It's interesting to see which subjects are covered in this list of new online courses. I signed up for a free course about podcasting from an Australian university. [via mefi]
"...none other than Corvallis stands out as the top city in the country for innovation — after you account for its size. New York is merely average." Some theoretical physicists are looking at new ways to measure the creative output of cities.
It's going to be that time of year again soon. These Thule chains look nice, but I'd rather see real people putting on chains in freezing weather in the demo, not spinning/floating CG.
"The fundamental problems with the American health care system are all linked, directly or indirectly, to the fact that the vast majority of folks get insurance solely through their employers." Amen, and go Wyden! [via Kattullus]
"The problem is Twitter isn’t really open. For Twitter to be truly open, it would have to be possible to use “Twitter” without an any way involving Twitter the institution. Instead, all data goes through Twitter’s centralized service." I'm not a fan of people pushing content to Twitter like it's an RSS reader for social reasons as well, but that's probably just me.
"More than half of the internet’s top websites use a little known capability of Adobe’s Flash plug-in to track users and store information about them..." [via schneier]
"Parents and other caregivers teach young children by paying attention and interacting with them naturally and, most of all, by just allowing them to play." [via Daddy Types]
"Superfeedr is Real-time Feed Parsing in the Cloud." Great idea that could help build specialized aggregators. Bummed it's ATOM at the end. I'd prefer RSS.
"In its final days before crashing into the surface of the moon on June 11, Japan’s KAGUYA explorer has been shooting high-definition footage of the lunar terrain from low altitude."
"Buying a new home, rearranging your room, or moving into a new office? You can save time and have more fun if you lay out your ideas ahead of time." Looks like nifty web app.