Especially useful curation

A list of uncommonly useful links and news items by an uncommonly astute person, Greg Linden (formerly of Amazon search in the early days) follows below. This is the best of all worlds: Having access to someone who has superior insights due to field of expertise, is articulate, and is willing to share without ulterior motive or bias.

I first heard of Greg Linden back in my days of using Google Buzz. At first, I thought he was a Linden of Second Life's Linden Lab! This isn't to say that he is my online friend or contact or anything like that. I miss Google Buzz. It was my introduction to Web 2.0 type online interaction, and was very positive, genuine.

Okay, that's enough pre-ambling from me. Have a look at those links and annotations.

Geeking with Greg: More quick links:

What has caught my attention recently: $1B for Instagram was silly and caused by fear, but it is impressive ...

This would be worth paying for, if Greg Linden were to want to sell a subscription newsletter for technology investing. That does not seem likely.

I stopped wondering "Why does he do this?!" awhile ago. Now I am quietly appreciative. I often forget entirely about visiting his weblog, for months at a time, as it is such a low-key and pleasantly ad-free corner of the internet!

A New Hajj Exhibition

I read a review of the Hajj Exhibition which opened recently, on 12 April 2012, at the British Museum in London.

A Collective Undertaking?

The new Hajj exhibition has been praised for its profound cultural importance by some. Others were critical, considering it an obvious whitewash of political and social injustice in the geographic region.

The photography featured in the review are striking. Most are copyright protected, so I will reproduce the only one that was allowed here (under Creative Commons license). There is a link at the end, so you can view them in all their intricate splendor.

Map of Mecca as the center of the world; Turkey, 1650
via Leiden University Library

I liked the final paragraph of the review:

The exhibition succeeds in providing an understanding and an appreciation of a centuries-old pilgrimage that involves millions of people, globally. It allows non-Muslims to participate in a cultural, intellectual and perhaps even spiritually moving way.

True cosmopolitanism entails an imaginative act of sympathy with others.

As promised, here is the link to the Hajj exhibition online gallery.

Threat assessment of Iran

Iran is no more likely to use nuclear weapons than any other nation that has such capabilities.

Comparisons

Iran is not riddled with out-of-control corruption. Consider Nigeria. Nigeria is an oil-rich nation but operates most of its petroleum production facilities at only 40% of capacity. Nigeria must even import refined fuel for its own consumption. Iran doesn't do that.

Unlike Afghanistan, Iran has a decently educated population. What of matters such as state-imposed religion, negligible women's rights and censorship? Regardless, it is highly unlikely that the people of Iran find the prospect of war, in the Middle East or elsewhere, to be a desirable outcome. The cascade of destruction from ANY country using nuclear weapons would be disastrous, whether it were the U.S.A., France, India, Israel, Russia or others.

Policy

U.S. foreign policy has been unclear to me lately. I do not see motives of self-defense, nor of imperialism. But the "war on terror" is not going well. The U.S. cannot sustain a constant state of foreign conflict. Yet that appears to be the case, continuously since 2002, and intermittently throughout the preceding 40+ years. 

When necessary, there will be intervals of war. These must have a conclusion. The delineation between peace time and war time needs to be finite, discrete.

Peace and war and peace

I am a U.S. citizen and I love my country. I don't want us to be in wartime conflict on two or three fronts for years at a time, particularly since the "fronts" are not adjacent to our sovereign territory. Terrorist actions on U.S. soil, e.g. the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, elsewhere, on September 11, 2001, must be responded to decisively. That doesn't necessarily mean going to war though. Let the CIA, or military counter-intelligence do what they are intended to do.

The first three months of 2012 have seen tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, nearby international waters, the sovereign waterways of Iran, and of neighboring countries. The same issues were a concern last year at this time, though. Barbs were exchanged in the international press. Nothing awful happened. Not last year, not this year. Iran recently held military exercises and announced production of highly enriched uranium fuel. What of that? 

Iran seems to be participating in the world community much as other countries do, and have done for centuries, with saber rattling as a show of strength.

Rebirth of the British space program

PARIS was a rare example of non-governmental development of a space project. The mission was completed on an undisclosed day in 2010. PARIS is an acronym for Paper Airplane Released Into Space.

PARIS was the culmination of two year's effort by The Register Special Projects Division.  Some may be be more familiar with it as the black ops department of UK-based information technology website, The Register. The publication's logo is black and white, depicting the side profile of a large-beaked bird of prey. The PARIS flight craft was aptly named Vulture 1.

El Reg premieres PARIS.

Vulture 1

PARIS is not a parody. Although the documentary video is a bit humorous, PARIS did succeed in attaining sufficient altitude that the curvature of Earth was clearly visible. The PARIS mission achieved a maximum altitude three times greater than that of any prior paper airplane flight. Vulture 1 landed about 100 miles from the launch site.

Medical Arts

Clinical Cases and Images posted an article about Merriam-Webster's Visual Dictionary of Medical Terms (online edition) in 2008. It remains an excellent reference source, useful for medical terms and for general interest topics.

While visiting the Clinical Cases blog, I found and followed a link to the official website of the most well-known medical illustrator of the 20th century, Frank Netter.

I spent many happy hours looking at Netter-signed illustrations when we lived in New Mexico. There were so many of them in my father's medical reference books. Dr. Netter was an exceptional artist.

Did Frank Netter illustrate anything else, beside human anatomy? Did he have other artistic inclinations?

Frank Netter was born in 1906. He wanted to pursue a career as an artist. However his parents wanted him to do work that would ensure a good living. So he went to medical school near home, in New York City. Netter gradually transitioned from clinical practice, as a general surgeon, to work as a full time, widely acclaimed medical illustrator:

"The first comprehensive collection of Netter’s work, a single volume, was published by CIBA Pharmaceuticals in 1948. It met with such success that over the following 40 years the collection was expanded into an 8-volume series—each devoted to a single body system."

This multi-volume series was referred to as Netter's Greenbooks. Elsevier Publishing acquired Dr. Netter's collection of hand-drawn, then painted, medical artwork after his death in 1991.

That was as much information as I could find in the biographical information from Elsevier.

Frank Netter's images showed great sensitivity toward his subjects. I remain curious what sort of artwork he did in his spare time, and in the years before he attended medical school. The Morisstown Museum in New Jersey exhibited Dr. Netter's work recently. It was a large show, and ran from November 2010 through March 2011. More insight could probably be found there.

Finding the L0L0 cat

In the days of Google's youth

This is one of my favorite April Fool's Day special features from Google. The video is brief, so do listen, please? 

Things were different then, even though the year was already 2012. The Google Tokyo employee in the video is a native Japanese language speaker. Notice how he has fun with us, pronouncing all his "L"s as "R"s in English?! There's the subject matter as well, evoking Nintendo, I believe? That living room is so elegant and beautiful. 

Another subtle detail is the date. It is 31 March. Why? Well, because the date was already 1 April in Japan! 

I enjoyed the dial-up modem sounds.

The Google NES 8-bit is a replacement for what I had in its place when I originally wrote this. At the time, I had segued to something cartographic using a GIF from Funny Blog. Unsurprisingly, Funny Blog and the source of the GIF are both long gone. You'll have to use your imagination. The GIF was a special feline hybrid: The Cat Erpillar!

Funny Blog has a funny cat for you!

Source: Silver Jewelry Life

Where is the L0L0 cat?

The idea for this came to me from the lolcat internet meme, although this is more cartographic, than feline. I'll give one clue to solving the mystery of the L0L0 cat's location, and why it is special. The clue is:

"What is the name of the official Google map product blog on Blogger?"

Not the URL, but the name of the blog. I must intercede with another update. The official Google map product blog no longer exists under its prior name. (The format is worse too. Like every other website, each entry is arranged as a grid of square blocks, making it difficult to ever find anything.) In the past, it was called the Google Latitude Longitude Blog.

Have a look at the map, and observe the caption at the bottom center. The caption is truly L0L0 rather than LOL or LOLO. 

The map may be enlarged here by clicking on it. It isn't necessary to open it on another page if you don't want to, although you can by clicking the underlined caption below. I didn't use Google Earth, only Google Maps, so no additional software is required to view. (Google Earth formerly required a download of software in order to support 3D rendering.)

Click here for a full-size view of the Land of L0L0

The triangular red map-marker--with an exclamation point--shows the physical location of the L0L0 cat but doesn't solve the puzzle.

I hope I haven't given the answer away.

Ultra short epistemology post

So many clever people, such good writing, so little time!

I read something that I liked today. Let me share the joy. It seems fitting, particularly in these uncertain times, with a possible rapture scheduled for the weekend, amongst other things:

Probabilities are for understanding... Truth is a rhetorical device.

Tempered by this wry observation,

On the other hand, "justified at an 83.5% probability" leaves something to be desired for whipping the tribesfolk into a frenzied mob.

via Aretae: Short epistemology post

For more political economy-flavored thought delivered with the sincerity of an electrical engineer, see Aretae and his list of BlogFriends.

Some of my own favorites are featured:

• The Volokh Conspiracy, which sounds sinister but isn't. They are actually a very loosely affiliated and mostly cordial cabal of blogging law professors.
• The Money Illusion, a very sane and friendly site where the author and readers discuss serious policy matters in an agreeable, self-deprecating way. Two typically understated examples are Other activities bumped and Still Not Blogging.
• xkcd: A math, physics and etymology web comic. It is also supposed to be about sarcasm and love, but there is not so much of that lately. I even wrote my own tribute to Randall Munroe, the author and creator of xckd in my earlier post, With love and geo-hashing.
• Greg Mankiw's Blog: I think he won a Nobel Prize. He's an often reviled pillar of economic orthodoxy, whatever that actually means. Maybe "University of Chicago-school monetarist" or "economic heterodoxy" would be more accurate. He has an arrogant style sometimes, but is very bright. Bonus: Mankiw gives links to sites with nice free things. Like economics or statistics textbooks. Or gratis access to the Brookings Institute economics journal.
• Overcoming Bias
• Foseti on banking and regulatory capture
• The Unenumerated: I really liked this post, Signals, Gifts and Politics.

Lunar eclipse

Wade Fulp was one of my favorite photographers on Google- oops, I meant Google+ (minor lol). That's where Wade posted these pictures in January 2011. I'm unsure which lunar eclipse they are associated with. I tried to reproduce them here in chronological order. 

No, I don't know why some are red rather than silver-grey as one would expect of the moon. Also, I reproduced the images I liked the most in the larger sizes. 

EDIT 2025: It was possible to click through and view all of Wade's images in his Google Photos archive https://get.google.com/albumarchive/pwa/wadefulpng/LunarEclipse but Google retired Google Photos archives in 2023.

  

First

Second

Third

Fourth

Fifth

Guide Me Home

A Near-Future Science Fiction Short Story

My journey began near the site of Google's offices in Beijing, shuttered and dark after permanent closure some years earlier by the government of the People's Republic of China. My destination was Camelback Road in Phoenix, in the U.S.A. My home. I could return. I had completed the assignment.

Pacific crossing

Time was not of the essence, thankfully. My transport choices in China were limited, to say the least. I didn't even have a bicycle! I would be traveling on foot for much of the journey. Fortunately, some ferry boats were still in operation. A kayak was waiting for me. Promises were kept. By ferry, occasional kayaking and motorboat relays, I returned to  U.S. territory at long last, to Guam. Hawaii was next. I arrived without incident, intending to rest for a brief time.

         View larger map

Hawaii was beautiful. Photos on The Map did not lie. But I couldn't linger. I returned to my Map. It would be impossible to cross the treacherous waters from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland without it. I traveled by ferry boat and assorted small craft. This was the most difficult part of the route home.

Finally, after more than 100 days in transit, I reached the coastline of North America. I entered via the more negotiable waterways near  Vancouver, although I would've preferred Seattle-Tacoma. The directions said that several short intervals of kayaking would be necessary. I was prepared. I had kept my kayak, but was glad to see the last of it!

Paseo del Norte

I was very worried about the notoriously strict Canadian border patrol.

Fortunately, my contact at Google's Redmond headquarters was informed of the situation. He met me at the border, plying the guards with two crates of brand-new, shrink-wrapped Microsoft PCs with optical processors inside. They are, effectively, quantum computers, yet have the footprint of a Windows 7 wireless phone. Such wonderful contraband, complete with factory installed Chrome Operating System!

Microsoft Optical PC: Small footprint prototype
 via the future and my imagination

You seem surprised. How so? Oh, my apologies!  I neglected to mention the massive consolidation that American industry and technology underwent during the economic and societal Aftermath.  That's how we refer to it now.

Euphemisms are a blessing.

Reconstruction

Let me pause a moment and get you caught up. This is what happened. Google and Microsoft consolidated. There were no succession problems following Bill's demise. Melinda Gates had years of experience as a Microsoft product manager prior to her marriage.

MS Google, as the combined entity was known, was warmly welcomed by locals in Washington State and Oregon after the auto da fe that destroyed Facebook. The populations of both states were delighted when Facebook's not-so-secret coal slurry and brimstone fueled data center was finally decommissioned!

Poor Apple. They were not social enough to get along with the others.

All that remained of venerable IBM were the Armonk and Almaden research centers. These IBM Research folk had PhD's and such, but very different attitudes compared to their predecessors. They quickly, and sensibly, requested a non-hostile takeover by Amazon Web Services. The merged entity chose to drop the "B" from the former International Business Machines, and became AWSIM.

AWSIM soon joined with Intel and AMD. Nowadays, AWSIM provides cloud computing, toasters and nearly anything else that MS Google or General Motors doesn't. AWSIM also acts as exclusive contractor to the U.S. Government. Probably will continue that until we get caught up again. There isn't any need for competitive bidding, not when I've just listed the only high-tech companies still in existence!

What was that you asked me? GM? Yes, General Motors is still here. We wouldn't have buses and blimps if they weren't! I don't recall the details, but I'm certain that GM did a reverse-IPO a long time ago. It continues to be a 100% employee owned and managed company.

Well! Enough of that! I must be on my way. I still have miles and miles to go before I sleep, working my way south, home to Phoenix. The thick blue path of The Map is my ley line. It glows softly yet does not flicker. I have no fear of getting lost with that to guide me. No, no fear at all.

Demise of Digg as we knew it

I spent yesterday afternoon reading about the latest controversy swirling around rapidly-failing digg.com, a mainstay of the social web. Digg founder and CEO, Kevin Rose, recently chose to follow in the footsteps of Goethe's Faustus when he sold his company's soul to advertising partners.

Digg advertising partners less accommodating

Troubled transition

Dr. Faustus fared better in choosing to deal directly with The Devil. Dr. Faustus was granted many years of productive accomplishment in the term sheet of his bargain! Yet Kevin Rose departed Digg a scant two months after Digg 4.0 went live in August 2010! A replacement CEO was hired, who now struggles to triage the sinking ship that is all that remains of Digg.

During the past several weeks, Digg slashed one-third of its workforce while watching site traffic plummet by 40% as loyal users continued their mass exodus. However, yesterday's events may well be the coup de grace.

Tampering detected

Lt General Panda, a long-time Digg user, released a series of spreadsheets, documenting the means by which Digg management, perhaps led by the new CEO, perhaps instigated by former CEO Kevin Rose, chose to alter its news-story selection algorithm. The algorithm is intended to reflect the Voice of the Digg User.

Site is no longer beta, but not quite functional either

Article submissions are classified by topic: current events, computing, security, gaming, technology, education, business, policy, world news, health, entertainment and humor.

Algorithm-related background details

Digg's proprietary algorithm was developed by the now vanished Digg Labs. The algorithm monitors Digg user input regarding perceived merit of submitted articles, which is then used to determine and adjust each article's relative visibility on the "front page". That is oversimplified. Digg provides more detail in the FAQ.

Lt. Gen Panda's story was quickly picked up by TechCrunch, suggesting that Digg tampered with its own proprietary algorithm in order to give greater prominence to items of interest to advertisers, rather than users.

Digg Labs website offline since Aug 2010

Advertisers already had a strong presence on the site, with banner ads and sponsored stories. By removing the Digg user community's freedom to select content based on merit, Digg management effectively removed all motivation to use Digg. After all, one can view as much display advertising and media news feeds as one wants simply by subscribing for free to feeds delivering stories via browser or newsreader.