All posts for the month January, 2013

Science stings

Cars begat engines, which needed fine tuning, and so then begat leaded fuel, which begat violent crime and lower IQs. It’s not just the science behind this Mothers Jones article that’s interesting but how much of a reminder it is of the responsibility that new technologies bring.

The next search paradigm

The Library of Congress has Twitter’s tweets, but the tech isn’t advanced enough to search it! Consider: [T]he Library noted in a separate White Paper released Friday that it can take 24 hours to perform a single search for a term in the Twitter archive. Also consider that the US government through its wiretapping institution […]

Obama isn’t motivated to do anything about the debt ceiling

I agree with the analysis that President Obama could and should raise the debt ceiling all on his lonesome is sound, valid, and the best course of action. I also think he won’t, though, or if he does, it would be out of character for him, and it’s worth understanding why. To unpack this why, […]

Coding Benevolently

I just finished off near-total rewrite of a python module. Near the same time, I also just finished reading Scientific American’s year-end tribute to human evolutionary biology. The module is simple enough, all it does is extend a Moodle activity so that our school can use it to do daily notices. For months I had […]