Popular Mechanics
February 25, 2011
February 24, 2011
Where Have The Good Men Gone?
Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This "pre-adulthood" has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it's time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn't bring out the best in men.
"We are sick of hooking up with guys," writes the comedian Julie Klausner, author of a touchingly funny 2010 book, "I Don't Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters and Other Guys I've Dated." What Ms. Klausner means by "guys" is males who are not boys or men but something in between. "Guys talk about 'Star Wars' like it's not a movie made for people half their age; a guy's idea of a perfect night is a hang around the PlayStation with his bandmates, or a trip to Vegas with his college friends.... They are more like the kids we babysat than the dads who drove us home." One female reviewer of Ms. Kausner's book wrote, "I had to stop several times while reading and think: Wait, did I date this same guy?"
WSJ
"We are sick of hooking up with guys," writes the comedian Julie Klausner, author of a touchingly funny 2010 book, "I Don't Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters and Other Guys I've Dated." What Ms. Klausner means by "guys" is males who are not boys or men but something in between. "Guys talk about 'Star Wars' like it's not a movie made for people half their age; a guy's idea of a perfect night is a hang around the PlayStation with his bandmates, or a trip to Vegas with his college friends.... They are more like the kids we babysat than the dads who drove us home." One female reviewer of Ms. Kausner's book wrote, "I had to stop several times while reading and think: Wait, did I date this same guy?"
WSJ
February 18, 2011
Is the internet killing empathy?
A TV news reporter for a Los Angeles station was doing an on-camera report on the Grammy Awards Sunday night, and suddenly her speech became garbled. Was she having a stroke on the air?
The newscast quickly cut away when it became apparent that she was in trouble. But by the next morning, televised news reports were making it part of their Grammy coverage. (One AOL.com page featured the incident at the top of its five "memorable moments" from the Grammys.)
The video went viral on the internet. At the UK Telegraph website, where we caught up with the video showing her sudden slurred speech, 9,388 people noted they "liked" the video with a thumbs up signal and 6,027 recommended it to Facebook friends.
People couldn't turn away. They were drawn to it, watching the images over and over with the same kind of grim curiosity that compels drivers to slow down and gaze at a fatal car crash -- drawn often by a subconscious fear that the same thing could happen to us. By observing it in other people, we have our own experience of it, but at an emotional distance. The more we observe terrifying events happening to other people, the more they reinforce our sense of denial and detachment: It can't happen to us.
CNN
The newscast quickly cut away when it became apparent that she was in trouble. But by the next morning, televised news reports were making it part of their Grammy coverage. (One AOL.com page featured the incident at the top of its five "memorable moments" from the Grammys.)
The video went viral on the internet. At the UK Telegraph website, where we caught up with the video showing her sudden slurred speech, 9,388 people noted they "liked" the video with a thumbs up signal and 6,027 recommended it to Facebook friends.
People couldn't turn away. They were drawn to it, watching the images over and over with the same kind of grim curiosity that compels drivers to slow down and gaze at a fatal car crash -- drawn often by a subconscious fear that the same thing could happen to us. By observing it in other people, we have our own experience of it, but at an emotional distance. The more we observe terrifying events happening to other people, the more they reinforce our sense of denial and detachment: It can't happen to us.
CNN
February 17, 2011
“I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords."
Ken Jennings, contestant on Jeopardy! famous for winning 74 games in a row, borrowing a line from The Simpsons to congratulate his computer opponent, Watson, for handily winning a three-day competition.
New York Times
February 8, 2011
Payback: Upset Ex-Girlfriend Spams Boyfriend In Google Images
Upset boyfriends and girlfriends are nothing new. There are plenty of stories of girlfriends getting back at their ex-boyfriends for mistreatment and visa versa. But in the age where Google ranks supreme, you do not want to mess with a girl who knows how to manipulate Google.
One guy learned this the hard way.
Apparently, a disturbed ex-girlfriend took her ex-boyfriend's professional taken picture and polluted it all over Google Images for a search on his name. You can see the Google Image search spam yourself by clicking here or in the screen shot below:
Search Engine Roundtable
One guy learned this the hard way.
Apparently, a disturbed ex-girlfriend took her ex-boyfriend's professional taken picture and polluted it all over Google Images for a search on his name. You can see the Google Image search spam yourself by clicking here or in the screen shot below:
Search Engine Roundtable
February 7, 2011
February 3, 2011
The internet has (kind of) run out of space
On Thursday, the internet as we know it ran out of space.
The nonprofit group that assigns addresses to service providers announced that, on Thursday morning, it allocated the last free internet addresses available from the current pool used for most of the internet's history.
"This is an historic day in the history of the internet, and one we have been anticipating for quite some time," said Raul Echeberria, chairman of the Number Resource Organization.
CNN
The nonprofit group that assigns addresses to service providers announced that, on Thursday morning, it allocated the last free internet addresses available from the current pool used for most of the internet's history.
"This is an historic day in the history of the internet, and one we have been anticipating for quite some time," said Raul Echeberria, chairman of the Number Resource Organization.
CNN
January 27, 2011
Sputnik Moment?
"This is our generation's Sputnik Moment," President Obama said during Tuesday's State of the Union.
...
So I couldn't help wondering: Could we ever have a Sputnik moment?
Frontiers? We live on them. In 1969, things were still analog. You didn't have to discard your devices after a few months because Steve Jobs had decided that light purple was the new purple. Now, if something is lasting, we look down on it. "The only thing that lasts these days are dead armadillos and those seasonal breads in the glass case at Starbucks," we point out. Ephemeral is the new permanent. We have the collective memory -- and persistent desire to mate with anything in sight -- of Viagra-addled mayflies.
This comes with many boons. Thanks to our insistence on living on the bubble of the present moment, our world is rife with unnatural wonders - iPhones, iPads, Clouds, memes, videos of cats in Japan stuffing themselves into boxes. When I have a sore throat, I can go online and describe my symptoms, and strangers from across the globe (or the part of the globe that follows me on Twitter, at any rate) can suggest that I drink blueberry syrup and hot toddies! This is the stuff!
Everyone admits that the world has shrunk. But this shrinkage has also closed the window for Sputnik moments.
Washington Post
...
So I couldn't help wondering: Could we ever have a Sputnik moment?
Frontiers? We live on them. In 1969, things were still analog. You didn't have to discard your devices after a few months because Steve Jobs had decided that light purple was the new purple. Now, if something is lasting, we look down on it. "The only thing that lasts these days are dead armadillos and those seasonal breads in the glass case at Starbucks," we point out. Ephemeral is the new permanent. We have the collective memory -- and persistent desire to mate with anything in sight -- of Viagra-addled mayflies.
This comes with many boons. Thanks to our insistence on living on the bubble of the present moment, our world is rife with unnatural wonders - iPhones, iPads, Clouds, memes, videos of cats in Japan stuffing themselves into boxes. When I have a sore throat, I can go online and describe my symptoms, and strangers from across the globe (or the part of the globe that follows me on Twitter, at any rate) can suggest that I drink blueberry syrup and hot toddies! This is the stuff!
Everyone admits that the world has shrunk. But this shrinkage has also closed the window for Sputnik moments.
Washington Post
January 17, 2011
Excessive Video Gaming Not Just A Symptom
Spending hours with a PlayStation or an Xbox every day can lead to serious psychiatric problems in children -- but "pathological" video game playing may not be just a result of preexisting mental disorders, researchers reported.
A two-year prospective study of more than 3,000 children identified several baseline psychological factors such as impulsivity that predicted excessive video game playing, according to Douglas Gentile, PhD, of Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, and colleagues.
Nevertheless, such conditions as depression, social difficulties, and poor school performance "seemed to act as outcomes of pathological gaming," Gentile and co-authors wrote online in Pediatrics.
"Pathological gaming seems not to be simply secondary to other disorders but to predict poorer functioning longitudinally, and it can last for several years," they added.
For their study, the researchers gave questionnaires to 3,034 elementary and middle-school children in Singapore from 2007 to 2009. The survey, conducted in the students' classrooms, asked age-appropriate questions to elicit information on video gaming habits, social interactions, decision-making skills, affect, and other aspects of their psychiatric status as well as school performance.
Gentile and colleagues noted that response patterns indicated that causation could go in both directions for some factors.
"For example, although impulsivity is a risk factor for becoming a pathological gamer, impulsivity worsens after a youth becomes a pathological gamer," they wrote.
MedPage Today
A two-year prospective study of more than 3,000 children identified several baseline psychological factors such as impulsivity that predicted excessive video game playing, according to Douglas Gentile, PhD, of Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, and colleagues.
Nevertheless, such conditions as depression, social difficulties, and poor school performance "seemed to act as outcomes of pathological gaming," Gentile and co-authors wrote online in Pediatrics.
"Pathological gaming seems not to be simply secondary to other disorders but to predict poorer functioning longitudinally, and it can last for several years," they added.
For their study, the researchers gave questionnaires to 3,034 elementary and middle-school children in Singapore from 2007 to 2009. The survey, conducted in the students' classrooms, asked age-appropriate questions to elicit information on video gaming habits, social interactions, decision-making skills, affect, and other aspects of their psychiatric status as well as school performance.
Gentile and colleagues noted that response patterns indicated that causation could go in both directions for some factors.
"For example, although impulsivity is a risk factor for becoming a pathological gamer, impulsivity worsens after a youth becomes a pathological gamer," they wrote.
MedPage Today
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