I've just read two blog posts on creating written content programatically. The first was the article How I automated my writing career by Robbie Allen. This article gives a brief description of how the author's company generates web-site content automatically using the quantitative analysis of data.
Rage against the machine
NPR has a story about How Technology Is Eliminating Higher-Skill Jobs. It features IBM's Watson System, that can beat the world's best human Jeopardy competitors. This technology is currently being used to automate the fields of law and medicine, so a lot of very technical jobs will disappear from some quite high-paying and respected professions.
GDP per Square Kilometre
Over at EconBrowser, James talks about Geography and Income. He talks about the question of how much economic activity is dependent on geographic location. When you look at a map of GDP density - GDP per square kilometre - it's fairly obvious that the bulk of economic activity in densely populated areas which are near coastal regions.
Prison versus Princeton
I saw this great info-graphic on The Atlantic comparing the costs of prison in the US with Princeton University.
Peak Stuff
There was an interesting article in the Guardian yesterday about Peak Stuff: Why is our consumption falling?. The Office of National Statistics in the UK publishes statistics about how much stuff is used - the sheer weight of the materials we consume. Currently the UK consumes the equivalent of 30 tonnes for each individual in the country!
Not a programmer!
I read the post "Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice" on the weekend. It is mostly aimed at permanent employees at companies, although I thought there were some useful takeaways for contractors as well.
Below is my summary of the points that resonated with me:
Global Wealth
Interesting post here summarising Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Report. Basically to be in the top 1% of the global wealthy, you need to have $712,000 USD in net assets. To be in the top 10%, you need to have over $82,000 in net assets.
One percent of 7 billion is 70 million. So basically there are 70 million people in the world with $712,000 USD or more in net assets.
[EDIT] Actually, having just read the report, the results are expressed in terms of the global population of adults, 4.5 billion in 2011.
Cool hand Luke
There's an interesting article over at Stanford Magazine about a new technique for reducing muscle fatigue in athletes. Apparently by rapidly cooling an athlete's hand, the athlete can train much harder as the muscles don't get as tired during repetitive exercise.
Micro-boxing for productivity
Time-boxing is an idea that I heard about a number of years ago. It's only been fairly recently that I have tried to incorporate it as a regular part of my daily workflow. The general idea behind time-boxing is that you concentrate on working for a set periods of time through-out the day. I adjust the period of time to how motivated I feel. When I feel really motivated I work in blocks of 25 minutes. When I am just getting started on the day I work in blocks of 10-15 minutes.
Before I die. Cool project
Candy Chang has created a fantastic project called "Before I Die". She took a derelict building and painted a wall with blackboard paint. There are spaces where people can write down one thing they want to do before they die. Very cool.