Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Bravo for companies that are starting to focus on innovation again! It’s about time. But even with this renewed attention to innovation, some managers keep projects resource-starved, in the belief that scarcity drives creative invention. Although ingenuity can sometimes spring up when means are scarce, managers beware: It is a dangerous miscalculation to think that…
Jonathan Touboul is a mathematician and a neuroscientist. He holds a PhD in math from France’s prestigious École Polytechnique, where he won a prize for his thesis on how to simulate neurons in the brain. He publishes papers with titles like “Pulsatile localized dynamics in delayed neural-field equations in arbitrary dimension” and “The propagation of…
Unlike early birds (people who have a genetic tendency to go to bed and wake up early), late risers, also known as night owls, have a natural tendency to go to bed late and sleep even later. And that’s just fine. Although you may sleep through the early morning hours, which many early birds claim…
Share Tweet Share Send Link There are currently hundreds of trillions of dollars in precious metals floating through space not far from Earth. Asteroids represent astronomical wealth in its most literal form, and both the U.S. government and private space exploration companies are trying to figure out how to harvest it. Is it even worth it? According to…
5 Brainwashing Tricks That Work No Matter How Smart You Are Everyone is talking about Scientology again, and why not? It’s a billion-dollar cult apparently based on convincing actors they have superpowers. But there’s no reason to single them out — look around and you’ll see the world is full of people who’ve either gotten…
Atlantic Puffins. Photo: Stephan Rech/Westend61/GmbH/AlamyHere are a couple of warnings I offer, free of charge, to savvy consumers of glossy-magazine think pieces: 1) Beware rhetorical questions in headlines or subheads (e.g., “Has climate change made it harder for environmentalists to care about conservation?”) [1]; and 2) Beware paraphrased quotes in which the writer doing the paraphrasing…
When Billy Rios needed emergency surgery last summer after cerebral spinal fluid began leaking through his nose, he was only partly focused on his life-threatening condition. That’s because Rios was distracted by the computerized drug-infusion pumps Stanford Medical Center used to administer medication to him and other patients. As a security researcher, Rios realized he’d…
We have seen the real cause of the California drought, and it’s one crunchy inch tall. One gallon of water to grow a single nut? BAN THEM ALL, writes everyone. But almond outrage is misplaced. We shouldn’t stop eating any fruit or vegetable due to how much water it takes to grow it. Especially when…
1. By now, you know that California has been in a horrible drought for years. Justin Sullivan / Getty 2. I’m not exaggerating when I say the deadliest and most morally sinister cause of our water shortage is ALMONDS. 3. California is the only state that produces almonds commercially, according to the Agricultural Marketing Resource…
The operation will be carried out by Italian surgeon Dr Sergio Canavero, in what he expects to be a 36-hour procedure involving 150 doctors and nurses. A Werdnig-Hoffman disease sufferer with rapidly declining health, Spiridonov is willing to take a punt on this very experimental surgery and you can’t really blame him, but while he…