January 2009
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Pompeii and the Roman Villa →
At the National Gallery, and well worth going if you’re in DC. It has frescos that are 2,000 years old, and statues, and mosaics, and Roman toes. It makes me want to travel to Italy again, and investigate the remnants of the city that conquered the Mediterranean.
December 2008
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The science of shopping | The way the brain buys |... →
[Shops] are all versed in the science of persuading people to buy things—a science that, thanks to technological advances, is beginning to unlock the innermost secrets of the consumer’s mind.
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The battle of Smoot-Hawley | The Economist →
[F]ew economists think the Smoot-Hawley tariff (as it is most often known) was one of the principal causes of the Depression. Worse mistakes were made, largely out of a misplaced faith in the gold standard and balanced budgets. America’s tariffs were already high, and some other countries were already increasing their own. Nevertheless, the act added poison to the emptying well of global trade...
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Darwinian answers to social questions | Why we... →
The corollary to this is the idea that with appropriate education, indoctrination, social conditioning or what have you, people can be made to behave in almost any way imaginable. The evidence, however, is that they cannot. The room for shaping their behaviour is actually quite limited. Unless that is realised, and the underlying biology of the behaviour to be shaped is properly understood,...
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Human evolution and music | Why music? | The... →
Such a multiplicity of effects suggests music may be an emergent property of the brain, cobbled together from bits of pre-existing machinery and then, as it were, fine-tuned. So, ironically, everyone may be right—or, at least partly right. Dr Pinker may be right that music was originally an accident and Dr Patel may be right that it transforms people’s perceptions of the world without necessarily...
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Fleet Foxes, Winter White Hymnal.
Happy solstice,...
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The State of the Cookie -- Slate →
But, pushed up against the cookie jar to name my desert-island fave, I’d reach for the chocolate-chippers and hope they’d be 3 inches in diameter, thin, crisp, well-browned, and overloaded with very dark chocolate.
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Downturn Choking Global Commerce -- Washington... →
Sharply lower consumer spending in the United States and other high-income countries is stalling global trade, causing a surprise downturn in exports from China that is dramatically slowing its economy and rippling through other countries that rely on international commerce.
With recessions hitting the United States, Europe and Japan at the same time, China yesterday said its November exports...
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Cheap Microfluidic Device Made From Paper and Tape... →
Harvard researchers have made a device from just paper and double-sided sticky tape that could be used to test for diseases at just a fraction of the cost of today’s diagnostic devices.
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Unlike devices made from plastic or glass, the paper device does not require a pump to transport the fluid. The paper itself transports the fluid laterally because of its wicking properties.
The...
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Dec. 9, 1968: The Mother of All Demos || Wired →
Computer scientist Douglas Engelbart kicks off the personal computer revolution with a product demonstration that is so amazing it inspires a generation of technologists. It will become known as “the mother of all demos.”
The presentation included the debut of the computer mouse, which Engelbart used to control an onscreen pointer in exactly the same way we do today.
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A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon... →
The defining principle of the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy is balance. The United States cannot expect to eliminate national security risks through higher defense budgets, to do everything and buy everything. The Department of Defense must set priorities and consider inescapable tradeoffs and opportunity costs.
The strategy strives for balance in three areas: between trying to...
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Desperately seeking Mahler | The Economist →
That an unskilled dreamer could teach professionals how to bring off a masterpiece is a fantasy that many share but few presume to achieve. Mr Kaplan, after his first performance [as conductor of Mahler’s second symphony], said: “I had a feeling that people in the audience were urging me to fulfil my dream. They were up with me on the podium that night, playing baseball for the Yankees,...
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The critical role of advanced technology... →
There is extremely good evidence from numerous past space programs that a key source of development cost overruns can in many cases be found in a failure to make adequate investments in mission/system concept studies and technology research & development before finalizing a mission design and submitting its cost estimate to the White House and Congress.
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The idea is simple: it is much...
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Welcome to the age of "Urban Jihad" -- Ares →
The Mumbai attacks of November 27 show a quantum leap in the quality of terrorism, from the era of the suicide bomber to a new urban Islamic terrorist, not much different from a well-trained elite forces commando.
According to Indian-born Dr Rohan Gunaratna, an international expert on al-Qaeda, the tactics and methodology of the Mumbai attack points directly to al-Qaeda’s philosophy,...
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