Quote of the Day

The first time that a driverless vehicle swerves to avoid a shopping cart and hits a stroller, someone’s going to write, ‘robot car kills baby to save groceries. It’s those kinds of reasons you want to make sure this stuff is fully tested.

- Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington who co-founded the Legal Aspects of Autonomous Driving center at Stanford. 

How Google Is Fighting Sex Trafficking With Big Data

Palantir was founded by a number of PayPal alumni and a group of computer scientists from Stanford. The company’s technology grew from data analytic and visualization systems invented while at PayPal to cite fraud. But after 9/11 the founders received funding from the CIA's venture arm In-Q-Tel and decided to apply their technology to the areas of counterterrorism and intelligence.

What Palantir is allowing The Global Human Trafficking Hotline Network to do is to make all the data it gathers useful. And in the case of human trafficking, the data the hotline collects becomes useful in two distinct ways: the first for immediate response, and the second for pattern recognition.

The immediate response comes when a sex trafficking victim or a forced laborer manages to call or send a text into an operator at the hotline.

“When you’re talking about someone who is taking a big leap of faith to call a hotline number from a sticker on a bathroom and say, ‘My pimp’s asleep; my pimp’s passed out,’ and have someone there in seven minutes to help that person rather than 17 minutes--that window of opportunity can close very rapidly, and so each moment you can hasten that process is very, very valuable,” says Jason Payne, philanthropy engineer at Palantir. “The core workflow that we’re providing is helping the call specialist comprehend their toolkit of options better and faster.”

In the case of immediate response like this, Palantir’s technology lets a call center operator pull up a Java or HTML 5 web app that maps where the victim is calling from. The operator can then do a radius search around that area to find what partnerships they have with NGOs or law enforcement agencies and use a histogram to look at the data they have about each of those to find the best match and then facilitate a linkup.

In addition to powerful search and mapping tools, data is automatically pushed to the hotline operator instead of having to manually pull it. For example, if a caller is describing the service station on the side of the road she is calling from, data of possible matches are pushed onto the operator’s screen as she inputs more information from the caller. In this way, Palantir’s technology allows hotline specialists to achieve rapid spatial context in two minutes instead of the five or seven minutes it would take if they had to access three or four different databases to find that information.

All of these search questions, whether it be a statistical search, a keyword search, a geographic search, can be saved and run in the background automatically,” Payne says. “When a hotline analysts logs in in the morning they see new information that matches those people. Using that easier capability to comprehend the data, they’re able to look at what trafficking networks are in play to better understand where networks are active and where they’re not.”

And it’s the power of using big data to understand trafficking networks where the second part of Palantir’s technology comes in: the ability to discern patterns in human trafficking so real-world resources such as law enforcement initiatives, government legislation, and NGO field work can be better allocated to fight it.

- More Here from Michael Grothaus and he is (rightly) very angry, so HELP until this hell on earth is eradicated:

And if you’re reading this--or if you ever have the soul-crushing yet eye-opening experience of talking to a trafficking victim--and that makes you realize that hell does exist on earth, and it makes you angry, but at the same time makes you feel helpless, know that you don’t need to be a legislator, or a software engineer, or in law enforcement to make a difference in the fight against slavery.

Increased awareness matters. And awareness isn’t going to increase about the slave trade unless you tell people; unless you take action. Show people this article. Tweet it. Share it on Facebook. Visit Polaris’s, LaStrada’s, and Liberty Asia’s websites. Check out the sidebars in this article to find out more ways you can help.

But above all, get angry, stay angry, and tell people about slavery. You don’t need to have a $3 million grant to make a difference. You don’t need big databases or powerful analytic tools. All the technology you need to spread this information is in your hands, as you read this, right now. So do it.

What I've Been Reading

Feynman by Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick. I don't remember the last time I read any comics, but I think millions will understand and inspired by science if more science books were written like this fascinating graphic biographic of Feynman - A must read!!

On how he quit drinking:
But one afternoon I found myself thinking in Rio: Yeah that's what I want. I'd love a drink right about now. 
It was a really strong feeling. 
Wait a minuet! But there was no social reason to drink, and the strong feeling scared me.
I get so much fun out of thinking that I don't wanna mess up the machine that makes life a kick. So I decided, right there, never to drink again. 

On his friendship with Jerry and how art helped him:
The idea as this, I'd been having this dopey arguments all my life about Art vs. Science. 
Feynman: We never get anywhere because you don't know a damn thing about science, and I don't know a damn thing about art. 
So on alternate Sundays I'll give you lessons in science and you give me lessons in art. 
Jerry: Sure, I'll teach you how to draw.
Feynman: Impossible
Jerry: Not impossible, of-course you'll have to work. 
Feynman - I was willing to work and I actually had a private reason for doing so. I wanted to communicate an emotion I had about the mathematical beauty of nature. This vast world, all run behind the scenes by same organization. 

Quote of the Day

And we are put on earth a little space
That we may learn to bear the beams of love

- William Blake in “The Little Black Boy,” found in Songs of Innocence and Experience

Breadwinning Wives & Nervous Husbands

Those men who spent their teenage years goofing off and their college years drinking beer shouldn’t be surprised that women who consistently received higher grades and continued further in school might now be earning more money as well. But the evidence suggests that while men tend to applaud their spouses when they help to bring home the bacon, husbands aren’t always as enthusiastic when women start bringing home the filet mignon. And it’s especially troubling that these old-fashioned social norms about gender identity appear to be adversely affecting family formation and stability.

What happens when a man marries a woman who has the education and skills to earn more than him? The couple can avoid violating the “man earns more” social norm if the woman works part time or leaves the labor force altogether. The authors found evidence of both choices. But what if the woman stays in the labor force and does earn more than her spouse? How does this affect the marriage? The findings here are striking. In such couples, surveys show, both wife and husband generally report being less happy about the marriage. Given these findings, it isn’t surprising that when a wife earns more than her husband, the risk of divorce rises, too.

- More here by Richard Thaler

If this is still not obvious, check out these two new books:

The End of Men: And the Rise of Women by Hanna Rosin

The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What It Means for American Schools by Thomas A. Diprete and Claudia Buchmann

The 24 Best Things Montaigne Ever Said

• A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.
• The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.
• There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.
• My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.
• Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.
• Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.
• One may be humble out of pride.
• The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.
• The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre.
• If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.
• If you don’t know how to die, don’t worry. Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don’t bother your head about it.
• It is a monstrous thing that I will say, but I will say it all the same: I find in many things more restraint and order in my morals than in my opinions, and my lust less depraved than my reason.
• Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.
• I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.
• I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
• If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not even think of themselves.
• I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
• I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.
• I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
• When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.
• Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.
• A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
• Ambition is not a vice of little people.
• Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.

- via here

Quote of the Day

We have white people problems in America. That’s what we have. White people problems. You know what that is? That’s where your life is amazing, so you just make up shit to be upset about. People in other countries have real problems. Like “Oh shit, they’re cutting all our heads off, today!” Things like that. Here, we make things up to be upset about. Like “How come I have to choose a language on the ATM. It’s bullshit. I shouldn’t have to do that. I’m American!

- Louis CK

How to Stay Out of Debt - Warren Buffett

Best financial future is your own ability and the capacity to use those abilities to the potential. Biggest thing for your financial self is yourself.

Wisdom Of The Week

In 2010, Dr. Nielsen and his colleagues found variants of certain genes that were much more common in Tibetans than in the Han, the major ethnic group in China, who have lived for thousands of years at lower altitudes. By a wide margin, the winner was a gene called EPAS1. People with different variants turned out to have different levels of hemoglobin, suggesting that the gene was important to adapting to life at high altitudes.

Recently, Dr. Nielsen and another group of colleagues published a study on people who live in the highlands of Ethiopia. They found no evidence that EPAS1 had evolved there as it did in Tibet. Instead, a different gene, BHLHE41, appeared to have experienced natural selection.

Two other teams of scientists have recently searched for high-altitude genes in Ethiopians, and neither put BHLHE41 on their list. It’s possible that Dr. Nielsen’s method is more sensitive than the others, but that remains to be proved. “It’s going to take a while to sort through the discrepancies in Ethiopia,” said Dr. Di Rienzo, a co-author of one of the other studies.

It will be intriguing to see that unfold. BHLHE41 and EPAS1 turn out to have something in common: they work together in a network of genes that lets us cope with low oxygen levels. Even at sea level, low oxygen can threaten our bodies from time to time. Exercise can strip it from our muscles, while inflammation can eliminate it from wounds. The oxygen-sensing pathway triggers defenses to protect our bodies from damage.

Dr. Nielsen’s study suggests that evolution has stumbled across a way to retool this pathway to help people live at high altitudes. But it turns out there’s more than one way to retool a pathway. Though evolution has some creative freedom, it seems to stick to a few themes.

- Carl Zimmer on Mountain Populations Offer Clues to Human Evolution and probably these incremental findings might help us one day survive in Mars and beyond.

Quote of the Day

After a stroll and breakfast alone, Darwin would begin a 90-minute work session around 8:00 a.m. He'd break to read mail with his wife and then return to his study around 10:30 a.m. for a second session. By noon or so, he'd have completed what he considered his workday, but the rest of his waking hours were no less regimented. He responded to letters, read and rested at regular intervals until bedtime, which arrived daily around 10:30 p.m. Thus his days went for forty years with few exceptions.

- Mason Currey in his book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work