Blog – page 41 of 75

Free markets tend towards the complex

via JasonTheodor.com

Gather up the good brains

This might be slightly less funny if it were slightly less true.

(via DOGHOUSE)

Rules are no substitute for judgement

The Changing face of plastic surgery infographic on Flowingdata.com shows changes in popularity of various procedures.

Everything was made. Each invention shows that the world is malleable, from the simplest stone tool to the screen you’re using to read this. We make what we want, break things in the process, collect what we like, and connect what we discover to get us closer to where we want to be.

—

Frank Chimero

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation is a project by Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, where he imagines the Gettysburg Address’ PowerPoint slides.

_[

](http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/sld001.htm)_

I finished reading Victory by Joseph Conrad a few weeks ago. Here’s a few passages (presented without comment or context) that jumped out at me:

Thinking is the great enemy of perfection. The habit of profound reflection, I am compelled to say, is the most pernicious of all the habits formed by the civilized man.

I prayed like a child, of course. I believe in children praying–well, women, too, but I rather think God expects men to be more self-reliant. I don’t hold with a man everlastingly bothering the Almighty with his silly troubles. It seems such cheek.

Google+ is in trouble. You can have all the “registered users” you want, but if no one is using your service, it’s going to tank. (via The Mounting Minuses at Google - WSJ.com)

Commercial sites should just buy the blogs that help them. There are brands selling things that bloggers love talking about and bloggers who would love to make a living without Adsense. So why don’t they just get together?[

](http://www.seomoz.org/blog/buying-links-is-shallow-buying-blogs-now-thats-a-strategy)

The phases of life are depressing.

(via EscaWorks - Phases Of Life)

BoraBora Sunshine Tablets: A sunny day in pill form.

(via Vaulot&Dyèvre)

Templates for modern movie posters via Dr. Monster

This is from an old but interesting story from Wired.com about the New Diamond Age.

Put pure carbon under enough heat and pressure - say, 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit and 50,000 atmospheres - and it will crystallize into the hardest material known. Those were the conditions that first forged diamonds deep in Earth’s mantle 3.3 billion years ago. Replicating that environment in a lab isn’t easy, but that hasn’t kept dreamers from trying.

World Press Photo of the Year - 2011.

Check out all the 2011 winners from Worldpressphoto.org or view them at The Big Picture.

Reginald Braithwaite shares my sentiment about a tragedy in technology.

What makes me sad is that the pinnacle of our computing power, the massive behavioural engine that is Google Adwords/Adsense, has decided that when someone is reading about dinosaurs, the most profitable thing to do is show them ads for games. Not books about dinosaurs, or even dinosaur games, but games.

We take a generation of incredibly smart people who have been rigorously trained to deliver amazing code, running on a massive computing engine, and when confronted with a human being trying to learn something, they try to distract him with games. Can you imagine Google in charge of textbooks? In my children’s time, textbooks will be immersive experiences, complete with Google’s avatars whispering “Psst! Math is hard, let’s play games instead of studying.” Can you imagine Google making eyeglasses? They would obscure anything educational with virtual billboards for dating sites.

That would be messy. Check out more Brilliantly Sarcastic Responses To Completely Well-Meaning Signs on Happy Place

Solve for X: Neal Stephenson on getting big stuff done (by wesolveforx).

I’m not a sy-fi geek, but this video has something for everyone. It has a few things to agree with and a few things to disagree with.

There’s more of these incredible sculptures on Takanori Aiba’s Flickr Photostream.