Happy @TheAtlantic day! and more links
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2011-02-15 15:13:00
Tags: palm links
Words: 271

It started out a little slow, but there are a lot of good articles in this month's issue. Like:

- Mind vs. Machine, an article about the Loebner Prize (i.e. Turing Test) written by one of the people trying to convince the judges he was human. Particularly topical now that Watson is playing Jeopardy...

- How Skyscrapers Can Save the City. High density development=good in my book!

- Inside the Secret Service - unprecedented access gives a good view how the Secret Service protects people. Also: I forgot President Bush had a live grenade thrown at him in 2005, and Clinton may have been almost assassinated in 1996. Scary stuff!

- When Freedom Is Bad for Business - remember when President Bush said that invading Iraq would help them rebuild their economy? Yeah...not so much. Iraq is currently 174th out of 183 countries for "ease in starting a business".

- The Moral Crusade Against Foodies - pretty hard hitting piece.

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On to non-Atlantic links!

* Apparently Palm is giving away Pre 2's to "all qualified developers". They're certainly supporting their developers, almost to a comical extent at this point :-)

* A fancy treemap view of Obama's 2012 budget proposal. Always good to remember where we spend most of our money, and why cutting earmarks to balance the budget is patently absurd.

* Speaking of Iraq, remember "Curveball", the source who convinced the White House that Iraq had a secret biological weapons program? He now admits that he made it all up. Whee!

* Neil deGrasse Tyson on why science should invest for the long-term and not just on practical problems: basically, because we've gotten a lot of practical use out of long-term ideas.

3 comments

Comment from flamingophoenix:
2011-02-15T16:35:19+00:00
I agree re: density and sprawl. The problem is that people tend to want their own land, which creates sprawl. (I blame your beloved state for part of this.) :-D (j/k) So, how do we fix that?

Oh, I guess there are other factors too: e.g. noise through the walls. That's a huge part of why I love living in a detached house: no fucking neighbors vacuuming at 11 PM.

Comment from gregstoll:
2011-02-15T17:15:27+00:00
Yeah, I will admit to a bit of hypocrisy here, both on behalf of my house and my state :-)

At least we can allow high-density housing in downtown areas. Austin has a number of big condo buildings under construction, and some (a lot?) of people don't like it because of beautification, etc. Luckily they seem to be happening anyway!

Comment from djedi:
2011-02-16T11:31:06+00:00
Yeah I would love living in high-density housing except for one big problem. I like some privacy. Until we start building high density housing that actually has privacy for the tenants, I'll sadly stay with homeowning.

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