Gems of the Web

Last updated April 20 2010

  • Other
  • Academic Resources
    • http://www.ocwconsortium.org/
    • http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/
    • http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page
  • Health
  • News
  • Finance
  • Shopping
  • Travel
    • Search Engines:
      • http://cn.bing.com/travel/flights
      • http://www.fly.com/SearchSpec.aspx?IgnoreSession=False
      • Most of world: momondo.com, kayak.com, cheaptickets, priceline
      • Students: studentuniverse.com
      • China-int’l flights: www.qunar.com
      • China-domestic flights: www.ctrip.com
    • Europe from Prague by bus: www.studentagencybus.com

  • Design/Infographics

    • Six Revisons
    • “Six Revisions is a weblog that provides practical, useful information for the modern, standards-compliant web designer and web developer.”
    • Wallstat.com
    • Econ/Finance focused infographics
    • Abudeezo
    • I subscribe to his feed and end up reading them all more often than not. Many of my thumbnail pics come from here.
  • Tools
  • Essays
  • Economics
    • When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Collapse by ADAM FERGUSSON – a Study of Hyperinflation – worth $2500 a few years ago, recently sold for $995. Full text.
    • The Economics of Interstellar Trade by Paul Krugman – “This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer travelling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are proved.”
  • Mathematics
    • Who Can Name the Bigger Number? by Scott Aaronson - Indeed, one could define science as reason’s attempt to compensate for our inability to perceive big numbers. If we could run at 280,000,000 meters per second, there’d be no need for a special theory of relativity: it’d be obvious to everyone that the faster we go, the heavier and squatter we get, and the faster time elapses in the rest of the world.