Greg Bales

Linkgasm

Links are for lovers.

• 5_Trope, an online literary magazine edited by my former office mate Gunnar Benediktsson. I helped him move, once!
• Timothy O’Sullivan’s photographs of the American West during postbellum surveys, from the Library of Congress. To put the extraordinary nature of his and his contemporaries’ photographs in perspective, watch Sally Mann discuss her own work with wet plate photography.
• Computers defeat humans in chess by volumes of computation alone, and Garry Kasparov appears to be okay with that. But, he argues, that cannot be all there is, and he raises the specter of chess to challenge computer programmers again. To build a computer that can win in chess by outcomputing a human is easy—a simple combination of algorithm and hardware; to build a computer that learns and strategizes with creativity? That is the real challenge.
• Working the Creation Museum into an overview of the Palin for President Tea Party people is a nice touch. Kudos, Ben McGrath!
• Yet another article about natural gas drilling contaminating drinking water. More on the problems being had out west can be found here.