A “right to repair” movement tools up – If it’s broken, you can’t fix
it https://www.Economist.com/news/business/21729744-tractors-smartphones-mending-things-getting-ever-harder-right-repair-movement Is ownership actually another form of leasing?
The Downside of #Baseball’s Data Revolution – Long Games, Less Action
https://www.WSJ.com/articles/the-downside-of-baseballs-data-revolutionlong-games-less-action-1507043924 It’s now a game for stat analysis, not thrills
On the brink https://www.NewYorker.com/magazine/2017/09/18/the-risk-of-nuclear-war-with-north-korea/amp Pro-basketball player Rodman may be the best communication conduit betw. the US & N Korean dictator Kim
QT:{{”
a measure of how impoverished America’s contact with North Korea has become that one of the best-known conduits is Dennis Rodman, a.k.a. the Worm, the bad boy of the nineties-era Chicago Bulls. Rodman’s agent, Chris Volo, a hulking former mixed-martial-arts fighter, told me recently, “I’ve been there four times in four years. I’m in the Korean Sea, and I’m saying to myself, ‘No one would believe that I’m alone right now, riding Sea-Doos with Kim Jong Un.’ ” Rodman’s strange bond with Kim began in 2013, when Vice Media, aware of Kim’s love of the Bulls, offered to fly American basketball players to North Korea. Vice tried to contact Michael Jordan but got nowhere. Rodman, who was working the night-club autograph circuit, was happy to go. He joined three members of the Harlem Globetrotters for a game in Pyongyang. Kim made a surprise appearance, invited Rodman to dinner, and asked him to return to North Korea for a week at his private beach resort in Wonsan, which Rodman later described as “Hawaii or Ibiza, but he’s the only one that lives there.”
“}}
The case of human nose shape & climate adaptation
http://journals.PLoS.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1006616 Comparing its Qst-Fst statistic w/ that for height & skin color
QT:{{”
“To address the question of whether local adaptation to climate is responsible for nose shape divergence across populations, we use Qst–Fst comparisons to show that nares width and alar base width are more differentiated across populations than expected under genetic drift alone. To test whether this differentiation is due to climate adaptation, we compared the spatial distribution of these variables with the global distribution of temperature, absolute humidity, and relative humidity. We find that width of the nares is correlated with temperature and absolute humidity, but not with relative humidity. We conclude that some aspects of nose shape may indeed have been driven by local adaptation to climate. However, we think that this is a simplified explanation of a very complex evolutionary history, which possibly also involved other non-neutral forces such as sexual selection.”
“}}
Breaking Into the #Brain
http://CEN.ACS.org/articles/92/i2/Breaking-Brain.html Contrasts potential for drug discovery in neuro-diseases v #cancer (which is “easier”)
interesting brain v cancer contrast
Computers Are Taking Design Cues From…Brains
https://www.NYTimes.com/2017/09/16/technology/chips-off-the-old-block-computers-are-taking-design-cues-from-human-brains.html Bio-inspired computing, or the connection machine redux HT @EricTopol
Next 1B Mobile Users Will Rely on Video & Voice
https://www.WSJ.com/articles/the-end-of-typing-the-internets-next-billion-users-will-use-video-and-voice-1502116070 Will drive computing in new directions from text HT @ElementoLab
How to Follow #HurricaneIrma
https://www.NYTimes.com/2017/09/06/upshot/how-to-follow-hurricane-irma.html Presentations of weather #uncertainty – cones, spaghetti plots, ensemble forecasts, &c
QT:{[”
Besides individual model runs, there are two other types of
model-based maps you might see on the internet. They’re both “spaghetti plots,” which depict many forecast tracks…..
While you might think that these capture the full range of
uncertainty, they often do not. They’re even more prone to understate the total uncertainty than the N.H.C. “cone.”
…
Another type of spaghetti plot shows an ensemble forecast. Unlike a typical “determinist” forecast, which takes current conditions and simulates a single scenario forward, an ensemble model varies initial conditions slightly and then simulates, propagating uncertainty through the forecast.
“}}