How I Teach Gerrymandering
by Ben Kraft The Gerry-mander One of my favorite Splash classes to teach is “Gerrymandering: Theory and Practice”. By now I’ve taught it in a number of different contexts – to high school students at...
Maryland Debacle Shows Why We Must Get Football Out Of Our Universities
The University of Maryland is once again paying millions of dollars to fire its football coach, in a futile effort to win more football games. They did the same thing four years ago, with disastrous effects. Why can't they learn? Meanwhile, the university has imposed furloughs and pay freezes on all…
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2015-10-13T04:52:40+0000
ferd.ca -> The Little Printf
The Little Printf: why do we code? This text is a transcript of a presentation I have given on October 9, 2015, at the CityCode conference in Chicago. This content is also available in video, and as a PDF Document better suited for printing. — Chapter 1 I've been lucky enough to have been born befor…
Hasnain says:
I think everyone who works with software should read this. Pretty spot on and pretty moving. So many amazing quotes, don't know where to begin.
"Little printf was surprised to meet an expert who seemed so disinterested in helping others, yet so annoyed by their perceived lack of skill. It was a bit sad that this man narrowed his vision of himself to just the one area he knew, to the point where he didn't do anything else than create problems for himself to fix!"
Posted on 2015-10-13T04:44:22+0000
In Bel-Air, someone is using 1,300 gallons of water — per hour
This much we know:
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2015-10-12T15:53:38+0000
From SimCity to, well, SimCity: The history of city-building games
To boot, the majority of older games are available on digital distribution service GOG.
Hasnain says:
This is a great read; though not discussing Cities:Skylines is an injustice
Posted on 2015-10-12T05:23:21+0000
Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department
In response to the many people who have asked me whether I am leaving Berkeley, it is true that the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department has fired me. More precisely, the then Chair of the Mathematics Department, Arthur Ogus, emailed me on October 31st 2014 saying that my employment would be terminate…
Urban activists set out to sue San Francisco's suburbs
A much unloved San Franciscan and her cohorts push a posh suburb to start building denser and more affordable apartments.
Hasnain says:
“Most people would be very uncomfortable tearing down 315 houses. But they don’t have a similar objection to never building them in the first place, even though I feel they’re morally equivalent. Those people show up anyway. They get born anyway. They get a job in the area anyway. What do they do? They live in an overcrowded situation, they pay too much rent, they have a commute that’s too long. Or maybe they outbid someone else, and someone else is displaced.”
“It’s easy to see the problem when you’re tearing down someone’s home. But when you’re not building, it’s hard to see whose home it is.”
Posted on 2015-10-11T22:45:43+0000
A Good Vimrc
There are tons of tutorials such as this one on the internet that contain all kinds of awesome hacks to make your Vim better, but the absolute worst way to make your environment better is to just copy it wholesale from others.
What people in 1900 thought the year 2000 would look like
Whale-buses, aviation police and new-fangled barbers: A fantastic vision of the future
Hasnain has not yet written a summary for this.
Posted on 2015-10-11T01:58:23+0000
Mecca Then and Now, 126 Years of Growth
A series of photographs on Mecca and its surrounding area taken sometime around 1887 by the photographer Al Sayyid Abd al Ghaffar, compared with images from similar locations taken in 2015.