PAgent’s Progress
Link ‘o the Day
The Bloggess vs. a Clueless Marketer:
Them: We are sorry that you are passing on this valuable opportunity to help your readers. We will keep you in mind for future products which meet your requirements.
me: You will send me four dead cats in a shoebox. I will send you high-quality photos of them as marionettes.
I’ll just let you guess who wins.
We kept telling you this, but you laughed at us
Researchers at the University of Rochester have determined that people who play action video games are capable of making decisions significantly faster than those who don’t, and that those decisions are no less accurate.
The researchers found that video game players develop a heightened sensitivity to what is going on around them, and this benefit doesn’t just make them better at playing video games, but improves a wide variety of general skills that can help with everyday activities like multitasking, driving, reading small print, keeping track of friends in a crowd, and navigating around town.
Guess who’s laughing now?
Read the article at Science Daily
Best of TED
You’ve probably heard of the TED talks, those short lectures by brilliant people sharing startling or fascinating new ideas. You’ve probably even seen one or two of them on YouTube. You know there are probably some great TED talks out there, but you haven’t been willing to spend the time to track them down.
Fortunately for you, Fast Company has compiled a list of TED’s Greatest Hits.
Go watch them. You’ll learn something.
Inventing Our Way Out of Joblessness
For some perspective, the Patent Office is funded solely by user fees, NOT tax dollars. Moreover, since 1992 Congress has diverted more than $750 million in patent fees to cover budget shortfalls in other areas. That corresponds to an unwritten tax on innovation, but what’s worse, they’re killing the goose that laid the golden egg in the process.
Interesting Op-Ed from the New York Times by a former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and the chief executive of a technology miniaturization firm.
Ghosts of Russians Past
Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov has taken old B&W photographs from World War II and painstakingly combined them with modern photos taken from the same perspective. The results are haunting and eerie, and very thought-provoking:
See the photos at Gizmodo.
Batman’s 34 Greatest Tweets
SciFiWire has collected a list of the best tweets from user God_Damn_Batman. Some of my favorites:
Joker’s face: make-up or permanent? Punch Test reveals nothing. Will try Concrete Dragging next.
Two things criminals should know. 1. I assume you don’t have health insurance. 2. I break the most expensive bones first.
I’m not saying these World Cup guys aren’t in shape, I’d just like to see them play in 50lbs of body armor with limited head motion.
See the whole list here.
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My Card
