trompe l'oeil robot

A humanoid robot, Aiko (愛子), dressed in kimono and cheerfully welcoming shoppers in honorific Japanese in front of Mitsukoshi department store(三越百貨) in Tokyo.  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-28/japan-unleashes-a-robot-revolution

Last old-school TV anchor retired

Just finished watching the last episode of CBS "Face the Nation" on every Sunday morning. For journalism, I only prefer watching the old-school TV anchors, starting from Walter Cronkite when I came to this country to Bob Schieffer today.

No more serendipity

Never until this morning did I learn that John Nash, the "beautiful mind" Nobel Prize laureate, was a regular customer in this Subway eatery in West Windsor NJ on every Wednesday at 2pm in this small and serene mall that I constantly patronize in the last 15 years. It is impossible to have serendipity any more. RIP  

crowd-sourcing medical advice

Bereft of hope when your medical problem could not be diagnosed by your doctors for years? The collective wits from Crowdmed, like kickstarter for financial crowd-sourcing, may trump over your doctor's credentials. Sound like too good to be true; however, some patients got their problems solved by Crowdmed that their doctors could not.   http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21651765-many-hands-make-diagnosis-work-crowd-will-see-you-now

magnet for young rocket scientists

Read an article on the airplane about how Elon Musk fulfilled his dream of space exploration. After being spurned by Russians, Elon Musk was determined to build the first-ever spaceship by a commercial company without any government support, a mission-impossible undertaking viewed by many veterans in the space field. To my surprise, during 2008, he went through the wringer that he might cede ownership of Tesla since he even could not afford to pay the employees' salaries for one more day. His perseverance made him ride the adversity out in 2008. Now, both SpaceX and Tesla are extremely profitable. Elon Musk might be the only Silicon Valley whiz-kid that dares to challenge the big incumbents such as Boeing, Martin-Lockheed, GM and Ford.  http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-elon-musk-spacex/

white-collar workers in the dole queue by AI

One day your smartphone can be an articulate translator (like future Skype), a competent diagnostician (like future Watson Health), a well-versed writer (like future Narrative Science) and a stock analyst (like future Kensho), When that day comes, don't worry that machine may take over the world, worry about the prospect that you, as a high-paid white-collar worker, may be in the dole queue.    http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21650526-artificial-intelligence-scares-peopleexcessively-so-rise-machines  

caste system in nail salons

Rampant exploitation in almost all the nail salons in NYC as in the headline of today's NY Times. This article has 4 language versions including Chinese. Manicurists in these sweatshops have caste system with Koreans on the top tier, Chinese on the 2nd rung and all others on the bottom tier. Korean owners drive Mercedes and live in multi-million mansions while their employees earn $3 an hour (or earn nothing in the first few weeks and are required to pay owners $100-$200 for training).    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/nyregion/at-nail-salons-in-nyc-manicurists-are-underpaid-and-unprotected.html

lousy performance, astronomical pay

The balance between pay and performance in Wall Street is totally out of kilter. In 2014, the S&P 500 index gained 13.6% while average gain of hedge funds was only 3%, 6th straight year below broad stock bench index. However, the top 5 earners in hedge funds still had astronomical incomes, ranging from $900M to $1300M in 2014.    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/business/dealbook/top-25-hedge-fund-managers-took-bad-14-all-the-way-to-the-bank.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0  

more IVF babies in the future

Interesting article in TIME about increasing the success rate of IVF ( in vitro fertilization, 試管嬰兒). By injecting the mitochondria (線粒體, energy-producing organelle) from the mom's own ovary, it can rejuvenate an aging woman's eggs and increase IVF rate substantially. This approach is so new that US FDA still has not approved it.  http://time.com/3849964/the-incredible-surprising-controversial-new-way-to-make-a-baby/?pcd=hp-magmod

adaptive learning

個人化教育在美國是khan Academy首居其功，在台灣當然就是均一了。 AltSchool則是將個人化教育精緻化, 全攬個人化教育的前段跟後段。 前段包括在教室裝設中多感測器， 即時偵測學生在學習時候臉部表情的變化，人際關係的互動，上課的專心程度。 後段則包括分析每一個學生的數據，老師教學過程的半自動化，以及建議如何提高每一個學生的學習效率。 這個工程太浩大，而且非常貴，所以大概只能嘉惠於政經地位不錯的家庭(雖然這個市場仍然是非常大)。 不過紐約市在2009年開辦的School of One(SO1), 至今已有15個學校參加, 比較能夠嘉惠於政經地位不高的家庭. SO1的個人化教育結果很不錯，在這個教育系統下的學生， 平均數學一年的學習效果，相當於全國平均的1.2年(如附圖)。 據估計在美國的高中學生，到2019年幾乎有一半會接受線上教育。 也許就像是哈佛的教授 Clayton Christensen 所預測的，以後的學校只是訓練德體群的場所，而學習就大部份交給Internet了.    

fatty coffee

Coffee with butter and triglyceride oil is healthy and can make you invincible? This so-called Bulletproof Coffee is a typical fad diet and many people are actually spreading the gospel of this fatty coffee. Though BusinessWeek has other balanced report in this article but it almost looks like a canard.   http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-04-21/buttered-coffee-could-make-you-invincible-and-this-man-very-rich