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