Software Carpentry does a little math describing the value of teaching scientists how to build good software. Even with very pessimistic assumptions, it’s clearly worthwhile. With realistic assumptions, it’s a frigging research bonanza. WTF? Why don’t advisers and administrators make sure everyone is on board?
Category: linkstream
A running log of all the links/bookmarks I share.
Unnatural Selection
An interesting Q&A from Shanghai Scrap with the author of Unnatural Selection, a book about the world’s 160 million missing girls, abortion, and the “perversion of choice”. In some Chinese counties, the male to female ratio at birth is skewed as far as 3:2 by elective abortions, which starts having broader societal implications. How does a western pro-choice feminist reconcile this outcome? Especially when the choices are predominantly being made by the women themselves.
Bicycle Seed Crystals
A wonderful little social patterning, guerilla marketing experiment, in which a bicycle occupies automotive space, and replicates. And a larger version, in which bicycles have their own designated replication space.
Virtual prison labor gangs in China
China used prisoners in lucrative internet gaming work. Prisoners are coal mining by day, gold farming by night… to the benefit the prison guards. Don’t earn enough gold? Get beaten with a pipe. Yet another indication we are living in a cyberpunk novel.
On the morality of a carbon-intensive lifestyle
Nils Gilman looks at the morality (or lack thereof) of our carbon-intensive way of life, by way of analogy with antebellum slavery. The average (mean) global citizen today wields roughly 20 times the intrinsic power of a single human being (~2,000 watts). It’s like having 20 “energy slaves” to do your bidding at any time. In the US it’s more like 100 human powered equivalents (~10,000 watts). Most North Americans have a hard time imagining life without the fossil fueled slaves. And so it was that most of us 150 years ago, other than a few radical eccentrics, had a hard time imagining our lives without the economic fruits of literal slavery.
Slugging
Slugging is a self-organized carpooling system that’s popular in Washington DC. People who want to use the HOV lanes troll known meetup locations for folks heading to the same exits on the freeway out of DC, and pick up several strangers. Seems like a great consequence of having HOV lanes… But then I saw the distances and times involved. Alone, people are driving 6 miles, and it takes an hour. In the HOV lane, it’s cut to a mere 30 minutes. With any kind of semi-reasonable infrastructure, bikes would beat even the carpoolers in a race.
On the Economics of Mass Transit and the Value of Common Sense
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight thinks about what we ought to measure when comparing public transportation options. Does Modesto, CA really have better public transit than New York City? There are a lot of measurable quantities, but only some of them are interesting. In particular, it’s not the absolute convenience of public transit that matters — rather, it’s transit’s relative convenience compared to driving alone that determines how people get around.
How Boulder’s Twitterati Got My Bike Back
A short story about the bright side of the Citizen Surveillance State we live in today. A bike was stolen, but the theft was photographed in progress, and there were enough people plugged in to the local social media scene that after it was announced and publicized, the thief was followed and apprehended in short order. Creepy and awesome at the same time!
Major developer to build car-free micro-homes in Portland
DR Horton, which has built nearly 20,000 mostly suburban homes across the US, is now pitching cozily downsized car-free living in SE Portland. It’s a development called Division 43, made up of 29 units, in 2-3 story buildings, on one third of an acre, with no on-site parking, and shared outdoor spaces including a garden plot. 350-700 square feet, 1-2 bedrooms and 1-2.5 baths, open floor plans, energy efficient, $120-180k. Sounds pretty awesome. Would be great to see similar stuff available in Boulder.
CycleTracks for iPhone and Android
The San Francisco Transportation Authority created a mobile app to collect bicycle route/usage data called CycleTracks. It’s open source, and we’re thinking it might be fun to adapt for use here in Boulder (and elsewhere) to better understand how people really get around by bike.