Thursday, April 21, 2011

The future according to Google, and other stories

xkcd: The future according to Google.

Mother Jones: How we fool ourselves. "Expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts. [...] We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself. [...] When we think we're reasoning, we may instead be rationalizing." H/T Rod Benson.

UK voters: The lies of the No to AV leaflet. I'm getting pretty annoyed by how misleading so much of the No campaign has been. The BNP are being used as a scare tactic, and yet they are only party to officially endorse the No campaign. It bugs me that such misrepresentations are being effective. H/T Neil Stewart.

SMH: Memos show oil motive in Iraq war. Perhaps this comes as no surprise, but the confirmation is important.

SMH: How Obama is morphing into Bush. Change we can believe in, because it is so small and non-threatening.

SMH: What is the secret to long life? Good table manners.

Reddit: If all you lazy, whining two-thirds world readers think you have things tough, you need to get a sense of some real first world problems.

Oatmeal: The deep ocean is a weird, weird place. Despite being a cartoon (with some naughty language), this is apparently true.

The Cost of Energy: Unemployed? You might want to consider applying for this position.

And a quick straw poll. I occasionally put together lists of random links like this. Which would you prefer:
(a) for these to continue in this fashion, with occasional dumps of lists like this;
(b) for me to post single links as I come across them; or
(c) for me to stop all random links and focus on a narrower band of topics?

7 comments:

Tom Melbourne said...

A. Definitely A.

sair said...

As is suits me quite well. Please don't stop!

Mike W said...

Yeah,
I like A
less annoying than B
and don't do C!!!

Sam Charles Norton said...

a) :)

my captcha word is 'lentize'

byron smith said...

I'm beginning to pick up a trend here...

byron smith said...

WaPo: Obama is a moderate Republican.

byron smith said...

MWH: The delicate art of making predictions. Why it is necessary and why it is also difficult.