Test Cloud, which is a behind-the-firewall cloud built by IBM on a client's infrastructure.
IBM is also previewing Smart Business Development & Test, which employs its Rational application development software and will run on IBM's public cloud."
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Epicureanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Epicureanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Epicurus believed that the greatest good was to seek modest pleasures in order to attain a state of tranquility and freedom from fear (ataraxia) as well as absence of bodily pain (aponia) through knowledge of the workings of the world and the limits of our desires"
Sleep quality, quantity linked to body weight
Sleep quality, quantity linked to body weight: "the researchers found that those who slept for between 7 and 8.9 hours daily had a lower BMI than did those who slept longer or fewer hours."
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Eric Margolis
Eric Margolis: "The Soviets destroyed 75-80% of all German divisions – 4 million soldiers - and most of the Luftwaffe. Russia lost at least 14 million soldiers and a similar number of civilians. The Red Army destroyed 507 Axis divisions. On the Western Front after D-Day, the Allies destroyed 176 badly under-strength German divisions."
Friday, June 12, 2009
Developer / Blog
Developer / Blog: "When you want to split up your data two questions spring to mind: which property of the data (which column of the table) will I use to make the decisions on where the data should go? And what will the algorithm be? Let's call the first one the 'sharding/partitioning key', and the second one the 'sharding/partitioning scheme'.
Which sharding key will be used is basically a decision that depends on the nature of your application, or the way you'll want to access your data. In the blog example, if you display overviews of blog messages per author, it's a good idea to shard on the author's $userID. Say your site's navigation is through archives per month or per category, it might be smarter to shard on publication date or $categoryID. (If your application requires both approaches it might even be a good idea to set up a dual system with sharding on both keys.)
What you can do with the 'shard key' to find its corresponding shard basically falls into 4 categories:
Vertical Partitioning: Splitting up your data on feature/table level can be seen as a kind of sharding, where the 'shard key' is eg. the table name. As mentioned earlier this way of sharding is pretty straightforward to implement and has a relatively low impact on the application on the whole.
Range-based Partitioning: In range based partitioning you split up your data according to several ranges. Blog posts from before the 2000 and before go to database 1, blog posts from the new millenium go to the other database. This approach is typical for logging or other time based data. Other examples of range based partitioning could include federating users according to the first number of their postal code.
Key or Hash based Partitioning: The modulo-function used in the photos example is a way of partitioning your data base"
Which sharding key will be used is basically a decision that depends on the nature of your application, or the way you'll want to access your data. In the blog example, if you display overviews of blog messages per author, it's a good idea to shard on the author's $userID. Say your site's navigation is through archives per month or per category, it might be smarter to shard on publication date or $categoryID. (If your application requires both approaches it might even be a good idea to set up a dual system with sharding on both keys.)
What you can do with the 'shard key' to find its corresponding shard basically falls into 4 categories:
Vertical Partitioning: Splitting up your data on feature/table level can be seen as a kind of sharding, where the 'shard key' is eg. the table name. As mentioned earlier this way of sharding is pretty straightforward to implement and has a relatively low impact on the application on the whole.
Range-based Partitioning: In range based partitioning you split up your data according to several ranges. Blog posts from before the 2000 and before go to database 1, blog posts from the new millenium go to the other database. This approach is typical for logging or other time based data. Other examples of range based partitioning could include federating users according to the first number of their postal code.
Key or Hash based Partitioning: The modulo-function used in the photos example is a way of partitioning your data base"
Facebook's photo storage rewrite
Facebook's photo storage rewrite: "Facebook has invested in its own large blob storage solution to replace expensive proprietary offerings from NetApp and others. The new server structure should reduce Facebook's total cost per photo for both storage and delivery moving forward."
Orca - Case Study: Installing Orca at Williams College
Orca - Case Study: Installing Orca at Williams College: "This document describes the process of installing Orca"
Scientists Create a Form of Pre-Life | Wired Science | Wired.com
Scientists Create a Form of Pre-Life Wired Science Wired.com: "A self-assembling molecule synthesized in a laboratory may resemble the earliest form of information-carrying biological material, a transitional stage between lifeless chemicals and the complex genetic architectures of life.
Called tPNA, short for thioester peptide nucleic acids, the molecules spontaneously mimic the shape of DNA and RNA when mixed together. Left on their own, they gather in shape-shifting strands that morph into stable configurations"
Called tPNA, short for thioester peptide nucleic acids, the molecules spontaneously mimic the shape of DNA and RNA when mixed together. Left on their own, they gather in shape-shifting strands that morph into stable configurations"
The Spring series, Part 1: Introduction to the Spring framework
The Spring series, Part 1: Introduction to the Spring framework: "Spring is an open source framework created to address the complexity of enterprise application development. One of the chief advantages of the Spring framework is its layered architecture, which allows you to be selective about which of its components you use while also providing a cohesive framework for J2EE application development."
Space Based Architecture (SBA) vs Tier Based Implementation | GigaSpaces
Space Based Architecture (SBA) vs Tier Based Implementation GigaSpaces: "were able to reduce this overhead by collocating the tiers and by breaking the entire application into partitions each dealing with certain segment of the data. We also used common In-Memory clustering for the messaging, data and business logic which enabled us to reduce the amount of moving parts and avoid the need for 2pc transactions without losing consistency."
Cal Henderson (Flickr) - Scalable Web Architectures: Common Patterns and Approaches | Kris Jordan
Cal Henderson (Flickr) - Scalable Web Architectures: Common Patterns and Approaches Kris Jordan: "What is scalability? Not raw speed / performance, high-availability, technology x, technology y.
Scalability is: Traffic Growth, Dataset Growth, Maintainability"
Scalability is: Traffic Growth, Dataset Growth, Maintainability"
Orca - Index
Orca - Index: "Orca is a resource control plane organized around resource leasing as a foundational abstraction. The architecture of Orca does not impose any particular structure on the shared resources, which means that it is possible to instantiate any experimental configuration for purposes of testing and deployment."
Performance: Scaling Strategies for ASP.NET Applications
Performance: Scaling Strategies for ASP.NET Applications: "The fact is, performance problems can creep into your app as it scales up, and when they do, you need to determine what the actual problem is and find the best strategies to address it. The biggest challenge you'll face is creating a set of measurements that cover the performance of your application from end to end. Unless you're looking at the whole problem, you won't know where to focus your energy."
2009 May « RightScale Blog
2009 May « RightScale Blog: "Finally the auto-scaling service is something that has been lacking in many users’ mind from EC2: we’ve often heard from people looking at EC2 the first time “you mean Amazon doesn’t automatically launch more instances when my app is overloaded?” Amazon now has an answer for those questions, which was badly needed. However, unless we’re missing something, there’s nothing additional to our current offering, but we’ll keep listening to what our customers tell us. We believe that the most difficult part of auto-scaling isn’t the actual launching of servers but that it’s lining up all the configuration management and lifecycle management so the new servers go into production successfully, and that dynamic runtime self-configuration is where RightScale really shines."
Cloud computing standards: Deploying and scaling services without lock-in
Cloud computing standards: Deploying and scaling services without lock-in: "Even for non-service designs, deploying and scaling applications beyond their initial stage is a process which often entails a mix of both hardware and software technology, requiring everything from virtualized operating systems and clustered middleware products to load balancers and custom application modifications, all to accommodate increasing demand"
scaling services automatically
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/Giant.pdf
http://www.mvdirona.com/jrh/talksAndPapers/JamesRH_Lisa.pdf
scaling services automatically
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/Giant.pdf
http://www.mvdirona.com/jrh/talksAndPapers/JamesRH_Lisa.pdf
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Freethought Today, April 2003
Freethought Today, April 2003: "The purpose of science in understanding who we are as humans is not to rob us of our sense of mystery, not to cure us of our sense of mystery. The purpose of science is to constantly reinvent and reinvigorate that mystery. To always use it in a context where we are helping people in trying to resist the forces of ideology that we are all familiar with."
Alternatives to Google App Engine « Josh Heitzman’s Blog O’ Code
Alternatives to Google App Engine « Josh Heitzman’s Blog O’ Code: "Google’s App Engine platform I started looking around for alternative platforms. While there are numerous providers that claim to provide a cloud very few of them actually have a distributed datastore and a hosting environment that automatically expands and contracts (i.e. scale) the resources allocated to the running of your app, so the service they provide is either utility computing somewhere in between utility computing and cloud computing."
I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Atomic Warfare - Cringely on technology
I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Atomic Warfare - Cringely on technology: "Intel and Linux is like Microsoft and Search, and we all know how well Microsoft has done in Search for the past 10 years."
I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Atomic Warfare - Cringely on technology
I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Atomic Warfare - Cringely on technology: "Intel CEO Paul Otellini is determined not to be anybody’s bitch."
Books of The Times - ‘Catching Fire’ by Richard Wrangham - Humans, the Cooking Apes - Review - NYTimes.com
Books of The Times - ‘Catching Fire’ by Richard Wrangham - Humans, the Cooking Apes - Review - NYTimes.com: "“Cooked food does many familiar things,” he observes. “It makes our food safer, creates rich and delicious tastes and reduces spoilage. Heating can allow us to open, cut or mash tough foods. But none of these advantages is as important as a little-appreciated aspect: cooking increases the amount of energy our bodies obtain from food.”"
What really prompts the dog's 'guilty look' | Eureka! Science News
What really prompts the dog's 'guilty look' Eureka! Science News: "Dogs looked most 'guilty' if they were admonished by their owners for eating the treat. In fact, dogs that had been obedient and had not eaten the treat, but were scolded by their (misinformed) owners, looked more 'guilty' than those that had, in fact, eaten the treat. Thus the dog's guilty look is a response to the owner's behavior, and not necessarily indicative of any appreciation of its own misdeeds."
Presentation Zen
Presentation Zen: "Who says you can't speak well to 200 PowerPoint/Keynote slides?"
Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit
Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit: "suggested as tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious"
Magazine Preview - The Architecture Issue - Data Center Overload - NYTimes.com
Magazine Preview - The Architecture Issue - Data Center Overload - NYTimes.com: "referred to by an appropriately atmospheric — and vaporous — metaphor: the cloud."
Cryptographic Right Answers
Cryptographic Right Answers: "I've put together a list of 'Cryptographically Right Answers' -- which is to say, a list of recommendations for using cryptography which, if followed, will make sure you get things right in the vast majority of situations."
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Infrastructure Matters: Challenges of Cloud-based Testing
Infrastructure Matters: Challenges of Cloud-based Testing: "Using cloud-hosted agents for application testing necessitates that traffic is arriving from outside the organization. In addition to application network and network infrastructure potential pitfalls, awareness of what security policies are in place that may be triggered by repeated requests sent from the same “client’ is a necessity."
Monday, June 08, 2009
The day pain died: What really happened during the most famous moment in Boston medicine - The Boston Globe
The day pain died: What really happened during the most famous moment in Boston medicine - The Boston Globe: "Before 1846, the vast majority of religious and medical opinion held that pain was inseparable from sensation in general, and thus from life itself."
Thursday, June 04, 2009
LooseBolts
LooseBolts: "Essentially for purposes of distribution, a network switch is placed at the top of the rack to handle server connectivity to the network. Does our proprietary power capping software catch the power draw of that switch? Any network gear for that matter? Doubtful. So while I may have super cool power capping on my servers I am still screwed at the rack layer –where data center managers manage from as one of their base units."
The efficacy of duct tape vs cryotherapy in the tr...[Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2002] - PubMed Result
The efficacy of duct tape vs cryotherapy in the tr...[Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2002] - PubMed Result: "The efficacy of duct tape vs cryotherapy in the treatment of verruca vulgaris (the common wart)."
AK's Rambling Thoughts: FoxP2: Evolving Human Intelligence
AK's Rambling Thoughts: FoxP2: Evolving Human Intelligence: "The FoxP2 protein is an enzyme that, at least, participates in the complex dance that is gene activation. Defective mutant alleles of this gene in humans cause cause a 'severe disorder, involving profound deficits in the control of complex coordinated face and mouth movements, resulting in disrupted speech ([ref's]).'11 The combination of this with the fact that humans have a recent improvement in this gene8 is what makes it so interesting."
Microsoft: Win 7 Date Set
Microsoft: Win 7 Date Set: "Microsoft has set an October 22 release date for the world’s most popular computer operating system"
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
PLoS ONE: The Emergence of Predators in Early Life: There was No Garden of Eden
PLoS ONE: The Emergence of Predators in Early Life: There was No Garden of Eden: "de Nooijer S, Holland BR, Penny D (2009) The Emergence of Predators in Early Life: There was No Garden of Eden. PLoS ONE 4(6): e5507. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005507"
Delay's Blog : Maintaining balance [A versatile red-black tree implementation for .NET (via Silverlight/WPF Charting)]
Delay's Blog : Maintaining balance [A versatile red-black tree implementation for .NET (via Silverlight/WPF Charting)]: "Which is why I was so excited to read about Robert Sedgewick's research paper on 'left-leaning red-black trees'. (If you want something a little more colorful than a research paper, here's a presentation on the same topic.) Basically, Dr. Sedgewick took advantage of a correspondence between red-black trees and 2-3-4 trees to introduce a constraint (that red nodes must be 'left-leaning') which significantly simplifies the overall implementation. This new algorithm sounded perfect for our purposes, and I spent a few bus rides developing a C# implementation of left-leaning red-black trees based on the published research."
Theorem: With red-black BSTs as the underlying data structure, we
can implement an ordered symbol-table API that supports insert,
delete, delete the minimum, delete the maximum, find the minimum,
find the maximum, rank, select the kth largest, and range count in
guaranteed logarithmic time.
Theorem: With red-black BSTs as the underlying data structure, we
can implement an ordered symbol-table API that supports insert,
delete, delete the minimum, delete the maximum, find the minimum,
find the maximum, rank, select the kth largest, and range count in
guaranteed logarithmic time.
How the Brain Takes Shortcuts, and Why « dlPFC
How the Brain Takes Shortcuts, and Why « dlPFC: "One of the more interesting and counterintuitive findings in this paper is the association of the executive dlPFC-parietal system with a heuristic strategy. In many other cases, this circuit is thought to be responsible for algorithmic processing of potential outcomes. This result underscores an important lesson, however: we are not homo economicus. It is adaptive to simplify problems. It saves both metabolic and computational resources and, as Barry Schwartz has shown, it can make us happier."
lamp performance on the elastic compute cloud: benchmarking drupal on amazon ec2 | johnandcailin
lamp performance on the elastic compute cloud: benchmarking drupal on amazon ec2 johnandcailin: "in this article we get a sense of lamp performance on ec2 by running a series of benchmarks on the drupal cms system. these benchmarks establish read throughput numbers for logged-in and logged-out users, for each of amazon's hardware classes."
Amazon Web Services Developer Community : Building GrepTheWeb in the Cloud, Part 1: Cloud Architectures
Amazon Web Services Developer Community : Building GrepTheWeb in the Cloud, Part 1: Cloud Architectures: "Applications built on Cloud Architectures run in-the-cloud where the physical location of the infrastructure is determined by the provider. They take advantage of simple APIs of Internet-accessible services that scale on-demand, that are industrial-strength, where the complex reliability and scalability logic of the underlying services remains implemented and hidden inside-the-cloud. The usage of resources in Cloud Architectures is as needed, sometimes ephemeral or seasonal, thereby providing the highest utilization and optimum bang for the buck."
/dev/websphere: Elastic scaling with WebSphere eXtreme Scale, a killer feature for Cloud and virtualized environments.
/dev/websphere: Elastic scaling with WebSphere eXtreme Scale, a killer feature for Cloud and virtualized environments.: "Hosting applications on platforms such as Amazon EC2, its competitors or on private clouds almost requires elastic scaling. Elastic scaling means that adding or subtracting virtual machines to/from the application farm is handled by the application in a transparent way.
The easiest scenario here is a completely stateless application. Here, adding or removing a machine and then incorporating it to the router will achieve that effect but such applications are rare as a database is usually involved.
Databases are typically not elastic"
The easiest scenario here is a completely stateless application. Here, adding or removing a machine and then incorporating it to the router will achieve that effect but such applications are rare as a database is usually involved.
Databases are typically not elastic"
Amazon Web Services Developer Community : Migrating to Amazon CloudFront
Amazon Web Services Developer Community : Migrating to Amazon CloudFront: "What is Amazon CloudFront and why do I need it?
Amazon CloudFront works by distributing your web content (i.e. images, video, etc) using a network of edge locations around the world. Your content is then served from the edge location that is geographically closest to the user who requests it."
Amazon CloudFront works by distributing your web content (i.e. images, video, etc) using a network of edge locations around the world. Your content is then served from the edge location that is geographically closest to the user who requests it."
Using and Managing AWS - Part 3: AWS Security | Cloud Computing Info
Using and Managing AWS - Part 3: AWS Security Cloud Computing Info: "Only present web servers to the internet. You have the option of not having a public IP address on every instance. If you have amulti-tier application, you can choose to have a public IP address on your web server and have just an internal IP address on your database server. To access the database server, you would have to log into the web server and then ssh from there to the databaseserver.
Another option is to encrypt all of your stored data (or at least the sensitive portions of it). Amazon offers Linux, Windows and Sunvirtual machines and all of these operating systems offer very robust (at least via third party tools) encryption. A very good, freeoption on windows servers is TrueCrypt"
Another option is to encrypt all of your stored data (or at least the sensitive portions of it). Amazon offers Linux, Windows and Sunvirtual machines and all of these operating systems offer very robust (at least via third party tools) encryption. A very good, freeoption on windows servers is TrueCrypt"
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
The Religion Virus: Doctor George Tiller Murdered in God's Name
The Religion Virus: Doctor George Tiller Murdered in God's Name: "Well, it finally happened. Dr. George Tiller, a physician who provided legal abortion services, was murdered in the name of Jesus and God. He was shot while attending church services on Sunday morning. This tragedy is only mitigated the tiniest amount by the fact that all of the mainstream anti-abortion groups denounced the murder. This is just the final chapter in a long string of harassment, threats, vandalism and and even another shooting – in 1993, Dr. Tiller was shot in both arms. Dr. Tiller must have known that sooner or later the threats would turn to action, yet he carried on."
Monday, June 01, 2009
Findings - In That Tucked Tail, Real Pangs of Regret? - NYTimes.com
Findings - In That Tucked Tail, Real Pangs of Regret? - NYTimes.com: "“This is the first evidence that monkeys, like people, have ‘would-have, could-have, should-have’ thoughts,” said Ben Hayden, one of the researchers. Another of the authors, Michael Platt, noted that the monkeys reacted to their losses by shifting their subsequent guesses, just like humans who respond to a missed opportunity by shifting strategy.
“I can well imagine that regret would be highly advantageous evolutionarily, so long as one doesn’t obsess over it, as in depression,” Dr. Platt said. “A monkey lacking in regret might act like a psychopath or a simian Don Quixote.”"
“I can well imagine that regret would be highly advantageous evolutionarily, so long as one doesn’t obsess over it, as in depression,” Dr. Platt said. “A monkey lacking in regret might act like a psychopath or a simian Don Quixote.”"
Models’ Projections for Flu Miss Mark by Wide Margin - NYTimes.com
Models’ Projections for Flu Miss Mark by Wide Margin - NYTimes.com: "On May 15, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that there were “upwards of 100,000” cases in the country, even though only 7,415 had been confirmed at that point."
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blank: "The Evolution of Immunology:
This was a major target of Intelligent Design supporter Michael Behe in his Darwin's Black Box. He claimed there (and when he was cross-examined in the Dover ID trial) that the scientific literature has 'no answers' as to how the adaptive immune system may have originated. He did this even when confronted with a pile of some '58 peer reviewed publications, 9 books and several immunology textbook chapters about the evolution of the immune system; he simply insisted that this was still not sufficient evidence of evolution, and that it was not 'good enough.'' (Judge Jones, 2005). Behe admitted that he had not read many of the publications presented (a small fraction of all the literature on evolutionary immunology of the past 35 years), but summarily rejected them as unsatisfactory and dismissed the idea of doing research on the topic as 'unfruitful.'"
This was a major target of Intelligent Design supporter Michael Behe in his Darwin's Black Box. He claimed there (and when he was cross-examined in the Dover ID trial) that the scientific literature has 'no answers' as to how the adaptive immune system may have originated. He did this even when confronted with a pile of some '58 peer reviewed publications, 9 books and several immunology textbook chapters about the evolution of the immune system; he simply insisted that this was still not sufficient evidence of evolution, and that it was not 'good enough.'' (Judge Jones, 2005). Behe admitted that he had not read many of the publications presented (a small fraction of all the literature on evolutionary immunology of the past 35 years), but summarily rejected them as unsatisfactory and dismissed the idea of doing research on the topic as 'unfruitful.'"
The origin of recent introns: transposons?
The origin of recent introns: transposons?: "Previous large-scale studies have failed to find a single convincing case of intron gain since the divergence of humans and mice [3] or a single case of convincing sequence homology between introns in the same genome for a range of taxa [4], and although some other cases of recent intron insertion have been discovered, the sources of these introns remain unknown. Yet, all characterized metazoan species and most other eukaryotes harbor multiple introns per gene, requiring hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of individual intron gains to have occurred throughout eukaryotic evolution"
Dembski's Latest: "Life's Conservation Law", and why it's stupid : Good Math, Bad Math
Dembski's Latest: "Life's Conservation Law", and why it's stupid : Good Math, Bad Math: "William Dembski, the supposed 'Isaac Newton of Information Theory' has a new paper out with co-author Robert Marks. Since I've written about Dembski's bad IT numerous times in the past, I've been getting email from readers wanting me to comment on this latest piece of intellectual excreta.
I can sum up my initial reaction to the paper in three words: 'same old rubbish'. There's really nothing new here - this is just another rehash of the same bankrupt arguments that Dembski has been peddling for years. But after thinking about it for a while, I realized that Dembski has actually accomplished something with this paper: in his attempt to argue that evolution can't possibly outperform random-walks without cheating, he's actually explained exactly how evolution works. He attempts to characterize that as cheating, but it doesn't work"
I can sum up my initial reaction to the paper in three words: 'same old rubbish'. There's really nothing new here - this is just another rehash of the same bankrupt arguments that Dembski has been peddling for years. But after thinking about it for a while, I realized that Dembski has actually accomplished something with this paper: in his attempt to argue that evolution can't possibly outperform random-walks without cheating, he's actually explained exactly how evolution works. He attempts to characterize that as cheating, but it doesn't work"
Dogs Are Aggressive If They Are Trained Badly
Dogs Are Aggressive If They Are Trained Badly: "some of the factors that cause aggressiveness in dogs are: first-time dog ownership; failure to subject the dog to basic obedience training; spoiling or pampering the dog; not using physical punishment when it is required; buying a dog as a present, as a guard dog or on impulse; spaying female dogs; leaving the dog with a constant supply of food, or spending very little time with the dog in general and on its walks.
'Failure to observe all of these modifiable factors will encourage this type of aggressiveness and would conform to what we would colloquially call 'giving our dog a bad education'', Pérez-Guisado explains to SINC.
The study, which has recently been published in the Journal of Animal and Veterinary Advances, is based on the following fact: approximately 40% of dominance aggression in dogs is associated with a lack of authority on the part of the owners who have never performed basic obedience training with their pets or who have only carried out the bare minimum of training"
'Failure to observe all of these modifiable factors will encourage this type of aggressiveness and would conform to what we would colloquially call 'giving our dog a bad education'', Pérez-Guisado explains to SINC.
The study, which has recently been published in the Journal of Animal and Veterinary Advances, is based on the following fact: approximately 40% of dominance aggression in dogs is associated with a lack of authority on the part of the owners who have never performed basic obedience training with their pets or who have only carried out the bare minimum of training"
The BRAD BLOG : EMERGENCY INJUNCTION FILED OVER QUESTIONABLE USE, PLACEMENT OF DIEBOLD TABULATORS, UNCERTIFIED SOFTWARE ON COMPUTERS IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY COUNTING ROOM
The BRAD BLOG : EMERGENCY INJUNCTION FILED OVER QUESTIONABLE USE, PLACEMENT OF DIEBOLD TABULATORS, UNCERTIFIED SOFTWARE ON COMPUTERS IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY COUNTING ROOM
am qualified to be a Green Party technical representative because I earned my Ph.D. in Physiological Psychology from the University of Washington in 1980. I did post-doctoral work in Peptide Neurobiology at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California 1980-1982. I have used computers for more than forty years, learning to program in the IBM Macro Assembly language in 1962. I also used computers throughout my education culminating in my Ph.D. in 1980, and continuing on through my postgraduate work at the Salk Institute, and at the U.S.C. Dept of Pharmacy at the U.S.C. Medical Center. Professionally, I worked in the defense industry for more than thirteen years working in Artificial Intelligence, Systems Engineering, and Information Technology evaluations for Northrop Grumman Corporation. I retired from Northrop Grumman Corporations as Senior Software
John Wenger, Ph.D.Green Party
am qualified to be a Green Party technical representative because I earned my Ph.D. in Physiological Psychology from the University of Washington in 1980. I did post-doctoral work in Peptide Neurobiology at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California 1980-1982. I have used computers for more than forty years, learning to program in the IBM Macro Assembly language in 1962. I also used computers throughout my education culminating in my Ph.D. in 1980, and continuing on through my postgraduate work at the Salk Institute, and at the U.S.C. Dept of Pharmacy at the U.S.C. Medical Center. Professionally, I worked in the defense industry for more than thirteen years working in Artificial Intelligence, Systems Engineering, and Information Technology evaluations for Northrop Grumman Corporation. I retired from Northrop Grumman Corporations as Senior Software
John Wenger, Ph.D.Green Party
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