August 2010
“I have provided him with a wife trained by me to perform, quite naturally,...”
– Vicomte de Valmont, via.
Allright, where’s les liasions in my bookshelf, again ?
Infinite doppelgängers may explain quantum... →
Probability is treated differently in the two main interpretations of quantum mechanics. In the traditional view, observing a quantum system yields just one outcome. This view, called the Copenhagen interpretation, is a bit baffling. An initial superposition of states in a given system collapses into just one state upon being measured. Exactly why this change happens, or how the system...
Satoshi Kon's last words | Makiko Itoh →
His letter to his friends and loved ones, translated.
Millennium Challenge →
bestofwikipedia:
Was a major wargame exercise conducted by the United States armed forces in mid-2002, likely the largest such exercise in history. The exercise, which ran from July 24 to August 15 and cost $250 million, involved both live exercises and computer simulations. MC02 was meant to be a test of future military “transformation”—a transition toward new technologies that enable ...
Permanent traffic jam -kottke →
A traffic jam in China’s Heibei Province has been going on for nine days now and may last a month.
“We have had hell and high water, pain and salvation. We survived Katrina, Rita,...”
– Mitch Landrieu, mayor of New Orleans via.
“Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera, once said that his method of design...”
– Fred Brooks, on Apple.
seophoria
wordporn:
dictionaryofobscuresorrows:
n. the satisfaction of lists, a series of bullet points being fired into the air as if to celebrate victory against the complexity of a universe that bombards us with five exabytes of data that would paralyze us if we didn’t connect random dots into constellations of dippers, hunters, and sexy ways to please your man.
Open-source cell phone network | Engineering for... →
A small team of telecom industry veterans has solved both of those problems. The team developed OpenBTS, an open-source, software-based cellphone network. Not only does it cost one-tenth as much as traditional networks, but carriers could charge callers about $2 per month and still make a profit.
“I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They...”
– Eric Schmidt, Google CEO. what a douchenozzle.
The Brainy Gamer: Portal to appear on Wabash... →
This year, for the first time, a video game will appear on the syllabus of a course required for all students at Wabash College
Alongside Gilgamesh, Aristotle’s Politics, John Donne’s poetry, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and the Tao Te Ching, freshmen at Wabash will also encounter a video game called Portal.
Good choice.
Wasps punish fake fighters - New Scientist →
When female paper wasps fight it out for nest dominance, they can judge each other’s fighting ability through facial patterns: those with more fragmented patterns are tougher.
It is a situation that seems ripe for cheating. Any mutation giving a weaker wasp a tougher-looking face should spread through the population like wildfire – and yet they don’t.
Why do we yawn, and why is yawning contagious even... →
Even your dog will yawn if it sees you yawning.
All dog owners will agree.
Mountains of Men: The Mythology of the Male Body... →
People like to talk about the changing dimensions of Lara Croft’s chest over the course of years, but have you noticed the upper arm development of Ryu over just four Street Fighter games?
“We’re going nowhere, we’re going to launch nothing, we’re going to do nothing....”
– Story Musgrave, former astronaut.
The Meaning of Novelty: Convention, Form, Genre... →
Tee hee hee hee.
Allow me to describe a conception of art based around the twin poles of convention and novelty (which I will resist calling Convention and Novelty, because I am not French). A convention is simply a norm or collection of norms, and all art exists within certain conventions. In the visual arts, applying paint with a brush is a convention of method, and a landscape is a...
