Saturday, January 28, 2012
I learn from a book that bacteria are unlike life as we know it. The evolutionary mechanisms are different. Food scarcity is the primary pressure on them. When food is scarce reproducing fast is beneficial. The book mentions two ways the accelerate their reproduction. Both address the same problem copying the genetic material takes [...]
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
This may be the only thing I’ve ever read that made me actually want to work at Google. First off, ignore the stupid framing and scroll down to the actual content. Let me pick some quotes. Writing about Amazon: “Organizing into services taught teams not to trust each other in most of the same ways [...]
I haven’t played with Mac OS X Lion yet, only read, John Siracusa’s lovely long review. John suggested a while ago that Apple had learned somethings from the iPhone/iPod/iPad, and that these things were likely to fundamentally change the way the Mac worked. At the time my reaction was; “but of course,” [...]
I assume they have all read the same book, because they use the same outline, start-up CEOs I mean. It has two parts. The opening, and the gonna have a revolution bit. First the prolog: Open with how grateful you are for the ideas and help the host (and/or the most powerful people in [...]
Some time ago I was greatly amused by this fine example the pervasive power of the patriarchy. Not that it’s surprising; the patriarchy rules! In that example we discovered that the forces which be have conspired to plant only male trees. Male trees are good for the economy. They increase in sales … of [...]
Thursday, August 12, 2010
My father was wrong. I learned at my father’s knee that it is wise to self insure for the little things and buy insurance for the big things. Thus it is clever and thrifty to buy insurance policies with large deductibles. It is a little odd to notice that poor people should buy more comprehensive, and [...]
Plucked from this poignant post about externalities (which reminds me of my realization that limited liability corporations evolved from pirates) is this bit from a Rolling Stone article. It’s a nice clean example of cost benefit analysis in the “real world.” BP has also cut corners at the expense of its own workers. In 2005, 15 [...]
The ongoing puzzle, debate even, about the choice points between a closed and open system appears to have picked up a new aspect. At least I had not noted this one before. What differentiates a closed model from an open one is the extent that the business hordes the options created by it’s product offerings. [...]
In the best scenario all Facebook is doing with their new service that allows 3rd party sites access to your Facebook identity along with a bit of what they know about your is a slightly more transparent version of what, say, Google’s Doubleclick can does. They are selling a service to their partners that identifies [...]
The Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein of ProPublica’s recently released work on the economic train wreck’s roots is marvelous. Listen to it on This American Life! A quick overview of the story: First recall that a key link in the supply chain of the subprime mortgage industry was the step where the risky mortgages where bundled [...]
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