Monthly Archives: January 2012

More on Micro-Institutions: Traffic Changes

Posted on January 30, 2012 by

A while back, I mentioned ongoing research in the field of crowd dynamics that looks at dominant traffic patterns. Although it first seemed that left/right traffic patterns are emergent, I noted an ongoing project by South Korea to get people … Continue reading →

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Can Programming Get You Killed?

Posted on January 26, 2012 by

You know my position on SOPA by now, but this brings a little perspective: The Iranian Government has sentenced Saeed Malekpour, an Iranian-born web programmer living in Canada until his 2008 arrest, developed software for uploading images online, to death…. After … Continue reading →

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Wednesday Nerd Fun: Build Your Own President

Posted on January 25, 2012 by

This blog has remained largely silent on the upcoming American election, but today we turn there for some lighthearted fun. Presidential politics offers voters a unique chance for voters to sort out preferences over a bundle of positions. None of … Continue reading →

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Major Strike on Sinaloa Cartel

Posted on January 24, 2012 by

From BBC News: The Mexican security forces have arrested 11 alleged members of the country’s most powerful drug gang, the Sinaloa cartel…. During the raid, elite troops killed the regional leader of the gang, Luis Alberto Cabrera Sarabia…. Mr Cabrera … Continue reading →

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Error in Art: How Many Rembrandt’s are there?

Posted on January 23, 2012 by

Over the weekend I had the pleasure of viewing the Rembrandt in America exhibit at NCMA. The exhibition was full of facts about Rembrandt (and paintings, of course). What most struck me was the question of “connoseurship”–whether Rembrandt had actually … Continue reading →

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Visualization Basics: Japanese Multiplication

Posted on January 20, 2012 by

Data visualization became very popular in 2011, as evidenced by NYT pieces like this one and the release of Nathan Yau‘s book Visualize This. It seems to me that the upper limit of the amount of information a dataviz/infographic/pick-your-term can … Continue reading →

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Why I Blacked Out

Posted on January 19, 2012 by

The Internet, as of this writing, is an anarchic system. While there are certain regulations and norms that govern behavior, they are not strong. There is no individual or subset of individual users/developers who can claim legitimate authority to coerce … Continue reading →

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Einstein and Reality

Posted on January 13, 2012 by

David Duff had some thoughtful comments on my post about Stephen Jay Gould’s arguments in The Mismeasure of Man about whether IQ is a “real thing” or just the result of measurement. I will provide further illustration of what I meant … Continue reading →

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Wednesday Nerd Fun: Dictators and Sit-Coms

Posted on January 11, 2012 by

While it isn’t the Dictator Game familiar to students of game theory, smalltime industries’ Guess the Dictator/Sit-Com Character game promises some genuine, nerdy fun. From their intro: Have you always thought of yourself as a sitcom character? Or maybe a … Continue reading →

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Micro-Institutions Everywhere: Crime Bosses

Posted on January 10, 2012 by

The similarity between organized crime and government continues to impress me. The best short read that you will find on this is Charles Tilly’s “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime.” (pdf here) We discussed this topic a lot … Continue reading →

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