Friday, August 7, 2009
In a perfect society, so specialized would be all jobs be, that no one would any longer understand what anyone else was doing
Alain De Botton, describing the ultimate outcome of '... the principles of efficiency laid down at the turn of the twentieth century by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who theorized that a society would grow wealthy to the extent that its members forfeited general knowledge in favor of of fostering individual ability in narrowly constricted fields,' in his latest book
Are we there yet?
(Via bookofjoe.)
How hot dogs are made
Warning: DO NOT watch this video if you plan to have hot dogs for dinner tonight.
I saw it the other day on the Discovery Channel in the original English — trust me, the Czech version above goes down much easier.
As if.
You may recall Otto von Bismarcks insightful remark, to wit: 'Laws are like sausages. Its better not to see them being made.'
He got that right.
(Via bookofjoe.)
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
If There Be Thorns
Attention, Grey Gardens fans (aka thinking, rational beings)—Walter Newkirk, author of memoraBEALEia: A Private Scrapbook About Little Edie Beale of Grey Gardens, is publishing a follow-up this fall called Letters of Little Edie Beale: Grey Gardens and Beyond. (WIll be available at Amazon and BarnesAndNoble.com.)
In the book, readers will be treated to nearly 100 cards and letters written by Beale to Newkirk, who had first interviewed her and her mother as a college journalist upon the release of the original film.
In the correspondence, Beale is said to discuss 'politics, 9/11, her cousins Jackie and Lee and more.'
Expect lots of jaw-dropping comments from the late Little Edie on the Maysles Brothers, whose documentary shot them to fame.
(Via boy culture.)
Monday, August 3, 2009
Neighbor Lawn Chair Wars ... An Email "Hate" Story
Neighbor Lawn Chair Wars ... An Email "Hate" Story: "One of the craziest email chains--and neighbor wars--over 
The Ultimate Nightmare? The Snuggie, Now For Dogs
The Ultimate Nightmare? The Snuggie, Now For Dogs: "
By Amy Vernon
At first, I thought it must be a joke. Then, I laughed. 
Frank Leahy
Frank Leahy: "'Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.'"
(Via Quotes of the Day.)
Throw Me To The Rats
Can Haz Computer Problems, Assorted Maladies, Sleepwalking Dogs [Technical Issues]
Can Haz Computer Problems, Assorted Maladies, Sleepwalking Dogs [Technical Issues]: "
Well, as you've probably seen today, this website and a bunch of other websites like it weren't working because we were too busy stealing...coffee, from Variety! Great place. Anyway, here's a video of a sleepwalking dog.
Do yourself a favor and watch it with the sound off. Apparently it's really old but hey, at least YouTube is working! I enjoyed it a great deal and laughed very, very hard because this is pretty much exactly how I feel today.
(Via Gawker.)
Google Is Making Us Smarter - jamais cascio - io9
Google Is Making Us Smarter - jamais cascio - io9: "
Though it is fashionable to say the internet is making us stupid, futurist Jamais Cascio just published an article in The Atlantic refuting that idea. In fact, he thinks computer networks and biotech are an evolutionary response to global crisis.
Cascio's basic premise is this:
Here's an optimistic scenario for you: if the next several decades are as bad as some of us fear they could be, we can respond, and survive, the way our species has done time and again: by getting smarter. But this time, we don't have to rely solely on natural evolutionary processes to boost our intelligence. We can do it ourselves.
Most people don't realize that this process is already under way. In fact, it's happening all around us, across the full spectrum of how we understand intelligence. It's visible in the hive mind of the Internet, in the powerful tools for simulation and visualization that are jump-starting new scientific disciplines, and in the development of drugs that some people (myself included) have discovered let them study harder, focus better, and stay awake longer with full clarity . . . And advances over the next few decades, driven by breakthroughs in genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, will make today's technologies seem primitive . . .
Scientists refer to the 12,000 years or so since the last ice age as the Holocene epoch. It encompasses the rise of human civilization and our co-evolution with tools and technologies that allow us to grapple with our physical environment. But if intelligence augmentation has the kind of impact I expect, we may soon have to start thinking of ourselves as living in an entirely new era. The focus of our technological evolution would be less on how we manage and adapt to our physical world, and more on how we manage and adapt to the immense amount of knowledge we've created. We can call it the Nöocene epoch, from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's concept of the Nöosphere, a collective consciousness created by the deepening interaction of human minds.
Thanko USB dental device will help prove you still need a dentist
Thanko USB dental device will help prove you still need a dentist: "
Oh, the joys of self-diagnosis. Thankos unleashed a USB dental 'microscope' to let you check out the inside of your own mouth in great detail -- because youre so much more knowledgeable than a real dentist, right? This puppys got six LEDs plus a small CMOS camera so you can shoot JPEGs / BMPs or 1,280×1024 resolution vids of your champers then check them out on your home computer. Of course, the sample shots (which are disgusting and after the break) inexplicably show a closeup of someones scalp, demonstrating that this USB badboy has a variety of uses, all of them pretty gross. Is there something wrong with us if we just dont want to see our bodies in that much detail? Its only available on Thankos Japanese site for the time being, and costs in the neighborhood of $80, but we have a feeling that itll show up in the States anyday now... as soon as Oprah gets wind of it.
[Via Gizmodo]
Continue reading Thanko USB dental device will help prove you still need a dentist
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Thanko USB dental device will help prove you still need a dentist originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 02 Aug 2009 19:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments(Via Engadget.)
QC Quotations
QC Quotations: "
The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision.
—Lynn Lavner, Jewish commedienne
(Via QueerClick.)
Sunday, August 2, 2009
A coin flip isnt random
Who knew?
Most people believe that a tossed coin has a 50-50 chance of landing heads or tails.
Not true.
Long story short: Its 51-49, with the more likely outcome being the side facing up when it was flipped.
Heres David E. Adlers story from todays Washington Post with the science behind this surprising finding.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••
A Reliable Randomizer, Turned on Its Head
In the Physics of a Coin Toss, It Turns Out, Theres No Such Thing as 50-50 Odds
Coin tosses are a classic metaphor in economics for randomness. For
instance, in his book about market efficiency, 'A Random Walk Down Wall
Street,' economist Burton Malkiel compares the price movements of the
stock market to the random outcome of a flipped coin: '[S]ometimes one
gets positive price changes for several days in a row; but sometimes
when you are flipping a coin you also get a long string of heads in a
row.' According to Malkiel, mathematicians term for a sequence of
numbers produced by a random process is a random walk. To him, this is
exactly what stock-price movements look like, hence the title of his
book.
Similarly, Nassim Taleb, in 'Fooled by Randomness,' points out that
the seemingly amazing success of money managers at beating the market
is often best explained by pure chance. People misperceive patterns in
what are, in fact, purely random sequences, akin to the outcomes of a
coin flip. And as everyone knows, coin flips produce 'heads and tails
with 50 percent odds each.'
Lately, the idea of randomness in stock prices has come under
attack; prices for individual stocks (but not the market on the whole)
often show small momentum effects: stocks that go up tend to keep going
up, and stocks that are going down tend to keep going down. But the
metaphor of a coin flip for randomness remains unquestioned. We use
coin tosses to settle disputes and decide outcomes because we believe
they are unbiased, with 50-50 odds.
Yet recent research into coin flips has discovered that the laws of
mechanics determine the outcome of coin tosses: The startling finding
is that they arent random. Instead, for natural flips, the chance of a
coin landing in the same position as it started is about 51 percent.
Heads facing up predicts heads; tails predicts tails.
Three academics -- Persi Diaconis, Susan Holmes and Richard
Montgomery -- made an interesting discovery through vigorous analysis
at Stanford. As they note in their published results, 'Dynamical Bias
in the Coin Toss,' the laws of mechanics govern coin flips, meaning
that 'their flight is determined by their initial conditions.'
The physics and math behind this discovery are complex. To
understand more about flips, the academics built a coin-tossing machine
and filmed it using a slow-motion camera. This confirmed that the
outcome of flips is not random. The machine could produce heads every
time.
When people flipped the coin, results were less predictable, but
there was still a slight physical bias favoring the coins initial
position 51 percent of the time. The reason real flips are less certain
isnt just that the force can vary, its that coins flipped manually
tend to rotate around several axes at once. They tumble over and over,
but they also spin around and around, like pizza dough being twirled.
The more a coin spins, the more unpredictable the outcome.
I spoke to Holmes, one of the Stanford researchers, about this. She
told me that when most people hear about this weird finding, they think
it has something to do with the density of the coin, but she was able
to disprove that by constructing a coin made out of balsa wood on one
face and metal on the other. It made no difference come flip time. The
dynamics of the coin flip, and its outcome, are determined not by the
lack of balance in the coin but instead by the physics of spinning and
flipping.
I asked Holmes whether coin flips used for, say, football, should be
eliminated because they are biased. The answer is no, as long as the
person calling the flip doesnt know how the coin is going to start
out. In football, the tosser is never the caller; the tosser is
supposed to be a referee. But if you are both the caller and the
tosser, well, that changes things. Knowing about the bias in coin
tosses give you an edge, albeit a tiny one.
Certain people, however, can make a toss come out heads (or tails)
100 percent of the time. Diaconis, Holmess co-author and husband, is
one of the people with this rare talent. Before becoming a
mathematician, he was a professional magician. So how exactly is
Diaconis able to make a coin toss come out a certain way? Holmes wont
tell me: 'It comes from his previous career -- its magic.'
••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Adler is the author of 'Snap Judgment.'
More?
OK.
You can read the first chapter here.
Free, the way we like it.
(Via bookofjoe.)
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Egg Baby, iwanttobeababy
Microchipped dog finds way home -- after nine years
Microchipped dog finds way home -- after nine years: "SYDNEY (Reuters) - A flea-bitten dog rescued from a squalid backyard is to be reunited with her owners 1,000 miles away -- nine years after she disappeared.
(Via Reuters: Oddly Enough.)
Snakes on a Family
AeroWalkers — Limousines for the feet
AeroWalkers — Limousines for the feet: "
From the website:
•••••••••••••••••••••
AeroWalkers®
Inflatable AeroWalkers provide gentle, effective exercise and
therapy for feet, ankles and calves.
Just attach with the adjustable Velcro straps and rock feet back and forth while sitting.
Aids
healing of strains, sprains and pain; can help reduce risk of deep vein
thrombosis.
One size fits most.
•••••••••••••••••••••
'... while sitting.'
And the picture above appears to be of a person sitting.
Yet theyre called AeroWalkers.
What gives?
(Via bookofjoe.)
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