• A Very Short History of Mathematics
  “Cauchy’s theorem is very important, but is much harder to prove now than it was when Gauss invented it.”
  (tags: math mathematics humor web)

• Hackers Take Down the Most Wired Country in Europe
  “Welcome to Web War one.”
  (tags: security web estonia wired news)

• The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics
  “To the vector belong the spoils.”
  (tags: geometry math mathematics video art animation)

• Time and the Hour Running Through Rough Days
  It’s surprisingly difficult to figure out how many days have elapsed between two (relatively distant) dates, though the problem does admit a fairly simple algorithmic solution.
  (tags: calendar mathematics algorithm math)

• Life After Poincare: Grigori Perelman (Part 1 of n)
  After proving the Poincaré Conjecture, Grigori Perelman quit mathematics and moved in with his mother. So what’s he up to these days? Making donuts, of course.
  (tags: math mathematics perelman poincaré humor video)

—Why didn’t the player’s union defend Michael Vick? Writer inadvertently reveals the essence of the reductionist insanity at the heart of many “slippery slope” arguments. “If we don’t defend the indefensible, then how are we going to defend the…defensible?”

–Franklin Roosevelt once said: “When You See a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.” He should have added: “I did.”

“Here, the global Harry Potter phenomenon has mutated into something altogether Chinese: a combination of remarkable imagination and startling industriousness, all placed in the service of counterfeiting, literary fraud and copyright violation.”

• A failure in generalship
  “For the second time in a generation, the United States faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency. … These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rather to a crisis in an entire institution: America’s general officer corps.”
  (tags: iraq vietnam war politics military)
• Joint failure – The Boston Globe
  “The JCS lies beyond salvaging. Before you build a new house, you tear the old one down. For the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it’s wrecking-ball time. A chairman possessing vision, strategic insight, and integrity ought to be the first to acknowledge that.”
  (tags: politics military iraq war)

• Blows Against the Empire
  “There are many books with unreliable narrators under the control of sane authors; [Valis] is the only one I know where a sane, reliable narrator (on the book’s own terms) is under the control of a clearly crazy author.”
  (tags: books writing dick newyorker)

• The Road to Clarity
  Very interesting story of the development of a new typeface for American highway signage.
  (tags: typography design nytimes)
• The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer
  “While the Internet has produced some strange new job descriptions over the years, it is hard to think of any more surreal than that of the Chinese gold farmer.”
  (tags: nytimes gaming china economics)
• Dinosaurs with Jetpacks.
  Why sell DRM-free tracks, but not through iTunes? “[T]o prevent the DRM monopoly Apple currently has going. The one, ironically, that Universal and other music companies demanded of Apple in the first place. The one that Apple also wants out of.”
  (tags: apple drm music itunes piracy universal)

• Bonds, Mantle and disappointment
  “[G]ive me the guy maybe doctoring his biochemistry in an attempt to stay around longer, do more, fend off the kids with greater fervor, even reach for some outlandish, unprecedented greatness, over the guy who literally drowns his talent over time.”
  (tags: sports baseball steroids bonds mantle)