Alan Olee Book Report

Of course all the links I provide are informative, entertaining, and maybe even stuff you didn’t know about; but the internet is huge and it’s difficult to find really cool stuff apart from nonsense, hype, misplace certainty where none is warranted; but these are a few of my favorites.  

Gizmag is great and I read it every day.  http://www.gizmag.com

It’s a technology, gadget, automotive etc, space,  with touches on Architecture and building tech too.  All around a great site to quickly scan cool stuff going on.  One caveat.  Don’t depend on them for anything too deeply cutting-edge science.  I mean, just their format lends itself to the deadly “science by press-release” syndrome with amazing headlines of this or that earth-shattering discovery – only to find it ain’t that earth-shattering after all.  And while I’m proselytizing, any time you read about some new “scientific discovery” go ahead and look up the actual scientific paper, or resource that is being hyped and do a little fact-checking yourself.  It isn’t as hard as you might think!

They have a tremendous amount of coverage on indisputably cool stuff like this:

http://www.allcarindex.com/auto-car-model/Italy-Pininfarina-X/

Gizmag does a tremendous job of reporting on this very cool, very ahead of its time gem of a design:  http://www.gizmag.com/1960-pininfarina-x-concept-car-auction/35369/

On a completely different note, and I may have already provided this one in a previous blog, I just love this one:

http://www.tylervigen.com/

OK.  From fun we jump into the realm of deep thought.  This guy is genius:  http://www.yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/

I love his Twelve Virtues of Rationality.  You can also print these out as a little booklet and keep them with you like I do.  Read them everyday.  It will make life better; a rational life is a good life.

Here’s another hard to find gem of a site:  http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/radevents/index.html

This guy tracks and lists all kinds of cool factual stuff.  I have in my somewhat distant past, worked around industrial nuclear stuff and have received some training in safety.  This was many years ago before there was an internet.  I concluded, quite correctly back then without all the wondrous information currently available, that outside of a nuclear weapon directed at you personally in malice ala Hiroshima, the largest chance you or I would be harmed by anything nuclear would be from an X-ray source from a common X-ray machine.  This guy’s site is hard to find so mark it.  Also note that X-rays are very dangerous, so be careful out there.

And here’s a fun way to brush up on your logic:  http://lifesnow.com/bingo/

I may have mentioned that for a time in my college days before discovering the wonders of a Mechanical Engineering Major, I majored in Philosophy and particularly enjoyed the study of formal Logic.  It’s not that hard to pick it up actually – some people are natively very good at it – you might be one of them!  Challenge yourself by learning a bit about the subject and then looking, actually mostly listening, to arguments made in the media and perhaps even some highly opinionated people you may know.  And play a round of Logical Fallacy Bingo.  It can be fun!

And this one is just fun and cool:  http://hint.fm/wind/