Friday Tips

Welcome to another installment of tips on Friday.  First up is my own.

Yesterday while preparing to register my car, I remembered one tip I learned as a young lad and it has been helpful ever since.  At the time it was very California-centric, but it's likely the same bureaucracy has now reached much of the world.

Thoughts on Independence Day

This year as the fourth of July approaches I’ve been thinking a lot about my wild yet enlightened uncle Charlie.  Although I have several agreeable uncles, Charlie was the coolest of the bunch and as a young lad I looked up to him.

Corporate Influence on U.S. Government and Politics

By now if you pay even modest attention to current events in America you've probably heard a lot about lobbyists, “special interests”, and PACs.  These are the levers in which corporations and industry groups influence and often control the US Government, as we will discuss below.

Friday Tips

Every day on the net I run across a great many tips to make life easier, and I'd like to start collecting and recording the best so they aren't lost or forgotten.  Here is the first batch from the archives, I'll post newer ones each week until I run out.

"We'll Tell You Any Shit You Want to Hear!"

This is part two of a series on recognizing and managing misinformation in the media named, "Finding A Bit Of Truth In An Ocean Of Garbage."

You might be surprised to know that the trend of the American media becoming less and less trustworthy has been recognized for a long time.  As such, I'd like to introduce you to Network, a film that a majority of readers here are likely not familiar with.  Amazingly, over thirty years ago in 1976 this ground-breaking movie saw the future, described it perfectly, and gave us all a clear warning about what happens when society starts believing its own fantasies.

Finding A Bit Of Truth In An Ocean Of Garbage

As you may have already noticed, one of the most frustrating developments of recent years is the difficulty in obtaining reliable news and information from media sources, especially in the United States.  Paradoxically, while this would be expected in far-off lands with totalitarian governments, it certainly wouldn't be in those with a free press.  Yet I submit that keeping informed today is harder than ever, as we are inundated with information from every angle, the majority of it garbage.  I'll be examining this regrettable topic in a series of posts here at Geekademy, in hopes it will help others recognize the problem and avoid its consequences.

A Symphony of Science

Creations such as the Symphony of Science make a geek feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  Enjoy this combination of great science, philosopy, music, and innovative techniques in creation of these fun videos.  Thankfully there are so many imaginative people in the world to keep things interesting.

Why don’t my floating-point numbers add up?

Recently happened upon this friendly site explaining the issues regarding floating-point math on binary computers and thought it useful.  As I'm sure you're aware it takes special talent to take a complicated subject and present it in an easy to understand fashion.