the rational post » science & tech

calculated terror

The Editor — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 04:27:01 +0000

In the 400+ years since the birth of modern statistics, data has been collected on everything from life expectancy and planetary motion to little league batting averages and micro-loans in rural Bangladesh. As technology catches up with the world’s desire to better predict the future and understand the past, applications have expanded to include dynamic models of the global economy and more recently the probability of a terrorist attack. The danger with relying on this methodology, of course, is that the same statistical biases that contributed to the recent financial chaos may cause more harm in the real world than they ever did on…

great leap forward

The Editor — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:48:47 +0000

The next wave of web-ready tablets represents a great leap forward in mass communication and may rescue the industry from commercial obsolescence. But any real progress will take genuine collaboration between content providers, aggregators, advertisers, and hardware designers — along with the courage to cannibalize an antiquated 19th century business model and dive head-first into the 21st century…

How Google Can Help Newspapers
Eric Schmidt in the Wall Street Journal

It’s the year 2015. The compact device in my hand delivers me the world, one news story at a time. I flip through my favorite papers and magazines, the images as crisp…

synchronicity

The Editor — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:58:15 +0000

This TED talk by mathematician Steven Strogatz “shows how flocks of creatures (like birds, fireflies and fish) manage to synchronize and act as a unit when no one’s giving orders”. The parallels to market behavior and financial panic are implicit but obvious. We often perceive of our decisions during a crisis as unique and self-preservational, but the tendency toward spontaneous order is a powerful impulse. Coordinated reaction to natural threats, be it a hungry seal or predator hawk, can often increase a group’s biological fitness and probility of survival, while a coordinated reaction to financial crises can actually amplify individual risk – like Strogatz’s example of London’s Millenium Bridge – and only make matters worse…

the darker side of ethanol

The Editor — Mon, 28 May 2007 20:21:48 +0000

As politicians and investors cast their enthusiastic support behind the legislation and technology necessary to christen the “New Age of Ethanol”, consensus among the world’s leading scientists is still critical at best. From hungry Mexicans to enraged environmentalists to ruffled foreign dignitaries, the real cost of ethanol has become increasingly obvious to all but the most cynical energy hucksters. Fueled by agricultural protectionism and the pressing drive for “energy independence”, the Ethanol Lobby is now humming on all cylinders, and if Runge and Senauer are right, that might spell disaster far beyond the pumps…

How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor
By C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer in

number portability

The Editor — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 20:07:09 +0000

One of the last developed countries to modernize competition in the red hot mobile sector, Canadian regulators have finally bent to the will of their constituents and — as of March 14, 2007 — will force incumbent cellphone operators to allow customers to switch service providers without losing their existing number. While that might not seem like such a dramatic shift in domestic policy on its surface, the move has been years in the making, though surprisingly, the changes have come with surprisingly little industry fanfare.

Within the more vocal activist community, advocates of Wireless Number Porting (or WNP) insist that such libertarian legislation benefits

brain drain

The Editor — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 22:33:38 +0000

Economics is converging with everything these days, from the environment to the grocery store to the bedroom. This time, the playing field is none other than the human brain itself, and the results are less surprising than they are empirically fascinating. Contrary to conventional thinking, it turns out that people won’t always act in the own best interests, and that’s as true for investing and gambling as it is for adultery and employment…

MIND GAMES
by JOHN CASSIDY in the New Yorker

What neuroeconomics…

need for speed

The Editor — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 01:25:27 +0000

Reading is believing…

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt!

when a fact is not a fact

The Editor — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 21:30:00 +0000

How can you compare the human body to an athletic shoe? Or worse still, the internal combustion engine? Those libertarians over at the Cato Institute have been sniffing some serious salt. With cardiac surgery approaching $100,000 a pop in the hands of the private sector, I’d be willing to bet that a 25-week wait in publicly-funded Sweden sounds pretty damn good to a Mexican waiter in Queens, or a Persian schoolteacher in East L.A. Which raises the obvious question: who’s health in really under the public’s beneficent care? Is it the endlessly wealthy or the helplessly weak? The answer, it turns out, is neither — unless you’re a surgeon or a pharma rep…

The Mythology of Health…

the mating game

The Editor — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 04:30:00 +0000

“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things…”
- Lewis Carroll, The Walrus and The Carpenter, 1872

That Charles L. Dodgson was considered by many to be a serial pedophile had little to do with his celebrated creative legacy. After all, he was a distinguished Anglican clergyman, a pioneer in early photography, a gifted mathematician, and above all, a writer of great fictional prose. As he wandered through the English language over a hundred years ago, his literary and personal idiosyncrasies led him from subject to subject and metaphor to metaphor, spawning works that have continued to delight his readers ever since.

But perhaps his most enduring legacy comes from the lines of a little…

re: nova | the elegant universe

The Editor — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 00:15:00 +0000

From: J Dyck
Sent: September 22, 2005 5:50 PM
To: d
Subject: RE: NOVA | The Elegant Universe | Watch the Program | PBS

i’m moving on up my brother! went to “scooter school” on saturday…which was largely about watching car crashes (did you know the west german government used LIVE people to test car crashes in the 70s…nothing like watching a blond haired, blue eyed german kid going 30mph into a tree…”dis exhibit iz closed!”). i have a road test scheduled for next month! if all goes well, methinks i may take a week off and scooter around the east coast to check out some MBA schools (don’t say it…i already feel dirty enough). speaking of…

state of the art

The Editor — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 23:03:00 +0000

Math is truly a beautiful thing. It’s a simple and elegant truth that isn’t distracted by words or feelings, and at the same time, explains virtually everything we see and hear and feel. In some cases, it’s simplicity is downright brilliant, and in other cases, it’s brilliance is surprisingly simple. That’s not to suggest that math doesn’t have its inherent complexities — as well as some extremely unusual by-products — but deep at the heart of it all, there’s always some important underlying truth.

In the case of fractal geometry, that truth is inherently beautiful, both in its underlying mathematical functionality, and in its tremendous visual appeal. Every spiraling swirl you…

google universe

The Editor — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 19:08:00 +0000

This absolutely blows my mind. With one simple download and a click of the mouse, I can literally zoom in from space on Moscow’s infamous Red Square, hovering less than 2,500 feet above St. Basil’s Cathedral and the ominous gaze of the Kremlin, as my computer pieces together terabytes of high-resolution satellite imagery from the urban landscape below.Then, with another subtle click, I’m flying back into space, and this time descend on one of the many sprawling banks of the raging Tigris River, closing in with crystal clarity on the now-empty walls of the National Museum of Iraq. Once home to some of the world’s greatest antiquities, the building is now just a depressing reminder of the…

kissed

The Editor — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 02:06:00 +0000

kissed my computer screen just now.

turns out i stumbled across (yet another) truly remarkable application of the internet this afternoon.

this time, it all started with a pair of musicians; and a pair of their greatest melodies. when combined, this fantastic foursome managed to distract me (quite easily) from what i was just about to do.

first, out of the cavernous depths of the world wide web, an untouchable brasilian sensation suddenly and irrepressibly emerged. inspired both by regional jazz legends as well as the all-time american greats, flora purim’s early and sensational rise to stardom began while singing over the inexhaustible ivories of keyboarding legend chick corea, and…

lord of the flies

The Editor — Sat, 25 Jun 2005 22:56:00 +0000

on tonight’s program, we marvel at the incredible life of the fishfly. that’s right…the fishfly.

fish-fly
A noun
1 fish_fly, fish-fly
similar to but smaller than the dobsonfly; larvae are used as
fishing bait

Category Tree:
entity
╚object; physical_object
╚living_thing; animate_thing
╚organism; being
╚animal; animate_being; beast; brute; creature; fauna
╚invertebrate
╚arthropod
╚insect
╚neuropteron; neuropteran; neuropterous_insect
╚fish_fly

while the internet has yet to embrace this particular woodland creature, if you’ll indulge me for the next few minutes, it would be my absolute pleasure to introduce you all to the reigning king of insect love.…

the great divide

The Editor — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 07:38:00 +0000

Imagine learning for the very first time — contrary to public opinion and centuries of contemporary science — that the world was actually round. Imagine being that first group of scientists (regents and spiritual leaders) or politicians (again, regents and spiritual leaders) or shell-shocked shepherds who grazed for thousands of years through the countrysides of the known world, convinced that if they wandered just a little too far, they might, in fact, fall right off the edge of the planet.

Life in those days was distinctly two-dimensional. There were the heavens, and there was the earth, and never the twain should meet. Stars were but holes in a giant celestial blanket while various pagan deities pulled the moon and the sun…