Tuesday, December 27, 2005

A Few Things, Nothing Earth-Shattering

Looks like the TTLB Ecosystem is evolving again. I've been happy as a Crusty Crustacean for some while now; A few hours ago I was a Mollusc ranked at 8000-something, and now I'm a Flippery Fish at 10,000-something with only 7 links when I know I have more than that. I'm going to leave the Dr. Zoidberg illustration as it is, but I'll have this ready just in case:

This is a real good Chris Anderson post on how probability and the marketplace of ideas (and "letting 1000 flowers bloom") keeps things like search engines, Wikipedia and the Blogosphere running smoothly adequately. Excerpt: Probability-based systems are, to use Kevin Kelly's term, "out of control". His seminal book by that name looks at example after example, from democracy to bird-flocking, where order arises from what appears to be chaos, seemingly reversing entropy's arrow. The book is more than a dozen years old and decades from now we'll still find the insight surprising. But it's right.

Annalee Newitz digs the new King Kong movie too. Excerpt: I saw King Kong during its opening week, one night after rewatching the 1933 original. Although the nerds I saw it with were unimpressed -- something about dialogue or whatever -- I was blown away. Kong fights three T.rexes! There's a brontosaurus stampede followed by a bronto pileup that verges on giant monster slapstick.

p.s. - Chris and Annalee, I think you're both great... No offense when I said "nothing earth-shattering."

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