Search Results for: Science
Information Theory and the Number of Unique Tweets
I gotta say, I was pretty amazed to find this article over at XKCD that attempts to answer the question “How many unique English tweets are possible?” This is interesting, primarily because I’m just coming off a very brief but intense fling with information and communication theory. In the span of three weeks, I read [...]
Space Combat != Naval Combat (Or: Why Star Wars Will Always Be Awesome)
I read a long essay this morning on what real space combat would look like. Frankly, it was a bit depressing. Science fiction has deluded us for a long time, and the article reveals a key reason why: [...] we must realize that space will present a new unique environment with new and unique challenges for [...]
Jared Cohen
Last night, I went to my alma mater to hear Jared Cohen speak. Cohen is only 30-years-old (!), but is a veteran of U.S. foreign policy, serving in the State Department under both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. He’s also well known as an expert on how social media affects governments and foreign policy. I [...]
Librarians and the Book: A Marriage of Convenience
Over the last few months, I’ve been reading The Portable MLIS: Insights from the Experts. This is an anthology of writings about the work of the professional librarian (“MLIS” refers to a Masters of Library and Information Science – the standard degree for a librarian). This book has introduced me to the Code of Ethics [...]
The Science of Predicting Weather
The Weatherman Is Not a Moron: This is a really interesting article about how computers are making weather forecasting better. In 1972, the service’s high-temperature forecast missed by an average of six degrees when made three days in advance. Now it’s down to three degrees. More stunning, in 1940, the chance of an American being [...]
eBook Analytics
Your E-Book Is Reading You: From the “it was just a matter of time” department, ebooks are phoning home to the mothership with analytics about how people read them. It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games” trilogy on the Kobo e-reader—about 57 pages an [...]
eBooks and Their Effect on Book Length
CMAP #5: Why books are the length they are: This is a series of posts by a science fiction author under the heading CMAP: “Common Misconceptions about Publishing.” In the series, he discusses the nitty-gritty detail of publishing books and how the publishing industry works (or often doesn’t). This particular entry is interesting because it [...]
Prosecuting Scientists for Being Wrong
Top Italian Scientists Who Failed to Predict 2009 Earthquake Now Face Manslaughter Charges: Here’s a short but thought-provoking article about Italian scientists who publically stated that the risk of a major aftershock to an Earthquake was low. A few days later, an aftershock killed 300. They’re now being charged with manslaughter. Local citizens claimed they [...]
A History of Word Processing
The Muses of Insert, Delete and Execute: I enjoyed this article about someone writing a book about the history of word processing and how it has affected writing throughout the ages: Uncovering a clean answer to the question “Who was the first novelist to use a word processor?” is a trickier business, though Mr. Kirschenbaum [...]
Why IA is Hard: A Practical Application
Ethan Zuckerman wants you to eat your (news) vegetables — or at least have better information: I love this article, not only for the main idea (“dietary guidelines” for news), but for the sheer number of issues it raises about Information Architecture. It probably (and inadvertently) does the best job I’ve seen at showing how [...]