if you're bored, you're not paying attention
State-by-state election returns make the U.S. look like a deeply divided country–red Republicans in the South and middle; blue Democrats on the coasts. (The division is eerily reminiscent of the division between free and slave states before the Civil War–how long the shadows of that ugly history are.)… Read the rest
Indian farmers have discovered that spraying their fields with Coca-Cola may be as effective as–and lots cheaper than–spraying with pesticides. An Indian agronomist says: “I think Coke has found its right use. Farmers have traditionally used sugary solutions to attract red ants to feed on insect larvae.… Read the rest
Get ready to meet the next big innovation in mobile communications technology: the hinge.
The Sierra Wireless Voq Professional phone is a rather ordinary-looking, somewhat bulky handset with a traditional 12-button keypad. Flip back the keypad and you reveal a miniscule QWERTY keyboard concealed inside, making the phone into a rather ordinary-looking, somewhat bulky handset with a keyboard sticking out to one side.… Read the rest
Research in Motion turned the corporate world on its ear with the first BlackBerry pagers, which gave middle managers the power to hound subordinates 24/7, no matter where in the world the expense account took them. Later, RIM grafted mobile phone capabilities onto its pagers, producing functional — if unlovely — smart phones that were able to plow through calls, e-mails, contacts, and calendars like Frankenstein knocking down a row of angry peasants.… Read the rest
Remember the John Woo movie Face/Off, where John Travolta and Nicholas Cage trade faces? Well, it isn’t science fiction any more.… Read the rest
Jacques Derrida is dead. The Telegraph has an intelligent and balanced review of his life and work. Derrida’s work had a huge influence on my college education, and it was always clear to me that his own writing was far more precise — and humane — than that of his American imitators.… Read the rest
Patrick Costello has put up the whole text of his book, The How and The Tao of the Old-Time Banjo, under a Creative Commons license. Patrick is a generous, down-to-earth, iconoclastic teacher of banjo and I am really looking forward to reading his book.… Read the rest
There are 11 different ways you can misspell “pedal to the metal,” all of which use legitimate words that Word won’t flag as misspelled: {pedal, petal, peddle} to the {metal, mettle, medal, meddle} = 12 permutations, only one of which is correct.… Read the rest
Researchers studying the behavior of software agents set up a test, called the “minority game,” where agents are competing for limited resources. In each round, the agents make choices, attempting to wind up in the successful minority. When the researchers added the ability for agents to communicate with one another to share information on successful strategies, a group of leaders emerged, amounting to about 1% of the total population.… Read the rest
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