The media tends to operate on a hype/anti-hype cycle (following Shannon’s theorem that the value of information is inversely proportional to its probability). So it was refreshing to read this post over at The Jawa Report that takes the current poll swings among Republican presidential candidates — each of which has been declared ‘toast’ or […]
Well, the circus that is the Iowa Caucuses is complete, and I am thankful for that. Never before have I seen the media make a bigger fuss over a tiny handful of voters and what their whims were. To see teams of analysts and pundits attempt to draw broad conclusions over what is (apologies to […]
First off, I have to cite a wonderful new blog from the folks that bring us Gizmodo, this new critter being called io9, and it’s all about Science Fiction and things surrounding it. A fabulous read if you are wandering around the house with your iPod Touch tinkering. One of the articles up there now […]
Unqualified Reservations is a new addition to my daily blog reading, largely because of posts like this one: A better way to think of our present financial system is to compare it to Microsoft Windows. Windows is indeed complicated. It is astoundingly, brilliantly, profoundly complicated. If there is anyone in the world, even at Microsoft, […]
Just ask Jeff Jarvis: — Google is the “fastest growing company in the history of the world.” – Times of London, 1/29/06 — Google controls 65.1% of all searches in the U.S. at the end of 2007 and 86% of all searches in the UK, according to measurement company Hitwise. — Google was searched 4.4 […]
Language Log is one of my favorite blogs. It is a gathering of linguists, mostly unrepentant descriptivists, who don’t hesitate to bring to bear their full education and resources on, well, issues that only language geeks (like myself) would wonder about. Here, as a sterling example, are a pair of posts exploring the origin of […]
Roughly 18 months ago, I wrote a post about the problems with the industry’s inability to agree upon a next-gen DVD format — leading to the split between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Among other things, I said the following: So now we come to the next generation solutions for video playback: HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. During the […]
George Santayana famously said: Progress, far from consisting in change, depends upon retentiveness…Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Victor Davis Hanson, the noted military historian and classics professor, reminds us of the recent past in Iraq: After the victory of the 1991 Gulf War, a bipartisan consensus had emerged that […]
Following the assassination of former Prime Minister Bhutto yesterday, Pakistan has seen several large cities erupt in violence. Many of the protests have been peaceful but quite a few have turned violent, with rioters focusing on burning property and destroying anything they can. A summary map of the most active cities below: Far and away […]
It’s a sad day for the forces of moderation and cooperation in the Muslim world. Early this morning US Time, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was killed a short time after a political rally. Reports from the scene state that multiple shots where fired, and one person detonated an explosive vest at the time […]
