Skip to main contentTag: Science
- Turnabout is fair play – “This is so wonderfully, evilly devious. Superficially, it seems to support creationist methods—but what it actually is is a grand reductio ad absurdam.”
- Google’s Business Model – Who is the customer and what is the product? (via @daringfireball)
- Björk: ‘Manchester is the prototype’ – “Biophilia is the Icelandic singer’s new project – the word means ’love of living things’ – and promises to push the envelope so far you’ll need the Hubble telescope to see it.”
- Christchurch earthquake – Shocking stuff, made all the more real by the great images.
- Why Last Week’s Solar Storm Was a Dud – “If the plasma’s magnetic field is parallel to the Earth’s, the incoming charged particles are effectively blocked from entering Earth’s magnetosphere. An identical flare with a perpendicular magnetic field would have triggered a much stronger storm.”
- Pope merchandise – “The pope is visiting the UK soon, and the merchandise is already on sale, but it’s rubbish. This week’s challenge is to show the Vatican what they should be selling to mark the occasion. God will be delighted.” (via @bengoldacre)
- The Creativity Crisis – “The age-old belief that the arts have a special claim to creativity is unfounded.” It’s always bugged me when people refer to ’the creatives’ when talking about designers or artists. This is why! But back to the article… it’s interesting that you can “teach” or at least encourage creativity.
- No sense of humour at all – “Personally, I’d love to see the Pope in a debate on abortion, where he would actually have to address difficult questions and defend his own ideas. Best idea yet would be a debate on various controversial topics, like birth control, abortion, the role of women in the church, and homosexuality…with the Pope on one side, and Stephen Fry on the other. It could be perfectly respectful, and it would be hilarious.”
- Audio slideshow: Hubble’s first 20 years – Amazing. Beautiful.
- Do liberals read only liberal blogs? – The dangers of the “long tail…” I deliberately go read Daily Mail headlines on a regular basis just to check that I’m sane. The moment I start to agree, please shoot me.
- exactly – “What if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?” Looks like we’re not going to find out because of a few hold-outs…
- A Typeface for the Underground – Design and typography on the London Underground. Fascinating stuff.
- Britain to Levy a One-Time Tax on Banker Bonuses – “To a large extent the levy underpins a quite broad understanding here — even among those generally sympathetic to the industry — that bank profits this year were largely subsidized by the government due to historically low interest rates.” The best discussion I’ve seen of today’s pre-Budget speech is, bizarrely, in a US paper.