Month: June 2009
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The Story of Big Numbers
Physicist Albert Bartlett is quoted as saying that “the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function”. Starting with a thought experiment in which two competitors are challenged to come up with the bigger finite number, Scott Aaronson has written an accessible and fact-filled essay about large numbers, touching on topics…
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Advice from Hoehn’s Year
One year after setting his personal goals Charlie Hoehn takes a look back at his achievements and offers some fantastic advice: Your friends who don’t care or are stupid will use Monster, CareerBuilder, and Craigslist (I was one of these stupid people for a few weeks). They will compete with hundreds of people for mediocre…
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Can Technology Solve Our Climate Problems?
After reading Cambridge physicist David MacKay’s much lauded Sustainable Energy (free download available), the FT Economist Tim Harford worries that we are “too complacent about technological fixes for the twin problems of climate change and finite oil and gas reserves”. Harford suggests that if we contemplate the idea that technological progress may not solve these…