This is a great article about how underdogs can win most of the time when they stray from the accepted rules of engagement. Applicable to just about anything.
When underdogs break the rules
May 16th, 2009Tweenbots
April 23rd, 2009I just learned about this project this morning. I like it!
(I guess this was a good candidate for my first twitter tweet.)
This is the NYPD
April 18th, 2009More unnecessary force and an illegal arrest. Many officers in the NYPD continue to work of control and above the law.
Check out their use of pepper spray and especially how they deal with a bystander yelling during last week’s New School building occupation:
If you were living under a rock last year, here is the video of a bicyclist being thrown from his bike that got mainstream media coverage:
Stewart Brand on Gavin Newsom’s sustainable cities talk
April 9th, 2009San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom gave a seminar for The Long Now Foundation entitled “Cities and Time”. If you live in San Francisco or are interested in Cities going “Green”, check out Stewart Brand’s summary of the talk: Mayor Gavin Newsom, “Cities and Time”.
It’s interesting to read about some of the things the mayor would like to see happen in San Francisco. Of course, he won’t be in office to make good on his desires, but these kinds of comments are probably smart if you want to run for Governor of California. 
Why Reddit uses Python
April 8th, 2009During Steve Huffman’s and Alexis Ohanian’s Pycon Keynote, someone asked why Reddit was moved from Lisp to Python. The reason for moving wasn’t too interesting, but why they have stayed is. Steve gave two “huge” reasons Reddit continues to use Python:
The biggest thing that has kept us on Python … well, there are two huge things. One are the libraries. There’s a library for everything. We’ve been learning a lot of these technologies and a lot of these architectures as we go. And, so, when I didn’t understand connection pools, I can just find a library until I understand it better myself and write our own. Don’t understand web frameworks, so we’ll use someone else’s until we make our own. Don’t understand a lot of stuff. And Python has an awesome crutch like that. And now, as we’ve been learning more, pulling more stuff back in house — just so we can have things the way we like them — it’s made the transition super super easy.
The other thing that keeps us on Python, and this is the major thing, is how readable and writable it is. When we hire new employees … I don’t think we’ve yet hired an employee who knew Python. I just say, “everything you write needs to be in Python.” Just so I can read it. And it’s awesome because I can see from across the room, looking at their screen, whether their code is good or bad. Because good Python code has a very obvious structure. And that makes my life so much easier. […] It’s extremely expressive, extremely readable, and extremely writable. And that just keeps life smooth.
The question gets asked around 25:54 on the video.