Have you played with Google Labs' NGram Viewer? It's an addicting tool that lets you search for words and ideas in a database of 5 million books from across centuries. Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel in this TED briefing show us how it works, and a few of the surprising things we can learn from 500 billion words.
Professor Philip Zimbardo conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world.
He covers all this in more detail in his book the Time Paradox. A short preview and lecture is excerpted below:
Your every significant choice -- every important decision you make -- is determined by a force operating deep inside your mind: your perspective on time -- your internal, personal time zone. This is the most influential force in your life, yet you are virtually unaware of it. Once you become aware of your personal time zone, you can begin to see and manage your life in exciting new ways.
In The Time Paradox, Drs. Zimbardo and Boyd draw on thirty years of pioneering research to reveal, for the first time, how your individual time perspective shapes your life and is shaped by the world around you. Further, they demonstrate that your and every other individual's time zones interact to create national cultures, economics, and personal destinies.
You will discover what time zone you live in through Drs. Zimbardo and Boyd's revolutionary tests. Ask yourself:
• Does the smell of fresh-baked cookies bring you back to your childhood?
• Do you believe that nothing will ever change in your world?
• Do you believe that the present encompasses all and the future and past are mere abstractions?
• Do you wear a watch, balance your checkbook, and make to-do lists -- every day?
• Do you believe that life on earth is merely preparation for life after death?
• Do you ruminate over failed relationships?
• Are you the life of every party -- always late, always laughing, and always broke?
These statements are representative of the seven most common ways people relate to time, each of which, in its extreme, creates benefits and pitfalls. The Time Paradox is a practical plan for optimizing your blend of time perspectives so you get the utmost out of every minute in your personal and professional life as well as a fascinating commentary about the power and paradoxes of time in the modern world.
No matter your time perspective, you experience these paradoxes. Only by understanding this new psychological science of time zones will you be able to overcome the mental biases that keep you too attached to the past, too focused on immediate gratification, or unhealthily obsessed with future goals. Time passes no matter what you do -- it's up to you to spend it wisely and enjoy it well.
Over the past two decades the documentary film has graduated into mainstream cinema, becoming a major box office draw and an important part of contemporary culture.
To celebrate this new age of the cinematic documentary, Current TV has commissioned a brand-new series that explores the most powerful, memorable and moving documentary feature films to have hit our cinema screens in recent years.
The shows count down from fifty to one, eventually revealing what our panel of preeminent film critics, academics and industry insiders has chosen as the most entertaining, powerful and influential modern documentary. However, this is not your average list show.
Renowned documentarian Morgan Spurlock embarked on a road trip to track down the filmmakers and characters behind some of the most remarkable moments in contemporary cinema. Along the way, he met maverick directors and eccentric contributors, traveled to iconic locations and explored the impact that the documentaries have made on both their subjects and society.
Of course, not everyone agrees with this list. A recent article in the New Yorker by Richard Brody suggests alternatives that might have been included.
The whole collection describing the films has been captured in Youtube short segments, and can be viewed at this link when you are looking for ideas on some film stimulation for a quiet evening as winter approaches.
Economics writer Tim Harford studies complex systems -- and finds a surprising link among the successful ones: they were built through trial and error.
Most people know about social security and medicare, but these programs include government and military veteran pensions, and about 8 income security programs.
As can be noted in F2 below, there has been a major increase from the 38% of the total funding from back into the 1970s. After a huge spike last year, even with the reduction, we are currently to close to 62% will a slow rise going forward. (click to enlarge)
This means that unless there is a change to the laws requiring this spending, then all the US Congress is really addressing in their current scrabbles is the smaller 38% left over. This also includes a growing annual interest payment on the ballooning public debt.
Of the less than 1/3 remaining of the budget, all defense, environment, education and myriad other services must be funded. Some projections of this mandatory share suggest it will be reaching close to 80% in another 30 years if left unchecked.
I grew up in the Reno-Tahoe axis. Given my early exposure to the fantastic local funding capabilities from gaming (i.e. jobs for parents, no Nevada income tax, tourists pay for city services), I soon realized only the house wins in the long run. Luckily gambling, like cigarettes, remained off my preferred plate of vices.
Recently, debate in Congress over the legalization of online poker has been heating up. The clamor is a direct result of April 15, 2011, dubbed "Black Friday" in the poker community. On this date, the FBI shut down the three largest online poker sites, seized their assets, and charged the founders with felonies.
Poker is the most popular form of Internet gambling by far, so the reverberations throughout its community have been the largest. It is also the only form of gambling that can legitimately be considered more a game of skill than of chance, a key difference being emphasized by advocates of legalization.
The odds in any form of gambling can be boiled down to the house edge, or the advantage the house has over the player. For example: the house edge in Blackjack, when played with proper strategy, is 0.8%. So for every $100 you "invest" in the game, you'd expect $99.20 back. Poker differs in that it's played against other competitors rather than the house, so the house edge is in the form of a "rake," or cut of the pot, which is typically around 5%.
Obviously, this is a raw deal for the patrons. With the exception of poker players, all gamblers are guaranteed to lose over the long run. Even poker is a zero-sum game, with the vast majority of the crowd losing money. Given these facts, it's conceivable that Congress just wants to prevent us from squandering our wealth.
Of course, the government itself offers gambling in the form of lotteries. If our benevolent Big Brother really wants to protect us from the usurious advantages of online casinos, its own gambling systems should at least offer better odds. Do they?
Not exactly. In fact, it's tough to overstate just how horrible state lottery odds really are. Your odds are 7,500% better playing craps than buying the average state lottery ticket.
We can draw many conclusions from this data, but two stand out the most. First of all, the free market provides overwhelmingly superior and cheaper gambling entertainment than does the government. Second, the government's professed intention of saving us from ourselves is clearly a guise. In reality, it could be perceived that they attempt to eliminate or assimilate competition.
With all the economic confusion in the play by play media commentaries, I think many people finally just give up on trying to understand the action. But, when you get rid of all the $50 words, cut through the hubris of obfuscation, the world of human financial interactions is actually quite straight-forward. The question is why generations have been seduced by the machinations of intensely selfish bankers and ivory tower economists?
An excellent 5 minute animated overview, although it is hard to say whether the Armageddon title is over-stretching the implications. What do you think?
