October 2011
1 post
Innovation Starvation, Neal Stephenson →
Why more information can actually stifle innovation:
Most people who work in corporations or academia have witnessed something like the following: A number of engineers are sitting together in a room, bouncing ideas off each other. Out of the discussion emerges a new concept that seems promising. Then some laptop-wielding person in the corner, having performed a quick Google search, announces...
September 2011
1 post
A Libertarian’s Lament: Why Ron Paul Is an... →
To deny that structural discrimination, with or without the backing of the state, can limit an individual’s liberty more injuriously than a sales tax requires the triumph of dogmatism over commonsense.
August 2011
2 posts
Marc Andreessen on Why Software Is Eating the... →
many people in the U.S. and around the world lack the education and skills required to participate in the great new companies coming out of the software revolution. This is a tragedy since every company I work with is absolutely starved for talent. Qualified software engineers, managers, marketers and salespeople in Silicon Valley can rack up dozens of high-paying, high-upside job offers any...
July 2011
1 post
Harvard's Privacy Meltdown →
“We faced a dilemma as researchers,” Mr. Kaufman said on tape. “What happens if a student has a privacy setting that says, ‘You can’t see me unless you’re my friend,’ and our undergraduate research assistant who is downloading the data is a friend of that person? Then can we include them in our data?”
No.
Wait, you seriously thought this was...
June 2011
1 post
The Real Mahatma Gandhi →
Christopher Hitchens on Joseph Levyland’s Great Soul.
April 2011
5 posts
I’ve actually been posting on my real blog again. I may or may not keep it up.
Disable Automatic Gain Control in Skype →
Open up ~/Library/Application Support/Skype/shared.xml in a text editor, find the <VoiceEng> section, and add <AGC>0</AGC> and <EC>0</EC>. Like so:
<VoiceENG>
<AGC>0</AGC>
<EC>0</EC>
[One or more <MicVolume>'s. Leave them alone.]
</VoiceEng>
Just tested this and it appears to still work in Skype 5.
This feature is...
Siva Vaidhyanathan on Media Matters →
My goal is to have every 12-year-old growing up in South Africa in 50 years be able to access the same quality and same quantity of information as a 12-year-old growing up in Sweden or Canada. I think we have the technology to actually, for once in human history, solve that problem. What we don’t have is the political will.
Great interview. I need to read his book.
(Great show, too....
March 2011
4 posts
PlatformPro Video →
Their video is like an SNL parody of an Apple video.
The Sociology Improv: Part II →
Whatever else we can say about this episode: it has the best album art yet.
February 2011
2 posts
The Paradox of Corporate Taxes →
It’s not really a paradox—it’s just stupid. But a good, short read. The variation in taxes paid by otherwise identical companies is fascinating.
January 2011
5 posts
Clive Thompson on How Tweets and Texts Nurture... →
Whereas a tweet becomes dated within minutes, a really smart long take holds value for years. Back in the ’90s, my magazine articles vanished after the issue left the newsstand. But now that the pieces are online, readers email me every week saying they’ve stumbled upon something years old.
The real loser here is the middle take. This is what the weeklies like Time and Newsweek have...
In Norway, Start-ups Say Ja to Socialism →
“What we’re doing when we are paying taxes is buying a product. So the question isn’t how you pay for the product; it’s the quality of the product.”
Russell Jacoby reviews Erik Olin Wright →
Wright’s gargantuan theoretical edifice, with its multiple appendages, add-ons, and attachments steals all attention from “real utopias,” about which he shows little enthusiasm. He is more eager to pronounce on how to think about how to approach the preconditions that underlie the claims that support “real utopias” or on the numerous principles and subprinciples of social transformation they...
Harvard's Open Access Sample Addendum →
The addendum used by Harvard faculty to add an open access provision to their publications.
Happy New Year!
Be back soon.
December 2010
4 posts
Manchin Explains His No Vote On DADT →
“I do not support its repeal at this time,” he said in the statement. “I would like to make clear that my concern is not with the idea of repealing DADT, but rather an issue of timing.”
“You see, it’s not politically convenient timing for me, and that’s pretty much all that matters here in the Senate.”
Anthropology Group Drops ‘Science’ References →
Until now, the association’s long-range plan was “to advance anthropology as the science that studies humankind in all its aspects.” The executive board revised this last month to say, “The purposes of the association shall be to advance public understanding of humankind in all its aspects.”
The part that seems really ridiculous to me in both versions — “studies humankind in all...
An SSD in a 4 year-old MacBook →
I recently swapped out the HD in my 1st-gen 1.83GHz MacBook (read my original review ), and thought others might be interested in the experience of going from a 60GB hard drive to a 40GB SSD. It might seem odd to buy a smaller hard drive, but it’s been well worth it.
via minimalmac
I have the same MacBook and have been kicking around this idea too. If I bought a replacement, it’d be...
November 2010
16 posts
Lightweight Portable Security →
The US Department of Defense has their own Linux distro:
LPS boots a thin Linux operating system from a CD or USB flash stick without mounting a local hard drive. Administrator privileges are not required; nothing is installed. SPI created the LPS family to address particular use cases. LPS-Public is a safer, general-purpose solution for using web-based applications.
Ravitch answers Gates →
… it is unfair to stigmatize the schools with the largest numbers of students who are English-language learners, special-education, and far behind in their learning. That’s like saying that an oncologist is not as good a doctor as a dermatologist because so many of his patients die.
[…]
The single biggest correlate with low academic achievement (contrary to the film...
New Survey Finds Teens Would Rather Facebook Than... →
There’s growing evidence that young people, for one, are less enamored of driving than their parents were. In 1976, three-quarters of all 17-year-olds had drivers’ licenses. By 2008, that was down to 49 percent. And, in a recent survey by Zipcar, the car-sharing company, a full 67 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds said they would prefer to drive less, especially if alternatives were...
In Defense of Earmarks →
“Earmarks are simply taking money we’ve decided to spend on community development or agriculture, and instead of allowing the bureaucracy or some type of static formula to decide it, it’s allowing the elected representatives of the people to,” said Frisch. In other words, earmarks do not represent new spending, but rather money that would have been allocated otherwise under bureaucratic...
The Beatles on iTunes Means Your Kids May Never... →
I’m an “album guy”. I can think of only one time I’ve ever bought a single song on iTunes or Amazon: when I had a free single download coupon for Amazon and I downloaded Steve Morse’s cover of “La Villa Strangiato”. And even then: that song is 9:28, so it’s hard to call that a normal “single”. You can see I was trying to stretch my free...
Diane Ravitch: The Myth of Charter Schools →
I’ve not actually seen Waiting for “Superman” yet, but I have still managed to read dozens of responses/critiques. This is the most complete & devastating.
Eric Holder Profile in GQ →
Yet another admirable, principled member of the Obama administration made miserable by fear of enacting policies they get politically punished for anyway.
WatchJump!
This post about how Republicans lie about Obama raising taxes is true enough, but in the interest of being fair and balanced, I think we can all agree that this truly awful method of wrapping text around ads better not take off:
Citizens United and its affront to democratic... →
By granting First Amendment speech protection to corporations, the Supreme Court misunderstood the purpose of political speech altogether. To the Supreme Court, elections are about competing interests, and any person, group or corporation with an interest ought to have the ability to speak his, her or its mind.
But the premise of the First Amendment is that citizens must be free to speak,...
We’ve traded this, for this:
Lookin’ at you, youngins.
October 2010
12 posts
Vim discovery of the week:
set clipboard=unnamed
Now yanked or deleted text in Vim is added to your OS’s clipboard.
Caveat: this will not use Vim’s normal clipboard then (i.e. you can’t use p to place the text you yanked). It also, obviously, won’t work over an ssh connection. So this isn’t something to place in your .vimrc, but to run in those specific...
iPhoto 9.0.1 Addresses Data Loss →
So, the proper steps of upgrading an existing iPhoto installation to iPhoto ‘11 appears to be:
Backup your existing iPhoto Library
Install iLife ‘11 (which includes the iPhoto 9.0 upgrade)
Install iPhoto 9.0.1 update from Apple. It should appear in Software Update.
Only after installing 9.0.1 should you then launch iPhoto, which will then prompt you to upgrade your...
Why Divided Government Is Bad for Obama →
Divided government creates gridlock. And when it does produce legislation, the president finds that legislation much less palatable than if his party were in control. Divided government also fails to make both parties equally accountable. Obama will get less of what he wants and pretty much all the blame if the economy and country are still in the doldrums two years from now.
Charlie Sheen: Too Big to Fail →
I don’t know what’s more shocking: that Charlie Sheen is still such an asshole at 45 years old, or that Two and a Half Men is still that popular. They’ve been recycling jokes since halfway through season one!
Email, Mail, Worse
I’m in the process of applying for jobs. A few features of this process have struck me in the last week. First, paper is such a pain. Most applications still require paper materials sent via traditional mail. Academic jobs require a lot of paperwork, too: cover letters, copies of manuscripts, syllabi, research and teaching statements, etc. So going through the process of printing these...