Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Shared Google Reader Items, 3/31/2009

It's only been a weekend and a day since my last update of shared items from Google Reader. Maybe I can get back to a daily schedule!

Education:
  • Lifehacker ran through the Top 10 Tools for a Free Online Education. Many of them are very specific, but there's definitely some cool stuff out there.
  • Campus computer labs are dying, morphing instead into wifi hotspots. As a former nearly-full-time resident of the CCLI at MTU, that's a little sad. I'm not sure we would have all ended up there for a wifi hotspot.
  • Toddlers can't plan for the future much, even when told to do so; they need negative reinforcement showing them why such planning is necessary. In other words, they aren't ignoring your warnings because they're obstinate, it's because their brains don't work that way. Well, not just because they're obstinate.
Atheism:
  • This sign at Beryl Baptist Church pretty much says it all. I did the link that way hoping to push Pharyngula up in searches for "Baptist church," because that would be both funny and useful.
  • The UN is calling religion a pussy again, claiming it can't survive people making fun of it. Poor religion. So useless, so ridiculous, so unnecessary. I'm sorry, though; I'll continue to call a spade a spade, and a religion a harmful, steaming pile of bullshit.
Politics:
Science:
Technology:
The Internets:
  • Ah, browser user scripts. Is there anything you can't do? Lifehacker gave me two new things you can do: auto-hide message labels in gmail (for screens where they don't fit as well), and fix the mess that is the new Facebook. Don't believe it when Lifehacker says those things are "Firefox only." I think IE is the only browser left that doesn't support them, as long as you're using the beta Chrome 2... and even IE 8.1 is rumored to support them.
Random:
As always, leave your comments on these or anything else below.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Shared Google Reader Items, 3/27/2009

It's been a busy couple weeks since my last shared items from Google Reader update. Sorry I took so long!

Science:
  • Obama ended the ban on stem-cell research funding. Things that are stupid about the idiots who are against stem-cell funding:
    1. The things being used for research are blobs of cells. They're less human than a patch of dry skin that flakes off.
    2. The blobs of cells are incinerated when they aren't used in research. How is incinerating these blobs of cells less bad than using them to learn?
    3. The assholes love to point out that embryonic stem cells haven't shown as much promise as other types of stem cells... ya know, the types of stem cells that have received government funding for research. If embryonic stem cells are so great, why can't researchers learn things from them when the research isn't being done, huh??? Answer that!
  • A chimp at a Swedish zoo hoarded rocks to later throw at people. In other words, the chimp planned for future events. That is very cool.
  • These photos of undersea eruptions near Tonga are awesome, moreso after the confirmation that this event wasn't associated with a tsunami or anything.
Politics:
Education:
Technology:
Astronomy:
  • I want to believe Space Bat survived his trip, and will return one day to save us from Mothra or something.
  • The entire Cosmos series is now on Hulu. This needs to get hugely popular, inspiring someone to make a series somewhere near as awesome.
The Interwebs:
Business:
Psychology:
  • Zenhabits had some good tips for beating procrastination. #7 is best: "Put something you dread more at the top of your to-do list — you’ll put off doing that by doing the other things on your list." I've been using it (combined with Gmail Tasks), and it works like a charm. Well, better than a charm, since charms don't work.
As always, leave your comments on these or anything else below (or on Reader if you use it, with the cool new comment feature).

Monday, March 16, 2009

Making Us Less Safe

Cheney posited on Sunday that Obama's policies "raise the risk to the American people of another attack." Everyone is attacking Cheney on whether or not that statement is true, but, dammit people, it doesn't matter.

Were we to cover the United States with jails, giving each of us a cell that we never left, we would all be much safer. Bush's policies were a step in that direction. The thing they forgot is that safety isn't the only thing that matters.

It's been quoted many times in the last eight years, but, dammit, it's true:
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. —Benjamin Franklin
Why are people still arguing about this? Isn't this still the United States, the country founded on the concept of liberty? Stop it!

Sunday, March 08, 2009

Shared Google Reader Items, 3/8/2009

Here are my shared items from Google Reader. Enjoy!

Entertainment:
Geek Culture:
  • My friend Jon sent me an interesting site, listing "What's Special About This Number" for most numbers from 0 to 9999 (well, at least many of them, I didn't check whether it's more than 50%).
Technology:
  • A team at Arizona State University, working with E-Ink (the company that makes the digital ink for the Kindle and Sony Reader), have developed bendable, touch-screen e-paper. This is very, very, very interesting to me. Imagine having a reader you can roll up and put in a backpack or briefcase, but then fold out to read that day's newspaper or a new book. Neat.
  • A bionic eye has given a blind man weak sight. It's a big step in an awesome direction.
  • The Kepler space telescope, which will search for Earth-like extra-solar planets, launched successfully Friday night. I thought that was awesome enough, but then I found out (by crossposting my Google Reader links on Facebook) that a childhood friend-of-the-family worked on the launch as a NASA engineer. I'm so jealous.
Programming:
Science:
The Interwebs:
  • PDFVue lets you edit PDF documents online. Convenient.
  • Dropbox is a cool way to synchronize files between computers (for example, I use it to transfer docs from my office computer to home, and vice versa). If you sign up through that link, I get extra storage. It's win-win!
  • Stephen Wolfram claims that he has a site that can answer questions (ie, when you search for "How many bones are in the human body?", it will return an answer, rather than a list of pages that might have the answer). That will be very interesting if it actually works (come May, when the site says it will be available).
Politics:
As always, leave your comments on these or anything else below.

Monday, March 02, 2009

Shared Google Reader Items, 3/2/2009

Here are my shared items from Google Reader. Enjoy!

Science:
Technology:
  • Penn State and Virginia Commonwealth U researchers have found a new trick for producing hydrogen gas that sounds very, very interesting. This could potentially be a world-changer. From what I gather, it sounds a whole lot like seems-free-but-isn't-technically-I-guess energy, which makes me skeptical, but goddam does it sound interesting.
  • To go along with that potential alternative energy neatness, solar panels have reached $1 a Watt.
Digital Rights:
Entertainment:
Random:

As always, leave your comments on these or anything else below.