Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Friday, October 26, 2012
God is where the opportunistic believer wants him to be.
God is where the opportunistic believer wants him to be.
via Ta-Nehisi Coates
The rest of the section goes as follows...
via Ta-Nehisi Coates
The rest of the section goes as follows...
Theology is like any other ideology. If the scholars of your ideology profess its great wisdom, despite crucial moral problems; and if you then take up that ideology, in full knowledge of those problems; if you argue that it should be elevated to law of the land; if you assert that it should then be imposed on half the country (not your half), you are not a bystander to immorality. You are an accomplice.Amen...
Thursday, October 25, 2012
The only Election2012 Infographic worth a damn
From the ever amazing Paul Crowley, we have this amazing Margin Bargraph (click to embiggen)
Note that this is just an image, go to the original for an interactive original...
(Additional Information via Paul)---->
Note that this is just an image, go to the original for an interactive original...
(Additional Information via Paul)---->
- To make sense of any of this you must understand the Electoral College.
- Red states are states that went for McCain in 2008.
- Blue states are states that went for Obama in 2008.
- States in the band with a pale blue background at the top of the diagram have been called by the networks for Obama.
- States in the band with a pale red background at the bottom of the diagram have been called by the networks for Romney.
- States to the left of the line are projected to go for Obama.
- States to the right of the line are projected to go for Romney.
- The further left or right they extend, the further the projected margin of victory.
- The vertical direction is measured in electoral votes
- The thicker the bar for a state is, the more electoral votes it has.
- The numbers inbetween states near the finish line mark how far that boundary is from the finish line.
- The projected winner is the person who takes the state on the finish line. This is because, by taking that state and all the other states that they have more favourable margins in, they can win the election.
- Nebraska and Maine only give out some of their votes according to the statewide margin, and some according to the vote in each congressional district. Thus the diagram shows separate "states" for their congressional districts as well as for their statewide votes.
- Hover over a state for more information about it.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
If the Revolution came when you were in the Office...
From the (Demented? Depraved? Diabolical? Definitely brilliant) mind of Jörg Sprave comes the definitive guide to Weaponizing your Office.
(Click image below to embiggen. A lot.)
(Click image below to embiggen. A lot.)
What your friendly Dominatrix wears on New Years Eve
Escape from Carbonite - the Weird Coda
From the brilliant minds of Ryan Sohmer and Lar Desouza we have this episode of Least I Could Do
Pretty much sez. it all...
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Signs of the Apocalypse - Denny's Hobbit-themed Menu
As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.
Denny's - that fine purveyor of Calories - now has a "middle-earth" themed menu. For proof, view the profoundly cringe-inducing ad from their campaign above.
Assuming you didn't throw up, you're probably strong enough to stomach the contents of the menu, which includes such awesome fare as
- Gandalf's Gobble Melt
- Radagast's Red Velvet Pancake Puppies
- Frodo's Pot Roast Skillet
- Hobbit Harvest Pie
I bet if we hooked up a generator to Tolkien's remains, we could power Boston.
For completeness' sake, i've attached the menu to this post - please don't read it
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Garbanzo and Garlic - Mmmmmm....
Ingredients
1 lb cooked Garbanzo beans
1 garlic clove (raw or roasted)
1/4th tsp kosher salt
1 tbsp olive oil (or more, if you're feeling suitable evil)
1 tsp coarsely crushed black pepper
Mush the kosher salt and garlic in a mortar/pestle thoroughly till it forms a smooth paste (around 10 seconds).
Add around four of the garbanzo beans to the mortar, and mush that in for around 10 more seconds.
Add the olive oil and pepper and mush it all together till you have what is basically a garbanzo salad dressing.
Drop this - somewhat unappetizing appearing - "dressing" into the rest of the garbanzo beans and mix it all together.
If necessary, add some more kosher salt.
Eat.
Enjoy.
Breathe. (Hopefully not on anybody that hasn't eaten this too)
- Garbanzo beans : If using canned beans, rinse them thoroughly or they'll taste of can
- Garlic : If using raw garlic, remember that it'll get more 'potent' as the day goes on, so eat it right now, or, well, just be aware. Alternately, the sun-dried kind to the left below works like a charm. Just use a spoonful
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Sheep - and Mechanical Turk
The Sheep Market - a collection of 10,000 sheep that were created by workers on Mechanical Turk.
The rules were pretty simple, $0.02 to draw a sheep facing left.
Interesting factoids
The rules were pretty simple, $0.02 to draw a sheep facing left.
Interesting factoids
- Average time per sheep : 105 seconds
- Average cost/hour : $0.69/hour
- Number of rejected sheep : 662
- Number of unique IPs : 7599
- Build rate : 11 sheep/hour
Monday, October 15, 2012
Why to use MongoDB - Reason #32
That said, the failure rate for tech / VC based startups is really pretty far along on the 90% end of the scale.
The point here?
MongoDB is remarkably good, useful, and effective at rapid prototyping, and quick development. Oh, it may have any number of issues at scaling, data integrity, etc., but it is - really - way cool when it comes to Just Getting Something Out There.
Putting the two together
MongoDB - because if your startup is destined to fail, you may as well Fail Fast
The Connection between Dwarf-Tossing and an Economics Nobel
Shapley you should know from the Stable Marriage Problem w/ a nifty example here.
TL;DR --> "Each person has a preference list of the folks of the opposite gender. A pair of people of opposite genders that like each other better than their respective spouses is an instability. How can we pair up all the folks so there are no such instabilities?"
Al Roth (blog here), extended this into all sorts of areas, and in particular in the world of organ trading, horse meat, and other such "repugnant" markets.
The highpoint - IMHO is his glorious paper "Repugnance as a constraint on markets" (go read it), which includes a section on dwarf-tossing.
Yup.
Dwarf-tossing.
To quote
To clarify ideas about repugnance, it may be helpful to look at a relatively uncomplicated case, in which little else besides repugnance seems to be at work. Dwarf tossing seems like a market whose widespread banning involves no more than simple repugnance.All in all, a pretty good day for game-theorists everywhere, and two in particular...
[...] Dwarf tossing is an activity in which a large person throws a small person. The venue often is one in which alcohol is served. It is often a source of livelihood for the small person, with the large person paying for the privilege. While dwarf-tossing is legal in many places, it is sometimes banned by law.
Update: On a more serious note, a much much more comprehensive take on the Nobels here...
Friday, October 12, 2012
The History of Conflicts through Google Maps
From conflicthistory.com comes this Visualization Gem - a Google Mapped timeline of (AFAICT) every conflict in human history.
Ok, it may not have this one time when I got in a fight in 2nd grade, but boy howdy, is it every comprehensive - pretty much everything from 3000BC through 2005.
As an added bonus, you can click on the marker and pop over to the associated wikipedia entry.
The image below is just that, an image (albeit a humongous one). Click here to go to the actual site and have your mind blown..
Ok, it may not have this one time when I got in a fight in 2nd grade, but boy howdy, is it every comprehensive - pretty much everything from 3000BC through 2005.
As an added bonus, you can click on the marker and pop over to the associated wikipedia entry.
The image below is just that, an image (albeit a humongous one). Click here to go to the actual site and have your mind blown..
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Mahesh's Twentieth Law - MongoDB and Documentation
All discussions about MongoDB will eventually include the phrase "It's there in the documentation"
Corollary
All sins are forgiven if they are documented beforehand
Note
Seriously, I don't care how bloody carefully it is documented, the default behavior of a database should not include silently losing information.
Corollary
All sins are forgiven if they are documented beforehand
Note
Seriously, I don't care how bloody carefully it is documented, the default behavior of a database should not include silently losing information.
Tilera - Less is More?
While I was away, Tilera seems to have expanded from their 64 core start to a whole plethora of CPUs. There are 9, 16, and 36 CPU models - I suppose to support people who actually want fewer cores in their servers.
Mind you, that could make sense from a power perspective - if you don't need the capacity, why burn up juice?
Then again, if you're running things at a scale where you actually worry about power consumption, I'd probably guess that you want the cores.
Anyhow, they're out there, for those who want 'em.
That said, I wonder what happened to the 100 core model. Its referenced all over the place on their product pages, but I don't see any product literature...
