Simon

"The United States is the fattest nation among 33 countries with advanced economies. The countries with the highest overweight and obesity rates after the USA are Mexico and Chile, says the report from the OECD. Countries with the fastest obesity growth rates: the United States, Australia and England, the report says." - Simon

GO USA! GO USA! WE'RE NUMBER ONE! - Amit Patel

"A circa 1908 ( possibly earlier) 35mm lens. Still functioning, mostly brass, and not nearly as much dust or fungus as one would think after sitting in a box for over a hundred years." - Simon

"all demographic groups—even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy—desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo" - Simon

It's possible that this is true for most countries, though. - Private Sanjeev

According to the report it seems that most American prefer the Swedish distribution of wealth. I wonder if the Swedes also do. - Simon

Dan Ariely and his co-author do confound economic mobility in the way they ask the survey though: "imagine that if you joined this nation, you would be randomly assigned to a place in the distribution, so you could end up anywhere in this distribution, from the very richest to the very poorest.” So some participants may feel that the country has little economic mobility and would want to hedge their bets by suggesting a more equal distribution. So I'm not sure how much to read into this report. Apparently they are working on another study to tease apart that issue. - Simon

"It is hard to imagine how someone could start an HDTV company in 2002 to compete with Sony, Samsung and Sharp.  And start it with less than $1M in total capital ($600,000 to be exact)!!  Can’t be done! William Wang did it.  In just 7 years Vizio became the second largest supplier of televisions in North America." - Simon

Just bought a 47in vizio myself. Interesting story. - vympelov

They are at the top of CNet's best rated TVs along with the other big providers. I laughed when I first saw one in the store. - no name

"I guess several things went through my mind when the plane blew up. One thing was my family. The second thing was that all my headaches were suddenly gone. I was still stuck with all these bad businesses, but I had a better attitude." - Private Sanjeev

Perhaps something like: "it is not possible for someone to consistently generate above-average publications about the strong efficient market hypothesis"? - Simon

Really good time lapse video of the San Francisco Bay Area. - Simon

"Looxcie is a ~$200 camera you plug into your ear, which then records everything you see, following your field of vision. Several hours are recorded, with new stuff overwriting the old... and if you saw anything interesting, you click its button and have the last 30 seconds saved" - Simon

That could pay for itself after one traffic accident. - Seth

"New sources tells us that Cuil was in the final stages of an acquisition as of last Wednesday, and everything was in place except the final signatures. Then the deal fell apart for some reason." - Simon

The Fermi Paradox - Simon

"Or rather, they’re building the software for the phone and working with a third party to actually build the hardware." - Simon

hehe http://maknakehidupann6.blogspot.com/2012... - Rizky Arif

Text to speech is getting pretty decent. I was just trying out a few different systems and came across this one. Some of the accents by NaturalReader are quite convincing at times. Try [I hope you clean your teeth thoroughly] with UK Lucy. She gets the British cadence just right. - Simon

(via Gizmodo) - Simon

wdyt? - ⓞnor

I never got what made them unique, besides the not-very-useful result preview images. - Andrew C (✔)

"French newspaper Le Figaro has reported that Stephane Richard, chief executive officer of France Telecom-Orange, has invited the heads of Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Vodafone to discuss the possible creation of a common platform for mobile devices. The talks, which are scheduled to take place October 8th in Paris, are motivated by a view that Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems have become a “Trojan horse” for these companies to establish their own relationships with mobile customers, reducing the significance of the operators in the value chain." - Simon

"the newspaper's editor-in chief, Osama Saraya defended the decision in an editorial today, saying the original photo had been published on the day talks began and the new version was only meant to illustrate Egypt's leading role in the peace process." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world... - Simon

"The researchers found that video game players develop a heightened sensitivity to what is going on around them, and this benefit doesn't just make them better at playing video games, but improves a wide variety of general skills that can help with everyday activities like multitasking, driving, reading small print, keeping track of friends in a crowd, and navigating around town." - Simon

Maybe I need to play more games. I just wish they weren't so boring. - Paul Buchheit

Excellent, a justification for my Starcraft 2 obsession. - Benjamin Lee

I notice that I have somewhat less situation awareness these days compared to when I would spend hours playing Quake. Hard to tell whether it's because of the lack of fps game playing, or simply old age. :) - Simon

"World's Fastest Shoelace Knot" - Simon

"If you need some help with the math, let me know, but that should be enough to get you started! Huh? No, I don't need to read your thesis, I can imagine roughly what it says." - Simon

That sounds exactly like Sheldon from "The Big Bang Theory" - Robert Felty

"The bias blind spot is the cognitive bias of failing to compensate for one's own cognitive biases. Pronin and her co-authors explained to subjects the better-than-average effect. According to the better-than-average bias, specifically, people are likely to see themselves as inaccurately "better than average" for possible positive traits and "less than average" for negative traits. When subsequently asked how biased they themselves were, subjects rated themselves as being much less subject to the biases described than the average person." - Simon

Ben Gomes in a comic strip! - Simon

"As the female wasp slides through the narrow passage in the fig her wings are ripped off (egg laying is a one-way mission) and while she is unsuccessful in laying her eggs, she successfully pollinates the female flower. The female flower then ripens into the fig that you can get at the supermarket, digesting the trapped wasp inside with specialized enzymes!" - Simon

Is it vegan to eat figs? - Simon

An autonomous towel folding robot, by a Berkeley professor who used to be in the same research group as me. - Simon

"This will not be an easy column to write. I am about to put down 1,200 words in support of a book that starts by attacking me and often returns to this sport. But it has persuaded me that I was wrong. [...] In Meat: A Benign Extravagance, Simon Fairlie pays handsome tribute to vegans for opening up the debate. He then subjects their case to the first treatment I've read that is both objective and forensic. His book is an abattoir for misleading claims and dodgy figures, on both sides of the argument." - Simon

Perhaps I never got homesick enough to actively look for it? - Simon

Where is this? Maybe I should just ask Gary :) - Private Sanjeev

It's in Draegers, Los Altos. We ended up buying some chocolate and plain hobnobs cookies, Heinz tomato soup and Branston pickle. It's a shame they were missing custard cream biscuits. - Simon

Employed at age 65-69: Spain: 0%, Germany 3%, UK 10%, USA 20% - Simon

"The term cargo cult science was first used by the physicist Richard Feynman during his commencement address at the California Institute of Technology, United States, in 1974, to negatively characterize research in the soft sciences (psychology and psychiatry in particular) - arguing that they have the semblance of being scientific, but are missing "a kind of scientific integrity". - Simon

His entertaining commencement speech: http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMAN... - Simon