WhoIsBramStoker?

• The NSA center in Utah has a utility bill of approximately $3.3 million a month – transforming coal into computronium for enough laser driven zeros and ones to fry those fuckers in North Korea eh?
• At present, about 2% of all global energy consumed is going into the web and computing – and that number is moving upwards quickly
• Still, this is an order of magnitude less than the brain, which consumes about 20% of body energy
• US CEO to average worker compensation in 1982: 42 to 1, in 2012: 354 to 1
• Proops is Hungarian for fart
• Have yachts and have-nots: the richest 85 people in the world have as much wealth as the bottom 50%
• IMHO, a lesson for our times, “The Little Way of Ruthie Leming“, Rod Dreher
• There are more expat US dollars than domestic dollars
• Climate change refugees are already an issue in New Zealand where the issue has gone before the NZ supreme court.
• According to Barrons (13 Oct 2013) there are $4620 US dollars in circulation for every ounce of gold in US reserves

Smart site..  LessWrong

Ulam Spiral

The Ulam Spiral is a method of visualizing the prime numbers discovered by chance by the mathematician Stanislaw Ulam in 1963.

The spiral is constructed on a regular rectangular grid of numbers, starting with 1 at the center, and spiraling out. As shown above, prime numbers are very often aligned on diagonals, which is unexpected and unexplained but leads to the development of new methods for generating or testing prime numbers. Visualization was required to discover this phenomena that scales to very large sizes.

IMHO,  how bitcoin and blockchains work is is a fundamental literacy point for our times. Deep down, mathematically and conceptually we are exploiting the DNA of creation as we turn the mysteries of “number” into working algorithms..

Excellent series of videos from the Khan Academy here and from imponderablethings.com here

Its more like fuel than money and it will disrupt all economic and social exchange. An excellent vision of the potential of blockchains (another interesting side effect of prime numbers).

Linky