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I do think humans are motivated to daydream about extraterrestrial intelligence, and, to put a finer point on it, extraterrestrial "people." They are motivated to dream about beings very much like them, things tantalizingly exotic but not so alien as to be totally incomprehensible and discomforting. Maybe those imagined beings have more appendages or sense organs, different body plans and surface coverings, but they typically possess qualities we recognize within ourselves: They are sentient, they have language, they use tools, they are curious explorers, they are biological, they are mortal - just like humans. Perhaps that's a collective failure of imagination, because it's certainly not very easy to envision intelligent aliens that are entirely divergent from our own anthropocentric preconceptions. Or perhaps it's more diagnostic of the human need for context, affirmation, and familiarity. Why are people fascinated by their distorted reflections in funhouse mirrors? Maybe it's because when they recognize their warped image, at a subconscious level that recognition reinforces their actual true appearance and identity.

The first pessimistic take is that the differences between independently emerging and evolving biospheres would be so great as to prevent much meaningful communication occurring between them if any intelligent beings they generated somehow came into contact.

The second pessimistic take is that intelligent aliens, far from being incomprehensible and ineffable, would be in fact very much like us, due to trends of convergent evolution, the tendency of biology to shape species to fit into established environmental niches.

It stands to reason that any alien species that managed to embark on interstellar voyages to explore and colonize other planetary systems could, like us, be a product of competitive evolution that had effectively conquered its native biosphere. Their intentions would not necessarily be benevolent if they ever chose to visit our solar system.

The third pessimistic scenario is an extension of the second, and postulates that if we did encounter a vastly superior alien civilization, even if they were benevolent they could still do us harm through the simple stifling of human tendencies toward curiosity, ingenuity, and exploration.

Right now reaching low-Earth orbit generally comes at a cost somewhere between $5,000 to $10,000 per kilogram, depending on which launch vehicle is used. This creates an enormous barrier to making profitable ventures in space or building major space-based infrastructure. It also engenders further high costs in the design, fabrication, and testing of most spaceflight hardware, which due to the high cost to orbit must be made as lightweight and reliable as possible.

If launch costs fall well below $1,000 per kilogram, a host of economic activities that were previously prohibitively expensive should at a stroke become cheap enough to be readily profitable.

I'm an American citizen, so I will focus my comments on the American space program and the American political system. I'm sad to say that in this country, the most powerful nation presently on the planet, space science, exploration, and development are treated as fringe issues at best. Too many politicians, if they consider these issues at all, treat them in one of two ways: Dismissively, as things to be joked about, or cynically, as little more than pork-barrel job programs for their districts, things to be defended purely for the status quo and only given token lip-service when absolutely necessary.

And who can blame them? Look at what happens to politicians when they try to talk seriously and ambitiously about space today. They are lampooned and ridiculed by the media and by their political opponents as starry-eyed idealists who are disconnected from everyday realities.

Holbrooke, though, may be the most significant member of the Obama story thus far because of his negative value: He was a larger-than-life personality who was crucially ignored.

By thwarting Holbrooke, White House advisers like Tom Donnelly signaled that while practical and hard-edged, Obama was not a risk taker with a grand strategy like Richard Nixon or George H.W. Bush.

Judging by his new appointees, Obama's second term will be like his first, only more so. Pragmatism will reign supreme, even as there will be little appetite to take authentically risky initiatives, whether diplomatic, military or otherwise.

Hagel is essentially a moderate Republican who is now closer to Democrats (he is distinguished by the fact that -- unusual for Washington -- he actually speaks his mind).

the emphasis at the Pentagon will be on smart cost-cutting; withdrawing from a high-maintenance, low-payoff conflict in Afghanistan; and avoiding -- unless absolutely necessary -- a military strike against Iran.

people extremely hesitant to embark on any adventures.

Indeed, the East Coast knowledge elite essentially believes that foreign policy is a branch of Holocaust studies, in which a president is judged by his willingness to intervene on behalf of innocent civilians in times of conflict. While it is true that the memory of the Holocaust -- less than a lifetime removed -- must play a role in foreign policy, at the same time it cannot define it.

Such a realist mindset is rejected by the media and academia, even as it is quietly practiced throughout government and, especially, by successful foreign policy administrations. Obama's new appointees will practice realism, even as idealism will infuse their remarks at press conferences.

Yes, Obama intervened largely for humanitarian considerations in Libya. But it was a hesitant, unenthusiastic intervention in which no boots were on the ground beyond some Special Operations Forces, ensuring that the United States did not own the security situation of post-Gadhafi Libya.

Even if the new secretaries of state and defense are less cautious than they appear, they will steer away from anything that smells of a large-scale, boots-on-the-ground operation, unless it is within an international coalition enjoying near-global consensus.

foreign policy during his administration is in safe hands, no great initiatives or schemes have been -- or will be -- attempted, and any threats or challenges that arise will be addressed efficiently through procedural responses.

Faucets are ways through which game currency is injected into the game. This generally involve players receiving currency from the game system itself, as opposed to other players.

Sinks are ways through which game currency is removed from the game. This generally involve players paying currency into the game system itself, as opposed to other players.

The establishment by Blizzard of a real money auction house (“RMAH”) alongside a virtual gold auction house in the game provided players with an incentive to both farm the game for real world profits and to pursue arbitrage opportunities. The RMAH was also created, at least in part, to disincentivize players from patronizing third party markets outside the game.

Although its anonymity may make it subject to skepticism, several weeks after the game’s debut a source claimed that there were at least 1,000 bots active 24/7 in the Diablo 3 game world, allegedly “harvesting” (producing) 4 million virtual gold per hour.[4]

The RMAH had minimum and maximum dollar amounts for in-game gold transactions: $0.25 minimum, $250 maximum. Market participants were also limited to dealing in increments of a certain size, called a “stack.” The “stack” was initially set to 100K gold. But as gold prices fell owing to rapidly building supply, the stack size was changed in August 2012 to 1 million. This practice, known as redenomination, is a fairly standard (if cosmetic) method of addressing inflation, but was viewed by some players as tacit devaluation.

To be clear, at the time at which the redenomination was introduced, gold was still trading above the floor rate. But being artificial, caps and floors not only prevent markets from clearing, but give black markets a target to undercut, to say nothing of offering players an opportunity to avoid the 15 percent fee — another intended gold sink — levied upon transactions within the auction house.

By early 2013, the gold price had fallen to the exchange floor set by the game managers — $0.25/million — and players began to show signs of concern.

Hyperinflation is the economist’s equivalent of an astrophysicist’s quasar cluster or a marine biologist’s dolphin “stampede”: a rare exhibition of a unique set of circumstances which arise infrequently and are closely studied when they materialize.

when holders of money expect the supply of money to increase — particularly without any sense of timing, bounds, or other guidance

monetary demand in the present drops in favor of surrendering money for vendibles.

If historical cases of hyperinflation — real, and now virtual — have one thing in common, it is the instinct among its victims to blame the symptoms rather than the disease.

While RMAH prices for virtual gold rallied occasionally, the prevailing direction of black market prices for virtual gold was inexorably lower as third party sellers undercut the in-game gold floor.

Several competing definitions for hyperinflation exist, with the strictest — an increase of 50 percent in one month — defined by economist Philip Cagan in his 1956 book The Monetary Dynamics of Hyperinflation.

On May 7th 8th, 2013, Blizzard rolled out Patch 1.0.8, which contained the seeds of the last, hyperbolic surge of gold superabundance.

In just a few hours, the already gold-swamped economy saw trillions more created: a mammoth deluge of, by then, worthless virtual gold chasing finite goods, driving prices upward in leaps and bounds.

Blizzard quickly closed the in-game auction houses and audited transactions which took place during the blowout, banning players who took advantage of the bug and donating the proceeds of certain sales to charity. The gold stack size was also moved back from 10M to 1M.

Remembering that game economies are private and players are voluntary members, there’s no explicit mandate to ensure rigid inflation control as one often sees (however rarely pursued) in public economies.

More critically, though, whether structured as auctions or exchanges, markets must be allowed to operate freely, without caps, floors, or other artificialities. Unrestricted (real) cash auctions would for the most part preempt and obviate black markets. [24]

By Mielke and Zahran's estimates, if we adopted the soil standard of a country like Norway (roughly 100 ppm or less), it would bring about $30 billion in annual returns from the cognitive benefits alone (higher IQs, and the resulting higher lifetime earnings).

Estimates here are even more difficult, but Mark Kleiman suggests that a 10 percent drop in crime—a goal that seems reasonable if we get serious about cleaning up the last of our lead problem—could produce benefits as high as $150 billion per year.

There's a flip side to this too. At the same time that we should reassess the low level of attention we pay to the remaining hazards from lead, we should probably also reassess the high level of attention we're giving to other policies. Chief among these is the prison-building boom that started in the mid-'70s.

There's always an excuse not to spend more money on a policy as tedious-sounding as lead abatement—budgets are tight, and research on a problem as complex as crime will never be definitive—but the association between lead and crime has, in recent years, become pretty overwhelming. If you gave me the choice, right now, of spending $20 billion less on prisons and cops and spending $20 billion more on getting rid of lead, I'd take the deal in a heartbeat. Not only would solving our lead problem do more than any prison to reduce our crime problem, it would produce smarter, better-adjusted kids in the bargain. There's nothing partisan about this, nothing that should appeal more to one group than another. It's just common sense. Cleaning up the rest of the lead that remains in our environment could turn out to be the cheapest, most effective crime prevention tool we have. And we could start doing it tomorrow.

In 1942 the United States negotiated an agreement with Mexico during an agricultural labor shortage. This agreement, known as the Bracero program, allowed millions of Mexican workers to enter the United States between the time the program was implemented and when it ended in 1964.

Though each new wave of immigration brings with it political and social controversy, the United States' ability to integrate new populations gives it a distinct advantage over many other developed countries.

Many students from around the world come to study in the United States, but legal restrictions prevent them from staying and working in the country. The proposed system appears designed to help keep more highly educated foreigners in the United States, a country that depends on technological innovation to create high-skilled, high-value jobs.

The Mexican government has long made it a priority to find a way to normalize immigrant status. It also has an interest in encouraging population flows that generate billions of dollars worth of remittances annually to Mexico.

The fact that immigration reform is attached to the new border security initiative will sweeten the deal for Mexico during negotiations with the United States.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's profile on VKontakte, a Russian social media website, said he attended school at the School No. 1 of Makhachkala, spoke English, Russian and Chechen and listed his worldview as Islam. A school administrator from the School No. 1 said the two suspects and their family had previously lived in Kyrgyzstan before moving to Dagestan.

Moreover, given what we have learned about the suspects and the nature of the improvised explosive devices they constructed, it is very likely that the authorities will find that the brothers had read and studied al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's Inspire Magazine.

This demonstrates how the jihadist threat has diminished in recent years -- a trend we expect to continue.

There will always be plenty of soft targets in a free society, and it is incredibly easy to kill people, even by untrained operatives. In this case the brothers conducted an attack that was within their capabilities rather than attempting something more grandiose that would require outside assistance - and which could therefore have put them in jeopardy of running into a government informant as they sought help.  It is thus important for citizens to practice good situational awareness and to serve as grassroots defenders against the grassroots threat.

The Internet and modern media make this truer than ever. The same music, sports, movies, and HBO miniseries are available to threshold earners that are available to their high-income counterparts. The only difference might be the size of the screen they watch it on.

For one thing, food trucks are “in,” and so are lots of other low-cost consumption made fashionable by threshold-earning hipsters—from no-brand plastic sunglasses and thrift store clothes, to Pabst Blue Ribbon and communal living.

It caters not to the average American, but to a more elite set interested in organic, gourmet, and ethnic foods. Nevertheless, it offers low prices through an ingenious mix of limited selection and price discrimination (many Trader-Joe’s-branded items are the same high-end brands you’d get at Whole Foods, just repackaged.)

“The retail strategy for luxury brands is to try to keep as far away from the likes of Zara. Zara’s strategy is to get as close to them as possible.” The threshold earning elite gets the high-end shopping experience and trendy clothes at low prices.

2. Many used some data, but they unfortunately used silly data strategies/metrics.

A lot of people get fired for this. Sadly not right away, because it takes time to realize how spectacular of a waste of money getting to real-time data was.

Real-time data is very expensive.

It is also very expensive from a decision-making perspective

even in the best case scenario of the proverbial pigs flying, they'll obsess about tactical things.

That is a cheaper systems/platform/data strategy.

That is also a way to get people to sync the data analysis (not data puking, sorry I meant data reporting) with the speed at which the company actually makes decisions (data > analyst > manager > director > VP > question back to manager > yells at the analyst > back to director> VP = 6 days).

The difference between a KPI and a metric is that the former has a direct line of sight to your bottom-line, while the latter is helpful in diagnosing tactical challenges.

Along the way you also learn how not to stink. Bounce rate goes from 70% to a manageable 30%. Takes three months.

From the time people land on your site it might take another 12 – 25 pages for them to buy or submit a lead. Focus on all that stuff. The tough stuff. Then you'll make money.

it does not take a very long time for your Senior Management to figure out how lame the Likes metric is and that it drives 1. Zero value on Facebook and 2. Zero squared economic value or cost savings to the business.

Here's one… We are looking at two consumer product brands, the tiny company Innocent Drinks and the Goliath called Tide Detergent.

Even with 10x the number of Likes on Facebook the giant called Tide has 4x fewer people talking about their brand when compared to the David called Innocent.

In a massively large company they've carved out an identity uniquely their own. They refuse to be corrupted by Coca Cola's own Facebook strategy of constant self-pimping and product ads masquerading as "updates." As a result pound for pound Innocent's fan engagement on its page is multiple time better than Coca Cola's - even if the latter has many more likes.

Not going to happen.

as all decent SEOs will tell you, is that search results are no longer standardized. Rather they are personalized. I might even say, hyper-personalized. Regardless of if you are logged in or not.

Universal search for example means that personalized results will not only look for information from web pages, they also look for YouTube/Vimoe videos, social listings, images of course, and so on and so forth.

So check your keyword ranking if it pleases you.

But don't make it your KPI.

Friends don't let friends use CPC as a KPI. Unless said friends want the friend fired.

Content consumption is a horrible metric. It incentivises sub optimal behavior in your employees/agencies.

If you are a news site, you can get millions of page views

And it will probably get you transient traffic.

And what about business impact from all these one night stands ?

Then measure the metric closest to that. Hopefully some ideas above will help get you promoted.

My hypothesis is that TV/Radio/Magazines have created this bad habit. We can measure so little, almost next to nothing, that we've brought our immensely shaky GRP metric from TV to digital. Here it's called impressions. Don't buy impressions.

If you are willing to go to clicks, do one better and measure Visits. At least they showed up on your mobile/desktop site.

Impressions suck. Profit rocks.

If the simple A/B (test/control) experiment demonstrates that delivering display banner ad impressions to the test group delivers increased revenue, buy impressions to your heart's content. I'll only recommend that you repeat the experiment once a quarter.

You can buy impressions if you can prove via a simple controlled experiment that when we show impressions we got more engagement/sales and when we don't show impressions we did not get more engagement/sales.

This is not a metric, this is more of a what data you'll use to target your advertising issue.

Our primary method of buying advertising and marketing is: "I would like to reach 90 year old grandmas that love knitting, what tv channel should I advertise on." Or they might say: "I would like to reach 18 to 24 year olds with college education who supported Barack Obama for president." And example of demographic and psychographic segments.

We use that on very thin ice data, we bought advertising. That was our lot in life.

Intent beats demographics and psychographics. Always.

Search has a ton of strong intent. It does not matter if you are a grandma or a 18 year old. If you are on Baidu and you search for the HTC One, you are expressing strong intent. Second, content consumption has intent built in. If I'm reading lots of articles about how to get pregnant, you could show me an ad related to that

The first intent is strong, the second one is weaker.

Instead, they must cast one vote that covers all the various programs and issues -- domestic and foreign -- before them. In doing so, they do not build some kind of index where they award five points for promoting Social Security, four for Medicare, three for parks, minus two for farm subsidies, and so on.

And when it comes to general philosophical leanings, the overwhelming majority of the population lean conservative, as these graphs show.

On the philosophical level, the liberal approach does not play for many because it is too abstruse.

Thus, President Obama stated in the 2013 State of the Union, "It's not a bigger government we need, but a smarter government that sets priorities and invests in broad-based growth."

Previously he told Americans, "I believe government should be lean; government should be efficient. I believe government should leave people free to make the choices they think are best for themselves and their families, so long as those choices don't hurt others."

One reads on Monday that Congress voted 394 to 1 to extend a subsidy program started in 1925 to ensure there would be enough helium for zeppelins, but now serves only a few private interests.

On Tuesday, that casino and private prison corporations who declare themselves real-estate investment trusts (REITs) although they have nothing to do with the real-estate business have gained IRS approval not to pay taxes on their profits.

On Wednesday, that a hospital chain requires its physicians to hospitalize 50 percent of the seniors who set foot into its ERs and automatically orders a battery of tests for them whether they need it or not, all charged to Medicare.

On Thursday, that when 19 of the largest Wall Street firms violated anti-fraud laws, rather than face criminal prosecution, they were made to promise not to break the law in the future. When they broke it anyway, in 51 different cases, no charges were filed and the offenders were simply made to repeat their promise to behave.

And on Friday one is reminded that not one of the fine people who brought us the finical crisis that lost millions their homes, jobs, and life savings have been jailed, including those who hired people to systematically commit massive fraud. And that that the banks we bailed out are still too big to fail, while their executives got big bonuses and are carry on brewing the next financial bubble.

No wonder many found that the Tea Party spoke to their anger. True, the movement also attracted some people who hold racial prejudices and oppose gay marriage.

Instead of dismissing Tea Partiers as a bunch of redneck hicks, liberals should tell them they are half right -- the government all too often is not serving the people -- but have the wrong address for their very justified anger.

First, because it had no clear narrative and was mainly an expression of a very diffuse sentiment; second, because it mixed populist with liberal messages; third, because it was unclear who the bad guys are -- Wall Street? The bankers? The one percent? The System?

However, few will be ready to support major limitations on the private monies gushing into elections until they have come to see the source of our malaise. It is as simple -- the message ought to be simple -- as this: The culprit is not the government but the unfettering of the special interests who all too often have captured its reins.

In the hands of many foreign policy specialists, William McKinley might as well be Perfect Stranger's clueless and spineless Larry Appleton, and Lyndon Johnson is BJ's corrupt and scheming Sherriff Lobo.

The same is true of American foreign policy writ large. The range of American international relations over time should reflect the crass, naïve, ambitious, and good motivations behind policy crafted by people.

Similar to individual Simpsons' episodes, the Homer Doctrine allows for very bad endings but also some happier conclusions. Mostly, it reminds me that foreign policy is a reflection of real life, and that historical interpretations of human actions and decisions should bear more resemblance to Homer's befuddled attempts at parenting than J.R. Ewing's machinations on Dallas.

Aghast at the news from Cuba, middle-class Americans organized and sent foodstuffs, supplies, and the Red Cross's Clara Barton to the island. Even with supplies and the Red Cross, the civil war made Barton's humanitarian task all but impossible. By the mid-1890s, middle-class Americans of all political stripes called for a "humanitarian intervention."

McKinley eventually opted for war, but he is not the Montgomery Burns many historians imagine. Like the 20th episode of the Simpsons 16th season, "Home Away from Homer," in which Homer accidentally drives Ned Flanders from Springfield by betraying his own principles and their friendship, McKinley lost control of events once war commenced.

The Intelligence Process

Intelligence means three things to us.

Reports that showcase empathetic analysis: Thinking About the Unthinkable: A U.S.-Iranian Deal Germany's Choice Hezbollah, Radical but Rational

Remember, health and wellness are extremely personal sciences. You'll be assaulted on all sides by articles, scams, self-help books, poorly-reported scientific studies, internet commenters, and more who all claim they know what will work for you—and it usually boils down to what worked for them (which is great!) or what they're willing to sell you (which is not so great.) Having an abundance of options isn't a bad thing, but remember who you're in this for.

Join Communities that Build Positive Habits.

Speaking of Fitocracy, Richard explained that services like Fitocracy do so well because they offer consistent, positive rewards for sticking to your guns. Even if you don't see results in the mirror right away—and you won't—a site like Fitocracy rewards you with levels, badges, and other treats that keep you engaged and motivated to do better. That's all great, but Richard explained it's really just a carrot to get you to the real prize: the community.

I have made the case that the United States emerged as the only global power in 1991, when the Soviet Union fell. It emerged unprepared for its role and uncertain about how to execute it.

During the last half of the past decade, the inability to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with economic problems, convinced reasonable people that the United States had entered an age of permanent decline. The sort of power the United States has does not dissipate that fast.

The defeated challenger in the U.S. election, Mitt Romney, had a memorable and important turn of phrase when he said that you can't kill your way out of the problems of the Middle East. The point that neither Romney nor Obama articulated is what you do instead in the Middle East -- and elsewhere.

Having provided what limited aid was required to destabilize the Syrian government, the United States was content to let the local balance of power take its course.

Nor could the United States withdraw from the world. It produces almost one-quarter of the world's GDP; how could it?

One of the hardest things for a young empire to master is the principle that, for the most part, there is nothing to be done. That is the phase in which the United States finds itself at the moment.

This will create a framework that begins to institutionalize two lessons: First, it is rarely necessary to go to war, and second, when you do go to war, go with everything you have. Obama will follow the first lesson, and there is time for the second to be learned by others. He will practice the studied indifference that most foreign problems pose to the United States.

government officials also attribute the drop-off in attacks and hijackings to better coordination between foreign naval patrols, which have made the waters off the Somali coast a less permissive environment for pirate operations.

Effectively patrolling such a large area requires intelligence and the development of a counterpiracy doctrine that includes going after the larger pirate vessels, called mother ships, that extend pirates' range and allow them to operate in rougher seas during the monsoon.

The new Somali federal government still lacks the capability to control pirate towns such as Hobyo and Haradheere, and its officials do not appear to want a strong Puntland doing it for them. 

In essence, the commercial shippers and naval forces have adopted a siege strategy -- they hope to starve the pirates of resources, forcing them to give up. Somali pirates held about 20 ships at any given time in 2010; they currently hold 11. As the pirates hijack fewer ships, and as armed guards make piracy more dangerous, the entire enterprise is looking less lucrative and appealing.

The problem with the siege strategy is that as soon as shipping companies or foreign naval forces let up on the pirates, they will go back to hijacking ships.

The key component of the siege strategy is that it weakens the pirates' control over their land-based sanctuaries. Their power is connected to their revenue, so the decrease in revenue will decrease their power. The shipping companies and foreign navies hope that some other, less disruptive enterprises will eventually take root along Somalia's pirate-heavy coast.

The only force that has significantly challenged the pirates on land is the Puntland Maritime Police Force. Located in northeast Somalia, Puntland is much more stable than the south and is virtually independent. The Puntland Maritime Police Force had success in capturing pirates, destroying their staging bases along the beach, cutting off their supply routes and even, supposedly, attempting to seize hijacked vessels from the pirates.

The problem isn’t that people don’t reason. They do reason. But their arguments aim to support their conclusions, not yours. Reason doesn’t work like a judge or teacher, impartially weighing evidence or guiding us to wisdom. It works more like a lawyer or press secretary, justifying our acts and judgments to others.

Haidt’s account of reason is a bit too simple — his whole book, after all, is a deployment of reason to advance learning — and his advice sounds cynical. But set aside those objections for now, and go with him. If you follow Haidt through the tunnel of cynicism, you’ll find that what he’s really after is enlightenment. He wants to open your mind to the moral intuitions of other people.

The worldviews Haidt discusses may differ from yours. They don’t start with the individual. They start with the group or the cosmic order. They exalt families, armies and communities. They assume that people should be treated differently according to social role or status — elders should be honored, subordinates should be protected. They suppress forms of self-expression that might weaken the social fabric. They assume interdependence, not autonomy. They prize order, not equality.

These moral systems aren’t ignorant or backward. Haidt argues that they’re common in history and across the globe because they fit human nature. He compares them to cuisines. We acquire morality the same way we acquire food preferences: we start with what we’re given. If it tastes good, we stick with it. If it doesn’t, we reject it.

This is Haidt’s startling message to the left: When it comes to morality, conservatives are more broad-minded than liberals. They serve a more varied diet.

Saving Darfur, submitting to the United Nations and paying taxes to educate children in another state may be noble, but they aren’t natural. What’s natural is giving to your church, helping your P.T.A. and rallying together as Americans against a foreign threat.