Book Reviews
![[Day Permalink]](http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/images/permaLink.gif){kind=small}
Thursday, March 9, 2006
![[Item Permalink]](http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/images/ur_bullet.gif){kind=small} -- Comment()
Wikipedia and rewards for knowledge sharing: "... people are happy to contribute to Wikipedia when there are no rewards whatsoever - not even any recognition! They do it for the love of doing it - contributing to a mission - to a worthy cause. They see the value in it. [...] By providing no recognition and no rewards - only the people who were passionate enough about the topic in hand take the time to contribute." [Gurteen Knowledge-Log]
|
|
-- Comment()
One Billion Mazes: "Actually, according to my count, clicking on any one of the exact billion of these mouse-run-like classic mazes (amazing, really, to think we can navigate through one billion choices so easily) gets you two images - one image of the maze and the other of the maze solved - both in completely printoutable form. So it's like 2 billion mazes, half of which are already solved. If you want to look at it that way. [...] Stunning, and yet an intrinsically very silly achievement." [Bernie DeKoven's FunLog] In 2004 I wrote a Python program for drawing mazes. This was a nice programming exercise, but not much more. The program can draw pictures like these:
|
|
-- Comment()
The critical importance of mangroves to ocean life: "Mangroves, the backbone of the tropical ocean coastlines, are far more important to the global ocean's biosphere than previously thought. And while the foul-smelling muddy forests may not have the scientific allure of tropical reefs or rain forests, a team of researchers has noted that the woody coastline-dwelling plants provide more than 10 percent of essential dissolved organic carbon that is supplied to the global ocean from land..." [Biology News Net]
|
