The closing narrative of the McCain campaign is apparently going to be “Obama’s a pinko commie socialist who wants to raise your taxes,” which means it’s time for all good liberals to bust out the graphs to show why this is false. Well, graph, singular. You know the one: I don’t remember who first posted… Continue reading The Visual Display of Political Information
Month: October 2008
The Missing Word
There have been a whole bunch of stories written about the idiot skinheads who were busted for a ludicrous plot to kill a whole bunch of black people, including Barack Obama: the AP version, the Washington Post, the New York Times. They’re all pretty similar, and they’re all notable for one thing: the word they… Continue reading The Missing Word
Think Like a Videogame Physicist
Over at Dot Physics (which might be the best physics blog in the world at the moment), Rhett Allain has a pair of posts exploring the physics of Fantastic Contraption. The posts don’t really lend themselves to excerpting, so you need to go over there and read them, but I think they’re brilliant, and deserve… Continue reading Think Like a Videogame Physicist
links for 2008-10-28
Cognitive Daily: Should you let your toddler watch TV? No, you dolt. (tags: science psychology television kid-stuff) The Bill Clinton President School – World Wide Web Homepage "Aren’t you tired of not being president?" (tags: us politics onion silly internet) Microsoft Ad Campaign Crashing Nation’s Televisions | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source "The… Continue reading links for 2008-10-28
What’s Your Watson Idea?
One of my service activities at the moment is serving on the committee that determines our nominees for the Watson Fellowship. Participating institutions are allowed to nominate up to four students, and we’ve just selected this year’s nominees, who are a really interesting bunch. The Watson, for those who haven’t heard of it, is, as… Continue reading What’s Your Watson Idea?
The Monkey Dance
As has already been noted by people with too much free time, my DonorsChoose challenge stands at $6,254. This is a big jump, and happened because somebody emailed to ask whether a donation of theirs had been counted; when I logged in to check, I found that there was $715 in account credits, which I… Continue reading The Monkey Dance
links for 2008-10-27
Corruption in textbook-adoption proceedings: ‘Judging Books by Their Covers’ Richard Feynman on the idiocies of the textbook selection process. (tags: science math education books politics culture publishing) What does it all mean — Crooked Timber "There are two big economic ideas that look substantially less appealing in the light of the current crisis." (tags: economics… Continue reading links for 2008-10-27
DonorsChoose Payoff: Meeting the Queen
Another day, another DonorsChoose incentive claimed. I’m actually late in responding to this one– I missed my self-imposed 24-hour deadline because we’re visiting Kate’s parents outside of Boston, but I’ll try to make up for it with the answer. Anyway, Helen asks: How did Emmy become part of your household? We decided we wanted a… Continue reading DonorsChoose Payoff: Meeting the Queen
Weird Windows by Various Authors
I tagged Ethan Zuckerman’s post abpout video “windows” to other places in a links dump recently. The idea is to put big video screens and cameras in fast-food restaurants around the world, and provide virtual “windows” into other restaurants in other countries. In talking about the idea, Ethan threw out a great aside: (If I… Continue reading Weird Windows by Various Authors
links for 2008-10-26
5 Presidential Elections Even Dumber Than This One (Somehow) | Cracked.com Hard as it may be to believe… (tags: politics history comedy US silly internet)