Friday, December 18, 2009

Atul Gawande thinks the most important parts of the health-care bill might be the small parts:

Almost half of it is devoted to programs that would test various ways to curb costs and increase quality. The bill is a hodgepodge. And it should be.

The bill tests, for instance, a number of ways that federal insurers could pay for care. Medicare and Medicaid currently pay clinicians the same amount regardless of results. But there is a pilot program to increase payments for doctors who deliver high-quality care at lower cost, while reducing payments for those who deliver low-quality care at higher cost. There’s a program that would pay bonuses to hospitals that improve patient results after heart failure, pneumonia, and surgery. There’s a program that would impose financial penalties on institutions with high rates of infections transmitted by health-care workers. Still another would test a system of penalties and rewards scaled to the quality of home health and rehabilitation care.
He says health care is so complex, that in order to get a handle on it we need to first experiment on a small scale with a bunch of different ideas, and that a similar idea revolutionized agriculture. It's a good read, but I'm not sure I buy it.

Monday, December 7, 2009

A year ago, Neel Kashkari was working himself to death at the Treasury Department, in charge of a $700 billion bailout. Now, he's building a shed:

"I had to do something with my hands. It's a big amorphous unknown -- what's going to happen to our economy. And the shed is solid, measurable. I can see it, I can touch it. It's going to be around for the next 30 years. It's the opposite of amorphous."
He has a new perspective now:

"This makes $700 billion seem small."

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Contributing to U2 awareness:

An expert commission of African leaders today announced their plan for comprehensive reform of music band U2. Saying that U2’s rock had lost touch with its African roots, the commission called for urgent measures to halt U2’s slide towards impending crisis.

Friday, November 20, 2009

In other local corruption news, my senator is selling her vote on health care for $100 million.
The city I live in:

Evelyn Holden admitted in federal court that she conspired with former senior Baton Rouge City Court prosecutor Flitcher Bell and others to fix criminal and traffic matters in City Court.
The mayor's sister is one thing. Corrupt police bother me even more:

Former Baton Rouge police Sgt. Darrell Johnson has admitted he took bribes to cause dismissal of criminal charges in City Court over a 19-year period. Johnson retired before pleading guilty.

Former Officer Leonard P. Jackson, who recently resigned from the Baton Rouge police force, admitted he sought and took bribes in a scheme to fix criminal and traffic charges in City Court.
I now officially don't trust the police in Baton Rouge, which is a terrible thing.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Fraud in the humanities and in the sciences:

Most interesting is that Schön’s frauds actually benefited from rigorous peer review at elite journals, much as earlier forgers benefited from the advanced techniques of text-obsessed humanists. The critiques and suggestions that Schön received in referee reports told him exactly what it would take to convince skeptics about new findings. If his amazing plastics really did show evidence of superconductivity, reviewers pressed, had Schön checked for such and such effects or measured this or that parameter? Schön could then deliver those results right back, in perfect keeping with expectations.

I also like the takeaway:

The relentless rat race to produce new results quickly in order to secure the next round of funding or promotion is not without consequences. The cozy relationship between prestigious scientific journals like Science and Nature and journalists—who receive prepublication copies of “hot” articles under special embargo, allowing them to prepare accompanying news coverage—entangles scientists, laboratories’ press relations staff, journal editors, investors and others in dizzying webs of potential conflicts of interest.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Give coffee addicts coffee and then have them do a challenging task. Tell half of them that caffeine is known to improve scores on the task, and tell the other half that it's known to have a negative effect. Independently, half get decaf and half get regular, but they all think they're getting caffeine.

Finally, no-one who got the decaf noticed that it didn't actually contain caffeine, and the volunteer's ratings of their alertness and mood didn't differ between the caffeine and placebo groups. So, this suggests that if you were to secretly replace someone's favorite blend with decaf, they wouldn't notice - although their performance would nevertheless decline.

Caffeine's not just a placebo, it does affect their scores - but the subjects don't notice it.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Recessions. Ten-percent unemployment. Wars. Shootings. No decent sidewalks or bike paths. But not everything is getting worse:

We estimate that world poverty rates have fallen by 80% from 0.268 in 1970 to 0.054 in 2006. The corresponding total number of poor has fallen from 403 million in 1970 to 152 million in 2006.

They also find that global inequality has decreased.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

More about pedestrians and sidewalks:

Cities like Barcelona and Amsterdam—pedestrian paradises both—are proposing limiting entire tracts of the city to 30 kph (that's 18.6 mph, folks), and in places like the "Skvallertorget," or "Gossip Square," in Norkkoping, Sweden, the legal right of way is shared equally, and safely, among pedestrians and drivers, without clear markings, because car traffic has dropped to human speeds.

Monday, November 2, 2009

I'm on a quest to discover why there are no sidewalks in Baton Rouge. This is a start:

Take The Millennium Towne Center apartment complex on Jefferson Highway. It has no way for residents to actually walk to the shops at Towne Center just two-tenths of a mile away.

“That should never have been built without a sidewalk,” says Metro Council member Alison Cascio, a former Planning Commission staff member. “You can’t even take a back pedestrian walkway.”

Bunch explains the Planning Commission approved the development with a 5-foot sidewalk along Jefferson Highway. As to why it’s not there, he can’t say.

The article is long, and boring in the way that only local politics can be. But it's just a little interesting.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

It's transportation week at the Evil Line. Today, Slate asks if bicycles should obey traffic laws:

"If there weren't cars, we wouldn't need stop signs," says Andy Thornley of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. "They're not there for bicycles." Bikers can safely slow down, look both ways, and proceed without sacrificing the momentum necessary to keep cycling, says Thornley. Lawmakers tend to favor the full-stop, in part because not all cyclists are skilled enough to judge the safety of proceeding through an intersection. During a debate in the Oregon state legislature, one representative admitted that he doesn't like stopping at signs. "But I do it because it's the law," he said. Plus, if bikes can cruise through stop signs, why not cars? Why do bikes deserve special treatment?

This piece also has an interesting distinction between "vehicularists" and "facilitators". I think I'm a vehicularist, but I can see both sides.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

The London congestion toll is working. But people hate it:

London Mayor Boris Johnson recently conducted a survey on expanding the London Congestion Charge Zone and found that 67 percent of respondents were opposed.

This is a problem with shared space traffic control, also. It works, but people don't like it. They like their cars, and like not having to pay attention when they drive.

Also on the transportation beat, mass transit may not be quite as green as you might think.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Readers will know that I'm a fan of Bruce Schneier. His best blog entry to date was yesterday.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Improve education by making the geek culture the cool culture:

"The driving force in the life of a child, starting much earlier than it used to be, is to be cool, to fit in," Grodd told the group. "And pretty universally, it's cool to rebel." In other words, prepare for you and your netbook to be jeered out of the room. "The best schools," Grodd told me later, "are able to make learning cool, so the cool kids are the ones who get As. That's an art."

It's hard. You do it, according to the article, by breaking the youth culture - having lots of adults around all the time, everywhere.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

This is why I read Slate:

Going to prison is a little bit like heading off to college. The first step is finding an institution that's right for you. Then there's a lot of anxiety: Who will be your roommate? Where is the library? What time does the dining hall close? How do you make a good impression with the people in charge? Will you make friends? A prison consultant addresses these concerns.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

A new approach to development aid:

The idea is simple: The payment of a basic monthly income, funded with tax revenues, of 100 Namibia dollars, or about €9 ($13), for each citizen. There are no conditions, and nothing is expected in return.

An approach like this says that the people you're trying to help are productive, hard-working, and smart, and that they know better what they need than you do. If they get drunk, you're wrong, if they start businesses, you're right.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The main barrier to bike commuting is bike parking:

On the flip side, people would be much less likely to drive into Manhattan if they knew their expensive car was likely to be stolen, vandalized, or taken away by police. And yet this is what was being asked of bicycle commuters, save those lucky few who work in a handful of buildings that provide indoor bicycle parking. Surveys have shown that the leading deterrent to potential bicycle commuters is lack of a safe, secure parking spot on the other end.

The math building here at LSU doesn't seem to have a single bike rack, and that's on a college campus. Sad.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

You've got sensitive data on your laptop, or you don't, but either way you don't want customs agents nosing through it. So you encrypt it twice, mail one key to a trusted friend near your destination, shred that key, use your laptop on the flight with the other key, and shred that key just before customs.

At this point, you will not be able to boot your computer. The only key remaining is the one you forgot in Step Three. There's no need to lie to the customs official; you can even show him a copy of this article if he doesn't believe you.

This idea from, who else, Bruce Schneier.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

PowerPoint is evil:

Students in the survey gave low marks not just to PowerPoint, but also to all kinds of computer-assisted classroom activities, even interactive exercises in computer labs. "The least boring teaching methods were found to be seminars, practical sessions, and group discussions," said the report. In other words, tech-free classrooms were the most engaging.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Fix the economy by improving the reputation of manual labor.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Seed offers a debate about competing energy technologies. My favorite is from Gwyneth Cravens, the nuclear power advocate:

And as far as pollution goes, 120 million tons of unregulated coal fly ash pours into thousands of American slurry pits each year. It contains toxic heavy metals and enough U-235 to run all of our 104 power reactors. Coal pollution exposes people within 50 miles to low-dose radiation—about 100 to 400 times greater than from a nuclear plant.

But several contributors disagree with her, and they have some good arguments. So make up your own mind.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Caitlin Flanagan on marriage:

There is no other single force causing as much measurable hardship and human misery in this country as the collapse of marriage. It hurts children, it reduces mothers' financial security, and it has landed with particular devastation on those who can bear it least: the nation's underclass.

It's a great article - go read it.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

A review of Shop Class as Soulcraft, a book about an academic turned motorcycle mechanic, about the value of working with your hands:

Most of his students were there only because they had heard that Latin could help boost their SAT scores — and that, Crawford says, was a shame. "I'm quite sure that if I'd been able to take some of these kids aside and say, let's build a deck together, or let's overhaul this engine, they would have perked right up. I think there's a question of, What sparks that love of learning?"

I'm intrigued by this book, but I'm not sure it says anything really new.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The academic publishing process is painful and annoying. So maybe I should create a fake journal to publish my stuff:

Merck paid an undisclosed sum to Elsevier to produce several volumes of a publication that had the look of a peer-reviewed medical journal, but contained only reprinted or summarized articles--most of which presented data favorable to Merck products--that appeared to act solely as marketing tools with no disclosure of company sponsorship.

Elsevier is rapidly losing my respect.

Monday, June 22, 2009

Hacking the high-security locks that protect the Pentagon:

One by one, brand-new Medeco locks were unsealed. And, as the camera rolled, one by one these locks were picked open. None of the Medeco-3 locks lasted the minimum 10 to 15 minutes necessary to qualify for the "high security" rating. One was cracked in just seven seconds.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The Onion usually focuses on the funny-and-false niche. But you can file this in the sad-and-true category:

According to the report, staring blankly at luminescent rectangles is an increasingly central part of modern life. At work, special information rectangles help men and women silently complete any number of business-related tasks, while entertainment rectangles—larger and louder and often placed inside the home—allow Americans to enter a relaxing trance-like state after a long day of rectangle-gazing.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Atul Gawande explains why health care costs so much in McAllen, Texas:

Providing health care is like building a house. The task requires experts, expensive equipment and materials, and a huge amount of coördination. Imagine that, instead of paying a contractor to pull a team together and keep them on track, you paid an electrician for every outlet he recommends, a plumber for every faucet, and a carpenter for every cabinet. Would you be surprised if you got a house with a thousand outlets, faucets, and cabinets, at three times the cost you expected, and the whole thing fell apart a couple of years later? Getting the country’s best electrician on the job (he trained at Harvard, somebody tells you) isn’t going to solve this problem. Nor will changing the person who writes him the check.

It's all about incentives. Maybe we should require doctors to take out annuities on all their patients.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

48:25. It's just a little bit worse than last year, so I'm just a little bit disappointed. I started out way too fast.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

The new Honda Insight:

And the sound is worse. The Honda’s petrol engine is a much-shaved, built-for-economy, low-friction 1.3 that, at full chat, makes a noise worse than someone else’s crying baby on an airliner. It’s worse than the sound of your parachute failing to open. Really, to get an idea of how awful it is, you’d have to sit a dog on a ham slicer.

This is the most entertaining car review I've read in a while.

Friday, May 15, 2009

In 1937, researchers did a comprehensive survey of a group of Harvard sophomores, with the goal of continuing to follow them throughout life. The study is still going, and its long-term nature provides results that are hard to find in more standard social science research. For example:

The Harvard data illustrate this phenomenon well. In 1946, for example, 34 percent of the Grant Study men who had served in World War II reported having come under enemy fire, and 25 percent said they had killed an enemy. In 1988, the first number climbed to 40 percent—and the second fell to about 14 percent. “As is well known,” Vaillant concluded, “with the passage of years, old wars become more adventurous and less dangerous.”

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Mark Oppenheimer is a good atheist with a Jewish background. His daughter is surprising him:

Until we begin, Rebekah is in a state of heightened, fidgety anticipation—and after we begin, she is happy, happy, happy. She loves the songs, loves babbling along with the few Hebrew words she has almost memorized, and especially loves marching around the room with a plushy stuffed Torah. Synagogue, along with Monday gym class and her daily DVD viewing of a trippy mid-1970s children's show that her mother loved as a child, is one of Rebekah's favorite rituals.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

A town in Germany with (almost) no cars:

Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs

The article mentions play dates, and IKEA, and shops, but not commuting to work, which seems like a pretty big omission.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Francis Fukuyama reviews two books on the problems with development in Africa:

Natural resources, whether diamonds or oil or timber, have quickly turned into a curse, because they greatly raise the stakes of the political struggle. Ethnicity and tribe, social constructs of often dubious historical provenance, have been exploited by political leaders in their quests for power. The advent of democracy has not changed the aims of politics but simply shifted the method of struggle. Only thus can we explain a phenomenon like Nigeria, which took in some $300 billion in oil revenues over a generation and yet saw declining per capita income during that same period.

Also note this interesting piece, arguing that you should support small, and only small, NGOs.

Monday, May 4, 2009

Apparently it's almost impossible to fire a public school teacher in LA:

The district wanted to fire a high school teacher who kept a stash of pornography, marijuana and vials with cocaine residue at school, but a commission balked, suggesting that firing was too harsh.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Last week my housemates and me had a taste-test party. We found that our test subjects had difficulty telling store-brand cola from Coke, could not at all tell sugar Coke from corn syrup Coke, could not tell Evian apart from tap water, but could easily tell the difference between 3.2% ABW beer and the same beer at full strength.

We didn't test if our guests could tell pâté from dog food, but luckily some scientists have done it for us:

Newman's Own dog food was prepared with a food processor to have the texture and appearance of a liver mousse. In a double-blind test, subjects were presented with five unlabeled blended meat products, one of which was the prepared dog food [...] subjects were not better than random at correctly identifying the dog food.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Corporal punishment at a school in South Carolina:

According to school statistics, referrals to the principal's office have dropped 80 percent since 2006. So far this school year, there's been fewer than 50. "I've had parents say 'thank you for doing this'," says fifth-grade teacher Devada Kimsey. "And look at the behavior charts now—there's nothing on them."

Friday, April 24, 2009

Saving Africa. Or improving your corporate image. But hey, it's better than nothing.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

This piece on global warming is full of quotable, uncomfortable lines. So I'm going to repeat all of them. First:

If you decline to write your own check while insisting that to save the world we must ditch the carbon, you are just burdening your already sooty soul with another ton of self-righteous hypocrisy. And you can’t possibly afford what it will cost to forgive that.

And then this:

Ostensibly green antinuclear activists unwittingly boosted U.S. coal consumption by about 400 million tons per year. The United States would be in compliance with the Kyoto Protocol today if we could simply undo their handiwork and conjure back into existence the nuclear plants that were in the pipeline in nuclear power’s heyday.

And this:

The oil nasties will celebrate the green war on carbon as enthusiastically as the coal industry celebrated the green war on uranium 30 years ago.

And finally, the conclusion:

Green plants currently pump 15 to 20 times as much carbon out of the atmosphere as humanity releases into it—that’s the pump that put all that carbon underground in the first place, millions of years ago. At present, almost all of that plant-captured carbon is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by animal consumers. North America, however, is currently sinking almost two-thirds of its carbon emissions back into prairies and forests that were originally leveled in the 1800s but are now recovering. For the next 50 years or so, we should focus on promoting better land use and reforestation worldwide.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

For Earth Day, some thoughts about crop yields, environmental impact, and genetic engineering.

Monday, April 20, 2009

About one percent of the stimulus package is allocated for high-speed rail. Christopher Beam says we should go directly for super-fast Japan-style trains:

Eventually, the United States could have a countrywide network of bona fide bullet trains. And as Obama likes to reiterate, no one said this would be easy. But upgrading our existing rail lines to support slightly faster trains doesn't bring that future any closer. In fact, it may postpone it. Instead of spending money making small upgrades to a flawed system, the government might get more mileage, so to speak, by starting from scratch.

But S.E. Kramer says exactly the opposite.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

I wanted to link this, about sex selection and abortion in China, but didn't know what to say about it. I still don't know what to say about it, so that's all.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

What you missed over the last forty-odd days:

How sailing works, explained by a mathematician. This article was the first time I understood tacking against the wind.

Think humans are successful because of our brains? Nope, it's our running ability.

Professors publish too much useless research and don't teach enough.

Monday, February 23, 2009

A profile of the man who oversaw a miraculous turnaround in the Indian railway system:

Every year, Indians take 5.4 billion train trips, 7 million per day in suburban Mumbai alone. New Delhi Station sees daily transit of 350,000 passengers, which is roughly five times more than New York’s LaGuardia Airport, and enough to make Grand Central look like Mayberry Junction. The railways’ total track mileage rivals the length of the entire U.S. Interstate Highway system, even though the United States is three times the size of India. Among human resource problems, the railways of India are an Everest. Its employees outnumber Wal-Mart’s by a figure comparable to the population of Pittsburgh. The world’s only larger employer is the People’s Liberation Army of China.

The plan of action seems to have been this: First, hire a supremely competent deputy. Second, drink tea and watch TV.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Five myths about prison, with this refreshing conclusion:

We need to focus less on high-profile drug statutes and more on the ways small-fry drug convictions cause later crimes to result in longer sentences. Once we start admitting fewer people to prison, we should shift money from prisons to police. If this seems like tinkering, rather than a sweeping fix, that's because it is.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

It's only February, but I'm already prepared to give out the Evil Line award for best sportswriting of 2009. A taste:

It is in basketball where the problems are most likely to be in the game — where the player, in his play, faces choices between maximizing his own perceived self-interest and winning. The choices are sufficiently complex that there is a fair chance he doesn’t fully grasp that he is making them.

Taking a bad shot when you don’t need to is only the most obvious example. A point guard might selfishly give up an open shot for an assist. You can see it happen every night, when he’s racing down court for an open layup, and instead of taking it, he passes it back to a trailing teammate. The teammate usually finishes with some sensational dunk, but the likelihood of scoring nevertheless declined. “The marginal assist is worth more money to the point guard than the marginal point,” Morey says.

I found it hard to get a quote that did this article justice. Do yourself a favor and go read it, even if you don't like basketball or math. But especially if you're like me and enjoy both.

Monday, February 9, 2009

The economy's bad, but it's not that bad: a lesson in using graphs.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Some physicists at UT Austin claim to have invented a way to incinerate nuclear waste while producing power. I'm skeptical, just because of what they named it. The Super X Divertor? Really?

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Genetically modified food is usually the enemy of environmentalism. But it doesn't have to be, says James E. McWilliams:

Cows that eat grass are commonly touted as the sustainable alternative to feedlot beef, a resource-intensive form of production that stuffs cows with a steady diet of grain fortified with antibiotics, growth hormones, steroids, and appetite enhancers that eventually pass through the animals into the soil and water. One overlooked drawback to grass-fed beef, however, is the fact that grass-fed cows emit four times more methane—a greenhouse gas that's more than 20 times as powerful as carbon dioxide—as regular, feedlot cows. That's because grass contains lignin, a substance that triggers a cow's digestive system to secrete a methane-producing enzyme. An Australian biotech company called Gramina has recently produced a genetically modified grass with lower amounts of lignin. Lower amounts of lignin mean less methane, less methane means curbed global warming emissions, and curbed emissions means environmentalists can eat their beef without hanging up their green stripes.

McWilliams says yes, frequent commenter Theo says no, I say maybe. Basically I believe in science - the phrase "genetically modified" isn't evil in itself, and it is possible for new technology, even biotechnology, to be used responsibly in ways that improve life. But it's not really the case that biotech companies are looking out for the environment or for our health - the incentives are wrong.

Monday, January 26, 2009

I really don't understand the economic situation. I've read several "The Stimulus Explained" type of blog posts that don't help. This one helps. A little.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

It's important that we have independent media and newspapers. That way, our news won't be influenced by billion-dollar corporations. Instead, it will be influenced by billionaire Mexican mobsters.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The New Urbanism is coming. It sounds like that means there will be more trains.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

A long time ago I posted about the Traveler's Dilemma, a problem in game theory. I thought it was interesting, but when I talked to my friend Patrick about it, he said, "Game theory is dumb, nobody thinks about it anymore."

So, being the contrary person I am, I thought about it, and wrote a quick little program to simulate it, and improved that program, and, well, wrote an article about it that appears in the January 2009 College Mathematics Journal. You can find a pdf here.

The CMJ is not a high-prestige research journal, but it's a perfect fit for this little paper and I'm happy with the result.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Charles Murray wants the bachelor's degree to no longer be the primary requirement for getting a job:

Colleges have adapted by expanding the range of courses and adding vocationally oriented majors. That’s appropriate. What’s not appropriate is keeping the bachelor’s degree as the measure of job preparedness, as the minimal requirement to get your foot in the door for vast numbers of jobs that don’t really require a B.A. or B.S.

I might agree with that, and I agree with half his description of the problem:

Many young people who have the intellectual ability to succeed in rigorous liberal arts courses don’t want to. For these students, the distribution requirements of the college degree do not open up new horizons. They are bothersome time-wasters.

But I strongly disagree with the other half of what he says about the problem:

It is a truth that politicians and educators cannot bring themselves to say out loud: A large majority of young people do not have the intellectual ability to do genuine college-level work.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

A football game is a story. If you're the best story-teller in the business, you can win eleven Emmys:

If the production crew of a televised football game is like a symphony orchestra, Bob Fishman is its conductor. He sits front and center in the dark trailer, insulated from the sunshine and the roar of the crowd, taking the fragments of sounds and moving images and assembling the broadcast on the fly, mediating the real event into the digital one. He scans the dizzying bank of screens to select the next shot, and the next, and the next, layering in replays, graphics, and sound, barking his orders via headset to his crew, plugging into a rhythm that echoes the pulse of the game.

Also on the football beat, Bill James calls for a boycott of the BCS:

Computers, like automobiles and airplanes, do only what people tell them to do. If you're driving to Cleveland and you get lost and wind up in Youngstown, you don't blame your car. If you're doing a ranking system and you wind up with Murray State in western Kentucky as the national football champion, you don't blame the computer.

Monday, January 5, 2009

The 2009 Edge question is up. If you don't remember from previous years, this is a game where super-intellectual people compete with each other to say shocking, original things that will make everyone marvel at their creativity and uncommon wisdom.

So, in response to this year's question of "What will change everything?", we get answers like "Understanding the mind" and "Artificial, self-replicating meme machines" and "The anthroposphere" and "Brain-machine interface."

Read through ten or so of these, and you're very refreshed to read Keith Devlin's simple answer:

The mobile phone. Within my lifetime I fully expect almost every living human adult, and most children, in the world to own one. (Neither the pen nor the typewriter came even close to that level of adoption, nor did the automobile.) That puts global connectivity, immense computational power, and access to all the world's knowledge amassed over many centuries, in everyone's hands.

I declare Devlin the winner. Yes, he is a mathematician. What, you expected me to declare a sociologist the winner?

Friday, January 2, 2009

2008 was a rough year, judging by headlines. But there was still some good news.