Krillion - Pseudorandomness

The Starfish Story

I heard this story the first year I taught and have never forgotten it... I just shared it with a teacher friend of mine who needed some encouragement- thought I would share it on my blog as well.....  Once upon a time there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work. One day he was walking along the shore. As he looked down the beach, he saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself to think of someone who would dance to the day. So he began to walk faster to catch up.

As he got closer, he saw that it was a young man and the young man wasn't dancing, but instead he was reaching down to the shore, picking up something and very gently throwing it into the ocean.

As he got closer he called out, "Good morning! What are you doing?"

The young man paused, looked up and replied, "Throwing starfish in the ocean."

"I guess I should have asked, why are you throwing starfish in the ocean?"

"The sun is up and the tide is going out. And if I don't throw them in they'll die."

"But, young man, don't you realize that there are miles and miles of beach and starfish all along it. You can't possibly make a difference!"

The young man listened politely. Then bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it into the sea, past the breaking waves and said- "It made a difference for that one."

How many "starfish" do you come across in a day?

working on context slide

#privacy

Dow Jones asks court to unseal long-completed digital surveillance cases Tens of thousands of electronic surveillance orders are sealed from public view. via arstechnica

Federal court rules cops can warrantlessly track suspects via cellphone Geo-data received based on "reasonable grounds" phone was connected to a crime.  via arstechnica

Amendment 4 by Jeff DeMaria creative commons licensed (BY-NC-SA) flickr photo  

Obama panel supports warrant requirement for e-mail, cloud content Congress has punted on issue for years. E-mail, cloud data to remain exposed.  via arstechnica

No worries: NSA chief says facial recognition program is totally legal "We do not do this in some unilateral basis against US citizens," NSA chief says.  via arstechnica

Octopuses

Octopus slips out of aquarium tank, crawls across floor, escapes down pipe to ocean

Swarms of Octopus Are Taking Over the Oceans

Octopuses may indeed be your new overlords

Deep Intellect

Christmas is the season of giving

If you're on Amazon, check out Amazon smile where you can support your favorite charity everytime you shop.   

Foodies, turn your pictures into donations with this app: We the Feedies 

A couple of other great links to check out:

Giving What We Can

What is the Greatest Good?

Holiday Giving:  7 Children’s Charities You Should Know About

Image used under Creative Commons license (BY) by John-Morgan

This is why not everything we call awesome is actually awesome

How many times did you use the word awesome today? Five, ten, fifteen times? We use the word awesome so often and, most of the time, so incorrectly that the term has lost its original sense— maybe forever. Comedian Jill Shargaa explains why in this AWESOME TED talk.

Claim on “Attacks Thwarted” by NSA Spreads Despite Lack of Evidence

The agency, President Obama, and members of Congress have all said NSA spying programs have thwarted more than 50 terrorist plots. But there’s no evidence the claim is true.

Waiting for the Pope2

Say what now? #Snowden

Here's Why The Washington Post Is Wrong About Edward Snowden via Fortune

Why is this so surprising and/or controversial? Because theWashington Post was one of the primary outlets that worked closely with Snowden, published multiple stories based on his leaks, and in fact won a Pulitzer Prize for a story about the program that the editorial board says should not have been publicized.

In effect, the newspaper’s editorial board is arguing that the coverage that won it the Pulitzer also “disrupted lawful intelligence-gathering” and therefore was largely indefensible even by the standards usually applied to whistle blowers.

WashPost Makes History: First Paper to Call for Prosecution of Its Own Source (After Accepting Pulitzer)

THREE OF THE four media outlets that received and published large numbers of secret NSA documents provided by Edward Snowden — The Guardian, the New York Times, and The Intercept –– have called for the U.S. government to allow the NSA whistleblower to return to the U.S. with no charges. That’s the normal course for a news organization, which owes its sources duties of protection, and which — by virtue of accepting the source’s materials and then publishing them — implicitly declares the source’s information to be in the public interest.

But not the Washington Post.