About Anything » Daily Reads

Friday’s reads

Al Stevens — Fri, 15 May 2009 19:09:21 +0000

Strong developer opinions, including “PHP is Crap“, and discussion about PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL. [Julian Andres Klode on his blog]

Today, I’m trying to grok Twine

So, today’s reads include some old articles.

A high level overview of Twine, at the time it was announced, by an investor. [Peter Rip on EarlyStasgeVC October 19, 2007 ]

Twine first impressions summarized from various blog posts right after its public announcement. [Richard McMannus on Thinking Space October 21, 2007]

Wednesday’s reads

Al Stevens — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:59:08 +0000

A summary of the March 10th Union Square Ventures put on a conference called Hacking Education with the theme of re-imagining how education should look in a web 2.0 world.
From the summary: “If the transition from the current high touch, but high cost, learning environment to an efficient peer produced learning network is as abrupt and brutal as the transition we are witnessing in the music and newspaper industry, the social consequences are likely to be a lot more severe. [Brad Burnham on unionsquareventures.com]

A brief piece on the difficulty of explaining authority. [on ACRLog]

Tuesday’s reads

Al Stevens — Tue, 12 May 2009 18:10:06 +0000

Another demonstration that false memories can be easily induced. Students who had been told that they loved asparagus as children come to believe it to be true and rated themselves as significantly more likely to order it in a restaurant compared to before the false memory was induced. [Dave Munger in Cognitive Daily reporting on an article in Experimental Psychology]

An exuberant person account of the space shuttle launch . [Julianne on Discover's Cosmic Variance]

It’s always fun to review the current state of Star-Trek technologies. Nine of them, from Phasers (good progress) to Deflector Shields (no progress) are reviewed here. [Charles Q. Choi on LiveScience]

Monday’s reads

Al Stevens — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:09:23 +0000

How to become a digital nomad. The solution is to digitize everything. [Mike Elgan in Computerworld]

Human population density does affect animal populations, in this case, fish. [Christopher Stallings in PLoS One]

A little comic relief. The Creation Wiki entry for the Flying Spaghetti Monster may not be the funniest page on the Internet, but it’s pretty funny. And I wasn’t even aware that there was a Creation Wiki. [Sean in Discover Magazine]

More comments on Elsevier’s six fake journals. [Barbara Fister on ACRLog]

A simple conclusion: Culling impedes the evolution of avian host resistance against influenza. [Eunha Shim in PLoS One]

Friday’s reads

Al Stevens — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:21:22 +0000

Alexis Wichowski reviews the evolution of folksonomies, concluding that may be flawed, but they are the best means known to track what is happening with the non–mainstream of the information environment.

Josh Pasek, et. al. find on careful analysis that there is no correlation between grades and Facebook use.

Thursday’s reads

Al Stevens — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:27:14 +0000

The Society for Neuroscience has announced an initiative to get it’s members to contribute to Wikipedia in order to promote public education about neuroscience. The initiative is summarized in Neuroscience Quarterly.

Seed Magazine interviews Alison Gopnik who suggests that children are like the R&D department of the human species.

Andrew Maynard writes how C. P. Snow’s essay of 50 years ago on “two cultures” has formed a smokescreen that masks living in a world divided into the rich and the poor, where science and technology are increasingly able to bridge this divide, but don’t.

Wednesday’s reads

Al Stevens — Wed, 06 May 2009 12:58:38 +0000

Marshall Kirkpatrick sees Firefox as a Facebook challenger. If the two technologies converge, Firefox will start with a lead.

Richard Bernstein argues that US immigrants continue to make astounding contributions by creating new technologies and new companies.

Evgeny Morozov takes on Tim O’Reilly and argues that we don’t need to reinvent the book for the web age.

Friday’s reads

Al Stevens — Fri, 01 May 2009 19:43:34 +0000

A brief post on ScienceNOW points out that the current H1N1 virus is made up of pieces of human, swine, and avian viruses from North America, Europe, and Asia. This patched-together virus might not be stable and could easily recombine with other viruses encountered in a host.

From 2003, an entertaining analysis of the biology of B-movie monsters, written by Michael C. LaBarbera, professor of Organismal Biology & Anatomy

Guy Steele Interviews John McCarthy, Father of Lisp, complete with a transcript.

Thursday’s Reads

Al Stevens — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:02:56 +0000

David Biello summarizes two recent papers that conclude that within 40 years, we’ll add as much CO2 to the atmosphere as we’ve added since 1750 — a scenario that is likely to result in catastrophic climate change.

Tim O’Reilly’s and Sarah Milstein’s “The Twiiter Book” published in PowerPoint and previewed on slideshare.

The virology blog describes the three ways influenza virus’s can be transmitted: (1) by direct contact with infected individuals; (2) by contact with contaminated objects; and (3) by inhalation of virus-laden aerosols.

Wednesday’s reads

Al Stevens — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:48:41 +0000

Today, it’s about the swine flu — a few reads that cut through some of the journalistic hype.

The WHO Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan has issued a statement raising the influenza pandemic alert from phase 4 to phase 5.

Katherine Harmon interviews Chris Olsen on what makes the current strain of flu different and how it might be treated.

Emily Singer summarizes the status of direct studies of the genetic sequence of the virus.

Alexis Madrigal suggests that Google’s search data could have provided an early warning about the swine flu outbreak.