Internal Monologue

Turns out bloggers were much better at estimating Apple's financial numbers than analysts who were presumably paid large sums of money to get those numbers right. Of course, the bloggers have a financial stake in getting the numbers right, too. Still, rather embarrassing for the analysts. I wonder if this was an isolated incident, or if there's going to be a general trend of enthusiasts outperforming professionals in certain areas. I'm thinking of Nate Silver's recent success at election forecasting. Also, I'm recalling how when I worked in the games group at Microsoft, people in the Excel group were often better at our games than our own testers who were being paid to the best they could be at the game. Do people who are naturally enthusiastic about something have an advantage over mercenaries? Do institutional analysts have to worry about offending clients or pleasing bosses with numbers in ways that bloggers don't? Or is this just a fluke, or limited to ar

Here's one kind of printer for which I'd be particularly hesitant to buy 3rd-party cartridges from shady eBay dealers: a food printer. Gizmodo : Scientists at Cornell University 's Computational Synthesis Lab are developing a commercially-available "3D food printer" that would allow users to "print" meals using "raw food 'inks'" inside syringes. Sounds delicious ! Cooking is so hard , what with "ingredients" and "recipes" and "having to leave your house to go shopping." So thank goodness for the fab@home project [link added] an open-source collaboration on 3D printer technology that's developing a "food printer" intended for home use. The whole idea of a custom manufacturing unit in your house is awesome, and it sounds like the technology is coming together. Think of how many D&D minis I could make!!! And they'd be perfectly customized to my exact specifications, assuming the

"Twenty years from now, conservatives will deny they were ever anti-gay, just as they now have no memory of ever supporting discrimination against African-Americans or women." -David Boaz, as quoted by Jennifer Rubin on Right Turn

(Photo: Kevork Djansezian/Getty via Sullivan ) Is it just me or does Obama look much older now than he did just three years ago? Admittedly, this photo is from Tucson, so his grieved expression makes him look older. But I don't remember all that gray hair. It must be very draining.

HT: Mad Latinist In fairness to the UN, the severe limits on its powers are by design and the fact that it is an organization with severe limits is the only way a lot of nations (especially ours) are willing to participate. Still, just as the Articles of Confederation proved inadequate to deal with the challenges facing the newly independent American colonies, I suspect the UN will prove inadequate to deal with the challenges facing the world today. But making an institution powerful enough and accountable enough to deal with problems like climate change, global pandemics, genocide, and crimes against humanity is a very difficult task. It's hard enough resolving tariff disputes. I suspect nation states and smaller entities (corporations, factions, political movements) are going to be where international power resides for quite some time.

If this is authentic, then it's pretty freaky. Derren Brown - Subliminal Advertising @ Yahoo! Video

Wouldn't it be awesome if humans dealt with the problem of dividing precious resources the way bonobos do : Bonobos like apples. They like them a lot. As a matter of fact, it’s difficult to do bonobo research without a supply of green apples to motivate them to do the experiments. But they like group harmony most of all. And the sudden appearance of the apples in their midst immediately raises the threat of discord. Who will get to eat the apples? If these were chimpanzees, the strongest males would immediately claim the fruit. There would be a fair amount of shoving, and possibly some bloodshed. But bonobos are so communal that the tension produced by something so precious as an apple in their midst must be dispelled by a gesture of community. In this case, everyone gets to cool off with a little sexual comfort from their neighbor. Then, self-interest replaced by a certain yummy group feeling, they settle down to share the apple. Sometimes, I think the only pa