January 2013
7 posts
“the number of U.S. adults who die from too much medicine is now higher than the number who die for lack of it”
—Forget the Placebo Effect: It’s the ‘Care Effect’ That Matters | Wired Opinion | Wired.com
“House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) assailed the fiscal-cliff legislation today, calling it “a classic example of putting 98.5 per cent of the American people ahead of the rest of the country.”
—Republicans Apologize to Top 1.5 Per Cent : The New Yorker
“Self-help is steeped in “that painful, self-congratulatory aspect that American success has. It’s not enough to be successful, you get to take full individual credit for it,” as if no one had helped you along the way. “Our indebtedness to each other is erased in this literature,” McGee says.”
—The Paperback Quest for Joy by Laura Vanderkam, City Journal Autumn 2012
December 2012
4 posts
“We have economic fear combined with everybody joined together on these instant twitchy social networks which are designed to create mass action. What does it sound like to you? It sounds to me like the prequel to potential social catastrophe. I’d rather take the risk of being wrong than not be talking about that.”
—What Turned Jaron Lanier Against the Web? | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine
“Before being monopolized by a single person working in tandem with a corporation, Monopoly had in fact been “invented” by many people—not just Magie and the Raifords but also the unknown player who gave the game its moniker and the unsung Ardenite who had perhaps aided Magie in advancing its rules. The game that today stresses the ruthlessness of the individual and defines victory as the impoverishment of others was the product of communal labor.”
—Monopoly Is Theft | Harper’s Magazine
“A study from the Brookings Institute says that it will soon be within the reach of the government — and other organizations — to keep a digital record everything that everyone in the country says or does, and the NSA is clearly on the cutting edge of large-scale data storage.”
—7 Technologies That Will Make It Easier for the Next President to Hunt and Kill You | Danger Room | Wired.com
“Very little of the inter-group hatred we observe in the world today is based on knowledge of the enemy as real people. And the groups with which we identify are made up, for the most part, of people we’ll never meet. Still, we haven’t forgotten our prehistoric ways of being bound together in groups. In times of desperation, we remember it best: for example, when the guns of a dictator are turned against us.”
—Harvey Whitehouse – On ritual
October 2012
11 posts
“No show has captured China’s heart the way the Super Girl Contest has. When it debuted in 2004, few would have predicted that the all-female American Idol knockoff would draw 400 million viewers. But while the Chinese people couldn’t get enough of the show, the Chinese government viewed it as a threat. The most popular contestants wore Western-style clothes and gave emotional performances that flew in the face of China’s usual stoicism. What really scared the government, however, was how viewers chose the winner by text message. In a nation where citizens have no say in who will lead them, that sort of exposure to the democratic process seemed dangerous.Government mandarins led by culture minister Liu Zhongde blasted the show as “poison for our youth.” And even after regulators stripped the program of its text voting, the venom continued. “We can’t have working people reveling all day in low culture,” Liu said.This being China, you can probably guess how the story ends. Government censors gave the show the ax following the 2011 season finale. Still, Super Girl managed to give China a real taste of democracy. Not even Simon Cowell could find fault there.”
—The 25 Most Powerful TV Shows of the Last 25 Years - Mental Floss
“A bicycle made almost entirely of cardboard has the potential to change transportation habits from the world’s most congested cities to the poorest reaches of Africa, its Israeli inventor says.”
—Cardboard bicycle can change the world, says Israeli inventor - Yahoo! News
“Imagine an authoritarian nation where everyone has a phone running a government-customized version of Android — indeed, is required to have one, because every phone is an eye and ear of the national surveillance network.”
—Selling Software That Kills | TechCrunch
“In 2010, Hungary was clearly demanding a dramatic change. However, in exchange for two years of sweeping reforms and stringent cutbacks, they have not said goodbye to hard times, merely their right to demand better.”
—“Hungary is being held hostage by an outdated tyrant”
“We have been informed that we cannot have two bottles of the same spirit open behind the bar and that we cannot have alcohol in the kitchen area, even though we use whisky for cooking”, explained Zsuzsanna. “We weren’t even aware of the law that prevents bars having two bottles of the same spirit open and ready to serve. For us that seems like a business decision that helps improve customer service. We don’t see why this would be illegal.”
—Update: Caledonia Budapest Expat Pub Faces Shocking Closure - Xpatloop.com - Expat Life In Budapest, Hungary - Entertainment
“What does it feel like to have a billion users? It feels like an honor. We get the honor of building things that a billion people use. I mean, there’s no core need. It isn’t a core human need to use Facebook. It’s a core human need to stay connected with the people you care about.”
—Coca Cola, McDonald’s, and… Facebook
“Facebook doesn’t want to be the gateway drug to the internet, it wants to be the internet.”
—Coca Cola, McDonald’s, and… Facebook
September 2012
12 posts
“What we’ve seen is that sharing equal responsibility for work in the home doesn’t necessarily contribute to contentment,” said Thomas Hansen, co-author of the study entitled “Equality in the Home”.”
—Couples who share the housework are more likely to divorce, study finds - Telegraph
“Before the Columbian Exchange, there were no oranges in Florida, no bananas in Ecuador, no paprika in Hungary, no tomatoes in Italy, no potatoes in Germany, no coffee in Colombia, no pineapples in Hawaii, no rubber trees in Africa, no cattle in Texas, no donkeys in Mexico, no chili peppers in Thailand or India, and no chocolate in Switzerland.”
—Columbian Exchange - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras “right” for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested…. Looking back on it, I felt I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.”
—The Revenge of the Fighting Quaker • Damn Interesting
“Three billion new minds are about to join the global brain. What will they dream? What will they discover? What will they desire? These are minds that the rest of society has never had access to before and their collective economic and creative boost becomes our final force: the power of “the rising billion.”
—Why You Should Be Optimistic About the Future | Wired Business | Wired.com
“Already folks with no education and little to eat have gained access to cellular connectivity unheard of just two decades ago.”
—Why You Should Be Optimistic About the Future | Wired Business | Wired.com
“Today’s belief in ineluctable certainty is the true innovation-killer of our age. In this environment, the best an audacious manager can do is to develop small improvements to existing systems — climbing the hill, as it were, toward a local maximum, trimming fat, eking out the occasional tiny innovation — like city planners painting bicycle lanes on the streets as a gesture toward solving our energy problems. Any strategy that involves crossing a valley — accepting short-term losses to reach a higher hill in the distance — will soon be brought to a halt by the demands of a system that celebrates short-term gains and tolerates stagnation, but condemns anything else as failure. In short, a world where big stuff can never get done.”
—Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation | Wired Business | Wired.com
“But what people want today goes well beyond technology and design. They don’t just want four wheels and a means to steer, or to be surrounded by music and information wherever their eyes and ears may roam. What people are looking for now is a way to reconnect with their values: to ground how they can, will, and should live in the world.”
—If Design’s No Longer the Killer Differentiator, What Is? | Wired Opinion | Wired.com
“A wall goes up,” Whitaker warned, “when you try to make Mr. and Mrs. Average American Citizen work or think.”
—The Invention of Political Consulting : The New Yorker
“It may not be rational, but we didn’t get where we are by being an entirely rational species – we did it by trying things, and failing pretty much most of the time. It’s time for someone to step up and show us all that we still have that drive, that when we have the guts to unleash that curiosity – and the guts to fail – we can still achieve greatness. Neil Armstrong’s death is a wake-up call, a challenge to our generation. We can go to Mars, and it doesn’t need a miracle: we just need to decide to go.”
—Neil Armstrong’s death should be a wake-up call for the world | Martin Robbins | Science | guardian.co.uk
August 2012
8 posts
“Today’s Web ads don’t know enough about you to avoid pitching you stuff that you’d never, ever buy. They do know just enough about you, though, to clue you in on the fact that they’re watching everything you do.”
—The uncanny valley of Internet advertising: Why do creepy targeted ads follow me everywhere I go on the Web? - Slate Magazine
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“Just take a quick look and don’t turn your face,” a horrified Iraqi father told his children when their car pulled alongside a gun-toting motorcyclist. The kids, frightened by what they’d believed was a tool of only police and criminals, asked, “Why does he have a gun? What is he planning to do?”
—The Land of Big Groceries, Big God, and Smooth Traffic: What Surprises First-Time Visitors to America - Max Fisher - The Atlantic
July 2012
8 posts
“If you want a platform to be commercially viable for third-party software developers, you have to lock it down. Just like in real life, closing the door and locking it helps make sure that your money remains yours.”
—Closed for Business - Matt Gemmell
“The most distinct culturally specific facial expression might be the British smile. According to Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner, compared with Americans, the British tend to use an extra facial muscle when they smile.”
—Olympic smiles: How to identify athletes’ nationalities based on their facial expressions. - Slate Magazine
“Two-thirds of executives surveyed in April by the German- Hungarian Chamber of Commerce said they were “very unsatisfied” with the predictability of the government’s policy decisions and this has led to a “spectacular deterioration” in confidence. Investments plunged to 12.6 percent of GDP in the first three months of 2012, the lowest for that period since at least 1995, according to the statistics office in Budapest”
—Orban’s Tax Binge Repels Investors - Bloomberg
“in the six years since Walmart has allowed online items to be picked up in stores, customer demand has been high. More than half of the sales from Walmart.com are now picked up at Walmart stores”
—Retailers Encourage Shoppers to Buy Online and Pick Up In-Store - NYTimes.com
“I see Microsoft as technology’s answer to Sears,” said Kurt Massey, a former senior marketing manager. “In the 40s, 50s, and 60s, Sears had it nailed. It was top-notch, but now it’s just a barren wasteland. And that’s Microsoft. The company just isn’t cool anymore.”
—Microsoft’s Downfall: Inside the Executive E-mails and Cannibalistic Culture That Felled a Tech Giant | Blogs | Vanity Fair
