Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• The Walk and Talk

  Craig Mod

  Kevin Kelly and I began talking while walking together some twelve years ago, near his home in Pacifica. Eventually, we branched out, and for these past six years have been running more "formalized" walk-and-talks across five countries with some 40+ people. We've walked-and-talked in China, Spain, England, Japan, and Thailand. These experiences are some of the best weeks of our lives.
  ...
  A walk-and-talk is a moveable salon. A small group of people walk together for a week, having casual conversations side-by-side during most of the day. In the evening the group sits down to an intense hours-long discussion centered on a daily chosen topic by those present. A moderator keeps the conversation on that day's single topic to sharpen it and make it memorable.

• The Cancer That Doctors Don't Want to Call Cancer

  A growing number of doctors are advocating what might seem like an unusual position: That low-grade prostate cancers that grow very slowly or not at all shouldn't be called cancer or carcinoma.

  The reason, they say, is that those words scare men, their families and sometimes even their doctors into seeking more aggressive treatment than patients need-leaving men with debilitating side effects-rather than pursuing a carefully monitored wait-and-see approach.

  A name change wouldn't be unprecedented. Certain other forms of thyroid, cervical and bladder cancers have been reclassified, sometimes partly to avoid scaring people about cancers that are unlikely to spread.

• Save the old Bell Labs as a new 'Museum of the Internet'

  Bell Labs, the historic headwaters of so many inventions that now define our digital age, is closing in Murray Hill, its latest owners moving to more modern headquarters in New Brunswick. The Labs should be preserved as a historic site and more. I propose that Bell Labs be opened to the public as a museum and school of the internet.

  There is no museum of the internet. Silicon Valley has its Computer History Museum. New York has museums for television and the moving image. Massachusetts boasts a charming Museum of Printing. Search Google for a museum of the internet and you'll find amusing digital artifacts but nowhere to immerse oneself in and study this immensely impactful institution in society.

• Debunking an Immigration Myth

  GovDocs to the Rescue!

  One question that routinely comes up in genealogy research: why is the family's surname different from its (presumed) original form? Most people have heard one explanation: those names were "changed at Ellis Island," altered either maliciously or ignorantly by port officials when the immigrant passed through. The charge against immigration officials, however, is provably false: no names were written down at Ellis Island, and thus no names were changed there. The names of arriving passengers were already written down on manifests required by the federal government, lists which crossed the ocean with the passengers.

  Changes were made later, by the immigrants themselves, usually during the naturalization process.

• Where can I view census records?

  After 72 years have passed, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is responsible for making census records publicly available. Records from the 1790 to 1950 censuses are currently available for genealogical research. Records from the 1950 Census were released by NARA on April 1, 2022. The 1960 records will become available in April 2032.

  Visit NARA's Census Records Web site to learn more about the availability of microfilmed and digital census records for genealogical research.

• Bill Ackman's celebrity academic wife Neri Oxman's dissertation is marred by plagiarism
  • Harvard's president, Claudine Gay, resigned after conservative activists revealed she had plagiarized.
  • The hedge fund manager and prominent Harvard donor Bill Ackman helped lead the charge against Gay.
  • BI analyzed Ackman's wife's doctoral dissertation and found numerous instances of plagiarism.

Interesting how Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution gave a pointer to what he called a programmatic tweet because it agreed with his beliefs, but failed to acknowledge the above hypocrisy of Ackman.

• Fund Comparison Tool

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