Ruchira S. Datta

Economics, and in particular, free market capitalism, is not a science, it is a belief system. This article traces the roots of this belief system to evangelical Christianity in the 1800s. Interesting stuff ... - Nadine Schaeffer via Bookmarklet

Thanks for the link Ruchira! - Nadine Schaeffer

Here's an old blogpost of mine about the quasi-scientific nature of neoclassical economics: http://ruchiradatta.blogspot.c... I didn't know about the historical background covered here, particularly the ties to evangelical Christianity. Thanks for posting the link, Nadine! - Ruchira S. Datta

Google claims that its data centers get an average of 1.2 PUE (20% overhead for air conditioning, battery backup, etc.), much lower than the old expected value around 2.0 (100% overhead), and that one of their data centers got 1.15. PUEs are going up in the graph because cooling needs are higher in summer. The EPA expects that with improvements, by 2011 the average data center will reach 1.9, and the very best data centers will get down to 1.2. - Amit Patel

I don't think the crawling/indexing is included in that comparison, but It's still pretty amazing if true. - Sanjeev Singh

Gabe, the switches and routers probably take negligible energy compared to the servers. - Sanjeev Singh

Behind this link are 37 intense, disturbing, real images illustrating, in graphically engaging photography, the growing pandemic of extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis. I warn you, they aren't easy to see. But, hopefully, they move us all to help out. - Christopher Sacca via Bookmarklet

XDR TB is a research focus of CEND, the Center for Emerging & Neglected Diseases at UC Berkeley, of which I am part (as a postdoc in Sjölander Lab). http://globalhealth.berkeley.e... - Ruchira S. Datta

The music is Iguazu by Gustavo Santaolalla...chilling (I think used in Deadwood too). - Jonathan Keller

@Jon, explain to me again why you no longer own a music store - Christopher Sacca

I respect people have different opinions, and I'll happily discuss politics on either side rationally and respectfully...but I'm seeing a nasty turn in some of it, and I have no desire to play - Duncan Riley

As a McCain supporter, I support blocking Hannity, Hollywood, Ingrahm, and Savage. Will-Zakaria '16 - Jonathan Keller

I won't block based on politics. In fact, knowing that I may come across as annoying in some of my own posts helps keep me in check. Perhaps I go overboard sometimes, but I do respect different opinions. - Mike Reynolds

Quite a few of us were around then...it wasn't *that* long ago. - Ruchira S. Datta

And years later, Pakistan is where it was before Musharraf seized power. The same political players (well, except Benazir). So, Mr. Mc Cain, *how* have things changed in Pakistan? Pakistan has been a failed state for decades now. - Sudhakar Chandra

"Although the fate of tonight's presidential debate in Mississippi remains very much up in the air, John McCain has apparently already won it -- if you believe an Internet ad an astute reader spotted next to this piece in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal this morning. "McCain Wins Debate!" declares the ad which features a headshot of a smiling McCain with an American flag background. Another ad spotted by our eagle-eyed observer featured a quote from McCain campaign manager Rick Davis declaring: "McCain won the debate-- hands down."" - Bret Taylor via Bookmarklet

On second thought, maybe it's not a lie, maybe it's just B.S. If you haven't read _On Bullshit_, I highly recommend it. To try to summarize the difference between lies and BS: the liar knows what reality is and is trying to construct an alternate one, whereas for the BS artist objective reality and/or self-consistency are completely of no concern. - Ruchira S. Datta

Guess its better then them running a Obama Loses Debate ad. - Christopher Welle

I wish I had 20 minutes to see if I would pass this IQ test. Apparently some friends of a friend couldn't do it. - ƃuɐʞ via Bookmarklet

Poorly designed test, low usability and way too restrictive in scope, and kind of boring so you may end up just clicking random stuff -- this site could be interesting if it would have a test that covers a variety of fields, puzzle types, and tests requiring different styles of thinking. They also don't accomodate for the fact the phone might ring or someone entering the room, which would collide with the timer. - Philipp Lenssen

This type of IQ test is known as Raven's matrices. It was formulated so as not to be culturally biased, since it's purely visual and so doesn't depend on language or knowledge. I believe the time limit is non-traditional; I doubt they've renormed the test to account for it. - Ruchira S. Datta

"Many networks of interest in the sciences, including social networks, computer networks, and metabolic and regulatory networks, are found to divide naturally into communities or modules. The problem of detecting and characterizing this community structure is one of the outstanding issues in the study of networked systems. One highly effective approach is the optimization of the quality function known as “modularity” over the possible divisions of a network. Here I show that the modularity can be expressed in terms of the eigenvectors of a characteristic matrix for the network, which I call the modularity matrix, and that this expression leads to a spectral algorithm for community detection that returns results of demonstrably higher quality than competing methods in shorter running times. I illustrate the method with applications to several published network data sets." - Sanjeev Singh via Bookmarklet

Sanjeev: http://www.pnas.org/content/10... ? - Aviv

ha ha thanks Aviv! - Sanjeev Singh

They who? - Jason Carreira

Quoting one of the commenters "Good article, but now I'm horny." - it turns out all points point to the essence of manipulation small percentage of people/voters are aware, but all of us are equal when confronted by jugs. - Nenad Nikolic via twhirl

@Nenad - Not all of us are equal. Case in point: they didn't do anything for me. ;-) - Ruchira S. Datta

Try the baccala alla vicentina and pastisada de caval. Go to the lido for less touristy restaurants and a great night ferry to piazza san marco. Find the century old fish market (before noon). Will be in Verona over the weekend, maybe we'll make it to Venice. - Antonio Piccolboni

Don't get lost! ;) - April Buchheit

There is a little restaurant that only takes cash called Vini da Aturo. It's really good. The owner/chef came out of the kitchen near closing and fed raw ground beef to our dog. I love Venice. - Chris White

Thanks for the suggestions everyone! I'm back, and managed not to get lost. :) - Ruchira S. Datta

"At the same time, I can’t honestly claim to be uniquely irreplaceable or valuable. Perpetually overworked yet entirely replaceable -- isn’t that the very definition of a cog?" This sums up Google perfectly. - Ana

I love fish tacos! I haven't had a good one in northern california yet, I'll check out Sinaloas - Roshan Vyas

@Ana +1 Not being a cog is one of the things I really like about my current work. Barry Schwartz says in _The Paradox of Choice_ that people with many choices (e.g., of jam) are less likely to choose any, or if they do, to feel satisfied with the choice they made. The opportunity costs make all the alternatives seem unattractive. I think that conversely, knowing that you are one of many equally good choices to do a given job makes it much less satisfying. Maybe the jam feels the same way? ;-) - Ruchira S. Datta

This is a serious question btw. I'm curious where these things come from. - Paul Buchheit

What do you mean by viral in this case? I'm assuming you don't mean chain letters... - xero

@xero, I was assuming chain letters were included, so now I don't know what Paul meant either. - Ruchira S. Datta

The furniture is less cheesy, though. - Tudor Bosman

Does everything have labels with funny names? - Sudhakar Chandra

@Sudhakar, quite a lot of it does! - Ruchira S. Datta

Arr! - Amit Patel via Bookmarklet

I like the interface, but no doodle? Or am I not seeing it because I'm in Italy? - Ruchira S. Datta

arrrr! - Raymond

♫ Yo ho, yo ho... ☠ - Ruchira S. Datta

by the vay frrriendfeed.com is available :D ?? - Harun Baris Bulut

Instructions: Take a picture of yourself right now. Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair - just take a picture. Post that picture with NO editing. Post these instructions with the picture. - Ruchira S. Datta

Like others, I wonder if lawyers could ever change litigation process enough to allow authentic and non-staged exchange to occur between experts. Intriguing, though. - Chris Wetherell

Will the hot-tubbing include actual hot tubs? How do I get in on this? ;-) - Ruchira S. Datta

A fun little puzzle game where you drag letters into a grid. I got up to level 10 before getting stuck. - Amit Patel via Bookmarklet

Aw, come on, it's close enough :-) (and btw your Joni Mitchell puzzle is in the "Tongue Twisters" category now) - Doug

Ah, here's the one responsible for this dangerously addictive site! Well, thanks a lot, Doug, I've enjoyed playing. And thanks for not putting too many up at a time. ;-) - Ruchira S. Datta

it also dubs as percentage that looks like Pac-man pie chart :) - Alan Le

mmmm pie - Jonathan Jesse

lmao - Lindsey Smith

Whenever I pull the second pie out of the oven I cry, "Two pie are!" - Ruchira S. Datta