Groundhog Day Links

I still don't think I can write a well-thought-out political piece right now (although most readers would probably say there is no evidence I've ever been able to), but I've collected a number of good story links:

Groundhogs totally deserve their own day (even if they can’t predict the weather) - Washington Post

The Basketball Team That Never Takes a Bad Shot – Wall Street Journal

Basketball's Other 3-Point Revolution - FiveThirtyEight

In America’s Heartland, Discussing Climate Change Without Saying ‘Climate Change’ - New York Times

The Health Battle Behind A2 Milk - The Atlantic

Why The Arctic Apple Means You May Be Seeing More GMOs At The Store - The Salt

Water Quality– Iowa Case Resolves One Issue, Clean Water Act Permitting Issue Remains Open - Farm Policy News

America's Great Divergence and Red State, Blue City - The Atlantic.  

Robots Over Roughnecks: Next Drilling Boom Might Not Add Many Jobs – OilPrice

Here's One Way Trump’s Team Could Manipulate Government Data - Slate

Troubled Waters: A Coalfield County Loses Trust in Water and Government - Ohio Valley Resource

Peter’s Choice – Mother Jones

Wilbur Ross and the Era of Billionaire Rule – Bloomberg

100 years ago, Americans talked about Catholics the way they talk about Muslims today - Vox and To my Jewish, Irish, Asian and Italian friends - The Reformed Broker

The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence - Rolling Stone

Malevolence Tempered by Incompetence: Trump’s Horrifying Executive Order on Refugees and Visas – Lawfare.  The first four words will probably define the Trump administration's legacy.

It Can Happen Here – Dollars & Sense

Rural counties’ economies depend on different industries - USDA ERS

NFL Playoffs Weekend Links

Well, the Bengals might exit the playoffs in the first round yet again, but that won't stop me from sharing some good stories with you:

Griffey In His Prime Was The Second Coming Of Willie Mays - FiveThirtyEight

Shadow Boxer - SB Nation

A Fighter's Hour of Need - New York Times

World's Largest Meatpacking Firm Wants To Test Out Robot Butchers - The Salt

Water Quality Would Get $4.7 Billion School Tax Diversion - Des Moines Register.  We see who ranks where in Iowa.

Hey Oregon "Militia": Here's The History Lesson You Missed - Esquire and How The West Wasn't Won - Bloomberg

Lawyer: 231 children abused in German Catholic choir - USAToday.  The first story I saw just said "German choir."  I had to click through to confirm it was the Catholic Church.  Not that I was surprised.

In east Buffalo, drug addiction's grip is tightened by decades long cycle - The Guardian

Inside The Tiny Police State With Seven Armies - The Daily Beast

No Accident: Inside GM's deadly ignition switch scandal - Atlanta Magazine

Trivers' Pursuit - Psychology Today

How Mickey Mouse Evades the Public Domain - Priceonomics

Why Bernie Sanders Doesn't Want Your Vote - Bloomberg

What Did the Governor Know About Flint's Water, and When Did He Know It? - The Atlantic

The worst idea in the presidential debate: a return to the gold standard - Michael Hiltzik.  Thanks, Ted Cruz.  You have to be smart enough to know this is just blowing smoke up gold bugs' asses.  But you are a big enough of an asshole to actually pretend to believe it.

Which States Rely the Most on Federal Aid - Tax Foundation

Madeline the Robot Tamer

Madeline the Robot Tamer from Pier 9 on Vimeo.

Robots Falling Down

The robots may be coming for our jobs, but they aren't going to get them all yet.

Faster, Stronger and Cheaper

The Robot Dairy

CME To Close Most Open Outcry Pits

Bloomberg:

That era has finally ended after CME Group Inc. announced Wednesday it will close most of its futures pits in Chicago and New York. The move deals a death blow to trading floors that grew in the 20th century alongside America’s agriculture, mining and energy industries and were once synonymous with capitalism.
With open outcry trading dwindling to just 1 percent of volume at CME, the owner of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and New York Mercantile Exchange decided to shutter nearly all its trading floors by July 2, according to a statement from Chicago-based CME. The exceptions include Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures as well as some options on futures.
“It was only a question of time,” said Darrell Duffie, a finance professor at Stanford University and Bloomberg View contributor. “It has taken this long mainly because CME has shown some loyalty toward market participants whose livelihood has depended on their participation in open-outcry trading.”
The rise of computers triggered the decline of floor trading beginning in the 1990s, said Craig Pirrong, a finance professor at the University of Houston.
“The floor in its heyday was an amazing place,” he said. “Despite the seeming chaos, it was an incredibly efficient way to buy and sell.” Yet in-person trading was a technology that hadn’t been updated since the 1860s, when Chicago served as the birthplace for derivatives.
Though CME’s Chicago trading floor has its roots in the 19th century, the pits at the Merc and the Chicago Board of Trade -- which CME bought in 2007 -- also spawned many of the high-frequency trading firms that now dominate computerized markets. Former floor traders Paul Gurinas and Bill DiSomma created Jump Trading LLC, one of the most prolific trading firms in the world.
The frenetic shouting, gesticulating and jumping -- which Gurinas and DiSomma allude to in the name of their firm -- that’s used to buy or sell futures made their way into popular culture. “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” featured a scene where the main character proposed to his girlfriend while overlooking the Chicago Board of Trade....
The CME decision affects products including contracts linked to metals, energy and agricultural commodities. In the past decade, CME bought the Chicago Board of Trade and consolidated their Chicago trading floors into one location. Many of the posts had become mostly empty in recent years as traders shifted to electronic platforms, including CME’s own Globex system.
All options traded at CME will retain an open-outcry component, except for contracts on the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq-100 Index.

They may as well have closed the pits as soon as they closed the observation deck at the Board of Trade after the September 11 attacks.  What good is the trading floor if you can't watch and see what's going on? Anyway, one more job where computers have put people out of work.

Fireworks: A Drone's Eye View

Utah in 4K

Filmmaker Ian Cresswell rigs an HD camera atop a remote-controlled "octocopter" for some spectacular aerial views. To see more of Cresswell's work visit his Vimeo.

Cubli

Wow:

Cubli, a project out of the Dynamic Systems and Control lab at the Swiss engineering school ETH Zurich, is a 6 inch by 6 inch metal block that employs three spinning wheels to perform a variety of tricks. Its creators humbly tout its ability to “walk,” using angular momentum to flip itself from face to face. This feat was kinda cute when MIT’s diminutive M-Blocks were doing it. Here it’s a little more unsettling.
Even more unsettling, though (and more impressive), are Cubli’s preternatural powers of balance. “Once the Cubli has almost reached the corner stand up position, controlled motor torques are applied to make it balance on its corner,” we’re told. You can change the angle of the surface it’s on, give the balancing wonder a gentle push to the side, or send it spinning like a top, and still, the devil cube retains its balletic poise.
The stabilization comes courtesy of the precise choreography of the internal spinning wheels–a system the researchers point out is similar to the one that keeps satellites oriented in space. Now, the team says they’re developing algorithms that allow Cubli to “automatically learn” and respond dynamically to changes in inertia, weight, or its surface.

That's amazing.

Google Buys Boston Dynamics

Boston Dynamics is a premier robotics research operation, and the eighth robotics company Google has purchased:

Google just acquired Boston Dynamics. It’s the eighth robotics company the California tech titan has purchased in six months and, by far, the most significant. For two decades, Boston Dynamics has produced some of the world’s most advanced robots.
Neil Jacobstein, co-chair of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Track at Singularity University, told Singularity Hub, “This is a watershed event. A very big deal. Google is buying up high potential robotics companies. Boston Dynamics is the pick of the litter.”
Even if you don’t follow technology or robots closely, you may have watched one of their viral videos with some combination of awe, fear, and the realization that robots are nowhere near as clunky as you thought they were.
The firm’s humanoid Atlas and Petman robots can balance on two legs, walk, and do calisthenics. Video of an uncannily human Petman in fatigues—the robot was built to test chemical warfare gear—drew over three million views earlier this year.

Beyond the bipedal, the company’s Cheetah robot runs faster than Usain Bolt; their WildCat robot recently took Cheetah’s tricks beyond the treadmill; their robot SandFlea leaps onto tall buildings; and LS3 autonomously follows soldiers across rough terrain, carrying gear and supplies on its back. (Check out the full roster here.)
The Boston Dynamics bots are rugged and multi-functional. And while many robotics firms are doing inspiring work, none have produced a complete package that so closely resembles the popular image of what a robot should be.
Google, meanwhile, has billions at its beck and call. They make clever algorithms with designs on artificial intelligence, own the most sophisticated self-driving car on the road, and write paychecks to AI luminaries like Geoffrey Hinton and Ray Kurzweil.
It’s simple addition to see why the deal is making headlines.
Some folks look on some of Boston Dynamics’ creations with trepidation because they have largely been funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa). But Boston Dynamics founder, Marc Raibert, has said he doesn’t consider his firm to be part of the military industrial complex. They’re just trying to take robotics to the next level.

Wow, Petman is creepier than Asimo.  More Boston Dynamics robot videos here and here and here

Robot Takeover Watch

From Bloomberg:

Prosperity in Thailand is spreading from glitzy Bangkok to less-developed regions, thanks in part to a boom in auto-manufacturing in places such as Rayong province, where this state-of-the-art Ford plant is located. 

Wow, that is a lot of robots.  That doesn't bode well for a healthy middle class.

Wildcat

Wired:

Last year when DARPA released video of its new robot designed to replicate the movements (and, eventually, speed) of a cheetah, some of us were creeped out by the machine’s ability to “chase and evade” at the rate of nearly 30 mph.
The only thing reassuring was that the Cheetah was tethered by an electronic leash of cables. Now MIT spinoff Boston Dynamics has released WildCat, the sequel to Cheetah, which can only move at 16 mph at the moment, but can do so while untethered.
Funded by DARPA, WildCat uses a combination of galloping and bounding to move and gain speed, as the video below shows, and can already recover from from stumbles and falls with ease.

Inside Tesla's Robotic Factory

From Wired:



Wow. Those robots are amazing.

Robot Dog Can Throw Cinder Blocks

From Wired:

Boston Dynamics’ BigDog started life as a headless four-legged robot capable of hauling soldiers’ gear along rough and uneven terrain. The BigDog’s upgrades and follow-on robots are expanding the boundaries of robotic motion, initially with cash from Darpa’s Tactical Technology Office. Its quadruped packmate the Cheetah can outrun Usain Bolt. Its cousin the Legged Squad Support System can follow voice commands. Its big brother the AlphaDog can stand up from a prone position.
But the BigDog has some new tricks: like, um, throwing a cinderblock, as shown in the video above that Boston Dynamics released Thursday. And the robot also a head. Kind of.

Whereas once the BigDog disturbingly lacked anything topping off its torso, Boston Dynamics has attached a fifth appendage where a humanoid robot’s head should be. It’s not really a head: It’s an arm-like limb, almost as long as the robotic legs on the ‘Dog, and terminating in a gripping mechanism. But that grip serves as an ersatz jaw, and a strong one: This upgraded BigDog can pick up a hunk of concrete and toss it like a shotput. Darpa, it should be noted, is done funding the BigDog, so it didn’t add the arm/head/limb/whatever to the machine.

It is cool seeing how it struggles to balance as it picks up the block, and as it throws it, but it impressive how quickly it gets back to equilibrium. 

Sometime, I need to take a trip to northern Indiana and see what projects my friend The Professor is working on.  

Return to Labor

Another interesting chart, via nc links:

So all you economists out there, tell me why this doesn’t show what I think it does: whenever labor’s share of income rises a bit, they hold a recession. Which takes care of that problem quite nicely.

I think it is interesting that the chart peaks out in 1980, right as the "Reagan Revolution" took place.  The tech bubble is also pretty interesting.  I think the 2012 bottom is as far down as things can probably go, and we'll eventually have to move back into the 64 to 66% range.  However, productivity investments and robotics may lead us to test the feasibility of staying below that range.  I doubt that that is feasible. 

Robots Taking Our Jobs

What Holds Up The Robot Takeover?

Mechanical limitations:

The two biggest challenges to making general-purposes robots are, as they always have been, hardware and software. Neither challenge is insuperable, but both are harder than one might think. On the hardware side, there are now lots of robots that can do incredibly cool things. One robot runs faster than the fastest human, another dances Gangnam style. Still another, PR2, folds towels and fetches beer. The catch is that, at the moment, each new robot is like a proof of concept. The ones that are fast and physically powerful, like AlphaDog, a quadruped robot, and the headless but amazing PETMAN, are, for now, still dependent on hydraulic actuators powered by industrial-strength pumps and gasoline engines; they work fine in a laboratory-test environment, but you wouldn’t want one roaming around your home. Others, like Baxter and PR2, are capable of fairly sophisticated movements, but at speeds that are still too slow to be practical around the home. It might take five minutes just for PR2 to grab you a beer. Computer processors keep getting faster and faster—roughly doubling every eighteen months, the rate predicted by the so-called Moore’s Law—and memory gets cheaper and cheaper. But the motors and actuators that move robots aren’t improving nearly as fast. (Battery technology, too, is key, moving quickly, but not quite keeping pace with Moore). In the words of Erico Guizzo, the robotics editor at the IEEE Spectrum, “Lots of people have been working on humanoid robots for decades, but the electric motors needed to drive a robot’s legs and arms are too big, heavy, and slow. Today’s most advanced humanoid robots are still big hulking pieces of metal that are unsafe to operate around people.”

That lets me breathe a little easier.  However, I'm disappointed it will take 5 minutes for the robot to fetch my beer.

Dynamics Class Comes To Life

More here

Robot Dog, Or Robot Cow?

Wired:

Previously we’ve seen AlphaDog, Darpa’s four-legged, autonomous robot wander the woods and play fetch. Now the Pentagon’s robo-beast, designed to haul supplies in rough terrain, has become smart enough to follow troops around like a loyal pet.
In the video above, released on Monday by Darpa, the AlphaDog – known as the LS3 or Legged Squad Support System – climbs rocks and trots after a soldier through wooded terrain. “We have been conducting tests to check out its mobility, perception and autonomy, and human-machine interaction,” Lt. Col. Joe Hitt, Darpa’s program manager, tells Danger Room. And a lot of what the robot is doing looks familiar. The machine, designed by Boston Dynamics, can stand upright, walk for 20 miles without a break and carry up to 400 pounds.
But this test has one important difference. Now the ‘bot can obey instructions to follow people. The Marines connected the robot to the Marine Corps Tactical Robot Controller (TRC), a 10-pound touchscreen device a soldier or Marine can use to send the robot orders.

That thing is creepy looking.  I'm glad to know what kind of robot crap the DoD is working on to make killing folks easier.  I don't think too many "sovereign citizens" can come up with the weaponry to fight off our military, 2nd amendment or not.