Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?
My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".
Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another:
- Spoiled Rotten – The New Yorker. "Well, since I’m not winning any friends by picking on the US this week, I may as well make it two for two. ‘With the exception of the imperial offspring of the Ming dynasty and the dauphins of pre-Revolutionary France, contemporary American kids may represent the most indulged young people in the history of the world.’ Ouch. But it’s an interesting discussion of cultural differences in child-rearing." (Alistair for Hugh).
- American Baby Names Are Somehow Getting Even Worse – Deadspin. "Tongue in cheek, sure, but there’s some truth in here. A roundup of some of the more ludicrously trending names for new children show that creativity is at an all-time high, perhaps at the expense of consequence. See how Drew Magary skewers such gems as Blayde, Sketch, Zebulon, Fallyn, and even Sharpay. ‘This is a character from High School Musical. It’s also a breed of dog. Why stop there? Name your child Dobyrman.’ Funny, and not particularly suitable for work." (Alistair for Mitch).
- Another Chunk of the Petermann Glacier Breaks Off in Greenland – NASA. "Stunning photos of a big Greenland glacier ‘calving’ an ice island – which happens when a piece of a glacier breaks off and starts floating away. This calving happens every summer, but what’s significant is that calving is happening more often with larger chunks, as is expected with climate change." (Hugh for Alistair).
- Was Moore’s Law Inevitable? – Kevin Kelly. "Kevin Kelly takes a long, detailed look at Moore’s Law, first articulated in the 1960s, which predicts (correctly, so far) that computing chips shrink by half in size and cost every 18-24 months (resulting in an exponential increase in computing power per dollar spent for you and me). One question about Moore’s Law: is it truly a physical property, or is it rather a social/economic self-fulfilling prophesy, whereby companies, investors and especially engineers bust their chops to *make sure* that chips improve on schedule. Kelly looks at some other technologies that follow roughly Moore’s Law, and concludes that there’s more to it than prophesy. Beyond that, though, he thinks all of us need to start planning better for the implications of Moore’s Law." (Hugh for Mitch).
- Scientists Discover The Oldest, Largest Body Of Water In Existence–In Space – Fast Company. "You don’t have to be a science nerd for this to blow your mind: ‘Researchers found a lake of water so large that it could provide each person on Earth an entire planet’s worth of water–20,000 times over. Yes, so much water out there in space that it could supply each one of us all the water on Earth–Niagara Falls, the Pacific Ocean, the polar ice caps, the puddle in the bottom of the canoe you forgot to flip over–20,000 times over.
The water is in a cloud around a huge black hole that is in the process of sucking in matter and spraying out energy (such an active black hole is called a quasar), and the waves of energy the black hole releases make water by literally knocking hydrogen and oxygen atoms together.’ I don’t care what you say, this is pretty mind-blowing stuff. When we discover ‘intelligent’ life forms, I may just give that news its own, unique, blog post ;)." (Mitch for Alistair).
- 30 Traits Happy People Have in Common – Marc and Angel Hack Life. "I’m not sure if I saw this link via Nilofer Merchant or Avinash Kaushik, but I read it and thought to myself, ‘happiness is a choice.’ Nothing revolutionary with that thought, but I often find myself in a negative psychological loop where I’m looking to lay blame somewhere else (besides myself). I should know better and this blog post acted as a great reminder that you choose your happiness, regardless of your lot in life. Yes, it’s easier said than done. Yes, some people are handed some pretty bad cards in the deck of life. Still, these words reminded me of a book I’m in the middle of reading (and one that I should have read long ago): Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl. It’s an incredible story about survival and where that instinct comes from… and how it comes from the choices that we make." (Mitch for Hugh).
Now it’s your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.