Sunspots 904

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to others*:

Computing: Gizmodo reports that Google has a tool that helps you keep your identity from prying eyes.

Environment: Gizmodo reports that leasing off-shore areas to wind power devices gives us more energy than leasing the same areas to oil and gas extraction, and such leasing also yields more taxes.

FiveThirtyEight on the Waffle House storm index -- it's real.

Health: Gizmodo reports on a large study that indicates that coffee (including decaf) is good for you.

Politics: (or something) NPR explains gaslighting,

Science: Gizmodo reports on a company that is using taxpayer dollars to attempt to bring mammoths, tasmanian tigers, and maybe the dodo back from extinction. There are lots of questions about such a project!

Gizmodo tells us that there is an ongoing debate about whether are frozen lakes on Mars.

The Scientist, and other outlets, reports that Svante Pääbo has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the DNA of early humanoids.

Sports:

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

An article in the current Atlantic has the same title as this post.

The author muses about that question, and his musings deserve to be widely read. He suspects, for one thing, that using Google is actually changing the way we think.

The article says that the founders of Google are trying to supplement the human brain with a search engine that is artificially intelligent, that gets us the information we want as quickly as, well, Googling someone, only better that how that works today -- it should, they think, get us exactly what we want. But would that be a good thing? Maybe, maybe not. Contemplation, reflection, messing around with stuff we weren't planning to think about, seem to be at the bottom of a lot of important discoveries.

Well worth reading, and thinking about.