Re: [FRIAM] Help with memory

2010-12-17 Thread Nicholas Thompson
Carl and everybody, 

 

The Wikipedia entry sure looked like it was going to have the reference, but
alas, it did not!

 

You are probably all prepared for one of the well-known terrors of old age,
that you forget stuff.  But another terror of old age you may not know about
- that you remember with great force and clarity things that never happened.


 

So, everybody, despite Carl's best efforts, the question remains open.  I
have put in calls to local nursing homes, but in the meantime could you put
your thinking caps on?  

 

Thanks, 

 

Nick 

 

PS  What the dickens did Roger Rabbit have to do with street cars and
entropy?  

 

 

 

From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf
Of Carl Tollander
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2010 8:28 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Help with memory

 

Google "Roger Rabbit", which sends you to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal Many
links.

On 12/17/10 8:03 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: 

Many years ago, perhaps more than 40, I swear I read a series of articles,
later published as a book, that laid out the basic principles of entropy,
told the history (perhaps mythic) of how GM tore up the trolley lines in LA
to get its dirty busses to replace clean trolley cars, argued that we would
in the next 40 years transition to natural gas as the price of other fossil
fuels rose, etc., etc.  I think I read it in the New Yorker, and I have had
two candidates for who wrote it, both of which have turned out to be wrong:
Bradford Snell and Barry Commoner.  Does anybody else remember it?  Is
anybody else on this list OLD enough to have read it?  

  

I promise I have googled the hell out it to no avail.  

  

Nick   

  

Nicholas S. Thompson 

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology 

Clark University 

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
  

http://www.cusf.org   

  

  

 
 

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Re: [FRIAM] Help with memory

2010-12-17 Thread Carl Tollander
Google "Roger Rabbit", which sends you to 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal Many 
links.


On 12/17/10 8:03 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:


Many years ago, perhaps more than 40, I swear I read a series of 
articles, later published as a book, that laid out the basic 
principles of entropy, told the history (perhaps mythic) of how GM 
tore up the trolley lines in LA to get its dirty busses to replace 
clean trolley cars, argued that we would in the next 40 years 
transition to natural gas as the price of other fossil fuels rose, 
etc., etc.  I think I read it in the New Yorker, and I have had two 
candidates for who wrote it, both of which have turned out to be 
wrong:  Bradford Snell and Barry Commoner.  Does anybody else remember 
it?  Is anybody else on this list OLD enough to have read it?


I promise I have googled the hell out it to no avail.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ 



http://www.cusf.org 



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[FRIAM] Help with memory

2010-12-17 Thread Nicholas Thompson
Many years ago, perhaps more than 40, I swear I read a series of articles,
later published as a book, that laid out the basic principles of entropy,
told the history (perhaps mythic) of how GM tore up the trolley lines in LA
to get its dirty busses to replace clean trolley cars, argued that we would
in the next 40 years transition to natural gas as the price of other fossil
fuels rose, etc., etc.  I think I read it in the New Yorker, and I have had
two candidates for who wrote it, both of which have turned out to be wrong:
Bradford Snell and Barry Commoner.  Does anybody else remember it?  Is
anybody else on this list OLD enough to have read it?  

 

I promise I have googled the hell out it to no avail.  

 

Nick  

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

http://www.cusf.org  

 

 


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Yahoo! To Close Delicious

2010-12-17 Thread Owen Densmore
On Dec 17, 2010, at 3:09 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

> ...
> Now all this said, I gotta say someone is likely to buy delicious from yahoo. 
>  Or somehow it will survive.  But none the less, its worth our community 
> being free from these sorts of disasters.

Looks like delicious is going to live on, outside of yahoo:
http://blog.delicious.com/blog/2010/12/whats-next-for-delicious.html

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Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Yahoo! To Close Delicious

2010-12-17 Thread Owen Densmore
Great pointers, thanks!

Listen: how about some of us try the new bookmarks-in-the-sky systems and 
report back on your experiences?

Now all this said, I gotta say someone is likely to buy delicious from yahoo.  
Or somehow it will survive.  But none the less, its worth our community being 
free from these sorts of disasters.

-- Owen


On Dec 17, 2010, at 2:01 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote:

> That's sad, del.icio.us is the only useful service
> from Yahoo which I still use. I have heard Diigo
> should be good: http://www.diigo.com/
> 
> Here are 11 ways to backup your del.icio.us bookmarks
> http://lists.econsultant.com/top-10-ways-delicious-backup.html
> 
> -J.
> 
> - Original Message - From: Owen Densmore
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Sent: Friday, December 17, 2010 6:26 PM
> Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: Yahoo! To Close Delicious
> 
> Roger passed on the news that Delicious is being closed by Yahoo.  It was of 
> interest to me because I was converting to Delicious, along with generally 
> revamping my digital ecology to better integrate between all the parts: tv, 
> laptop, mac mini home server, phone, ipad, .. and so on.  So bookmarks in the 
> sky seemed part of that.
> 
> Well, as we've seen from Google, stuff often gets dropped and you Just Can't 
> Trust the Bastards!
> 
> My solution for bookmarks in the sky was two fold: try Chrome's bookmark 
> sync, and to make sure I had a Plan B for delicious.  My plan B looks to be a 
> winner: Pinboard: http://pinboard.in/howto/
> 
> Its sorta interesting: a one man shop that aims for simplicity over just 
> about everything else, with a free account, but also a very interesting 
> upgrade that includes archiving all the sites you bookmark so that if they go 
> 404 you get a backup, sorta like Google's "cached" pages.
> 
> BTW: along the way of all this fussing with stuff, I converted to Chrome 
> full-time, and started using the "search engine" feature.  I've found that 
> putting in several useful sites, along with an "I'm feeling lucky" search, 
> that my use of bookmarks has diminished considerably.
> 
> -- Owen
> 
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org



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Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: Yahoo! To Close Delicious

2010-12-17 Thread Jochen Fromm

That's sad, del.icio.us is the only useful service
from Yahoo which I still use. I have heard Diigo
should be good: http://www.diigo.com/

Here are 11 ways to backup your del.icio.us bookmarks
http://lists.econsultant.com/top-10-ways-delicious-backup.html

-J.

- Original Message - 
From: Owen Densmore

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2010 6:26 PM
Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: Yahoo! To Close Delicious

Roger passed on the news that Delicious is being closed by Yahoo.  It was of 
interest to me because I was converting to Delicious, along with generally 
revamping my digital ecology to better integrate between all the parts: tv, 
laptop, mac mini home server, phone, ipad, .. and so on.  So bookmarks in 
the sky seemed part of that.


Well, as we've seen from Google, stuff often gets dropped and you Just Can't 
Trust the Bastards!


My solution for bookmarks in the sky was two fold: try Chrome's bookmark 
sync, and to make sure I had a Plan B for delicious.  My plan B looks to be 
a winner: Pinboard: http://pinboard.in/howto/


Its sorta interesting: a one man shop that aims for simplicity over just 
about everything else, with a free account, but also a very interesting 
upgrade that includes archiving all the sites you bookmark so that if they 
go 404 you get a backup, sorta like Google's "cached" pages.


BTW: along the way of all this fussing with stuff, I converted to Chrome 
full-time, and started using the "search engine" feature.  I've found that 
putting in several useful sites, along with an "I'm feeling lucky" search, 
that my use of bookmarks has diminished considerably.


-- Owen




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[FRIAM] Fwd: A List Apart: Articles: Smartphone Browser Landscape

2010-12-17 Thread Owen Densmore
>From the site Roger recently referred to (Delicious closed), I found another 
>interesting article:
   http://www.alistapart.com/articles/smartphone-browser-landscape/ 

How in the world can you test on all smart-phone browsers?!  But more 
importantly, it gives an interesting view on smart-phones and their markets.

-- Owen




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[FRIAM] Fwd: Yahoo! To Close Delicious

2010-12-17 Thread Owen Densmore
Roger passed on the news that Delicious is being closed by Yahoo.  It was of 
interest to me because I was converting to Delicious, along with generally 
revamping my digital ecology to better integrate between all the parts: tv, 
laptop, mac mini home server, phone, ipad, .. and so on.  So bookmarks in the 
sky seemed part of that.

Well, as we've seen from Google, stuff often gets dropped and you Just Can't 
Trust the Bastards!

My solution for bookmarks in the sky was two fold: try Chrome's bookmark sync, 
and to make sure I had a Plan B for delicious.  My plan B looks to be a winner: 
Pinboard: http://pinboard.in/howto/

Its sorta interesting: a one man shop that aims for simplicity over just about 
everything else, with a free account, but also a very interesting upgrade that 
includes archiving all the sites you bookmark so that if they go 404 you get a 
backup, sorta like Google's "cached" pages.

BTW: along the way of all this fussing with stuff, I converted to Chrome 
full-time, and started using the "search engine" feature.  I've found that 
putting in several useful sites, along with an "I'm feeling lucky" search, that 
my use of bookmarks has diminished considerably.

-- Owen


Begin forwarded message:

> From: Roger 
> Date: December 16, 2010 9:50:38 PM MST
> To: Owen Densmore 
> Subject: Yahoo! To Close Delicious
> 
> Hope you haven't transitioned too many bookmarks,
> 
> -- rec --
> 
>  
>  
> Sent to you by Roger via Google Reader:
>  
>  
> Yahoo! To Close Delicious
> via Slashdot by timothy on 12/16/10
> Thwomp writes "A leaked internal presentation from Yahoo shows that 
> Delicious, the popular bookmark sharing site, will be wound down. According 
> to Daring Fireball's John Gruber the whole team was let go just yesterday. It 
> appears that Delicious is just one of the services in Yahoo's portfolio that 
> is going the way of the Dodo."
>   
> 
> Read more of this story at Slashdot.
> 
> 
>  
>  
> Things you can do from here:
> Subscribe to Slashdot using Google Reader
> Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites
>  
>  


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Re: [FRIAM] guide to git using spatial analogies

2010-12-17 Thread Owen Densmore
Hey, better yet, its available in Italian!  Yeehaa!  I need more study material 
after the last trip.  A List Apart has always been not only pertinent , but 
literate.  And now in italian!

-- Owen


On Dec 16, 2010, at 1:21 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote:

> This one looked interesting:
> 
>http://www.alistapart.com/articles/get-started-with-git/
> 
> -- rec --
> 
> On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 12:40 PM, Owen Densmore  wrote:
> Speaking of git, it turns out my hosting service uses (and prefers, I 
> believe) git over the others (svn, cvs, ..).  But I haven't needed to use it 
> but would like to start.
> 
> What's the best guide out there for newbies?
> 
> -- Owen
> 
> 
> On Dec 16, 2010, at 11:58 AM, Giles Bowkett wrote:
> 
>> http://tartley.com/?p=1267
>> 
>> "think of the state of your repository as a point in a high-dimensional 
>> ‘code-space’,  in which branches are represented as n-dimensional membranes, 
>> mapping the spatial loci of successive commits onto the projected manifold 
>> of each cloned repository."
>> 
>> He presents it as a simplification, although that might be ironic.
>> 
>> -- 
>> Giles Bowkett
>> http://gilesbowkett.com
>> 
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
> 
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
> 
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org


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