links for 2009-11-05

"As an industry, we haven’t done our best to make our content-rich websites suitable for learning and exploration. Learners require more from us than keywords and killer headlines. They need an environment that is narrative, interactive, and discoverable."

"So if we take 3rd quarter growth to be more or less equivalent to average Clinton-era growth, even after 8 years of growth at that rate we’d only expect unemployment to have fallen from the current 9.8% to a still uncomfortably high 6.3%. It would take us around a decade to reach more or less full employment. As I said in my previous post, that’s well into President Palin’s second term."

"So let em cheer. Today we live in a world where a lot of people who love each other can’t get married. In about 20 years, these people will live in a world where those same people WILL be able to get married, and they will have to shamefully explain to their grandkids why they were on the front page of the newspaper celebrating an ignorant and hopeless cause."

"The underlying reason why smart people get the wrong answer is (according to the article) that they simply don’t take the time to go carefully through all of the possibilities, instead taking the easiest inference. The patience required to go through all the possibilities doesn’t correlate very well with intelligence."

"In studies over the years, scientists have found that it can take a week or more for the cognitive and physiological consequences of poor sleep to wear off — even after increasing sleep. In a study at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in 2003, for example, scientists examined the cognitive effects of a week of poor sleep, followed by three days of sleeping at least eight hours a night. The scientists found that the “recovery” sleep did not fully reverse declines in performance on a test of reaction times and other psychomotor tasks, especially for subjects who had been forced to sleep only three or five hours a night."

"Such is the case in Iraq, where the military there is using what is essentially dowsing techniques to try to detect bombs in cars at military checkpoints. Let’s be very clear here: they are using provably useless antiscientific nonsense to try to find terrorists who carry explosives. They may as well use tea leaves, or palm reading, or seances. The NYT article also has expert advice from several explosives and military authorities (including long-time friend of the JREF Air Force Lt. Col (retired) Hal Bidlack), all of whom conclude that this device does nothing. Given the product description on the company’s own web page, I agree as well. The description makes no scientific sense at all; it claims it can detect ions from a distance without ever coming in contact with them, and that includes through lead, concrete, and more."

"People who download music illegally also spend an average of £77 a year buying it legitimately, a survey has found. Those who claimed not to use peer-to-peer filesharing sites such as The Pirate Bay spent a yearly average of just £44."

"But is even veganism really enough? The cost that consumer society imposes on the planet’s fifteen or so million non-human species goes way beyond either meat or eggs. Bananas, bluejeans, soy lattes, the paper used to print this magazine, the computer screen you may be reading it on—death and destruction are embedded in them all. It is hard to think at all rigorously about our impact on other organisms without being sickened."

"Mockingbird is an online tool that makes it easy for you to create, link together, preview, and share mockups of your website or application." Looks super nice.

"Leaving a website untouched after its initial launch is, in many ways, like buying a car and never changing the oil or never filling up on gas — it might run fine for a while, but eventually it will slow down and come to a complete halt, providing no benefit to its owner or passengers. An ongoing routine of regular, scheduled analysis and maintenance using many of the techniques mentioned in this article could prove integral to the success and overall functioning of your website or web application."

"It took Ignaz Semmelweis more than twenty years (he died before it happened, actually) to persuade doctors that washing their hands could save the lives of mothers giving birth. He had the data, he had the proof, but that wasn't enough to change minds. What are you going to do when your hunches don't match the data that's now pouring in?"

"AT&T Inc. is suing Verizon Wireless over its competitor's "There's a Map for That" commercials, saying in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that the ads are misleading and amount to deceptive trade practices." Dumb move AT&T.

"About 300 protesters held a candlelit protest outside a Glasgow theatre over the staging of a play which portrays Jesus as a transsexual."

"The outcome of all seven contests that we were tracking tonight appears settled, or very nearly so"