Denialists' Deck of Cards: An Illustrated Taxonomy of Rhetoric Used to Frustrate Consumer Protection Efforts by Chris Hoofnagle. All Work and No Pay: The Great Speedup. When Do Humans <i>Want</i> to Share the Wealth? Jonathan Haidt reports an interesting experimental result: Two three-year-olds walk up to a marble-delivery machine that has two bins.
Each stands in front of one bin. Politics and the English Language - Essay by George Orwell. Politics and the English Language by George OrwellHorizon, April 1946.
Recorded as completed in Orwell’s Payments Book on 11 December 1945. Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent, and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. Is Crime a Virus or a Beast? One Word Can Make a Big Difference.
Visualizing Bayes’ theorem. How to Hang Yourself with Statistics. Posted by John F.
McGowan, Ph.D. in Probability Theory and Statistics on September 2nd, 2012 | 11 responses A practical understanding of probability and statistics at an advanced, at least college, level is increasingly important in the modern world. For example, many expensive and potentially hazardous drugs including chemotherapy for cancer and anti-cholesterol drugs such as Lipitor are approved for use and justified to patients based on complex statistical studies. Children are being increasingly medicated for a range of alleged psychiatric disorders such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD or ADD), bipolar disorder, and others.
BAYES' THEOREM IN THE COURT OF APPEAL. Explaining Evidence Logically.
Coked up bankers of Hong Kong. Tessa Thorniley reports from Hong Kong for Danwei on the city's drugged up financial industry.
On a Friday night in Lan Kwai Fong, a 29-year-old stockbroker knocks back a shot of sake and tries to work out how many people in his bank take drugs. It is a question that has been rippling through the Hong Kong banking community since the death, in June, of Neil McCormick, the 36-year-old head of Asian equity derivatives at UBS on the island. Screw Optimism and screw “sanity” I recently stumbled across a book on the link between leadership and what we call madness.
From the Amazon review: Take realism, for instance: study after study has shown that those suffering depression are better than “normal” people at assessing current threats and predicting future outcomes. Looking at Lincoln and Churchill among others, Ghaemi shows how depressive realism helped these men tackle challenges both personal and national. Or consider creativity, a quality psychiatrists have studied extensively in relation to bipolar disorder. Developments in Facial Recognition. Eventually, it will work.
How to camouflage yourself from facial recognition technology. The day when you’ll be able to hold up your phone and identify a stranger through a viewfinder is getting closer.
Google’s Goggles, a mobile app for visual search, has a facial recognition version unreleased to the public, while Israeli startup Face.com’s technology can tag people’s faces in Facebook photos. Facebook even released a basic version of face detection last night, although it doesn’t have recognition. The Society of the Spectacle. The Global Financial Crisis and the Shift to Shadow Banking. Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world Stock trades to exploit speed of light, says researcher. 23 March 2011Last updated at 03:20 By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas Optimal high-frequency trading locations (blue) exist for pairs of major financial exchanges (red) Financial institutions may soon change what they trade or where they do their trading because of the speed of light.
THE EXILED. Listen, Little Man! The Biggest Company You've Never Heard Of. The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See (part 1 of 8) Galactic-Scale Energy. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, we have seen an impressive and sustained growth in the scale of energy consumption by human civilization.
Plotting data from the Energy Information Agency on U.S. energy use since 1650 ( 1635-1945 , 1949-2009 , including wood, biomass, fossil fuels, hydro, nuclear, etc.) shows a remarkably steady growth trajectory, characterized by an annual growth rate of 2.9% (see figure). It is important to understand the future trajectory of energy growth because governments and organizations everywhere make assumptions based on the expectation that the growth trend will continue as it has for centuries—and a look at the figure suggests that this is a perfectly reasonable assumption. (See this update for nuances.) Total U.S. Energy consumption in all forms since 1650. Gini coefficient. Gini coefficient of national income distribution around the world.
Growth Has an Expiration Date. Bio. Jevons paradox. The Jevons paradox has been used to argue that energy conservation may be futile, as increased efficiency may increase fuel use. Theyrule.