TravisLS

Indeed. I would argue that the state of campaign finance is such that only special interest groups have the influence required with congress to pass or kill anything. When 100% of your time is dedicated to raising money, you only ever talk to the people who provide that money - for better or worse. Representatives need not be in the pocket of industry shills for campaign finance to be a problem, there's simply nobody else around for them to talk to.

This is somewhat circular. The government's influence over all these industries is partially a product of the fact that these industries finance the campaigns of the representatives.

Representatives without sufficient capital to finance their own campaigns rely on being in their financiers' (corporations) good graces. That means strategically putting their fingers in every industry.

There's no solution to the government industrial complex without campaign finance reform.

Interesting. I thought the most compelling part of the talk was his interpretation of the purpose for doing math and how we've failed to educate toward that purpose.

I assume you're referring to his assertion that deep understanding of by-hand calculation is not necessary (the driving a car vs servicing a car analogy). I would agree that this may be a false analogy, and that a basic understanding of mathematical concepts (presently drilled into place through hand calculation) may be a fundamentally important step to being able to do math. Especially for those who continue to any advanced math study, fundamental understanding is almost certainly necessary.

But this talk is more about the common student who doesn't go on to college or post-grad math. Overall the broader point of the talk still rings true to me: because of an overemphasis on calculation, the majority of students are receiving insufficient math education to successfully make life decisions and contribute to their own fields of work/study. In my mind, Wolfram presents a viable solution in recommending refocusing math education towards logical thinking and correctly structuring problems, and in utilizing computers for calculation.

Indeed. Conrad Wolfram has a great Ted talk on this very subject: http://www.ted.com/talks/conrad_wolfram_teaching_kids_real_m...

I'll always regret not seeing a shuttle launch. I went once and it was cancelled due to poor weather.

Hopefully NASA will replace it with something equally spectacular, or perhaps I'll just have to wait and enjoy a private launch (from on-board).

It's kind of cringe-worthy that a copyright from 1935 isn't public domain, regardless of the circumstances of its issue.

I've been trying to find this quotation from Neil Degrasse Tyson but haven't been successful. It's one of my favorite perspectives on NASA's budget (and specifically the the importance of lavish, public, manned missions).

Paraphrased: Investing only $19 billion dollars a year is a no-brainer, considering the return is a generation of American kids interested in math and science.

Or, more importantly, you need to be able to tell them apart when they're not side-by-side at all, shown 3 days apart. I thought that was the author's point, but the solution seems to have the same problem.

This made me laugh out loud in the middle of a meeting (thanks), but it also raises a great point. In order to truly make programming accessible to everyone, I think you'd either need to train everyone to think like programmers (shudder), or you would need AI smart enough to decipher pretty ambiguous and logically incomplete code.

Precisely. Just because all the 25-year-olds are proving themselves by working on ad clicks today doesn't mean tomorrow's Elon Musk isn't among them.

A generation of kids cutting their teeth on smaller, more approachable products is going to grow up into a generation of seasoned entrepreneurs who can meaningfully allocate capital to solve bigger problems.

This post has kind of a linkbait title, given that the actual content is pretty insightful. The 99.5% comment is really referring to the social media experts missing the bigger point.

tl;dr social media isn't just a tactic to dabble in, because it opens the floodgates for end user communication. It's potentially a revolutionary way to establish context with users, but you have to be ready to engage fully or it can do more harm than good.

I don't really fault them for copying other people. That's a pretty decent strategy for the market leader to take.

Deals is a fantastic way to monetize their competitive advantage (the massive database of social profiles and friendship connections). I'd prefer they implement all the creative ideas they can to keep Facebook usable and valuable, rather than suffocating the experience with ads.

There's an interesting side effect of this system which I think means that it would have lessened impact on the policies implemented by the elected officials.

As in his example, pretend the Kitten party appeals to 10% of the electorate distributed evenly across districts. So in roughly 10% of districts, the Kitten party would earn a seat, but would only represent 10% of their constituency.

In this case, the incentives of the elected Kitten party representative shift. Instead of keeping to their Kitten party ideals, they would seek to maximize their following within their district by shifting to a median political position. This would ensure them the maximum likelihood of re-election in the following campaign.

So theoretically the actual policies coming out of each district would still represent the median view of the electorate in that district, and the Kitten party would remain disenfranchised.

There was an excellent episode of Radiolab about this subject. If you have the time or inclination to listen to an hour long podcast, I highly recommend "Words": http://www.radiolab.org/2010/aug/09/

How handy. Thanks for putting this together and instantly shortening my to-do list.

Community-driven support offers benefits beyond cost savings, for one, it allows users to get faster responses. Your email probably can't provide answers every hour, but a vibrant support community will.

Additionally, it gives you a way to show publicly how friendly and responsive you are (assuming you participate in the community), which can impact your signups.

We always offer both, a public support option, community, or Facebook page, and an obvious private email link. Most users seem very happy with that level of interaction.

In fairness, I get the feeling the TSA doesn't actually think any of these bottles of liquid are explosives, since they just throw them in the public terminal trash cans.

If they did treat every water bottle as an explosive, then yes, this procedure would make a lot more sense than evacuating the terminal.

I've used one of these in New York for a year or so, and while they stand up well to the wind, there are other design considerations where they're oddly lacking. For instance, on the compact version, the handle is much to small, making it uncomfortable to hold. On the larger versions, the umbrella doesn't stay collapsed, so every time you arrive inside you have to awkwardly fumble to tie the velcro straps around it while it flops open.

Allow me to add another reason: If you use your real identity frequently to post insightful and interesting commentary, then it will overshadow anything less seemly you may have posted under your real name at some other point in your life. This can come in handy when a potential partner or employer Googles your name.

This patent is filed February 1990, issued October 1993 - wouldn't that make it expired? Or am I naive?

I think the author makes a valid point, but it's important not to confuse feature-rich and complex. A customer's purchase decision may be driven by the abundance of features, but the review they post later that week will be driven by the experience using your product.

Highlight features to sell, but keep those features well-organized and intuitive to create a positive experience after the sale.

Thank you for actually taking the time to make the graph we all instantly thought of when we saw that ridiculous wired article.

From the end of the article: "I haven't found a way to short higher education as a whole. If you can think of one, let me know." Any ideas?

If someone finds out about a book through your site, then continues on to buy that book, you should be rewarded for generating that traffic - that's why the affiliate program exists in the first place.

I think you can get around any moral qualms by clearly pointing out any affiliate links. If you're turning readers on to a good book, they'll be happy to intentionally click your affiliate link.

Probably the most useful piece of advice I've ever heard regarding this kind of discourse: A mediator friend of mine once told me to always attempt to briefly recap the other person's point before beginning a counter-argument. That way they know you heard what they said, and they have the opportunity to correct any inaccuracies before you get going.

I find this interesting because it's something that I've worked really hard to un-learn. I used to say "I think" before nearly every opinion, but I found it hard to have any of my opinions taken seriously. After all, why should anyone care what I think?

These days, I'm much more inclined to say "What if..." or "We should also consider..." to preface an opinion, such that consideration is required before dismissing what I've said.

You could probably actually buy two Ferrari F430s once you take into account all of the student loan interest.

It's cases like this that make it so easy to be skeptical about global warming. There is a fair amount of real, verifiable evidence that global warming is real, human-caused, and problematic, but none of it is dramatic enough to make a good story. Endangered polar bears, Hurricane Katrina, and out-of-control Malaria epidemics are a much easier way to get people's attention.

Unfortunately, in the quest for a good story, the activists may give their critics so much scientific firepower as to eventually lose the political battle. It's happened with other environmental problems, and it looks poised to happen again.

Most CSS rules work pretty well in emails, as long as you're careful. This list details how some CSS rules work in certain rendering engines:

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/

The other thing that NYC would do well to implement was the so-called "green highway". I bike to work every day and find that our separated bike lanes have longer and more frequent red lights than the lanes given to cars (we have a red light when they have a green light + left turn arrow). Most of the people who bike frequently in the city actually avoid the separated bike lanes because of the poor traffic light timing.