March 1, 2005

Browsing Magazines

DEEP DOWN, BEING SMART CAN BE, WELL, SORT OF DUMB:
Instead of drearily working their way to the top, today s exalted executives travel a route more like something out of a Harry Potter novel. Initially, the wunderkind finds his way to one of our most elite universities, which still proves inadequate to contain his prodigious mental energies, as in the case of Harvard dropout Bill Gates and the two founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who abandoned a Stanford Ph.D. program. Then he retreats to a holy site (often a Silicon Valley garage), where there s a period of mysterious wizardry involving smoke and flashes of light before our hero emerges with his Creation. More years of struggle follow, and then comes the magical ceremony that finally earns him the mantle of true genius: the initial public offering.
-- Wilson Quarterly's The Revenge of the Nerds by Steven Lagerfeld

MEANWHILE BUSH REALLY DID KILL THOMPSON:
While the comments that followed [at Daily Kos] rejected such speculation, a consensus developed that President Bush was nonetheless to blame for Thompson's demise. Opined one Kossack: "His blood is also on Bush's hands. Probably just couldn't accept life with four more years of Bush. Guess he chose to take the easy way out." Other commenters were slightly more reasonable. Recalling an acquaintance who had committed suicide shortly after the 2000 election, another Kossack conceded, "I doubt he killed himself over Junior Caligula's ascencion [sic] to the throne . . . but it no doubt was on the background."
-- The Weekly Standard's Kos Party

AND IN OTHER NEWS, EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT THE EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE IS PROBABLY WRONG:
Renowned physicists, authors of astronomy textbooks and prominent popularizers of science have made incorrect, misleading or easily misinterpreted statements about the expansion of the universe. Because expansion is the basis of the big bang model, these misunderstandings are fundamental. Expansion is a beguilingly simple idea, but what exactly does it mean to say the universe is expanding? What does it expand into? Is Earth expanding, too? To add to the befuddlement, the expansion of the universe now seems to be accelerating, a process with truly mind-stretching consequences.
-- Scientific American: Misconceptions about the Big Bang

DITTO THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION:
In her testimony, told and retold over the last forty years, she claimed among other things that she was looking at the limousine where she saw Kennedy and his wife, Jackie; the couple was looking at a little dog between them, a white fluffy dog. Hill then jumped to the edge of the street to yell, Hey, we want to take your picture! JFK turned over to look at her. At that point, he was shot, and Jackie shouted, My God, he has been shot! Then, Mrs. Hill said that she saw some men in plain clothes shooting back and a man with a hat running toward the monument on the other side of the plaza on the so-called grassy knoll. Immediately, she started running after him, thinking he was involved in the shooting.
-- Facts and Fiction in the Kennedy Assassination; Notes on a Strange World (Skeptical Inquirer January/February 2005)

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE PRESENT, KIDS ARE LISTENING TO THEIR INNER IPODS:
Computer enthusiasts have worked out how to reprogram Apple's iPod music player with their own code using an ingenious acoustic trick.

They adapted the component that generates clicks - or "squeaks" - as a user scrolls through the on-screen menu in order to extract vital information from the latest generation of the device. This allowed them to install an alternative operating system and make their iPods run games and other new programs.
-- New Scientist Breaking News - iPod 'squeaks' betray software secrets

Posted by Vanderleun at March 1, 2005 9:46 PM
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Posted by: siunevada at March 3, 2005 11:55 AM