Sweet sweetness - using networks to create something extraordinary

This via slate.com.

The demo seemed magical, conjuring a whole new way of collecting the thousands of photos that each of us now produce during our lifetimes: Imagine being able to review your Grand Canyon vacation not as a static slide show but as a tour of the 3-D environment produced by your and everyone else's pictures. "This takes data from the entire collective memory of what the earth looks like," Aguera y Arcas told the crowd. "All of those photos become linked together, and they make something emergent—greater than the sum of their parts."

I'd make a nerd boner joke here but I don't want anyone to get in trouble at work. Just know that I'm a nerd. And my boner is set to "emergent".

Also - TED talks is bitchin way to kill a few minutes if you want to learn something new. I think I've mentioned it here before, but here are some of my favorites again:

Malcolm Gladwell
William J. Clinton
Richard Dawkins

Thanks for reading.

setting snarky aside: go read a book

I was all set to write a snarky post about how Blogger created youtube videos to explain how to set up a blog. Just typing that bugs me because it's so un-ironically stupid, but it's a personal issue of mine (the inability to create a blog should be some kind of idiot filter). However...

I was distracted by this fun blog about people reading. My favorite entry? The one for Paws Off, Cheddarface. Because reading is good for you.

What I'm reading right now: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. This is my third or fourth time through the book. There's so much in it that you can read it every 6 months and still find something new, or remind yourself of something you already knew. Short History is like Blink and The Tipping Point in that they are excellent introductory / gateway books. As in, books that lead you to other good books.