Category — Non-fiction

The Intertubes isn’t just lolcats and YouTube videos. There’s actually some really good stuff out there that will make you not only smarter, but generally more awesome as well. Here are five websites that you should be visiting:

TED

Short for “Technology, Entertainment, Design”, TED is an annual conference that brings together the worlds best thinkers to give 20-minutes talks on science, the arts, politics, culture, business, global issues, technology, and entertainment. They’ve had people like Al Gore, James Watson, and Jonathan Haidt come and talk, and they release a new video every week. TED is definitely the granddaddy of them all, so be sure to bookmark this website.

ScienceBlogs

As an invitation-only blog network and virtual community, ScienceBlogs is dedicated to enhancing the public understanding of science. As of March 2008, ScienceBlogs hosted around 70 blogs dedicated to various fields of research. Each blog has its own theme, specialty, and authors, and is not subject to editorial control. Authors are almost always scientists in industry, college professors, professional writers, graduate students, and post-docs.

BigThink

Billing itself as a public forum designed for interaction between users and scholars, BigThink has recorded thousands of hours of footage from interviews of numerous experts. This allows users to see what today’s leaders feel about broader issues, such as global warming and the two-party system. Users can respond to these ideas by posting their own videos or questions to experts, creating a conversation in the public sphere. It’s like YouTube for intellectuals.

Frontline

Originally an award-winning documentary program on public television, Frontline has expanded to include a deeply detailed website for each of its broadcasts. It publishes the full video of the show, extended interview transcripts, in-depth chronologies, original essays, sidebar stories, related links and readings, and source documents, including photographs and background research. Most videos are about an hour long, but some can be even lengthier. [previously]

The Long Now

Established in 1996, The Long Now Foundation is a private organization that seeks to become the seed of a very long-term cultural institution. It aims to provide a counterpoint to what it views as today’s “faster/cheaper” mindset by promoting “slower/better” thinking. To emphasize this, the group writes years using five digits instead of four: 02008 instead of 2008. Their seminars are available for free on their website or via podcast.

Having recently learned that Karl Rove is coming to Miami to give a talk, I decided to attend and, if possible, ask him a question during the Q&A session. However, I confess I do not know a lot about the man, other than that he’s a behind-the-scenes GOP strategist who was involved in a few scandals and subsequently resigned last fall. So I submitted requests at two popular social media websites for help in determining a few possible questions to ask Mr. Rove: Reddit and Ask MetaFilter (”AskMeFi” for short).

The Request

The wording of the two requests was nearly identical. On Reddit though, you can only submit links and their anchor text. With no place for a broader description of my request, I followed the common Reddit convention of posting a comment on the link as soon as I submitted it, so users who saw the story could also see and read my comment. On AskMeFi, however, they provide a longer description section, so I posted almost the exact same text there:

First off, I’m not looking to be a complete d*ck and waste my potential question scolding him for his disgusting politics. I want to ask a legitimate, coherent question, because whether I like it or not he is an important political figure. Ideally, I’m looking for a simple query that will simultaneously be good enough that the Republicans in the crowd don’t immediately demand that I be tased, but also pointed enough to reveal his underhanded tactics, numerous scandals, etc.

Once the comments and suggestions started to roll in, it quickly became apparent which site was giving me a higher signal-to-noise ratio. (In online discussion forums, off-topic posts and spam are regarded as “noise” that interferes with the “signal” of appropriate discussion.)

The Results

On Reddit, I received several helpful suggestions, but a large majority of the comments (including the one with the most upvotes) were pathetically irrelevant. Out of the 93 comments my submission has now, the final score comes to 58 unhelpful comments and 14 helpful ones, with the remainder being essentially neutral. Of course, what constitutes a helpful comment and an unhelpful comment in this context is entirely subjective, but I think I’ve provided a reasonably accurate count.

Over on AskMeFi, however, I got exactly one unhelpful comment, with the remaining 24 comments being pertinent to the discussion in some way. In fact, I actually received quite a few suggestions that were very well thought-out and constructive.

The Analysis

The question now becomes: why did I get awesome results on one site, and pathetic results on the other? I believe the answer is that MetaFilter charges a one-time fee of $5 to actively participate on it’s website. Now, this idea isn’t exactly original, but I believe in can simplify Mr. Kelly’s theory a little.

He states that the main reason MetaFilter is devoid of spammers is that most such people are younger, and without access to PayPal and debit/credit cards. While this may be true, I think the real reason is much simpler: nobody wants to bother with a registration process that takes more than a minute or so.

On Reddit, anybody can create an account in less than 10 seconds. All you need to do is choose a name, a password, solve a CAPTCHA, and you’re done. You don’t even need an email address. And once you’re registered, you can submit links and comments immediately. Thus, there are effectively no real barriers keeping spammers and immature trolls out of the community.

MetaFilter, however, has a lengthier sign-up process. Indeed, you have to wait some time before you’re able to post to the front page or ask a question on AskMeFi. Of course, the nominal membership fee also helps weed out the unwanted trolls and idiots.

In sum, while sites like Digg and Reddit are probably more popular, they simply do not match MetaFilter in the amount of quality content and discussion produced per day. If you’re at all interested in joining a first-class Internet community, I would consider signing up for a MeFi account. It’s completely worth it.

Today, beekeeping is seen as an eccentric, arcane sort of hobby, and perhaps rightly so, for it has been practiced for thousands of years. The domestication of bees was well developed in Egypt; sealed pots of honey were found in the graves of Pharoahs such as Tutankhamun. Beekeeping was also documented by Roman writers like Virgil and Columella. Even Aristotle discusses, at considerable length, aspects of the lives of bees and beekeeping.

The following is an excerpt from a more modern collection of short stories about that same hobby. The author is Jason Nelson, also known as “xC0000005” (or just “the bee guy“) over on kuro5hin.org:

The honeybee is a patient teacher for those who watch. What we see in them tells us much about ourselves. Driven by instinct and not free will, the honeybee still rises to defeat its enemies. It toils for the good of its sisters and makes sacrifices for the welfare of all. One can learn much from them. To live alongside of and learn from nature. To run on its schedule and not our own. To cooperate and not dominate. When the time comes for me to hang up my bee suit, when the river of life takes me far from the bee garden, I will take with me these lessons from the hive.

The full collection of his stories is available over on his website.