Year: 2005

MSN search has a feature that lets you rank results your own way. Go to “+Search Builder” and select “Results ranking”. You can decide how important recency, popularity and accuracy are to your search.

My new commenting system is based on the principle of “scribbling on the margin”. If you’re interested, have a look at the source code for this page. It is as clear as mud, so best of luck!

Esref Armagan, blind painter. He has been blind all his life. Yet his paintings are realistic. Neural scans indicate that when he is painting, his visual cortex is stimulated as much as it is for normal people when they see objects.

Google’s search for meaning. Paul Vitanyi and Rudi Cilibrasi use Google to determine the similarity of words. (Pairs of words that get higher hits are more similar to each other.)

Puzzles at kuro5hin.org. If you’re a puzzles freak, the rec.puzzles archive is also recommended.

The Thought Project

Over a period of three months, the 28-year-old Danish photographer stopped random passersby on the streets of Copenhagen and New York City and asked them what they were thinking just before he intercepted them. Then he snapped their photos and transcribed their thoughts word-for-word.

False advertising. Ads that make fun of famous ads / logos.

Why do Americans work so much more than Europeans? Because America has lower marginal tax, says Prescott, the 2004 Economics Nobel Laureate.

The important observation is that the low labor supplies in Germany, France, and Italy are due to high tax rates. If someone in these countries works more and produces 100 additional euros of output, that individual gets to consume only 40 euros of additional consumption and pays directly or indirectly 60 euros in taxes.

I wonder where India stands.

Thinking, a book by Hardman and Macchi, says people would much rather let bad things happen, than take a risk to stop them:

Decisions with identical outcomes are judged as worse when they result from acts of commission than acts of omission. For example, most people are reluctant to vaccinate children against a potentially lethal flu when side effects of the vaccine can cause death. Faced with a flu epidemic that is expected to kill 10 out of 10,000 children, most people are not willing to accept a 9 out of 10,000 risk of death from vaccination, and the median acceptable maximum risk is 5 in 10,000. Apparantly, killing a child with a vaccination (that is, an act of commission) is perceived as worse than causing its death by failing to vaccinate (that is, an act of omission).

Google video. Not very relevant yet, but probably will be, once movies are included. Could rival IMDb, maybe search movie scripts also.