Links for Sunday, August 12, 2007

• Smart Mobs: Emergency 2.0: Twitter Helps Public Services Speed up Ahead the Government in Crisis Situations – “Redcross will be a test channel that will serve to spread information during a mass evacuation: evacuees will text ‘FOLLOW REDCROSS’ to 40404, and sign up to get updates about where the shelters are, distribution sites, and other contact info. Safeandwell is going to be more for incoming communication, meaning that people who text ‘FOLLOW SAFEANDWELL’ to 40404 will automatically be followed back, thus being able send their private information as a Direct Message to the American Red Cross database.” – via Nick Wilson‘s Twitter.
• EvolutionBlog: How Scientists Lose Debates to Cranks – “The crank wins just by looking serious and thoughtful and not at all like the raving lunatic mainstream consensus says he is. That the facts he cites are invariably wrong and the references he tosses off relentlessly unreliable is mostly irrelevant. Unless you have really spent some time immersed in crankdom, you should not be debating the subject publicly.“
• Niall Kennedy: Yui Rich Text Editor for Blog Comments – “In this post I’ll walk you through how to implement YUI’s Rich Text Editor on your own blog with comment-specific features.“
• Phil Burns: The Ancient Art of Writing – “I never learned to write in cursive, it always seemed stupid to me. I mean, I can sort of do it if forced, but there’s no way I can sit down and write in cursive without thinking very carefully how to create each letter. When I do write, it is always in print, and I have no concept of upper/lower case letters in print.“
• Tim Paterson: Is DOS a Rip-Off of CP/M? – “*If tiny Seattle Computer Products had been sued by Digital Research back when DOS was new, I’m sure we would have caved instead of fighting it. I would have changed DOS so the API details were nothing like CP/M, and translation compatibility would have been lost. But in the end that would have made absolutely no difference. No one ever used or cared about translation compatibility. *”
• Wall Street Journal: Why Rich Kids Don’t Stay Rich – “My conclusion is that despite all their supposed advantages, today’s rich kids have grown up in such bubbles of privilege that they’re not prepared for today’s increasingly competitive job market. They don’t make good investors, they don’t compete well for the top jobs, and they’re not hungry for success like kids who grow up in middle-class homes can be.” – Be sure to read the comment trail; there’s a lot of interesting stuff there.
• Hubble Site: Hubble Pans Across Heavens to Harvest 50,000 Evolving Galaxies – “Several hundred images taken with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have been woven together into a rich tapestry of at least 50,000 galaxies. The Hubble view is yielding new clues about the universe’s youth, from its “pre-teen” years to young adulthood.“