Optimizing humans for machine-like performance

Book Excerpt: The Numerati by Stephen Baker Takriti confesses that he’s nervous. His assignment is to translate the complexity of highly intelligent knowledge workers into the same types of equations and algorithms that are used to fine-tune shipping or predict the life span and production of a mainframe computer. With time, he and his team [...]

Complete monitoring to be proposed in the UK

AC Grayling: Safe in our cages | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk This Orwellian nightmare, additionally, is proposed for a world in which leading soi-disant liberal democracies run, and/or permit rendition flights to, Guantanamo Bay. How many steps separate an innocent British citizen from some misinterpretation or interference or error in the collected and ‘made [...]

Phonetics and the English language

Alphabetic principle – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I take it you already know,Of tough and bough and cough and dough.Others may stumble, but not you,On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,To learn of less familiar traps.Beware of heard, a dreadful word,That looks like beard and sounds like bird.And dead – [...]

Who will make a killing this recession?

Knowyourmoney – Who will make a killing this recession? The chatter of recessions and credit crunches is ubiquitous. It’s coming from every corner of the media, from the boardroom meetings at work, from the bloke at the bar down your local, even the teenage girl at the bus stop is shouting into her mobile about [...]

Large hadron collider rap

A black hole may take us down but we humans will go down laughing…

Italian mayor bans gatherings of three or more people

Italian mayor bans gatherings of three or more people as soldiers hit streets – Telegraph He has also banned the consumption of alcohol at the city’s station after 6pm and closed a immigrant cultural centre. Opposition councillor Sara Paladini said: “There is no emergency situation in Novara – there is no need for such a [...]

Rich-poor widening gap

Polly Toynbee and David Walker: an extract from their new book on the widening gap between rich and poor | Money | The Guardian From the marbled 20th floor of a glass tower in Canary Wharf the view of the river is breathtaking. It snakes down to the Thames barrier, glinting in the sunset. Close [...]

10 Things to Understand About the Housing Bubble and the Debt Crisis

RGE – 10 Things to Understand About the Housing Bubble and the Debt Crisis At first, the HELOC was designed to solve the problem created by the elimination of interest deductions on consumer loans. Simply grant a lender a second mortgage on your home and suddenly, as long as you had less than $1 million [...]