Freezing Europe - From Space Edition

Most of you know about or having been feeling the effects of the cold snap hitting Europe and the US. The UK has been particularly hit by it and today the BBC showed one of the prettiest pictures I've seen so far:

I really wish that sub-orbital flights were cheap enough such that I could go take a peek of Earth from above. I wouldn't mind getting rich either... This company (based in Barcelona) has a really cool business model. I hope they succeed!

Stress is Bad for your Trading Account

I read this a couple of weeks ago in the FT and forgot to blog about it. Basically Phillips and ABN Amro are teaming up to develop a bracelet to be used by traders that displays a warning if their stress levels are too high. The idea here is that investors might follow irrational strategies if they cannot think properly and should take a brake if they get to stressed out before taking any decisions.

This reminds me of a paper by Andre Lo in which he measures physiological characteristics of traders (like blood pressure) during live real trading sessions and finds significant correlation between changes in cardiovascular variables and market volatility.

Here is a video of how it should work. It looks like really good sci-fi stuff. I wonder if it might help in other situations, like preparing to an interview, approaching girls, or right before some World Cup penalty shoot-out...

Perfect Memory

A friend send me this amazing story about a woman that doesn't forget anything that has happened to her in the past 30 years. I wonder what "enhancements" to the human body will be available to us in 30-40 years. I've read some sci-fi stories in which we all have neural implants connected to a huge "Google" that enables us to retrieve any information stored on the internet. I wonder if that will require my exams to be more difficult...

Here is the introduction of the article:

 Wouldn't it be great to be able to remember everything? To see all our most important moments, all the priceless encounters, adventures and triumphs? What if memory never faded, but instead could be retrieved at any time, as reliably as films in a video store?

 "No one can imagine what it's really like," says Jill Price, 42, "not even the scientists who are studying me."
The Californian, who has an almost perfect memory, is trying to describe how it feels. She starts with a small demonstration of her ability. "When were you born?" she asks.
She hears the date and says: "Oh, that was a Wednesday. There was a cold snap in Los Angeles two days later, and my mother and I made soup."