The Fount of Useless Information
Your place for useless information that just might possibly be interesting.
Cheating report confirms teacher’s suspicions
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/08/05/atlanta.public.schools.scandal/index.html
Shocking! Night follows day! Who could have possibly predicted such a black swan event?
I am dubious about this particular claim:
“Nobody knows yet how to write machine-scorable standardized test questions that are able …
Is Obama Smart?
A case study in stupid is as stupid does.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904140604576495932704234052.html
Normally it is quite challenging to read a piece from the WSJ and expect anything to be objective or analytical when it comes to democratic behavior (indeed, …
Bank of America death-watch
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/08/09/bank_america/index.html
I found this an interesting article because it might become a proximal trigger event for the apocalypse. Presuming the authorities ignore the situation (as the author supposes), when the shit does hit the fan it …
Bringing solar light bulbs to the world
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/innovation/08/14/solar.light.bulbs/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7
The gist of the article is having huge faceless (and often brainless) organizations ramming unwanted solutions down the throat of poor/disadvantaged is the opposite of the way to get widespread adoption. Find …
A very plausible way to cut health care costs by close to 50%, yet wind up with a healthier, happier, longer-lived population:
Asking the right questions about health care
http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/18/asking-the-right-questions-about-health-care/?hpt=hp_bn6
Of course, it requires people to do something more than …
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/the-elusive-big-idea.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
I think this article is quite important to people who think. Here is a sample that I hope will get you motivated to read it…
But it is especially true of big thinkers in the social sciences like the …
but this one is thoughtful but also really funny:
Daum: Invasion of the idiocrats
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/18/opinion/la-oe-daum-idiocracy-20110818
I think I am going to have to rent/buy Idiocracy and see how far our society really is away from achieving that state.…
If we could somehow penetrate the bureaucracy and get access:
An e-ripoff of the U.S.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/21/opinion/la-oe-sparrow-medicare-fraud-20110821
To me the solution isn’t to do away with the electronic payments, but to invest in serious validation before payment. Given the half billion …
The quest for an unhackable code
http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/02/technology/unhackable_code/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=hp_bn5
I started to study cryptography quite a few years ago (more than 15) and very quickly came to the realization that ‘unbreakable’ codes are meaningless because it is so trivial to hack the …
of the dramatically anti-science attitude in the US:
The Science of Injustice
Capital murder case highlights Texas courts’ resistance to physical evidence
http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2011-08-19/the-science-of-injustice/
This amuses me (in a very dark way) the most:
‘Delmore and the Montgomery County D.A.’s Office …