Juha Haataja: Universally PersonalWhat I Almost Didn't Do Today.Being civil (and fighting dirty under the table)- June 30, 2008 Ssp commented the post on collaborarion vs. fighting:Perhaps women just aren't as vocal about their opinions I don't think collaboration and fighting are as opposite as your title makes them seem. If you have the problemfight out in the open, it's a situation that can be developed and improved. If people disagree but still 'collaborate' no progress happens and frustration accumulates. If I were a consultant I'd sell this to you as fighting being the best form of collaboration. I agree that the.http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/06/30.html#a4914 How to disagree - Collaboration vs. fighting, women vs. men- June 29, 2008 Freakonomics blog discusses the nature of feedback from men and women: Why Does So Much Hate Mail Come From MenIn all the hundreds of such pieces of hate mail I've received, not more than a handful have come from women....Setting aside for a second that the readership is likely biased towards med, perhaps it's just your basic conflict vs collaboration Men like to compete. Women like to collaborate.This question arises a lot of further questions. As a completely different example, it is widely...http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/06/29.html#a4913 Changing the world- June 29, 2008 Chris Guillebeau wrote an interesting (although simplistic) pamphlet on how to set personal objectives and how to change the world. The two key questions areWhat do you really want to get out of lifeWhat can you offer the world that no one else canThese are interesting questions, and hard to answer. Thinking about the future is hard, and I'm not altogether convinced that it is productive thinking. But I can look instead at today: what kind of things would I like to do if I would be able to do...http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/06/29.html#a4912 The Britney Spears Problem- June 28, 2008 Brian Hayes has written on interesting article in American Scientist on the so-called Britney Spears Problem: "What I'm trying to understand is how we can know Britney's ranking from week to week. How are all those queries counted and categorized What algorithm tallies them up to see which terms are the most frequent"The article is an interesting discussion about a relevant computer science problem. Hayes ends his article in a wish: "Years from now, someone will type "Britney Spears" into a...http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/06/28.html#a4911 Firefox 3 - how good can a web browser be- June 23, 2008 I have been using Firefox 3 for a while, and I'm a happy camper. I managed to get both bookmark syncing and in-window pdf viewing to work in Firefox. Thus, I don't have much to wish for. Well, perhaps there are some rough corners here and there (minor blemishes in appearance etc.), but nothing which really bothers me. And Firefox has been stable on both my aluminium iMac and my iBook. No crashes, no slowing down - everything works smoothly. There are some things which are better in Safari and...http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/06/23.html#a4908 Is computational science really "science"- June 17, 2008 Norman Chonacky (and Greg Wilson) discuss the status of computational science in an interesting way in the MayJune issue of "Computing in Science and Engineering". Can computational scientists can call their work "science" The writers say that currently the "practices" on researchers in computational science are far from good. Scientific work should be reproducible and materials and instruments should have open and verifiable provenance. In computational science this is not (always) the...http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/06/17.html#a4906 Censorship in Finland- June 15, 2008 Kai Ekholm has written an excellent column on censorship in Finland. Politicians are trying to score easy points by favouring censorship, without understanding (or willing to understand) the big picture. Censorship destroys the society from within. And it makes those who favour it laughable in the long run. Here is a list of such populistic politicians: Marjo Matikainen, Tanja Karpela-Saarela, and Suvi Lindén. I wouldn't vote for them. And this has nothing to do with the political...http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/06/15.html#a4905 World is ending on Saturday next week...- June 14, 2008 ... but first we need to cover the football games, and make a special report on the latest kiss-and-tell story. --- Yes, information overload has made us stupid. (And the world is not ending as far as I know, not this time.)http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/06/14.html#a4904 Views on computational science- June 13, 2008 I got some comments on my opinion piece in Helsingin Sanomat. Because my affiliation was not included in the writer information, some of the messages asked whether I'm the author of the text. There are quite a few people with the same name here in the Helsinki region. I hope they have not been bothered too much. By the way, it is interesting how few comments (relative to the size of the readership) there usually are from HS pieces, compared to other much smaller publications. Perhaps the big...http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/06/13.html#a4900 An opinion piece in Helsingin Sanomat- June 12, 2008 Today my opinion piece on the role of science in society appeared in the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. The title was changed but the text mostly as it was - however, I had a phone discussion with an editor who wanted some scientific terms changed to easier ones. In retrospect, it is interesting to note that the text also contains some advanced economic terms which the editor accepted as they were.http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/universallyPersonal/2008/06/12.html#a4898 |