View From a Height

Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• Patent Trolls Under Siege
  Patent reform is getting a boost in Congress and, possibly, in the Supreme Court.  The House voted 325-91 last week for serious reform, beating back a number of Democrat amendments that would have gutted reform. Passage of the bill is a big step for patent reformers, which would have been hard to imagine even one […]
• Han Solo’s Blaster For Sale
  Via Design Taxi: Those familiar with the Star Wars franchise will remember the scene where Darth Vader uses the Force to get a hold of Han Solo’s DL-44 Blaster. Now, this iconic pistol will be up for sale on 21 December 2013 via Invaluable.com. “I know you’ve got a certificate and a great story, but I need to be […]
• Raul Candy Store
   
• Ah, Reform, Peking Style
  Not exactly encouraging: When the screening in Jiangsu ended, state media reported, local party chief Luo Zhijun exhorted the assembled officials to “correctly understand the lessons of history.” The film’s message: The Soviet Union didn’t fall apart because of the communist system itself, but because of individuals who betrayed it, especially Mikhail Gorbachev. The film […]
• Science of Snowflakes
  A profile of Kenneth Libbrecht, the man who wrote the book on snowflakes (literally, as BoingBoing points out). Over the course of his research, Libbrecht’s work has grown to encompass art and science. He’s produced both scientificpapers and hundreds of beautiful photos of natural snowflakes (which he’s published in severaldifferentbooks and had featured on U.S. postage stamps), and also devised ingenious ways […]
• Sean Trende Offers Hope for Colorado Republicans
  Even with a contentious Senate primary getting underway for the Republican nomination, some are writing off the seat and conceding it to Udall.  Sean Trende, not so much: If Republicans had a stronger field, this race would probably move up a tier. But there’s no doubt that Udall is benefiting from a field of relatively […]
• 50 Years, 50 Toys
  What people who can’t afford authentic Star Wars memorabilia have been buying for the last half-century:
• Saving = Happiness?
  Yes, you’d expect a bank to say that.  But isn’t savings actually earned success for most people?  I know it makes me feel happier.
• Climate Deniers
  That would be James Hansen, last seen “adjusting” historical climate data to show the “correct” increases.  He’s still at it, plugging away, claiming that while we’ll have to suffer through 1-degree changes, we have a moral obligation to cripple our economies to prevent 2-degree warming. The new study is a departure from the typical climate science […]
• Detroit, Illinois, Colorado
  Yes, pensions.  No, we are not Detroit or Illinois, and won’t be for some time, even if we left things as they are.  Still, our problems are far from solved, and rather than writing foolish columns about what Detroit could have learned from PERA, we’d do better to learn from Detroit and Illinois. Eileen Norcross from […]

Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• Libertarians For (and Against) Safety Nets
  In particular, some form of the Basic Income.  Matt Zwolinski of Bleeding Heart Libertarians makes the case for, including a couple of different forms it might take, and quotes from both Friedman and Hayek in support of the idea: Both Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek advocated for something like a Basic Income Guarantee as a proper […]
• A Detailed Explanation of the Bitcoin Protocol
  We posted a video last week about the basic principles of Bitcoin.  Here’s a detailed explanation for the layman of how Bitcoin’s cryptography works. Understanding the details of the Bitcoin protocol opens up otherwise inaccessible vistas. In particular, it’s the basis for understanding Bitcoin’s built-in scripting language, which makes it possible to use Bitcoin to […]
• FSA Commander Flees Syria
  According to the Wall Street Journal: Islamist fighters ran the top Western- backed rebel commander in Syria out of his headquarters, and he fled the country, U.S. officials said Wednesday. The Islamists also took over key warehouses holding U.S. military gear for moderate fighters in northern Syria over the weekend. The takeover and flight of […]
• The Fourth Branch
  Jonathan Turley, the liberal law professor who spoke of Obama’s being “the threat the Constitution was designed to prevent,” wrote about the rise of the bureaucratic state earlier this year: This  growth since the founding has led to increasing power and independence for agencies. The shift of authority has been staggering. The fourth branch now […]
• Access to a Waiting List
  That’s what happens when 70% of doctors don’t join your exchange: An estimated seven out of every 10 physicians in deep-blue California are rebelling against the state’s Obamacare health insurance exchange and won’t participate, the head of the state’s largest doctors’ association said. … “Enrollment doesn’t mean access, because there aren’t enough doctors to take […]
• Floating House
  Also, some instruction on camera angles and perspective.  Shot from a distance, I think it might look bleaker and less pleasant.
• Should Queens Tear Down the 1964 World’s Fair Pavilion?
  The latest Preservation Battle at Gizmodo: Last month, officials in New York determined that it would cost $53 million to fix and restorethe New York State Pavilion, the series of hulking space-age structures built in Flushing Meadows Corona Park during the 1964-65 World’s Fair. Should these deteriorating ruins be preserved? That seems like a lot of […]
• An Affordable Metal 3D Printer?
  So far, they’ve been plastic.  The results are pretty robust, but metal is a whole ‘nother ballgame: Now, scientists have built an open-source 3D metal printer that costs under $1,200, sharing their design and software with the maker community. “We have open-sourced the plans,” in the hopes of accelerating the technology by allowing others to build upon […]
• An Internet Radio From 1969
  Who knew Al Gore was so into transistors?
• Sub-Launched Drones a Reality
  The US Navy has launched a drone from a submarine platform.  No word on whether they’re naming it after the birds that Noah sent out.
• Earth’s Gravity Scarred By Earthquake
  The ESA GOCE satellite maps the earth’s local gravity, and shows that the March 2011 Japan earthquake left detectable changes in the earth’s gravity there.
• Four Social Security Reforms
  Courtesy of the e21 Project at the Manhattan Institute.  Basically they amount to making marginal systemic changes now in order to avoid crashing the system just in time for me to retire.   They’re good ideas. Much of Paul Ryan’s budget strategy centered around getting discretionary spending off the table so we could focus on […]
• Modern SF Loft
  Brick-and-Wood at its best: Two problems: first, it’s in San Francisco, which means it’s completely unaffordable unless you own Oracle;  second, as with so much modern interior design, it’s beautiful because it’s empty.  Nobody actually lives this way.
• Notes on Israeli Income Inequality
  From Tyler Cowen: The bottom decile actually has done quite well in terms of rates of change, but the 6th through 8th deciles have done especially poorly (same link).  That source serves up the intriguing hypothesis that the disappearance of middle class-earning middlemen in the Israeli economy is due to the disintermediation of the internet, […]
• Maybe They Just Don’t Like Wal Mart Because It’s a Meritocracy
  A new Wal Mart just opened in Washington, near the old downtown shopping district.  They get 38 applications for every position, and Mark Perry notes that it’s more from hope than desperation. Too bad, though, that they didn’t take Garfinckel’s old location.  Would have driven people like Jonathan Singer up the wall.
• How to Bend Markets
  Innovation, of course: The WSJ has an article today about innovation blowing up the commodity industry…. The price of nickel, a metal used to make stainless steel for everything from sauce pans to guitar strings, spiked past $50,000 a metric ton in 2007 from less than $10,000 just a few years earlier…. The innovation has sent nickel […]
• Jewish Democrat Foundation Makes It Official
  From The Jewish Week‘s Gary Rosenblatt: Several weeks ago the Nathan Cummings Foundation, a stalwart in the Jewish philanthropic community for 25 years, announced that its new strategic plan calls for focusing on two specific areas: inequality and climate change…. In the past, about 20 percent of those funds were designated to Jewish groups and […]
• First Books, Now Newspapers
  Millennials Still Want Their Newspapers.  I think the headline overstates this considerably.  Of those from 18-34, 56% are reading their local paper online or in print, and 60% of that self-selected group consider it trustworthy.  Those are ridiculously low numbers compared even to 20 years ago, never mind 40 or 60.  It’s taken a long […]
• What Industries Are Driving Denver’s Bounce Back?
  Tech, oil, and…lawyers? I don’t know if 33rd in the country is “impressive, though.”
• National Geographic Maps Meet Google
  National Geographic Google-Maps 500 of its own maps.  You can search on a location, and then zoom in and out.  The link has a couple of maps to explore, but it’s unclear how you get to the other maps they’re digitizing.  
• Harold Edgerton, Call Your Office
  From Hi Fructose: Alan Sailer, a microwave engineer and photographer, creates remarkable photographs that capture, with incredible precision, the explosion of several objects as he shoots them with a pellet rifle.
• The 3D Pen
  An Engadget review is lukewarm: Drawing on a flat surface is simple enough, however, and tracing seems a pretty good place to get started with the new tool. Lay a thin piece of paper over a well-defined image and go to town…. The trouble starts when you attempt to draw in the air. You’re essentially […]

Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• Could dark matter be hiding in plain sight in existing experiments?
  Particles called axions could be creating noise in superconducting devices: Axions were not originally proposed as a solution to the dark matter problem. Instead, they are a possible way to solve a pressing problem in quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of the strong force, which governs quarks and their interactions. Most interactions in physics work […]
• Obama Joins the Patriarchy
  The Obama White House continues to pay its women staffers less than its men:
• Last Friday’s Fonts
  How the 70s saw the future?  This site has Free Font Friday, usually worth taking a look at.
• How Much Is Enough?
  We are constantly being told that the US doesn’t spend enough on education.  Compared to whom, exactly?
• Obama at Saban
  Lee Smith thinks the issue is settled, that Obama has taken the military option off the table: One early clue that the administration had already discounted the military option was its opposition to imposing sanctions. The strategic purpose of sanctions was not to destroy the Iranian economy, or even just to force the regime to […]
• Israeli Startups Funding Using OurCrowd
  A different startup crowdfunding model: That’s where the hybrid model comes in, with OurCrowd, an Israeli crowdfunding platform that allows only accredited investors to invest in startups that have been curated by the OurCrowd team. This allows startups to gather lower financial commitments, but from a larger pool of investors, while still maintaining the focused […]
• The Democrats’ Civil War
  Jacob Heilbrunn in the National Interest: But the notion that discontent is a basis for governing is another matter. Just because these sentiments are passionately and genuinely held does not mean that they are practical or even beneficial economically or politically. The fact is that Third Way has performed a valuable service by calling out […]
• Vintage Skeeball Game
  I wouldn’t want one in my house, but the lines are gorgeous:
• Harry Reid’s House of Lords
  I’ve complained before about how Harry Reid’s fealty to the administration is doing lasting damage to the Senate as an independent institution.  Someone else has noticed, as well, as he’s now obstructing the NDAA: The real culprit here is Sen. Reid, who seems more intent on running interference for the administration than legislating the people’s […]
• Democrats vs. the Self-Employed
  Joel Kotkin: Why is this the case? Ironically, this may be a reaction to expansive regulatory regimes that tend to both reduce corporate employment and also encourage some individuals “to take their talents” solo into the marketplace without having to deal with, for example, labor laws and environmental regulations. … Obamacare is only one aspect […]
• 3D Imaging Reveals Details of Volcanic Flows
  Not exactly volcano-lancing, but it’s a start: To collect the data, researchers equip airplanes with hundreds of thousands of lasers that scan the terrain at a perpendicular angle to the ground. The lengths of the laser beams indicate the height of the flow, and when multiplied hundreds of thousands of times, the scans can be compiled into […]

Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• Quantum Entanglement Gives Rise to Wormholes?
  That’s the theory, anyway. But what enables particles to communicate instantaneously—and seemingly faster than the speed of light—over such vast distances? Earlier this year, physicists proposed an answer in the form of “wormholes,” or gravitational tunnels. The group showed that by creating two entangled black holes, then pulling them apart, they formed a wormhole—essentially a […]
• Play-i Crowdfunds $1.4 Million
  We mentioned these robots last week in a post about teaching kids programming.  Here’s a fuller description of how they’ll work: The app presents visual sequences of actions and simple commands on the iPad that kids can then perform — like clapping, waving their hand or shaking one of the robots — that compel the […]
• Abandoned Building Photography
  And not ruin porn from Detroit, either:
• Bike Service At Your Service
  Beeline Bikes Like Uber? He started Beeline Bikes, which is kind of like an Uber or Homejoy for bike tune-ups. They have mobile vans, outfitted with all kinds of parts (see below) and trained mechanics that can fix up many bikes over the course of a day. The nine-person startup has three initial vans and the […]
• Healthcare.gov: Unrealistic Technology Expectations
  Gee, ya think? The fiasco with the $600 million federal health insurance website wasn’t all bureaucratic. Forcing slow and disparate databases run by government and insurance companies to work together in real time—and then launching the service all at once—would have challenged even technology wunderkinds. In particular, the project was doomed by a relatively late […]
• Misshapen, F1-Inspired Electric Motorcycle Is Coming to the U.S.
  Hey, innovation looks different.  Get used to it. The concern isn’t the look, it’s the handling, along with the recharge time and range issues that are endemic to electric vehicles.  I still think the right model is battery-swaps.
• Russians Zipline a Car
  Across a River: There’s video, too. This might seem crazy, but it’s very similar to how Indian Bridge at Lee’s Ferry in Utah was built.  The nearest crossings were a long way upriver and downriver, so for a while, they were loading up cars with material and sending them back and forth over the canyon […]
• Grand Canyon Temperature Inversion
  Doesn’t happen often, even less often on a sunny day.

Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• Canadian Cabin
  In my old line of work, “Stealth” meant something else entirely.  But here at the Glimpse, we love cabins as clever, cozy getaways.  Stock them with a few dozen hundred books, and we’re all set.
• The Classical Liberal Constitution
  Richard Epstein describes his new book: More specifically, the proper scope of the police power is tied to the two reasons that lead people to join a political compact in the first place. The first reason is to control the use of force and fraud. The second is to allow state taxation and coercion to […]
• Cool Bus Stops
  Denver’s got its share of odd bus stops, especially out in Lowry, but nothing like this: There’s been a lot of talk about making bus stops more functional, including announcements, apps that show when the next bus is due, and so on.  I don’t think it’s as important to make them fun and interesting, but it […]
• Income Equality Is A Bottom-Up Problem
  A look at the household demographics of income inequality, from AEI’s Mark Perry: Most of the discussion on income inequality focuses on the relative differences over time between low-income and high-income American households, but it’s also instructive to analyze the demographic differences among income groups at a given point in time to answer the question: […]
• Why Square Designed Its New Offices To Work Like A City
  Trying to encourage spontaneous, serendipitous interactions at work. The design of the office “motivates people to move around the office and interact in casual, unscheduled ways,” he explains–just like the well-planned public spaces of a great city. Early concepts for the office were motivated by old 18th-century maps of cities. “When I think about a […]
• Another Take on Burke-Paine
  This one from Ira Stoll: Mr. Levin acknowledges that, 200 years later, America’s right-left arguments don’t always map so neatly onto the Burke-Paine diagram. I found myself recognizing the libertarian hero Milton Friedman of “Free To Choose” fame in Mr. Levin’s description of Paine’s emphasis on the individual and choice. Mr. Levin refers once to […]
• The Pope’s Half-Truth
  A more nuanced rejoinder to the Pope’s comments on capitalism. As Rev. Robert Sirico points out in a recent interview, Pope Francis is from Argentina where “free market capitalism” isn’t, in fact, all that free. The economic system in his home country is plagued by corruption and cronyism, which have greatly limited real economic freedom. Perhaps this […]
• Why Are Gas Prices Falling?
  Alexis Madrigal posted this graph-filled gem about three weeks ago, but it’s still relevant.  At least some of the answer may be increased diesel demand in Europe.  
• ASICMINER’s Threat to Bitcoin’s Model
  All your Bitcoins are belong to us: How much of an impact on the difficulty of Bitcoin mining such super miners will have is difficult to say. The Bitcoin algorithm adjusts the difficulty every 2016 blocks to keep the rate at about 10 minutes to solve a block. It the hardware improves then the difficulty […]
• Zappos Turns Baggage Claim Carousel Into Wheel of Fortune
  This sounds like fun: This Thankgsiving Eve, travelers through Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport found their baggage claim conveyor belt festooned with what appeared to be Zappos advertising banners, but which were in fact prize markers for clothing, appliances, accessories and gift certificates. I would gladly trade the grisly post-apocalyptic set of murals at DIA […]
• The Return of Iceball
  Some climatologists are now worried about global cooling: According to the scientists, the oft-cited “stagnation” in rising global temperatures over the last 15 years is due to the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean oscillation cycle, which lasts about 65 years. Ocean oscillation is past its “maximum,” leading to small decreases in global temperature. The de Vries […]
• Pssst. Wanna Buy a Phone?
  Apple previews iBeacon in its stores today: If you own any iPhone more recent than the 4, walk into any US Apple retail store today and you’ll get a taste of the possibly-dystopian future of retail and the internet of things. That’s because Apple just rolled out a technology called iBeacon in all 254 of its […]
• Caution on the Yuan
  Reports of the yuan replacing the euro are greatly exaggerated: At most, around 15% of China’s trade (paywall) is currently settled in yuan. Either a big chunk of global trade—more than half—would need to come from China for 8.7% of global trade to be settled in yuan, or companies outside China would need to be […]

Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• Robot Navigation and QR Codes
  Programmers won’t like the lack of an algorithmic solution, but this looks like a good idea: Interesting though these problems are, there is another way of doing things. Most robots navigate around a “built” environment and there is no reason why we can’t simply augment the environment so that the robot finds it easier to […]
• The Obama Language Wars
  Tim Carney on politics and the English language: After Chait implies Hillyer is like a slaveowner, he writes something actually defensible: Critics of Obama should be careful not to use language that will come across as racially tinged…. But here’s a point for Chait: The worst possible way to cultivate racial sensitivity is by haphazardly […]
• Desert Cabin of Wood and Mirrors
  In Joshua Tree, California:
• Cut-and-Fold Artwork
  Like you’ve never seen it before:  
• Nanotech to the Rescue Against MRSA?
  Another idea for how nanotech could rescue us from our post-antibiotic future: Nanosponges that soak up a dangerous pore-forming toxin produced by MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) could serve as a safe and effective vaccine against this toxin. This “nanosponge vaccine” enabled the immune systems of mice to block the adverse effects of the alpha-haemolysin toxin from […]
• The Bombe That Beat The Enigma
  From Bletchley Park, the computer that helped break the Enigma codes: The small size here doesn’t do it justice.  This was truly an awesome, beautiful machine in the way that only mid-century technology can be.
• Quantum Gravity and the Proton Radius
  Using quantum gravity to resolve differences in measurement? This inconsistency between proton radius values, called the “proton radius puzzle,” has gained a lot of attention lately and has led to several proposed explanations. Some of these explanations include new degrees of freedom beyond the Standard Model, as well as extra dimensions. Now in a new […]

Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• Who Really Betrayed Detroit?
  From Steven Malanga at City Journal: Most press accounts note that city-worker pensions in Detroit are modest. They rarely mention that, for two decades, the city supplemented those pensions with annual, so-called “13th checks” for retirees—an additional monthly pension payment. Pension-fund trustees—themselves city workers, retirees, city residents, and elected officials—handed out nearly $1 billion in […]
• Paging Cleavon Little
  Obamacare isn’t helping Democrats with white women: Remarkably, only 16 percent of blue-collar white women have a favorable view of Obamacare. They disapprove of it by a 4-1 ratio. (The poll found 21 percent did not know enough about the ACA to hold an opinion.) These voters are by no means a strongly Democratic group: Obama […]
• A New Maunder Minimum?
  Still not very many sunspots: But scientists are watching the sun carefully to see whether cycle 24 is going to be an aberration—or if this solar calmness is going to stretch through the next cycle as well. “We won’t know that for another good three or four years,” said Biesecker. Some researchers speculate this could […]
• Flashback: Orchids
  From January, 2009: “He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.” Coloradoans, right now, as I write this, it’s -9 in Denver.  Minus.  Nine.  Remember this when you get […]
• Top Complaints About Offices
  Noise.  Everything else is practically non-existent by comparison: The worst part, according to the data, is that these office workers can’t control what they hear — or who hears them. Lack of sound privacy was far and away the most despised issue in the survey, with 60% of cubicle workers and half of all partitionless people […]
• Obama Changes Course, Accepts China Air Defense Zone
  And people wonder why the world thinks we’re unreliable: Japan, a vital American ally, has expressed fury over the Chinese move and ordered its commercial airliners not to provide information about their flight paths to the Chinese military. By contrast, the United States made a point of flying a pair of B-52s through it last […]
• Unbuilt London
  Urban transport as it never was.  Some of these are pretty cool, others are a little silly, and some are outright desecrations.
• What is Gene Therapy?
  An explanation of why it’s so hard: Several early efforts at gene therapy have focused on diseases of the blood, inherited anaemia, immune deficiencies, and blood clotting disorders. In these cases, the theory is relatively simple. But, in practice, gene therapy has proved much harder than we might have expected. Lots of promising technologies never make […]
• Perils and Promise of Working Remotely
  From a company that waded in at the shallow end, and is now trying it full-time.  The good, and the bad. NO COMMUTING! Cutting out the commute means that if you’re working from home, you can spend the time you would be commuting exercising, gardening, cooking, or whatever it is you’d rather be doing than […]
• Wittes on Drones
  Benjamin Wittes takes Eugene Robinson to task for getting just about everything wrong about drones: Over at the Washington Post, columnist Eugene Robinson has a piece decrying the morality of drone strikes—a piece that expresses with an admirable economy of words nearly every conceptual error one can make on the subject. Let’s dissect…. …“I don’t see how drone strikes […]
• Theodore Dalrymple on the Pope’s Economics
  While sympathizing with the impulse to find consumerism disotasteful, Dalrymple points out what ought to be obvious by now: He writes, inter alia, that ‘Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed on the powerless.’ This is demagoguery of the purest kind, the kind that ruined […]
• Political John Doe Investigation in Wisconsin
  In a link-filled guest post for Legal Insurrection, Wisconsin Watchdog report Matt Kittle details what looks like abuse of prosecutorial discretion in Wisconsin, operating secretly but within the law, targeting Governor Scott Walker. There’s a secret war being waged in Wisconsin, and the outcome could have national ramifications on free speech and the rule of […]
• Shazam for Neo-Nazi Music
  German police are building an app that will identify right-wing music: Many themes and ideas can get media placed on the list including, “indecent, extremely violent, crime-inducing, anti-Semitic or racist material,” as well as “media content that glorifies National Socialism… and to media content that discriminates against specific groups of people.” This is the law […]
• Triathletes And Pain
  Apparently, they handle it differently from the rest of us: In the tests, the triathletes could discern pain just as well as non-athletes, but they felt it with less intensity and were able to withstand it longer. The researchers explain that detecting pain is a relatively straightforward sensory experience, whereas evaluating pain and being willing […]

Daily Links From Glimpse From a Height

• Liberals Lose Effort to Defund the Right Via SEC Disclosure
  Via Bainbridge, quoting Marc Hodak: Mary Jo White, former United States Attorney, is bringing a strong prosecutorial agenda. This shift in priorities appears to have manifested itself in a new Rule List that, at least for now, drops the push for disclosure of corporate political contributions. The pro-regulatory crowd is not going to be happy. … Corporate political spending […]
• Using Nanographene Oxide to Destroy Tumors
  More nanotechnology promises: Scientists have learned over the years that the cells in cancerous tumors are more sensitive to heat than normal cells in the body (it makes them more porous). To take advantage of this property, researchers have developed techniques for heating such cells before applying other techniques meant to kill them—heating tumors before using chemo or radiotherapy […]
• Origins of Common UI Symbols
  Not all of them got their start with Tech.  
• A New Book On the Mumbai Massacre
  The Siege: 68 Hours Inside the Taj Hotel by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark gets a favorable review at Lawfare. The Siege discloses a new intriguing wrinkle about Headley.  The two British authors’ investigations in Pakistan, India and the US led them to believe LeT and the ISI became suspicious that Headley was a double agent, secretly […]
• LA’s Former Forest of Oil Rigs
  LA used to look like this: They’re still there, often hidden under a building or a decorative shell, but there are some down near the airport, if I recall.  I do remember a season of 24 opening with Jack working at one of today’s oil pumps.
• 3D-Printed Modular Cell Phones?
  So say Motorola and 3D Systems: Last month, Motorola announced a plan for a modular smartphone. Project Ara, the company said, will be a simple way for users to individualize their phones, swapping out parts like the battery and camera until users have a phone that’s just for them. How do they plan on doing that? With 3-D […]
• The 5 Coldest Places To Live
  Congratulations, Fraser, Colorado!
• Pensions, Midwestern Style
  Detroit finally gets a break: Rhodes — in a surprise decision this morning — also said he’ll allow pension cuts in Detroit’s bankruptcy. Rhodes emphasized that he won’t necessarily agree to pension cuts in the city’s final reorganization plan unless the entire plan is fair and equitable. Illinois is considering its own pension reform plan, and […]
• Thanksgiving, The Founders, and Religion
  There’s a reason that religious liberty was specifically written into the 1st Amendment. If we seek evidence of the broadly shared public view of the meaning of the Establishment Clause at the time of the Founding, we find not an insistence on strict separation of church and state but instead a largely uncontroversial willingness to see the […]
• How Elon Musk Thinks
  Reason things out from “first principles” rather than by analogy: The benefit of “first principles” thinking? It allows you to innovate in clear leaps, rather than building small improvements onto something that already exists. Musk gives an example of the first automobile. While everyone else was trying to improve horse-drawn carriages, someone looked at the […]
• Young Adult Readers ‘Prefer Printed To Ebooks’
  Hope from, of all places, the youth of Britain: Sixteen to 24-year-olds are known as the super-connected generation, obsessed with snapping selfies or downloading the latest mobile apps, so it comes as a surprise to learn that 62% prefer print books to ebooks…. The top-rated reasons for preferring physical to digital products were: “I like to hold the […]
• Happy 250th, Touro Synagogue
  One hundred years to the day before the completion of the Capitol Dome, the current building of the recipient of Washington’s famous letter was dedicated. Documents associated with the letter are much sought after by collectors today, not least because contemporary printings of Washington’s letter in Rhode Island newspapers, the Newport Mercury and the Providence […]
• Someone Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe
  Along with everyone else: So almost everywhere in Europe, people are living longer but having fewer years of healthy life. Only in the UK, Denmark and the Netherlands did people buck this trend with the numbers of years of healthy life increasing in these places since 2003. That raises an obvious question: what happened in […]