Facebook, used to be fun and cool, but a large part of what I have to do on Facebook now is adapt to their changes on their terms. This is unacceptable to me, especially when I don’t see the website adding significant benefits.
You have to give it to the Ayn Rand Institute: They have figured out how to keep their author’s works alive. Are there any other such programs? None that I could find. Recently, Scholastic launched an initiative that promotes free books for kids through a Facebook campaign, where the books go to K.I.D.S., or Kids In Distressed Situations. But this and other similar worthy endeavors do not help public school teachers. And as kids become teens, programs become scarcer: It's easier to raise money for children’s books than it is for high school texts.Meanwhile, many high school English teachers are forced to scrounge through the school’s storage room year after year to find 30 copies of To Kill A Mockingbird. Or they get the Rand novels.
via good.is
Q: Didn’t you once run in the Paris Marathon?
Joe: Yep. I ran three of them.
Q: Correct me if I’m wrong but is it also true that you never trained for any of them?
Joe: You shouldn’t really ask me about my training regime, you know.
Q: Why?
Joe: Because it’s not good and I wouldn’t want people to copy it.Q: Don’t make me beat it out of you.
Joe: Okay, you want it, here it is. Drink 10 pints of beer the night before the race. Ya got that? And don’t run a single step at least four weeks before the race.
Q: No running at all?
Joe: No, none at all. And don’t forget the 10 pints of beer the night before. But make sure you put a warning in this article, “Do not try this at home.” I mean, it works for me and Hunter Thompson but it might not work for others. I can only tell you what I do.
via cluas.com
It's understandable that appearance is a sticking point for feminists. So much of our work is about challenging traditionally defined notions or racist ideals of beauty that the last thing we want to do is privilege appearance over substance. But we also have to be real about the ways in which people get brought into political movements. It's rarely because we read up on legislation or resolve to be more active citizens. It's more often because we find a person or group of people who we really like and identify with their politics, too.
via prospect.org
One of the oldest human images known, the so-called Venus of Willendorf, created about 25,000 years ago, features a bosom of Dolly Parton-esque dimensions. Two hundred fifty centuries later, the power of the exaggerated breast shows little sign of getting old. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgery, 347,254 breast augmentation procedures were performed in the United States in 2007, making it the nation's most commonly performed surgical procedure. What gives the female breast such transcendent influence over heterosexual male consciousness?
Both E coli and the Linux networks are arranged in hierarchies, but with some notable differences in how they achieve operational efficiencies. The molecular networks in the bacteria are arranged in a pyramid, with a limited number of master regulatory genes at the top that control a broad base of specialized functions, which act independently.
In contrast, the Linux operating system is organized more like an inverted pyramid, with many different top-level routines controlling few generic functions at the bottom of the network. Gerstein said that this organization arises because software engineers tend to save money and time by building upon existing routines rather than starting systems from scratch.
via physorg.com
Another thing not everybody knows is that some of the best critical writing on the web can found in seemingly specialist sites, devoted to science fiction, film noir, animation, horror, silent films, anime and so on. And video games, whether or not they're Art :). I haven't even mentioned drama, classical music, architecture, dance, photography, painting and on and on. Great critics have been and are being developed. They mostly aren't making money, but now they have limitless outlets, and not long ago there were a handful.
Her approach -- first announced on her blog -- works based on contracts and "crowdsourcing." First she announced the standards -- students had to do all of the work and attend class to earn an A. If they didn't complete all the assignments, they could get a B or C or worse, based on how many they finished. Students signed a contract to agree to the terms. But students also determined if the assignments (in this case blog posts that were mini-essays on the week's work) were in fact meeting standards. Each week, two students led a discussion in class on the week's readings and ideas -- and those students determined whether or not their fellow students had met the standards.
As these kittens imply, "good" often places emphasis on agreeable behavior, what's proper in context and what's right overall. There are ethical and moral qualities associated with "good" as well, ones agreed upon and reinforced by those around us. In society, others are as complicit in behaving "good" as otherwise.
There is also an emphasis on performance, with "good" as part of a demonstration of proficiency. It need not just be about behavior, and I think this performative aspect is as evident here today, with those recognizing the "good" in others as they speak about their work, as it is in online and virtual environments like World of Warcraft. Various and sundry forms of aptitude all relate to some understanding of "good."
As with most all words, though, "good" can be complicated in practice. This picture of Richard Nixon making Elvis Presley "federal agent-at-large" in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs is the most requested photograph from the National Archives. Questions of "good" still surround both men as the word also holds implications of who is estimable and deserving of our respect. There is the question of ethics, i.e., was Nixon a "good" man, a good president? There is the question of proficiency, i.e., was Elvis a "good" man, a "good" performer? Again, there is the moral quality to "good" as well as the more obvious kairotic elements.
In response to Nixon and Elvis, I offer up this early example of the facepalm. It also functions as an additional understanding of "good" as expression and movement. Just as "seriously" denotes a sustained manner, "good" does, too. Behavior and performance are both forms of expression, of movement through spaces offline and online.
Again, the performative element, that "good" is something acted rather than acted upon, that behavior and performance are not mutually exclusive endeavors but often the same. And we aren't "good" alone. I'm not sure we can be, either because of the philosophical "if a tree falls in the forest and no one's around, does it make a sound?" sense or because of the element of public and social recognition. Others support us in our "good"ness, recognizing it as much as our seriousness.
To be "seriously good" is to be earnest and effective in expression.
A free Web needs free software. You cannot have a free Web if your access to the software you use to engage the Web is limited to an arbitrary number of computers, or if you are not allowed to conduct business on the Web using the software, or if you are forbidden from asking someone to develop additional features you need.
Jobs has hit the nail on the head when describing the problems with Adobe, but not until after smashing his own thumb. Every criticism he makes of Adobe's proprietary approach applies equally to Apple, and every benefit attributed to the App Store can be had without it being a mandatory proprietary arrangement. Apple can offer quality control and editorial selection over available free software, and encourage users to exclusively—but voluntarily—use their store. Instead, Apple chooses to enforce legal restrictions, the transgression of which is punishable by criminal law, on users who want to make changes to their own computers, like installing free, non-Apple, software.
via arstechnica.com