Long Game

"Instapaper is a great way for you to read your web content on the go using an iDevice of your choosing, but did you know that you can save those articles for offline reading on your Amazon Kindle too? Even though the regular Kindle e-reader doesn't have a traditional app store, it is possible to have your Instapaper saved content pushed directly to that e-ink display."

"Amazon has just begun shipping its latest e-reader, the Kindle Paperwhite, but already it has received any number of rave reviews as the ultimate e-reader of choice. In the words of Gizmodo reviewer Kyle Wagner, the Paperwhite, "makes previous generations feel like a pulpy paperback held up next to an ornately illustrated tome. In short: this is the best e-reader you can buy.""

"One of the best things about the Gadget Lab is our awesome readership, and this tip comes from Gadget Lab fan Ron Winters. Ron has actually managed to make the Kindle's "experimental" web-browser functional. Better still, it is an always-connected client for reading your own personal news."

"It allows you to send subscriptions that in specific folder of Google Reader Periodical format, include article index"

Totally. The app version (I have it on Android) doesn't begin to cut it. Which is funny, to me, because you'd think the straight-up software version of something would be eaiser... but I'm clueless. In the communications department, we have a very strong need to have a "book" that contains all the relevant information about X right at hand. The scientists could benefit from this, as well, since they're printing 20 reams of paper's worth of stuff they barely read, probably weekly (and that's conservative). I just see the thing on the cusp of becoming a ubiquitous tool. I know that tablets are awesome, but I'm coming at this from a single (or few) purpose device. All that happens when we roll out tablets for people is they start playing Angry Birds.

I vote for online knowledge sites with dynamic interfaces.

"What you eat is important, but even healthy food can stop you from losing weight if you eat too much of it. I never recommend extreme calorie restriction (most people aren't very good at it anyway), but there are some tricks you can use to slightly reduce the amount of food you eat without feeling deprived, or even really noticing."

Browse the timeline of war and conflict across the globe. A VERY powerful tool.

"Abstract The widespread prevalence and persistence of misinformation in contemporary societies, such as the false belief that there is a link between childhood vaccinations and autism, is a matter of public concern. For example, the myths surrounding vaccinations, which prompted some parents to withhold immunization from their children, have led to a marked increase in vaccine-preventable disease, as well as unnecessary public expenditure on research and public-information campaigns aimed at rectifying the situation. We first examine the mechanisms by which such misinformation is disseminated in society, both inadvertently and purposely. Misinformation can originate from rumors but also from works of fiction, governments and politicians, and vested interests. Moreover, changes in the media landscape, including the arrival of the Internet, have fundamentally influenced the ways in which information is communicated and misinformation is spread. We next move to misinformation at the level of the individual, and review the cognitive factors that often render misinformation resistant to correction. We consider how people assess the truth of statements and what makes people believe certain things but not others. We look at people's memory for misinformation and answer the questions of why retractions of misinformation are so ineffective in memory updating and why efforts to retract misinformation can even backfire and, ironically, increase misbelief. Though ideology and personal worldviews can be major obstacles for debiasing, there nonetheless are a number of effective techniques for reducing the impact of misinformation, and we pay special attention to these factors that aid in debiasing. We conclude by providing specific recommendations for the debunking of misinformation. These recommendations pertain to the ways in which corrections should be designed, structured, and applied in order to maximize their impact. Grounded in cognitive psychological theory, these rec

"The Debunking Handbook, a guide to debunking misinformation, is now freely available to download. Although there is a great deal of psychological research on misinformation, there's no summary of the literature that offers practical guidelines on the most effective ways of reducing the influence of myths. The Debunking Handbook boils the research down into a short, simple summary, intended as a guide for communicators in all areas (not just climate) who encounter misinformation."

The pro-Disruption argument goes like this: In a digitally connected age, there's absolutely no need for public carriage laws (or hotel laws, or food safety laws, or… or…) because the market will quickly move to drive out bad actors. If an Uber driver behaves badly, his low star rating will soon push him out of business.

I'm going to have to dig into this. I don't see the necessary connection between valuing "disruptive" and being a Randian. I'm sure there are sociopathic enterprises that claim to be disruptive, but that doesn't equate the two.

Looking at the rest of the (lengthy) piece, I get the sense that the real nested claim here is that most people claiming to be disruptive are of this radical libertarian egotist ilk.

"Windows 7 includes a Libraries feature which allows multiple folders or drives to be grouped together for combined viewing and searching. With Libraries, users can separated different categories of files and folders including those out of user directory such as Desktop into few virtual library folders, or grouped files and folders in different physical locations such as different hard drives, external USB or FireWire mass storage device, or file server and NAS (Network Attached Storage) into a single virtual library folder."

"But as a German citizen who has now fought fierce battles with American telephone companies, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the public schools, I find it strange that Americans fear a socialist state. Because Europe's bureaucratic nightmares have nothing on America's. For example, it took an entire day for my wife and me to get our visas processed. We had to answer dozens of detailed questions online: the exact dates of our previous stays in America, the dates of trips to other countries where we had needed visas, the complete birth names of our grandparents. And if we took too long to answer and didn't save our work in the meantime, the Web site automatically shut down and we had to start all over again."

"Overall, I am for betting because I am against bullshit. Bullshit is polluting our discourse and drowning the facts. A bet costs the bullshitter more than the non-bullshitter so the willingness to bet signals honest belief. A bet is a tax on bullshit; and it is a just tax, tribute paid by the bullshitters to those with genuine knowledge."

"Of course, you already knew this, thanks to Portlandia. But show creators Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein should thank sustainability chief Susan Anderson: She's been pushing the city in this direction since the early '90s. Anderson started off at the energy office and was a key figure in its first climate action plan in 1993. She's headed the sustainability department since 2000, and now runs the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, the result of the Bureau of Planning merging with the Office of Sustainability in 2009."

"2008 was also a unique political moment, when George W. Bush's immense unpopularity was compounded by a financial collapse, and when the possibility of electing the country's first black president fired the imagination of the nation (and the nation's press corps). So it was still possible to regard the Obama majority of '08 as more flukish than transformative - or at the very least, to see it as a fragile thing, easily shattered by poor choices and adverse developments."

"The New York Times election statistician, Nate Silver, perfectly predicted all 50 states last night for President Obama, while every single major pundit was wrong-some comically wrong. Despite being derided by TV talking heads as a liberal hack, Silver definitively proved that geeks with mathematical models were superior to the gut feelings and pseudo-statistics of so-called political experts. The big question is, will the overwhelming success of statistical models make pundit forecasting obsolete, or will producers stubbornly keep them on the air?"

"The United States held elections last night, and nothing changed. Barack Obama remains president. The Democrats remain in control of the Senate with a non-filibuster-proof majority. The Republicans remain in control of the House of Representatives."

"Dear Republicans, Sorry about the election. I know how much it hurts when your presidential candidate loses. I've been there many times. You're crestfallen. You can't believe the public voted for that idiot. You fear for your country. Cheer up. The guy we just re-elected is a moderate Republican."

"Before rank-and-file conservatives ask, "What went wrong?", they should ask themselves a question every bit as important: "Why were we the last to realize that things were going wrong for us?""

"And the amazing thing is that the game gets me to feel all those emotions too. I'm glad that the game comes in monthly installments, because I need the time between episodes to recover. But why is that? By what psychological, neurological, and biological mechanisms do video games like The Walking Dead get us to not only empathize with characters onscreen, but also share their emotions?"

"Piracy off the coast of Somalia has dropped off dramatically in 2012. Successful ship hijackings have decreased from 31 in 2011 (and 49 in 2010) to only four so far in 2012. Attacks against ships have also decreased, falling from 199 reported attacks in the first nine months of 2011 to 70 attacks over the same span in 2012 -- a 65 percent drop. However, diminished activity does not necessarily mean a decrease in the cost of sailing around the Horn of Africa. Somali pirates occupy a unique position, which is right along highly strategic global shipping lanes yet outside the reach of any national power. For international actors, it is politically and militarily easier to try to contain the Somali piracy threat than to eliminate it. But containment comes at a high cost."