munir

xkcd - A Webcomic - Brontosaurus

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 09:51:44 -0400

xkcd - A Webcomic - Brontosaurus

ambivalence: Marcus Buckingham: What’s Happening To Women’s...

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 09:48:40 -0400

ambivalence:

Marcus Buckingham: What’s Happening To Women’s Happiness?

Great song, about 419 scammers in Nigeria. I love the pidgin...

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:44:23 -0400

Great song, about 419 scammers in Nigeria. I love the pidgin english.

Osuofia - I Go Chop Your Dollar (via scambaiter)

Rome Police Hold Anniversary-1953 (via joinmedear)

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:22:13 -0400

Rome Police Hold Anniversary-1953 (via joinmedear)

Dr. Ronald Chevalier - The Art of Relaxating (via...

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 10:06:38 -0400

Dr. Ronald Chevalier - The Art of Relaxating (via RonaldChevalier)

via farm4.static.flickr.com

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:19:00 -0400

via farm4.static.flickr.com

'Major discovery' from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution - MIT News Office

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 12:02:38 -0400

'Major discovery' from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution - MIT News Office

tiny gigantic » Smart-people traps

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 11:46:50 -0400

tiny gigantic » Smart-people traps

Lego Stephen Hawking (kottke.org)

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:25:49 -0400

Lego Stephen Hawking (kottke.org)

"Already, most conversations in English are between nonnative speakers who use it as a lingua franca."

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:05:10 -0400

“Already, most conversations in English are between nonnative speakers who use it as a lingua franca.”

- How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand

Do it NOW says Mr. T!I Pity The Fool (via MrTsNumberOneFan)

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:31:26 -0400

Do it NOW says Mr. T!I Pity The Fool (via MrTsNumberOneFan)

Big Ideas (don’t get any) - on Vimeo (via...

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:29:45 -0400

Big Ideas (don’t get any) - on Vimeo (via Andrew)

Reimagining of Nude, a Radiohead song, using outdated computer hardware.

From the author:

“Based on the lyric (and alternate title) “Big Ideas: Don’t get any” I grouped together a collection of old redundant hardware, and placed them in a situation where they’re trying their best to do something that they’re not exactly designed to do, and not quite getting there.

It doesn’t sound great, as it’s not supposed to.”

Financial Analysis of Peacekeeping

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:09:55 -0400

dihard:

“Every time a conflict in some poor and chaotic place simmers down to the point where peace has a chance, rich countries with an interest in reconstructing that country face a choice: do they merely provide economic aid, or should they also dispatch troops - their own or other countreis’ - to nail down and enforce the peace?”

A cost-benefit financial analysis of the situation in a Copenhagen Consensus 2008 Challenge Paper (you can download it at the bottom of the Economist article) concludes that peacekeeping, doing the latter from above, makes sense. Here’s why..

Since 1960, there have been two outbreaks of civil war a year. A graph in the Copenhagen Consensus compares the number of new conflicts to the number of total conflicts, indicating some are ongoing and some are renewed. That is here..

Analysts conclude that we should concentrate on interventions which attempt to prevent the recently ended wars from reigniting.

The cost of a renewed conflict in a developing country is between $60 billlion (including mortality and morbidity effects) and $250 billion (taking into account the affect of conflict on entire regions and the exacerbation of crime and terrorism, the cost increases). Thus, since 1960, the running cost of conflict is between $120 billion and $500 billion a year.

The ideal security package, which the authors argue is post-conflict aid + military spending limits + peacekeeping + guarantees to militarily support democratic governments of countries, would cost about $10.8 B per year ($4.8b, $480m, $4b, $2b, respectively). The calculated payoffs would be security gains of $100b, increased GDP of $11b in the post-conflict countries, reduced coup risk of $6b, and fewer wars in democracies, worth $75b. The cost benefit ratio is therefore between 1:5 and 1:19. (The end of the doc has a summary of the costs & benefits under different discount rate and costs of war worth checking out.) Since “peace is a pre-condition for social and economic development,” based on the analysis, peacekeeping seems pretty worth it. Just one question - who’s footing the bill?

I love the Copenhagen Consensus’s quest to get a cost-benefit analysis to all these wildly divergent solutions to our Big Problems.

Don't Talk to Him Before He's Had His Coffee

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:09:29 -0400

gknauss:

One of my favorite scenes in Star Wars is in the conference room on the Death Star, where Grand Moff Tarkin is getting a status update from his lieutenants on the fate of the stolen battlestation plans. When I was nine, it was cool because Darth Vader used the Force to strangle an uppity bureaucrat. Now that I’m 40, it’s cool now because it almost exactly resembles every corporate meeting I’ve ever been in, with sniping and pettiness and ass-covering. And walking embodiments of galaxy-spanning evil.

My kids recently brought home a reprint of the first issue of the Star Wars comic — a quickie affair, obviously drawn from storyboards instead of the movie itself — and the scene is even better.

Darth Vader — Sith Lord, Jedi killer and what remains of the broken soul of the hope of the galaxy — uses his mastery of the elemental force of the universe to summon a hot cup of joe. None of this pouring from the admin-provided urn over chit-chat before things get started, oh no. He floats it to him right in the middle of an argument. Total dis! Oh, I’m sorry. Where you making a point? I was thirsty. Man, who makes this sludge? Am I right?

The only problem being, of course: How does it drink it, exactly?

gina: The Day There Was No News

Wed, 21 May 2008 19:08:04 -0400

gina:

The Day There Was No News

The Dilbert Blog: The Economics Party

Wed, 21 May 2008 14:21:27 -0400

The Dilbert Blog: The Economics Party:

“We’re pro flip-flop when it makes sense.”

Chris Blattman's Blog: The wages of terror (versus road building)

Tue, 20 May 2008 14:55:22 -0400

Chris Blattman's Blog: The wages of terror (versus road building):

The U.S. Army is trying to outbid the Taliban and al-Qaeda for wage labor

The World of Chemistry (via TEDBlog)

Tue, 20 May 2008 14:37:07 -0400

The World of Chemistry (via TEDBlog)

"If people abuse our socialnorms we’ll execute them in public."

Tue, 20 May 2008 14:26:38 -0400

“If people abuse our socialnorms we’ll execute them in public.”

- Twitter / Robert Scoble: “If people abuse our social…

First Look: OLPC XO Generation 2.0

Tue, 20 May 2008 14:25:48 -0400

First Look: OLPC XO Generation 2.0 :

Check out the video on the link. Cute!

Would love to read more about the technical details and such. Any plans for a better rollout process etc? Are these going to primarily be running Windows?

The press release says that “Younger children will be able to use simple keyboards to get going, and older children will be able to switch between keyboards customized for applications as well as for multiple languages.” That sounds good to me! (As long as these keyboards are cheap enough - though they can obviously be shared, if they’re application-specific.)