- Clive Thompson on the New Literacy – Maybe the Internet isn’t the end of literacy after all…
- Galileo’s telescope reaches 400th anniversary – “Exactly 400 years ago today, on 25 August 1609, the Italian astronomer and philosopher Galilei Galileo showed Venetian merchants his new creation, a telescope – the instrument that was to bring him both scientific immortality and, more immediately, a whole lot of trouble.”
- Creationists, now they’re coming for your children – “The Greatest Show on Earth is a book about the positive evidence that evolution is a fact. It is not intended as an antireligious book. I’ve done that, it’s another T-shirt, this is not the place to wear it again. Bishops and theologians who have attended to the evidence for evolution have given up the struggle against it.”
Tag: Technology
- In pictures: Satellite eye on Earth – July – Awesome images.
- Amber Ale: Brewing Beer From 45-Million-Year-Old Yeast – Science, history and beer, and all in one story. How could I not bookmark this article?
- Microsoft’s Long, Slow Decline – “The evidence is staring Microsoft’s leadership in the face that they have lost the most lucrative segment of the market, but, judged by their actions and public remarks, they seem to think it’s all a big joke. They should be sweating this but they’re laughing it off.”
- Anatomy of a feature – Great post describing how hard it really is to add a supposedly easy feature.
- The Matrix, but with money: the world of high-speed trading – Good introductory piece about algo trading and the technology used to implement it.
- The giant Apollo 11 post – The best of the web on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing.
- Year two – Nice analysis of where the App Store need to change in order to keep both customers and developers happy.
- Let’s all take a deep breath and get some perspective – “[Google are] starting to look like the new Scott McNealy. Remember him? Ran a company called Sun, which had a great little business going until McNealy became obsessed with Gates and started doing things like paying millions of dollars to buy StarOffice so he could get into that booming free software business.”
- Battle between ZX Spectrum and BBC Micro to be BBC4 comedy drama – This looks like it could be fun. I especially like some of the comments after the article. The Spectrum vs. Commode 64 [sic] debate still rages to this day…
- Materials: The HTC Hero’s Teflon Coating Makes the iPhone Feel Like Junk – iPhone 3G – One thing that’s holding me back from getting a 3GS is the plastic back. I much prefer the aluminium from the first gen model.
- The blue and the green – “Your eyes are not cameras faithfully taking pictures of absolute truth of all that surrounds you. They have filters, and your brain has to interpret the jangled mess it gets fed.” A very neat optical illusion.
- Ravenous Clock Runs Backward, Scares Children – Neat.
- Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live – “The point is that making a master teacher into a sacred fetish misses the essence of his teaching. So let us now kill Darwin.”
- Zappos CEO Talks Culture Fit and the Importance of Creating a ‘Wow’ Experience – Interesting article about how Zappos have thrived.
- Pro-God buses for London streets – Anyone feel like complaining about these Christian ads on the ground that they make unsubstantiated claims?
- House Approves Whitelist of People Who Aren’t Terrorists – The solution to the errors and inconvenience of the no-fly list is… drum roll… another database! How could that possibly go wrong?
- Exclusive: ID cards are here – but police can’t read them – After spending shed-loads of money on ID cards, apparently the police and immigration officers can’t read them.
- Senator to ISPs: “Think twice” about ‘Net neutrality… or else – It’s encouraging that some politicians understand the issues of net neutrality. Let’s hope that there are also tech-savvy MPs here in the UK.
- Peep Show for free! – If you’re in the UK this is a must-have download: the first episode of the new series of Peep Show. It’s perhaps the best comedy show on British TV at the moment. Highly recommended.
- The Free Web: 15 Years Old Today – The subject line says it all! Where would we be without the web?
- An elephant never forgets? George W. Bush’s lost e-mails – “The administration has chafed at external oversight and shown a tendency to come up with dubious legal justifications for ignoring laws it doesn’t agree with.” Just what is Mr Bush trying to hide?
- WordPress 2.5.1 – I just upgraded to the newest version of WordPress. Looks good as far as I can see but let me know if you spot anything untoward.
- Madonna, Hard Candy – “It’s about grooves rather than memorable songs, and Madonna just doesn’t make for a convincing soul diva [as she] sings them with the emotional engagement of a sat-nav suggesting a right turn onto the A23.”
- eBayer invites buyers to rip him off – It does seem that eBay has become a victim of its own success. Having said that, some of the ways that they’re trying to tackle fraudulent users are clearly bonkers.
- Japan MPs moot halt to executions – Hopefully this will move from “moot” to law, and then from temporary to permanent.
- Designing What’s Right for Consumers – Is it really so hard to design consumer electronics? The manufacturers say it is. Everyone else seems to disagree.
- WordPress 2.3.3 – I’ve upgraded to the current version of WordPress. As ever, if you spot anything amiss please let me know!