J.K. Rowling Should Try the Voting Algorithm Frequent contributor Bennett Haselton proposes a new use for online, anonymous voting: helping sort skill from luck in the cheek-by-jowl world of best-selling (and would-be best-selling) authors: "J.K. Rowling recently confirmed that she was the author of a book she had published under a pseudonym, which spiked in sales after she was outed as the true author. Perhaps she was doing an experiment to see how much luck had played a role in propelling her to worldwide success, and whether she could recreate anything close to that success when starting from scratch. But a better way to answer that question would be to strike a deal with an amateur-fiction-hosting site and use the random-sample-voting algorithm that I've written so much about, to test how her writing stacks up against other writers in the same genre." Read on for more. Update: 07/20 01:23 GMT by T : Note: An editorial goof (mine) swapped out the word "confirmed" for "revealed" (above) in an earlier rendering of this story.
Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald - Mt. Pyre Peak Acapella The 30 Best Films of the Decade We’re all in that humanistic mode of evaluating our lives – coming up on the end of the year and the last time a zero will be the third digit on our calendars. We’re all (from Variety to Cat Fancy) also waxing expert on what films were the best of the best of the best of the past ten years. Which is why there is an unnavigable sea of opinion polluting the internet right now. You may ask (since I’m forcing you to rhetorically), “How can giving your opinion be better than everyone else’s tepid version of an almost-arbitrary-seeming list?” I’m glad you asked. Neil and I anticipated this task back in October and began planning what would become far too much work for two people who essentially sit around watching Animal House all day. We then forcefully shoved that list into an algorithm that neither of us understood (which is why I got my Masters Candidate in Applied Mathematics Friend to construct it for us (and why we didn’t scoff when he charged us $20 and our Powder Blue DVD for it)). 30.
A l'heure de pointe, l'enfer de la ligne 13 du métro... de Pékin 10 Forgotten Fantastical Novels You Should Read Immediately Fans of magical prose and magical worlds, take heart. Titan Books has recently released a special limited edition version of steampunk legend James Blaylock’s The Aylesford Skull, a classic from one of the genre’s trailblazers. To celebrate the release, Blaylock has put together a list of forgotten or ignored works of literature that have inspired his own writing, and should be must-reads for anyone interested in science fiction or the fantastic. Blaylock writes: “Why these novels turned out to be inspirational is a long story, too long to recount here, and in fact sometimes I can’t quite say: a sensibility, maybe, that seemed to me to be True in some regard, a sense of humor that was also a sense of proportion, wisdom of a whimsical variety, an evocative atmosphere, intriguing characters, a level of eccentricity that was somehow made perfectly plausible, a giant cephalopod. All of that is very murky, of course. Phantastes, George MacDonald
30 Books I’m Glad I Read Before 30 In various ways, these 30 books convey some of the philosophy of how Angel and I live our lives. I honestly credit a fraction of who I am today to each title. Thus, they have indirectly influenced much of what I write about on this site. A medley of both fiction and nonfiction, these great reads challenged my internal status quo, opening my mind to new ideas and opportunities, and together they gave me a basic framework for living, loving, learning and working successfully. If you haven’t read these books yet, I highly recommend doing so. Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert – Gilbert, a Harvard professor of psychology has studied happiness for decades, and he shares scientific findings that just might change the way you look at the world. What are your favorite books? Photo by: Katie Harris
Le Long Voyage. Q : Hé moi aussi je veux un beau site comme ça, vous me le faites ? WordPress est un logiciel participatif, normalement chacun peut reprendre un habillage et l’adapter, rien n’est “déposé”.Cela dit nous avons décidé de ne pas le mettre non plus en open-source. On s’est donné du mal pour faire un truc joli et on ne veut pas que ce soit repris n’importe comment par n’importe qui. Nous avons donc préféré nous dire que nous filerions l’accès à ce format d’habillage à des dessinateurs dont nous connaissons/apprécions le travail !Après, personnellement, je considère la partie WordPress comme le travail d’Arnold et je le laisse complètement décider de ce qu’il veut faire avec !
polls - What is the best comment in source code you have ever encountered