Start with an obvious example. Let’s say a company claims to have a team with an uncanny ability to predict the stock market. You hear this advertisement: “Our team has a 100% success rate in predicting one day movements in the Dow. Pay $10,000 and this team will tell you their prediction for tomorrow.”
Thirty years ago, it seemed like world-changing inventions that were yet to be discovered would require millions of dollars and a super atom collider or an electron microscope.
But in the last thirty years, we’ve seen unprecedented access to discovery, and it’s getting more so by the minute.
“I don’t think anyone makes a profit on room service because of its labor costs,” says a consultant to the hotel business (source). (Really? Even with the high prices, built in gratuity and delivery charge, and tip?)
You’d think that longer passwords were stronger than shorter ones. Not necessarily. Hackers know that people have to remember their passwords, which means that long ones are often easily remembered sentences or phrases. When a password breaking program uses a “dictionary attack”, where it makes assumptions that a password contains real words, it cuts back on their processing time by thousands, even millions.
It’s been a known fact of human nature for centuries – rumor travels faster than fact. George Washington wrote, “Serious misfortunes, originating in misrepresentation, frequently flow and spread before they can be dissipated by truth.” Fast rumors arriving before slow truth have created problems for major corporations that cost millions, and for individuals that cost embarrassment.
Doctors in Michigan saved a baby’s life by CT scanning the passage from the back of her throat to the top of her lungs, and then making a 3D printer replica of it with cartilage-like material as “toner”. The baby had a rare respiratory condition that caused her airways to collapse called tracheobronchomalacia.
How could a disease so dreadful, humiliating, and demoralizing, not be given the same cultural engagement as other diseases? Embracing Alzheimer’s could bring more compassion, more support, more insurance coverage, more research funding, and more understanding. It could make the nearly shattered lives of Alzheimer’s victims and their families a tiny bit easier.
Start with an obvious example. Let’s say a company claims to have a team with an uncanny ability to predict the stock market. You hear this advertisement: “Our team has a 100% success rate in predicting one day movements in the Dow. Pay $10,000 and this team will tell you their prediction for tomorrow.”
Portland held its First Friday Art Walk again last week, and I camped out at Constellation Gallery on Congress Street.
“I don’t think anyone makes a profit on room service because of its labor costs,” says a consultant to the hotel business (
You’d think that longer passwords were stronger than shorter ones. Not necessarily. Hackers know that people have to remember their passwords, which means that long ones are often easily remembered sentences or phrases. When a password breaking program uses a “dictionary attack”, where it makes assumptions that a password contains real words, it cuts back on their processing time by thousands, even millions.
It’s been a known fact of human nature for centuries – rumor travels faster than fact. George Washington wrote, “Serious misfortunes, originating in misrepresentation, frequently flow and spread before they can be dissipated by truth.” Fast rumors arriving before slow truth have created problems for major corporations that cost millions, and for individuals that cost embarrassment.
Bad spellers like myself love spell check. I have been using it for so long, I get nervous every time I step up to a whiteboard.
How could a disease so dreadful, humiliating, and demoralizing, not be given the same cultural engagement as other diseases? Embracing Alzheimer’s could bring more compassion, more support, more insurance coverage, more research funding, and more understanding. It could make the nearly shattered lives of Alzheimer’s victims and their families a tiny bit easier.