darnton

The United States is a maritime superpower, able to project power across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Losing the Pacific coast would end that. I can't imagine it being let go easily.

What can a run-of-the-mill technical person do to help?

We know that super-AI is more likely than not to be existentially dangerous. It would be remiss to foresee the apocalypse and assume someone else will fix it.

The way I read it was that "both versions" refers to the two tellings of the problem, one in terms of deaths the other in terms of survivors, not the two different medicines.

I had a strange moment of mental serenity during an earthquake a couple of years ago. Furniture was rolling around the place and glass was smashing, my heart rate was about 180 and my respiration the same, but I had a moment of complete mental quiet as I realised it didn't matter what got lost or broken.

I've never really believed that "you don't own your stuff - your stuff owns you"; I've always thought that was claptrap. But it was interesting to me that in the face of losing all my stuff it didn't really bother me too much.

Scroll down to the comments and follow the Google Maps link to the crazy Belgium/Netherlands border. How does stuff like this even happen?

They are usually called "Britons".

Is this supposed to be used instead of the Business Model Canvas or alongside?

In "The Luck Factor" Richard Wiseman talks about the personality characteristics that are associated with luck. Agreeableness and conscientiousness are not (contra this saying, which gets attributed to all and sundry) but extroversion, [lack of] neuroticism, and openness are.

Hard to believe the article can make this observation without mention of John Boyd. http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-The-Fighter-Pilot-Changed/dp/B002...

According to Book Depository my copy was shipped yesterday. (Of course, it has yet to make its way to my doorstep in New Zealand.)

The Box: How The Shipping Container Made The World Smaller And The World Economy Bigger - Marc Levinson.

There are so many facets to this book. It's the story of Malcom McLean's drive to make containerisation a reality. It's a history of the global economy since WWII. It goes into detail about labour relations on the docks and about how changes in shipping change the fortunes of cities.

One stand out chapter details the logistics of getting military materiel into Vietnam before and after containerisation and then McLean's idea that there was no point bringing all those empty boxes back - might as well stop off at Japan and pick up some transistor radios.

This book is well worth your time.

Seville in the 16th century is the best example of what might happen. Spain got hold of the equivalent of a gold-filled asteroid - South America. All the gold and silver came in through the port at Seville, which became very rich, and inflation slowly radiated out from there to the rest of Europe.

I wouldn't even read that much into it. Infants learn a whole range of new gestures as they get finer motor control.

Newborns flail around not even knowing they've got arms. Then they learn to guide their arms and hit things. Then they grab. After a while they develop a sort of lobster pinch with the thumb against four fingers and can pick things up. Then they develop the thumb and forefinger pinch and can gently manipulate small things.

I'm pretty sure my nine-month old son would behave just like this, even though he's never seen an iPad. In his technologically-deprived state he contents himself with examining crumbs and bits of fluff from the carpet.

They're a sort of universal building block. In Christchurch at the moment (badly damaged by earthquakes over the last year) they're used to shore up loose facades, as baffles to stop or slow falling rubble, they've been refitted to contain generators and substations, toilets, and shops. I buy my coffee each morning from a couple of guys who plopped a 10-foot container with an espresso machine on the pavement after their shop was demolished.

The best thing I've read on this topic is The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel (http://www.amazon.com/Procrastination-Equation-Putting-Thing...).

He concludes that different people procrastinate for different reasons and that those reasons boil down to:

- learned helplessness (you have a low expectation of success)

- boredom (you don't value the task), and

- poor impulse control.

He then gives specific advice for working out which applies to you and then for dealing with each of these, which is far more useful than either saying, "Just do it," or telling an impossible-to-apply just-so story about mammoths and frontal lobes.

According to small print, you'd also need to move to Canada.

Ideas similar to this are explored by Denis Dutton in The Art Instinct (http://www.amazon.com/Art-Instinct-Beauty-Pleasure-Evolution...).

The basic idea, in one sentence, is that our preferences in art are a result of our ancestral environment.

He cover various ways in which both natural and sexual selection pressures have shaped how we appreciate various artistic products and how we create them. He explores aesthetics from Aristotle to post-modernism and looks, from the Darwinian perspective he's formulated, why we regard forgeries and modern art "readymades" the way we do.

I bought this book as a "Rough Cut" a few months ago. If you want a very high-level introduction to the field of DSLs this book may be for you but don't expect to be able to do much useful after reading it. It really is just the 50,000 ft view.

I was disappointed because I wanted to get my hands dirty and so I got The Definitive ANTLR Reference a day or two later. While it has nothing like the breadth of Fowler's DSLs it has enough depth to be very useful.

http://www.pragprog.com/titles/tpantlr/the-definitive-antlr-...

If you want to learn to draw and don't know where to start, get a copy of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. You will be stunned at how quickly you can improve.

http://www.amazon.com/New-Drawing-Right-Side-Brain/dp/087477...

It's flying in a replacement for one that caught fire yesterday. http://www.smh.com.au/business/qantas-drama-flames-like-a-gi...

Absolutely. Let your kids make mistakes. Let them do things wrong. Let them make odd decisions.

The best thing you can do for your children is help them to become good decision makers and the best way to do that is to let them make lots of decisions.

You can still make your values known and prevent damage and injury but let them do as much as possible and learn what works.

A great introduction to this type of thinking is Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn.

"France excelled at many things. Punch card automation was not one of them."

Rene Carmille founded the Demographic Service in Vichy France and began conducting the first decent Jewish census in France because previous efforts had been such a shambles.

He took lots of German money to put together a punch card operation and set to work but failed to produce many names and addresses of Jewish families. However, he did manage to secretly put together a list of 300,000 veterans and others to mobilise as part of the Free French army when the allies invaded.

He was tortured and killed by Klaus Barbie in 1944.