* simple – easy to understand and to evaluate * easy – can be done without extensive preparation or heavy engineering * clean – does not produce unwanted side effects * cheap – or raising the money to do it will be harder than doing it * smart – should use deep insight into the [...]
Read more →The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation. These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated. Internal [...]
Read more →“When we decide about a product, we always start with the price,” Deboehmler said. “Then, what is the consumer need?” For example, the product designers might begin thinking about designing a new flat-screen-television stand. Assuming that there’s evidence such a product is needed–like a trend of many people buying flat-screen TVs–Ikea will set out to [...]
Read more →http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7354428.stm Good on ‘em.
Read more →Commenting on http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2008/04/robbing_peters_meal_to_gas_pau.html I agree with you completely on hunger from biofuels. That’s been expected for a while. I wrote a paper predicting this scenario in 2003 and I was far, far from the first. Worse, biofuels are basically useless in the big picture unless you move to algae as a feedstock. Consider: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/311/5760/435 Which [...]
Read more →http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/12/121906.html Talking about “baseline” – taking one’s emotional temperature for the day. Quite good.
Read more →http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/ites/0502/ijee/arable.htm
Read more →Komar & Melamid design music and art based on statistical survey results. And then commit aesthetic atrocities, carefully calculated to offend everyone. Quite well done. http://www.metafilter.com/67478/Maybe-she-likes-Wittgenstein
Read more →Faster computers do not make writing programs easier, any more than printing presses made it easier to write poetry. Vinay Gupta I’ve been trying to find a way of saying that for a while. Now, of course, conversely Computers which are too slow or too small for the problem at hand make programming harder because [...]
Read more →The foundation has posted its Transparency in Government Act of 2008 on the Web at publicmarkup.org and has invited the public to tweak, add to or criticize any aspect of the proposed bill. The goal, said Ellen Miller, executive director of the foundation, is to change the backroom, secretive way that legislation is typically passed [...]
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