MIT OpenCourseWare | OCW Home

MIT OpenCourseWare | OCW Home
MIT (among a few other schools) have published syllabi, course readings & assignments for many of their courses. A great way to learn something new. Of course, having contact with professors and other students, and having assignments evaluated, is not included.

The Onion | Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

The Onion | Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory
Heh. Science claims to have "laws", but they are "only" theories

General Chemistry Online: Home

General Chemistry Online: Home
Way cool. This is really excellent use of technology. If you want to learn some chemistry (without doing labs...), there is a lot here.

Black Swan

In Rotorua, there were many black swans, though I believe they are native to Australia.
Assertions about swan color have become a canonical example in logic; see, e.g., Falsifiability.
They are cute but have a bit of a nasty temperament.

Buddhabot Blog
Current (?) postings on the project.

The Buddha Bot
Chat with simulated enlightenment.

Boosting Research Site: Boosting.org

Boosting methods have proven remarkably successful in machine learning. This is a great clearinghouse of resources.

Our Founding Fathers Were NOT Christians
The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians
More on the topic...

Deist Founding Fathers
To those religious intolerants who argue that America was founded as a Christian nation, some actual facts showing quite the opposite. Most of the founding fathers were not exactly atheists, but it's hard to find a Christian among them.

Kids, don't fall for 'free press' hype
Another chill falls. Read:
Anybody who thinks they want to be a reporter should be required to read every single word of the opinion of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia No. 04-3138. That's the one that ordered Miller and Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper to reveal their confidential sources to a federal grand jury.

Pay particular attention to pages 72 through 78. Why? Because they're blank, that's why. Even experienced constitutional lawyers are flabbergasted by this. But at the request of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor assigned to this inquiry, his most powerful arguments for why Miller and Cooper should break their promises to sources are too sensitive for any of us to see.

As one respected First Amendment expert was heard to say, "What is this, freakin' Albania?"

FRONTLINE: watch online | PBS
Many excellent PBS Frontline shows available to watch online, plus transcripts & other web stuff. High quality stuff!

The Long Tail: "Pre-filters" vs. "Post-filters"
Some interesting comments on distribution. "Filters" are tools to help you find what's right for you in the mass of stuff. Old world: filters are gatekeepers. New world: filters are advisors.

Andrew Sullivan reviews two books on Abu Ghraib
The Torture memos & chronology of abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. Key quote:
I confess to finding this transparency both comforting and chilling, like the photographs that kick-started the public's awareness of the affair. Comforting because only a country that is still free would allow such airing of blood-soaked laundry. Chilling because the crimes committed strike so deeply at the core of what a free country is supposed to mean. The scandal of Abu Ghraib is therefore a sign of both freedom's endurance in America and also, in certain dark corners, its demise.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: June 12, 2005 - June 18, 2005 Archives
Off topic - his experience with the tablet PC. Summary: good!

Being Present, Mindfulness, Nowness, the Power of Now, and Self Remembering
Some pithy wisdom. Be here now.

COHE :: Ethics Overview
A secular perspective.

Ethics For A Secular Millenium
An interview with the Dalai Lama.

The Official Home Page of Grateful Dead
Still alive for us. All things deadhead.

DSIRE: DSIRE Home
Database of state incentives for renewable energy.

Cognitive Illusions and Pattern Hallucinations
A presentation I gave at U. of Iowa back in 1998 or so. I've had a keen interest in cognitive science for many years and this talk pulls together some behavioral finance work with other cognitive stuff.

Grocery Store Wars | Join the Organic Rebellion
Well done!

Computer and Information Science Papers CiteSeer Publications ResearchIndex
Now has a new home. Scientific publications should be freely & widely available.

Turtle Beach - Video Advantage - Video Capture and Editing Solutions
Pretty snazzy way to capture video to digital.

:: CRUSHPAD ::
Want to make your own wine? Here's a San Francisco "community winery" where you can sign up for as little as one barrel (25 cases) for as low as $4,000, and get some premium grapes & assistance.

Welcome to Emotionally Focused Therapy!
Looks like a very sound approach to relationship counseling.

SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator
Need to get a submission in place for some crummy conference so that you can get another publication in place for your tenure review?
If you are in Computer Science, try this. The creators of this program were able to get a randomly generated paper accepted to a conference.

Augusta National Course Rating
While watching the Masters, I wondered just how hard is Augusta National? Turns out
it's not publically rated, but a "stealth rating" has been made. Answer: pretty hard.

The Atheism Web: Common arguments
Freethinking.

Fallacies
While on the subject of rhetoric... here is a list with pretty comprehensive descriptions of logical fallacies.

democracyarsenal.org
OK, back to politics for a while. A site for "foreign policy progressives", encouraging liberalism throughout the world. Recent post points out that Bush, regardless of whatever other valid criticisms you might want to level at him, deserves credit for promotion of democracy in the Middle East.