January 2010
149 posts
thanks, navi!~
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CrisisCampNYC: Day 2: Virtual Volunteering
Just finished a chunk of work (from home!) for Relief Oversight. & while I only managed to get through three of the five orgs on my plate, I made a ton of progress in usability (not UX but slightly related) & general organization.
I emailed some of you about helping out. For the more sensitive among you, I want to let you know that it is beyond both my desire and my inclination to pass...
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Whole Foods Puts Its Mouth Where the Money Is →
jayparkinsonmd:
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, who recently published a controversial op-ed on health care, announced that the company will soon offer higher store discounts for healthier employees. The company will consider blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking status, and body mass index (BMI) in determining the discount level. “Our intention for all of these lifestyle programs is that they are...
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mills:
“Marco enters a city; he sees someone in a square living a life or an instant that could be his; he could now be in that man’s place, if he had stopped in time, long ago; or if, long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had taken the opposite one, and after long wandering he had come to be in the place of that man in that square. By now, from that real or hypothetical past...
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NASA Extends the World Wide Web Out Into Space →
excerpt: Astronauts aboard the International Space Station received a special software upgrade this week - personal access to the Internet and the World Wide Web via the ultimate wireless connection. Expedition 22 Flight Engineer T.J. Creamer made first use of the new system Friday, when he posted the first unassisted update to his Twitter account, @Astro_TJ, from the space station. Previous...
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Vice Over IP: The VoIP Steganography Threat →
excerpted:
7:00 p.m., Shanghai
An employee of an electronic equipment factory uploads a music file to an online file-sharing site. Hidden in the MP3 file (Michael Jackson’s album Thriller) are schematics of a new mobile phone that will carry the brand of a large American company. Once the employee’s Taiwanese collaborators download the file, they start manufacturing counterfeit...
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Uncorrelated activity in brain helps function →
Interconnected networks of neurons process information and give rise to perception by communicating with one another via small electrical impulses known as action potentials. In the past, scientists believed that adjacent neurons synchronized their action potentials. However, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany said in a...
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CrisisCamp NYC
Spent the day at New Work City volunteering with CrisisCamp NYC. An enjoyable experience all-around. Worked / am working on UX and research / data entry for Relief Oversight.
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one thing at a time
Spending more time working on outreach program and less time worrying about political activism. Projects/thoughts can run in parallel, i.e. research / due diligence is taking me to some nat’l orgs. Makes me wonder how much of their funding goes to overhead (see Bunker Roy quote) — in the back of my mind models are being set up re: small gov’t, using these big nat’l orgs...
Nonlinear thinker →
navigolucky:
noosphere:
[snip]
Hallelujah! Econ, meet the semi-real world…
Amen!~ =)
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Nonlinear thinker →
Engineers prefer linear systems because they’re much easier to work with mathematically, but unfortunately, we live in a largely nonlinear world. So a lot of research is aimed at finding linear characterizations of the behavior of nonlinear systems. That research usually requires a great deal of mathematical insight and trial and error, and even when it’s successful, the results may be...
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2010 Lemelson-MIT Invention Index Reveals Ways to... →
STEM= Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics
Cambridge, Mass., January 28, 2010 – The nation is hoping for a bright future. Many believe the key to strengthening the U.S. economy and competing globally lies in fostering an innovative culture and educating America’s youth in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). According to this year’s Lemelson-MIT Invention Index1, an...
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Party of No →
mikehudack:
ericmortensen:
think4yourself:
azspot:
Paragons of fiscal discipline, every Senate Republican today voted against reestablishing “pay-as-you-go” budgeting rules that mandate that any new spending must be paid for. The rule passed on a 60-40 party line vote.
It’s almost as if they are playing right into our (well, mine & other third-party proponents’)...
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“I think some innovations get destroyed if there’s too much money… ...”
– Bunker Roy, founder of Barefoot College (in interview posted below, about 8 min. in)
Makes me think of all the beneficially disruptive innovations out there which are slowly remaking the societal landscape here in the US. And gives me some great ideas on how to transform big unwieldy government...
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mikehudack:
“That is the American tragedy of the early 21st century: a vital and self-renewing culture that attracts the world’s talent, and a governing system that increasingly looks like a joke. One thing I’ve never heard in my time overseas is “I wish we had a Senate like yours.” When Jimmy Carter was running for president in 1976, he said again and again that America needed “a government as...
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“The thing that bothers me most about the iPad is this: if I had an iPad rather...”
– Alex Payne — On the iPad
Charlie says: This post by Al3x sums up many of my higher-level thoughts about the iPad. My fear is that Apple is trying to position itself as being “at the intersection of Technology and the Liberal Arts,” but by focusing so heavily on consumption, rather than creation, I...
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my research
involves the nature of reality, encompasses math; theoretical physics; theories of consciousness, embodiment, time, gravity, and mass. There’s some useful tech that will come out of it, namely breakthroughs in medical imaging & diagnosis, hopefully some useful med treatment tech as well.
Eventually, it will take us out of the solar system speedily enough to make use of any habitable...
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that said (or my dilemma)
I discussed my thoughts re: centrist party with my sister (who has a degree in political science from UC Berkeley).
Her immediate reaction: What happened to school & research? (We also had a long discussion re: third party. She disagreed at first but eventually came around. My arguments are/were sound.)
My response: It’s all part of the same problem. How to make life better for...
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some of my ideas: DC
[The links, with the exception of centrist party posts due to recency, are mostly bookmarks for myself (and for the time stamp). I’ve pulled most of the relevant information and put it here.]
The newest (or oldest — have been thinking about it for a long time) is the formation of a centrist party, as I’ve tumblred about here, here, here, and here.
re: my last post on Path101 +...
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some of my ideas: tech side
Path101
I emailed Charlie, asking if he would consider tweaking Path101 to help a wider range of people, namely the millions like me who lost their jobs.
Suggestions:
on where to seek funding (I know he’s a VC, but I’d wondered if he’d considered asking Wall Street since they seemed to be part & parcel of the problem) [this has some relation to the DC ideas (post...
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what happened next
Since I couldn’t find a job, I decided that I would have to make my own.
While at Columbia, I met several tech entrepreneurs at a meeting put together by the applied math dept. Checking in via the ‘net two years later, I saw that one of the projects discussed (Charlie O’Donnell’s Path101) had stalled severely. And, after a reblog rant, @dens himself emailed me, asking...
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backstory
As I mentioned here, I lost my job + tuition benefits after the economy tanked and endowments at Columbia University went with it. And while the time in PNW was great, I did not (as promised) return to NYC with the future.
In my hubris, I thought I could go it alone and build the tech that would change how we think about who and why we are + get me the grants/funding I needed to finish school. ...
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Carnegie Mellon Releases Data on Haitian Creole To... →
In response to the humanitarian crisis in Haiti, scientists at Carnegie Mellon University’s Language Technologies Institute (LTI) have publicly released spoken and textual data they’ve compiled on Haitian Creole so that translation tools desperately needed by doctors, nurses and other relief workers on the earthquake-ravaged island can be rapidly developed. Since Carnegie Mellon...
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Scratch: A Programming Language For Kids - PSFK →
The MIT Media Lab has developed a programming language simple enough for children to use.
With the goal of teaching kids to understand how technology works, Scratch allows users to program through visual elements.
The National Science Foundation explains:
In Scratch, coding is done with graphical blocks, not with syntax and those semicolons. A student writes code by snapping together blocks,...
Generation X vs Generation Next, Join the debate →
Join Economist journalists and readers of all ages in a fun tussle on serious subjects
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jayparkinsonmd:
topherchris:
Lawrence Lessig outlines why money + politics ≠ democracy for his Change Congress group back in 2008. After searching for news and opinions in the wake of the Citizens United v. FEC decision, I’ve found that this speaks to me more than anything else. (I love Lessig’s presentation style, so I’m already predisposed to like this.)
Like I’ve said in the past,...
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Stock Exchanges At Risk From Rogue Trading... →
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How a Lack of Control Leads to Superstition -... →
Interesting article, tho’ I found the following experiment a bit disturbing:
In 1976 Harvard psychologist Ellen J. Langer and Judith Rodin, now president of the Rockefeller Foundation, conducted a study in a New England nursing home in which the residents were given plants, but only some had the opportunity to water them. Those residents who were in charge of watering the plants lived...
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mikehudack:
“Also, the more I think about a roomba, the more I’m convinced an owner needs to be in control of a vacuum. What if you break a glass and need to vacuum that area? Do you just set the roomba down near by and hope for the best?” — This is an excellent question. (via katiebakes)
It’s a problem. I’ve also been having a problem with my Roomba getting stuck on the sloped...
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mikehudack:
“We are now 200-plus years past Jefferson’s wish for permanent revolution and nearly 30 past Olson’s warning, with that much more buildup of systemic plaque—and of structural distortions, too. When the U.S. Senate was created, the most populous state, Virginia, had 10 times as many people as the least populous, Delaware. Giving them the same two votes in the Senate was part of the...
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Centrists unite!
A more carefully thought out addendum to my enthusiastic reblog of Marco’s response to Thomas Friedman.
===
Yes, one of my pie-in-the-sky dreams is to create / help create a third (major) political party, a party which reaches beyond ideological divides to address all of the issues which binary systems of thought can neither efficiently nor effectively solve.
But how?
We’ve come to...
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B Corporation - Our Declaration of... →
We envision a new sector of the economy which harnesses the power of private enterprise to create public benefit.
This sector is comprised of a new type of corporation, the B Corporation, which is purpose-driven and creates benefit for all stakeholders, not just shareholders.
As members of this emerging sector and as entrepreneurs and investors in B Corporations,
We hold these truths to be...
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No, we can't / Yes, we can!
marco:
We’ve been taught that our government, ostensibly a representative democracy, is effectively neither. We’re powerless. We’ve had the civic engagement beaten out of us. Friedman’s assumption that we think our job is done is condescending and incorrect. We’ve been shown by all three branches of the federal government that they’ll do whatever they want regardless of popular opinion, that...
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White House Decides to Outsource Some NASA Work -... →
Ironic on the heels of my post on the European Space Agency’s Business Incubation Centre.
Somewhat related to Marco’s post, I think that it is, in part, a lack of imagination that’s killing us.
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The Sixty One →
mikehudack:
Absolutely beautiful music discovery engine. Hat tip to Rafi Mama.
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On Reading Captain Underpants his Miranda warnings
mikehudack:
squashed:
It looks like the underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, more commonly known as Captain Underpants, (which means some of us will need a new secret identity), was questioned for a number of hours and provided valuable information. After he was belatedly read his Miranda rights, stopped talking.
It’s a little backwards to first question Capt. Underpants without...
Common Ground » HOPE Count 2010 →
On Monday, January 25, 2010, the NYC Department of Homeless Services will conduct the Homeless Outreach Population Estimate (HOPE). We need thousands of volunteers to canvas parks, subways, and other public spaces to count the number of people living unsheltered.
Anyone 18 years old or older who shares our commitment to helping the homeless of New York City is encouraged to volunteer. We will...
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Congress Finances Program to Use Technology in... →
infoneernet:
More than a decade ago, Lawrence K. Grossman, former president of both NBC News and PBS, and Newton N. Minow, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, were asked by several foundations to explore how nonprofits like schools, libraries and museums could tap into emerging digital technologies.
Their bold recommendation in 2001 was to set up a multibillion dollar...