Via Metafilter: "Carl Zimmer explores the implications of network design versus evolution, suggesting that a more modular architecture in bacteria leads to a rugged (i.e. robust) system that does not "crash" like a computer."

(Presented without comment.)

Watts uses these tropes over and over again, generally as a (cynical and defeated?) way to describe flirting, banter and sexual display in social settings.

GM's Volt, the "Barack Obama of cars."

"The fighter was detectable by antique radar operating at wavelengths of 2 meters - a detail that had supposedly escaped the Stealth designers, who operated on the assumption that the plane would only have to be invisible to modern centimeter and millimet

"Ad nets, social nets, and minigames won't change the DNA of the economic system. Let me put it more sharply. I think we have two choices. Help fix things, and get rich, or just get blown up along with everyone else." Via migurski.

Profound and important. For that other project.

"Maoist theory hypothesizes that, if encirclement is realized, annihilation must be only a small distance removed in strategic space; but encirclement is the only creative strategic mechanism recognized by the theory and consequenlty, when no further enci