45 minute - The Crash Course in 45 Minutes (or less) - Oct. 29, Blog by Chris Martenson Thursday, October 29, 2009, 10:05 AM To commemorate our one-year anniversary, I'm pleased to announce that I am posting a free, condensed, 45-minute version of the Crash Course for your viewing enjoyment. The presentation it contains is part of a public talk delivered in Boulder, Colorado, this past summer filmed by Dave Gardner (who is working on a documentary called GrowthBusters, check it out - he deserves and would appreciate support for his project). If it has been a while since you watched the Crash Course, please take the time to experience this new format. You can watch all six parts here on this page. We hope that this condensed version of the Crash Course will be able to traverse the web, the airwaves, and the networks of your friends and families more speedily and effectively than the original version.
Why You Can’t Help Believing Everything You Read | PsyBlog You shouldn’t believe everything you read, yet according to a classic psychology study at first we can’t help it. What is the mind’s default position: are we naturally critical or naturally gullible? As a species do we have a tendency to behave like Agent Mulder from the X-Files who always wanted to believe in mythical monsters and alien abductions? Or are we like his partner Agent Scully who was the critical scientist, generating alternative explanations, trying to understand and evaluate the strange occurrences they encountered rationally? Do we believe what the TV, the newspapers, blogs even, tell us at first blush or are we naturally critical? It’s not just that some people do and some people don’t; in fact all our minds are built with the same first instinct, the same first reaction to new information. Descartes versus Spinoza Descartes’ view is intuitively attractive and seems to accord with the way our minds work, or at least the way we would like our minds to work.
Pearltrees launches Twitter sync and reveals its social system [France] Paris-based Pearltrees has been catching interest around the web the last few days not least because a gaggle influential Silicon Valley bloggers have descended on Paris for Le Web, but mainly because of its interesting model for visually mapping how people collect and share information on the Web. But today the startup opens the kimono on its full system. They will announce two new things today: Twitter synchronization (enabling a user to create a pearl automatically from Twitter and to tweet automatically from their new Pearltrees), Pearltrees search, Real time discussion and connection. The other new aspect announced today on stage at Le Web is the Pearltrees Social System. But to explain first, here’s a new video they just released: Pearltrees is effectively visual social bookmarking and therefore has the potential to be more widely used than perhaps the traditional alternatives. You can track what you have looked at and watch what your friends are tracking.
Pearltrees Visualizes How You Organize the Web This post is part of Mashable's Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. Name: Pearltrees Quick Pitch: Pearltrees is a new visual way to organize content on the Web and connecting people's interests. Genius Idea: How do you organize the web on the browser? Signing up for Pearltrees is simple, but getting used to the interface and all of its features is not as easy. Now for the organization part: you can create complex systems of pearls, known as pearltrees. Clicking on a pearl gives you a range of options that go beyond visiting your favorite website. Pearltrees takes a time investment to make it useful. Spark of Genius Series Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs.
Meet Pearltrees: Bookmarks with a social twist | Between the Lin A French Web site, called Pearltrees, is developing a Web service that is trying to bring a social networking element to bookmarking - but with the connections based on content instead of people. Think Facebook and Twitter mixed with one Amazon's recommendation system. You don't add friends in Pearltrees. Here's the trick: if there are others on Pearltree who have also posted that same URL into one of their own pearltrees, you are now connected and can see their other links. The service, which is free, is still in alpha mode and has limited functionality and exposure. For now, it's a bit buggy but the concept is pretty solid. With Pearltrees, I "pull" information that's more likely to be relevant to my interests.
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Stop Software Patents Petition Love your idiots So, I've been thinking recently about milestones in open source projects. Not code based milestones, but ... milestones in terms of a project's use and community. Usually ones that happen to you rather than ones you can create. The one that I want to talk about today though is a bittersweet moment but one that needs to be handled correctly if you want your project to thrive: The arrival of the idiots. You should know that moment by now. So ... ok, maybe the guy is an idiot. The point is: you need to find a way to communicate with this person. For your project to be accessible to somebody with a different mental model, you need to attract and retain a documentation contributor with that mental model so they can write the docs that make sense to them. Or, the shorter but less polite version: An idiot is the only person who can tell you what your docs need to make them comprehensible to other idiots. So ... keep reframing the conversation. "This is going to take some explaining. -- mst, out