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Wednesday, March 02, 2016

The Laws of Adaptation

Two centuries before modern psychologists coined “the backfire effect” — the root of why we have such a hard time changing our minds — Faraday captures our profoundly human propensity for self-deception when it comes to confirming our convictions and indulging our desires ...

Harvard Law Bulletin (Fall 2015), *The Laws of Adaptation:
Change is coming to the legal profession—whether attorneys like it or not—and HLS is at the forefront of efforts to anticipate it, and prepare students.
 ‘If you make art in order to understand your life, then it follows that it is about your life.’  


All about body fat transformation


As longterm readers know, (John Quiggin) my record on political and other predictions is mixed, not as bad as some have made out, but by no means uniformly accurate. Still, I’m going to venture my most fearless prediction in some time. Bill Shorten will be Prime Minister after the next election. Like most Australian voters, I have no great enthusiasm for Shorten. But, I’ve come to the view that Turnbull is, as the Fin remarked recently, “all hat and no cattle”, and the same can be said of most of his ministry. In particular, Scott Morrison is the most striking instance of the Peter Principle I’ve seen in some time. Brutally effective as Immigration Minister, he handled the Social Services portfolio quite deftly, but has floundered as Treasurer Another fearless prediction

The User Experience: Why Data – Not Just Design – Hits the Sweet Spot
Knowledge @ Wharton, 15/2/16. The successful user experience is about meeting a consumer’s need on an individual level – a “segment of one” not “one-size-fits” all, many experts say. But what does that look like in practice?



What McDonald’s and Walmart Can Teach Drug Cartels Vice: “UBS already wrote this one.”
Monica C. Corcoran's editors note with this photo reads: 'Everywhere I look in this frame, there is something visually interesting. Shutters both opened and closed, flower boxes, signage, a laundry line filled with drying clothes, and a random assortment of plants that anchor the bottom of the frame. The perspective is pleasingly disorienting and I have to stop myself from straining my neck to take it all in.' (Photo by Parnia Sehat, National Geographic's Your Shot)
Monica C. Corcoran's editors note with this photo reads: 'Everywhere I look in this frame, there is something visually interesting. Shutters both opened and closed, flower boxes, signage, a laundry line filled with drying clothes, and a random assortment of plants that anchor the bottom of the frame. The perspective is pleasingly disorienting and I have to stop myself from straining my neck to take it all in.' (Photo by Parnia Sehat, National Geographic's Your Shot)



Drinking more coffee may lessen liver damage caused by booze USA Today

Urging Openness About Superbug Infections, Doctor Omits Cases In Own Hospital Kaiser Health News



It's official - the size of the nation's budget forecasting blunder across the boom and bust years since 2002 is $682 billion. Treasury, which is increasingly emphasising likely ranges in its estimates, is being forced to accept more external advice after a review found forecasting shortcomings that led successive governments to spend big

It's official: Treasury gets budget revenue forecasts wrong by $682b, PBO says
 
Less transparency, more efficiency in NSW’s ‘open government’ 

Link to famous “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch. “Enormously sized, lavishly detailed, and compellingly grotesque,” the work is now available to explore in an “online interactive adventure.” Viewers can take a “15 step” tour of the image, or go their own route, clicking on the flags placed on the image to listen to or read more information and stories, as well as music and noise. It’s an impressive use of online multimedia technology to bring some art history to the public, for free.

Here is what’s ahead in the analytics sector. Close the flap on your
SAS disks:

◾Machine learning is “established” in the enterprise.

◾The Internet of Things “hits reality.”

◾Big Data enriches modeling.

◾Cybersecurity is improved via analytics.

◾Analytics drives increased industry academic interaction


“So I wish you first a
Sense of theatre; only
Those who love illusion
And know it will go far:
Otherwise we spend our
Lives in a confusion
Of what we say and do with
Who we really are.”

 
Google Unveils Neural Network with ‘Superhuman’ Ability to Determine the Location of Almost Any Image MIT Technology Review. 

Keeping Investors on a Need-to-Know Basis Gretchen Morgenson, New York Tim

Mummified body of a sailor found ... Dr Mark Benecke, a forensic criminologist in the German city of Cologne, told BILD newspaper: “The way he is sitting seems to indicate that death was unexpected, perhaps from a heart attack.” Officials said dry ocean winds and the salty air helped to preserve his body. As authorities tried to put together the circumstances of Bajorat’s death, details of his private life have started to emerge, according to The SunHe began his travels with his wife in 2008, but the couple subsequently split up. She later died from cancer.

“Most of the crime lab scandals… have occurred at crime labs that were already accredited.” [Radley Balko]


Read deep enough into this very long New York Times report, and you learn that Air France has been stymied from dismissing some employees it suspects of Islamic radicalization because “individuals were often able to successfully challenge such dismissals in French labor courts”:
Lastly, Thinking about Intimate Surveillance of MEdia Dragons Bruce Schneier