In a nutshell, Dance with Chance is all about knowing what you can and cannot predict and, therefore, what you can and cannot control. Think about it. Every day human beings make decisions. Some are important: should you invest your life savings in the stock market? Others are trivial: should you take an umbrella today? [...]
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Personally I’m a little skeptical about a Healthcare X Prize that is sponsored by Wellpoint, (does it not follow that a giant for-profit healthcare provider would primarily be motivated to discover ways to become more profitable?) but after watching the Peter Diamandis “Why design a Healthcare X PRIZE?” video I’m at least convinced that the [...]
I’ve been through the death of two close relatives through the Canadian medical system. In both cases the illnesses were complicated. In both cases my relatives were treated expertly, without concern for expense–or profit– but with dignity and the loving care that befits all of us. All this talk currently about reforming the U.S. Health [...]
From EconTalk.org (Includes full transcript). Direct link to mp3 interview Nassim Taleb talks about the financial crisis, how we misunderstand rare events, the fragility of the banking system, the moral hazard of government bailouts, the unprecedented nature of really, really bad events, the contribution of human psychology to misinterpreting probability and the dangers of hubris. [...]
Alicia Morgan is a musician friend with whom I’ve occasionally had the pleasure of working over the last decade or two. Her blog turned into a book, The Price of Right: How the Conservative Agenda Has Failed America (and Always Will). I’ve just read it and highly recommend it-that is-if you’re in good health and [...]
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Try it as a thought experiment. What if an extract of Marijuana/Hemp DID cure cancer? Or some cancer. Or even 1% of skin cancers. Wouldn’t you want to try it on yours? Especially if it did no harm? Especially if you’d exhausted whatever treatments your Doctor had advised? Well, here’s a little science: Marijuana Cuts [...]
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
According to Saul’s calculations, in order to reach a goal of 450 ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide in time to limit a global rise in temperature to 2 degrees C., we’ll have to reduce the amount of burned fossil fuels to 3 terawatts (of power). That means we’ll need to replace 11.5 terawatts with new [...]
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Sunday, December 14, 2008
A thread over at the neXtPrize blog got me thinking about Early Warning systems–how mobile technologies like SMS can allow Twitter-like real-time monitoring of data for the purpose of discovering emerging disasters. Pragzz pointed me to a couple of non-profs that are already supporting this. Ushahadi (Swahili for ‘testimony’) is an Open Source platform that [...]
Monday, November 17, 2008
Dean Kamen, inventor and entrepreneur, has pieced together a hybrid that uses electric battery power for the drive train, and a Stirling engine for heat and defogging. In a pinch, the Stirling engine can also be used to recharge the battery. Read the whole story at UnionLeader.com (See Also: Dean Kamen’s Deka Revolt Electric Car [...]
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
In 1999 I compiled a ‘best of’ collection of mostly political audio clips from my KPFK collection. I was reminded of this one from Louis Farrakhan when Obama won the Presidency last night. louis-farrakhan-black-president.mp3 .
Saturday, September 20, 2008
It’s great to see people taking the issues and statements the candidates have made seriously. Andrew Allemann of DomainNameWire.com took the time to track down the Obama and McCain policy statements and put together some hard questions for each of them. From DifficultDebate.com The 2008 election for President of the United States has nothing to [...]
Saturday, September 20, 2008
From WorldChanging.com this article was written by Jeremy Faludi in June 2007. We’re republishing it here as part of our month-long editorial retrospective. Google Transit was already the best thing that ever happened to online public transit trip planning, and now it’s grown to a whole new level. Even better, it’s starting to be incorporated [...]
Saturday, September 20, 2008
From WorldChanging.com This article was written by Micki Krimmel in June 2007. We’re republishing it here as part of our month-long editorial retrospective. I first learned about MAPLight.org at the recent NetSquared Conference. As I wrote last week, the conference attendees chose MAPLight as the winner of the first prize NetSquared Innovation Award. In a [...]
This from Berkman Center For Internet & Society New Media analyst, Hal Roberts. Fascinating blog post on using Google’s new Insights For Search tool to extract, well… insights. Digital Cameras v. Nigeria One of my guiding theories of the modern media / advertising landscape is that the extensive real time surveillance of consumers by online [...]