Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Until recently, alcohol, like energy-dense food, was viewed as fundamentally different from tobacco in the sense that a little of what you like is fine. This contrasted with no safe level for smoking. But the new health evidence underpinning the latest alcohol guidelines in the United Kingdom suggests that it may have much more in…
It seems everyone’s on a detox for the new year, and don’t we all need one? Our bodies are full of toxic chemicals. It would be great if we could just purify ourselves with a few smoothies, right? Tough luck. Detoxes are bullshit. It’s easy to get drawn into the marketing of detoxes or cleanses…
The night before a big meeting with a Swiss drug company in 2008, Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes and a colleague sat in a Zurich hotel, sticking their fingers with a lancet. They drew drops of their own blood to try the company’s testing machine, but the devices wouldn’t work, says someone familiar with the…
Lumosity, which created a brain game powerhouse by telling people it could make them smarter, is paying for its lies. Lumos Labs will pay the Federal Trade Commission $2 million for deceptive trade practices. “Lumosity preyed on consumers’ fears about age-related cognitive decline, suggesting their games could stave off memory loss, dementia, and even Alzheimer’s…
Four new elements have been added to the periodic table, finally completing the table’s seventh row and rendering science textbooks around the world instantly out of date. The elements, discovered by scientists in Japan, Russia and America, are the first to be added to the table since 2011, when elements 114 and 116 were added….
Ganges riverbank in Varanasi (image by Jeeheon Cho / Wikimedia) The Ganges is the largest river in India, providing water to more than 500 million people. It also has extremely important religious significance in Hindu culture — personified as the goddess Ganga, Hindu faith holds that bathing in the river can absolve one’s sins, and that anyone who is cremated…
Christmas is the busiest time of year for both Santa and the United States Postal Service. But while Santa has magic on his side, the USPS must rely on technology to make its deliveries. The service expects to distribute about 15.5 billion pieces of mail during the 2015 holiday season, which is more than 2 times the number of people on Earth. What…
You probably know at least one person who always tends to bet on the loser. From laserdiscs to New Coke, they adore the unpopular product. Turns out that that’s a predictable trait, and the people who display it are “Harbingers of Failure.” What happens when a group of professors from MIT, Northwestern University, and the…
Seeing the whole world is a fantasy that Michel DeCerteau calls the “totalizing eye” and Donna Haraway calls “the God Trick”. This is the first image taken of the whole earth in 1967. From Wikipedia. In January, I’m headed to the Responsible Data Forum’s event about Data Visualization. While there is a lot of hype…
‘; if (google_ads[0].bidtype == ‘CPC’) { /* insert this snippet for each ad call */ google_adnum = google_adnum + google_ads.length; } document.write(s); } } google_ad_client = ‘ca-pub-0457527031304647’; google_ad_output = ‘js’; google_max_num_ads = ‘1’; google_ad_type = ‘text’; google_feedback = ‘on’; google_skip = google_adnum; google_ad_channel = ‘1102379497’; During this election season, you will hear candidates argue about…