10 non-work-related items that I found fun or interesting (should have been last Saturday)

Why being wrong makes us angry via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker

Christie Aschwanden is a science journalist. Last month, she joined a lot of other science journalists at the National Association of Science Writers conference and gave a short Ignite presentation about why people get angry when presented with evidence that their beliefs are wrong. She's posted a storyboard of the presentation to The Last Word on Nothing blog. It's definitely worth a read.

Do, please, read it. It makes sense and not only in relation to science writing but also to life in general. Underneath all the bluster you know that you’re wrong but can’t bring yourself to admit it as this impinges on you as a person not just your beliefs.

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Literature and the loo. For Henry Miller, the toilet enriched certain works: Ulysses could not be read anywhere else... more

Heating Up: Wildfire in the Arctic Tundra (Science Up Front) via Britannica Blog by Kara Rogers

In 2007 the Anaktuvuk River fire burned 1,039 square kilometers of Alaska’s Arctic tundra, increasing by two-fold the area burned since 1950 across the entire Arctic tundra biome. The burn resulted in the release of some 2.1 teragrams of carbon – an amount equivalent to that absorbed each year for the last 25 years by the tundra ecosystem, according to a study led by University of Florida biologist Michelle C. Mack.
Prepare to be frightened, if not terrified, by the statistics. Read it here.

Using machine translation techniques to attack ciphers reveals secrets of ancient German opthalmology cult via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
A team of Swedish and American researchers used machine translation techniques to crack an 18th century cipher used by a secret society. The approach – presented to the Association for Computational Linguistics in a paper called The Copiale Cipher (PDF 8pp) – treated the encrypted text as a foreign language and used techniques similar to those employed by Babelfish and Google Translate to derive the cleartext.
(via Reddit)
How Revolutionary Tools Cracked a 1700s Code [nytimes.com]

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
The hole in The Old Farmer's Almanac made it easier to hang in an outhouse, where it served dual purposes, equally useful... more

Quant Trading or How Mathematicians Run the World via Big Think by Big Think Editors
Once the purview of obsessive traders, financial markets the world over are increasingly controlled by algorithmic trading formulas that buy and sell large volumes of stock automatically. Developed by some of the world’s leading theoretical mathematicians …
Read More

Travelling in realms of gold via Prospero by The Economist
Swift, direct, plain, and eminently noble; Homer’s Iliad has inspired translations for centuries. Our correspondents consider four new ones.
Nice podcast here (calls itself video but that is only the advert).
I never managed to conquer this in the original (a bit of Latin but never Greek) although I thought the sound of it really melodic.

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Evil and us. Sloppy historical analogies, amateurish psychological speculations, oversimplifications, tired moral platitudes – we've gotten evil all wrong... more
In my opinion this essay deserves to be read, in full, thoughtfully and carefully. You may not agree with everything that is being said but you will, I believe, be moved by the arguments.

Friday Fun: Siege Hero – Viking Vengeance via the How-To Geek by Asian Angel
Your work week is almost over, but until you can leave for the day why not sneak in some castle crunching fun? In this week’s game you lead an army of Vikings on a crusade to conquer your enemies, grab the gold, and save your allies along the way.
Read Asian Angel's walk-through here or go straight to Siege Hero – Viking Vengeance
Looks to me like a dozen or so other games but …

The psychopathic neurobiologist via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
James Fallon studies the brain. Then he studied his own, and found out that he has the same brain malfunctions as psychopathic serial killers. What happened next is a fascinating story about the brain, the mind, and the duelling influences of nature and nurture.
Read it here (or actually watch the video – 15 minutes but worth every one of them).

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