This is dumb.

This is dumb.

May. 22 2013
52 notes
My book recommendations, the Kindle app edition.

My book recommendations, the Kindle app edition.

May. 21 2013
6 notes
Aristotle and Plato in GIF form.

Aristotle and Plato in GIF form.

May. 21 2013
19 notes
“Unlike previous forms of blogging, the service has virality built into its architecture.”
— Matt Buchanan, from What Yahoo Bought With A Billion Dollars: Hope [New Yorker | Elements]
May. 20 2013
Via newyorker.com
#tumblr #internet
5 notes
“In short, it is only a humanity which is capable of awe, which will also be capable of controlling the new potentials which we are opening for ourselves. We can be humble and live a good life with the aid of the machines, or we can be arrogant and die.”
—

Mathematician Norbert Weiner in 1949, from M.I.T. Scholar’s 1949 Essay on Machine Age is Found [NY Times]

Of note,

Not even the brightest picture of an age in which man is the master, and in which we all have an excess of mechanical services will make up for the pains of transition, if we are not both humane and intelligent.

May. 20 2013
Via The New York Times
#machines #computers #future #society
13 notes
“The worrisome extrapolations made by researchers — including the one who first published disturbing findings about prenatal cocaine use — were only part of the problem. Major newspapers and magazines, including Rolling Stone, Newsweek, The Washington Post and The New York Times, ran articles and columns that went beyond the research. Network TV stars of that era, including Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather, also bear responsibility for broadcasting uncritical reports. A much more serious problem, it turns out, is infants who are born with fetal alcohol syndrome.”
—

Revisiting the ‘Crack Babies’ Epidemic That Was Not [NY Times]

While I admire the excellent video on the subject by Retro Report (check them out), and that The New York Times admitted that they were responsible for propagating the idea, it’s bittersweet.

The Times revisited the subject in 2009 in piece titled “Crack Babies - The Epidemic That Wasn’t”, in it the author remarks,

Dr. Frank, the pediatrician in Boston, says cocaine-exposed children are often teased or stigmatized if others are aware of their exposure. If they develop physical symptoms or behavioral problems, doctors or teachers are sometimes too quick to blame the drug exposure and miss the real cause, like illness or abuse.

“Society’s expectations of the children,” she said, “and reaction to the mothers are completely guided not by the toxicity, but by the social meaning” of the drug.

The “crack baby” myth not only negatively influences the lived experiences of children in these societies but also those who are members of the community, and become the casualties of prejudices and politics.

As this 1995 Mother Jones piece highlights,

The crack baby quickly became a symbol for the biological determinism recently promulgated in its rawest form by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein in The Bell Curve: These (mostly black) bug-eyed morons weren’t quite human—and no amount of attention could make them so. In the late ‘8os, some commentators predicted they would become America’s “biologic underclass.” By 1991, John Silber, president of Boston University, went so far as to lament the expenditure of so many health care dollars on “crack babies who won’t ever achieve the intellectual development to have consciousness of God.”

It’s tough to not notice how some myths influence the realities of particular groups, and how responses to these realities fuel the myths. It’s unfair.

Also Related: ‘Crack Babies’ Talk Back [2004]

May. 20 2013
Via The New York Times
#journalism #news #politics #mother jones #drugs
27 notes
cristobalite: a post i made is on buzzfeed i’m going to cry Thanks for pointing this out. I made this image last night as a joke but I guess that was lost on the Buzzfeed folks. With that said, I finally made it. And I brought up Lily with me to the big leagues so it’s more appropriate to say, we made it.

cristobalite:

a post i made is on buzzfeed i’m going to cry

Thanks for pointing this out. I made this image last night as a joke but I guess that was lost on the Buzzfeed folks. With that said, I finally made it. And I brought up Lily with me to the big leagues so it’s more appropriate to say, we made it.

May. 20 2013
Via BuzzFeed
42 notes
Wow, I have no word. Edit: I have quite a few word actually, I wasn’t expecting Deal or No Deal slots but the video feature was a nightmare for my computer. It’ll be interesting to follow tumblr as unknown startup Yahoo seeks to synergize, innovate, and cloud to top to the technology business ladder and earn a few more Techcrunch posts. Business is tough in tech, you adapt or you archive. Thus far Yahoo and tumblr seem to be engaging in what we call in the futurist singularity world “high frequency quantum dark symbiotic parthenogenesis fusion”, it’ll be watch to fascinating over the years. Next I’ll explore what this means for MOOC in my next #tech blog post.

Wow, I have no word.

Edit: I have quite a few word actually,

I wasn’t expecting Deal or No Deal slots but the video feature was a nightmare for my computer. It’ll be interesting to follow tumblr as unknown startup Yahoo seeks to synergize, innovate, and cloud to top to the technology business ladder and earn a few more Techcrunch posts.

Business is tough in tech, you adapt or you archive. Thus far Yahoo and tumblr seem to be engaging in what we call in the futurist singularity world “high frequency quantum dark symbiotic parthenogenesis fusion”, it’ll be watch to fascinating over the years.

Next I’ll explore what this means for MOOC in my next #tech blog post.

May. 19 2013
#yahoo #tumblr #yumblr
43 notes