The real impact of the internet.
Every decision can be made by the person or group best qualified to make the decision, modulo the cost of acquiring context.
Fluid access to expert opinion is a huge factor, from telemedicine to crop health to technical support - it’s expertise on tap, help on the hard bits, and “what do you make of this?” that’s really changing the world.
Peer production only goes so far: sometimes you need expertise beyond what the immediate group one is working with possesses, and that’s one of the keys to not wasting time when stuck on a dead end.
Capitalism vs. the Caste System
“The untouchable has been touched by India’s growth. Dalits are coming out from hunger and humiliation,” said Chandra Bhan Prasad, a popular Dalit newspaper columnist and childhood friend of Ram’s.
“Capitalism is beginning to break the caste system,” said Prasad, who is conducting the survey.
…
“To me, this is the greatest social change India has ever witnessed in its known history,” Prasad said. “The Dalit has been unchained. The answer was found in the machine.”
…
Undependable power, like the rutted dirt roads and lack of running water, is one of the remaining impediments to economic growth in Dalit villages.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/30/AR2008083002299.html?hpid=topnews
Food grabs by Europe
http://www.celsias.com/article/manufactured-famine/
EU fishing the hell out of Africa, for example.
Also references “Late Victorian Holocausts” which covers the democidal activities of the Brits. The Indian Holocausts seem to have had more in common with the Ukranian Famine than the Holocaust but you get the general idea. An era that history has politely forgotten, for the most part.
Robot helicopters that learn tricks from *watching* other robot helicopters
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/september10/helicopter-091008.html
Somebody please, please show these people Terminator.
Bizarrely produced but beautiful fluid dynamics video
They take the computational fluid dynamics models and then test them against the real world. With good results. But what’s with the production?
WALL-E
Hm. 97% ripe on Rotten Tomatoes and with good reason. To get this and Batman in the same year really rather validates Hollywood as an institution that still has it.
What Toy Story showed about friendship, and Finding Nemo said about fathers and sons, or the Incredibles said about families, WALL-E says about one form of romantic love. It’s really very beautiful and kind of cute-and-deep in a way that’s hard to describe. Also some rather good bits on relationships between human and machine. I hear there’s been a lot of fuss among the Libertarians reading it as a critique of capitalism - not really seeing that, I think it’s pretty clear that The Company is actually the State 
Really does need to be seen, it’s a wonderful film, and I very much doubt the small screen does it justice. Enjoy!
A pox on both their houses
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-elisberg/the-worst-vice-presidenti_b_122491.html
Brutal beat down on Lara Croft Sarah Connor Sarah Palin.
If you make it through the article, here’s my thinking: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” I think people will vote for her as a mom-with-a-gun, as the VPILF (cough, hack) and as a symbol of America’s past and future - rugged, gun-toting frontier types, making their way through the world with nothing but a covered wagon, some corn meal, and a gigaton nuclear arsenal.
Grab popcorn and enjoy the show, this one’s gonna be a doozy.
Obama’s acceptance speech… I wish I believed it. I don’t.
Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who’s willing to work.
That’s the promise of America - the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper.
That’s the promise we need to keep. That’s the change we need right now. So let me spell out exactly what that change would mean if I am President.
This is allegedly Obama’s brother.
He told the magazine: “I live like a recluse, no-one knows I exist.”
Embarrassed by his penury, he said that he does not does not mention his famous half-brother in conversation.
“If anyone says something about my surname, I say we are not related. I am ashamed,” he said.For ten years George Obama lived rough. However he now hopes to try to sort his life out by starting a course at a local technical college.
He has only met his famous older brother twice - once when he was just five and the last time in 2006 when Senator Obama was on a tour of East Africa and visited Nairobi.
The Illinois senator mentions his brother in his autobiography, describing him in just one passing paragraph as a “beautiful boy with a rounded head”.
Of their second meeting, George Obama said: “It was very brief, we spoke for just a few minutes. It was like meeting a complete stranger.”
George added he was no longer in contact with his mother and said:”I have had to learn to live and take what I need.
So… brother’s keeper indeed, Mr. Obama, brother’s keeper indeed.
I am not optimistic.
two words you don’t find together every day: quantized redshift
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_G._Tifft
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/redshift.html
Radioactive decay varies depending on the distance from the earth to the sun???
http://www.celsias.com/article/energy-crossroads/http://arxivblog.com/?p=596
Implications: I think this might turn out to be the ultraviolet catastrophe of our era. It’s something which is entirely convenient to study in the lab so it should be highly replicable, and it’s weirder than all hell.
Here’s hoping that it’s not some dopey measurement error due to something else which varies annually.