Will sports betting change how games are played and even watched?

This is an interesting meta view of how betting will change sports.

The games we watch are already enhanced by data collected through technological advances. Announcers tell us how hard baseballs are hit and how far they travel, or how many miles a particularly active soccer player has run. Because such derivatives create new opportunities for betting, we’re sure to see many more of them. (The N.B.A. has been advertising for a gambling data analyst on the employment website Glassdoor.) Hockey hasn’t traditionally generated much in the way of metrics, but in order to learn who is skating the fastest or shooting the hardest, the N.H.L. is preparing to record the movements of every player during every game and even put a chip inside the puck. “Leagues are building a fire hose of data around their product,” says Chris Grove, an analyst who consults for gaming companies and investors. “And the logical recipient of that data is the betting industry.”

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But gambling’s greatest impact, at least proportionally, could come in the new professional leagues it spawns and the moribund ones it helps to resurrect. The Arena Football League once included 19 teams spread across the continent; last year there were four. Leonsis owns the Washington and Baltimore franchises, which makes him not only the most powerful owner in the league but the only person preventing its demise. He has positioned it as an ideal entertainment vehicle for the next generation. That includes gambling, of course. Arena Football averages a touchdown every six plays, Leonsis notes, as well as 98 points a game. “Lots of data generated,” he says — and a multitude of possible bets.

Personally I would love to see arena football go mainstream.
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Death in the time of bitcoin

Purchasing uncertain cryptocurrency claims at a discount is an interesting investment strategy. I know some opportunistic investors were buying Mt. Gox claims , but that situation is arguably less complex than Quadriga.

… this tale of “boy meets girl; boy marries girl; boy stores all client cryptocurrency data on cold wallets with no backup; boy dies; more than 115,000 people get screwed out of their precious crypto” could have a happy ending for a progressive asset allocator.

The cold wallets were subsequently found empty so the search continues I wonder how the hunt for the missing crytpo will be financed?

Theranos: How a broken patent system sustained its decade long deceptionh

I’m not convinced by the assertion that the patent office gives out patents much too easily on a consistent basis. But this article points out that many of Theranos’ patents arguably don’t pass basic tests of patent law.

What does this mean long term now that Theranos has been seized by its lenders?

Accused of having lied to investors and endangered patients, the company leaves us with a parting gift: a portfolio of landmines for any company that actually solves the problems Theranos failed to solve.

So basically the shell of Theranos will become a patent troll? Also, apparently Mark Cuban has endowed a research organization to fight “stupid patents”

When Britain chose Europe

The Brexit debate in a historical context going back to Cobden and the fight against the corn laws. Points out a startling implication of Brexit that the media barely covers:

There is, in fact, simply no way thata hard Brexit, much less a no-deal Brexit, can be accomplished without an intra-national upheaval that will result, sooner or later, in a disunited kingdom”

The fallen superpower: US foreign policy from triumph to hubris

Review of a new book, the Back Channel A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal , written by William Burns, the ultimate foreign policy insider who has served 5 presidents and 10 secretaries of state

…diplomatic profession has lost its near monopoly on presence, access, insight and influence. In the age of WikiLeaks and transnational actors, secrecy is porous, information ubiquitous. Those like Burns who have practised statecraft risk being drowned out. Lost in the Twittersphere are the age-old virtues of diplomacy: the ability to convene, communicate and manoeuvre for future gain, especially through alliances.

The End of Economics?

That economics has since slipped from that pedestal is simply a testament to the fact that the world is messy. The social sciences differ from the hard sciences because “the subjects of our study think,” said Herbert Simon, one of the few scholars who excelled in both. As we try to understand the world of the next three decades, we will desperately need economics but also political science, sociology, psychology, and perhaps even literature and philosophy. Students of each should retain some element of humility. As Immanuel Kant said, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”

Rediscovering literacy

Literacy meant using mastery over language — both form and content — to sustain a relentless and increasingly sophisticated pursuit of greater meaning. It was about an appreciative, rather than instrumental use of language. Language as a means of seeing rather than as a means of doing.

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Gutenberg certainly created a huge positive change. It made the raw materials of literary culture widely accessible. It did not, however, make the basic skills of literacy, exposition and condensation, more ubiquitous.

Instead, a secondary vocational craft from the world of oral cultures (one among many) was turned into the foundation of all education, both high-culture liberal education and the vocational education that anchors popular culture.