Most people don’t care that much about increasing their life expectancy, they care about being cared for and being cared about. They care about reassurance and they care about feeling like they are not alone.
We can see that people don’t care that much about maximizing their life expectancy because they place an enormous premium on their doctor’s bedside manner and a much smaller premium on his error rate. We can see that when objectively bad doctors who are nice rarely get sued for malpractice, while much better doctors, who are assholes get sued all the time.
Month: January 2011
Central Park Nature
a super detailed map of central park
Fitness is a Lie
Who cares if you put on more muscle than you really want? Or if you suck during a few weekend soccer games because the squats are hammering your legs? You’ll be on a journey, at long last, learning how to own the gym, how to make your thrice-weekly health-club sessions into a confident, focused process invulnerable to bullshit. You’ll begin walking right past all the muscle-isolation weight machines, feeling a little sorry for all the guys who still think those are a good use of their time. You’ll start heading right back to the barbells instead, back in the gym’s darkest distant corner, and seeing them only as tools for your own ends, your own sports and goals. Once that happens, you’re on your way.
free weights good, machines bad.
Quantum Water
A new quantum state of water found in carbon nanotubes at room temperature could have important implications for life
might explain the fluid dynamics of cells, and be crucial for life.
Beer Calories Chart
abv to calories chart
Anytime Intelligence Tests
If we succeed, science will be able to measure intelligence of higher animals (e.g. apes), humans and machines in a universal and practical way.
Surface Drone
big-ass table used to remote control flying drone.
Zheng He vs Columbus
what could have been.
Kindle Singles
Before the advent of digital reading, writers often had to choose between making their work short enough for a magazine article or long enough to deliver the “heft” required for book marketing and distribution. 3 months ago, Amazon made a call to serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers to join Kindle in making a new kind of content available to readers–Kindle Singles. Typically between 5K and 30K words, each Kindle Single is intended to allow a single killer idea — well researched, well argued and well illustrated — to be expressed at its natural length.
the reign of the padded book because you can sell a 30 page paperback is over. yay!
Quantum Foam
metamaterials influence photons just like the curvature of spacetime, allowing for experiments at the planck scale, artificial black holes, etc.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 