A critique of the problems with the world building in Rainbow. “Rod, Jane and Freddy seem to live everywhere and nowhere all at once, a bit like God or The Littlest Hobo.” (tags: funnyrainbowtelevision)
1997 presentation about the levels of flight deck automation and how to keep out of trouble. Interesting stuff about trusting the automation too far, and how trying to keep it updated when the situation changes is worse than going more manual. (tags: automationaircraftsafetyflying)
A lengthy essay arguing that the popular image of Shatner’s Kirk isn’t what the original episodes of Star Trek portray (but that the reboot has picked up the stereotype and run with it). (tags: star-trekkirkjames-t-kirkscience-fictiontelevision)
If you want just the SF bits of Person of Interest (which are great, see Peter Watts’s review) without the police procedural/victim of the week stuff, Abigail Nussbaum has a useful list of episodes to watch. (tags: person-of-interestartificial-intelligencescience-fictiontelevision)
Yvain/Scott Alexander on why it might be a bad idea to continue to espouse a belief in God, the Devil and whatnot while having a sort of private understanding of what that means, even if that understanding is more palatable than the original theology. (tags: psychologyreligionrationalityhitler)
Simon Tatham introduces C to people who’ve only worked in high level languages, the innocent little darlings. You ‘ad array bounds checking? You were lucky! (tags: Cprogramminglanguage)
“The real scandal in the Liberal Democrats is not leading the news. Extremists are menacing the career and life of a Liberal Democrat politician and respectable society hardly considers these authentically scandalous threats to be a scandal at all. The scandal, in short, is that there is no scandal.” (tags: islamlibdemsliberal-democratsnick-cleggislamismfreedomtwittermohammed)
Classic literature titles re-written as those click-bait headlines you see spreading around Facebook: “They Told Him White Whales Were Impossible to Hunt. That’s When He Went Literally Crazy.” Via marn. (tags: creativefunnyliteratureparody)
"And in one of those dreaded realizations pilots are advised to avoid, that insulation between cockpit calm and atmospheric anarchy looks thin indeed. An extrapolated horror: the riveted aluminum planks bending apart, the wind rushing in, explosive depressurization, death, the first airliner — no, the first vehicle — in history to crash because of an overflowing toilet." This guy tells a good story. Via marnanel (tags: flyingtoiletpilotaircraftfunny)
"But our brains are fooling us. Even though this will be in the news for weeks, we should recognize this for what it is: a rare event. That’s the very definition of news: something that is unusual — in this case, something that almost never happens. " (tags: terrorismbruce-schneiersecurity)