Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for August, 2008

Computers and numbers

A pet peeve of mine is the ongoing public misperception that computers are really all about numbers. This is constantly reinforced by the mainstream (and even IT) media. Take, for instance, this quote from a BBC News story today:

The DNS acts as the internet’s address books and helps computers translate the website names people prefer [...]

Read Full Post »

The Decline of Violence

Steven Pinker has an interesting talk on the TED conference website, debunking the idea that we are living in an increasingly violent society. As Pinker shows, over pretty much any timescale you care to look at, violent death rates have been dropped considerably, and we now live in the safest time ever. Fascinating and cheering.

Read Full Post »