Sub-pontian idea of the day for G+
1) Collect all the most annoying people you can find in one circle
2) Give the circle an un-threatening name like, say, Sci-Fi 
3) Share the circle widely with your followers
4) Sit back in the knowledge of a job well done
[from: Google+ Posts]

Marquez on a damp track. What is he doing? How does he do that?
http://pix.crash.net/motorsport/710/PA1296054.jpg
http://www.crash.net/motogp/picturearchive/0/126/2013+motogp/4876/photos.html

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[from: Google+ Posts]

Another example of why I find Charles Stross' blog to be essential and thought provoking reading.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/03/the-permanent-revolution.html
Today's rant is about the ideological flavour of a belief in endless exponential growth and what it means for society. 

My own thoughts are too confused here to be offer much comment. But this. Robert Wilson's and Terence McKenna's ideas about accelerating change proved to be too strong. The novelty curve didn't go vertical in an exponential growth singularity in Dec 2012. So the model was too simplistic. But a sigmoid curve where we're past the steepest part and rate of change is levelling out is also too simplistic a model. And so back to Limits to Growth again. 
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2846/28462101.jpg
That model recognises global macro economics as a whole series of interdependent variables, all with implications and all with major lags. Almost every single run results in exponential growth, sigmoid slowing and then a catastrophic correction.

Then there's Buckminster Fuller and Thermodynamics. The laws of thermodynamics and especially the second law are usually quoted without the words "in a closed system". So one approach for dealing with the downsides of exponential growth and this statement "Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist - Kenneth Boulter, Economist." is to look for ways in which the system can be changed so that it is no longer closed. In 17th Century England, this would avoid the resource limitations of sheep and wool via imperialism. In the 21st century this might be post-industrial knowledge work, the industrialisation of space, much greater and direct exploitation of solar power and others. That doesn't nullify  the resource limits of oil energy or minerals, or the negative drivers such as pollution, but it does perhaps allow us to sidestep them.

Meanwhile, 99.9% of the population of the earth has a long way to go before it has the lifestyle and comforts of Louis XIV so explonential change, improvement and the future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed.

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[from: Google+ Posts]

Another write up from a Google Reader founder. Interesting that all the same reasons for writing it originally still exist. And surprising to see the same old Atom vs RSS enmities being repeated again after all these years.

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[from: Google+ Posts]

Separated by nearly 40 years. Starless from the album 'Red' (and not 'Starless and Bible Black' surprisingly) from King Crimson vs a folk version from The Unthanks.
The Unthanks : Starless
vs
King Crimson - Starless

btw. Listen to The Unthanks, they're lovely.

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[from: Google+ Posts]

Whose side are you on,
1) people who claim there's only two sides to the argument, or
2) everyone else?
[from: Google+ Posts]

Request: put a "Comments" tab on the profile page of G+ showing all the posts that the person has commented on in reverse comment date order.

Meanwhile, providespecial search keywords commenter:<profileId> and author:<profileId> so we can filter G+ post searches by authors.

tip: https://plus.google.com/s/%22<firstName>%20<lastName>%22%20-inurl%3A<profileId>/posts does kind of work.
 
[from: Google+ Posts]

Most [UK] family doctors have given a patient a placebo drug
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21834440

So how does this work?
- Do patients prescribed placebos experience the side effects for the apparent named drug? ie. The Nocebo effect.
- Are the placebos branded or generic?
- Do they cost the same prescription charge?
- In these days of internet research, surely we can look up and check if a particular medicine is actually a placebo.
- Is there some special mark or acronym on the prescription which tells the pharmacist to put the special sugar pills into the "Lopitoff 80mg" box? Or is "Lopitoff" the real drug and "Lopitoff-NR" the placebo?

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[from: Google+ Posts]

If you use Feedburner and Google closed it, what would you do?

One of the things I've heard over and over from non-technical users who have the same concerns now that Feedburner is owned by Google, is where do we go if we want to switch? Ahh. There is no place to go.

Why is there no competitor?

Here's another question. If you use Blogger or Blogspot and Google turned off RSS/Atom feeds on those platforms, what would you do?

From an old post that turned up in Dave Winer's link blog and came to my attention via a feed reader. Posted to G+ and then copied to Twitter, Facebook and a blog via an Atom feed created by a 3rd party because of course G+ doesn't have Atom feeds.

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[from: Google+ Posts]

News Readers for Chromebooks
With Google Reader going, and Google Currents being Android and iOS, what would Google recommend for reading general news on Chromebooks? Flipboard and Apple's Newsstand are also platform restricted and not available on Chromebooks. 
 
It seems to me that Chromebooks need a general purpose news reader just as much as laptops / PCs and mobile phones / tablets. Chromebooks are inherently portable and reading news is an obvious use case when on the move and sitting somewhere like a cafe or on a train.

So apparently we need a cloud based, browser based, general purpose news reader for the Chromebook platform just as much as on the other platforms. And of course, it should be accessible on phones / tablets / Chromebooks / laptops and sync read/unread across all the platforms you access it from.

So if Google don't want to provide it, we'll find it elsewhere.
[from: Google+ Posts]

https://soundcloud.com/paveun/xxyyxx-fields-hesk-paveun

Actually pretty much all of XXYYXX's stuff is awesome but this is an epic remix.

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[from: Google+ Posts]

They've poisoned the well in the worst way; they made it clear that Google is worse than mercenary - it's banal.

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[from: Google+ Posts]

Google Glass and a related up tick in interest in Virtual Reality is making me nostalgic for 1990 (and it's view of the future).

I'm almost ready to coin a new word Futurastalgia. Nostalgia for an old and alternate future that didn't quite arrive.

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[from: Google+ Posts]

What if Facebook built a Google Reader competitor right into Facebook?
I'm very, very uncertain of how good an idea this is for all of us in the long term. But it's food for thought, no?

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[from: Google+ Posts]

Geotagging posts in G+ desktop browser view
Allow posts to be geotagged in the desktop browser view using the modern browser's geolocation functions. In the same way as in the old mobile web version. And provide the same "Nearby" view of posts. This also needs the ability to geotag to a street address as well as to a business or local place. And/or the ability to define new places.

Maybe then we can get rid of Latitude and roll it's functionality into G+ 

We also need some more control over the Places section of profiles. It's annoyingly wrong too much of the time.
[from: Google+ Posts]

Dammit. Chrome's G+ button has just lost my text. Again.

Anyway, the attached article is short but important.

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[from: Google+ Posts]

There's a very simple cocktail known as the Whisky Mac, allegedly invented in India during the Raj, but more likely in Glasgow pubs. Basically equal parts Whisky and Green Ginger Wine (either Stones or Crabbie's). And drunk room temperature, or with an ice cube or two or even hot.

So here's the question. Is there a name for the same drink but made with other whiskies such as Irish, Canadian, Bourbon, etc? Any other cocktail uses of Ginger Wine? Given the Dark and Stormy, you'd think that something could be made with a med or dark Jamaican Rum as well. 

After  a party at Christmas, somebody left behind a mostly full bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label and another bottle of J&B. The wife needed green ginger wine for some cooking recipe and then starting having a small sherry glass or two. The end result is that the Whisky Mac been a fairly common fri/sat night drink in the Bond household. Especially as the weather hasn't been great and the Whisky+Ginger is really warming in front of a wood fire.
[from: Google+ Posts]

Superb article about the history of RSS and Google Reader. Unfortunately it's TL;DR!

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[from: Google+ Posts]

The statue on one of the roundabouts outside Jerez on the way to the Jerez circuit. I have to say, I would like to live in a town that puts up statues of motorcycles!

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[from: Google+ Posts]

'Fauxstalgia'. Nostalgia for a time you never knew.
[from: Google+ Posts]