Around the interwebs

via Regina Spector, old TED talk featuring Sarah Jones.

A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation, where we are reminded,

Since the beginning

Not one unusual thing

Has ever happened.

Around the interwebs

Great post by Ezra on how penicillin fooled us, and the ensuing fallout to public policy.

Discussion on what we say, and what we mean. In general, an excellent discussion on the use of knowledge in language.

R surpasses Matlab and SAS in popularity

I think that those R folks might be onto something.

Links of the day

Ten things every conservative should know about Reagan.

Via infostatics, very nice use of Flash. Wonder if HTML5 could handle something like this,

Via three toed sloth, nice article on writing R functions (pdf)

Links of the day

Giant spider attacks! Packers win!
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2011/02/07/mental-health-break-5-24/

Make shift Egyptian helmets (also via AS)
http://www.sadanduseless.com/2011/02/egyptian-helmets/

And, via an MS  tutorial:

Hello, world.

Hello, world.