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Trying to solve a scientific mystery is like starting a startup: timing is everything. Try to solve a problem too soon, and your efforts are wasted. Try to solve a problem too late, and you can't contribute anything new. But there's a sweet spot between when a problem becomes […]
Every year, literary agent to famous intellectuals John Brockman emails his 150+ clients a philosophical question to publicly weigh in on. The question he asked this year is, What should we be worried about? I can't say this list did much for my peace of mind, but it was […]
The American political scene is in sorry shape. If you're reading this blog or indeed, if you have a pulse you likely agree with this, so I won't belabor the point. The standard prescription is to get out and vote . While it's important that people vote, the idea that 'our […]
I'll be at Y Combinator's startup school at Stanford this weekend. If you see me (Mike Johnson) there, feel free to say hello.
Jaan Tallinn (of Kazaa/Skype fame) gave a 'big picture' talk at SS2011 on existential risks and how society may (or may not) meet our coming challenges head on. There's a lot of good stuff in there, but one thought in particular stood out: he talks about how social status is a […]
Sports doping is an eternal arms race. You have black market chemists making undetectable 'designer drugs', and you have anti doping agencies coming up with more and more sophisticated tests in response. Sadly, the dopers are winning right now, and few sports are 'pure'[1]. Many […]
Spend any time around finance people, and you start to worry about things. Unsustainable trends, ruinous policies, global economic collapse. I think it's always like this it's a career that attracts and rewards worriers. But something's different in 2012 finance: there's a […]
The question of whether the official government inflation numbers are right (currently 2 3%, depending on inclusion of food and energy) is really important. It would be hard to understate how important this is. But it's considered a fringe topic, a settled issue. Here's Krugman […]
I'm often pleasantly surprised by how much smart laypeople are interested in physics. Regardless of their educational background, peoples' ears perk up when the discussion turns to how weird quantum mechanics is, issues in contemporary physics, or even odd physics thought […]
John Hawks, on the mathematics of family trees and recombinant DNA: In practice, even though we have billions of nucleotides, our DNA cannot follow billions of genealogical lines. Recombination over 30 40 generations does not divide chromosomes down to individual nucleotides. In […]
