discovered a google maps-based api to calculate the shortest distance when traveling to multiple locations and order doesn't matter. useful for designing a walking tour.
now have an answer to 'best ethiopian food in town?'
watched sunset over the potomac before cuban ballet at the kennedy center.
fried a steak to accompany some sriracha-soaked avocado slices.
caught up on the essays..
(1) the decider's memoir
the world's longest prize acceptance speech
in the late 1960s, george bush jr was at yale, branding the asses of pledges to the delta kappa epsilon fraternity with a hot coathanger
pamphlets sold by the national parks service explaining that the grand canyon was created by the flood
the sunnier halves of half-truths
(2) a syrian immigrant in the hurricane
due process went the way of the levees
new orleans, he said, was 'going to look like little somalia'
(3) the reconstruction of neural networks
entered what he called 'deep blindness,' where he could not conjure up any images at all, not even familiar ones, like those of his wife and children
a reservoir of visualization to the point where he could compute large sums on an internal blackboard and see a gearbox in three dimensions
(4) the world after wikileaks
just as the concept of 'privacy' fades into obscurity when sixteen-year-olds can present their innermost thoughts to an audience of billions, so, too, the internet distribution of official secrets changes the rules of the game
the technology has outpaced the ethics
(5) cambodia past and present
by confronting the crimes committed between 1975 and 1979, the khmer rouge trials offer hope of breaking the pattern of impunity that has characterized cambodia's recent history. but they could also allow cambodia's leaders to claim a commitment to justice and the rule of law while avoiding accountability for their own crimes and repressive practices.
hun sen, now one of the world's longest-serving prime ministers..uses pol pot's record as a yardstick to measure progress, thereby making failure impossible.
(6) railway advocacy
but railway stations built a century or even a century and a half ago..not only appeal aesthetically and are increasingly objects of affection and admiration: they work..this is a testament to the quality of their design and construction, of course; but it also speaks to their perennial contempraneity.
(7) silencing the chinese
people learned not to kill rats immediately; it was better to tie a string to a rat's leg, follow it to its hole, and kill it then. that way one could eat the rat as well as dig down into its hole to recover whatever grain it might have stored below.
(8) the end of kodachrome - as used in my old south america super8 film.
(9) the advent of russian entertainment television
in russian these kick-backs are known as otkat, 'backwash'
(10) before mubarak left
in each case the ruler had been in place so long that half the population had no memory of his predecessor
(11) written february 4th, and now obama calls for the 1967 borders
israel's own cost-benefit calculations have changed. now that it is on the verge of reverting to an earlier isolation - its peace agreements with egypt and jordan are at risk, international assaults on its legitimacy are newly underway - a government that rejects the urgent demands of its only remaining friend will not survive for long.
(12) big bangs, big crunches
the long march of cosmology since the renaissance has been marked by one seemingly preposterous proposal after another, from copernicus's assertion that the earth whizzes around the sun (our own sensations of stillness notwithstanding), to einstein's suggestion that space and time are as wobbly as a trampoline.
what would the universe look like after, say, 10^100 years, a timescale equivalent to the current age of our observable universe raised to the tenth power?
(13) the latest television hit
as much as i disliked the show, i did find myself persisting. why?
(14) the likely survival of the individual mandate
the congressional budget office estimated that in 2008 the uninsured shifted $43 billion of health care costs to others.
judge hudson's decision reads as if it were written at the beginning of the twentieth rather than the twenty-first century. it rests on formalistic distinctions-between 'activity' and 'inactivity,' and between 'taxing' and 'regulating'-that recall jurisprudence the supreme court has long since abandoned, and abandoned for good reason. to uphold judge hudson's decision would require the rewriting of several major and well-established tenets of constitutional law. even this supreme court, as conservative a court as we have had in living memory, is unlikely to do that.
congress plainly can tax for the purpose of providing health insurance. it does so already, through medicare and medicaid.
(15) dictator for life
a despairing tunisian provincial fruit and vegetable vendor..his photo is now everywhere in tunisia-in the places where ben ali's portrait used to be
(16) what to do about malaria
with all due respect..a vaccine would be great, but that's at least ten years away. and with 2 million kids dying every year from malaria, that's 20 million freakin' kids that will die. in my humble opinion the gates foundation ought to balance a bit more of its funding to get drugs to these kids now.
(17) the mysterious indian chief
sightings of the devil..he was wearing a suit and tie and looked like an ordinary man..except for his thick, long tail.
(18) math need and myth in the economy
fully 26 percent of us physicians are now foreign-born
alexander hamilton: 'it is in the interest of the united states to open every possible avenue to emigration from abroad..of ingenious and valuable workmen in different arts and trades.'
(19) the internet, our thoughts, and our physical mind
who could resist? certainly not i.
'neuroplasticity': the idea that experience affects the structure of the brain.
we face many information faucets, all going full blast. our little thimble overflows, as we rush from one faucet to the next
the digerati are not impressed by such avowals, 'no one reads war and peace' .. (woody allen solved that problem by taking a speed-reading course and then reading war and peace in one sitting. 'it was about russia,' he said afterwards).
i had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then i realised the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. it provides us with external cognitive servants - silicon memory systems
(20) why we maintain the death penalty
the most common cause of death among death-row inmates is 'natural causes'
when germany outlawed capital punishment in its 1949 constitution, two-thirds of its population were still in favor. francois mitterand's administration abolished it in 1981, ignoring the 73 per cent of the french population who approved of it. in the uk, 76 per cent of respondents backed it in 1995, nearly three decades after abolition. meanwhile, about 65 per cent of the american public supported it in 2001.
it's not the worst murderers who die, but those with the worst lawyers.
(21) the chess champion
one of the greatest known bouts of psychoanalysis in absentia the world has ever seen.
(22) slime cows and siberian grendel
until around 1930, tigers continued to pose such a risk that, in north korea, the bulk of offerings made to some buddhist shrines were prayers for protection from these animals.
(23) the king of handcuffs
(24) the past fifty years of the book
books were hamburgers, fast-moving items with mass appeal served by unsophisticated staff to anonymous customers.
technological change is discontinuous
(25) hawking's latest in multiverses..and the hippocratic oath, but for physicists: avert the next manhattan project
(26) what's wrong with this country
i mentioned to both strangers and friends the video wikileaks released of a helicopter in baghdad gunning down reuters journalists and civilians while its crew whooped with delight. they either hadn't watched it, or just wanted to talk about what a bad man assange was and whether he ought to be taken out.
(27) tax havens come home
a race to the bottom
'delaware can protect you from politics.'
(28) more on that digital public library of america idea
(29) public vs. private vs. technology in the postal system
the consumer, as europe's former citizens are now known.
a few hundred giant firms and organizations which want to send bursts of millions of letters and catalogues every few days are competing for the same set of postal workers with millions of people who want to send a few christmas cards and once in a while something that needs signing. in this competition the power lies with the few, whose priority is cheapness, rather than the many, whose priority is regularity and universality; cheapness wins, and it is the postal workers who suffer.
(30) the race to build the catalog of life
an ant that had evolved to resemble a spider.
when the malarial parasite was linked to mosquites..suddenly, the capacity to distinguish insects by the tiniest differences in wing venation or 'hairs on legs' became much more than a diverting hobby for eccentric naturalists: it was a lifesaver..a utilitarian argument has been used ever since to justify species hunting: who knows if this small weed might not contain a cure for cancer?
darwin..became..'a machine for generating hypotheses'.
(31) what development statistics from india, china, bangladesh mean
(32) independent flu data, please
(33) the deindustrialization of america
stop scapegoating public sector workers for problems that originated on wall street
interested in identity politics rather than class politics, in individual rights rather than collective ones
interested in identity politics rather than class politics, in individual rights rather than collective ones
6/9/11