February 2012
19 posts
500 Words before 8am →
Clay Johnson:
Starting your day as a producer means that your information consumption has meaning: the rest of the day means consuming information that is relevant to what it is that you’re producing. Waking up as a producer frames the rest of your habits. You’re not mindlessly grazing on everyone’s facebook’s statuses. You’re out getting what it is you need to...
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Potential Crisis May Be Brewing in Preservation of... →
The Digital Shift:
A recently released study of e-journal preservation at Columbia and Cornell universities revealed that only about 15 percent of e-journals are being preserved and that the responsibility for preservation is diffuse at best.
Even as electronic materials now account for around 60 percent of collection expenditures (and print dwindles in importance), the report, Preservation...
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“The paper describing the double-helix model shape of DNA was not peer reviewed,...”
– The Future of Science Publishing : We Beasties
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E-books Can’t Burn →
Tim Parks:
The e-book, by eliminating all variations in the appearance and weight of the material object we hold in our hand and by discouraging anything but our focus on where we are in the sequence of words (the page once read disappears, the page to come has yet to appear) would seem to bring us closer than the paper book to the essence of the literary experience.
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Three Hidden Ways Wheat Makes You Fat →
Mark Hyman:
Yes, gluten is a real problem. But the problem is not just gluten. In fact, there are three major hidden reasons that wheat products, not just gluten (along with sugar in all its forms) is a major contributor to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia, depression and so many other modern ills.
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The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom →
Robert McDowell:
On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year’s end.
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The False Novelty of Making Reading 'Social' →
Alan Jacobs:
So what is it that sites like Findings and Readmill do? I would say that they enable asynchronous interactive digital commentary. That’s a mouthful; it’s a lot easier to say that they “make reading social.” But easier in this case is definitely not better. All these digital possibilities are turning the old and familiar experience of reading on its head,...
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A New Kind of Review for a New Kind of Book →
Carl Zimmer:
Walk into a book store and look at the science section. Most of the books are between about 200 and 400 pages. Most are created by large publishing houses. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong about a 50-page book, of course. It just doesn’t fit comfortably into the publishing business—a business that has to contend with costs for printing books, storing them in...
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Google Privacy policies →
A Gmail user says Google deleted MP3s from his email because of copyright.
Despite Walmart and Starbucks, divided we stand →
Portland Press Herald:
America’s most essential and abiding divisions are not between red states and blue states, conservatives and liberals, capital and labor, blacks and whites, the faithful and the secular. Rather, our divisions stem from this fact: The United States is a federation composed of the whole or part of 11 regional nations, some of which truly do not see eye to eye with...
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Trouble for Elsevier, the Leading Academic... →
On the Media:
Late last month, a Cambridge Mathematician wrote a blog post that launched a massive boycott of the largest publisher of academic journals in the world. The boycott, now more than 6,000 academics strong, has ignited a discussion over the cost of, and access to, information published by academics. Rick Karr reports on rising discontent with the current academic publishing model.
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“Lessen your choices and your actions will quicken as well. You will not have to...”
– Patrick Rhone
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I.B.M.: Big Data, Bigger Patterns - NYTimes.com →
New York Times:
In the last five years, I.B.M. has spent some $14 billion purchasing analytics companies, in the service of its Big Data initiative. “We look for adjacencies” between one business and another, said Mr. Mills. “If we can’t get an adjacency, we’ll never get a return.”
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Curing Diabetes: How Type 2 Became an Accepted... →
The Atlantic:
Reframing type 2 diabetes — and the obesity and sedentary lifestyle that most often triggers it — as potentially deadly but almost entirely preventable is a good beginning. Offering factual information to someone diagnosed with diabetes about how to possibly reverse their disease is every bit as important as writing prescriptions for medications and blood glucose test...
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Big Data’s Impact in the World →
New York Times:
Welcome to the Age of Big Data. The new megarich of Silicon Valley, first at Google and now Facebook, are masters at harnessing the data of the Web — online searches, posts and messages — with Internet advertising. At the World Economic Forum last month in Davos, Switzerland, Big Data was a marquee topic. A report by the forum, “Big Data, Big Impact,” declared data a new class...
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Iran begins blocking access to Gmail, other sites... →
Washington Post:
When Thomas Erdbrink, The Washington Post’s correspondent in Tehran, logs on to the Internet in Iran, he never knows whether Gmail and Google Reader, The Post or Facebook will open for him. Increasingly, this is the error message he sees instead of the page he was trying to reach:
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Happiness Takes (A Little) Magic →
Brian Lam:
I also stopped reading twitter and facebook regularly, because most of my online acquaintances are nice, but I like to think about these experiences as shallow and yes, also I don’t give a shit about 99% of people I interact with online. I’ve met some great friends online, but once I find them I would prefer to spend that time and energy with the few I would do anything...
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Software piracy is vital to preservation →
January 2012
78 posts
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On (Not) Learning to Code →
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Why Eating Fat Doesn't Make You Fat: Sources →
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Obama Signs Global Internet Treaty Worse Than SOPA →
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Pac-Man Proved NP-Hard By Computational Complexity... →
Technology Review:
In the last few years, a few dedicated mathematicians have begun to study the computational complexity of video games. Their goal is to determine the inherent difficulty of the games and how they might be related to each other and other problems. Today, Giovanni Viglietta at the University if Pisa in Italy reveals a body of Herculean work in this area in which he classifies...
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Hollywood Still Hates You →
Matt Drance:
iTunes changed the music industry because it was more convenient than stealing. Most people made the value judgment that ten bucks for a clean, legal digital album was worth the alternative of fishing around for files that may or may not be damaged or infected. Hollywood continues to completely ignore that lesson.
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Selected Reading on Research Works Act – Why You... →
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Coding for success →
Andy Young:
We need to teach our kids to code. All of them. This should be compulsory education, a core pillar of modern schooling. Many people are worried about a shortage of trained programmers, but this misses a wider issue – one of the biggest modern threats to our individual and collective success. They will thank us for it, and curse us if we don’t. Stick with me, because I want to show...
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Do humanists get their ideas from anything at all? →
Ted Underwood:
The basic mistake that Fish is making is this: he pretends that humanists have no discovery process at all. For Fish, the interpretive act is always fully contained in an encounter with a single piece of evidence. How your “interpretive proposition” got framed in the first place is a matter of no consequence: some readers are just fortunate to have propositions that turn out to...
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Locked in the Ivory Tower: Why JSTOR Imprisons... →
Laura McKenna:
This morning, I searched for an article about autism on JSTOR, the online database of academic journals. I have a child on the autistic spectrum, and I like to be aware of the latest research on the topic. I could not access any of the first 200 articles that contained the word “autism.” That’s because, for the most part, only individuals with a college ID card...
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Dim Sum Thinking →
Daniel Steinberg:
I’ve been told by a publisher that they want a second edition of one of my books. Their conditions on me are that I drop this series of ebooks I’m working on because it might compete with the title. When I said no they responded that that’s ok they’ll just get someone else to revise my book.
My book.
It’s not really mine. Even though the copyright is in my name,...
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Mobilizing the Public Against Censorship, 1765 and... →
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The Brilliant "Don't Be Evil" Bookmarklet →
parislemon:
There has been a lot of back and forth in recent weeks over Google’s new Search+ functionality — about how “fair” it is, and whether or not it should lead to antitrust inquiries. But the bottom line is this:
Search+ makes Google worse. It replaces relevancy with Google’s own agenda to pump up Google+.
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Udacity and the future of online universities →
After 160,000 students enroll in Prof. Sebastian Thrun’s online Artificial Intelligence class, he’s leaving Stanford to start an online university.
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The Public Practice of History in and for a... →
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Blogs vs. Term Papers →
New York Times:
Of all the challenges faced by college and high school students, few inspire as much angst, profanity, procrastination and caffeine consumption as the academic paper. The format — meant to force students to make a point, explain it, defend it, repeat it (whether in 20 pages or 5 paragraphs) — feels to many like an exercise in rigidity and boredom, like practicing piano scales...
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SOPA Is Inevitable →
Marco Arment:
We can’t protest every similar bill with the same force. Eventually, our audiences will tire of calling their senators for whatever we’re asking them to protest this time. Eventually, we will lose. Such ridiculous, destructive bills should never even pass committee review, but we’re not addressing the real problem: the MPAA’s buying power in Congress. This is a campaign finance...
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Why You Shouldn’t Listen to Facebook or Google... →
Beta Beat:
Just don’t forget: Facebook’s only against this piracy bill because it could affect them in a not-nice way, not because of how it might effect you. If that were the case, they’d be advocating for your rights while policing their own biggest problem, privacy.
The same is true for Google, Wikipedia, and Tumblr.
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The Other Problem with SOPA and PIPA: They Won’t... →
Popular Mechanics:
The failure of the entertainment industry—and, consequently, the legislators who are trying to help them out—to understand their problem is because of an even more fundamental misunderstanding about the products they are selling. They believe they are selling music and movies, discrete pieces of entertainment. But since the advent of the compact disc and DVD, the...
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Issa Statement on #SOPA & #PIPA Website Blackouts →
The Protect IP Act and SOPA are threats to the openness, freedom, and innovation of the Internet. I applaud the Internet community, including the thousands of blogs and websites that have decided to go dark today, for participating in our democracy and opening up the debate on legislation to the public. This unprecedented effort has turned the tide against a backroom lobbying effort by...
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Supreme Court Says Congress May Re-Copyright... →
Wired:
Congress may take books, musical compositions and other works out of the public domain, where they can be freely used and adapted, and grant them copyright status again, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. In a 6-2 ruling, the court ruled that just because material enters the public domain, it is not “territory that works may never exit.”
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Defend our freedom to share (or why SOPA is a bad... →
Great TED talk by Clay Shirky on the problem with SOPA and PIPA.
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Teenagers Sharing Passwords as Show of Affection -... →
New York Times:
Young couples have long signaled their devotion to each other by various means — the gift of a letterman jacket, or an exchange of class rings or ID bracelets. Best friends share locker combinations. The digital era has given rise to a more intimate custom. It has become fashionable for young people to express their affection for each other by sharing their passwords to e-mail,...
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SOPA blackout leads co-sponsors to defect →
Politico:
An Internet blackout Wednesday by Wikipedia, Reddit, Mozilla and thousands of other sites against two anti-piracy bills in Congress has started to have its desired effect: Co-sponsors of the legislation have changed sides and other lawmakers have called for more debate before any vote. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — who was a co-sponsor of the PROTECT IP Act — became the latest lawmaker...
Electronic Frontier Foundation | Defending your... →
minimalmac:
Besides internet blackouts, beyond the death of SOPA and PIPA, is supporting the organizations that have been out there fighting for our online rights for years.
Turn off your site and call your representatives. But support these folks with your cash.
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“Apple will still face some serious non-technological hurdles before it can make...”
– ‘What’s Wrong With Education Cannot Be Fixed with Technology’ — The Other Steve Jobs | Epicenter | Wired.com
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As demand for e-books soars, libraries struggle to... →
Washington Post:
Kindles, Nooks and iPads can do many amazing things, but they can’t bump you ahead in line at the Reston Regional Library. In fact, if you want to borrow a book, it may be quicker to put down your sleek new device and head into the stacks. Checking out e-books without having to leave home — just as you would buy a title online: click and boom, there it is — might be the...