A Different Take...

...on Professor Muller, whom I wrote about a few days ago.

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade...

This site is interesting on several levels: as a demonstration of accessible data mining, as a tool for quantative history study, and as a means for anybody to informally learn a lot more fact-based history (a commodity in amazingly short supply!).

The screenshot at right (click to enlarge) shows one of my own explorations: I wanted to know where slaves actually went.  Answer: the vast majority went to the Caribbean and to South America – not North America.  Prior to seeing these numerical data, I'd known that many slaves went to the Caribbean – but I did not know that such an overwhelming majority went there, nor did I know that so many went to South America.

There is much else to learn at that site...

Just Plain Cool!

Phong shading (a computer graphics technique) helps to solve (tentatively, for the moment) a long-standing mystery in physics: the Pioneer Anomaly.

Takers, not Makers...

This is a bit exaggerated by a common bias: not including the entire software industry (and, similarly, other makers of “intangible” products).  Nonetheless, the point is one that I agree with, and worry about...

Krauthammer on Obama's Syria Policy...

You can reduce it to one word: rubbish.