December 2011
7 posts
4 tags
a couple of well-made interactive graphics
sex in modern Britain
road fatalities in the United States
The Burning House →
‘If your house was burning, what would you take with you?’
The answer, in a series of elegant photographs.
3 tags
CIA's secret Romanian prison →
From an accompanying article:
The basement consisted of six prefabricated cells, each with a clock and arrow pointing to Mecca, the officials said. The cells were on springs, keeping them slightly off balance and causing disorientation among some detainees.
2 tags
November 2011
1 post
3 tags
October 2011
7 posts
Neurotics experience more immersion when watching... →
psychotherapy:
Descriptions of neurotics are typically unflattering: they’re fearful, tense people, prone to catastrophise and will often shy away from challenges. Well, here’s some more uplifting news for folk matching this personality description. A study of film immersion has found that people who score highly in neuroticism (as measured by agreement with statements like “I worry a lot”) tend...
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occupy ______
Regarding the “occupy _____” meme, is anyone using it as a verb in the second definition, as listed here?
That would be kind of interesting. As in, distract Wall Street! Or, put Wall Street to work!
(I’m just trying to make the most of this, guys.)
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“The writer Elizabeth Wurtzel got to know Franzen and Wallace in the...”
– lovely article. how do i meet, and become one of, the people doing this today?
4 tags
June 2011
7 posts
pet names
I’m working on a volunteer project for the local humane society that involves looking at their adoption and return data. The spreadsheet that I’m working from has the animals’ names as well as their ID numbers. I’m almost at the end of the sheet, and I just ran across a dog named “Gwen Stacey” - probably my favorite so far. (There was also a cat named...
Richard Dienst on WBAI.
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billing + trust
I’m generally not a whiny consumer, and I will always recognize the phenomenal benefits of mobile technology over the flaws of its providers.
That said, my billing relationship with Sprint Wireless is increasingly fraught. I’d like to treat their bills like any other - glance over an email once a month and let the money slide out of my bank account with a quiet sigh - but they insist...
May 2011
7 posts
1 tag
3 tags
“Even if localizing specific brain functions is at some point wholly agreed upon...”
– “Looking for Empathy in a Conflict-Ridden World,” Scientific American
DealBook: Jimmy Choo Sold to Labelux for About... →
I understand that things like this happen, and that it’s fundamentally an issue of the financials, but it’s still weird to me that PE firms own things like luxury shoe companies.
1 tag
“Mermaids may be beautiful, but can they be trusted?”
– important questions posed by facebook ads.
April 2011
6 posts
2 tags
Program on Liberation Technology →
Draw your own conclusions.
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on mathematics education
I’m reading the New York Times article “A Better Way to Teach Math,” and I can’t help thinking athousandtimesyes. Not only is this math tutor’s method giving the lie to the idea that there are “math people” and “not-math people” (which I myself once believed), but he’s also able to introduce game dynamics and intellectual micro-steps in a...
1 tag
“A friend who works in advertising told me that she felt fine about her life —...”
– People are awesome. Thanks for confirming, New York Times!
(In the latest social-media-ruins-everything-forever article.)
March 2011
8 posts
3 tags
1 tag
"push back"
This is not a term you ever need to use unless you’re having a schoolyard tussle with a client. Try “responded,” “resisted,” argued,” etc.
1 tag
observation
People in politics or in a high-contact business who are likely to meet many other people in a superficial fashion don’t say “Nice to meet you.”
They say “Nice to see you,” which is much more neutral. It avoids offending anyone who you might have met before, but without suggesting that this is necessarily a repeat encounter (which “Nice to see you again”...
I’d like to get an external monitor to expand my screen real estate beyond my 13” MacBook. Any recommendations regarding brand/size/best place to get a deal?
2 tags
February 2011
14 posts
“If you’re going to a gala for some kind of disease and then you go to a hip art...”
–
I’ve often wanted someone to study the efficiency of expensive gala benefits for “causes” — i.e., what’s the ratio of money spent by guests and hosts to create & attend the event vs. money raised for the cause. (via fattailed)
It’s not a study per se, but the movie Friends with Money...
4 tags
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If She Did It →
longreads:
No one expected Judith Regan to go quietly. After dropping out of sight for much of this year, on Nov. 13 she filed a lawsuit against News Corp, HarperCollins, and Jane Friedman for defamation, breach of contract, and sex discrimination. Most spectacularly, the lawsuit alleges that Ms. Regan was the victim of a vast conspiracy, set in motion by two unnamed News Corp executives, who...
“We are all tapping on the walls late at night waiting for answers from distant...”
– Cary Tennis answers a woman who asks Why do I blog? (via somethingchanged)
4 tags
My friend Leon has a great article on the increasing use of statistical technology to predict criminal behavior:
“This is the nightmare that I have,” Berk said. “Supposing I am able to tell a mother that her 8-year-old has a one in three chance of committing a homicide by age 18. What the hell do I do with that information? What do the various social services do with that information? I...
I’m looking for a more elegant whiteboard/corkboard solution to jot down notes and hang up scraps of paper on a wall. Any suggestions?
1 tag
7.20.2010
Exhausting a topic is exhausting. A topic slinks in, inviting no less delicacy than a love relationship. And a love relationship is a most exhausting topic -
I still think sometimes of the poem I never wrote: the panoply of digital voices never heard.
It seems quaint now - snapshots in time? instant message statuses? - even as it seems more poetic than the sundry outbursts of the...