Thursday, April 03, 2003

Robert F. Kennedy. "The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use - of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public." [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] 3:30:55 PM

political cartoons. Political cartoons often speak more than a thousand words. Even in Arabic. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog] 3:22:07 PM

Super squid surfaces in Antarctic:   A colossal squid has been caught in Antarctic waters, the first example of Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni retrieved virtually intact from the surface of the ocean.     New Zealand squid expert and senior research fellow at Auckland University of Technology, Dr Steve O'Shea, told BBC News Online,  Enlarge image "When this animal was alive, it really has to be one of the most frightening predators out there. It's without parallel in the oceans." The specimen, which was caught in the past few weeks in the Ross Sea, has a mantle length of 2.5 metres. That is a larger mantle than any giant squid that Dr O'Shea has seen and this specimen is still immature, the NZ scientist believes. "It's only half to two-thirds grown, so it grows up to four metres in mantle length." By comparison, the mantle of the giant squid, Architeuthis dux, is not known to attain more than 2.25 metres. The specimen is a sub-adult   Enlarge image "We'd like to give this animal the name colossal squid in order to have a common name for it as opposed to just the scientific name," said Kat Bolstad, research associate at Auckland University of Technology. "We feel that colossal conveys both the size and the aggressiveness of the animal. "This animal, armed as it is with the hooks and the beak that it has, not only is colossal in size but is going to be a phenomenal predator and something you are not going to want to meet in the water." 3:12:02 PM

The technology behind Google's great results As a Google user, you're familiar with the speed and accuracy of a Google search. How exactly does Google manage to find the right results for every query as quickly as it does? The heart of Google's search technology is PigeonRank™, a system for ranking web pages developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. Building upon the breakthrough work of B. F. Skinner, Page and Brin reasoned that low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) could be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms. And while Google has dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of our service on a daily basis, PigeonRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web search tools. 2:23:17 PM

From the Boston Globe: The End (of movies as we know them) The generation of movie fans raised on video and the Internet is bringing a new vision to what constitutes a screen masterpiece. As for the classic films, they're history.  Screenwriters' Bloc | Reel Solitude 1:58:29 PM

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