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We Could Steal Time Just For One Day

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On June 5, 2013

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I just want to share this as far as wide as I can, because it says everything.

This, i believe…

ROGER EBERT: On kindness

ROGER EBERT: On kindness
Roger Ebert (1942-2013) was the world’s most respected and celebrated film critic. I can’t possibly do justice to his legendary career in the movies. For that, I…

The text, excerpted from Rober Ebert’s memoir reads, for the benefit of those who cannot see the image:

“Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”

My pencils are sharp enough. Even the dull ones will leave a mark…

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On January 4, 2013

In Blog

I was just now linking someone else to the brilliant work of Ze Frank, and it occurred to me:

1) How much I love the first episode of his new web show
2) How much it still affects me
3) How I need to listen to it every day until I internalise it.

’30 Rock’ biggest ethics violator on TV – The Marquee Blog – CNN.com Blogs

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On December 30, 2010

In Blog

Get the feeling someone at Global Compliance figured out a way to get their employer to pay for them to watch TV all day?

Seriously, I went into the wrong line of work…

’30 Rock’ biggest ethics violator on TV – The Marquee Blog – CNN.com Blogs

If you think your co-workers are a handful, take a good look at the characters on your favorite shows. A recent study conducted by Global Compliance found that most people on TV are hardly politically correct, constantly violating ethics in the workplace.

The biggest offender? “30 Rock,” which averages 11 violations per episode. On one show, Jack (Alec Baldwin) comments that a “chick lawyer” who handles sexual harassment presentations is “asking for it.” According to Global Compliance, which is devoted to helping organizations achieve the highest degree of ethical behavior, Jack’s remark violates Diversity, Equal Opportunity, and Respect in the Workplace.

Read a Thorough Chart of Bad Space Science in Movies — Vulture

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On December 29, 2010

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Read a Thorough Chart of Bad Space Science in Movies — Vulture

Read a Thorough Chart of Bad Space Science in Movies. The good news: Apollo 13 was totally accurate. You really can get three men back from the moon on the power it takes to run a coffee machine!

Yearbook Blacks Out Kids’ Eyes for Fear of Porn Potential – ParentDish

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On November 30, 2010

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this is officially the dumbest thing I’ve seen in a month.

Yearbook Blacks Out Kids’ Eyes for Fear of Porn Potential – ParentDish

What would you do if you got your kids’ yearbook and all the eyes had been blacked out with magic marker?

Personally, I’d try to wake up. But at a school in England, the principal is very much awake and behind this whole thing. Apparently, she was so worried someone might cut out the kids’ faces, paste them on child porn pictures and post them on the Internet — yes, that’s really her concern — that she ordered the teachers to manually black out all the children’ eyes.

Let’s pause for a second to consider how lovely an illustration this is of what I call “Worst-First” thinking. That is, thinking up the worst, most perverse explanation for something first, instead of assuming a less dramatic, but far more likely, rationale.

Map of the World’s Countries Rearranged by Population | Strange Maps | Big Think

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On November 30, 2010

In Blog

I love stuff like this. It serves no purpose other than to make you bend your mind around the world in interesting new ways. And that’s kinda cool all by itself.

490 – Map of the World’s Countries Rearranged by Population | Strange Maps | Big Think

What if the world were rearranged so that the inhabitants of the country with the largest population would move to the country with the largest area? And the second-largest population would migrate to the second-largest country, and so on?

The result would be this disconcerting, disorienting map. In the world described by it, the differences in population density between countries would be less extreme than they are today. The world’s most densely populated country currently is Monaco, with 43,830 inhabitants/mi² (16,923 per km²) (1). On the other end of the scale is Mongolia, which is less densely populated by a factor of almost exactly 10,000, with a mere 4.4 inhabitants/mi² (1.7 per km²).

The averages per country would more closely resemble the global average of 34 per mi² (13 per km²). But those evened-out statistics would describe a very strange world indeed. The global population realignment would involve massive migrations, lead to a heap of painful demotions and triumphant promotions, and produce a few very weird new neighbourhoods.

What it’s like to have sex with someone with Asperger’s | Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist

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On November 30, 2010

In Blog

I’d be hestiant to generalise this to all people (or even any other people) with Asperger’s , but it’s certainly a fascinating look at one individual.

What it’s like to have sex with someone with Asperger’s | Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist

You think it would be really fun to have sex with me. Because, I think you can tell from my posts, I’ll do anything. But maybe you can also tell from my posts that it’s a little bit weird. Because you know that I’ll say anything, too, but sometimes, I make you cringe.

I think I’m that way in bed, too.

This post is about work. And sex, which are two of the essential areas of life one needs to be able to function in before you can feel like a normal adult. And both sex and work are governed by a set of rules that many people are able to learn just by being in the world.

There Is More To The Local Movement Than Just Food : TreeHugger

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On November 26, 2010

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There’s nothing shocking in this, but its nice to have some numbers.

There Is More To The Local Movement Than Just Food : TreeHugger

According to a study commissioned by Michigan’s Local First, “when West Michigan consumers choose a locally owned business over a non-local alternative, $73 of every $100 spent stays in the community. By contrast, only $43 of every $100 spent at a non-locally owned business remains in the community.” This year, a coalition of groups is promoting a holiday challenge to shop downtown and support local businesses.

Your mind, well and nicely blown

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On November 26, 2010

In Blog

The world is not only stranger than we imagine, it’s stranger than we can imagine. And that is *awesome*.

Mark Morford: Your mind, well and nicely blown

We are never going to run out.

This is the good news. Wait, check that: This is the astonishing, God-exploding, soul-altering, holier-than-wow news you must sip like a fine absinthe and jack straight into your bloodskin like a heroin bomb and then suck into your very anima like Lindsay Lohan on a coke bender.

It might sound obvious, the idea that wonders will never cease, that we will continue to be blown away by new discoveries for as long as we shall exist, that the world will keep astonishing us with stunning ideas, organisms, diseases and cures, synapses and connections, modes of being and ways of understanding for all eternity, despite our efforts to thwart it, deny it, reject it, or dumb ourselves down so much that we no longer have a goddamn clue what’s going on.

But it’s not obvious at all. We are, after all, nothing if not preternaturally jaded and wary. Many assume we’re at a point in history when we’ve made most of the major breakthroughs and discoveries, have established all the laws of time and physics we are ever going to need. No more man on the moon, no more discovery of antibiotics, no more E=MC2, no more sorry-Pope-the-world-ain’t-flat kind of epiphanies left.

My Helical Tryst: Review of the TSA X-ray backscatter body scanner safety report: hide your kids, hi

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On November 26, 2010

In Blog

I’ve been reluctant to weigh in on the TSA scanners because there simply wasn’t enough data, pro or con, to really make a decision about their safety. Jason Bell goes a long way towards giving us more hard data to consider, and it’s somewhat alarming.

I still maintain that the real problem with this sort of thing is that it doesn’t actually improve the safety of air travel to any meaningful degree, unless the object is to make flying so onerous that no one bothers to do it anymore.

My Helical Tryst: Review of the TSA X-ray backscatter body scanner safety report: hide your kids, hide your wife

Last spring, a group of scientists at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) including John Sedat Ph.D., David Agard Ph.D., Robert Stroud, Ph.D. and Marc Shuman, M.D. sent a letter of concern to the TSA regarding the implementation of their ‘Advanced Imaging Technology’, or body scanners as a routine method of security screening in US airports. Of specific concern is the scanner that uses X-ray back-scattering. In the letter they raise some interesting points, which I’ve quoted below:

  • “Our overriding concern is the extent to which the safety of this scanning device has been adequately demonstrated. This can only be determined by a meeting of an impartial panel of experts that would include medical physicists and radiation biologists at which all of the available relevant data is reviewed.”
  • “The X-ray dose from these devices has often been compared in the media to the cosmic ray exposure inherent to airplane travel or that of a chest X-ray. However, this comparison is very misleading: both the air travel cosmic ray exposure and chest X-rays have much higher X-ray energies and the health consequences are appropriately understood in terms of the whole body volume dose. In contrast, these new airport scanners are largely depositing their energy into the skin and immediately adjacent tissue, and since this is such a small fraction of body weight/vol, possibly by one to two orders of magnitude, the real dose to the skin is now high.”
  • “In addition, it appears that real independent safety data do not exist.”
  • “There is good reason to believe that these scanners will increase the risk of cancer to children and other vulnerable populations. We are unanimous in believing that the potential health consequences need to be rigorously studied before these scanners are adopted.”

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