Maszman Speaks!

Open Stomp, the world’s first open source digital guitar effects pedal

Tom — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:58:03 +0000

The Inequality Speech That TED Won’t Show You

Tom — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:51:45 +0000

Nick Hanauer is a wealthy venture capitalist who gave a TED talk on job creation in which he said “I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small.”

TED is so far refusing to put the talk up on their web site but you can read the entire text in the link.

Meet the ‘worst’ 8th grade math teacher in NYC

Tom — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:35:23 +0000

Whether or not you feel teachers should be evaluated, it’s easy to see that improper evaluation methods don’t help to show who is an effective educator. In other words, just because you can measure something doesn’t mean that you should or that measurement gives you the information you’re looking for.

That teacher was more than successful by any reasonable standard and now she’s left the profession. Surely we can do better.

Can there really be a “best” beer?

Tom — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:14:27 +0000

Although both wine and beer are fermented beverages made from natural ingredients there is (and long has been) a marked difference between the cultures surrounding them. One big difference is how beers and wines are rated. Wine ratings come from a select group of experts while beers are rated by the people who drink them.

How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit

Tom — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:40:39 +0000

T. Mills Kelly encourages his students to deceive thousands of people on the Web, using fake websites and Wikipedia entries. This has angered many, including Jimmy Wales, but the experiments help reveal the shifting nature of truth on the Internet and how trust is managed in various online communities.

Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived – The Oatmeal

Tom — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:16:42 +0000

Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived – The Oatmeal.

The Vintagent’s 1850s photography for the 2012 Cannonball

Tom — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:23:12 +0000

The Vintagent specializes in vintage motorcycles and offers plenty of photos. But now he’s combining vintage motorcycles with vintage photography for the 2012 Cannonball (NY to SF) in September. He’s employing wet plate collodion on tin or glass to photograph the competitors, using his chase van as the darkroom. Wet plate photography requires the plates be coated, exposed and developed quickly and the photographer essentially has to bring the darkroom with them into the field. This is the method that Matthew Brady used to photograph the Civil War.

Ron, this one’s for you.

Light-field photography

Tom — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:47:42 +0000

You might have heard about the Lytro camera that allows you to refocus digital photos at any time after they’ve been taken. The bit-player blog takes a look at light-field photography as it exists now. Included are some photos that you can refocus with a click of the mouse so you can see how the system actually works.

To Behave Like The Fallen World

Tom — Sun, 13 May 2012 17:10:16 +0000

Steve Almond writes about the hair-cutting incident that Mitt Romney seems to not remember.

It’s not about “flip-flopping”, it’s about something far more basic. Something so basic that it takes a significant effort to change, if change is even possible. It makes you wonder about someone like Romney who could be so cruel and yet claim to not remember it. More to the point, it makes you wonder about those who would vote for such a man despite knowing this about him.

Thanks to Garret for this one.

Farhad Manjoo switched to Microsoft’s search engine for a week

Tom — Fri, 11 May 2012 20:09:05 +0000

Like me, Slate.com’s Farhad Manjoo switched to Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, instead of Google. But unlike me, he lasted only a week.

My issues with the “social results” and search history were enough for me to switch, but I still will use Google from time to time. Given that he’s a much heavier user of web search than I am, his concerns over the quality of search results are not to be ignored. But nevertheless I don’t think I’ll be switching back to Google. It’s good to have a choice.