Microsoft turns spoken English into spoken Mandarin – in the same voice “And the final kicker: he has fed the system an hour’s worth of his voice, and thus the software will speak in Mandarin, using his own tones.”

For The Record Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Barry Zito vs. Daniel Descalso – McCovey Chronicles “Because that was such an obvious setup pitch, maybe he could cheat a bit and sit on a curve.”

Why Startup Founders are Always Unhappy “My theory is that a founder’s happiness is tied to the rate of change of their startup’s success. In other words, your happiness graph is the first derivative of your success graph.”

We Should Probably All Calm Down a Bit: Kevin Drum “Oh, and smart people on both sides of the aisle should start thinking seriously about how to handle a future in which smart machines do more and more work and humans do less and less. I’m dead serious about this.”

Is Demography Destiny? by Megan McArdle “I’m not sure how enduring this ‘Emerging Democratic Majority’ will prove to be. Some reasons for my skepticism”

Immigration is only part of the problem Republicans have with hispanic voters – Spectator Blogs Because it is not just about immigration. It is about belonging. It is about respect. It is about being part of the American family.

When quants tell stories | Felix Salmon “At heart, the campaign was marrying quantitative skills with storytelling, to unbeatable effect. Which stories should the campaign tell, to any given group of people? How should it tell those stories? And who should it get to deliver those stories? The database answered all those questions”

Good as Gold Alex Belth, Bronx Banter

Money talks, but NHL fans don’t want to hear it “the fan is saying: don’t treat me as if I don’t matter… Don’t make me think about the money. I don’t want to think about the money.”