Last weekend's Off-Topic post here.
Previously on MoreLiver’s:
Weekender:
Weekly Support (weekly market reviews and previews)
COSMOLOGY
Vindication for
Entrepreneurs Watching Sky: Yes, It Can Fall – NYT
For decades, scientists have been on the lookout for
killer objects from outer space that could devastate the planet. But warnings
that they lacked the tools to detect the most serious threats were largely
ignored, even as skeptics mocked the worriers as Chicken Littles. No more.
NASA data may have uncovered galaxy's youngest
black hole – cnet
A rare
distorted supernova explosion leads scientists to believe they may be
witnessing the birth of a black hole for the first time ever.
Scientists ‘on the threshold’ of major dark
matter discovery – Raw
Story
PSYCHOLOGY
When Brain Damage Unlocks The Genius Within – Popsci
Brain
damage has unleashed extraordinary talents in a small group of otherwise
ordinary individuals. Will science find a way for everyone to tap their inner
virtuoso?
New Study Links Childhood Bullying to Adult
Psychological Disorders, Surprising Even the Study's Authors – Slate
The positional game and the end of the age – Discover
By most
material measures we're doing better as a species than we ever have. That is,
in an absolute sense. But a lot of human life is about relative prosperity. I
recall hearing once that role playing games which emphasized egalitarianism,
with no "winners" or "losers," often had a difficult time
gaining users. We are a cooperative species, but we're also a competitive
species.
How unconscious processing improves
decision-making – Kurzweil
AI
TECH / WEB
Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the
Web Wrong – The
Atlantic
Most people
think that first there was internet. Then a decade or so later there was the
rise of social sites such as Facebook or Twitter and we could suddenly share
links we found. Yet this isn’t really accurate. People have always, and
continue to share links through email and instant messages. This is just as
social as what we traditionally consider to be social media. The reason why
this type of social sharing doesn’t get much attention is because it’s
impossible to track.
The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk
Food – NYT
A chemist
by training with a doctoral degree in food science, Behnke became Pillsbury’s
chief technical officer in 1979 and was instrumental in creating a long line of
hit products, including microwaveable popcorn.
The Brain is Not Computable – MIT
Technology Review
A leading
neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen. Instead,
humans will assimilate machines.
CHINA’S CYBERWAR
There are
serious implications for national security and trade policy, which experts will
cover better than I can. But if true,
Mandiant's report also demonstrates a startling fact about China's political
economy – that big business has so much power that it is able to wield the
country's national security apparatus to get a leg up in contract
negotiations. It is as though Goldman
Sachs were able to use the wiretapping expertise of the NSA in order to get a
leg up on its overseas competitors.
Exposé of Chinese
Data Thieves Reveals Sloppy Tactics – MIT
Technology Review
A report on the Chinese group that breached the
computers of U.S. companies
reveals that they took few precautions against detection.
Chinese cyber-attacks: How to steal a trillion – Babbage
/ The Economist
Cybercrime: Smoking gun – The
Economist
A smoking gun? – Free
exchange / The Economist
NORTH KOREA
The old
definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a
different result. The new definition, which applies only in the case of North Korea, is: doing something different and
expecting a different result.
The
intelligence on a regime as closed as Pyongyang remains less than optimal, and as
such it is always difficult to truly comprehend what North Korea is up to, much less ascertain the
rationale behind its actions. What is clear, however, is that Pyongyang’s belligerence under Kim Jong-un
does not suggest he will be any different than his father, which bodes ill for
future regional security.
The World’s North Korean Test – Project
Syndicate
How the
international community responds, in both word and deed, to North Korea's latest nuclear test will say much
about the world we live in. And, whether the Chinese like it or not, how they
respond will speak volumes about what kind of role China will play in global governance.
MILSECINT
DIY Weapons of the Syrian Rebels – The
Atlantic
Beyond the Pivot – Foreign
Affairs
A New Road
Map for U.S.-Chinese Relations – The Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia made sense, because China was starting to doubt U.S. staying power. Now that Washington has sent Beijing a clear message it will be around
for the long haul, however, the time has come for the two countries to deepen
and institutionalize their relationship in order to secure Asia’s lasting peace and prosperity.
The Lost Logic of Deterrence – Foreign
Affairs
What the
Strategy That Won the Cold War Can -- and Can't -- Do Now – For half a century,
deterrence was the backbone of U.S. national security strategy. But
now, Washington doesn't seem to know how and when to use it
properly. The United States has needlessly applied deterrence
to Russia, failed to apply it when it should have
against Iraq and Iran, and been dangerously confused
about whether to apply it to China. U.S. policymakers need to relearn the
basics of deterrence in order to apply it successfully in the appropriate
circumstances.
Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail – Rolling
Stone
How HSBC
hooked up with drug traffickers and terrorists. And got away with it
A growing
scholarly literature has left no doubt that the greatest famine in history,
with a death toll of around 36 million Chinese, was caused not by natural
disasters but by excessive state levies ordered by Chairman Mao Zedong. But in China, these facts remain officially
taboo. For Yang, a journalist and one-time believer in Mao’s utopian vision,
discovering the truth was a personal quest.
The Evolution of Irregular War: Insurgents and
Guerrillas From Akkadia to Afghanistan – Foreign
Affairs
Pundits
tend to treat terrorism and guerrilla tactics as something new, but nothing
could be further from the truth. Although the agendas have changed over the
years -- from tribalism, to liberalism and nationalism, to socialism, to
jihadist extremism -- guerrilla and terrorist warfare has been ubiquitous
throughout history and consistently deadly.
Generation Kill - Foreign
Affairs
A
Conversation With Stanley McChrystal – The former Afghanistan and special forces commander talks
frankly about his accomplishments, his mistakes, his lessons learned, and the
future of the new American way of war he helped create.
Welcome to the Malware-Industrial Complex – MIT
Technology Review
The U.S. government is developing new
computer weapons and driving a black market in “zero-day” bugs. The result
could be a more dangerous Web for everyone.
Despite
media hoopla, cross-border crime -- illegal drugs sales, evasion of taxes,
intellectual property theft, and money laundering -- is hardly a new
phenomenon. For much of history, moreover, the United States was as much perpetrator as victim.
Recognizing this awkward truth should help cool down overheated debates about
today’s transnational problems and how to respond to them.
The long arm of the Google – Felix
Salmon / Reuters
Is Google
becoming a key arm of the law-enforcement complex?
DRUGS
Winding down the war on drugs: Towards a
ceasefire – The
Economist
Experiments
in legalisation are showing what a post-war approach to drug control could look
like
Illegal drugs: The great experiment – The
Economist
Winding down the war on drugs: Towards a
ceasefire – The
Economist
SEX
Life of a Call Girl: Fantasy vs. Reality – Jon
Millward
Deep Inside: A Study of 10,000 Porn Stars and
Their Careers – Jon
Millward
Applying
big data analysis to Internet Adult Film Database, the IMDB of porn.
OTHER
Roma exploitation: end of the dream – euobserver
Roma who
turn to prostitution, theft or badly-paid labour often do so because of
financial pressure. Back home, someone is waiting for money: the 'king' who
brought them to western Europe.
The Origins of Monopoly – Farnam
Street
Three
decades before Darrow’s patent, in 1903, a Maryland actress named Lizzie Magie created
a proto-Monopoly as a tool for teaching the philosophy of Henry George, a
nineteenth-century writer who had popularized the notion that no single person
could claim to “own” land.
The Power-Hungry Elite Aren't Who You Think
They Are – big
think
4 Things Politicians Will Never Understand
About Poor People –
cracked
Happy Birthday, United Amateur Press
Association – brain
pickings
H. P.
Lovecraft on the Early Spirit of “Blogging”
The World's Most
Problematic Videogames – Discover
Is 'video game addiction' a useful concept? Some
people certainly play an awful lot of games, and therefore have little of a
life outside of them; but that doesn't in itself mean that games are harming
them. Maybe that's just how they prefer to live. Maybe games are just filling a
void that would otherwise be occupied by something else. However, some people
do report suffering problems as a result of their gaming and wishing they could
cut down on it. Such self-declared problematic use
Visualizing The World's Megatrends In 2020 – ZH
Tony Robbins and the Buddha Compare Notes – Big
Think
An
imaginary round table discussion with Anthony Robbins and Gautama the Buddha on
being the best we can be.
It might be
surprising that I know Adam Rifkin. What’s not surprising is that Adam Rifkin
knows me — because Adam knows everybody. In 2011 Fortune Magazine declared him
the best networker in Silicon Valley.
Data, Stimulus, and Human Nature – Krugman
/ NYT
What Data Can’t Do – NYT
Career Arc: Bruce Willis – Grantland
How did a
30-year-old bartender turn into one of the great American movie stars?
The Extraordinary
Science of Addictive Junk Food – NYT
Inside the battle for how America snacks.
The End of Cheap Airfare – Slate
The US
Airways/American merger will mean fewer flights, higher prices, and worse
service. But that’s OK.
Straight
talk from geologists about our new era of oil abundance.
The Economist: Here’s How You Will Probably Die – The
Reformed Broker
The Runner – ESPN
Fauja Singh
ran his first marathon at age 89 and became an international sensation. Now 101
years old, he will run his final race on Sunday in Hong Kong -- and try to find peace with a
Guinness World Records slight.