Blink

Boing Boing has an exclusive profile of neutron bomb inventor Samuel T. Cohen by Charles Platt. All the reports so far are that it’s a 10,000 word “must read.”

The article, Profits of Fear, is available in PDF, plain text, and Palm doc versions at Boing Boing.

Thanks to David Rothman for the heads up. Extra: Rothman asks what it all says about mainstream media when respected authors eschew traditional media for blogs.

Right up front in the prologue of Ruth Wajnryb’s Expletive Deleted she quotes the following from Richard Dooling on the difficulty in researching “bad language”:

The Library of Congress classification system does not provide a selection of books … on swearing or dirty words. A researcher … must travel to the BF of psychoanalysis, the PE of slang, the GT of anthropology, the P of literature and literary theory, the N of art, the RC of medical psychiatry, and back to the B of religion and philosphy.

Somebody asked for some links to get started with PHP. Of course I lead them to the PHP.net official site, where the documentation is some of the best I’ve seen for any product.

I also suggested PHPDeveloper.org and PHPFreaks.com, though the truth is I usually Google any questions I have that the official docs don’t answer. Still, I’ve found some good info at both of those.

Finally, the PHP Cheat Sheet at ILoveJackDaniels.com is pretty nice to have around (cheat sheets mentioned previously).

Danah Boyd posted about the biases of links over at Many2Many the other day. She looked for patterns in a random set of 500 blogs tracked by Technorati as well as the 100 top blogs tracked by Technorati. She found patterns in who keeps blogrolls and who is in them, as well as patterns about how bloggers link in context and who they link to.

The patterns Boyd points to would certainly effect the Google Economy, our way of creating and identifying value based on linking structures. And though she’s emphasizing gender differences, the patterns show broad differences in linking patterns between content types as well.

Discussion?

Colin pointed out Spark Fun Electronics as a source for all manner of geeky components, like component level GPSs and accelerometers. Thing is, they also sell the components in kits with custom PC boards, some with USB interfaces.

Alternet has a story by Monica Mehta titled The Myth of Marriage with this synopsis:

A radical new book debunks the concept of marriage as a time-honored institution, and argues that we need to loosen up about it.

The book is Stephanie Coontz’s Marriage, A History.

Related previous story: The “Sanctity” Of Marriage.

John Emsley, author of Elements Of Murder: a history of poisons appeared in an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air’{#4769877} earlier today. Those who were fascinated by the morbid details of Devil in the White City should give it a listen. I plan on checking out the book too, though it sounds like Emsley offers more chemical formulae than outright suspense.

Via Defense Tech: Slate did a series last week titled A Nuclear Family Vacation that visited the Nevada Test Site; Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and Sandia National Labs; and Trinity. Extra: a slideshow accompanies the text and the authors interviewed{#4755708} on NPR’s Day to Day{#4755708}.

Related: previous nuclear stories at MaisonBisson.

Two items from the blogosphere about Rove’s Leak-and-Covergate at Tikun Olam and AlterNet.

Flash app dynamically generates charts based on XML formated data or values in a PHP array.

XML/SWF Charts is a simple, yet powerful tool to create attractive web charts and graphs from dynamic XML data. Create an XML source to describe a chart, then pass it to this tool’s flash file to generate the chart. The same tool also accepts PHP sources. XML/SWF Charts makes the best of both the XML and SWF worlds. XML provides flexible data generation, and Flash provides the best graphic quality.

More info here.

MIRTs turn red lights green, but merely having one will probably get you in a pile of trouble. More info at i-hacked.com{#176}.

Ross Rubin at Engadget just alerted me to Peerflix

…which can be described on a basic level as eBay meets Netflix. Peerflix resembles many online DVD stores, but it neither rents nor sells DVDs. Rather, it depends on a community of users willing to trade DVDs they have for DVDs they want. There are no subscription fees. Peerflix charges a 99-cent transaction fee and senders are responsible for the postage charge of 37 cents for the mailers that the company distributes. Behold the $1.36 DVD.

Google engineers have got the moon on their minds lately. We all got a laugh at their April Fools Day lunar hosting and research center job opening, but they’ve done themselves one better and several points more serious with Google Moon. Sure, it’s in celebration of the first lunar landing 36 years ago today, but if they’re so fixated on the moon, why not sponsor a space competition?

First Lady Laura Bush speaking at the White House Correspondents Association gala noted:

George’s answer to any problem at the ranch is to cut it down with a chain saw. Which, I think, is why he and Cheney and Rumsfeld get along so well.

The quote is all over the net now, but I found it in the August issue of Vanity Fair.

Search Engine Watch did a story about how to use Google and Amazon’s tools to search full-text content inside books.

The gist? when you can get to the tools and where they’ve got content, it does a lot to make books as accessible and open as electronic content.

Sort of related: I’ve spoken of Google Print before and there’s more in the Libraries and Networked Information category.

Jenny Levine is talking about an example of The Perfect Library Blog over at The Shifted Librarian.

The posts are written in the first person and in a conversational tone, with the author’s first name to help stress the people in the library. The staff isn’t afraid to note problems with the new catalog, the web site, or anything else. Full transparency — nice. You can feel the level of trust building online. They respond to every comment that needs it, whether it’s a criticism, question, or suggestion. And some of the comments are fantastic. Users are even helping debug the new catalog.

Jenny quotes some examples, go look.

The MAKE: podcast pointed me to gumstix — really small computers built for hacking. Cool.

From O’Grady’s PowerPage{#14723}:

I have no interest in true hacking (i.e. rummaging through people’s private junk) although viewing random unprotected IP cameras around the world in public places and controlling their panning and zoom functions is kind of mind-blowing. There are a ton of fun GHacks out there – like spelling out words in pictures using Google image search, and the Google poetry generator, or the news map generator etc. Check out more than a dozen Google Hacks here.

Sort of related: put an “&btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky” at the end of your query URL to invoke Google’s “I’m feeling lucky” option. This is incredibly useful when using Google to search WorldCat, like this.