Interactiondesign | Akkam's Razor

Posts Tagged: interactiondesign

Daily Links — No Comments
1
Jul 09

All excerpts are quoted from the respective link(s).

How Jim Fulton Saved the Space Shuttle | SpaceRef – Your Space Reference – Near a shaded street that winds through Mount Lebanon Cemetery in Pittsburg lay the grave of an Allegheny County native. More than a century ago, on March 1, 1903, James Grove Fulton was born in Allegheny County. Mr. Fulton distinguished himself as a fourteen-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives, winning his first election while still in the Naval Reserve, in 1944. A lawyer by training, Mr. Fulton came to be intrigued by science, and in particular manned spaceflight. While in Congress, he also served in the U.S. delegation to the United Nations from 1960 to 1969 as an advisor on space.
Across his nearly 30 years in the Congress, Jim Fulton was a member of the Republican minority, but still passed many laws and was a popular member of the Pennsylvania delegation. But among his many achievements is one you might not remember.

Because, you see, James Grove Fulton saved the Space Shuttle. And therein lies a story of politics and compromise.

Wordgeddon | GOOD – Though apocalypse and Armageddon are used interchangeably in this trend, they used to have distinct meanings. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the original sense of apocalypse as “The ‘revelation’ of the future granted to St. John in the isle of Patmos,” which sounds like a good isle to avoid. Not until the late nineteenth century did the term start to mean “a disaster resulting in drastic, irreversible damage to human society or the environment, esp. on a global scale; a cataclysm. Also in weakened use.” I feel safe in saying a-taco-lypse and French-fry-pocalypse fit under the rubric of weakened use.

Daily Links — No Comments
3
Mar 09

Why Is Her Paycheck Smaller? – Interactive Graphic – NYTimes.com – Nearly every occupation has the gap — the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the size of the paycheck brought home by a woman and the larger one earned by a man doing the same job. Economists cite a few reasons: discrimination as well as personal choices within occupations are two major factors, and part of the gap can be attributed to men having more years of experience and logging more hours.
Quantifying the Nightmare Scenarios – Freakonomics Blog – NYTimes.com – There’s no shortage of fear about the economy. But just how fearful should we be? Perhaps financial markets can provide some guidance.