Happy Thanksgiving Americans! If you’re the type who browses while full of turkey, here are some postprandial links with no unifying theme whatsoever.
The Arts · Address is Approximate is fanciful visual poetry built with Street View.
Pretty pictures of spider webs.
Smart Geeks · The excellent Sam Ruby relates his Experience with Git.
What Brent said, in Pub Rules. Oh yes my goodness yes. If you’re publishing on the Web and you’re not doing what Brent says, you’re Doing It Wrong.
Civics 101 · Canada’s national broadcaster asks: Should marijuana be legalized in Canada?
As many others have noted, mainstream economics reporting is hopelessly broken, which matters a whole lot, because just at the moment economics, which are always important, are more important than usual.
Andrew Haldane asks What is the contribution of the financial sector? and brings actual statistical analysis to bear on the question.
From Mike Masnick, The Definitive Post On Why SOPA And Protect IP Are Bad, Bad Ideas. I’m not sure it’s definitive, but it covers the issues as well as anyone else I’ve read.
From Adam Minter, a look at an aspect of China that’s not terribly visible from outside: Iraq Loss Final Straw for China's Soccer Lovers.
Neelie Kroes, who has appeared in this space before and whom I’ve long admired, asks a simple question: Is copyright working?
Here in Vancouver we’ve kept it pretty well freeway-free here inside the city, but there are a couple of highway viaducts left over from decades-old fortunately-aborted big-buck construction projects. There’s been talk of tearing them down and replacing them. The City asked for proposals on what could be done and is now asking citizens what they think.
In the Economist’s excellent Democracy In America blog, Horatio Alger and Lady Gaga. This is one you want to read all the way to the end.
Contributions
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Austin Ziegler (Nov 24 2011, at 19:25)
Sadly, the link to Neelie Kroes's article is broken. I suppose you meant this: http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/neelie-kroes/is-copyright-working/
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From: Tom Welsh (Nov 25 2011, at 09:43)
"As many others have noted, mainstream economics reporting is hopelessly broken..."
Actually, mainstream economics is broken.
Isaac Newton is supposed to have reflected modestly that "I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me".
Whereas in his case he was selling himself short (as far as the rest of us are concerned, anyway). But his description fits economists rather well. They are quite adept at noticing patterns of behaviour and approximate (or apparent) relationships. But they have never come anywhere near to knitting all these scraps of knowledge or hypothesis together into a unified structure - which is why no economist is any good at predicting the future.
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