Stuff I've seen September 10th through to September 12th

These are my links for September 10th through September 12th:

  • Google’s PageRank Predicts Extinction Paths | Technology & Gadget News – "The complex algorithm that Google’s uses to rank web pages has been hailed by scientists as a way to predict extinction cascades within ecosystems."
  • Mapping revisited & social change theory « CDI Europe – "The largest opportunity – and the largest experiment – would therefore be to test its social change theory in a space that so far no organisation has consistently occupied: mobile Internet and apps based on smartphones."
  • The Ethics of Openness | Rebooting the System – "Today the default in our discussion of government is negative: they are doing bad things badly, and we are the watchdog who’ll catch the bastards in the act.”
  • At “Blogger Roundtable” To Launch Homeland Security “Dialogue”, DHS Policy Head Heyman Asks For “Shareholders” Input As Part Of “Shared Responsibility” To Help Protect The Nation – "there were three major reasons for bringing the public into the “dialogue”: 1) to raise awareness and engage citizens about the “shared responsibility” for homeland security and address a “sense of complacency”; 2) to include the “shareholders” (ie. citizens) in discussions on how their government should be allocating its resources in homeland security; and 3) to solicit good ideas about how to keep the nation “safe and secure” from across the nation “capitalizing on the knowledge of the public”."
  • Treatment of Alan Turing was “appalling” – PM | Number10.gov.uk – "Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later."