Biweekly links for 10/26/2009

  • …My heart’s in Accra » Jonah Lehrer: Outsider Intelligence
    • “An experiment at Indiana University brought in a group students and gave them insight puzzles, which measure divergent thinking and creativity. One was the compound remote associate test. If I give you the words “mile”, “sand”, “age” – what word can be added to all of them to make a valid word or a phrase?

      One group was told that the problem came from researchers down the hall. Another was told that it came from a team in Greece. The people told that the problem came from Greece solved 40% more of the puzzles. “

  • Linus Says, Linux Not Designed; It Never Was | KernelTrap
    • Fascinating discussion by Linus Torvalds about the pitfalls of design: “And I know better than most that what I envisioned 10 years ago has _nothing_ in common with what Linux is today. There was certainly no premeditated design there. And I will claim that nobody else “designed” Linux any more than I did, and I doubt I’ll have many people disagreeing. It grew. It grew with a lot of mutations – and because the mutations were less than random, they were faster and more directed than alpha-particles in DNA. “
  • Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI)
    • A network of undersea sensors connected by 1200 kilometers of multi-gigabit cable. The data is, I believe, going to be open. Estimated cost is $600 million, and it’s supposed to come online in 2014.
  • The (Skilled) Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
    • Timothy Burke on teaching students about the presentation of self.

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