Monday Links from the Breakpoint Vol. XXXXI

[NickFitz]

A quick break from the debugger has given me time to round up this little collection of edification and entertainment:

• Pac-Txt - "Mixing [Zork] the classic VIC-20 text-adventure games' style with the enthralling plot of Pac-Man for the ultimate in retro gaming action, we present Pac-txt." Brilliant idea:
  
  

  > look
  You are in a long corridor. You may go forward or backward and there are glowing dots in every direction.
  There is a glowing dot hovering near you. 
  
  > forward
  You have moved.
  
  > eat
  You have eaten the glowing dot!

• Why Night Owls Are More Intelligent than Morning Larks - "Some people are night owls, and others are morning larks. What makes the difference may be their levels of general intelligence." Satoshi Kanazawa considers evidence in support of this hypothesis, which itself derives from the more general hypothesis that those who engage in behaviour that would have been disadvantageous to early humans living in the wilderness are those who are better able to perceive and exploit new possibilities that are contrary to purely genetic imperatives selected for by evolutionary pressure.
  
  
• Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request - "On Oct. 1, 1958... self-professed to be in a 'frenzy of drink,' Thompson penned a letter of application to the Vancouver Sun. '...don't think that my arrogance is unintentional. I didn't make myself clear to the last man I worked for until after I took the job. It was as if the Marquis de Sade had suddenly found himself working for Billy Graham. The man despised me, of course, and I had nothing but contempt for him and everything he stood for.'" Thompson had clearly found his style, both literary and personal, long before he got the opportunity to use it to its full potential.
  
  
• Inventionland Offices - "The offices of Inventionland are like nothing you’ve ever seen before... a 70,000sqft facility that is designed with 15 different sets. Sets range from pirate ships, race tracks, and faux caves, to red carpet walkways, a castle, or a giant robot." Judging by these photos, I want to work there
  
  
• “Буран”, принесенный в жертву - "Казалось бы, брошенный космический корабль на улице Москвы — это нечто из области фантастики. Но, увы, это самая настоящая реальность. " (Translation by Google: "Seemingly abandoned spaceship on the streets of Moscow - it is something from the realm of fantasy. But alas, this is the true reality.") This photo gallery shows the Soviet space shuttle, Buran, lying abandoned in a scrap yard
  
  
• Sunday Magazine - "Every Friday, I post the most interesting articles from the New York Times Sunday Magazine from 100 years ago this weekend, with a little bit of commentary or context." This week: "Readers of The Times Take Issue with Edison's Statements." (He'd denied the existence of the soul.)
  
  
• 8 Items That Aren’t Normally Used as Business Cards - "Sometimes the 3” x ½” size business cards just don’t do the trick. You need a way to stand out! You need a way to catch someone’s attention and make them interested in your business! So what’s the easiest solution? Look around your house for some inspiration. A random object could very well be the next great business card." Not sure how well these would go down with the IB brigade, but media/advertising/creative folk would be well into them (except perhaps the beef jerky).
  
  
• This is a news website article about a scientific paper - "In the standfirst I will make a fairly obvious pun about the subject matter before posing an inane question I have no intention of really answering: is this an important scientific finding?" Excellent parody of online science reporting, by Martin Robbins. (Warning: it's on The Grauniad's web site; try not to panic when you find yourself there.)
  
  
• how we improved signups by 30% by doing nothing - "After a month or so of running A/B tests, we decided to test the A/B testing software itself, to verify that everything was actually correct. To do this, we had two versions of the page that were exactly the same... the results were clear: The 'changed' page had improved signups by a whole 30%, with 99.8% confidence!" A cautionary tale not just about A/B testing but about statistics generally.
  
  
• Human landscapes in SW Florida - "Many homes there are empty and have been for years. Huge developments sit partially completed among densely built up neighborhoods and swampland. A guest stated that there were 'enough housing lots in Charlotte County to last for more than 100 years'. Boom and bust residential development has drastically affected parts of southwest Florida for decades now, and I spent some time (with the help of Google Earth), looking around the area." Excellent collection of satellite photos showing, amongst other things, just how peaceful the neighbourhood could be if you're the first to move in to a new development which then gets shut down.

Happy invoicing!

[Mich the Tester]

[*]Why Night Owls Are More Intelligent than Morning Larks - "Some people are night owls, and others are morning larks. What makes the difference may be their levels of general intelligence." Satoshi Kanazawa considers evidence in support of this hypothesis, which itself derives from the more general hypothesis that those who engage in behaviour that would have been disadvantageous to early humans living in the wilderness are those who are better able to perceive and exploit new possibilities that are contrary to purely genetic imperatives selected for by evolutionary pressure.

Thanks; I knew someone had done a study on this and it's quite useful in explaining why I don't do early mornings.

[MarillionFan]

Thanks; I knew someone had done a study on this and it's quite useful in explaining why I don't do early mornings.

I thought that was going to be an interesting study. Frankly i don't believe it. The meantime across the board was midnight with tiny differentials. The iq ranging was ridiculous and there was no definition of age.

I thought that was a fail.

[Scrag Meister]

Text pacman, what a great idea? made me laugh though.

[EternalOptimist]

Thanks; I knew someone had done a study on this and it's quite useful in explaining why I don't do early mornings.

A little thought experiment here.
What behavioural characteristics would have been selected for by early man, and where would we look for intelligence in someone bucking the trend.

Well early man would have been a lot safer if he had been quiet, Stick to a medium/large sized group (for defence), not habitual (dont use well worn trails, dont drink at the same water hole at the same time), ability to vary diet in order to avoid predators (if you rely on bananas and there is a leopard in the banana tree you are fooked), spread his seed around loads of different women (no masturbation). Medium/small build for obvious athletic benefits, full head of hair to keep the sun off.

So the counterfactual conditional would be a 21st century genius who drinks at the same place every night punctually on his own, gets very noisy when the pepperamis run out but is easily capable of switching to salted peanuts, fat , baldy and a bit of a tosser.

sorted