The Maggie's Farm editor ate my homework. It does that once out of every five tries or so. It keeps me guessing in the most piquant fashion. The Maggie's Farm computer console is hooked up by a leather strop to the hub of Bird Dog's Farmall, and sometimes, if the humidity is high, the belt slips. Oh well. You'll have to skip my scintillating insights for today, and just read the boring old newspapers:
Why Algorithms Suck and Analog Computers are the Future
But aren’t there any supercomputers that don’t require this much energy to run? Indeed there are: The human brain is a great example – its processing power is estimated at about 38 petaflops, about two-fifths of that of TaihuLight. But all it needs to operate is about 20 watts of energy. Watts, not megawatts! And yet it performs tasks that – at least up until now – no machine has ever been able to execute.
Your brain is 2/5ths as powerful as the most powerful computer ever built. It's not your brain's fault you use it to watch pro wrestling and worry about vaccines and autism. You could be doing something useful with it.
The European Court of Justice’s Invitation to Fraud
This is an instance not of judicial activism, but of judicial populism. It is, albeit in clotted legal language, a pandering to popular, or at least very common, notions of causation, such that where two notable events take place in close temporal proximity, it stands to reason that the first must have caused the second. We are not far from the Azande belief that no death is natural, and each death is caused by malign witchcraft.
Theodore Dalrymple is one of maybe five intelligent persons currently writing for the internet.
Satellites reveal melting of rocks under volcanic zone, deep in Earth's mantle
The GPS measurements in the Taupo volcanic zone reveal that it is widening east-west at a rate of 6-15 millimetres per year - in other words, the region, overall, is expanding, as we anticipated from our previous geological understanding. But it was surprising to discover that, at least for the past 15 years, a roughly 70-kilometre stretch is undergoing strong horizontal contraction and is also rapidly subsiding, quite the opposite of what one might anticipate.
Real scientists observe things and ask questions. Fake scientists make pronouncements and ask for edicts. This is real science.
How Brian Eno managed to piss in Marcel Duchamp’s famous urinal, 1990
In the interview Eno confesses that “Roxy Music was an aberration in my life” and also intriguingly asserts that he has never owned a copy of the Velvet Underground’s third album because he does not want to spoil it by overplaying it. But the most startling portion of the interview comes towards the end, when he describes an illicit art adventure he experienced three years earlier, in 1990, when he decided to pee in Marcel Duchamp’s famous “ready-made” from 1917, a urinal with the title “Fountain” bestowed upon it.
I'd have left an upper decker.
The Story Behind the World’s Most Famous Desktop Background
So he stopped his car, pulled out his medium-format camera, and took a few photos using color Fujifilm. Those brilliant greens and pure blues were totally unedited when O’Rear uploaded them to Corbis, a stock photo and image licensing site founded by Bill Gates. A few years later, he got a call from Microsoft asking to use his shot of Sonoma County as the default background for its newest operating system.
How a grape blight resulted in the most famous photograph of all time.
So Long, Hamburger Helper: America’s Venerable Food Brands Are Struggling
High-end consumers are shifting toward fresher items with fewer processed ingredients while cost-conscious shoppers are buying inexpensive store brands. The makers of staples including Chef Boyardee canned pasta and Hamburger Helper meal kits failed to spot the threat and didn’t innovate in time.
Got that? Hamburger Helper is too hoity toity for poor people now.
'Welcome to hell': G20 protesters start fires after riot police hit them with water cannons and pepper sprays in clashes ahead of Hamburg summit
Dramatic photos showed helmeted officers battling to keep order after 100,000 protesters poured into the city for their 'Welcome To Hell' protest against the meeting of world leaders. Police say they repeatedly asked a group of demonstrators to remove their masks and hoods but instead officers were hit with bottles and bricks - breaking the window of a riot van.
It's agitprop. Posing. The police pretend to police while the rioters wreck stuff. The world has raised an entire generation of Wild Ones: What are you protesting? What have you got?
US judge in Hawaii leaves Trump's travel ban rules in place
The Hawaii Attorney General's Office noted after the ruling that the district court did not address the substance of either party's arguments and instead focused on the procedural question about which court is the appropriate forum to decide the issue.
The nonsensical rulings are over. Not because the judges have gotten religion. They just know they'll be overturned and they'll look like fools. To paraphrase Jennifer Cavalleri, Gorsuch means never having to say you're sorry.
China just built a 250-acre solar farm shaped like a giant panda
Called the Panda Power Plant, it will be able to produce 3.2 billion kilowatt-hours of solar energy in 25 years, according to the company. That will eliminate approximately million tons of coal that would have been used to produce electricity, reducing carbon emissions by 2.74 million tons.
Goofy projects deserve a goofy design, I guess. If arithmetic isn't your strong suit, coal costs maybe $40 a ton. It cost 55 million dollars to build a solar array to avoid buying 40 million dollars-worth of coal.
Oral sex spreading unstoppable bacteria
She said: "When you use antibiotics to treat infections like a normal sore throat, this mixes with the Neisseria species in your throat and this results in resistance." Thrusting gonorrhoea bacteria into this environment through oral sex can lead to super-gonorrhoea.
Super Gonorrhoea? They'll probably make him into a Marvel superhero in the next edition.
76-year-old woman takes mobility scooter down I-75 after trip to Walmart
After making contact with the woman, Devine loaded the scooter in his patrol car and gave her a ride home. Vehicles such as Amigos cannot operate on the expressway safely since they are unable to maintain the minimum speed limit of 45 mph. Most mobility scooters cannot travel faster than 5 miles per hour.
It was kind to help her out instead of citing her.
Teens arrested in Massachusetts for allegedly having sex on beach while crowd watched, cheered on
The four teenagers “will not be arraigned for at least six months,” Judge Robert Welsh III said on Wednesday. He agreed to delay the arraignments while the four attend a program for first-time offenders.
First-time offenders? What does that mean? They were all virgins? There's a program? Back in my day my friends just slapped me on the back and said attaboy.
Have a great Friday, everyone!
Tracked: Jul 09, 09:03