If you’d ask me to name who I think is the smartest person I’ve ever known about, I’d answer “Richard Feynman”. Read this article for a few examples why:

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In the meantime, we were having a lot of trouble explaining to people what we were doing with cellular automata. Eyes tended to glaze over when we started talking about state transition diagrams and finite state machines. Finally Feynman told us to explain it like this,

“We have noticed in nature that the behavior of a fluid depends very little on the nature of the individual particles in that fluid. For example, the flow of sand is very similar to the flow of water or the flow of a pile of ball bearings. We have therefore taken advantage of this fact to invent a type of imaginary particle that is especially simple for us to simulate. This particle is a perfect ball bearing that can move at a single speed in one of six directions. The flow of these particles on a large enough scale is very similar to the flow of natural fluids.”

This was a typical Richard Feynman explanation. On the one hand, it infuriated the experts who had worked on the problem because it neglected to even mention all of the clever problems that they had solved. On the other hand, it delighted the listeners since they could walk away from it with a real understanding of the phenomenon and how it was connected to physical reality.

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If you want to get noticed, don’t be so polished.

This UPS truck has a haphazardly affixed SAFETY sign hanging from the back. Think that’s unintentional? UPS does it on purpose. You notice it because a human being did it.

via

I was reminded that next Wednesday is my birthday. I’m getting old (so get of my lawn already!)…

If you’re inclined to do something about this (usually, I’m not, but that doesn’t appear to stop anybody), you can visit this.

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Telecomprovider KPN is met Apple in gesprek over de introductie van de iPhone in Nederland, een van de weinige Europese landen waar het toestel nog niet is aangekondigd.

Dat heeft woordvoerder Bram Oudshoorn van KPN dinsdag bevestigd. Volgens Oudshoorn lopen de gesprekken al enkele maanden. “Het is logisch dat Apple in ieder land naar de marktleider kijkt”, laat hij weten. Hij zegt niet te weten of KPN als enige met het bedrijf in gesprek is. Ook kan hij niet zeggen of en wanneer de onderhandelingen tot een overeenkomst zullen leiden.

“enkele maanden”…

pff. Ik zei het ruim anderhalf jaar geleden al tegen de toenmalig directeur Retail, en hij was het met me eens.

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NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander can be seen parachuting down to Mars, in this image captured by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is the first time that a spacecraft has imaged the final descent of another spacecraft onto a planetary body.

From a distance of about 310 kilometers (193 miles) above the surface of the Red Planet, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pointed its HiRISE obliquely toward Phoenix shortly after it opened its parachute while descending through the Martian atmosphere. The image reveals an apparent 10-meter-wide (30-foot-wide) parachute fully inflated. The bright pixels below the parachute show a dangling Phoenix. The image faintly detects the chords attaching the backshell and parachute. The surroundings look dark, but corresponds to the fully illuminated Martian surface, which is much darker than the parachute and backshell.

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The Department of Transportation said figures from March show the steepest decrease in driving ever recorded.

Compared with March a year earlier, Americans drove an estimated 4.3 percent less — that’s 11 billion fewer miles, the DOT’s Federal Highway Administration said Monday, calling it “the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history.” Records have been kept since 1942.

This picture reminded me of this

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The federal government is secretly negotiating an agreement to revamp international copyright laws which could make the information on Canadian iPods, laptop computers or other personal electronic devices illegal and greatly increase the difficulty of travelling with such devices.

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The deal would create a international regulator that could turn border guards and other public security personnel into copyright police. The security officials would be charged with checking laptops, iPods and even cellular phones for content that “infringes” on copyright laws, such as ripped CDs and movies.

The guards would also be responsible for determining what is infringing content and what is not.

The agreement proposes any content that may have been copied from a DVD or digital video recorder would be open for scrutiny by officials – even if the content was copied legally.

“If Hollywood could order intellectual property laws for Christmas what would they look like? This is pretty close,” said David Fewer, staff counsel at the University of Ottawa’s Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic. “The process on ACTA so far has been cloak and dagger. This certainly raises concerns.”

Repeal copyright. All of it. If they want to fight, give ‘em a fight. Let us not piddle about minor interpretations of legalisms. Let’s gut the whole thing. Patents too. Both of them were designed to promote progress and now the serve the opposite purpose. They should be done away with.

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