"In a scientific context what does this mean? The overall project referred to is your analysis. The activities are simple operations within your analysis. All these operations have a certain number of inputs and outputs. In the case of fetching a DNA sequence, an input may be an identifier of the sequence, whilst the output is a string representing the nucleotide sequence represented by this identifier.
The triggering of activities by other activities are where an operation feeds data into a subsequent operation. For example, the ‘fetch sequence’ operation may feed its output (the string containing sequence ‘ACTG’) into a ‘transcribe’ operation. This would subsequently change the DNA sequence into an RNA sequence. We would then have a simple workflow with one operation, and a link, which looks something like the following:…"

"After nearly eight years of national prosperity in the construction industry, there continues to be one prominent shortage: time. The only way to gain on the situation is to use time better. To that end, I offer the following suggestions. Think of this list as a web of strategies-one is not more important than any other. However, if you are going to be successful with No. 10, you'll need to demonstrate competence in Nos. 1-9."

"The big theme for 2009 economically will be contraction. The end of the cheap energy era will announce itself as the end of conventional "growth" and the shrinking back of activity, wealth, and populations. Contraction will come as a great shock to a world of conventionally programmed economists. They will toil and sweat to account for it, and they will probably be wrong. Unfortunately, this contraction will do its work in unpleasant ways, driving down standards of living, shearing away hopes and expectations for a particular life of comfort, and introducing disorder to so many of the systems we have depended on for so long. People will starve, lose their homes, lose incomes and status, and lose the security of living in peaceful societies. It will become clear that the Long Emergency is underway."

"There is increasing concern about the disappearance of technical knowledge from the public domain, both on grounds that is presents a security danger and because it is economically valuable "Intellectual Property". I argue that this development is not anomalous at all but a great historic trend tied to our transition to the information age. We are in the process of losing a human right that all of us thought we had but actually didn't–the right to learn things we can and better ourselves economically from what we learn. Increasingly, figuring things our for yourself will become theft and terrorism. Increasingly, reason itself will become a crime."

"After Freshwater took his side public, Jenifer said she and her husband were worried Freshwater wouldn’t face disciplinary action. In June, they filed a lawsuit against Freshwater and the district for violating the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause by permitting religion to be taught in class, and for failing to protect their son. Federal law allows such civil liberties cases to be filed anonymously. Freshwater has filed a countersuit, citing defamation of character."

"The myth of the riskometer is alive and kicking. In spite of a large body of empirical evidence identifying the difficulties in measuring financial risk, policymakers and financial institutions alike continue to promote risk sensitivity.
The reasons may have to do with the fact that risk sensitivity is intuitively attractive, and the counter arguments complex. The crisis, however, shows us the folly of the riskometer. Let us hope that decision makers will rely on other methods."

"Who would be invited to a social charrette in a technocracy? One thinks of blue ribbon panels and legislative hearings, but those are not public deliberations in most cases…they are public hearings. A charrette is a publicly deliberative process. It has rules and structures that are pliant and disruptive influences are addressed by a combination of rhetoric and interest, not “leadership,” which is a term I find increasingly dubious. "

"In transforming ourselves, we transform the world around us. If, as a leader, you can demonstrate the power of shifting your own thinking, it provides the space and opportunity for your ‘village’—the community that surrounds you in the workplace—to do the same. And once you tap into the power of that network, broader transformation becomes possible.

So perhaps ‘the next big thing’ is not something ‘out there’. It may be staring at you in the mirror."

"Yeah, Coleman might fight, but he'll lose. The Republicans are gonna be fucking pieces of shit about Franken's election, but that's what Republicans do. They'll lose, too. So now there's someone heading to DC who is a wholehearted liberal, someone who learned from 2000 and 2004, put on his brass knuckles, and said, "Let's go.""

"She said that while cc grads who transfer to her university do just as well academically as native students, they don't donate as much back to the university as alums. They only spent two years there, instead of four, so they don't feel the same level of attachment. The university knows that, so it puts a pretty tight lid on transfer admissions. It admits a few students to fill out the numbers in some upper-level courses, but that's it. It doesn't want to jeopardize the future funding stream from donations."

"Now, I won’t try to defend the idea that the Founders included Satanists in their vision for “religion in general.” But the following is a list of “religions” which they believed were “sound” and valid ways to God: Orthodox or unorthodox Christianity, Judaism, Islam, certain forms of Deism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Native American spirituality and pagan Greco-Romanism. Putting them together, you certainly get “religion in general” not “Christianity in particular.”"

"In upcoming posts, we'll review some of the ways people are starting to organize online and look at the key design elements of self-organizing, whether online or off.

Jean pointed out that some of you are already experimenting, so please let us know what you are doing by responding to this post!"

"The most long-standing suspicion about kindness is that it is just narcissism in disguise. We are kind because it makes us feel good about ourselves: kindly people are self-approbation junkies. Encountering this argument in the 1730s, the philosopher Francis Hutcheson dispatched it briskly: "If this is self-love, be it so … Nothing can be better than this self-love, nothing more generous.""