Year: 2011

50 must-see documentaries as per New York Times

Via Kottke.org I came across the New York Times recommendation of 50 must-see documentaries.  Looking through the list, I see only a few that I’ve seen.  The rest should provide me with a few hours of entertainment and learning.  To make things slightly more useful, I’ve created a new public list on IMDb, in which I’ve put all the recommended movies in the order that they were recommended.

Which ones have you seen and which ones do you recommend I start with?

Update: There were quite a few critical comments to the article, suggesting even more documentaries that should have made the list but didn’t.  I decided to keep the original list intact and created an additional list – Must-see documentaries. I’ve put most of the suggestions from the comments into this list and I will keep updating it with other documentaries which I get recommendations for.

Day in brief – 2011-09-06

  • Shared: SSH configuration: single host, multiple users. http://t.co/0PxJ0Gj #
  • Laughing at: 15 Funny Exam Answers http://t.co/HGXpBrm #
  • The only time I'm happy that my mouse is not wireless is when I accidentally drop it off the table. #
  • I favorited a @YouTube video http://t.co/Hkc2Zqb Oscilaciones de la cuerdas de una Guitarra #
  • @steverubel I wish more publishers had such balls. we'd live in a different world then. #
  • @titanas @gmail dude, start using a real OS already and stop worrying about such nonsense as viruses. :-) #
  • @ektagon good idea. I tried to push a couple of companies to do that, bur they turned out to be too conservative. :-) #

A lesson in geography perhaps, Mr.President?

Cyprus Mail does an extensive coverage of the explosion investigation (several articles, I’m only linking to the one I quote).  The President of Cyprus, Dimitris Christofias, was also questioned and gave a few statements.  Some of his words are rather unbelievable.

Christofias also denied it was him who decided where to put the munitions, adding that he had never visited the Evangelos Florakis naval base at Mari, which neighbours the Vassilikos power station, before the blast. “If I knew the proximity to the power station I would not have accepted them being stored there,” Christofias said.

Say what?  I mean, I can understand that Cyprus is covered with villages big and small, some with duplicate names.  But this place is special.  It is the largest naval base in Cyprus.  And it has the power station that was responsible for about 60% of all power supply. This location must be on every single strategic plan this country has.  This should be one of the things you know before you accept the responsibility of leading this country.  EPIC FAIL.

Bayes theorem history

A fascinating read on the Bayes theorem history:

The German codes, produced by Enigma machines with customizable wheel positions that allowed the codes to be changed rapidly, were considered unbreakable, so nobody was working on them. This attracted Alan Turing to the problem, because he liked solitude. He built a machine that could test different code possibilities, but it was slow. The machine might need four days to test all 336 wheel positions on a particular Enigma code. Until more machines could be built, Turing had to find a way for reducing the burden on the machine.

He used a Bayesian system to guess the letters in an Enigma message, and add more clues as they arrived with new data. With this method he could reduce the number of wheel settings to be tested by his machine from 336 to as few as 18. But soon, Turing realized that he couldn’t compare the probabilities of his hunches without a standard unit of measurement. So, he invented the ‘ban’, defined as “about the smallest change in weight of evidence that is directly perceptible to human intuition.” This unit turned out to be very similar to the bit, the measure of information discovered using Bayes’ Theorem while working for Bell Telephone.

If the whole thing is too much for you, at least read the “Bayes at War” section.