News from Cfleesia

Jul 06 2009 ∞
“ Within a game theory-like approach, we explore different promotion strategies and we find, counter intuitively, that in order to avoid such an effect the best ways for improving the efficiency of a given organization are either to promote each time an agent at random or to promote randomly the best and the worst members in terms of competence.
— arXiv.org: [0907.0455] The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study (open access)
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Michael Lewis: The Man Who Crashed The World (Vanity Fair, August 2009)

Almost a year after AIG’s collapse, despite a tidal wave of outrage, there still has been no clear explanation of what toppled the insurance giant. MICHAEL LEWIS decides to ask the people involved—the silent, shell-shocked traders of the AIG Financial Products unit—and finds that the story may have a villain, whose reign of terror over 400 employees brought the company, the US economy, and the global financial system to their knees.

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“ … and has a Methuselah-like battery life.
— Samsung M110 Solid rugged phone • Register Hardware
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“ For a few decades, it’s been noted that a large percentage of all gifted students (those who score in the top 10 percent on aptitude tests) severely underestimate their own abilities. Those afflicted with this lack of perceived competence adopt lower standards for success and expect less of themselves. They underrate the importance of effort, and they overrate how much help they need from a parent.
— The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids - New York Magazine
Jul 05 2009 ∞
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Dropbox. Pretty amused at the calculation since my connection is capped at 64 KB/s up..
Jul 04 2009 ∞
“ This first-hand account of the construction of a clandestine shortwave radio by British POWs in a Japanese camp in Singapore really reminds me of James Clavell’s magnificent novel King Rat, my all-time favorite war-novel, which revolves grippingly around the construction, discovery and consequences of a hidden shortwave in the Changi camp…
— HOWTO build a radio in a POW camp — the real life King Rat - Boing Boing
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Sunset Along Interstate 5 - James Duncan Davidson

Looks good? That was a D700. clickthrough for the iPhone shot.

Jul 03 2009 ∞

Dario Taraborelli: The Beauty of LaTeX »

“LATEX is a free typesetting system that allows you to focus on content without bothering about the layout: the software takes care of the actual typesetting, structuring and page formatting, producing documents of astonishing elegance. “

I never knew Adobe Minion Pro and Hoefler Text could look so good.

Jul 02 2009 ∞
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doanepaperfeed:

Cool Cub Scout fleur-de-lis bar code on the side of a pine wood derby kit. I wonder how well it scans?

That just gave me a bunch of ideas.

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“ Don’t have a soul? Apply here
— A subject line seen in my spambox
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