A child laborer rests as laborers stack bricks at a brick factory in Kabul. Photo: Jonathan Saruk
The war in Afghanistan is not over. Help us tell the story. Fund our Kickstarter.
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Matt Mullenweg: I’m Worried That Silicon Valley Might Be Destroying the World →
WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg confessed to feeling conflicted about one of the blogging service’s upcoming features: Notifications.
Mullenweg said he’s concerned that Silicon Valley is creating products that are so engaging that they’re also incredibly distracting, to the detriment of creativity and productivity.
He fretted that some of these socially disruptive technologies might be “morally destitute.” He has been preoccupied with the question: “Is Silicon Valley destroying the world?”
(Source: courtenaybird)
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Mothers looking for employment are less likely to be hired, are offered lower salaries and are perceived as being less committed to a job than fathers or women without children, according to a recent study of gender inequality in the workplace. What’s more, the pay gap between mothers and childless women is actually bigger than the pay gap between women and men.
— Motherhood penalty remains a pervasive problem in the workplace | The Clayman Institute for Gender Research (via robot-heart-politics)
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the angels wanna wear my red shoes: In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy and the market economy. →
Those are the opening lines of David Korten’s book The Post-Corporate World (2000). I met Ed Cohen earlier this
weekspring, a successful banker and professor of Classics, who gave a talk here in Athens outlining some of the same concerns about the capitalistic spirit in… -
Computer game helps rehabilitate stroke victims
Scientists at Newcastle University have developed a computer game designed to help stroke victims recuperate.
The Circus Challenge game, created with a computer game studio, aims to help patients recover motor functions.
Players use wireless controllers to perform virtual circus acts such as lion taming and plate spinning.
Full Story: BBC
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Gemma (asexual reproductive structure) from the thalloid liverwort (Lunularia cruciata) (20x) by Dr. Robin Young
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This image captures the 171 Angstrom wavelenght of extreme ultraviolet, showing plasma in the solar atmosphere, called the corona, that is aroung 600000 Kelvin.
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Foreign E-Book Sales Increase 333% For U.S. Publishers in 2011
Sales of e-books by U.S. publishers to readers in other countries increased to $21.5 million in 2011 from $4.9 million in 2010, a 333% increase, according to a report released today from the Association of American Publishers. At the same time, print sales by U.S. publishers for foreign readers increased by 2.3% to $335.9 million. While growing significantly faster than print, e-book sales only accounted for 6% of overall sales.
Paul Higgins: I am surprised that is so low (given my purchases) - I wonder do they include Amazon US figures where those are sold to overseas or are they US sales?
Full Story: Digital Book World
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The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
— Albert Einstein, Albert Einstein (via ybb55)
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You probably saw this when it made the rounds in October or thereabouts, but maybe give it a fresh listen.
This time lapse sequences of photographs taken with a special low-light 4K-camera by the crew of expedition 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from August to October, 2011 would be necessary viewing even if the soundtrack wasn’t Jan Jelinek.
Image Courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center, The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov
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Gaiman on Copyright Piracy and the Web (by OpenRightsGroup) thank you elige
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Dream Practice
“Try a very simple experiment which will give you some idea of the quality of your daytime visual imagination. Many times we daydream, but we are seldom attentive as to how visually substantial the images we create might be. Choose one of the objects from the Magritte painting above and, with eyes closed, bring the image into focus in your mind. Try turning the object around, watching the light change over its surface.
It will be rare for any readers to have a photographic replica floating in the darkness in front of them. Most of us find it difficult to keep any consistent image at all. Perhaps this is because many of us use words to give form to our inner images of eggs, hats, and things. Such imagery is about as stereotyped as a children’s spelling book, yet our non-verbal imagery is often vague and shadowy, like that reported in normal dreams. In a lucid dream, however, the brain appears to bypass all verbal needs and presents to everyone, irrespective of ability, clear and immensely detailed imagery which can be touched and closely inspected and found to be substantially real.”
Exercise taken from The Lucid Dreamer: A Waking Guide for the Traveler Between Worlds, Malcolm Godwin (Simon & Schuster, 1994)
Painting: René Magritte, La Clef des Songes, 1930.
“In this piece the artist links everyday objects with ordinary words. But the words are independent and in no way describe the visual object. Magritte is pointing out, with some humor, just how attached we are to verbal descriptions. But not only are we dependent upon words to experience reality, but also upon the culture which lies behind them.”
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Microbots Made of Bubbles That Are Powered by Lasers
We’re used to thinking of robots as mechanical entities, but at very small scales, it sometimes becomes easier to use existing structures (like microorganisms that respond to magnetic fields or even swarms of bacteria) instead of trying to design and construct one (or lots) of teeny tiny artificial machines. Aaron Ohta’s lab at the University of Hawaii at Manoa has come up with a novel new way of creating non-mechanical microbots quite literally out of thin air, using robots made of bubbles with engines made of lasers. […]
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Bonn Climate Talks Close in Disappointment; World Leaders Whistle Towards Disaster | Greenpeace: Climate crisis caused by lack of political action →
People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.
—John Kenneth Galbraith
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Global CO2 Emissions at Record High
The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported yesterday that global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions hit a record high in 2011 and that the probability of reducing the average global temperature increase to 2°C is becoming more out of reach.
Climate Scientist James Hansen has called even a target of 2 degrees of warming “a prescription for long-term disaster.”
“When I look at this data, the trend is perfectly in line with a temperature increase of 6 degrees Celsius (by 2050), which would have devastating consequences for the planet,” Fatih Birol, IEA’s chief economist told Reuters.
