August 2015 – Amalgamated Contemplation

How Google Could Rig the 2016 Election – POLITICO Magazine

Google’s search algorithm can easily shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20 percent or more—up to 80 percent in some demographic groups—with virtually no one knowing they are being manipulated, according to experiments I conducted recently with Ronald E. Robertson.

In laboratory and online experiments conducted in the United States, we were able to boost the proportion of people who favored any candidate by between 37 and 63 percent after just one search session.

Source: How Google Could Rig the 2016 Election – POLITICO Magazine

Michigan doctor launches campaign to end non-medical vaccination waivers | MLive.com

A Michigan doctor has launched a campaign to strengthen the state’s vaccination law by eliminating religious and philosophical waivers to vaccination for children attending school, preschool or daycare.

Michigan is one of a handful of states that allows parents to opt out of mandatory immunization for their children attending schools or daycares by citing religious or philosophical reasons.

Nearly half of the state’s population lives in counties with kindergarten vaccination rates below the level needed to prevent contagious diseases from spreading.

Source: Michigan doctor launches campaign to end non-medical vaccination waivers | MLive.com

The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t – The New York Times

In the digital economy, it was supposed to be impossible to make money by making art. Instead, creative careers are thriving — but in complicated and unexpected ways.

Source: The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t – The New York Times

Science Isn’t Broken | FiveThirtyEight

Taken together, headlines like these might suggest that science is a shady enterprise that spits out a bunch of dressed-up nonsense. But I’ve spent months investigating the problems hounding science, and I’ve learned that the headline-grabbing cases of misconduct and fraud are mere distractions. The state of our science is strong, but it’s plagued by a universal problem: Science is hard — really fucking hard.

Source: Science Isn’t Broken | FiveThirtyEight

Medicare and Medicaid at 50: Time to Check Fiscal Health – Barron’s

Medicare and Medicaid consume more than one-third of health-care spending in the U.S. Is that too little or too much?

the size of the U.S. health-care problem: If we could create a system that provided a Dutch level of benefits for a Dutch level of spending, all of our nation’s fiscal problems would vanish.

Source: Medicare and Medicaid at 50: Time to Check Fiscal Health – Barron’s