links for 2009-01-08

"In other words, there is a reference frame in which what is "right under your nose" is far far away, and just seconds after the big bang (let's ignore cosmology for now.) "

Why are actuaries so popular, anyway?

Love those recursive acronyms.

"So, if you want to raise the moral value of a particular action, what you need to do is make sure that the positive aspects of the action are valued in markets where the price is high, and the negative aspects where the market is low. For example, an advocate of the Iraq war can be a virtue ethicist as regards their own heroic standard against Ba'athist dictatorship, a deontologist regarding obligations to punish the criminal behavior of their enemies, regardless of the unintended effects on the millions of people living in the general vicinity, and a consequentialist regarding the necessity to excuse the criminal behavior of their leaders for fear of subsequent bad effects on the polity."

"Their breakthrough is to have found that the structure of the web is determined by three factors: the number of inbound links to a page, the rate at which pages are created and deleted and the likelihood that somebody visiting a page will link to it."

"Some of them dealt with major controversies over political interference with science at the Environmental Protection Agency, the teaching of creationism, and women's access to reproductive health services. Others tackled challenges of a networked world, or considered how policy can better harness the talents of a burgeoning scientific workforce."