The Economist wrote about the emerging practice of asking millions of strangers on the internet for help with medical problems:

• There are at least 7,000 “rare” diseases – those that affect fewer than 200,000 people.
• Doctors cannot possibly be aware of, and know how to diagnose all of them.
• Even if they’re farsighted enough to know that they’re unable to diagnose a particular condition, they may not know who to refer a patient to.
• In Europe 40% of those afflicted with rare diseases get an incorrect diagnosis at first.
• Enter the crowdsourcing healthcare site CrowdMed. The site allows users to post a detailed list of their aliments and ask for a diagnosis.
• Patients can offer monetary rewards to garner more attention.
• Those who contribute are medical students, retired doctors, and other laymen who enjoy a challenge.
• Those who provide a correct diagnosis rise in the website’s rankings and gain more prominence.
• One analysis indicates that 80% of the suggestions offered through the site were accurate.
• Surprisingly the most accurate diagnoses don’t always come from those with the best credentials.
• On the other end of the spectrum, AI systems such as IBM’s Watson are also entering into the healthcare diagnosis business by using big data to come up with suggestions.
• It remains to be seen if crowdsourcing or artificial intelligence will provide the most accurate medical evaluations in the future.

Read more in the truly excellent Economist over here.

Source: The Economistc

Europe has a thriving ecosystem of imaginary companies writes Liz Alderman:

• Imaginary companies such as “Animal Kingdom” in France sell animal food.
• They take into account their revenue, costs, and payroll. All these numbers are made up.
• The imaginary company works with other imaginary companies such as banks and suppliers.
• The companies have real offices, and real people working in them but that’s about the extent of it.
• The imaginary money that each company’s employees make can be spent buying the products of other imaginary companies.
• This ecosystem started as a government initiative to train students and the unemployed and get them used to working in an office environment.
• Since the ongoing Euro problems began they’ve taken a crucial role in fighting long-term unemployment by keeping office skills fresh.
• To fully replicate the European business experience, the companies will sometimes hold strikes complete with placards and upset employees.
• The fake companies are successful. Up to 70% of those who go through it in France go on to find a job.

Read more about the World War 2 roots of these companies, how the real workers feel about working in a fake company, and more over here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution

Back in 2013 Linda Rodriguez McRobbie took a look at the history of the Ouija board:

• Ouija boards became popular at a time when communicating with spirits was all the rage in the US. It was particularly popular since it was thought to be compatible with Christian beliefs.
• Back then people would communicate with spirits by calling out letters of the alphabet and waiting for a spirit to ‘knock’, thus spelling out words in a time consuming process.
• Entrepreneurs fixed the problem by coming up with the Ouija board, making the process of communicating with spirits much quicker.
• The board got a boost in popularity after the patent office certified it works. They did so because the Ouija board correctly guessed the patent officer’s supposedly unknown name.
• The fact that one of the people who took the board to the officer was a patent attorney, and thus may just have known the officer’s name went unmentioned.
• The board named itself. Its creators asked it what it should be called, and it responded with Ouija – claiming it meant good luck.
• The name is possibly a misreading of the name of a woman’s rights activist, Ouida, whose picture may have been in the room at the time the board was named.
• Mediums hated the board – by bypassing them, the board was stealing their business.
• Up until 1973 the board was a bit of a joke, a game which sometimes had higher sales than Monopoly. Then The Exorcist, a movie where a child is possessed after playing with the board, became popular. Suddenly the board began to terrify people.
• It has since receded as an object of terror in the popular imagination. Several Ouija board apps are available.
• Experts believe that Ouija boards work as a result of the ideometer effect, where involuntary muscle movements are amplified. Because the movements are involuntary they are assumed by people to be caused by an external force.
• There is some psychological evidence to indicate that the board can be used to access people’s subconscious memory.

Read more about the history of the board, how the board “asked” its so-called creator to build a factory that later killed him, the role it played in the White House, how psychologists are trying to use it, and much more in a fascinating article over here.

Source: The Smithsonian

Robbie Gonzalez took us inside the life of a human cannonball:

• Human cannonballing is largely a family business. Performers are related by blood or marriage.
• The business is secretive. Only industry veterans know, for example, how the cannons are made.
• It’s a dangerous sport. One old estimate suggests that out of 50 performers, 30 had died.
• When the person is launched they travel at a speed of 66 miles per hour.
• They are shot from a cannon that is heated precisely to between 65 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit, in order to ensure that the pressurized gas powering the cannon behaves as expected.
• The cannonball lands on an airbag that is painted with a target and multiple stars that act as reference points and tell the performer how to control their speed mid-air.

Read more about the business and see some incredible videos and .gifs, including one that shows what it’s like from the perspective of the human cannonball here.

Source: io9

Self-driving cars are coming. Joseph Coughlin and Luke Yoquinto looked at what this will mean for our commutes:

• On average, despite the type of transit available, people live about a 30 minute commute from work.
• This relationship is so strong it may well have been true for ancient Greeks and cavemen.
• But the average hides a lot of variation. For a lot of people 90 minute commutes are fairly normal – though they’re offset by all the people with five minute commutes.
• Since autonomous cars will be able to drive safely at incredibly fast speeds, those willing to commute 90 minutes will be able to live much further away.
• Somebody could live, for example, in upstate Vermont and work in New York.
• Such commutes will be even more palatable since autonomous cars will likely have a lot of space for eating, reading, and sleeping.
• This will also likely herald the end of the short haul flight industry. Why fly when you can get there much cheaper and without the hassle of security?

Read more about what the future of autonomous cars means for us, the environmental concerns, and the infrastructure we’ll need to bring this about here.

Source: Slate

We’ve previously covered the market for luxury ice. Christopher Jones wrote about just how sophisticated the market has become:

• Premium bars are increasingly making premium ice a part of their brands.
• This can add up to 80 cents to the price of each drink
• This is because of the cost of the machinery involved. One that specializes in making clear ice costs $6,000 and takes three days to make 600 pounds of ice.
• Clarity is important because like diamonds, ice is judged on its clarity, density, size, and cut.
• Difference ices are used in different drinks. Large ice cubes are used in spirit heavy cocktails in the hopes of slowing down dilution.
• Meanwhile another machine makes chewy and fluffy pellet ice that absorbs flavours and is used in drinks such as mojitos.

Read about the different kinds of ice, what it costs to make them, and why ice is so important over here.

Source: Wired

Jared Goyette and Bobby Bascomb reported on an audacious new plan to save the rhinos: poison them.

• The low number of living rhinos means that they’re expensive for zoos and reserves. Each one can cost over $20,000.
• But poachers can get $200,000 for their horns.
• To protect their investments zoos buy insurance – costing around $700 a year per rhino – against poaching.
• In order to secure this insurance one company requires that the Rhinos horns be poisoned.
• By injecting poison deep into the horn of the rhino, anybody who later ingests it after it is poached will fall violently ill.
• The hope is that if enough of the market becomes worried about poisoning, demand for rhino horns will drop.
• There are enough rhinos that it’s not possible to poison all their horns – but if a majority are that should be enough to dissuade buyers.
• In order to spread this fear, the injection of poison into rhino horns is usually done in public with a large audience, in order to disseminate the message.
• As the horns grow quickly, the poison has to be re-injected into the horns every four years.

Read about those behind the idea, its effectiveness, why the South African government doesn’t really believe in it, and more over here.

Source: PRI

Via: Marginal Revolution

Kathy Gilsinan wrote about the $25 million prize that was available for catching Osama Bin Laden:

• The United States now offers $25 million for Bin Laden’s successor.
• The numbers are determined based on perceived threat and may change if, for example, a terrorist gets promoted or demoted in their organization.
• Yet one economist notes that $25 million seems too low when compared to the trillion dollars spent on the Afghanistan invasion.
• If instead the United States had offered $500 million or a billion everybody could potentially have been saved a lot of trouble, grief, and money.
• Critics note that such a high offer could result in even more false leads that would result in wasted time.
• But false leads are the cost of doing business – and the government seems willing to accept that costs given the tremendous amount of false leads that must be generated by the NSA’s bulk metadata collection.
• Moreover there’s not much of an incentive to offer false leads – no money will change hands as a result of it.
• Other critics note that the bounty may in fact be too high. $25 million may seem too abstract and potential informants may not appreciate just how much it is.

Read more musings about the subject here.

Source: Defense One

Joe Pinsker looked at the benefits of being tall:

• Every inch of height is, on average, worth an extra $800 a year in earnings.
• Compounded over a 30 year career, that’s several hundreds of thousands of dollars that people will enjoy just for being tall.
• Some inches matter more than others. The sharpest jump in earnings is for those between the heights of 5’4″ and 5’6″.
• By the time you reach the six footers, additional inches don’t mean much for earnings.
• It’s not just about the money though – its status. Bishops tend to be taller than preachers.
• Taller people are also more likely to be entrepreneurs, and are more satisfied with life.

Read more about why height may lead to extra dollars, how attractiveness affects earnings, and more over here.

Source: The Atlantic