Declining After Age 40

After age 40, people become more stupid.

To weave elaborate stories to seek asylum

NYT had a coverage how Chinese yarn elaborate but fictitious stories coached by lawyers how they were persecuted in China in order to seek asylum in the U.S. NYC has 3.1M immigrants, 37% of the total population of 8.2M and Chinese account for 12% of the immigrants, only slightly behind Dominicans. But the growth rate of Chinese immigrants in NYC is 34% in the last 10 years and will soon overtake Dominicans to become the largest ethnic group in NYC.
Lawyers teach clients how they should be persecuted in China

Best Max Ernst's painting by a con artist

Interesting story about a con artist, Beltracchi, in tonight's "60 Minutes". He could spend 3 days to finish a fake Max Ernst painting worth $5M and was even recognized by the top art connoisseur as the best Max Ernst's painting. 98% of the paintings under the detailed examining of Raman Spectroscopy are fake. Next time when you are mesmerized by the paintings in the museums, they are likely to be made by the talented con artists.

Winners take all

Recent acquisition of Whatsapp by FB was at a staggering price of $19B. For the 55 employees in Whatsapp, it is a whopping $345M value for each employee. This is another example of "winners-take-all" as described in Chap. 10 of the book "The Second Machine Age". With the combined juggernauts of FB and Whatsapp, probably only WeChat in China can be the relevant competitor in IM market.

Guide dogs may be out of works

Even guide dogs (導盲犬) may lose jobs due to technology advances. I usually thought vision-impaired patients have little hope. Not really. Video camera, artificial intelligence and powerful processor can restore vision-impaired function to some useful level as in the following two links (actual devices on the market)

Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System Artificial Retina

How OrCam works

IP court judge, a supremo

One recent article in IEEE Spectrum, "The Lowballing of Kodak Patent Portfolio", pointedly described how an IP court ruling can make $2.3B USD vanish in the air. Kodak imaging IPs were independently evaluated at $2.4B of which it was eventually settled to 4% while Nortel's wireless IPs were settled to 450% of its original evaluated value. All patent attorneys require either engineering or science degrees while judges do not. A reversal of patent ruling from a judge without any technical background may inevitably sway the company's future.  

unregulated E-Cig

Never heard electronic cigarette (E-Cig) until today. You can buy it from Amazon.com in U.S. or Taobao.com in China but not in Taiwan since E-Cig is regulated in Taiwan as medical device. Its sale in 2013 was only US$1.5B dwarfed by the $80B sale of traditional cigarettes. Since E-Cig has only nicotine and is supposed to be free from all other carcinogens, it is interesting to see how FDA will draft the rules to regulate E-Cig in the near future.  

More is less and less is more

2009 legislation of ObamaCare triggered a multibillion-dollar carrot and stick system of government incentives and penalties for EHR (electronic health records) system. Now, I am able to go online to see my health records. What it interests me is the business model of one of the EHR providers, Practice Fusion. From the recent issue of BusinessWeek, when Practice Fusion asked for $300/month from doctors for service, its business was just a flat line. Then, when it drops service charges to zero, its business soared by three times. "More is less and less is more" as in the aphorism of Lao Zi.

PM2.5 particulate in China and Taiwan

Recent Economist magazine has an article about China's pollution. I compared its 2012 data of PM2.5 particulates with cities in Taiwan in late December last year. Any PM2.5 number more than 10 ugram/m^3 is unhealthy. 北京 and 河南 are the worst. 台東, 恆春,青海, 西藏, 新疆 are all Xanadu.