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Category: Science Snippets

  • Singularity Signposts – Just ask Watson

    George Rebane IBM’s Watson will now take your calls.  The progeny of Watson of Jeopardy fame is being introduced into all kinds of new decision support applications from medicine to finance.  One of the new areas for Watson technology is to ‘man’ call centers – you know, those telephone sweat shops where the speaker at…

  • ‘In Defense of Carbon Dioxide’ (updated 14apr13)

    George Rebane That is the title of a short but extremely important column by Professors Harrison Schmitt and William Happer that appeared in the 9may13 WSJ.  Readers know that I am a longtime skeptic of the ongoing climate change hysteria (especially the AGW part), and for technical reasons believe that results from data diddling and…

  • Frequentists vs Bayesians

    George Rebane One would think that the excellent summary of the decades old debate between the two schools of probabilists would be settled by the following cartoon, but I won’t hold my breath – old ‘science’ dies hard.  (H/T to correspondent)  For more on Bayesian analysis and decision making, search RR with ‘Bayes’. Footnote: This…

  • Scattershots and Asteroids

    George Rebane In my scratch file for blog topics, items on the flood of government lies are overflowing.  I was going to do an update post on the most egregious ones.  There are so many ––    The new $9 minimum wage is going to boost the economy.  If so, why stop at $9?  Instead it…

  • New Encryption App Promises Big Changes and Trouble

    George Rebane A new iPhone and iPad encryption app will come on the market this Friday 8 February that is sure to get the feds’ undies in a bundle.  It was developed by a hot new cryptography start-up called Silent Circle,  and has already been successfully tested in a number of situations worldwide.  Readers will,…

  • Ruminations – 1feb13

    George Rebane Global blarney.  The IPCC has quietly admitted that its four prime climate change computer models have been overestimating the world’s temperature rises (here and here).  Of course none of these kinds of reports of dubious ‘science’ make any impact on the progressives’ who claim to be champions of science and higher learning.  Their…

  • Numbers get a (confused) boost

    George Rebane The importance and magnitude of EVERY social problem lies in its numbers.  If you don’t understand the numbers and how they relate, all you can do is emote about the problem. RR has argued from the start that applying the tools of the systems sciences is critical to the solutions of all social…

  • CES2013

    George Rebane The long running Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is again in full swing showing off all kinds of new technical innovations, gizmos, and ongoing projects.  Absent again are the big guys like Microsoft, Apple, etc, but you can be sure that they have sent teams of attendees to see what's worth copying…

  • Today’s AI in tomorrow’s medicine

    George Rebane Wired magazine has a very lame article on what should be an exciting report – the advent and functionality of clinical AI systems that are entering the healthcare service.  ‘Paging Dr. Watson: Artificial Intelligence As a Prescription for Health Care’ authored by Brandon Keim paints an inconclusive ‘on the one hand, … but…

  • National Issues – connecting the factors that affect us (Addended)

    George Rebane When thinking about the upcoming election in the context of national issues and all that is going on which affects America, things get complicated pretty quickly.  An established tool for representing, sorting out, and communicating such factors and their interaction is called the Influence Factors Diagram (IFD).  An IFD is usually involved in…

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