Links for 07-12-2006
Transhumanists diss Stross, girls are evil, low self-esteem and crime novels, Digg and the (un)wisdom of crowds, table-top particle accelerator…
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Not one, not two, but THREE negative reviews of Stross’s ‘Accelerando’; guess the World Transhumanist Association award votes weren’t unanimous, then…
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2 – Girls are evil.A mathematical proof I remember from college, and was amused to be reminded of. All in good humour, BTW.
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“…though virtual experiences improved people’s memories of the camera’s functions, it also increased false positives — that is, more people believed it could do things that it couldn’t do.” Short but interesting.
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“[the] behavior of coupled oscillators—long a fascination of physicists and mathematicians—also can help biologists seeking to understand such questions as why some locations overflow with plants and animals while others are bereft…”
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“People who have lower levels of self-esteem prefer crime and detective stories that confirm their suspicions in the end, while those with higher self-esteem enjoy a story that goes against expectations.”
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“They’re writing patents that cover broad, general topics that totally unrelated ideas can be described as infringing — and which can then be used to set up toll booths to slow down innovation.” Same old same old. Sigh.
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“Named after the resilient mythological bird, Phoenix is based upon a lander that was meant to fly in 2001, but administratively mothballed by NASA.”
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“The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of all household wealth, according to a new study by a United Nations research institute.” Feeling a bit guilty? So you f*cking should.
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“If there ever was a technology that calls out for street use, it is a jet engine. There is a small subculture of jet hackers. Among them is New Zealander Bruce Simpson who runs a cool website of his experiments.” Loony, grade A.
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A Metafilter round-up that does what it says on the tin. Result.
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“Internet applications should follow game mechanics in order to make them compelling and addictive, proposed Amy Jo Kim, online community building guru, at this year’s Supernova.” Curveball perspective, but rings rather true.
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“Over the past few years, it’s become almost impossible to win a Hugo without releasing a short story or novella on-line for the voters to read … I think the same is, to a lesser extent, happening with novels…”
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“So how do booksellers know what works in selling books? Or, more germane to this blog and this discussion, how does the author know which of his/her promotional efforts are paying off?” DLE on effective book marketing.
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14 – The Wisdom of Crowds“…if each person believes that the crowd is wiser than he is (as would typically be correct) then they will only echo back what they think is the crowd consensus, leading to “groupthink” and runaway.” Interesting.
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“Yesterday a story made the frontpage of Digg [...] As of right now the story has 2860 Diggs but the original submitter has also posted a retraction on Digg.” It’s all about the fact-checking, people.
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“A table-top particle accelerator has been built by French physicists, who used a pair of laser beams to precisely control the acceleration of electrons within a plasma.” Take it to the woods! To the beach! To a club!
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“We’re looking forward to working collaboratively with our colleagues in the PR industry, journalist and bloggers to further this concept as well as working with our clients to adopt this new format.” Hyping a new format of hype! Woo!
Tags: links
December 7th, 2006 at 5:52 am
>2% own over 50% of the worlds wealth.
What is there to feel guilty about?
You get born into a situation and you make the best of it.
Some start off unlucky. Bad country. Bad parents. Bad health. etc…
Most have the chance to significantly improve their own situation.
Especially anyone in Japan, Europe, North and South America, Australia, S Korea, Taiwan and pretty much any country in the top 40 of gdp per capita
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita
Now most people in China and significant numbers in India.
For those who ended up in a bad country then probably the best thing to do is to first recognize this and escape that situation to where hard work and reasonably good choices can bring results. A big part of the problem is that over half the people live in places that are too screwed up and have no system or way to build any wealth. But just they are standing still or regressing in wealth does not mean we should hold back those in places where things are working.
For those already in the pretty good places of the top 40 gdp per cap places then it is a matter of developing some reasonable mastery of some important wealth building skills and knowledge.
Right now there is a growing wave of people who are becoming rich in many countries. In the USA there are about 8.3 million millionaires not including their primary residence. This is increasing at about 7-10% per year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire
http://www.spectrem.com/custom.aspx?id=32
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/whatittakes/
This is similar to the effect in china
http://www.economist.com/research/backgrounders/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7246087
with expanding wealth at the middle and higher tiers. Waves where a lower middle class grows and becomes dominant and then a upper middle class grows.
Mass affluence is growing in the developed countries and will become the dominant class over the next few decades replacing what is now considered the middle class. Probably in the 2025-2035 timeframe. Certainly most of the 33 million mass affluent should move up to millionaire status.
December 7th, 2006 at 10:56 pm
hey Brain Wang just wondering wat donu do for a living?
December 7th, 2006 at 10:57 pm
hey Brain Wang just wondering wat do
u do for a living?
December 8th, 2006 at 3:10 am
business intelligence, ecommerce and real estate in the top 1% according to the UN study.
December 8th, 2006 at 8:57 pm
impressive and explains the above