Thank You, Mr. Bloomberg

Applied Sciences NYC  announced its fourth applied technology graduate campus: the Carnegie Mellon University Integrative Media Program. The CMU campus follows the flagship Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island, the Center for Urban Science and Progress led by NYU in downtown Brooklyn, and Columbia's Institute for Data Science and Engineering.


New York's expansion of its Applied Sciences endeavor should remind observers that innovation is the critical driver of economic growth across all industries.

Competition is a Good Thing

In an industry where the government hands out exclusive sinecures to providers and industry profits sometimes approach 90%, T-Mobile sees its opportunity to become a global player.

Their latest initiative is to eliminate charges associated with international calling.
 

Ghosts Don't Exist

Unfortunately our species is prone to imaginary distractions like ghosts, goblins, vampires, heaven and hell...none of which exist. On the other hand, we spend scant attention to real matters like poverty, violence, and ignorance.

Whenever I meet someone who professes to believe in the supernatural I consider their intelligence and rationality suspect.

Gates Profile

I understand that it may interfere with your prejudices, but if you have an open mind, watch the profile below to find that one of the richest men in the world is also one of the most generous.

Reign of the Robot Donkeys

WildCat is a four-legged robot being developed to run fast on all types of terrain. So far WildCat has run at about 16 mph on flat terrain using bounding and galloping gaits.

On a scarier note, WildCat is being developed with funding from DARPA's M3 program. Yes, those are the people who hope someday to bring you robot soldiers and robot armies.

The Wisdom of Warren Buffett

Want to know more about the lifestyle of the Rich and Famous? Then enjoy watching the video profile of the Sage of Omaha, Warren Buffett, who happens to be worth billions.

Robot Bartenders

Did you know that robots are "socially inadequate"?

A team of scientists has tried to study and improve their skills. If they succeed, perhaps the research could be applied to the majority of humans who also seem to suffer from this apparent inadequacy :)

Ergonomic is Economic

The prevalence of pain has a tremendous impact on business, with a recent report by the Institute of Medicine indicating that the annual value of lost productivity in 2010 dollars was roughly $335.5 billion.

Watch the video below to improve your workspace ergonomics.

American Education Woes

Amanda Ripley has written an interesting and informative book entitled, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way. It discusses educational outcomes, and what the most effective educational systems have in common. No surprise, the U.S. is not among the elite.

Hospitals, Doctors and Other Thieves

The odds are that you've never heard of the "chargemaster" list of prices that hospitals use to determine their fees for service. It's egregious evidence of monopoly power in our Healthcare system, and one reason that treatment in the U.S. is overpriced and sub-par.

Dutch Disease

Dutch disease is an economic phenomenon in which the revenues from natural resource exports damage a nation's productive economic sectors by causing an increase of the real exchange rate. This makes tradable sectors, notably agriculture and manufacturing, less competitive in world markets.

If methane hydrate allows much of the world to switch from oil to gas, the conversion would undermine governments that depend on oil revenues, especially petro-autocracies like Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. A gush of petroleum revenues can actually weaken oil-rich economies by crowding out other business.

Wireless Home Routers Are Insecure

Wireless routers are
insecure. But the vid
shows how to make
them less so.

Descended from Cannibals

Jamestown was founded in 1607 by English colonists. The "starving time" was a period two years later in which 80% of the colonists died. Besieged by Powhatan Indians in their wooden fort, the settlers had been joined by new colonists whose main supply ship had disappeared in a storm, leaving them without food. Naturally, they resorted to cannibalism.

Evernote

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.

Viva la República Dominicana

After many battles and much bloodshed, the Dominican Republic was born on February 27, 1844, claiming independence from Haiti with a declaration at the Puerta del Conde.

To get an idea of the current economic, social and political climate in DR, follow any or all of the preceding links.

And to appreciate the awe-inspiring beauty of this nation, view the video below:

Be My Valentine

Valentine's Day is only possible because of free markets. Prior to the rise of capitalism in the 1700s and 1800s, only wealthy individuals were capable of buying gifts or spending leisure time with their significant others. Today, the average citizen can accumulate enough savings to buy a gift or engage in leisure activities on Valentine's Day.

Google's Driverless Cars

Google's driverless car technology has the very real potential to transform the world. Google’s claims for the car, as described by its lead developer, are:

-reduce traffic accidents by 90%
-reduce wasted commute time and energy by 90%
-reduce the number of cars by 90%

And if realized, this will save trillions of dollars of time, effort and resources over time, as the table at left indicates.

Poop Therapy

C. difficile, a dangerous bacteria that antibiotics often cannot control, is a global problem. In U.S. hospitals alone, more than 300,000 patients contract C. difficile each year, and researchers estimate that the total number of cases in the U.S. may be three million. Treatment costs exceed $1 billion a year.

But recently, fecal infusion therapy, transplanting feces from a healthy person into the gut of one who is sick, has been used effectively to cure this intractable gut ailment.

Similar approaches have been used in the past on horses and cows, and ancient Chinese medicine texts even mention giving "yellow soup" orally to human patients to cure diarrhea, which doesn't really make you want to grab a phone and order Chinese food :)

Bikini

Archaeologists have discovered Minoan wall paintings from 1600 B.C. and Roman mosaics from 300 A.D. that depict the bikini; however,the advent of the modern bikini dates to 1946 when a skimpy two-piece swimsuit was designed by Louis Reard.

He marketed the product as “the world’s smallest bathing suit" and named it for the Bikini Atoll, a string of small islands in the Pacific Ocean, which had served as a nuclear test-site.

Today, the bikini is the most popular female beachwear with annual sales in excess of 800 million dollars.

Merry X-mas

To all my fellow economics enthusiasts as well as anyone else who stumbles upon this message:

I wish you health and happiness in this and every other season of the year.