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Farewell, Dean Dome. You had a rough night, but I won’t...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 02:22:59 -0600

Farewell, Dean Dome. You had a rough night, but I won’t soon forget you. (Taken with instagram)

"PageRank, however, has always been just one of the factors determining how Google’s search results..."

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:18:00 -0600

“PageRank, however, has always been just one of the factors determining how Google’s search results are ordered. In 2007, Google told the New York Times that it was now using more than 200 signals in its ranking algorithm, and the number must now be higher. What every one of those signals is and how they are weighted is Google’s most precious trade secret, but the most useful signal of all is the least predictable: the behaviour of the person who types their query into the search box. A click on the third result counts as a vote that it ought to come higher. A ‘long click’ – when you select one of the results and don’t come back – is a stronger vote. To test a new version of its algorithm, Google releases it to a small subset of its users and measures its effectiveness through the pattern of their clicks: more happy surfers and it’s just got cleverer. We teach it while we think it’s teaching us. Levy tells the story of a new recruit with a long managerial background who asked Google’s senior vice-president of engineering, Alan Eustace, what systems Google had in place to improve its products. ‘He expected to hear about quality assurance teams and focus groups’ – the sort of set-up he was used to. ‘Instead Eustace explained that Google’s brain was like a baby’s, an omnivorous sponge that was always getting smarter from the information it soaked up.’ Like a baby, Google uses what it hears to learn about the workings of human language. The large number of people who search for ‘pictures of dogs’ and also ‘pictures of puppies’ tells Google that ‘puppy’ and ‘dog’ mean similar things, yet it also knows that people searching for ‘hot dogs’ get cross if they’re given instructions for ‘boiling puppies’. If Google misunderstands you, and delivers the wrong results, the fact that you’ll go back and rephrase your query, explaining what you mean, will help it get it right next time. Every search for information is itself a piece of information Google can learn from.”

- Daniel Soar, London Review of Books

I learned of this review via Gmail. I read it — and posted this excerpt and link — via Chrome.

Hi, Google.

Taken with instagram

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 07:51:19 -0600

Taken with instagram

Photo

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:15:58 -0600

"It is Alito’s quarrel with Scalia’s originalist approach that is most interesting today, echoing and..."

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:20:00 -0600

“It is Alito’s quarrel with Scalia’s originalist approach that is most interesting today, echoing and even amplifying his jab at oral argument in a case about violent video games last year, that “what Justice Scalia wants to know is what James Madison thought about video games.” At argument in that case, Alito went further, observing that such games represent a “new medium that cannot possibly have been envisioned when the First Amendment was ratified” and that it was “entirely artificial” to analogize the Framers’ attitudes to violent books for children to violent games. Today Alito again invokes the artifice of the Scalia approach, poking fun at his obsession with what the Framers would have done with satellites and lasers by suggesting, “It is almost impossible to think of late-18th-century situations that are analogous to what took place in this case. (Is it possible to imagine a case in which a constable secreted himself somewhere in a coach and remained there for a period of time in order to monitor the movements of the coach’s owner?)” Then to ratchet up the absurdity, Alito answers his own question in a footnote: The teensy constable scenario “would have required either a gigantic coach, a very tiny constable, or both—not to mention a constable with incredible fortitude and patience.””

- U.S. v. Jones: Supreme Court Justices Alito and Scalia brawl over technology and privacy. - Slate

Sam Alito is hilarious! Who knew?

newyorker: Cartoon of the day. For more: http://nyr.kr/yMCVgg

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:44:23 -0600

newyorker:

Cartoon of the day. For more: http://nyr.kr/yMCVgg

You know it's a rough day when

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:42:39 -0600

… your dad calls you to tell you he saw you in your mailbag video and you can hear the concern in his voice immediately as he says: “Jeez, son, are you OK? You look like you haven’t slept in a week. Get some sleep. Can you take a nap during the day here and there, maybe? At least go have a steak. You need protein.”

To be fair to the pops, he ain’t wrong. Especially about the steak. I could definitely go for a steak.

"Most of my experience has been in sports writing, but I can write everything from warmongering..."

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 20:30:22 -0600

“Most of my experience has been in sports writing, but I can write everything from warmongering propaganda to learned book reviews.”

- Hunter S. Thompson’s 1958 cover letter for a newspaper job - Boing Boing

The Cover Of The New Penn Stater Magazine Is Dark, Demented, And...

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:40:55 -0600

The Cover Of The New Penn Stater Magazine Is Dark, Demented, And Perfect — Deadspin

nevver: Justin Mezzell

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:04:55 -0600

nevver: Justin Mezzell

"Decoder Magazine is foremost an attempt to interpret a world of culture and media in which the..."

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 14:50:07 -0600

“Decoder Magazine is foremost an attempt to interpret a world of culture and media in which the preeminent players have been the newly liberated human and the ambitious constellation of niche communities that new resources have given us digital beings unparalleled access to”

- Decoder Magazine, Issue #1 Kickstarter

That sounds great and all, but wait … say what?

Residents of Worcester’s Grafton Hill neighborhood acknowledged Monday they would not...

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 10:48:15 -0600

Residents of Worcester’s Grafton Hill neighborhood acknowledged Monday they would not necessarily mind a Panera Bread franchise coming in and wiping out Callahan’s, a charming, family-run bakery that has been a fixture of their community since 1964.

According to locals, the national restaurant chain would be just the thing to run the mom-and-pop establishment out of business, replacing Callahan’s genuinely warm, welcoming atmosphere with the kind of impersonal, hassle-free cafe experience they have long desired.

“Callahan’s really is lovely and all, but every time I’m in there I get roped into a 10-minute conversation about what’s going on in the neighborhood, or the history of some recipe that’s been in their family for generations,” said patron Catherine New, 33, who told reporters the friendly older couple who owns the shop is always there, apparently working from open to close every single day. “It would be such a relief to walk in somewhere and have some disinterested college-age kid take my order without even making eye contact.”

“They’re nice at Callahan’s, but they don’t seem to get that this is only a business transaction,” New continued. “I just want a cup of coffee. We’re not friends.”

Neighborhood Kind Of Hoping Panera Bread Shows Up And Plows Over Charming Local Bakery — The Onion

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Fri, 30 Dec 2011 20:38:19 -0600

"This has been a key theme of 2011: For reasons that defy any of the signals we’re seeing in..."

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 11:16:07 -0600

“This has been a key theme of 2011: For reasons that defy any of the signals we’re seeing in the actual economy, Congress — and, for much of the year, the president — has been obsessed with finding a deal on deficit reduction and relatively resigned on policies to create jobs. In part, that’s simply because the Republicans in Congress were (and are) staunchly opposed to further stimulus but seemed willing to work with Democrats on the deficit, and the political system prefers to focus on things it can do rather than things it can’t. In part, it’s because, for most of the year, Democrats were willing to go along with Republicans who wanted to talk about the deficit rather than job creation measures — note that they didn’t, for example, demand, as part of the debt-ceiling deal, that the supercommittee also come up with jobs proposals. But the end result has been very weird, like watching the doctors of a patient with acute pneumonia spend a year discussing the best way for the patient to lose weight.”

- Ezra Klein

"Boys are given goats to herd and messages to deliver. They hunt and fish. Girls weave, haul water,..."

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 08:41:29 -0600

“Boys are given goats to herd and messages to deliver. They hunt and fish. Girls weave, haul water, grind corn, chop firewood, serve as part-time mothers to their younger siblings; a serious share of baby care in the world is performed by girls not yet in their teens.”

- NYT — Now We Are Six: The Hormone Surge of Middle Childhood

Where does “riding a bike” and “watching ‘Howie’s World’” fit into all this?

globephoto: The best photographs of 2011 in The Big Picture:...

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:07:02 -0600

globephoto:

The best photographs of 2011 in The Big Picture: http://bo.st/sgXGyv

"In courtship, the best gifts are “the most useless to women and the most expensive to men.” Flowers...."

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:04:36 -0600

“In courtship, the best gifts are “the most useless to women and the most expensive to men.” Flowers. Pricey dinners. Jewelery. The less useful, the better. Waste is the most efficient way to a woman’s heart.”

- The Behavioral Economist’s Guide to Buying Presents - Jordan Weissmann - Business - The Atlantic (via felixsalmon)

"Romney and Gingrich share something important: they’re wonks. Gingrich is flakier than Romney,..."

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 09:43:23 -0600

“Romney and Gingrich share something important: they’re wonks. Gingrich is flakier than Romney, and Romney is less creative than Gingrich, but the policies that are getting them in trouble are policies that most Republican wonks once backed. Gingrich and Romney’s support for these ideas wasn’t unusual. It was, at the time, typical for Republicans engaged in national policy debates. Health-care plans including an individual mandate have been proposed or co-sponsored by Bob Dole, the Heritage Foundation, Phil Gramm, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Richard Lugar, Judd Gregg, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Jesse Helms, Lamar Alexander, Bob Corker, Mike Crapo, and Strom Thurmond — and that’s only a partial list. In 2008, Jim DeMint endorsed Mitt Romney for president, and specifically mentioned his health-care plan as one of Romney’s qualifications. The Republican Party has since turned on the individual mandate. But if past support for the policy is a conservative litmus test, then Phil Gramm, Jesse Helms and the Heritage Foundation are no longer conservatives in good standing. And that’s absurd.”

- Wonkbook: Gingrich and Romney have the same problem

"My son ain’t going to be miserable because he’s going to be the child of a rock star, the end."

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 13:57:39 -0600

“My son ain’t going to be miserable because he’s going to be the child of a rock star, the end.”

- Noel Gallagher Is on His Own

Almost forgot that one.

"This is rock ’n’ roll. Would Johnny Rotten have gotten a house on the eve of an American tour? Keith..."

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 13:54:27 -0600

“This is rock ’n’ roll. Would Johnny Rotten have gotten a house on the eve of an American tour? Keith Richards? John Lennon? You either want it or you don’t, and I wholeheartedly blame him for us never becoming as big in America as we were in England. Admittedly he did buy a nice house.”

- Noel Gallagher Is on His Own