For those unaware, distributed computing is a way to help out scientists with near-zero effort on your part. You install a program that, when you’re not using your computer, will run simulations to help scientists. While your old Pentium II isn’t very fast, when combined with the thousands of others the result is faster than the worlds best supercomputers.

The oldest, most famous (and least likely to succeed) of these is SETI@home which looks for patterns in electromagnetic radiation from space — possible indicators of extraterrestrial intelligent life. There are also projects like Folding@home and BOINC that let you use your computer to help try and find cures to diseases or model the climate.

I love these programs, and run them nearly all the time on my ‘lil laptop — at home, in Starbucks in hotels. But running them inside a church gives me a particular thrill.

I’d like to coin a term for my insignificant theft of resources from a church:

Scijack
Verb
A portmanteau of the words ‘science’ and ‘highjack’
To use the resources of a religious institution to further scientific research.

In my frequent travels around London I’ve found that St. Martin-in-the-Fields is the best place, by far, to scijack. There’s a little cafe below the main church in an old crypt. In addition to having unsecured wifi and electrical outlets, it’s an atmospheric location. (And it’s where I met my wife)

Anyone know of any other good places in London or around the world to scijack? I’m thinking this could turn into a competitive sport — how many people can you get into a church, and how many units of computing can you complete before being removed. And remember: pics, or it didn’t happen.

So I discovered this morning, via reddit, that the UK government has decided it’s a good idea to censor the Internet in the name of protecting us all from child pornography. I didn’t realize it before, but in the UK any image of a naked child counts as porn — no matter the context. Those family photos of the new baby getting a bath? Porn. Plus, if you email them to the grandparents, you are now a child porn distributor. Ridiculous.

The photograph above is by Huỳnh Công Út taken of a nine-year-old girl running after being burned in a napalm attack during the Vietnam war.

I’m rather glad my wife and I have recently decided it’s time to leave. Any suggestions as to where we should go?

“I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” –Frederick Douglass

You can get this design at the Miscellanea Store.

This is the last election 2008 comic, I promise.

I’ll be frantically clicking ‘refresh’ on fivethirtyeight.com until this is over.

Before the yelling starts I’m America-hating Eurotrash, I’d like to clear a few things up: first off I am American — not British as the many emails people send me assume. Secondly, I desperately, desperately want America to actually be the best country in the world. I’ve lived in London for the majority of the Bush presidency and been miserable watching from a distance as the nation crumbles from within.

What is it that prevents America from righting herself? Stupid, blind, unthinking patriotism — willful idiots yelling “We’re number one!” while ignoring all evidence to the contrary.

That Americas now have shorter lives than Bosnians, that our democracy is only slightly better than the Czech Republic’s, that we have more people in prison per capita than any other country in the world, and that a child born in Slovakia is more likely to survive than in America is pathetic.

We can fix this. We must fix this. But before you can fix a problem, you must acknowledge that it exists.

This comic is also available as a printable PDF and as a poster in the miscellanea store.

The sources used for the poster are:

The OECD Countries of the world Database

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listofcountriesbynumberofmobilephonesin_use

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/08/14/science/sciencespecial2/20050815EVOGRAPHIC.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldwidePressFreedomIndex#WorldwidePressFreedomIndex_Ranking

http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/series/2543/pisa_2006/29012/29013/6

http://www.itif.org/files/BroadbandRankings.pdf

P.S. If you are interested in an amazing lecture covering how countries compare to each other, check out this TED talk by Hans Rosling and his website http://gapminder.org/

Inspired by stuff white people like: Netflix and my own imaginary experiences with throttling from their British counterpart, LOVEFiLM

The photo of a Netflix envelope used in the background comes from flickr user hinnosaar

Best viewed in full-screen mode

Ten trillion dollars is an unimaginable sum. With this presentation I’ve tried to show a few of the ways to think about a number this large. Add a comment if you can think of another way to use ten trillion.

If you found this slideshow interesting, you might be want to read The Three Trillion Dollar War. Oh, and if you haven’t check out the XO laptop, it’s really worth a look.

P.S. I’m not entirely satisfied with using slideshare for my presentations. If you know of any better alternatives, I’d love to hear from you.

Credits:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/1027863995/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/odalaigh/2332401466/

http://flickr.com/photos/skycaptaintwo/96522428/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnmueller

http://www.flickr.com/photos/olpc/2928908291/

http://flickr.com/photos/malias/86009411/