Welcome!
This site serves as my playground for software development with tools like Java, PHP and PostgreSQL (not to mention HTML, CSS, and JavaScript). As such, it is continuously under construction, will probably never be 'complete', and should not be considered the best dipiction of my capabilities ;).
I may also feel the need to spout-off about my other interests, including chess, acoustics, and music. So, feel free to drop me a line to tell me how much you think this site sucks!
Some Lite Reading...
- Vermont Bans Fracking
eldavojohn writes "Vermont is the first state to ban fracking (hydraulic fracturing), a process that was to revolutionize the United States' position into a major producer of natural gas. New York currently has a moratorium on fracking but it is not yet a statewide ban. Video of the signing indicates the concern over drinking water as the motivation for Vermont's measures (PDF draft of legislation). Slashdot has frequently encountered news debating the safety of such practices."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Tenenbaum To SCOTUS: Let's Get This Debate Rolling
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Joel Tenenbaum has filed a reply brief in support of his petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, trying to get the Court to take on the thorny issue of copyright statutory damages in the age of mp3 files and micropayments."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Comcast To Remove Data Cap, Implement Tiered Pricing
StikyPad writes "Comcast is reportedly removing its oft-maligned 250GB data cap, but don't get too excited. In what appears to be an effort to capitalize on Nielsen's Law, the Internet's version of Moore's Law, Comcast is introducing tiered data pricing. The plan is to include 300GB with the existing price of service, and charge $10 for every 50GB over that limit. As with current policy, Xfinity On Demand traffic will not count against data usage, which Comcast asserts is because the traffic is internal, not from the larger Internet. There has, however, been no indication that the same exemption would apply to any other internal traffic. AT&T and Time Warner have tried unsuccessfully to implement tiered pricing in the past, meeting with strong push back from customers and lawmakers alike. With people now accustomed to, if not comfortable with, tiered data plans on their smartphones, will the public be more receptive to tiered pricing on their wired Internet connections as well, or will they once again balk at a perceived bilking?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- From MIT Inventor To Tea Party Leader
An anonymous reader writes "In the midst of Congressional races around the country, one stands out to techies. Thomas Massie, an MIT whiz kid who pioneered touch-based interfaces and founded SensAble Technologies in the 1990s, is the favorite to win the Republican nomination in his Kentucky district next week. SensAble was recently sold on the cheap, but in a new exclusive, Massie explains why he left the haptics firm years ago to lead a simpler life of farming, family, and guns — lots of guns. Along the way he built a solar-powered, off-the-grid house and became a local hero of the Tea Party. Now Massie is leading the charge to get more engineers into politics, and if he wins, he could be a force to be reckoned with in Washington, DC."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Paul Vixie: 100,000 DSL Modems May Lose Their DNS On July 9
Dante_J writes "Up to 100,000 DSL modems may lose access to DNS come July the 9th, due to scripted web interface changes made to them by DNSChanger. This and other disturbing details were raised by respected Internet elder Paul Vixie during a presentation at the AusCERT 2012 conference."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Iran Threatens Legal Action Against Google For Not Labeling Gulf 'Persian'
New submitter PantherSE writes with an article at CNN about the geopolitical importance of labeling, excerpting thus: "Iran has threatened legal action against Google for not labeling the Persian Gulf on its maps 'Toying with modern technologies in political issues is among the new measures by the enemies against Iran, (and) in this regard, Google has been treated as a plaything,' Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Thursday, according to state-run Press TV. He added that 'omitting the name Persian Gulf is (like) playing with the feelings and realities of the Iranian nation.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- The Pirate Bay Returns, Anonymous Hater Takes Credit For DDoS
An anonymous reader writes "After being the victim of a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack by an unknown party, The Pirate Bay has returned. An Anonymous traitor who goes by the name AnonNyre has claimed responsibility for the DDoS attack that kept the site offline for days."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Senators To Unveil the 'Ex-Patriot Act' To Respond To Facebook's Saverin
An anonymous reader writes "Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has a status update for Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin: Stop attempting to dodge your taxes by renouncing your U.S. citizenship or never come to back to the U.S. again." See this earlier story on Saverin's plan to make the leap out of the U.S. tax system.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Ask Slashdot: Is Outsourcing Development a Good Idea?
New submitter penmanglewood writes "I am a developer at a small IT company, and we primarily make software and games for the education market. I used to work with a team of developers, but for reasons outside the scope of this question, my boss and I are the only ones left. My boss says that our new strategy is to use outsourced developers to do the 'monkey work' for us. To me, this sounds like a bad idea. Do we give the developers access to our internal libraries? How will they be able to work on parts of our product without having access to our repository. I could think of a hundred more objections, but maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way. Is there a smart way to outsource development, or is it just a bad idea?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- NIH Study Finds That Coffee Drinkers Have Lower Risk of Death
parallel_prankster writes "Older adults who drank coffee — caffeinated or decaffeinated — had a lower risk of death [full paper is paywalled, at the New England Journal of Medicine] overall than others who did not drink coffee, according to a study by researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and AARP. Coffee drinkers were less likely to die from heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes, and infections, although the association was not seen for cancer. These results from a large study of older adults were observed after adjustment for the effects of other risk factors on mortality, such as smoking and alcohol consumption. They also found that the association between coffee and reduction in risk of death increased with the amount of coffee consumed. Relative to men and women who did not drink coffee, those who consumed three or more cups of coffee per day had approximately a 10 percent lower risk of death. Researchers caution, however, that they can't be sure whether these associations mean that drinking coffee actually makes people live longer."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Who Is Still Using IE6? the UK Government
strawberryshakes writes "The death knell for IE6 was sounded a couple of years ago, but seems like some people just can't let go. Many UK government departments are still using IE6, which is so old — 11 years old to be exact — it can't cope with social media — which the government is trying to get its staff to use more to engage with citizens."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- DreamHammer Wants To Corner the Drone OS Market
nonprofiteer writes "The Pentagon is increasingly transforming the military into an unmanned force, taking soldiers out of harm's way and replacing them with drones and robots. In 2011, it spent $6 billion on unmanned systems. The problem is that the unmanned systems don't work well together thanks to contractors building proprietary control systems (to lock government into exclusive relationships and to make extra money). A company called DreamHammer plans to have a solution to this — a universal remote control that could integrate all robots and drones into one control system. It would save money and allow anyone to build apps for drones. 'DreamHammer CTO Chris Diebner compares it with a smartphone OS — on which drones and features for those drones can be run like apps. Of course, Ballista is doing something on a much larger scale. It means that it takes fewer people to fly more drones and that new features can be rolled out without the need to develop and build a new version of a Predator, for example.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Online Loneliness At Google+
An anonymous reader writes "Google+ is a lonely place. At least according to a new study that paints the social networking site as a virtual tumbleweed town. Using information culled from the public timelines of 40,000 randomly selected members, data analysis firm RJMetrics found that the Google+ population, which currently numbers 170 million, is largely disengaged, with user activity rapidly decaying—at least when it comes to public posts. According to RJMetrics, 30 percent of first-time Google+ public posters don't post again. Of those who make five public posts, only 15 percent post again. The average time lapse between posts is 12 days, and RJMetrics cites a cohort analysis showing that members tend to make fewer public posts with each successive month. And the response to public posts on Google+ is extremely weak. The average post receives fewer than one reply, fewer than one '+1' (the equivalent to Facebook's 'Like'), and fewer than one re-share — basically most posts in the study did not garner any response."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- RunCore Introduces Self-Destructable SSD
jones_supa writes "RunCore announces the global launch of its InVincible solid state drive, designed for mission-critical fields such as aerospace or military. The device improves upon a normal SSD by having two strategies for the drive to quickly render itself blank. First method goes through the disk, overwriting all data with garbage. Second one is less discreet and lets the smoke out of the circuitry by driving overcurrent to the NAND chips. Both ways can be ignited with a single push of a button, allowing James Bond -style rapid response to the situation on the field."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Federal Court Rejects NDAA's Indefinite Detention, Issues Injunction
First time accepted submitter Arker writes "A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction late Wednesday to block provisions of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that would allow the military to indefinitely detain anyone it accuses of knowingly or unknowingly supporting terrorism. The Obama administration had argued, inter alia, that the plaintiffs, including whistleblower and transparency advocate Daniel Ellsberg and Icelandic Member of Parliament Birgitta Jonsdottir lacked standing, but Judge Katherine Forrest didnt buy it. Given recent statements from the administration, it seems safe to say this will be the start of a long court battle."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Responsive Images and Web Standards at the Turning Point
Responsible responsive design demands responsive images—images whose dimensions and file size suit the viewport and bandwidth of the receiving device. As HTML provides no standard element to achieve this purpose, serving responsive images has meant using JavaScript trickery, and accepting that your solution will fail for some users. Then a few months ago, in response to an article here, a W3C Responsive Images Community Group formed—and proposed a simple-to-understand HTML picture element capable of serving responsive images. The group even delivered picture functionality to older browsers via two polyfills: namely, Scott Jehl’s Picturefill and Abban Dunne’s jQuery Picture. The WHATWG has responded by ignoring the community’s work on the picture element, and proposing a more complicated img set element. Which proposed standard is better, and for whom? Which will win? And what can you do to help avert an “us versus them” crisis that could hurt end-users and turn developers off to the standards process? ALA’s own Mat Marquis explains the ins and outs of responsive images and web standards at the turning point.
- Application Cache is a Douchebag
We’re better connected than we’ve ever been, but we’re not always connected. ApplicationCache lets users interact with their data even when they're offline, but with great power come great gotchas. For instance, files always come from the ApplicationCache, even when the user is online. Oh, and in certain circumstances, a browser won't know that that the online content has changed — causing the user to keep getting old content. And, oh yes, depending on how you cache your resources, non-cached resources may not load even when the user is online. Lanyrd’s Jake Archibald illuminates the hazards of ApplicationCache and shares strategies, techniques, and code workarounds to maximize the pleasure and minimize the pain for user and developer alike. All this, plus a demo. Dig in.
- Say No to Faux Bold
Browsers can do terrible things to type. If text is styled as bold or italic and the typeface family does not include a bold or italic font, browsers will compensate by trying to create bold and italic styles themselves. The results are an awkward mimicry of real type design, and can be especially atrocious with web fonts. Adobe’s Alan Stearns shares quick tips and techniques to ensure that your @font-face rules match the weight and styles of the fonts, and that you have a @font-face rule for every style your content uses. If you’re taking the time to choose a beautiful web font for your site, you owe it to yourself and your users to make certain you’re actually using the web font — and only the web font — to display your site’s content in all its glory.
- Content Modelling: A Master Skill
The content model is one of the most important content strategy tools at your disposal. It allows you to represent content in a way that translates the intention, stakeholder needs, and functional requirements from the user experience design into something that can be built by developers implementing a CMS. A good content model helps ensure that your content vision will become a reality. Lovinger explains how to craft a strong content model and use it to foster communication and align efforts between the UX design, editorial, and technical team members on your project.
- Tinker, Tailor, Content Strategist
What does content strategy mastery look like? As in any field, it comes down to having master skills and knowing when to apply them. While there are different styles of content strategy (from an editorial and messaging focus to a technical and structural focus), the master content strategist must work with content from all angles: messaging architecture and messaging platforms; content missions and content management. Above all, she must advocate for multiple constituents, including end users, business users, stakeholders, and the content vision itself. Rachel Lovinger shares the skills that go into achieving CS mastery.
- Getting Clients
Co-founder of Mule Design and raconteur Mike Monteiro wants to help you do your job better. From contracts to selling design, from working with clients to working with each other, his new book from A Book Apart, released today, is packed with knowledge you can’t afford not to know. A List Apart is pleased to present an exclusive excerpt from Chapter 2 of Design Is a Job.
- Dive into Responsive Prototyping with Foundation
There are hundreds of devices out there right now that can access the full web, as Steve Jobs once put it. They come with different capabilities and constraints, things like input style or screen size, resolution, and form. With all these devices set to overtake traditional desktop computers for web traffic next year, we need tools to help us build responsively. Jonathan Smiley shows how to dive into responsive design using Foundation, a light front-end framework that helps you rapidly build prototypes and production sites.
- Style Tiles and How They Work
How do you involve your client in a successful design process? Many of our processes date back to print design and advertising. It’s time we evolved our deliverables to make clients a more active participant in the process. The style tile is a design deliverable that references website interface elements through font, color, and style collections delivered alongside a site map, wireframes, and other user experience artifacts. Learn how style tiles can align client and designer expectations, expedite project timelines, involve stakeholders in the brainstorming process, and serve an essential role in responsive design.
- Artistic Distance
Pimpin’ ain’t easy; neither is self-critique. If you are passionate about what you create, it is impossible to completely disassociate yourself from your work in order to objectively evaluate and then improve it. But the ability to achieve “artistic distance”—that is, to attain a place that allows you to contemplate your design on its own merits—will enable you to improve your own work immeasurably and, ultimately, to cast off the immature shackles of ego. Learn to let your work shine by letting go of it. Acquire the knack of achieving artistic distance.
- The Best Browser is the One You Have with You
The web as we know and build it has primarily been accessed from the desktop. That is about to change. The ITU predicts that in the next 18–24 months, mobile devices will overtake PCs as the most popular way to access the web. If these predictions come true, very soon the web—and its users—will be mostly mobile. Even designers who embrace this change can find it confusing. One problem is that we still consider the mobile web a separate thing. Stephanie Rieger of futurefriend.ly and the W3C presents principles to understand and design for a new normal, in which users are channel agnostic, devices are plentiful, standards are fleeting, mobile use doesn’t necessarily mean “hide the desktop version,” and every byte counts.
- This is crazy
Ben Howard performing a cover of Call me Maybe by Carly Rae Jespen on BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge.
(Live Lounge previously on Metafilter) - Libel protections for peer reviewed journals
Britain is considering legislation to protect scientific publications in peer reviewed journals from libel lawsuits, such as the Chiropractic Association's lawsuit against Simon Singh.
There are older articles on Singh's case in Nature and the NYT. There are other interesting examples of Britain's exceptionally plaintiff friendly libel laws include the Trafigura and Hempel cases and the super-injunctions articles under the libel tag. - I will not make any more boring art
A Brief History of John Baldessari The Godfather of conceptual art. Narrated by Tom Waits. (SLYT)
- "...a reading that can only be described as sensual."
Gilbert Gottfried reads Fifty Shades of Grey (NSFW audio)
- RIP Doug Dillard
Doug Dillard was a pioneer of country rock with his band The Dillards, with his brother Rodney, who were perhaps the first to plug bluegrass instruments into amplifiers back in the early sixties. He died today at the age of 75.
The Dillards album Wheatstraw Suite was recorded after Doug left the band to work with Gene Clark, but he worked on the songs and recorded early single versions of some of them. This album is arguably the best country-folk-rock album ever made, outstripping (IMHO) efforts by The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers.
His work in Dillard and Clark was magnificent, especially "Why Not My Baby", a forgotten masterpiece that somehow marries banjo with a string section (and Gene Clark's plaintive vocal), though it was generally lost in stupid band politics and the remarkable capacity of both principals for self-destruction.
Perhaps The Dillards, and Doug's, biggest impact on the national stage was as The Darlings, the bluegrass band on The Andy Griffith Show, the first time most Americans ever heard this form of their own music.
Here's Doug in (somewhat) later years on Ralph Emery's show Pop! Goes The Country. - Perhaps that should read "enter the ranks of the unemployed"
- $374,244 or 7,200 aspirant screenwriters?
It's Nicholl Fellowship season again! This year, with a May 1st deadline, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences accepted a record 7,197 entries -- an estimated 647,730 to 863,640 pages that Academy Judges will have to read and evaluate by October. This is a record reflecting not only a high number of aspirant screenwriters, but over 1,000 submissions from outside the territorial United States. Previously, here and here. Does anybody here have any Nicholl Fellowship tales? Any wins? Any multi-decade efforts to get their story out there?
- UK Police to practice their own form of "phone hacking"
Met Police to extract suspects' mobile phone data [BBC] The Metropolitan Police, covering Greater London, are set to expand their search powers by making it standard practice to swipe contact details, call logs, and texts off of the mobile phones of anyone in custody - and retain that data - regardless of whether the suspect ends up charged with a crime or not. Clearly not everyone is over the moon about this, seeing it as the latest sign of the steady erosion of communications privacy in the UK and a potential breach of human rights law.
- "Once I checked the shadows and the statues, I had a lovely time."
"Hello! I'm the Doctor Puppet! I travel to places with my companion who takes pictures of me." Doctor Who as a puppet, traveling around NYC, getting his photo taken.
- An app to prevent violence before it happens.
Circle of 6, one of the winners of the HHS / White House "Apps Against Abuse" challenge.
"Circle of 6 is a tool that meets young people where they are and offers concrete strategies for supporting each other, whether safety threats are coming from intimate relationships or potentially dangerous social situations." Somaya Chemaly review in Huff Post Tech. - Last Dance
Donna Summer, the queen of disco, dies at 63. Once upon a time there was a girl who loved to love you. Sometimes she was a bad girl, but she always worked hard for the money, and she was always hot stuff. Although once she left her cake out in the rain. Now it's time to dim all the lights, and have one last dance, for the queen has gone to the disco in the sky.
Previously on Metafilter. - "no longer Gage"
UCLA neuroscientists have reconstructed Phineas Gage's head injury and mapped out how his brain was affected by the tamping rod that went through it. You can read the full scientific article here. Phineas Gage has become one of the most famous cases in the history of science. A railroad worker who survived having an iron rod go through his brain with subsequent changes in personality. Malcolm McMillan of Deakin University, Australia, has the great Phineas Gage Information Page, which includes his story and a page on unanswered questions. [Phineas Gage previously on MeFi]
- Music Won
These days, Steve Stajich is a columnist for the Santa Monica Mirror. He's done some standup, some theater, and some TV. In the Denver summer of 1978, he recorded an album.
- The story of Ron Paul's presidential candidacy as told by his supporters in Time Magazine's comments section
The story of Ron Paul's presidential candidacy as told by his supporters in Time Magazine's comments section. Extra-specially meta thanks to an update which posts comments from underneath the same post.
- "The dentist man got me"
ReachOut Healthcare America, a dental management services company, "built its business model on the premise that low-income parents often don't have time or transportation to take children to the dentist. So mobile teams pack equipment in large cases, load up a minivan, head to schools and set up in gyms, libraries or classrooms." Services are billed to Medicaid. ReachOut and other dental management services companies are increasingly backed by private equity firms. What could possibly go wrong?
A 4-year-old in Arizona received two "baby root canals," crowns and 10 X-rays -- all while he was at school. And without his mother's knowledge or consent, she says. State investigators are examining complaints that ReachOut-dispatched teams billed Medicaid for unnecessary work on children. ReachOut says what happened is not common practice. - RIP
Jean Craighead George has died.
George was an author of young-adult literature, including the Newbery Medal winning Julie of the Wolves and My Side of the Mountain, which won the Newbery Honor. Her works doubtlessly introduced millions of young readers to the joys of literature. - SEOgrandmaster2203 goes legit
Flabkiller Acai Berry Extract Helps You Lose! Make big money from home with Envelope Elf! iPads for just $39.99 at Deals R Us!
Don't worry, my account hasn't been hacked. These websites are part of a new educational campaign from the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs to warn about common internet scams. Clicking on any of the links takes you to information about the type of scam and how to spot it. - The changing nature of photography
- Ambition dies Hard
Bill Bollinger was an important post minimalist sculpture in the late 1960s and early 1970s. One of a generation of people who changed what sculpture meant.
His early work was noted for it's use of found and industrial materials. He became famous for the quote "I only do what it is necessary to do. There is no reason to use color, to polish, to bend, to weld, if it is not necessary to do so" This led to work made of cyclone fence, rope, or rubber pipe.
His 1969 Graphite Piece, where one half of a room is filled with powdered graphite, and the other half of the room is empty, becomes a discussion of materiality, physical presence, and human impact on built space.
He was part of two art shows that defined what this new post-material sculptures would look like. The 1968 9, at the Warehouse space of landmark dealer, Leo who represented among others, Johns, Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein, and Warhol. 9 was named after the number of artists in the show, and those artists included Giovanni Anselmo whose most famous sculpture makes you wait for lettuce to rot so a marble block can fall, Eva Hesse, who was known for early and innovative use of fiberglass, latex, and other forms of plastic; Stephen Kaltenbachwho moved between linguistic conceptualism and more industrial pieces ; Bruce Nauman, the early video, audio and neon innovator; Alan Saret, and his tenuous pieces in wire Richard Serra whose early work (pdf) shared the industrial materials with his later work but was on a much smaller scale, Keith Sonnier who was known for abstracted neon, and Gilberto Zorio fellow Artist Povera with Anselmo. He was also part of the famous exhibition Live in Your Head at the Kunsthalle Bern. A show that had 34 artists, which became a canon of process, conceptual, post-industrial, minimalist, language, and installation artists.
In 1972--Bollinger departed from his more installation and found work to make a series of cast iron work, that shared an interest in abstraction. sharing some material and scale choices with Serra. Eventually he worked with a set of sculptures about water, that were expensive, and hard to sell. As the glitz of the 1980s replaced the slightly scruffy 1970s, his work became more and more difficult to sell and he was ignored. As interest in the 9 show developed including Marcia Garcia Torres' pamphlet on the 9 show, interest in Bollinger slowly increased. The first major step of Bollinger's critical reception was Wade Saunder's poetic and critical investigation of his work, published in the March, 1st issue of Art in America. Saunder's article begins with the heart breaking epigraph: "Richard Serra: There were a lot of good people in that show ("9 at Leo Castelli," December 1968). Nauman was in that show, there were a few interesting Italians in that show--
Chuck Close: Eva Hesse was in that show.
Richard Serra: Eva Hesse was ill the show. There was a really talented guy--1 don't know what happened to him--Bill Bollinger.
Chuck Close: Bollinger was very interesting. There were some beautiful Sonniers in that show, the best he ever did, I think.
--New York City, Oct. 2, 1995, from The Portraits Speak: Chuck Close in Conversation with 27 of his Subjects (New York, A.R.T. Press, 1997)
It took almost a decade, but that 2000 article has now resulted in a set of major career retrospectives, 40 years after Bollinger's death. The first, in February 2011, was at the Kunstmuseum Lichtenstein. (youtube video of the show, in German, but good images. This show moved to the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, in November. The curator of that show Christiane Meyer-Stoll had a conversation with the curator of the Fruitmarket, Fiona Bradley. They also produced a major catalog. Here is the Scotsman's review of the show. Here is The Glasgow's Journal. Here is the visual Art Blog Distorted's review.
That show is now at the Sculpture Center of Long Island. Here is the notice of the Sculpture Center. Here is an Art Info review.
This retrospective might rework his reputation. - Beaucoup Boo Krug
At Burning Man 2011, select participants were invited to an elaborate champagne dinner party, with food prepared by New York City chef Phil Winser of The Fat Radish. But who hosted the party, what was the reason for the dinner, and why were only certain participants invited? Well, the dinner was a marketing campaign for Krug.
With Burning Man as a backdrop, Krug's marketing team and events agency invited society bloggers and publications such as Town & Country and W Magazine to photograph and write about the "exclusive" dinner for its brand loyalists, with the intent of getting extensive coverage and brand exposure. After the dinner and photo shoot, Krug's teams abandoned the setup and left the entire mess for Burning Man to clean up. When the New York Times asked Krug's brand director Carl Heline about Burning Man, he remarked, "It's not that different than Fashion Week."
Burning Man has a long-standing policy regarding advertising at and commodification of the event. While Burning Man allows media members to publish photographs for editorial purposes, Burning Man does not permit the use of images for branded articles and product placement. Outraged by Krug's marketing campaign and disregard for Burning Man's 10 Principles, the Burning Man community has been voicing their opinions of Krug on Twitter and Facebook. Burning Man organizers have posted the entire story on The Burning Blog. - alt-ac census
Who are the alt-acs? They are people with graduate education (mostly in the humanities and library science) who have decided to pursue alternative academic careers. They choose to skip the "dues-paying crap" often associated with pursuing a traditional tenure-track job, and avoid languishing in unrewarding adjunct assignments. They also tweet like mad. The results of a new (and, as of this writing, ongoing) #alt-ac census show alt-acs thriving in diverse positions; there's a strong contingent involved in the digital humanities, but also a historian at the U.S. Department of State, an exhibit developer at the National Constitution Center, and a self-employed "Editor, musicologist."
Even William Pannapacker, often cited by MeFites for his advice "Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go", has repeated the claim that alt-ac is the future of the academy. - Teach them well and let them lead the way
According to the U.S. census bureau, from July 2010 to July 2011, more than half of all babies born were members of minority groups, a first for the United States.
"This is an important landmark," said Roderick Harrison, a former chief of racial statistics at the Census Bureau who is now a sociologist at Howard University. "This generation is growing up much more accustomed to diversity than its elders." - TED: Yes to "Drying your Hands," No to "Income Inequality."
"I can say with confidence that rich people don't create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small," said über-rich venture capitalist Nick Hanauer in a March 1st TEDx talk, which TED is refusing to put on its website.
When asked why, TED curator Chris Anderson stated that "We have a general policy to avoid talks that are overtly partisan, and to avoid talks that have received mediocre audience ratings."
Was it overly partisan or mediocre? When Geekwire asked, Hanauer stated that he got a standing ovation.
In a discussion on Reddit, user TEDChris, reportedly the TED curator Chris Anderson, states that "The trouble with this talk is that it tackled the issue in a way that was explicitly partisan, framing it as a critique of "an article of faith" for Republicans. TED is avowedly non-partisan. We want to share ideas in a way that brings people together, doesn't throw sand in their faces."
The National Journal has posted the full text of the speech here. - Paralyzed Woman Controls Robotic Arm With Her Mind
For the first time since she was paralyzed by a stroke 15 years ago, a woman in the BrainGate2 clinical trial served herself a drink of coffee ... with a brain-controlled robot arm (with heartwarming video)
- Today, Maman died.
Rethinking "Mother died today": Translating a work requires a surprising amount of thought to avoid leading readers into contextual pitfalls, and The Stranger is no exception. "Within the novel's first sentence, two subtle and seemingly minor translation decisions have the power to change the way we read everything that follows."