Internet expectations on Presidential performances?

Just read this piece on the 2012 presidential competition. And it made me think about how social media (including television and radio) influences the way we expect Presidential candidates to talk with the electorate.

"My theory is that in the Oprah-haunted '90s, when self-help had supplanted public-policy as the preferred path to widespread human betterment, the press needed an apolitical way to talk about politics. They made it about feelings. They made it about identifying, relating."

What does this suggest about 2012? Are we going to be Oprah-like or Limbaugh-like as we were in 2008? Or are we more likely to resonate with the Daily Show, Colbert Report, or FOX news approach to political discourse.

None of these paradigms of political discourse seem healthy or appropriate to me, but I think the question is pertinent. Maybe it will all boil down to PACs, in which case I'll be tying to move to Sweden or Canada, thankyouverymuch.

I usually avoid reading TechCrunch because its writers aren’t that great and the topics they cover rarely intersect the topics I find interesting. This morning, a tweet announced that TechCrunch had an article [1] that seemed to say that the technology industry is a zero-sum environment. As a mathematician and a college teacher, this piqued my curiosity; I’m always looking for good examples of situations that admit game theoretic descriptions.

Ashkan Karbasfrooshan wrote this article to justify the claim that “tech is a zero-sum, winner takes all game.” [2] A reader called him on this, questioning his use of the term zero-sum. So Karbasfrooshan decided to take another run at the idea and show his readers how much he knows about game theory. Anybody can cut-and-paste the wikipedia definition of zero-sum game, but it takes someone willing to think carefully about a sophisticated idea (e.g., game theory, technology markets) to write anything insightful and of value.

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Last week, I caught up with an old friend who had turned me on to cooking with a smoker.  I love grilling, whether it be over gas, over charcoal, or over an open pit fire.  So adding a smoker to my collection of cooking tools was a thrill.  My smoker is an old Traeger Lil’ Tex.  This smoker burns wood pellets that are drawn slowly into an ignition well by an electric auger.  The smoking temperature is regulated by a three position thermostat.  Its setting are ‘smoke’, ‘medium’, and ‘high’.  This doesn’t give much control over the cooking temperature.  When my old friend said he had a couple digital thermostats gathering dust on a garage shelf, I jumped at the chance to upgrade.  Here’s how it worked.

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Ze Frank is coming back with 'A Show', thanks for heaps of Kistarter support.

Here's a classic from 4/18/2006.

http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/04/041806.html

Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I met Bacigalupi by reading his Hugo award winning The Windup Girl. These short stories predate that work, but share its grit and grittiness. Some of the stories are set in the same (or neighboring) Universe as The Windup Girl, but most aren't. There's more than some distopia in all of the stories in the collection except one. (The confusion of the protagonist makes up for the normal world in "Softer.") Most stories are set in a non-American or non-Americanzed culture, which is something that Bacigalupi uses to add color, poetry, and character to his stories.

Especially memorable stories are "The Fluted Girl" and "The People of Sand and Slag", memorable for their characters and the sketch of very different futures that they draw.

I couldn't put this collection down. All stories made me want to read the next story. I'm looking forward reading more of him.

Guess he wants to preside over this country.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/118369-how-to-optimize-your-caffeine-intake

FWIW, Paul Erdos said, "A mathematician is a machine for turing coffee into theorems." WIth all due respect to Paul, the last theorem I produces was in 1998. Other caffeine byproducts have consisted of chalk dust and ... I'm not sure what else.

http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/best-college-majors-by-salary-022012/

What did I do wrong?