Links for Later 2-28-12

1. Predictions about Pakistan, ranging from the disturbing to the deeply disturbing.
2. What James Altucher learned from watching Shark Tank.
3. How to synthesize the nasal decongestant pseudephedrine from crystal meth, and other apocryphal science.
4. The case against the case against contraception
5. Varanasi
6. Davos
7. Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) speaks about the Prometheus mission at TED 2023
8. Notes on R Programming

Ruben Block - Sweet Dreams

Eurythmics cover, performed (one and a half times) on DWDD.

Links for Later 2-22-12

1. Third Frontier expands to new accelerator programs
2. How to do guilloche and other patterns in Illustrator
3. Gig poster graphics tutorial in Illustrator
4. The making of Thread's Not Dead, a book about making T-shirts
5. Crowdsourcing tools
6. Jeb Corliss hits Table Mountain
7. Jakprints
8. Bird skull necklace

Tycho (Scott Hansen) on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic

If I had Tycho's album Dive on vinyl, I'd have played the grooves flat by now. Wonderful music to drive to.

John Green and Ransom Riggs went to Kenyon, became friends, and twelve years later are on the top of the bestseller list at the same time. Kenyon alumni everywhere are cheering and gnashing our teeth in envy like Oscar nominees who went up against Meryl Streep for best actress.

Quote of the Day

Nothing Scales Like Stupidity: Yes, that would be the smart thing to do, but it won't scale. The stupid approach is better because it scales.

-Tim Cushing/John D. Cook

Links for Later 2-21-12

1. Get Started with iOS Programming
2. The $1000 home recording studio
3. Tycho (aka Scott Hansen, ISO50)'s recording studio, interview
4. Jonathan Coulton made $500k last year without a record label
5. There is no critical period: Neuroplasticity and the late in life guitarist
6. Building libraries in Indonesia
7. Trent Reznor's winning business model

Macoto Murayama's Flowers

Dissected, drawn, and reassembled using architectural design software, Macoto Murayama's flowers are things of beauty and a wonder to behold.

(via BLDGBLOG and The Scientist)

How to Write a Novel, by Nick Alderton, and the more advanced How to Write a Great Novel, as recommended by N. Gaiman.

Sandman One

Dave Mckean's construction for the cover of Sandman issue #1, from an off-angle. Amazing to see how this was put together.

(via Empire of Dust)

Eddie Colla

If you want to achieve greatness, stop asking permission.

-Eddie Colla

(via This Isn't Happiness)

The Future Is Now, Vol. LXXXVI: Your Pocket Gene Sequencer

For $900, you can buy Nanopore's USB-stick-sized gene sequencer, or for somewhat more you can buy an "array of desktop sized" machines that can sequence your genome in 15 minutes. Fun for the whole family.

The Litany of Tarski

If the box contains a diamond,
I desire to believe that the box contains a diamond;
If the box does not contain a diamond,
I desire to believe that the box does not contain a diamond;
Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.

—The Meditation on Curiosity

(via lesswrong) 

The Litany of Gendlin

What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn't make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn't make it go away.
And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn't there to be lived.
People can stand what is true,
for they are already enduring it.

—Eugene Gendlin

(via lesswrong)

Happy Valentine's Day

John Fugelsang tells the story of how his parents broke the habit and got married. Read the whole story in this NPR slideshow.

(via Americablog)

Links for Later

1. A bunch of talks & interviews with Samuel R Delany
2. Econ bloggers in a nutshell (via marginal revolution)
3. Aaron Swartz interviewed on the copyfight, SOPA
4. Angellist's Naval Ravikant interviewed about the new paradigm in startup funding
5. Ron Conway, Super Angel
6. How Obama lost the will to compromise

Why Digital Piracy is Lending, Not Theft

Neil Gaiman tweeted a link to this article, which reiterates and expands on a point that Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, and many, many others have made before: people who download free copies of your books are typically finding something that they would not otherwise have found, and they end up buying your content if they like it. This means that "piracy" really looks a lot more like lending and/or advertising than it does like theft. In the embedded clip, Gaiman points out that when his publisher offered the digital version of one of his books for free, sales of the physical copies of the book went up by 300% the next month. That's a heck of a lift.

Mitt Romney, Super Consultant

I'm a consultant, many of my friends are consultants, and, as Reason Magazine notes, Mitt Romney is a consultant by experience and temperament, with all of the positives and negatives that implies. He's a really smart, flexible thinker with effective problem-solving skills, but he's also detached from the emotional and economic consequences of his decisions. For a good example, consider Romney's plan to balance the budget and set government spending at 17% of GDP, which would require greater than 50% cuts in domestic programs.

There's a certain narrowness of focus required to practice consulting at the highest level, because the client wants a particular problem solved, not the most interesting or beneficial problem solved. Plus, with today's GOP, he's got a basket case for a client; in the course of trying to make the base happy, he's going to have to be willing to do a lot of really foolish, damaging things to America.

If flip-flopping is Romney’s greatest weakness, his business experience is probably his greatest strength. But can the two be separated? Consultants don’t have ideology; they have strategy. Their job is to take their current client’s side, whatever it is, and put a good polish on it while restoring whatever’s underneath.

Think about what Romney actually did while running Bain Capital. Stephen Kaplan, the Chicago business professor, argues that he should get credit just for having run something. But former Bain Capital partner Eric Kriss, who also worked with Romney in the Massachusetts governor’s office, has warned people not to read too much into the gig. “Mitt ran a private equity firm, not a cement company,” Kriss told The New York Times in 2007. “He was not a businessman in the sense of running a company. He was a great presenter, a great spokesman, and a great salesman.”

Those who have worked with Romney cite his flexibility as a virtue. “He’s spent his entire life in a world that’s constantly changing, where he has had to modify his thinking in order to address problems,” says Scott Meadow, his friend and former business partner. “I think it demonstrates something that I’ve always seen: an ability to adapt and change, and a willingness to accept that his thinking evolves. And not being afraid to change his mind and go in a different direction because that seems like the appropriate thing to do.” Meadow says Romney is “loyal to success,” whatever form it takes. “He’s flexible because he’s had to be,” Meadow says.

More: How Mormon Economics Shape the GOP,

Wade Davis' Writer's Cave

Travis Price Architects built Wade Davis an enviable office, featuring its own library dome, The Kiva of Knowledge. You probably know Wade Davis as the author of The Serpent and the Rainbow and other books, or as National Geographic's Explorer in Residence.

Wade Davis has one of the most coveted jobs in America – Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. A cross between your favorite professor and a modern day Marco Polo, he spends of his time with his fingers in the dirt, traversing the globe as an anthropologist, ethnobotanist, photographer, and writer. When he’s home in Washington, he escapes to put pen to paper in his Travis Price-designed study, overflowing with books, manuscripts, artifacts, and inspiration.

“Travis did a studio on M Street in Georgetown for me,” Davis says, noting that in his current home, zoning prohibited a detached building. While many need light-filled rooms for inspiration, he wanted to avoid large windows opening onto a residential neighborhood and sought a cave-like atmosphere to disappear into his work. Subtle light was brought in by other means when the architect built a dome above his client’s desk (which Price describes as similar to the rotunda of the oracle’s temple at Delphi) and filled it with the books he uses the most. Davis whimsically calls the space his “Navajo kiva of knowledge.”

-Karin Tanabe,Washington Life Magazine

(via boingboing & bookshelf)

Previously: Best Thing of the Week: Wade Davis and the shit knife

Links for Later 2-9-12

1. How to deal with digital piracy (hint: better, cheaper products) (via Bruce Schneier)
2. Prop8 repeal wins at appellate level
3. Profile of Maggie Gallagher
4. Obama and the contraceptives decision
5. Egypt's Parliament getting off to a lively start
6. Obama is the most "moderate" Democratic President since WWII, still ticks off Repubs
7. Tau protein spreading in Alzheimer's. I don't know about this one, so more research, please.
8. Svante Paabo strikes again: Human ancestor's genome sequenced from fossilized remain
9. Why Chicago is great for startups