The college tuition bubble

The college tuition bubble

by | Aug 18, 2013 | Personal, Reading

A must-read Matt Taibbi on the horrific actions the US government has taken to protect the student loans industry (which is now essentially nationalised). No requirement to disclose full APR, no ability to declare bankruptcy, garnishing disability payments. Horrible,...
MSG myths

MSG myths

by | Aug 18, 2013 | Reading, Science

Helpful to know that the anti-MSG message is based on no real science (everything is damaging in large quantities). Worth reading in full. Thought experiment: if you were offered Kombu salt to finish your dish, would you accept? If you were offered MSG crystals? Same...
Privacy online

Privacy online

by | Aug 16, 2013 | Personal, Reading

If you send a message to an electronic service, the service has to process and often store the message. You might value the processing enough to pay for it, e.g. to scan for spam, allow full-text indexing, back up your local information. If you don’t like what...
What a stupid headline

What a stupid headline

by | Aug 14, 2013 | Hong Kong / China, Reading

Hong Kong launches mass evacuation as Typhoon Utor shuts down region There was no evacuation in HK, only in Hainan and mainland. The HK shut down was standard for the wind speed.  
Orbital velocity / What if

Orbital velocity / What if

by | Aug 14, 2013 | Reading, Science

This is utter brilliance. The ISS travels 1,000 miles in the time it takes to listen to a famous pop song. What a story arc. If you like xkcd you should follow what if as well.  
Holacracy: a different vision of management

Holacracy: a different vision of management

by | Aug 7, 2013 | Business, Reading

I’m always interested in new ways of managing companies, and Holacracy looks like a good one. My summary: distributed decision making with purposeful discussions of issues. Saw a review of Medium’s use of the practice and will need to investigate further,...