Super Volatile

Krzysztof Szafranek's link blog

Hi, I'm Krzysztof and I make websites.
When I'm not making websites, I read these.
Apr 9 / 7:29pm

A TED Talk to Open Your Eyes to Open Science

It takes a good story to pull it all together, and that’s what Michael Nielsen delivers here: A nice, short, TED-sized story about a slick project that shows the power of open science’s main principles. I give TED some grief now and then, when its hunger for powerful ideas gives air to expressions of scientific ideas that walk too far out beyond the evidence. Here we see its redeeming strength: It generates concise stories illuminating the firm frameworks of complexity.
more on wired.com

On the idea Open Science – using the internet to foster sharing of scientific information. I don't yet see how the problem of attribution is addressed, but the idea makes sense to me for publicly funded research.

Filed under: science   ted  
Mar 5 / 2:10pm

#134 The TED Conference « Stuff White People Like

Due to the broad audience watching the talks, TED speakers generally take very complex ideas and boil them down into a simple engaging presentation. So when a white person finds out that you have a PhD and visits and attempts to engage you in a conversation about String Theory, you should know that all of their understanding comes from a twenty-minute talk they listened to while running on a treadmill. You should also be aware that the average white person considers their knowledge on the subject to be on par or superior to yours.

Hell, yeah.

Filed under: stuff white people like   ted  
Feb 25 / 10:20pm

Paul Stamets on 6 ways mushrooms can save the world

more on ted.com

Amazing, but still somehow creepy talk.

Filed under: science   ted  
Feb 24 / 11:30pm

Steven Pinker chalks it up to the blank slate

more on ted.com

Interesting remarks on contemporary art criticism and analysis.

Filed under: psychology   ted  
Feb 24 / 11:26pm

Richard Dawkins on our "queer" universe

more on ted.com

Dawkins almost successfully avoids his favorite topic.

Filed under: science   ted  
Feb 15 / 1:30am

TED Organizer Trashes Speaker, Fails Social IQ Test

TED Organizer Chris Anderson isn’t a man to be trifled with. If you criticize his event you don’t get invited back (which is why we see a bunch of nonsense articles about the event that don’t mean anything at all, but praise heavily). But it’s always fine for Anderson to trash his own speakers.

“I know I shouldn’t say this about one of my own speakers,” he said on Twitter, “but I thought Sarah Silverman was god-awful…”

Interesting, though hard to judge without watching the presentation.

Filed under: ted