[Signal boosts are awesome! --L.]
- Why everyone should learn programming
- [FlowingData - Nathan Yau]
Daniel Shiffman, assistant professor at the NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program, talks programming, computation, data, and why everyone should learn programming…
Watch the four-minute interview below. The excitement in Shiffman's voice alone might want to make you learn some Processing (which he wrote a useful book for).
- O’Donnell, Jefferson on Separation of Church and State
- [Constitutional Law Prof Blog]
Republican Senate Candidate Christine O'Donnell's 2008 primary campaign manager Jonathon Moseley this week offered a $1,000.00 reward to anyone who could find the phrase "separation of church and state" in the Constitution…
The phrase, of course, comes from Thomas Jefferson's January 1, 1802, letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in response to that group's address congratulating him on his election as president. The Library of Congress, with the help of the FBI, analyzed Jefferson's handwritten draft of the letter, including Jefferson's edits, and featured the letter in a 1998 exhibit on church and state. The LoC gives us an historical context here. The text of Jefferson's final letter is here; the unedited text is here. [linkety link]
[Or, you know, you could just read the entire First Amendment. I cannot believe these jokers have an audience.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text
-L]
- Guest Post: Stuck and tired: How universities are failing disabled students
- [FWD/Forward - Diane Shipley]
[Oh, this all sounds bitterly familiar. -L]
- Participatory Politics Foundation
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Our sibling non-profit is the Participatory Culture Foundation, working for a fairer, more open, and more democratic media space. See what we're fighting for [link]
- This Makes Me Feel Better About Spoiling My Dog
- [There, I Fixed It - Epic Kludge Photos]
- Scenes from Thailand
- [The Big Picture]
The last time we focused on Thailand, the government crackdown on Red Shirt protesters was taking place in Bangkok. Since then, much of the damaged part of downtown Bangkok has been repaired, and the Red Shirts continue their protests both in the streets and online. Thailand has also been hit with severe flooding, struggled with terrorist attacks, and celebrated Queen Sirikit's 78th birthday. …. (31 photos total)
- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is now officially a legal authority
- [io9 - Charlie Jane Anderson]
Ruling on the limits of police power, the Texas Supreme Court quoted from Star Trek II…
- Kids draw the Cthulhu Mythos
- [Awesome Sauce!]
The Cthulhu Mythos as Imagined by Kids – three galleries of awesome. Nearly all of them were unaware of who Lovecraft was.
- No Wonder This Station Has Such Few Fans
- [There, I Fixed It - Epic Kludge Photos]
[Now, that's what I call a Big Name Fan. -L]
- Physicists Vote to Run Tevatron for 3 More Years
- A group of high-energy particle physicists decided this week to recommend extending the life of the Tevatron [at Fermilab], the second-most-powerful particle collider in the world, for 3 years.
[Well, of course they did. It's called THE TEVATRON. Clearly, it is too awesome to get mothballed. -L]
…The funding decision could determine whether the United States or Europe wins the race to find the theoretical Higgs boson. It all comes down to $105 million, a tiny amount relative to the billions spent building the massive particle colliders competing for the find.
…the existence of the Higgs boson… would help explain the origin of mass in the universe.
[TEVATRON.
...Maybe it's a good idea that I'm not running this country.
-L]
- The evolution of cat coat patterns
- [Why Evolution Is True]
[Crunchy. -L]
- Missing sacred swords found 1,250 years later
- [ABlogAboutHistory.com - Sevaan Franks]
A pair of swords found underneath the Great Buddha of Todaljl temple in Japan have undergone x-ray analysis, identifying them as two sacred weapons dedicated to the temple around 760 A.D. by the Empress Komyo.
- Halloween 2010: Top Costumes, History, Myths, More
- Get the facts on Halloween history, today's most popular costumes, record-breaking pumpkins, and more in National Geographic News's 2010 Halloween roundup.
- Sharp Stone Age spearheads were cooked then flaked
- An ingenious trick for making sharp stone spearheads was invented 50,000 years earlier than we thought
- The Easiest Way to Set Gmail As The Default Email Handler in Windows
- [Make Tech Easier - Damien]
[In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. --L.]

The Of interest (Thu, Oct 28th, 12pm) by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.