Essentials
theDiagonal is a personal blog by Mike Gerra, skeptic, technologist, psychologist, artist, humanist, collector of grand, eclectic ideas.theDiagonal blog connects the dots across multiple disciplines for inquisitive, objective and critical thinkers, exploring the vertices of big science, disruptive innovation, global sustainability, illuminating literature and leftfield art. It is on this diagonal that creativity thrives, big ideas take flight and reason triumphs.
Monthly Archives: November 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Map of the World’s Countries Rearranged by Population
From Frank Jacobs / BigThink:
What if the world were rearranged so that the inhabitants of the country with the largest population would move to the country with the largest area? And the second-largest population would migrate to the second-largest country, and so on?
The result would be this disconcerting, disorienting map. In the world described by it, the differences in population density between countries would be less extreme than they are today. The world’s most densely populated country currently is Monaco, with 43,830 inhabitants/mi² (16,923 per km²) (1). On the other end of the scale is Mongolia, which is less densely populated by a factor of almost exactly 10,000, with a mere 4.4 inhabitants/mi² (1.7 per km²).
...read moreFriday, November 26, 2010
The Top Ten Daily Consequences of Having Evolved
From Smithsonian.com:
Natural selection acts by winnowing the individuals of each generation, sometimes clumsily, as old parts and genes are co-opted for new roles. As a result, all species inhabit bodies imperfect for the lives they live. Our own bodies are worse off than most simply because of the many differences between the wilderness in which we evolved and the modern world in which we live. We feel the consequences every day. Here are ten.
...read moreMonday, November 22, 2010
MondayPoem: The Lie
By Robert Pinsky for Slate:
Denunciation abounds, in its many forms: snark (was that word invented or fostered in a poem, Lewis Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark“?), ranking-out, calling-out, bringing-down, blowing-up, flaming, scorching, trashing, negative campaigning, skepticism, exposure, nailing, shafting, finishing, diminishing, down-blogging. Aggressive moral denunciation—performed with varying degrees of justice and skill in life, in print, on the Web, in politics, on television and radio, in book-reviewing, in sports, in courtrooms and committee meetings—generates dismay and glee in its audience. Sometimes, for many of us, dismay and glee simultaneously, in an uneasy combination.
A basic form of denunciation is indicated by the slightly archaic but useful expression giving the lie.
...read more
Posted in Arts and Letters, Literature
Tagged MondayPoem, Pinsky, poetry, Sir Walter Raleigh
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Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Search Engine History
It’s hard to believe that internet based search engines have been in the mainstream consciousness for around twenty years now. It seems not too long ago that we were all playing Pong and searching index cards at the local library. Infographics Labs puts the last twenty years of search in summary for us below.
From Infographic Labs:
Infographic: Search Engine History by Infographiclabs
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