Month: April 2009
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64 Things Every Geek Should Know
If you consider yourself a geek, or aspire to the honor of geekhood, here’s an essential checklist of must-have geek skills.
Minimise the risk of infection with these essential tips
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Planets and Stars in Scale
A mind blowing animation showing the relative size of planets and stars in our universe.
Shown as part of the VW Superior Sequels season.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb the author of the brilliant The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
presents in the Financial Times Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world. [via]
Also very worth reading is his essay The Fourth Quadrant: A map of the limits of statistics.
Taleb, looking at the cataclysmic situation facing financial institutions today, points out that “the banking system, betting against Black Swans, has lost over 1 Trillion dollars (so far), more than was ever made in the history of banking”.
But, as he points out, there is also good news.
“We can identify where the danger zone is located, which I call the fourth quadrant, and show it on a map with more or less clear boundaries. A map is a useful thing because you know where you are safe and where your knowledge is questionable.”
I’m not sure that those with the power to change things and those that caused the financial chaos have learnt the lesson and will likely ignore the advice of Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
The reason they got us into this mess and were allowed to get away with it for so long was because they were making money hand over fist using financial instruments that nobody really understood. However they were clearly operating off the map and the system became prone to be hit by a Black Swan event.
Their narrative didn’t tie with the reality of the situation at the time and in the future they will restructure the narrative of these current events to suit their own purposes. It will be the fault of the sub-prime house buyers and the poor management at the companies that collapsed and not faults inherent in the system and the lack of proper regulation.
Lots of answers but with them come more questions. Like where did Charles Widmore get a horse on the island?
Ben is lying about knowing that Locke would be resurrected by the island as he was truly very shocked to see Locke welcoming him back to the land of the living. What is in Illana’s crate?
Ben and Ethan are carrying out Widmore’s orders to kill Rousseau but Ben steals Alex instead. this is pre-purge so the two of them must still be living amongst the Dharma initiative and not yet fully members of the Others.
Michael Emerson and Terry O’Quinn are really great in this episode as Ben and Locke and I love that their roles are now somewhat reversed with Locke knowing more than Ben about what is going on and what to do next. Is Caesar dead? That was fairly short lived for what I thought would have been a new major character. He’s dead before he’s made barely any impact.
Who are Illana’s gang protecting the island from and what purpose are they protecting it for. Why didn’t Ben recognise later that the Oceanic Six had been members of the Dharma Initiative. What about Sawyer, Jin, Juliet and Miles whom he has lived with for three of his most formative years and during a period of time that major events happened including getting shot by an escaped prisoner.
Because what is about to come out of that jungle is something I can’t control. Then Locke emerges. Big clue to suggest that Locke is in fact just a manifestation of the smoke monster.
What lies in the shadow of the statue?
Hieroglyphs depicting Anubis communing with the smoke monster.
Did it let Ben live because he’s taken responsibility for the death of Alex. Presumably Alex was not really there and so Ben was talking to an aspect of the monster and then talks to Locke who is I think yet another aspect of the monster.
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We’re paying rent to tax dodgers”
“We’re paying rent to tax dodgers” – Mark Thomas