I was awakened this morning by my five-year old informing me, “Daddy, I can’t eat your soul. My teeth aren’t long enough or sharp enough, yet. How reassuring. That inspired a very quick and badly drawn vampire comic.
Category: Follies of the Human Condition
Science for The People: Environmental Debt
This week, Science for The People is looking at how worldwide environmental challenges interact with our increasingly global economy. They speak to Amy Larkin, founder of Nature Means Business, about her book “Environmental Debt: The Hidden Costs of a Changing Global Economy.” Journalist Ken Silverstein joins them to explain the way climate change is dividing the insurance and energy industries. And they’ll talk to Arjen Hoekstra, professor of Water Management at the University of Twente, about the effects of water scarcity on business.
More Bad News for Patent Trolls
The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled several software patents invalid because the patents did not cover a detailed process, but an abstract idea. This could place a number of dubious patents in software, technology, and science at risk of being invalidated in the future, too.
It may set a very important precedent for other legal cases involving lawsuits involving “patent trolls”. Currently, the most well-known of these actions has been efforts by Personal Audio to extort money from podcasters by threatening lawsuits based on supposed infringement of patents Personal Audio claims cover podcasting.
A key element of patent trolling is the inherent vagueness of the patent, which allows the concept of infringement to be drawn as widely as possible. The vague patent interpretation that makes patent trolling possible makes them vulnerable to being viewed as too broad, too abstract, or too vague by the courts and the US Patent Office. Indeed, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has reported success with getting the US Patent Office to narrow or invalidate overbroad patents.
This ruling may add another arrow to the quiver of those fighting the abuse of patents to stifle innovation*.
Hat tip to Giles Newton
*And your ability to listen to the WTF Podcast.
Man Kicks Ball
Thanks to science, a paraplegic man stood up in an exoskeleton controlled by his mind and made the opening kick of the 2014 World Cup.
Alan Boyle has an excellent summary of the event, research, and debate about the resources invested in this event for NBC News.
Breaking News: Kids Distract Easily
Those of us in online environments are familiar with the concept of attention allocation or attention as currency. A new research paper in Psychological Science argues that off-topic wall decorations in the classrooms of young students distract from the learning.
I’m not a psychology researcher. So, I can’t and won’t comment on the merits of the work as it relates to the body of related research. From reports, the study does use a small sample size (24 students in one class) and the same students in both conditions. So, don’t start yelling at your kid’s kindergarten teacher based on this study alone.
As the parent of a kindergartener and a recently graduated kindergartener, I was a bit surprised to discover that there was debate about the decoration of classroom grounds on its educational merit. Here, competition for kindergarten students is pretty fierce. At the same time, we parents are pretty irrational consumers of education as a product.
Walls covered in bright colors and cute art by little kids? That makes a classroom look fun, inviting, and warm. It distracts us too; and, before you know it, we are signing applications and deposit checks.
The Finch and Pea 