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My friends at WPI have been posting about the fact that Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson was chosen to be their commencement speaker this year. I’ve seen comments on both sides and there is a movement to protest the speech. Concerns have been raised primarily about Exxon Mobil’s corporate ethics and their contributions to global climate change. Based on the comments on facebook the protest group is attempting to be flexible and undisruptive in their actions. However the unfortunate result of this debacle is that this commencement is now about politics instead of the graduates. I can only hope that next month those on both sides of this debate will be able to celebrate together and focus on building a better future.

I listened the the TED talk on my iPod and thought this is amazing. Lessons and practice problems for a variety of subjects on one website. The format is better than many of the other open courseware sites I’ve been to online. The talk is embedded below. Enjoy!

Today’s cool find is courtesy of my enjoyment of NPR and Planet Money. They had a partnership with an organization known as ProPublica. I decided to explore their website today and they have a fantastic section on data extraction and analysis. If you want to get started with data analysis they have some great techniques, especially for PDF extraction.

Obama’s deficit speech today demonstrates the power of the bully pulpit given to the chief executive. After the speech there was much reaction on twitter, facebook, and mainstream news outlets. I prefer to listen to the speech myself instead of listening to the talking heads, so I’ve embedded the link below. I hope that you too will listen to it and make your own judgement.