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The Electronic-Medical-Records Email(s) of the Day, No. 2
For background on the EMR saga, see this original article and previous installments one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. Today, let's talk technical and business specifics of electronic-record...
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How We Misunderstand 'Innovation'
1. How we misunderstand innovation... a meditation. "But there is another form of ignorance which seems to be universal: the inability to understand the concept and role of innovation. The way this is...
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Wall Street Wants to Lend You Money to Fight Climate Change
The latest series of reports from the United Nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in stark terms the catastrophic consequences of the world’s governments’ decades-long foot-dragging...
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Do You Walk Enough?
Walking is good for you. The American Heart Association says "the simplest, positive change you can make to effectively improve your heart health is to start walking." For starters, they suggest...
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I Hate the Song-as-Flowchart Meme, and Here's Why You Should, Too
What a great song "Hey, Jude" is, especially the soulful Wilson Pickett version. It's about love and letting people in and it's perfect like all the great Beatles songs. There's almost nothing one...
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The Song-as-Flowchart: It's Not Only Great, It's Part of the Tradition
I took ill last night, so I woke up this morning groggy and slower-moving than usual. I lurched through my apartment, ate some matzah, and eventually settled myself upon the porcelain throne while I...
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If the Robots Kill Us, It's Because It's Their Job
In the movie Transcendence, which opens in theaters on Friday, a sentient computer program embarks on a relentless quest for power, nearly destroying humanity in the process. The film is science...
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A Report With Slightly Encouraging Environmental Implications
In the current issue, I have a brief story based on an interview with Steven Chu and Yi Cui, now both of Stanford, about advances in the seemingly boring but actually exciting world of battery...
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People Don't Like Google Glass Because It Makes Them Seem Weak
“Wait, I just had my first Glass sighting,” a friend whispered to me as we left Dolores Park last summer. “I just can’t. These people. They look so stupid.” Personally, I am blind—and was more...
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Who Will Watch You Fall? A Radar Detection Program for the Elderly
"I've fallen, and I can't get up," Mrs. Fletcher, an elderly woman alone in a blue smock, shouts from her bathroom floor. By some fortune, Fletcher is wearing a Life Call remote control device. Rattled...
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Our Diminished Utopianism
1. Astra Taylor's new book on what happened to the Internet, The People's Platform, looks really good. "I was struck by how ours is a diminished utopianism. It wasn’t that we would use these machines...
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How China Will Dominate the U.S. Electric-Bus Market
Next Monday, a battery-powered, 40-foot bus is set to roll off the assembly line in a former recreational vehicle factory in Lancaster, California, a blue-collar desert community north of Los Angeles,...
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A Majority of Americans Still Aren't Sure About the Big Bang
A majority of Americans don't believe in even the most fundamental discovery of 20th century physics, which 99.9 percent of members of the National Academies of Sciences do: that our universe began...
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The Best (and Worst) NBA Teams at Facebook
The NBA playoffs have begun. The emotions of millions are at stake every night. But NBA franchises are also businesses, and those businesses depend on fans buying into the team, both literally and...
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Booksellers Say They Bought Shakespeare's Personal Dictionary on eBay
Scholars say that William Shakespeare used as many as 30,000 different words in his plays and poetry. They further estimate that he knew about a quarter of all the words circulating in English during...
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The Inevitable Connection Between Artificial Intelligence and Surveillance
1. Surveillance by artificial intelligence... how else did we think law enforcement would process all that video footage? "Artificial intelligence is already in use across surveillance networks around...
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The 12 Spammiest Countries (We're #1—And It's Not Even Close)
Americans like to associate their spam with other countries. They joke about Chinese spammers or Nigerians or Russians. It's a time-honored nativist tradition. But, according to the new quarterly...
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How Google is Helping Warren Buffett Go Green
Google today made its biggest renewable energy purchase yet, agreeing to buy 407 megawatts of carbon-free electricity to be generated by a massive wind project under construction by Warren Buffett’s...
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What the Shift to Mobile Means for Blind News Consumers
If a website is designed haphazardly, it doesn’t only look out of control. The user experience can be just as messy for someone who can’t see. "News apps are just completely frustrating," said...
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Is the Tablet Market Growing or Shrinking?
1. What's up with tablets these days? Apple's earnings report today will tell us a little something: how many iPads they've sold and whether that number is growing or shrinking. "In fact, nearly half...
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