As a kid growing up in the Windows 95 era, my answer would have to be The Incredible Machine. I actually think that that game, along with LEGO, really birthed my interest in engineering and problem-solving. The concept is simple: given access to a limited set of ingredients (some realistic, like a helium balloon -- some less so, like an antigravity generator) create a Rube Goldberg machine to accomplish a relatively simple goal, like moving a basketball into a net. As a kid I would spend hours constructing huge monstrosities like this: The first two were for DOS/Windows 3.1 but I still remember getting TIM3 and playing it on our brand-new beige-with-cow-logo Windows 95 PC. It might be time to dust off dosbox and fire it up again.
Tomorrow I find out if I'm going to spend 9 weeks in jury duty on a high-profile case, away from work and everything else that happens in the daylight hours. I'm torn up about it; I really don't want everything I work on to shrivel up while I'm gone. If I get picked I'll probably end up working evenings; September is going to be very hard. And yet, I still really hope I get picked. It's going to be hard to sleep tonight. Time for some whiskey.
An Ars writer went to town on this story yesterday: http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/07/magic-carbon-layer-not-a-sign-of-extraterrestrial-life/
A bit off topic, but whatever: I'd love to read more about methods of persuasion; I've done debate, but as you touch on, debate is a great way to have both sides become more entrenched in their beliefs. Any suggestions for reading material that expands on what you're talking about here?
Mine's a picture I took from one of my favorite places in San Francisco:
If you're looking for some very different stuff, you should give The Bad Plus a listen. I'm wearing out the grooves on my copy of Never Stop, but I think my favorite album of theirs is These Are The Vistas. They have a way with teetering on the edge of cacaphony and coming back from the precipice that makes my brain happy.
I think Facebook is probably immune from the big-bang-death of Digg et al, but I do think it's in decline. More and more, my social group is leaving Facebook and falling back on a combination of email, instant messaging and Instagram to keep in touch. Everyone still has a Facebook account, but my news feed has come to be dominated by a small subset of my friends who still actively post; I myself barely ever sign on any more.
Just read the blog post you linked from Heinrichs, then immediately bought his book. And Jonah never lied, he just "borrowed" a bunch, so I'll take a look. Thanks so much!
I'm a little confused by this: Did the Human Rights Campaign say that in relation to Manning's case? What makes her gender reassignment surgery medically necessary?The Human Rights Campaign — an advocacy group for gays, lesbians and transgendered people — said there is “a clear legal consensus” that the U.S. government should cover the cost of sex-change operations for federal prisoners if the treatment is medically necessary.