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I’m more than a little impressed by the audacity of Philippe Croizon. Despite having had his arms and legs amputated, he’s successfully swum the English Channel, the Straits of Gibraltar, a chunk of the Red Sea, and is now swimming Bering Strait. To do this, he swims freestyle, with flipper-like leg prosthetics attached to the… Read More »
There’s a double standard in the rhetoric around markets that’s always intrigued me: Free markets are the best way to organize society Central planning and command leadership is the best way to organize large organizations such as corporations and government The first claim is regularly heard in political discourse, while the second is rarely made… Read More »
I was completely unaware of this, but apparently cases of academic misconduct, as evidenced by the retraction of papers from journals and other publication venues, have been on the rise. According to the article, retractions from journals in the PubMed database have increased by a factor of 60 over ten years, from 3 in 2000… Read More »
I spent Saturday at the HCI for Peace workshop representing the Voices from the Rwandan Tribunal project. It was fairly informal, with only 10 participants, which made it easy for everyone to participate in the discussion. Several participants presented projects they’ve worked on, including: Lahiru Jayatilaka, a Sri Lankan PhD student from Stanford, who presented… Read More »
Played in Big Gaming Week 2011 this week, a gathering of friends now scattered around the world as part of the NZ diaspora, drawn home for Christmas and New Years. We’re in our eighth or so year now. In addition to the normal LAN, board, and RP games, we added a few things to line-up,… Read More »
With the referendum on voting methods in New Zealand coming up in December, I thought it might be interesting to draw up some graphs to compare the results we’re getting under MMP to the results we got under First Past the Post, the system we used to use. I’ve plotted two sets of graphs: a… Read More »
At around age 10, I read the Dragonlance Chronicles, my first real introduction to the world of fantasy fiction. When I discovered they were based on a series of D&D modules, I immediately wanted to run them. In 2000-2002ish, Nick did just that. I played, along with the usual suspects, and though the game was… Read More »
I need to plug this site: Skyscraper Page. Despite its not so imaginative name*, the site is a veritable gold mine of information both awesome and mundane, listing skyscrapers all over the world, with their construction dates, heights, floor count, and other information, along with scale sketches for most. Sadly, though it lists every building… Read More »
Even though much art is concerned with representing the real, it’s not about photo-realism so much as it is about interpretation and re-presentation. Spotted this lovely quote which captures that: Drawing is a struggle between nature and the artist, in which the better the artist understands the intentions of nature, the more easily he will… Read More »
Played Cellcraft this morning, which turned out to be one of the best science education games I’ve seen in a while. First off, here’s a screenshot of my cell being attacked by viruses (click to zoom). Note the various organelles, as well as the use of ATP, nucleic acids, amino acids, fatty acids, and glucose… Read More »