From Stephen E. Arnold’s The Google Legacy: How Google’s Internet Search is Transforming Application Software (Infonortics: September 2005):
The figure Google’s Fusion: Hardware and Software Engineering shows that Google’s technology framework has two areas of activity. There is the software engineering effort that focuses on PageRank and other applications. Software engineering, as used here, [...]
Posted on November 28th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, Webster U: infosec management, business, history, science, security, technology | No Comments »
From Richard Stallman’s “Transcript of Richard Stallman at the 4th international GPLv3 conference; 23rd August 2006” (FSF Europe: 23 August 2006):
Specifically, this refers to four essential freedoms, which are the definition of Free Software.
Freedom zero is the freedom to run the program, as you wish, for any purpose.
Freedom one is the freedom to study the [...]
Posted on November 28th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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From Paul J. Zak’s “How to Run a Con” (Psychology Today: 13 November 2008):
When I was in high school, I took a job at an ARCO gas station on the outskirts of Santa Barbara, California. At the time, I drove a 1967 Mustang hotrod and thought I might pick up some tips and cheap parts [...]
Posted on November 27th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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From Carl Zimmer’s “The Return of the Puppet Masters” (Corante: 17 January 2006):
I was investigating the remarkable ability parasites have to manipulate the behavior of their hosts. The lancet fluke Dicrocoelium dendriticum, for example, forces its ant host to clamp itself to the tip of grass blades, where a grazing mammal might eat it. It’s [...]
Posted on November 24th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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From Eric’s “Canon’s Iris Registration Mode - Biological Copyright Metadata” (Photography Bay: 9 February 2008):
A recent Canon patent application (Pub. No.: US 2008/0025574 A1) reveals the next step in digital watermarking - Iris Registration.
The short and sweet of it?
1. Turn the Mode dial to “REG”
2. Choose between “REG 1″ [...]
Posted on November 22nd, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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From James Turner’s interview with Dr. Barbara Simons, past President of the Association for Computing Machinery & recent appointee to the Advisory Board of the Federal Election Assistance Commission, at “A 2008 e-Voting Wrapup with Dr. Barbara Simons” (O’Reilly Media: 7 November 2008):
[Note from Scott: headers added by me]
Optical Scan: Good & Bad
And most of [...]
Posted on November 22nd, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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From Mark Townsend and Anushka Asthana’s “Put young children on DNA list, urge police” (The Guardian: 16 March 2008):
Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain’s most senior police forensics expert.
Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland [...]
Posted on November 22nd, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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From Malcolm Gladwell’s “A gift or hard graft?” (The Guardian: 15 November 2008):
This idea - that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice - surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: [...]
Posted on November 15th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, education, science | No Comments »
From Jonathan M. Gitlin’s “Does ideology trump facts? Studies say it often does” (Ars Technica: 24 September 2008):
We like to think that people will be well informed before making important decisions, such as who to vote for, but the truth is that’s not always the case. Being uninformed is one thing, but having a population [...]
Posted on October 6th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: education, history, politics, science | No Comments »
From Lauren Davis’ “Delusion or Alien Invasion? Disorders That Make Life Seem Like Scifi” (io9: 27 September 2008):
Capgras Delusion: You believe a loved one has been replaced with an exact duplicate.
…
Reduplicative Paramnesia: You believe that a place or location has been moved to another site, or has been duplicated and exists in two places simultaneously.
…
Alien [...]
Posted on September 28th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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From Russell L. Ackoff & Daniel Greenberg’s Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track (2008):
A classic story illustrates very well the potential cost of placing a problem in a disciplinary box. It involves a multistoried office building in New York. Occupants began complaining about the poor elevator service provided in [...]
Posted on September 18th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, science, true stories | No Comments »
From Brendan I. Koerner’s “Is a Dishwasher a Green Machine?” (Slate: 22 April 2008):
To really green up your automatic dishwashing, you should always use the air-drying function, avoid the profligate “rinse hold” setting, wash only full loads, and install the machine far away from your refrigerator.
…
Just promise that you’ll scrape your dishes instead of pre-rinsing, [...]
Posted on April 22nd, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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From Oliver Sacks’ “The Case of Anna H.” (The New Yorker: 7 October 2002: 64):
I was reminded of a blind woman, a contemporary of Mozart and a most remarkable pianist, who, it is said, could no longer play after she regained some sight.
Related posts
After a stroke, he can write, but can’t read
Our eye seeks the [...]
Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, history, security, weird | No Comments »
From Oliver Sacks’ “The Case of Anna H.” (The New Yorker: 7 October 2002: 64):
I recently received a letter from Howard Engel, a Canadian novelist, who told me that he had a somewhat similar problem following a stroke: “The area affected,” he relates, “was my ability to read. I can write, but I can’t read [...]
Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: on writing, science, weird | No Comments »
From Celeste Biever’s “Language may shape human thought” (New Scientist: 19 August 2004):
Language may shape human thought – suggests a counting study in a Brazilian tribe whose language does not define numbers above two.
Hunter-gatherers from the Pirahã tribe, whose language only contains words for the numbers one and two, were unable to reliably tell the difference [...]
Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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From Steven Pinker’s “What the F***?” (The New Republic: 9 Octobert 2007):
The mammalian brain contains, among other things, the limbic system, an ancient network that regulates motivation and emotion, and the neocortex, the crinkled surface of the brain that ballooned in human evolution and which is the seat of perception, knowledge, reason, and planning. The [...]
Posted on April 19th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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From Atul Gawande’s “Final Cut: Medical arrogance and the decline of the autopsy” (The New Yorker: 19 March 2001):
The Roman physician Antistius performed one of the earliest forensic examinations on record, in 44 B.C., on Julius Caesar, documenting twenty-three stab wounds, including a final, fatal stab to the chest.
Related posts
The last remaining Stone Age tribesmen
Did [...]
Posted on April 12th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, history, science | No Comments »
From John D. Barrow and John K. Webb’s "Inconstant Constants: Do the inner workings of nature change with time?" (Scientific American: 23 May 2005):
One ratio of particular interest combines the velocity of light, c, the electric charge on a single electron, e, Planck’s constant, h, and the so-called vacuum permittivity, 0. [...]
Posted on March 25th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Webster U: infosec management, security, technology | No Comments »
From Wikipedia’s “Clarke’s three laws” (2 November 2006):
Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three “laws” of prediction:
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible [...]
Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: tech in changing society, technology | Comments Off
From Erica Goode’s “Incompetent People Really Have No Clue, Studies Find: They’re blind to own failings, others’ skills” (The New York Times: 18 January 2000):
Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.
On the contrary. People who do things [...]
Posted on October 7th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Webster U: infosec management, commonplace book, science | Comments Off