Yikes - they are pretty out there.
Example: “Computation at Scale: How can we develop asymptotics for a world with massively many degrees of freedom?”
Monthly Archive for September, 2008
Some great stories on consulting presentations. I still enjoy two Datamonitor stories based on overhead projectors (yes I’m old):
Interesting analysis of the Congressional votes on the bail out. Summary: if you are retiring and don’t care about voters you voted for it; if you are in a close fought seat, you voted against it. Everyone else was evenly divided. I like the factoid: $700bn blocked by partisan politics, $1,000bn knocked off share prices.
I have finally started the switch over to using Google GMail as my main mail host and my personal hosting as a backup. I have often had problems copying messages between accounts in Thunderbird (slow, sporadic crashes) and there was no difference with GMail - “cannot append message. (failure)” errors that stopped the whole copy, not just that one message.
So I found (for the second time) that IMAPSize does a very good job. You have to list each folder in the messages pane and then right click to get the copy menu. Then leave it be.
Finally, some sensible reporting on a numerical issue. Summary: UK rates of teen pregnancy have fallen in real terms since 1998 (caveat: you can normally chose past dates to help these kind of figures - you need to see the historical data in full to really understand). So no massive rise in teen pregnancies. But, as the article notes, the UK’s rate is still high compared to Europe. Now we can make sensible policy.
Neatly avoiding the McCain mistake of getting involved and then looking like you have blocked the agreement. Also a useful non-partisan approach. I wonder if Labour can match the tone? Presently they are all about “decisive action” which seems foolish, given that the market is still snafu.
Lovely application of metamaterials (those whose structure affects their function) to shield objects from heavy waves, including tsunami.
Lovely galaxy. Not quite the milky way of the more recent post, but still beautiful.
I particularly liked the tilt-shift shots, but there are some crackers here. We really enjoyed our few days in Singapore, even if the weather was partly atrocious.
Zappos has a very interesting take on enthusing customer service throughout an organisation. Thanks to Levitt for the original link. If the story is still bandwidthed out, the Google cache is here
Great chutzpah to flash your flashlight for the time needed to not damage this long exposure. Amazing.
Interesting point from Robert Peston - if the Bamp;B collapse could end up costing the city firms £9bn, why couldn’t they find a rescue deal among themselves? Can’t be fun in the square mile right now…
Must read on the Durham non-trials. Even the Indy was reporting some “interesting findings” or some such. Shocking.
We met Connie and Raf in Malaysia at Sholto and Farah’s wedding. Seriously cool people.
Amazing that the Russians still get their equipment up there - just shows how effective the cold war was at creating effective engineering. Oh yes, and the usual Big Picture goodness.
Just like father-in-law, who doesn’t really want to warehouse his copper, but on a different scale: Dell focusing on marketing, not construction.
Ah, c’est moi. Apparently.
