Category Archives: Technology, science, and math

Jeff Jarvis has been on an anti-lottery rant recently, challenging economists to prove that lotteries are not actually depressing the economy. Calculate the total amount of income — income at its most spendable — drained from the economy; how much … Continue reading → Continue reading →

This morning on NPR’s Morning Edition, I heard a story about how a British mathematician claims to have solved one of math’s great unanswered questions, the Poincare Conjecture. You can listen to the story here. They spoke to Arthur Jaffe … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The San Francisco law firm of Morrison and Foerster, known as MoFo, is suing a spamhaus for violations of California’s antispam laws. In its fight, MoFo is suing a Silicon Valley e-mail marketing firm called Etracks. Mr Jacobs says while … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Guess I’m blogrolling this morning…From War Liberal comes this story about a group of scientists in Arizona who are campaigning for laws to help keep the skies dark at night. Excess light from the city of Tucson is playing havoc … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Do you feel guilty about eating too much fat? Have you ever tried a lowfat diet? Read this article and be astonished. I knew that there was a lot of pseudoscience in the weight loss and low-fat foods industries, but … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Patrick points me to this article by Dan Gillmor about the SSSCA. It’s interesting that Dan doesn’t hope that a President who is committed to free trade would step in and lobby against this obviously obstructionist bill. Of course, we … Continue reading → Continue reading →

News Corp President and COO Peter Chernin claims that the public is illegally downloading a million pirated movies a day. Good grief. Do these entertainment industry bigwigs take stupid pills or something? Has anyone reading this ever illegally downloaded a … Continue reading → Continue reading →

From The USS Clueless comes this article about how China is upset that American and European Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are blocking email from China, Korea, and Taiwan to combat spam. Spammers routinely relay mail through servers in these countries … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Ginger talks about the sad state of computer documentation, and wonders how one can redirect mail in Outlook. I have good news and bad news for you, Ginger. It looks like it can be done, but as if often the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

In today’s Chron, there’s an ad for the new movie Super Troopers. This ad contains the following pull quote from critic Lou Lumenick of the New York Post: “An Amazingly High Joke-to-Laugh Ratio!” Um, you do know that this means … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Dane Carlson, whose weblog is more technical than political, points to this interesting article on website usability. I’m definitely a technical user, so none of the concepts described within were new to me, but it reinforces the notion that many … Continue reading → Continue reading →

The Supreme Court declined to hear a case in which a Minnesota teacher was reassigned by his school for attempting to bring creationism into his classroom. With all of the talk about how our science eduation is lacking, it’s nice … Continue reading → Continue reading →