La rosa de los vientos

Population growth and climate change explained by Hans Rosling

Sat, 18 May 2013 08:51:57 +0200

Population growth and climate change explained by Hans Rosling

Evgeny Morozov on technology: The folly of solutionism by TheEconomist on SoundCloud

Thu, 09 May 2013 10:45:39 +0200

Evgeny Morozov on technology: The folly of solutionism by TheEconomist on SoundCloud

Inca Tern: The Magnificently Mustached Bird Seen...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:07:46 +0200

Inca Tern: The Magnificently Mustached Bird

Seen on: http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/inca-tern-mustache-bird

Photo credit: Salamander Photography

Big Data, Small Government? Or What Happens When We Expect...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:29:42 +0200

Big Data, Small Government? Or What Happens When We Expect Silicon Valley to Do the Job of Politicians

More information theRSA

Programming language for life

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 11:08:29 +0200

Researchers at the International Open Facility Advancing Biotechnology (aka, BIOFAB) have just announced that they have, in effect, established rules for the first language for engineering gene expression, the layer between the genome and all the dynamic processes of life…

… allowing researchers to engineer the function of DNA more precisely, and to better predict the resultant behavior.

More info: http://biofab.org/content/bootstrapping-biotechnology-engineers-cooperate-realize-precision-grammar-programming-cells

We know what cybercrime looks like, but what about cyber...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 11:58:15 +0200

We know what cybercrime looks like, but what about cyber war?

Yves Daccord is the Director-General of the International Committee of the Red Cross Directorate at TEDxHelvetia.

John Cleese on creativity and productivity The key to get in a...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:24:18 +0200

John Cleese on creativity and productivity

The key to get in a creative state, is to avoid interruptions.

Beautiful video: “The Shoemaker” by Dustin...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 08:53:04 +0200

Beautiful video: “The Shoemaker” by Dustin Cohen.

More info: http://dustincohen.com/

"Drones are just the latest in a long line of military technologies augmenting the process of..."

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 12:27:41 +0200

“Drones are just the latest in a long line of military technologies augmenting the process of death-dealing, but they are among the most efficient, the most distancing, the most invisible. These qualities allow them to do what they do unseen, and create the context for secret, unaccountable, endless wars.”

- Read more: Dronestagram: The Drone’s-Eye View

If you think criticising Islam is racist, you must think Islam is a race. And if you think Islam is...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:18:09 +0200

If you think criticising Islam is racist, you must think Islam is a race. And if you think Islam is a race you are a racist.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) 4 de abril de 2013

Selling Your Most Personal Item: You

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 08:11:49 +0200

Selling Your Most Personal Item: You:

The era of genetic-based advertising is coming, and it could be just as profitable.

The curiously revered world of irrational nonsense has seeped...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:42:10 +0200

The curiously revered world of irrational nonsense has seeped into almost every aspect of modern society and is both complex and multifarious. Therefore rather than attempt a comprehensive taxonomy, I have opted instead for a gross oversimplification and a rather pretty Venn Diagram. In my gross over simplification the vast majority of the multitude of evidenced-free beliefs at large in the world can be crudely classified into four basic sets or bollocks. Namely, Religion, Quackery, Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. However as such nonsensical beliefs continue to evolve they become more and more fanciful and eventually creep across the bollock borders. Although all the items depicted on the diagram are completely bereft of any form of scientific credibility, those that successfully intersect the sets achieve new heights of implausibility and ridiculousness. And there is one belief so completely ludicrous it successfully flirts with all forms of bollocks.

by @Crispian_jago

Religious Bollocks ∩ Quackery Bollocks ∩ Pseudoscientific Bollocks ∩ Paranormal Bollocks = Scientology

(via The Reason Stick: The Venn Diagram of Irrational Nonsense)

"En un cajón hay un puñal. Fue forjado en Toledo, a fines del siglo pasado; Luis Melián Lafinur se lo..."

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:44:34 +0200

“

En un cajón hay un puñal. Fue forjado en Toledo, a fines del siglo pasado; Luis Melián Lafinur se lo dio a mi padre, que lo trajo del Uruguay; Evaristo Carriego lo tuvo alguna vez en la mano.

Quienes lo ven tienen que jugar un rato con él; se advierte que hace mucho que lo buscaban; la mano se apresura a apretar la empuñadura que la espera; la hoja obediente y poderosa juega con precisión en la vaina.

Otra cosa quiere el puñal. Es más que una estructura hecha de metales; los hombres lo pensaron y lo formaron para un fin muy preciso; es, de algún modo eterno, el puñal que anoche mató un hombre en Tacuarembó y los puñales que mataron a César. Quiere matar, quiere derramar brusca sangre.

En un cajón del escritorio, entre borradores y cartas, interminablemente sueña el puñal con su sencillo sueño de tigre, y la mano se anima cuando lo rige porque el metal se anima, el metal que presiente en cada contacto al homicida para quien lo crearon los hombres.

A veces me da lástima. Tanta dureza, tanta fé, tan apacible o inocente soberbia, y los años pasan, inútiles.

”

- http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Luis_Borges

Unweaving the Rainbow

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 09:37:01 +0100

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”

Everything the donating public has been taught about giving is...

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 10:03:25 +0100

Everything the donating public has been taught about giving is dysfunctional, says AIDS Ride founder Dan Pallotta.

via @TEDtalks

No man in history has ever listened to a woman Dr. John Gray,...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 10:11:42 +0100

No man in history has ever listened to a woman

Dr. John Gray, author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, discusses some listening techniques to help men pay better attention to women.

via foratv

Good Fucking Design Advice via likeafieldmouse

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 10:28:19 +0100

Good Fucking Design Advice

via likeafieldmouse

Ray Kurzweil: Your Brain in the Cloud (by bigthink) We will...

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 16:10:57 +0100

Ray Kurzweil: Your Brain in the Cloud (by bigthink)

We will create artificial neocortex that have a comparable number or a greater number, and I think the principal application will actually be to extend our own neocortex. We have 300 million pattern recognizers in the neocortex by my estimate. That hierarchy we build ourselves each of these pattern recognizers capable of connecting itself to other neocortexes, to build its hierarchy. We build that hierarchy from the moment we’re born or before that. We’re constantly building it, but we run up against this limitation of 300 million. We’ll be able to extend that and think in the cloud.

This is how it should be: Ladyada founder of Adafruit on...

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 11:16:51 +0100

This is how it should be: Ladyada founder of Adafruit on President Obama’s Fireside G+ Hangout.

What's the meaning of life?

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 16:22:00 +0100

Finally an answer: WolframAlpha