> Ok, so, I am trying to post something every week now. We’ll see how long that lasts. This week, a collection of thoughts and links on our financial crisis, with a psychological approach. For beginners, or people interested in seeing a quick visual way of looking at how things went down, take a look…
>Lately I have been obsessed with the impending death of newspapers. While I don’t sit down every day and read a newspaper, I just can’t imagine life without the New York Times (here is a scenario by which the NYT goes bankrupt by May, from the Atlantic Monthly). And I have some nostalgia for newsprint,…
> I’ve got something for you…Watch this video, then bookmark this site, I am sure you will be backhttp://cleanupdata.com/#video It is called Magic/Replace, and it is basically a smart spreadsheet program that knows what you want to do with your spreadsheet. You just have to watch the video.
> How might you know whether there is a flu outbreak coming to your state? If you only knew how many people are getting flu medication… But, a reasonable proxy is tracking how many people use the Google for flu remedies. I think this is a great use of google data, and not at all…
> I have to share a few interesting links, and how Barack Obama has already won. First, from a focus group done by a republican consultant in an Upper Midwestern state, described in Ben Smith’s blog: 54 year-old white male, voted Kerry ’04, Bush ’00, Dole ’96, hunter, NASCAR fan…hard for Obama said: “I’m gonna…
> Have you all heard of amazon’s Mechanical Turk? Basically it is a place where you can post a task to be done over the web, and how much you want to pay for it, and then people can sign up and do the task. Basically it is for tasks which a large group of…
> The head of IT at Amherst College compiled the technology use habits of his incoming freshmen (class of 2012). Here it is.Some tidbits:There are 438 people99% have facebook accounts1% have landlines The personal landline is a technology that will be obsolete relatively soon. Why have that, when you have caller id, and even web…
> So, you may have heard (by reading the NY Times article this past Sunday) about some of Sarah Palin’s secretive practices as mayor of Wasila and governor of Alaska. One of the interesting tidbits was that she used a private email address to conduct official government business (as some in the current Bush administration…
>From chartjunk (a blog dedicated to eradicating bad charts, named after a term Edward Tufte coined): They have redone the Washington Post’s chart which compares the Obama and McCain tax plans. Rightly pointing out that the top two brackets represent only 1%, but yet get around 20% of the physical chart. Their chart is more…
> Ok, a break from the political rage, for a little fun, courtesy of Waxy Links, my favorite one stop for everything cool but not yet popular on the web:Check this out from CollegeHumor:Translation of a freestyle rap battle See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor. It is not really necessary to watch…
