linkstream2 microblog

http://www.well.com/~hernan/biomorphs/

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/business/international/a-new-economic-era-for-china-goes-off-the-rails.html?referer=https://www.google.com/

QT:{{”
Richard Dawkins (in “The Blind Watchmaker”) writes:

“Michael Land reckons that there are nine basic principles for image-forming that eyes use, and that most of them have evolved many times independently. For instance, the curved dish-reflector principle is radically different from our own camera-eye (we use it in radiotelephones, and also in our largest optical telescopes because it is easier to make a large mirror than a large lens), and it has been independently ‘invented’ by various molluscs and crustaceans. Other crustaceans have a compound eye like insects (really a bank of lots of tiny eyes), while other molluscs, as we have seen, have a lensed camera-eye like ours, or a pinhole camera-eye. For each of these types of eye, stages corresponding to evolutionary intermediates exist as working eyes among other modern animals.”

With all respect to Mr. Dawkins, to believe that a structure as complex as any brain has evolved more than once is stretching credulity too far.

Michael Land calls the eyes “the premier sensory outposts of the brain” (see The Evolution of Eyes (1992)), but he only mentions the eye/brain connection three times (and then only in passing), and not in any brain evolution context.
“}}

http://redwood.berkeley.edu/vs265/landfernald92.pdf
https://www.quora.com/Given-that-eyes-appear-to-have-evolved-multiple-times-independently-through-evolution-why-has-human-level-intelligence-not-evolved-more-than-once

https://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/

http://www.wired.com/2016/01/david-chaum-father-of-online-anonymity-plan-to-end-the-crypto-wars/?mbid=social_twitter

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/opinion/we-need-a-new-green-revolution.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&utm_content=buffer7cf0f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer&_r=0

Why Public #Wifi is a…Hazard
https://medium.com/matter/heres-why-public-wifi-is-a-public-health-hazard-dd5b8dcb55e6 Exposes one’s past network usage; ergo, don’t put your street into your home’s SSID

QT:{{”

Wouter removes his laptop from his backpack, puts the black device on the table, and hides it under a menu. A waitress passes by and we ask for two coffees and the password for the WiFi network. Meanwhile, Wouter switches on his laptop and device, launches some programs, and soon the screen starts to fill with green text lines. It gradually becomes clear that Wouter’s device is connecting to the laptops, smartphones, and tablets of cafe visitors.

On his screen, phrases like “iPhone Joris” and “Simone’s MacBook” start to appear. The device’s antenna is intercepting the signals that are being sent from the laptops, smartphones, and tablets around us.

“More text starts to appear on the screen. We are able to see which WiFi networks the devices were previously connected to. Sometimes the names of the networks are composed of mostly numbers and random letters, making it hard to trace them to a definite location, but more often than not, these WiFi networks give away the place they belong to.

We learn that Joris had previously visited McDonald’s, probably spent his vacation in Spain (lots of Spanish-language network names), and had been kart-racing (he had connected to a network belonging to a well-known local kart-racing center). Martin, another café visitor, had been logged on to the network of Heathrow airport and the American airline Southwest. In Amsterdam, he’s probably staying at the White Tulip Hostel. He had also paid a visit to a coffee shop called The Bulldog.

“}}

For Wealthiest…Tax System…Saves Them Billions http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/business/economy/for-the-wealthiest-private-tax-system-saves-them-billions.html Since ’12 #tax for 1%ers flat at 24% v for top .1% down >3% to 18%

QT:{{"From Mr. Obama’s inauguration through the end of 2012, federal income
tax rates on individuals did not change (excluding payroll taxes). But
the highest-earning one-thousandth of Americans went from paying an
average of 20.9 percent to 17.6 percent. By contrast, the top 1
percent, excluding the very wealthy, went from paying just under 24
percent on average to just over that level.

“We do have two different tax systems, one for normal wage-earners and
another for those who can afford sophisticated tax advice,” said
Victor Fleischer, a law professor at the University of San Diego who
studies the intersection of tax policy and inequality. “At the very
top of the income distribution, the effective rate of tax goes down,
contrary to the principles of a progressive income tax system.”
"}}

QT:{{”
The waves and the pebbles together constitute a simple example of a system that automatically generates non-randomness. The world is full of such systems. The simplest example I can think of is a hole. Only objects smaller than the hole can pass through it. This means that if you start with a random collection of objects above the hole, and some force shakes and jostles them about at random, after a while the objects above and below the hole will come to be nonrandomly sorted. The space below the hole will tend to contain objects smaller than the hole, and the space above will tend to contain objects larger than the hole. Mankind has, of course, long exploited this simple principle for generating non-randomness, in the useful device known as the sieve. “}}

http://dbanach.com/dawkins3.htm

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/declassified-u-s-military-s-secret-cold-war-space-project-revealed/