exactly -- imdb has an internet and populist skew. As long as you take this into account, their ratings are fine and predictable. Gaming rankings is practically an official internet pastime, so it's not unexpected that this event is taking place, although I'm surprised it built up enough steam without (presumedly) official co-ordination to drop the Godfather a few places -- that is notable. I'm sure politicians are taking notes as we speak.
The popular book (and television series) Guns, Germs and Steel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel) addresses the reasons why technological advancements tended to occur in particular cultures and its title provides the short answer to your question.
You may also find it interesting to read up about colonialism -- some of the statements you've made represent attitudes that are considered somewhat dated by modern standards; it's almost as if they were cribbed from "The White Man's Burden" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_man%27s_burden).
Thank you for those links. I don't fully agree with what Jared Diamond says, but it's interesting nonetheless. In particular he says that genetic differences had nothing to do with it without actually showing so.
But even more in particular it doesn't explain why nothing has changed today. All his arguments fall to the wayside today, and yet nothing has changed.
For example: both china and japan stopped progress because they were isolated. Fine, and it's a reasonable argument because today both those places have plenty of progress. So that makes sense.
But it doesn't answer about any other parts of the world.
As for your second link, I had never heard of it before (or even of that concept before), I cribbed from reading a book on the history of technology and nothing else. I just kept noticing the same countries over and over, and started wondering why.
It would be nice if the HN feed included the short description -- I find that titles are often too brief to evaluate whether or not it's worth clicking through. Additionally, a comment count would be welcomed.
Including a rating, or including a dynamic feed for a particular rating would be icing on the cake.
fwiw, i'm a happy google reader user -- 158 subscriptions. The only downside is that it's my go-to procrastination website. I read just about all RSS content, and click through about 10-20% of the time depending on the feed. If I find that I clear the unread on a feed more than once or twice, I'll usually unsubscribe (because obviously I don't have the time to keep up with it). Sometimes I use feeds as a glorified bookmark.
"I've finally found an application for closures" is almost as daft as "I've finally found an application for variables".
If you haven't found an application for such-and-such basic programming concept yet, chances are that's because your experience is so limited that you should probably spend more time coding instead of writing ejaculatory blog posts.
(not directed at the parent directly, more at the article, which wasted a minute of my precious life)
my current company still finds basecamp a valuable tool, but that's because we're not large enough to have someone doing fulltime project management. Of course, we don't need anything beyond a glorified to-do list -- which is good, because that's pretty much basecamp's core competency.
