Ben Shoemate's Notebook

via http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/naps/

"small tree"

Michael Masnick via Techdirt shared by 5 people

From Paul Kedrosky we find one of the most idiotic theories on where the whole financial crisis came from, out of a laughably stupid interview with author Tom Wolfe. Apparently, the problem wasn't complex securities, massive leverage, unsupportable subprime mortgage giveaways or anything of the sort. No sir. It was all those flickering screens on computers that make financial types not want to pay attention:

The whole thing, starting with the subprime, is the fault of the computer. I was just talking to a banker the other day, and not that long ago, 20 years ago, an investment banking house, let's say, Lehman Brothers, when it got a package of mortgages, they would go through every mortgage, every single one, and they'd throw out the ones that just seemed absurd, they just wouldn't accept them. Things used to arrive on paper. Today things arrive on a screen, and a screen is back lit, and one of the biggest pains in the neck is trying to read something dully written and complicated on a computer screen. It will drive you nuts -- I mean, try it sometime. Now they say, "Oh, to hell with it," and they just accept the whole package. And if it hadn't been for that, they'd be going over each loan. What's happened is the backward march of technology.

So, now you know.

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Canada.com

Photos: Messenger returns to Mercury CNET News - 38 minutes ago On Monday, NASA's Messenger spacecraft drew within 125 miles of Mercury in its second pass by the planet within the past year. NASA 'Messenger' Captures Space Views Of Mercury's Surface InformationWeek NASA: Messenger sends back never-before-seen Mercury images Computerworld MSNBC - eFluxMedia - RedOrbit - Reuters all 103 news articles

Kevin Purdy via Lifehacker shared by 4 people

IBM is offering the public a peek at Bluehouse, an online office portal aimed at making it easier for employees to share documents and desktops, host web conferences, and reach out to clients from one location. Any sized business can sign up to try out the service, though not everything works at the moment. One notably cool feature is the "Live Charts," which does exactly what it sounds like. There's tagging, importing from Outlook or Lotus Notes, and a lot more to fiddle with. Bluehouse is free to use (for the moment), requires a sign-up.

Just in time for the presidential debates tonight, from Lessig blog:

Barack Obama has reaffirmed the position he took in the primaries and asked the Debate Commission to support "open debates." Here's the letter.

Craig "Craigslist" Newmark explains that Lessig led the effort, and that "the idea is to make video footage available to everyone for commenting and reuse, a big deal."

[Barack] wrote last year to the Chairman of my Party: "The Internet has enabled an extraordinary range of citizens to participate in the political dialogue around this election. Much of that participation will take the form of citizen generated content. We, as a Party, should do everything that we can to encourage this participation… I am a strong believer in the importance of copyright, especially in a digital age. But there is no reason that this particular class of content needs the protection. We have incentive enough to debate. The networks have incentive enough to broadcast those debates. Rather than restricting the product of those debates, we should instead make sure that our democracy and citizens have the chance to benefit from them in all the ways that technology makes possible."

(via @cnewmark on Twitter)

UPDATE: The McCain campaign has also come out in support of the "open debate" project. My apologies for the earlier omission.

via http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5010

"no description"

"Curious Iceberg columns of natural formation, Lemaire channel"

"Made in Nasa"