SCRAPBOOK

Scrapbook for accumulating URLs and short selections (^_^)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface
The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a standard (see RFC 3875: CGI Version 1.1) that defines how web server software can delegate the generation of web pages to a text-based application. Such applications are known as CGI scripts; they can be written in any programming language, although scripting languages are often used.

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Kensington&state=MD&site=LWX&textField1=39.0259&textField2=-77.0732&mp=1
Late Afternoon: Snow. High near 29. North wind around 17 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. Total daytime snow accumulation of less than one inch possible.

Tonight: Snow, mainly before midnight. Low around 20. Blustery, with a north wind between 21 and 23 mph, with gusts as high as 33 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%. New snow accumulation of less than one inch possible.

Monday: Cloudy, then gradually becoming mostly sunny, with a high near 30. Windy, with a northwest wind between 23 and 26 mph, with gusts as high as 39 mph.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P%C3%B3lya
George Pólya (December 13, 1887 – September 7, 1985, in Hungarian Pólya György) was a Hungarian mathematician. He is most noted for his work in heuristics and mathematics education, publishing several books on the subject, the most famous of which is the celebrated How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/central/
Want to be extra sure about a site’s legitimacy before you make a purchase? Click on a site favicon for an instant identity overview. Another click digs deeper: how many times have you visited? Are your passwords saved? Check up on suspicious sites, avoid Web forgeries and make sure a site is what it claims to be.

http://zhurnaly.com/
So how to grab a text selection and stash it with the source URL? It took me an embarrassingly long amount of messing around to relearn enough Javascript and Perl, but now I've got a pre-beta prototype. This "Scrapbook" bookmarklet throws the information to a small program on the zhurnaly.com server which catches it and appends it to an HTML file. To try it out, copy this text and put it into a bookmark in your browser:

javascript:location.href='http://zhurnaly.com/cgi-bin/scrapbook.cgi?X='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&Y='+encodeURIComponent(window.getSelection())
To use the Scrapbook, highlight some text on a web page and click the Scrapbook bookmarklet. You'll see the address of the page as a link, followed by the selected text. Neat! The default demo scrapbook lives at http://zhurnaly.com/scrapbook.html.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=38.9846+-76.9233&z=17&t=h

http://zhurnaly.com/cgi-bin/wiki/Scrapbook_Bookmarklet_Version_0.1

http://catalog.umd.edu/F/YVFTAJD17KQ9D8X2P1REYAATPKLQ1KH364N44PJ7C8MDTX85R8-08309?func=item-global&doc_library=MAI01&doc_number=000479180&year=&volume=&sub_library=CPENG&type=02
UMCP EPSL Periodical Stacks TA409.E5 v.6 (1974) Non-Circulating / On Shelf

http://catalog.umd.edu/F/YVFTAJD17KQ9D8X2P1REYAATPKLQ1KH364N44PJ7C8MDTX85R8-01169?func=find-b&=&=&=&local_base=cp&request=0013-7944&find_code=022&pds_handle=2712201019381411974427201012381419
title Engineering fracture mechanics.
published New York : Pergamon Press, c1968-
description v. : ill. ; 25 cm.

http://www.sv.vt.edu/classes/MSE2094_NoteBook/97ClassProj/anal/yue/energy.html
Energy Release Rate

The energy release rate often denoted by G is the amount of energy, per unit length along the crack edge, that is supplied by the elastic energy in the body and by the loading system in creating the new fracture surface area. In terms of the stress intensity factor there is relationship called the Irwin relationship. Note that there our two models for the stress intensity factor one for plane stress and plane strain.

(Plane Strain)

G: the energy release rate.
n: Poisson's Ratio.
K: the stress intensity factor.
E: the modulus of elasticity.

G=K2/E (Plane Stress)

G: the energy release rate.
K: the stress intensity factor.
E: the modulus of elasticity.

The total energy release rate in combined mode cracking can be obtained by adding the energies from the different modes (Figure 4.),

Fig. 4 Three modes of crack surface displacements Mode I (opening or tensile mode), Mode II (sliding mode), and Mode III (tearing mode).
(From Parton V.Z. Fracture Mechanics from Theory to Practice Pg. 66 Figure 47, Gordon and Breach Science Publishers.)

These models by Irwin started the foundation of linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM). This discipline of fracture mechanics characterizes the state of material loading over a volume of sufficient size that the fracture strength of many engineering materials can be given in terms of the critical (maximum) stress intensity factor, KIC.

http://www.happinessinthisworld.com/2011/01/09/why-we-quit/
We don’t end up quitting because we find ourselves facing too many obstacles or obstacles that are too strong. We end up quitting because we’re too weak. I firmly believe, however, the inflection point at which we can no longer avoid paying attention to the idea of quitting—that is, the point at which our strength fails us—can be changed. We can become stronger by challenging our weakness even if at first we don’t succeed. Increasing resilience, both mental and physical, is an arduous process that’s rarely linear. That is, it’s a process filled with stops and starts, periods of progress and periods of regression.

I quit running before I finished my route many mornings at first. But the benefit of the effort I made in running up to the point I quit weren’t nullified by my quitting. Those efforts strengthened me enough over time that eventually I became capable of meeting my goal consistently, i.e., reached my previous level of fitness. But only because I didn’t allow my quitting on any one day to stop me from going back out the next.

This same principle applies any time we make to break new ground in any arena. The key to success is simply to keep coming back for more—even if you quit short of your goal several times over—until you find yourself strong enough not to give in when your body or your mind are telling you to. Just because you do quit—even a hundred times in a row—the experiences you have up until the various points at which you do are the very things that develop the resilience you need to win in the end. What if you need to fail a hundred times to gain the ability to succeed on the 101st?

The risk of becoming grounded in self-defeating thoughts when you’re defeated by yourself (i.e., you choose to give up), we should note, is far greater than when you’re defeated by something else . It may very well be psychologically easier to get yourself to try again in the latter case than in the former because in the former you’re far more likely to buy into a narrative that defines you as a quitter and therefore undeserving of success.

But this is a false narrative. Even if you failed because you chose to give up, you can still try again. You must constantly remind yourself that having tried at all has increased your chances of ignoring the voices in your head urging you to quit the next time. Always remember, the key to victory is strength, and the key to developing strength is trying again, no matter what the reason you failed before.

http://www.happinessinthisworld.com/2011/01/09/why-we-quit/
I quit running before I finished my route many mornings at first. But the benefit of the effort I made in running up to the point I quit weren’t nullified by my quitting. Those efforts strengthened me enough over time that eventually I became capable of meeting my goal consistently, i.e., reached my previous level of fitness. But only because I didn’t allow my quitting on any one day to stop me from going back out the next.

This same principle applies any time we make to break new ground in any arena. The key to success is simply to keep coming back for more—even if you quit short of your goal several times over—until you find yourself strong enough not to give in when your body or your mind are telling you to. Just because you do quit—even a hundred times in a row—the experiences you have up until the various points at which you do are the very things that develop the resilience you need to win in the end. What if you need to fail a hundred times to gain the ability to succeed on the 101st?

The risk of becoming grounded in self-defeating thoughts when you’re defeated by yourself (i.e., you choose to give up), we should note, is far greater than when you’re defeated by something else . It may very well be psychologically easier to get yourself to try again in the latter case than in the former because in the former you’re far more likely to buy into a narrative that defines you as a quitter and therefore undeserving of success.

But this is a false narrative. Even if you failed because you chose to give up, you can still try again. You must constantly remind yourself that having tried at all has increased your chances of ignoring the voices in your head urging you to quit the next time. Always remember, the key to victory is strength, and the key to developing strength is trying again, no matter what the reason you failed before.

http://physics.aps.org/articles/v4/4
As Aharon Katchalsky, who is largely credited with bringing nonequilibrium thermodynamics to biology, purportedly said, “It is easier to make a theory of everything than a theory of something.”

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Boston&state=MA&site=BOX&textField1=42.3583&textField2=-71.0603&e=0
Wednesday: Snow. The snow could be heavy at times. High near 31. Blustery, with a north wind between 22 and 25 mph, with gusts as high as 45 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow accumulation of 8 to 12 inches possible.

http://www.sciencecompany.com/lab/
Isaac Asimov wrote about chemists in his 1965 work, "To Tell a Chemist"...

Since I know the chemical profession best, I devised two questions, for instance, to tell a chemist from a nonchemist. Here they are:

1. How do you pronounce UNIONIZED?
2. What is a mole?

In response to the first question, the nonchemist is bound to say "YOO-yun-ized," which is the logical pronunciation, and the dictionary pronunciation, too. The chemist, however, would never think of such a thing; he would say without a moment's hesitation: "un-EYE-on-ized."

In response to the second question, the nonchemist is bound to say, "A little furry animal that burrows underground," unless he is a civil engineer who will say, "A breakwater." A chemist, on the other hand, will clear his throat, and say, "Well, it's like this -" and keep talking for hours.

There's my cue. Shall we talk about the chemical version of the little furry animal?

http://mcrrc.org/racing/2011/ShootingStarr.htm
57 50/150 6/16 666 Mark Zimmermann M 58 Kensington MD MCRRC 27:24

about:blank

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article7171325.ece
The new neurosexism
Cordelia Fine has produced a witty and meticulously researched exposé of the sloppy studies that pass for scientific evidence in so many of today's bestselling books on sex differences

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article7171325.ece
Over and over, if you watch what people do rather than what they say they would do, and vary the situations in which they do it, gender differences fade to the vanishing point. As Fine puts it, “Pick a gender difference, any difference. Now watch very closely as – poof! – it’s gone”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Perrin_number
Named after...?

Well, one wants to know who that "R. Perrin" was. Was he French? At least the full Christian name.82.57.91.93 17:13, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

How do you propose to find out this information? I don't think it's a matter of not wanting to know, so much as that it's not obvious how to discover it. —David Eppstein 17:37, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/12dfed7268ccee56

http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/2011/2/how-our-minds-make-sound-into-music
How Our Minds Make Sound into Music
Peter Pesic

THE MUSIC INSTINCT: How Music Works and Why We Can’t Do Without It. Philip Ball. x + 452 pp. Oxford University Press, 2010. $29.95.

http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=5950
Review - Contemplative Aging
A Way of Being in Later Life
by Edmund Sherman
Gordian Knot, 2010
Review by Wendy C. Hamblet, Ph.D.
Feb 22nd 2011 (Volume 15, Issue 8)

http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=5949
Review - The Spirit of the Buddha
by Martine Batchelor
Yale University Press , 2010

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/mar/10/how-we-know/?pagination=false
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
by James Gleick
Pantheon, 526 pp., $29.95

http://mcrrc.org/racing/2011/Seneca-Creek-Trail-50K.html
157 111/122 3690 Mark Zimmermann M 58 Kensington MD 07:01:51 13:35

http://shiningsultra.blogspot.com/2011/03/balance.html
6. It takes courage to say no. In the early years of my love affair with ultras, I said "yes" to every run invitation. 35 miles on the Massanutten Trail in late February beginning at 6:00pm and finishing at 8:00am? Sure. 71 miles of the Ring on the Massanutten Trail with very little training and experience? Of course! A midnight run on the (you guessed it) Massanutten Trail in the pouring rain for four hours? Wouldn't miss it! I agreed to all those runs due to a combo of peer pressure, FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), and naivete. As a result, I got burned out, injured, and almost died of hypothermia...and now I absolutely refuse to run on the Massanutten Trail except for once a year. The lesson? Don't be stupid. And see # 7...

http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=5980
Pryce-Jones has distilled Happiness down to five core elements, the Five C’s, namely, Contribution, Conviction and Culture, Commitment and Confidence, which are all about achieving your potential, within the greater, outer levels of abstraction in the workplace, namely Pride, Recognition and Trust. Summarizing these: they showed that

· You are responsible for being happy or unhappy

· You have many more choices than you think

· Self-Awareness is the place to begin, namely by measuring how happy you are.

http://focus.aps.org/story/v27/st10
A recent theory solves some problems in cosmology and particle physics by proposing that the early universe contained fewer spatial dimensions than the three we see today. In the 11 March Physical Review Letters, a team describes a specific test of the theory using LISA, a planned, space-based observatory for gravitational waves. The theorists say the waves can't exist in fewer than three dimensions, so above a certain frequency--representing the oldest waves--LISA should see no primordial waves. Although the theory is speculative, some researchers believe cosmic ray data has already shown hints of vanishing dimensions at high energies. The team says the new test would be more conclusive than previous results.

The vanishing dimensions hypothesis predicts that, at extremely high energies and temperatures, the three dimensions of space that we are familiar with reduce to two, or even one dimension [1]. So in the hot conditions of the very early universe, there would have been fewer dimensions, and then, as the universe cooled, additional spatial dimensions would have appeared, one-by-one. The theory also proposes that our current universe has four spatial dimensions, but we only experience a three-dimensional "slice" of it. The appearance of the fourth spatial dimension gave rise to extra energy, which generated a boost to the expansion of the universe, according to the theory. This boost could explain the accelerating expansion of the universe that was discovered in 1998 and that is usually described as resulting from a mysterious "dark energy" pervading the universe. The theory also solves some problems in particle physics, says Dejan Stojkovic of the State University of New York at Buffalo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_of_a_Pilgrim
The Way of a Pilgrim is the English title of a 19th century Russian work, recounting the narrator's journey across Russia while practicing the Jesus Prayer. It is unknown if the book is literally an account of a single pilgrim, or if it uses a fictional pilgrim's journey as a vehicle to teach the practice of ceaseless inner prayer and communion with God.[1] The Russian original, or a copy of it, was present at a Mount Athos monastery in Greece in the 19th century, and was first published in Kazan in 1884.[2]

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/buddhism_and_the_brain/
Both Buddhism and neuroscience converge on a similar point of view: The way it feels isn’t how it is. There is no permanent, constant soul in the background. Even our language about ourselves is to be distrusted (requiring the tortured negation of anatta). In the broadest strokes then, neuroscience and Buddhism agree.

How did Buddhism get so much right? I speak here as an outsider, but it seems to me that Buddhism started with a bit of empiricism.

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/buddhism_and_the_brain/
Buddhism’s core tenets significantly overlap with findings from modern neurology and neuroscience. So how did Buddhism come close to getting the brain right?

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/mar/24/can-brain-explain-your-mind/?pagination=false
Can the Brain Explain Your Mind?
March 24, 2011
Colin McGinn

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/sports/19burla.html?pagewanted=2
She spent the few weeks before her surgery coming to terms with what had happened to her.

“There was a fleeting moment when I was first diagnosed when I questioned, Why my leg?” Burla said. “But the answer slapped me in the face instantaneously. Had the tumor not been in my leg, it would have been ignored and chances are the diagnosis would have been too late. Running saved my life.

“There was also a day in February when I had an epiphany,” she added. “I had lived my life without regrets. I had loved with my whole heart, lived each day for all it was, done my best while doing the right thing, and I was at peace. I realized that by living without fear, I wasn’t afraid of what the future may or may not hold. If my time was up, then I could leave this earth satisfied. If I was to live another day, then I would continue according to plan.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaman_(term)
Gaman (我慢), or gamandzuyoi (我慢強い), a compound with tsuyoi meaning "strong"[1] is a Japanese term which is generally translated to "patience and perseverance". It is also described as a law, a type of person, etho, trait and culture. It means to do one's best in distressed times and to maintain self-control and discipline.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/opinion/20pubed.html
Franklin Roosevelt said that it took him an hour to write a one-hour speech. A 30-minute version took him two hours. His most difficult task was to create something that could be delivered in two minutes — that took the better part of a day. Had he been restricted to 28 words (140 characters), it might have taken him months

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/books/review/book-review-the-most-human-human-by-brian-christian.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y
THE MOST HUMAN HUMAN

What Talking With Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive

By Brian Christian

http://www.happinessinthisworld.com/2011/03/27/when-someone-you-love-is-unhappy/
# Maintain appropriate boundaries. Remind yourself constantly that your loved one’s unhappiness is not your own. You may become unhappy in response to their unhappiness, but your unhappiness then becomes your responsibility. You will be tempted to resolve your unhappiness by trying to resolve their unhappiness (not to mention, in a time frame that suits you), but that way leads only to frustration and resentment. Treat the two as separate things that require separate solutions.
# Allow your loved one space to be unhappy. People often become unhappy for good reasons, i.e., as a result of a blow or a loss of some kind. After a while, most people most of the time (though, it’s important to note, not all the time) find their level of happiness returning to its baseline. Be patient. You often don’t need to do anything at all but tolerate their dip in mood. If you’re dealing with someone who dips frequently or regularly, learn to recognize the signs. Dialogue with them when they’re in a good place to ask how you can best support them when they’re in a bad place. Then try out their suggestion. It may work—or it may not. If it doesn’t—if they don’t know themselves how they should be supported—try other things until you hit on what works best.
# Give yourself space from them. When people are unhappy, being around them is difficult. In giving them space, you give yourself space as well. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking they need you around all the time to handle their unhappy feelings.
# Defend your own happiness fiercely. Misery may think it loves company, but in the long term it doesn’t. It’s more than just all right to remain happy while someone you love is miserable: it’s imperative.
# Suggest professional help. When things seem not be returning to normal, sometimes consulting a professional brings new clarity to the problem.
# Detach with love. Sometimes people are simply toxic by nature, a fact that often dawns on others around them only after time. Sometimes people refuse to take steps to make themselves feel better. As a result, sometimes you have to love them from a distance. This can be an intensely difficult decision, but sometimes it’s the right one. Give yourself permission to entertain the thought and consider it seriously if consider it seriously you should.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/business/03stream.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26
“Statistics,” says Dr. Hans Rosling, a professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, “is now the sexiest subject around.”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28642710@N00/5604606275/in/set-72157626342650221

http://www.flickr.com/photos/61330047@N02/5604761390/in/set-72157626339057557

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28642710@N00/5604606275/sizes/z/in/set-72157626342650221/

http://www.tnr.com/book/review/stanley-fish-write-sentence
The Mighty Pen

*
Simon Blackburn
Simon Blackburn
view bio
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The Mighty Pen
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Whatever You Say
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Being and Time
* April 27, 2011 | 12:00 am
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How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
by Stanley Fish

Harper Collins, 156 pp., $19.99

http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=6060
In her examination of Mill, Carlisle has gone beyond the contrasting drafts of the Autobiography. She consults, for one thing, his diary, examining his declared regret that he had 'procrastinated in the sacred duty of fixing in writing, so that it may not die with me, everything that I have in my mind which is capable of assisting the destruction of error and prejudice and the growth of just feelings and true opinions'. Carlisle comments on that conviction that the contents of his mind could be fixed on paper like an entomological specimen.

http://zhurnaly.com/scrapbook.html
Scrapbook for accumulating URLs and short selections (^_^)

http://mcrrc.org/racing/2011/Brookeville---Capital-for-a-Day-5K.html
47 43/101 7/14 666 Mark Zimmermann M 58 Kensington MD MCRRC 22:19 7:11

http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200904/images/cartooniverse-large.jpg

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/business/media/13carr.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
The lessons from this last week were anticipated by Martin Lomasney, a ward boss in Boston at the turn of the last century. “Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink.”

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/mar/24/can-brain-explain-your-mind/?pagination=false

Can the Brain Explain Your Mind?
March 24, 2011
Colin McGinn

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fd20110605bj.html
"Maybe I'm biased," he writes, "but I think literature is extremely important to us as human beings. People who are satisfied with TV and daily conversation do not seem to me to be fully developed human beings."

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts-apparel/unisex/popculture/e95c/#tabs
Somebody's Got To

So you have this new thing to build. The project manager wants it on time. The program manager wants it under budget. The IT architect wants it without modifying the existing infrastructure. The documentation person wants it without too many tweaks to the current help screens. And you. You know how you want it? You want it so that the people it's intended for can use it effectively and efficiently to achieve whatever end they're after. You with your CRAZY aspirations. You'll be the death of us all. (Also, thank you thank you thank you for having our best experience in mind even when we don't know what that might be.)

A vector-ized fist with the words "I fight for the users" in a turquoise blue on a black, 100% cotton t-shirt.

http://www.slate.com/id/2297019/pagenum/all/
The Liberty Scam
Why even Robert Nozick, the philosophical father of libertarianism, gave up on the movement he inspired.
By Stephen Metcalf

about:blank

http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/oddmuse?action=rc;days=7;all=1;showedit=1

http://www.tricycle.com/interview/freelance-monotheist
The Freelance Monotheist

An Interview With Karen Armstrong

http://www.tricycle.com/blog/what-ego-if-not-collection-judgments-and-opinions
In his Week 3 talk, Ezra cites an example from his own marriage. When he and his wife first got together 20 years ago, Ezra was working with his own tendencies to be critical and judgmental. Also seeing that his wife had no interest in being "fixed" by him, he made it his practice to avoid all judgments and criticisms whenever possible. Through this, Ezra learned something amazing, that his judgments were rarely about her and were almost always about him. He explains that he and his wife have very different styles regarding possessions, that he is a minimalist who likes to own very little and his wife likes to go to thrift stores and bring home all sorts of "little treasures." Ezra initially believed that his style was "more Zen like," but as he worked with the practice of withholding criticism, he began to see that his inner state driving his criticism was not some great Zen virtue but was actually just a fear of chaos and loss of control that was being triggered by his wife's rather ordinary, modest, and joyful patronage of thrift stores. Learning this, it became easy to withhold his criticisms because he realized they were really about him. He didn't have to ask his wife to take away his discomfort, he could just deal with it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beard
The Greek word for beard: πώγων (pōgōn) is the root of a number of technical and humorous words relating to beards. For example the study of beards is called "pogonology", giving rise to "pogonologist" and similar words. Those terms are fairly respectable because the study is non-trivial (in fact challenging) and apart from constituting a specialism in the field of dermatology, research pogonologists commonly are employed by major producers of cosmetic products and equipment.

Perhaps less seriously, other words relating to beards have been coined. For example some dictionaries now list "pogonotomy" (literally "beard cutting") as a term for shaving. Its converse is "pogonotrophy" for beard growing. Such words commonly are used to convey humorous pretentiousness. On the other hand, the "pogon" root and derivatives such as "pog-" are fairly common in biological nomenclature. For instance Pogonomyrmex is the genus of "bearded ants".[1][2] The name of Pogonymus pogognathus, a small Hawaiian fish, includes the root twice.[3] Dipogon lignosus is a trailing leguminous plant.[4] The name means something like "two-bearded, woody".

In the course of history, men with facial hair have been ascribed various attributes such as wisdom and knowledge, sexual virility, masculinity, or high social status; and, conversely, filthiness, crudeness, or an eccentric disposition.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/on-experts-and-global-warming/?hp
The essential point, however, is that once we have accepted the authority of a particular scientific discipline, we cannot consistently reject its conclusions. To adapt Schopenhauer’s famous remark about causality, science is not a taxi-cab that we can get in and out of whenever we like.

http://www.amazon.com/review/RY5O1B3PBMBJS
In contrast, when I read George Johnson's recent biography of Murray Gell-Mann (Strange Beauty), I couldn't help thinking, "That's Murray!" "Yes, that's Murray!" (Recently I spoke with some close friends of Gell-Mann who felt the same way.) Author Johnson did have the opportunity to spend a considerable amount of time with Gell-Mann and that certainly comes through. To a large degree you will get a strong sense of what Gell-Mann's personality is like. He can be extremely formidable, sarcastic with distinguished rivals as well as fools (he does not suffer fools gladly) and arrogant (adapting a phrase from Issac Newton, he once said, the reason I can see further than others is because I am surrounded by dwarfs).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oahe_Dam

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova
Solitary stars with a mass below approximately 9 solar masses, such as the Sun

http://lesswrong.com/lw/vs/selling_nonapples/
Programmers have a phrase called the "Turing Tarpit"; it describes a situation where everything is possible, but nothing is easy. A Universal Turing Machine can simulate any possible computer, but only at an immense expense in time and memory. If you program in a high-level language like Python, then - while most programming tasks become much simpler - you may occasionally find yourself banging up against the walls imposed by the programming language; sometimes Python won't let you do certain things. If you program directly in machine language, raw 1s and 0s, there are no constraints; you can do anything that can possibly be done by the computer chip; and it will probably take you around a thousand times as much time to get anything done. You have to do, all by yourself, everything that a compiler would normally do on your behalf.

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-new-generation/?utm_source=email
The New Generation
ShareThis

By Alesksandr Solzhenitsyn

Translated by Kenneth Lantz

http://merlesneed.blogspot.com/
Merle Wayne Sneed

The periodic ramblings of an old kook.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/opinion/when-august-was-cold-and-dark.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
It was, as Cherry-Garrard later wrote, “the worst journey in the world,” a phrase he took as the title for his 1922 narrative of the Scott expedition, one of the greatest books ever written about exploration. Its author was the least likely member of that crew. Cherry-Garrard was nearly blind without his glasses, which he was unable to wear while sledging. He had little scientific training and had never been to the Antarctic. We have his book only because he was not chosen by Scott for the final push to the South Pole, which killed all its members, including Wilson and Bowers.

“And then we heard the Emperors,” Cherry-Garrard writes of the climax of their winter journey, “trumpeting with their metallic voices.” The contrast between those birds — thoroughly at home on the sea ice — and the men of the Crozier expedition could hardly be greater. They “were already beginning to think of death as a friend.” But this month, let us imagine the relief that Wilson, Bowers and Cherry-Garrard must have felt a century ago as they wrestled out of their sledge harnesses and stepped into the light and the warmth of a small wooden hut.

http://www.oldspice.com/products/product/164/old-spice-fresh-collection-deodorant-komodo/
While other men may choose to transport themselves via minivans, bikes or filthy taxis, you choose to ride two Komodo dragons, which you strap onto your feet like shoes. You also choose to wear the fresh smell of Old Spice Komodo, which provides anyone close with a light nose-tickle of exotic winds and ornate pagodas. And we’ll just end this short piece of Internet product copy with this: is there a better image than a man walking off into the sunset with live Komodo shoes, both hands raised triumphantly in the air? It’s a rhetorical question.

about:blank

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128231.400-ultimate-logic-to-infinity-and-beyond.html?full=true
Ultimate logic: To infinity and beyond

01 August 2011 by Richard Elwes
Magazine issue 2823. Subscribe and save
The mysteries of infinity could lead us to a fantastic structure above and beyond mathematics as we know it

http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=6181
Review - Coffee - Philosophy for Everyone
Grounds for Debate
by Scott F. Parker and Michael W. Austin (Editors)
Wiley-Blackwell, 2011

http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/2011/6/information-and-human-society
As I read this book, I found myself wishing that Gleick had grounded his presentation in historical statistics on volumes of data, information and knowledge. Over the past 500 years, there has been relatively steady growth in the number of books published each year, the sizes of large libraries and the volume of communication—initially via postal services, later by telegraph and telephone, and finally over the Internet. Many developments were stimulated by this growth, and others obviously were required to enable it. There are many hints of this in The Information. For example, there is a brief discussion of growth in size of dictionaries. Also, Gleick notes that library catalogs were initially printed with books listed by subject, and then, as collections grew, alphabetically; later yet, as growth continued, card catalogs were introduced. This was a reflection of the growing complexity and sophistication of human society over time. By concentrating more than he does on quantitative measures of information, Gleick might better have illuminated a number of issues, including the thorny question of apportioning credit for scientific, economic and technological progress.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/books/review/the-beginning-of-infinity-by-david-deutsch-book-review.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
It hardly seems worth saying (to begin with) that the chutzpah of this guy is almost beyond belief, and that any book with these sorts of ambitions is necessarily, in some overall sense, a failure, or a fraud, or a joke, or madness. But Deutsch (who is famous, among other reasons, for his pioneering contributions to the field of quantum computation) is so smart, and so strange, and so creative, and so inexhaustibly curious, and so vividly intellectually alive, that it is a distinct privilege, notwithstanding everything, to spend time in his head. He writes as if what he is giving us amounts to a tight, grand, cumulative system of ideas — something of almost mathematical rigor — but the reader will do much better to approach this book with the assurance that nothing like that actually turns out to be the case. I like to think of it as more akin to great, wide, learned, meandering conversation — something that belongs to the genre of, say, Robert Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy” — never dull, often startling and fantastic and beautiful, often at odds with itself, sometimes distasteful, sometimes unintentionally hilarious, sometimes (even, maybe, secondarily) true.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/books/review/the-beginning-of-infinity-by-david-deutsch-book-review.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
There is a famous collection of arguments from the pioneering days of computer science to the effect that any device able to carry out every one of the entries on a certain relatively short list of elementary logical operations could, in some finite number of steps, calculate the value of any mathematical function that is calculable at all. Devices like that are called “universal computers.” And what interests Deutsch about these arguments is that they imply that there is a certain definite point, a certain definite moment, in the course of acquiring the capacity to perform more and more of the operations on that list, when such a machine will abruptly become as good a calculator as anything, in principle, can be.

Deutsch thinks that such “jumps to universality” must occur not only in the capacity to calculate things, but also in the capacity to understand things, and in the closely related capacity to make things happen. And he thinks that it was precisely such a threshold that was crossed with the invention of the scientific method. There were plenty of things we humans could do, of course, prior to the invention of that method: agriculture, or the domestication of animals, or the design of sundials, or the construction of pyramids. But all of a sudden, with the introduction of that particular habit of concocting and evaluating new hypotheses, there was a sense in which we could do anything.

http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Learning-the-art-of-letting-go-at-trapeze-school-2116801.php
The Trapeze Club in New Paltz teaches people how to soar. Students -- ranging in age from 3 to 60 -- travel from other states from May to September to trapeze at New Paltz.

Students experience something else in that two hours -- a release from the fight with their boss, a vacation from the teenage daughter who's started the silent treatment or a break from the paperwork stacking up on their desk. They've come to live out their childhood dreams of flying. They want to trade their realities for fantasy.

Terry Bernardo takes part in that fantasy. For two hours a week, she is transformed from 45-year-old Ulster County legislator and business owner to part-time trapeze artist.

Bernardo is an admitted trapeze addict. In a field where her co-workers die from stress-related health issues, people tell her she looks great. Trapeze is Bernardo's therapy.

"It's a way to turn all that noise in your brain off, take a break from it," she says. "Politics can be a bottomless pit of time, money and emotion. Trapeze gives you a break from that."

http://tinybuddha.com/blog/lessons-on-the-trapeze-the-art-of-making-things-happen/
“Smile and listen. Those are the only two rules you need to follow to excel at the trapeze.”

I kept waiting to hear more. Smile and listen? That’s it? How do those apply?

But when I was on the trapeze it was interesting how those two commands helped me glide through the air. When I listened and took action just when they told me to, grace would take over and my move through the air would be effortless.

When I was driving home, I realized how these two commands also apply to life.

The purpose of the smile command is to let go of resistance.

When you’re taking on anything new where fear can creep in–like flying on a trapeze–you have to find a way to tell your fear that you are okay, that this is okay. That you’re going to be fine. To smile is a decision; and in making this deliberate decision, you’re setting the tone of your own experience.

This reminds me of a wise teacher I once had. Whenever I’d complain about something I had to do but didn’t want to, she would tell me: Change your mind.

Decide you want to do it. Decide there is something in it for you. Decide that you are going to have a good time doing it. And invariably, I would, but it put me, not my circumstances, in charge of that decision. I think the same concept goes for the smile.

The listen command, was more interesting. Darrel, a part of the team that was holding the ropes on the ground, was watching us fly and timing our actions.

We were supposed to listen for his cue to bring our legs over the bar, because from his vantage point, he knew the precise moment when the wind would be at my back and grace would take over.

Outside of the trapeze world, this listen command is relevant because our intuition–our higher guidance, the universe, whatever you want to call it–has a similar vantage point.

It’s at ground control wanting to assist us in our forward momentum. It knows what we want and the quickest route to get there. We get the hunches, we get the cues, we get the nudges–but how often do we follow them?

http://zhurnaly.com/cgi-bin/wiki?action=rc;days=3;all=1;showedit=1

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/confessions-of-an-ex-moralist/
The task seemed squarely on our human shoulders to figure out how to act on particular occasions, and how to live in general. Yes, there were deep problems to unravel, but they were subject to rational resolution. Most of my thinking concerned the dispute between the moral doctrine known as consequentialism and so-called deontological ethics: is it the outcome of our actions that determines their moral value, or, alternatively, the quality of the act itself? For example, is a lie that leads to something good thereby permissible, perhaps even obligatory, or would it be forbidden simply in virtue of being a lie? This kind of inquiry is known as normative ethics.

Then there is another kind of motive for doing ethics, more practical in nature. So-called applied ethics seeks to find answers for the pressing moral problems of the day. Can abortion ever be justified? Capital punishment? Euthanasia? War? In my case the plight of nonhuman animals at human hands became the great preoccupation. I could think of no greater atrocity than the confinement and slaughter of untold billions of innocent creatures for sustenance that can be provided through other, more humane diets.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/2011/08/18/gIQA7yxNXJ_story_2.html
Epicurus once said, ‘If a little is not enough for you, nothing is.’

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/2011/08/18/gIQA7yxNXJ_story_1.html
“I wasn’t depressed or fighting bipolar disorder. I didn’t need Paxil. I just needed the skills to think clearly about what went wrong,” said the woman, who works in graphic art. “I heard online about these shrink-thinker types who used John Milton, Adam Smith and Socrates, and I called right away. I wanted to know how our greatest minds would see my situation.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/2011/08/18/gIQA7yxNXJ_story.html
Murphy is one of an increasing number of philosophical counselors, practitioners who are putting their esoteric learning to practical use helping people with some of life’s persistent afflictions. Though they help clients cope with many of the same issues that conventional therapists do — divorce, job stress, the economic downturn, parenting woes, chronic illness and matters of the heart — their methods are very different.

They’re like intellectual life coaches. Very intellectual. They have in-depth knowledge of Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist theories on the nature of life and can recite passages from Martin Heidegger’s phenomenological explorations of the question of being. And they use them to help clients overcome their mother issues.

Philosophical counselors are becoming increasingly popular at a time when Americans are taking more antidepressants than ever before. According to a study published in the August issue of Health Affairs, non-psychiatrists are increasingly prescribing drugs for patients who haven’t even gotten a diagnosis of mental illness.

“Not everyone needs to be medicated,” said Murphy, a thin woman with long, gray hair. “Whereas drugs can treat the body,” she said, “there may be other things that the soul needs.”

Unlike a visit to a conventional psychologist or psychotherapist, seeing Murphy won’t involve lying on a couch or reaching for the obligatory tissue box. Though she works from a home library lined with tomes by Albert Camus, Søren Kierkegaard and Immanuel Kant, Murphy takes clients outside for brisk strolls through her leafy neighborhood because Kant believed that walking helped thinking and was soothing for the soul.

http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/oddmuse/Raw_HTML
Use the following rule if you want to allow raw HTML on all pages:

push(@MyRules, \&RawHtmlRule);

sub RawHtmlRule {
if (m/\G\<html\>(.*?)\<\/html\>/cgs) {
return UnquoteHtml($1);
}
return undef;
}

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/books/review/willpower-by-roy-f-baumeister-and-john-tierney-book-review.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
“Willpower”is filled with advice about what to do with your willpower. Build up its strength, the authors suggest, with small but regular exercises, like tidiness and good posture. Don’t try to tame every bad habit at once. Watch for symptoms of ego fatigue, because in that recovery period you are especially likely to blow your stack, your budget and your diet. For that matter, don’t diet in the first place, since it starves the very system that implements self-control. Learn from Ulysses and tie yourself to the mast or fill your ears with wax so temptations are blocked out or you are unable to act on them. The authors also recommend Web sites and software that can audit, broadcast, punish or pre-empt lapses of will — a godsend, in particular, to Internet junkies and other infomaniacs.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/09/05/110905fa_fact_macfarquhar

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/09/05/110905fa_fact_macfarquhar
ANNALS OF IDEASHOW TO BE GOODAn Oxford philosopher thinks he can distill all morality into a formula. Is he right?
by Larissa MacFarquhar
SEPTEMBER 5, 2011
Subscribers can read this article on our iPad app or in our online archive. (Others can pay for access.)

PRINTE-MAILSINGLE PAGE
KEYWORDS
Derek Parfit; Philosophers; Brain Transplants; Personal Identities; Moral Truths; Morality; “Reasons and Persons” (1984)
ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF IDEAS about the moral philosopher Derek Parfit. Most of us care about our future because it is ours—but this most fundamental human instinct is based on a mistake, Derek Parfit believes. Personal identity is not what matters. Parfit is thought by many to be the most original moral philosopher in the English-speaking world. He has written two books, both of which have been called the most important works to be written in the field in more than a century—since in 1874, when Henry Sidgwick’s “The Method of Ethics,” was published. Parfit’s first book, “Reasons and Persons,” was published in 1984, when he was forty-one, and caused a sensation. The book was dense with science-fiction thought experiments, all urging a shift toward a more impersonal, non-physical, and selfless view of human life. Parfit’s view resembles in some ways the Buddhist view of the self. After Parfit finished “Reasons and Persons,” he became increasingly disturbed by how many people believed that there was no such thing as objective moral truth. This led him to write his second book, “On What Matters,” which was published this summer. Parfit lacks the normal anti-social emotions—envy, malice, dominance. He is less aware than most of the boundaries of his self, and he is helplessly, sometimes unwillingly, empathetic. Parfit was born in China, in 1942. The following year, his family moved to England. In the early summer of 1961, he went to work at The New Yorker, as a researcher for The Talk of the Town. In the autumn of 1961, he went up to Oxford to read history. After Oxford, he went back to America for two years on a Harkness Fellowship. He decided to study philosophy, and he won a Prize Fellowship to All Souls, at Oxford, which entitled him to room and board at the college for seven years, with no teaching duties. He also had appointments at Harvard, Rutgers, and N.Y.U. Sometime around 1982 or ’83, the philosopher Janet Radcliffe Richards moved from London to Oxford, and, after she attended a seminar that Parfit was teaching, they began a relationship. Around the mid-nineties, Parfit started reading Kant. He became more and more troubled by the ways in which Kant diverged from Sidgwick, and by the way that modern Kantians disagreed with modern consequentialists and both disagreed with contractualists. He came up with what he called the Triple Theory: An act is wrong just when such acts are disallowed by some principle that is optimific, uniquely universally willable, and not reasonably rejectable. Mentions Bernard Williams. Parfit moved out of All Souls last year. Since then, he and Richards have been living together in a house in Oxford. Last August, after nearly thirty years together, they married. Meanwhile, Parfit experienced an episode of transient global amnesia. He recovered his memory, but smaller aftershocks have continued.

http://help.dottoro.com/ljcvonpc.php
[object TextRange]

http://www.webreference.com/js/column12/crossbrowser.html
Now that you know how to handle selections in Navigator 4.0x (with the getSelection() method) and Internet Explorer 4.0x (with the TextRange object), its time to discuss cross-brower implementations. Generally speaking, Navigator 4.0x supports the document.getSelection() method, while Internet Explorer 4.0x supports the document.selection object.

http://zhurnaly.com/cgi-bin/wiki/Comments_on_Scrapbook_Bookmarklet_Version_0.1
to make the bookmarklet Javascript work in IE8 (maybe!) try changing it to:

javascript:range=document.selection.createRange();location.href='http://zhurnaly.com/cgi-bin/scrapbook.cgi?X='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&Y='+encodeURIComponent(range.text);... since older versions of Internet Explorer don't handle window.getSelection() properly, so it's apparently necessary to do document.selection.createRange and then use its text ...

http://www.parkshalfmarathon.com/
Online registration is now closed. Roughly 100 spots are still open for Sunday's race and will be available this Saturday at RnJ Sports from 10am-6pm while supplies last. Saturday registration is $60, cash or check only

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/tilted-fun-zone/153088-ipad-im-totally-going-sue.html

01-27-2010, 06:35 PM #8 (permalink)
ratbastid
Darth Papa

Location: Yonder
Quote:
Originally Posted by clavus
Yup. I remember when MadTV did that. It was after my cartoon. But that's OK. I did a cartoon last year and unwittingly ripped off a Mad Magazine idea from 30 years ago.
There are no new ideas.

The idea that there are no new ideas is not a new idea.

The idea that the idea that there are no new ideas is not a new idea is not a new idea.

MAYBE the idea that the idea that the idea that there are no new ideas is not a new idea is not a new idea IS a new idea, though!

http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/silicon-valley-2011-9/
The idea that there are no new ideas is not a new idea.

http://newslite.tv/2010/04/06/7500-shoppers-unknowingly-sold.html
7,500 shoppers unknowingly sold their souls
April 6, 2010 4:24 PM
Thousands of shoppers unknowingly signed their souls over to a computer-game store after failing to read the terms and conditions on their website.

GameStation added the "immortal soul clause" to online purchases earlier this month stating customers granted them the right to claim their soul.

While all shoppers during the test were given a simple tick box option to opt out, very few did this, which would have also rewarded them with a £5 voucher.

The store claims this shows 88 percent of people do not read the terms and conditions of a website before they make a purchase.

Bosses also say they will not be enforcing their rights and will now email customers nullifying any claim on their soul.

http://newslite.tv/

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/10/meme-weaver/8625/
Meme Weaver
The author tries—and fails—to cash in on a big idea.

By MARSHALL POE

http://www.netwalk.com/~fsv/CWguide.htm#Using%20CW%20Abbreviations%20and%20Q
ADRaddress
GNgood night
RIGstation equipment
AGNagain
GNDground
RPTrepeat
BKbreak
GUDgood
SKend of transmission
BNbeen
HIthe telegraphic laugh
SRIsorry
Cyes
HRhere
SSBsingle side band
CLclosing
HVhave
TMWtomorrow
CULsee you later
HWhow
TNX-TKSthanks
DEfrom (French)
Nno
TUthank you
DXdistance
NRnumber
URyour
ESand (French)
NWnow
VYvery
FBfine business
OMold man
WXweather
GAgo ahead
PSEplease
XYLwife
GBgood bye
PWRpower
YLyoung lady
GEgood evening
Rreceived as transmitted
73best regards
GMgood morning
RCVRreceiver
88love and kisses

http://motherboard.tv/2011/9/22/strokes-of-genius-physics-greatest-beards
Strokes of Genius: Physics' Greatest Beards

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0306819163/
Marcus Aurelius: A Life

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0767930487/
The Philosophical Breakfast Club: Four Remarkable Friends Who Transformed Science and Changed the World

http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=6254
Review - Obliquity
Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly
by John Kay
Penguin Press, 2011
Review by Chris Vaughan
Oct 4th 2011 (Volume 15, Issue 40)

http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=6256
Review - What Should I Do?
Philosophers on the Good, the Bad, and the Puzzling
by Alexander George
Oxford University Press, 2010
Review by Aline Medeiros Ramos
Oct 4th 2011 (Volume 15, Issue 40)

http://www2.stetson.edu/~efriedma/topten.html
Erich's Top Ten Lists

http://www2.stetson.edu/~efriedma/topten.html
Top Ten Lists

http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/search.py?ctx=en%3Asearchbox&forum=1&query=javascript+getselection
The problem area is in this code: if (window.getSelection) { var selected_obj =
document.getElementById(myElement).contentWindow.window. ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/health/policy/08prostate.html
Treating patients with prostate cancer is a highly profitable business in the United States, and much of the practice of urology is dedicated to this fight. If men no longer get screened routinely, urologists will see a steep decline in patient visits and income. But Dr. Kapoor rejected the notion that profit plays any role in his defense of screening.

“That I’m going to treat patients that don’t need therapy is morally repugnant,” he said.

But Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, suggested that is what doctors like Dr. Kapoor are doing. “We in medicine need to look into our soul and we need to learn the truth,” he said. “If your income is dependent on you not understanding something, it is very easy not to understand something.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave
Origin of name
The science fiction television series Firefly provided the inspiration for the project's name.[11] In the series, a wave is an electronic communication, often consisting of a video call or video message.[11] During the developer preview, a number of references were made to the series, such as Lars Rasmussen replying to a message with "shiny", a word commonly used in the series to mean cool or good, and the crash message of Wave being a popular quotation from the series: "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"[3][12] Another common error message, "Everything's shiny, Cap'n. Not to fret!" is a quote from Kaylee Frye in the 2005 motion-picture Firefly continuation, Serenity, and it is matched with a sign declaring that "This wave is experiencing some turbulence and might explode. If you don't want to explode..." which is another reference to the opening of the film.

http://www.seatshield.com/product_info.php?pName=ultrasport-seatshield
Our most popular SeatShield is made with a cloth microfiber for extra softness and durability. It works great with cloth and leather seats.

- Completely Waterproof
- Odorproof & Sweatproof
- Machine Washable
- Soft and Comfortable

http://ivl.cns.iu.edu/km/pres/2011-borner-sci2tutorial-nsf.pdf

http://martinfowler.com/bliki/FrequencyReducesDifficulty.html
One of my favorite soundbites is: if it hurts, do it more often. It has the happy property of seeming nonsensical on the surface, but yielding some valuable meaning when you dig deeper

An example context for this is integration. Most programmers learn early on that integrating their work with others is a frustrating and painful experience. The natural human response, therefore, is to put off doing it for as long as possible.

The rub, however, is that if we were able to plot pain versus time between integrations, we'd see a graph like this

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?CityName=Kensington&state=MD&site=LWX&lat=39.0259&lon=-77.0732&mp=1
Friday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 44.

Saturday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 64.

http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/43826.aspx
In conversation, it's easy in the midst of spontaneous speech to succumb to verbosity and duplication. In writing, redundancy is less forgivable but fortunately easy to rectify. Watch for these usual suspects:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-hazards-of-confidence.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
But the exaggerated expectation of consistency is a common error. We are prone to think that the world is more regular and predictable than it really is, because our memory automatically and continuously maintains a story about what is going on, and because the rules of memory tend to make that story as coherent as possible and to suppress alternatives. Fast thinking is not prone to doubt.

The confidence we experience as we make a judgment is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that it is right. Confidence is a feeling, one determined mostly by the coherence of the story and by the ease with which it comes to mind, even when the evidence for the story is sparse and unreliable. The bias toward coherence favors overconfidence. An individual who expresses high confidence probably has a good story, which may or may not be true.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-hazards-of-confidence.html?pagewanted=4&_r=1
To know whether you can trust a particular intuitive judgment, there are two questions you should ask: Is the environment in which the judgment is made sufficiently regular to enable predictions from the available evidence? The answer is yes for diagnosticians, no for stock pickers. Do the professionals have an adequate opportunity to learn the cues and the regularities? The answer here depends on the professionals’ experience and on the quality and speed with which they discover their mistakes. Anesthesiologists have a better chance to develop intuitions than radiologists do. Many of the professionals we encounter easily pass both tests, and their off-the-cuff judgments deserve to be taken seriously. In general, however, you should not take assertive and confident people at their own evaluation unless you have independent reason to believe that they know what they are talking about. Unfortunately, this advice is difficult to follow: overconfident professionals sincerely believe they have expertise, act as experts and look like experts. You will have to struggle to remind yourself that they may be in the grip of an illusion.

http://www.who.int/csr/don/2011_10_26/en/index.html
Avian influenza – situation in Indonesia - update 7

26 OCTOBER 2011 - The Ministry of Health of Indonesia has announced two new confirmed cases of human infection with avian influenza A(H5N1) virus.

The first case is a 5-year old female from Bangli district, Bali Province. She developed symptoms on 27 September, and was first admitted to a local general hospital on 5 October. She died on 9 October.

The second case is a 10-year old male, the brother of the first case. He developed symptoms on 30 September, and was first admitted to the hospital on the same day as his sister. He died on 10 October.

http://communicationnation.blogspot.com/2005/12/noguchi-filing-system.html

The Noguchi filing system
The filing system proposed and used by Noguchi Yukio is worth a look. To employ the system, you'll need to discard many conventional notions about how to store paper documents. Here's how it works:

You need a set of A4 (letter)-sized envelopes and some way to mark the outside of the envelopes. If you want, you can color-code them with markers.

Take every document and store it in an A4-sized envelope with the flaps cut off, as shown here.

Mark the title and date of the document on the side of the envelope, as shown, and the envelopes are stored vertically on a bookshelf.

Don't attempt to classify documents. The color coding is optional, and only there to help you find documents more quickly.

Add any new document to the left end of the "envelope buffer." Whenever a document is used (i.e., the envelope removed from the shelf), return it to the left end of the bookshelf. The result of this system is that the most recent and frequently used documents move to the left, while documents that are rarely or never used migrate to the right.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/sports/lauren-fleshman-ran-marathon-to-prepare-for-olympic-5000-meters.html?pagewanted=all
“If you’re honest about your weaknesses, you realize you’re only going to make it so far being the athlete you currently are,” said Fleshman, who studied human biology at Stanford. “At 30, I’m not going to get dramatically better doing the same thing.”

Still, she would have to train for the New York City Marathon on her own terms. The training period would be limited to seven weeks instead of the preferred 12 to 16. She would run 70 to 80 miles a week instead of 100-plus so her body could handle the pounding.

Most marathon runners are tiny figures who seem to be all legs, heart and lungs. Sunday’s prerace favorite, Mary Keitany of Kenya, stands perhaps 5 feet tall and weighs 88 pounds. Fleshman is 5-8 and weighs 130. She supplemented her mileage with workouts on an ElliptiGO machine, a combination of bike and elliptical trainer that is ridden outdoors. Joan Benoit Samuelson, the 1984 Olympic champion, assured her that her regimen was perfectly fine.

“A lot of women are overdoing it,” Samuelson told her, according to Fleshman. “I only hit 100 miles probably twice in the last 40 years.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/sports/lauren-fleshman-ran-marathon-to-prepare-for-olympic-5000-meters.html?pagewanted=all
“With the race this close, you can’t change anything,” Fleshman said. “You are what you are. Now, you just have to convince yourself that what you are is perfect and great. You don’t need to be better. You just need to be you.”

http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2011/11/science-fiction-for-young-adults.html
Science Fiction for Young Adults: A Recommended List
What books can we give our teens that don't mire them in a swamp of vampires, domineering wizards or nostalgia for feudalism? These are a few of my personal science fiction favorites for young adults, weighted more toward SF and a little common sense mixed with lots of sense-o-wonder. Many are classics that I grew up with...along with some marvelous recent additions.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-stunning-revelations-idiot-has-about-running_p2/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fanpage&utm_campaign=new+article&wa_ibsrc=fanpage
You're leveling up your bodies.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-stunning-revelations-idiot-has-about-running/
4 Stunning Revelations An Idiot Has About Running
By: Robert Brockway November 30, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/science/out-of-neal-stephensons-imagination-came-a-new-online-world.html?ref=science
Over lunch at the Omni Berkshire Place hotel in Manhattan, he explained his reticence about taking credit for clairvoyance. For one thing, he said, it isn’t really true. “The way the Internet developed, in my mind, is completely different from the Metaverse in ‘Snow Crash,’ ” he said. “I can talk all day long about how wrong I got it. But there are a lot of people who feel as though that was an accurate prediction.”

He described his reputation as a seer in terms resembling what psychologists call the focusing illusion — too much attention to some aspects of a thing and too little to others. Science fiction writers are “shotgunning ideas” through their works, he said, and people tend to recall the pellets that hit the target. “The perception of goodness is just selective,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/science/out-of-neal-stephensons-imagination-came-a-new-online-world.html?pagewanted=2&ref=science
The needs of the world are great: New forms of energy, space transportation and infrastructure all need to be tackled with imagination and innovation, he said. He grew animated as he discussed his latest initiative: He is now pushing for a return to a can-do American culture that can “get big stuff done.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/science/scott-aaronson-quantum-computing-promises-new-insights.html?pagewanted=2&ref=science
Quantum computing has challenged that vision by showing that if “the universe is a computer,” then even at a hard-nosed theoretical level, it’s a vastly more powerful kind of computer than any yet constructed by humankind. Indeed, the only ways to evade that conclusion seem even crazier than quantum computing itself: One would have to overturn quantum mechanics, or else find a fast way to simulate quantum mechanics using today’s computers.

http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/oddmuse?action=rc;days=14;all=1;showedit=1

http://tinybuddha.com/blog/be-a-master-of-where-you-are-now/
BE A MASTER OF WHERE YOU ARE NOW

http://www.playdiplomacy.com/help.php?sub_page=New_Player_Guide

http://sunsetgrillcomic.com/index.php?comic=20120113-january-13,-2012

http://zhurnaly.com/cgi-bin/wiki/Scrapbook_Bookmarklet_Version_0.1
okmark, but instead of a static address like http://zhurnaly.com it contains a tiny Javascript program to do something dynamic. A couple of weeks ago my wife, Paulette, was talking about how handy it would be to have a quick-and-easy way to take clippings from a web page. She wanted to highlight a snippet and single-click save it, along with a reference to where it came from. I've often wished for the same thing. To do it using the ZhurnalyWiki or a text editor takes a back-and-forth series of copy/paste maneuvers, more than slightly inconvenient.

http://zhurnaly.com/cgi-bin/wiki/Scrapbook_Bookmarklet_Version_0.1
Maybe in version 0.2 it will be better.

http://zhurnaly.com/cgi-bin/wiki/Scrapbook_Bookmarklet_Version_0.1
Of course, a public scrapbook is likely to accumulate a lot of garbage, could get erased at any time, and isn't appropriate for material you don't want everybody in the world to see. If you want to experiment with your own semi-private scrapbook, just drop a note to z(at)his(dot)com and I'll set one up for you to play with. Note that this "Version 0.1" scrapbook has all sorts of weaknesses. In particular, it can't accept more than a few paragraphs of text at a time, it doesn't handle formatted text or images, and it lacks a way to clear out the scrapbook and start over (without asking me). Maybe in version 0.2 it will be better.

http://zhurnaly.com/cgi-bin/wiki/Scrapbook_Bookmarklet_Version_0.1
k, highlight some text on a web page and click the Scrapbook bookmarklet. You'll see the address of the page as a link, followed by the selected text. Neat! The default demo scrapbook lives at http://zhurnaly.com/scrapbook.html.

Of course, a public scrapbook is likely to accumulate a lot of garbage, could get erased at any time, and isn't appropriate for material you don't want everybody in the world to see. If you want to experiment with your own semi-private scrapbook, just drop a note to z(at)his(dot)com and I'll set one up for you to play with. Note that this "Version 0.1" scrapbook has all sorts of weaknesses. In particular, it can't accept more than a few paragraphs of text at a time, it doesn't handle formatted text or images, and it lacks a way to clear out the scrapbook and start over (without asking me). Maybe in version 0.2 it will be better.

http://www.egreenway.com/taichichuan/short.htm#Quotations
The Eight Active Ingredients of Tai Chi

"1. Awareness - including mindfulness and focused attention. Perhaps the most fundamental ingredient underlying Tai Chi, the slow, deliberate movements and attention to breathing, body positions, and sensations, fosters acute self-awareness, a prerequisite to all other ingredients. The emphasis on moment-to-moment awareness results in mindfulness and improved focus.

2. Intention - including belief and expectations. Additional active ingredients of imagery, visualization, and related cognitive tools alter intention, belief, and expectation, and contribute significantly to the therapeutic and physiological effects of Tai Chi.

3. Structural Integration - including dynamic form and function. Enhanced integration within and between multiple structural and physiological systems is another key active ingredient that underlies Tai Chi's therapeutic effect. Biomechanically efficient shapes and patterns of movement have functional consequences across many systems.

4. Active Relaxation - Tai Chi's circular, flowing motion helps shift the body and mind into deeper levels of relaxation, and is a form of meditation in motion.

5. Strengthening and Flexibility - Tai Chi provides moderate aerobic training equal to levels obtained by walking at a moderate pace. The integrated movements result in less strain, greater power with less effort, and better balance. The slowness of the Tai Chi movements, in combination with the slightly flexed stances and placing weight on one leg at a time for sustained periods, leads to significant lower extremity strength training and increased loading on the skeleton, which promotes strong bones. In addition, slow, continuous, relaxed, and repetitive movement also results in dynamic stretching, which enhances overall flexibility.

6. Natural Freer Breathing. More efficient breathing improves gas exchange, massages body tissues, including internal organs, helps regulate the nervous system, improves mood, and balances and moves Qi within the body and between the body and the environment.

7. Social Support - including interaction and community. Being part of a group has proven therapeutic value for various medical conditions, including cancer, heart disease, depression and anxiety. In ongoing Tai Chi classes, students develop a strong sense of community, and with rich interactions and support from teachers and peers, often undergo and profound journey of self-discovery.

8. Embodied Spirituality - including philosophy and ritual. Tai Chi creates a practical framework for practicing living with a more holistic, Eastern philosophy that integrates body, mind and spirit. It can also be a powerful vehicle to add a spiritual dimension to your life. Also, the ritualistic practice of Tai Chi may help amplify and sustain its therapeutic benefits."

The Harvard Medical School Guide to Tai Chi: 12 Weeks to a Healthy Body, Strong Heart, and Sharp Mind. By Peter M. Wayne, Ph.D., and Mark L. Fuerst. Boston, Shambhala Press, 2013. Index, detailed notes, 336 pages. A Harvard Health Publication. ISBN: 978-1590309421. VSCL. 'The Eight Active Ingredients of Tai Chi' are explained on pp. 30-65.

http://zhurnaly.com/zhurnal87.html
e http://zhurnaly.com it contains a tiny Javascript program to do something dynamic. A couple of weeks ago my wife, Paulette, was talking about how handy it would be to have a quick-and-easy way to take clippings from a web page. She wanted to highlight a snippet and single-click save it, along with a reference to where it came from. I've often wished for the same thing. To do it using the ZhurnalyWiki or a text editor takes a back-and-forth series of copy/paste maneuvers, more than slightly inconvenient.

So how to grab a text selection and stash it with the source URL? It took me an embarras

' encodeURIComponent(location.href) '

' encodeURIComponent(location.href) '
' encodeURIComponent(window.getSelection())

' encodeURIComponent(location.href) '
' encodeURIComponent(range.text);...

' encodeURIComponent(location.href) '

' encodeURIComponent(location.href) '
' encodeURIComponent(window.getSelection())

' encodeURIComponent(location.href) '
' encodeURIComponent(range.text);...