phrase of the day

The algorithm is mightier than the equation.

from "The Man Who Cracked the code to everything," in June's Wired Magazine.

with surgeons like these...

A Boston surgeon walks out of surgery to go to the bank. Back in a Jiffy! he said. He was operating again in only 35 minutes. Not bad. He could be a marathonist too, while he's at it.

america's prisons

From an article in The Economist this week:

"Some 600,000 inmates will leave prison this year—more than the population of Washington, DC. After quadrupling its imprisonment rate in just 30 years—America now has 700 people in every 100,000 under lock and key, five times the proportion in Britain, the toughest sentencer in Western Europe—the world's most aggressive jailer must now confront the iron law of imprisonment: that those who go in almost always come out.
The result is a society that, statistically at least, is beginning to look a little like early Australia. Nearly one in eight American men has been convicted of a felony—and thus, in many states, has been automatically deprived of numerous rights, including the right to vote. One in 20 men has been to jail. The average is much higher among some groups (one black man in five has been to prison, one in three has been convicted of a felony)."

Related to this one, another article focuses on "life after prison" or lack thereof.

dave on weblogs over discussion groups

Dave Winer comments today on why Trackback (in movabletype) won't become generally useful, and why discussion groups will be replaced by weblogs for civilized discussion (a topic I previously touched here).

qubits in circuitry

This article on Scientific American contains a summary of recent advances on creating circuitry with quantum bits.

nation building lite

I just found this report on Afghanistan's current situation, published in the New York Times Magazine. Shows why "nation building" is an oxymoron. Nations are not "built," they grow by themselves or not at all.

checking for prime numbers

Three computer scientists announced a breakthrough method to accurately compute wheteher a number is prime or not. It's slower than approximation methods, but it's still a big advance.