“It’s only by measuring can we cross the river of myths” – watch Hans Rosling predict the levels of child mortality & children per women in a more recent video.
Flying with the vultures [Video]
Behind the scenes video of how the BBC’s Earthflight team get the amazing pictures & video of birds – UAV’s or Drones. Here’s a clip from the Earthflight documentary on pelicans
A business model around Hair [Photos, Article]
A lifecycle of human hair – from the temples at Thirumala in India to the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico.
Feynmann Method [short note]
Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say: “How did he do it? He must be a genius!”
UN leaves a trail of destruction [Article]
UN peacekeeping forces were responsible for the outbreak of cholera in Haiti, according to journalist Johnathan Katz. Haitians had no immunity against the disease because they’d never been exposed to the virus. Ironically, the UN is claiming legal immunity against being held responsible. An article from the Atlantic.
The halfway house to nowhere [article]
Data vizualisation expert Robert Kosara explains why letting machines make all our decisions for us is probably suicidal for humanity. The Halfway House To Nowhere
The Hedge – A short story by Don Marti
Could be a story, but as the author says, reality’s catching up pretty quickly. Gripping. Read it for yourself. The Hedge
NO [Movie]
Trust Jesse Kornbluth to shine a light on things that will otherwise be obscure. This time it’s a movie that won no Oscars. No is a Chilean movie about the referendum on Pinochet’s government, a man that most people don’t know was helped by the CIA to become the country’s dictator. Read Kornbluth’s evocative review here.
Print me an ear [Article]
3D printing is not the future, it is already here. Here’s another application of the technology in the medical profession – the goal is to make print cartilege – ears reliable enough to be used for children born with deformed ears, and adults who lose them from injuries. Print Me An Ear
The Trans Pacific Partnership (or is it?) [Article]
Most of us won’t care about it- yet, the US corporate sponsored TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) will soon inflict more misery on the world through an intricate, very secretive partnership between countries that is being pushed though their respective parliaments to become law. Essentially, the plan is to skirt domestic laws and courts and privately enforce the terms of a public treaty by directly challenging governments’ public interest policies before foreign tribunals to demand unlimited sums of taxpayer compensation. The premise for including such extreme extra-judicial enforcement procedures in past agreements has been that the domestic legal systems of developing country trade partners have not been sufficiently trustworthy. Japan is the latest country getting ready to sign up.