Map projections

A sense-of-wonder-inspiring XKCD webcomic inspired a look into the forum there which lead to the discovery of this cool idea for projecting a map of the Earth onto a 2D surface. I highly recommend checking out the gallery that displays many of van Wijk's creations using the method he invented.

A story of salvation

This is a story I have only just heard. It's full of examples of how love and sacrifice, empathy and hard work can be applied in ways that defy expectation, explanation, and make inroads to a better world. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDOrzF7B2Kg

Now that's fast

Time-Critical Social Mobilization

Galen Pickard et al.
Science, 28 October 2011, Pages 509-512

Abstract:
The World Wide Web is commonly seen as a platform that can harness the collective abilities of large numbers of people to accomplish tasks with unprecedented speed, accuracy, and scale. To explore the Web's ability for social mobilization, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) held the DARPA Network Challenge, in which competing teams were asked to locate 10 red weather balloons placed at locations around the continental United States. Using a recursive incentive mechanism that both spread information about the task and incentivized individuals to act, our team was able to find all 10 balloons in less than 9 hours, thus winning the Challenge. We analyzed the theoretical and practical properties of this mechanism and compared it with other approaches.