His camp doesn’t need to turn their guy into someone you’d have a beer with. They just need to eliminate the bugs in the machine.

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Building a Better Mitt Romney-Bot

Florence and the Machine go straight to number one in the UK with the band’s second album Ceremonials, which sold more than 90,000 copies in its first week.

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Florence album takes number one

It’s a bright fall Sunday in rural Pennsylvania, and inside the Shekinah Fellowship Church, the Rev. Sam Childers — also known as the Machine Gun Preacher — rushes the stage in black, steel-toed boots. Childers, 49, grabs a headset and starts his sermon, a toothpick wedged between his teeth. He has a bushy salt-and-pepper walrus mustache and burly arms etched with faded jailhouse tattoos. Read full article > >

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A bad boy for Jesus: the Rev. Sam Childers found God, guns and movie fame

All the tools you need to pull the best shot at home every time Whether you’re a daily dripper or a post-dinner sipper, your preferred roast does play an important role in the espresso. But in the end the most important key to a great shot is the consistency. How do you maintain a perfect balance every time? The short answer is solid gear and attention to detail—good coffee is a science after all. I recently set out to source the top gear for making the perfect shot of espresso, soon realizing the daunting variety of machines, tampers and grinders on the market made so I turned to Chris Nachtrieb of Chris Coffee for help. Over the past 30 years, Nachtrieb has cultivated relationships with some of the industry’s best espresso machine producers and has become known for his extensive mechanical knowledge about how machines work. A huge proponent for improving espresso, Nachtrieb happily customizes machines to customer specifications. I was first drawn to the good looks of Quick Mill’s Vetrano machine, and after a few pulls was very pleased with the results. With further research, I realized in many high-end home espresso makers—the Vetrano included—a single boiler both heats the steam for milk and the water for espresso. These machines use heat exchange, meaning that inside the boiler 255

All the tools you need to pull the best shot at home every time Whether you’re a daily dripper or a post-dinner sipper, your preferred roast does play an important role in the espresso. But in the end the most important key to a great shot is the consistency. How do you maintain a perfect balance every time? The short answer is solid gear and attention to detail—good coffee is a science after all. I recently set out to source the top gear for making the perfect shot of espresso, soon realizing the daunting variety of machines, tampers and grinders on the market made so I turned to Chris Nachtrieb of Chris Coffee for help. Over the past 30 years, Nachtrieb has cultivated relationships with some of the industry’s best espresso machine producers and has become known for his extensive mechanical knowledge about how machines work. A huge proponent for improving espresso, Nachtrieb happily customizes machines to customer specifications. I was first drawn to the good looks of Quick Mill’s Vetrano machine, and after a few pulls was very pleased with the results. With further research, I realized in many high-end home espresso makers—the Vetrano included—a single boiler both heats the steam for milk and the water for espresso. These machines use heat exchange, meaning that inside the boiler 255

By Edward Goldstick A reader focuses on my observations: Submission to Watson by text isn’t really the advantage it might appear, or at least it’s a “fair advantage.” First, it’s essential to “see” the text for clues that aren’t available by hearing. For example, if an item includes “the ’20s” then the apostrophe is an important clue to the meaning. Or there might be quotes around words to signal titles, puns and wordplay. Humans receive these clues from seeing the written question. If Watson were forced to use speech-recognition, it would be at a clear disadvantage. So, text submission seems only fair. If Watson were required to play via voice recognition, then the written text should be removed from the game for everyone. But that’s not how the game is set up. While I agree that speech-recognition would be a burden for the machine, that is probably so for the human players as well; however, I had presumed the machine would be “seeing” the text optically rather than parsing it in text form directly (and none of this was explained clearly on NOVA ScienceNow or in the background clips during the show which were my only references…).  On the other hand, it is conceivable that the pattern/form recognition advantage offered by visualizing the entire text in an instant is, in that case, an advantage for the human contestants, so it might well be a wash… Second, I’ve read comments that the text transmission should be delayed. This also is wrong. If it were delayed until the host finished reading the text aloud, for instance, this ignores the human players’ ability to read and begin processing the item far more quickly than it’s spoken — so this would be an unfair delay. As it is, and should be, humans and Watson both get the complete text at the same moment. Sure, Watson is presumably analyzing the text in its entirety while the humans are still reading, but isn’t that part of the point?  Watson has advantages (in this case, speed) while humans have others and the challenge is how they match up. If in an all-human game it were somehow discovered that one player could read items nearly instantaneously while others typically needed 2 seconds, it would be ridiculous to suggest that the faster player be penalized. I’m not as curious as you about the idea of imposing on Watson a fixed half-second response delay. Let’s assume that a half-second is a fair/accurate measure of the time between the instant a player decides to buzz in, and the recording of his button-push (which it might not be, but let’s go with it). Can a human player reassess his decision in the time it takes to press the button, and stop? Certainly, there’s nothing preventing him. So then, how would Watson be offered the same ability to rescind the decision to answer, given another half-second of processing time? The notion of a ‘delay’ that I offered was only with regard to the latency in the button push, not in that leading to the “Aha!” reflex that triggers the process.  In fact, my sense was that all three contestants knew the answer to all the questions except those very few that none of them got very quickly [thanks Jim for making this obvious because I hadn't realized that I perceived it until I got your note...]… and in the end, I would have been interested to see if Ken and Brad had pushed their buttons just moments behind Watson…   Here’s what I’d be curious about: You surmise that Ken Jennings is adapting his strategy to risk quicker “buttons” and then using the time available for his answer to finish his analysis. He’d first assess that he’s strong in a category, and then assess his chances on a particular question from a quick impression of key words, and buzz in. (Perhaps he’d also, on some level, mitigate this strategy based on the dollar value/penalty of the question and his standing in the game at the time.) I’d be curious to know if Watson does the same, or could. That is — buzz in to answer before having found an answer of sufficient probability to do so, but based on an initial assessment of success within the time allowed actually to respond. Anyway, it’s fun stuff. Agreed… though not without a bit of disappointment, if I may, because it was truly impressive how outmatched these two fact-filled fellows seemed to be… so for now, bravo IBMers* ! ! ! … but now, onto Day Two! * I wonder if Watson could recognize a word like that? Edward Goldstick is a veteran of the high-tech, software, defense, and energy-technology worlds in the US and France.

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On Watson’s Eyes and Ears

We are ready to start the economic engine again. But is it fully fixed?

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Restarting the economic machine

Mr. Anderson led Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine to back-to-back World Series championships and went on to win another title in Detroit.

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Sparky Anderson Is Dead at 76

Florence Welch, of Florence and the Machine, is a double-winner at the Q Awards in London, also attended by the reunited Take That.

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Double Q Awards win for Florence

An at-home trash converter turning plastics into oil While denaturing plastics is a relatively common practice, the compact Blest machine simplifies the process to a “safe to use at home” degree. Claiming to be the safest, cleanest and most user-friendly form yet, inventor Akinori Ito’s portable Blest machine converts plastic waste back into usable oil with just a temperature-controlling electric heater. A video of the machine in action shows how several features set Blest apart from similar machines. By using the electric heater in place of a flame, plastic melts but since nothing is directly burned, the machine doesn’t release CO2 or other toxins that come from incinerating trash. Most importantly, the machine is small enough to fit on a countertop, allowing fuel generation to take place anywhere from a warehouse to a family room. Ito’s goal was to address the issue of overwhelming plastic waste. A landscape like Japan suffers from the lack of places to put garbage; plastics from there and almost every other country around the world end up in landfills or in the ocean (see the Great Pacific Garbage Patch ). By creating a machine that allows the user to take everyday waste and make something as useful as fuel, the project shows people the value of garbage and also the value of recycling. Ito has introduced the machine and these concepts to schools around Japan, educating children about the potential that “garbage” holds. The fuel produced from the plastic conversion process can be put to use immediately for stoves and generators, or can be further refined to be used as gasoline to power vehicles. While the end product still involves the burning of fossil fuels (and therefore damage to the environment) by converting the plastic back into oil as opposed to burning or dumping it, there is an massive overall net loss in the amount of C02 released into the environment. Another impressive benefit, by producing your own fuel locally you remove the carbon footprint that comes from transporting petroleum from distant countries. The current tabletop model can convert one kilo of plastic into one liter of oil, and can sells from Blest for $9,500.

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Blest Machine

Millions of homes have been seized by banks during the economic crisis through a mass production system of foreclosures that was set up to prioritize one thing over everything else: speed.

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Speed equaled money in foreclosure ‘machine’

Millions of homes have been seized by banks during the economic crisis through a mass production system of foreclosures that was set up to prioritize one thing over everything else: speed.

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Speed equaled money in foreclosure ‘machine’

Almost all job growth comes from new businesses.

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The real jobs machine: Entrepreneurs

When you are trying to figure out how to dispose of a computer, there are two main items you need to take into consideration.