- The Fall of Wintel and the Rise of Armdroid – James Allworth – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review
- This year's show, Dediu argues, marks the end of the PC-era: it's finally being disrupted. The basic concept of disruption is that a low-end offering (in this case, tablets) emerges to displace existing solution (PCs). The reason this takes place is that the current solution has improved to such an extent that it provides more performance than a majority of users [are] able to usefully employ.
- First Impressions Are Difficult to Change: Study | LiveScience
- "Imagine you have a new colleague at work and your impression of [him] is not very favorable, …A few weeks later, you meet [him] at a party and you realize he is actually a very nice guy. Although you know your first impression was wrong, your gut response to your new colleague will be influenced by your new experience only in contexts that are similar to the party. …your first impression will still dominate in all other contexts."…
"What is necessary [to change someone's perception] is for the first impression to be challenged in multiple different contexts. In that case, new experiences become decontextualized and the first impression will slowly lose its power," he said. "But, as long as a first impression is challenged only within [one] context, you can do whatever you want. The first impression will dominate regardless of how often it is contradicted by new experiences."
- Great Leaps Backward – NYTimes.com
- [Paul Krugman]
I’ve already pointed out the problems, both logical and empirical, with the claim that workers are unemployed because they have zero marginal product. But there are many more problems with the notion of a recession as a supply shock.
- Big News for Women and Hollywood
- [Women & Hollywood - Melissa Silverstein]
As of today we are moving over to IndieWIRE. Yes, you read that right, this blog is going BIG TIME. They are several exciting things about the move …it is an acknowledgement that the issues we all care about will have a bigger platform…
Everything will be as is except for the fact that we have a new address:
http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandhollywood/
…make sure to bookmark the site and update your feed if you use that.
- Well-known pickup artist allegedly shoots woman in the face
- [Feministe - guest blogger Clarisse Thorn]
For me, this scandal has crystallized one question: How much of the pickup artist subculture is useful advice for socially anxious guys, and how much of it is misogynist assholery that can arguably be connected to violence against women? I don’t think it’s possible to understand that subculture without recognizing that both those elements are present.
- Wednesday Geek Woman: Karen Spärck Jones, leading computational linguistics researcher
- [Geek Feminism Blog - Mary]
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- Understand Hotel Lingo to Get Cheaper Room Rates
- [Lifehacker - Kevin Purdy]
- New Scientist TV: Mini robot helicopters build towers, pyramids or walls
- Daniel Mellinger and his team from the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a system that allows flying robots to construct just about any structure (see video above). A human only needs to decide on the design before an algorithm takes over to determine where parts should be placed to create it. Tiny helicopters then follow these instructions and coordinate with each other by choosing the next part placement in a list.
The team also developed a gripper that can easily pick up parts lying horizontally or upright. Once a piece is in position, magnets snap it in place.
- The smoking gun
- [Why Evolution Is True]
Yesterday I mentioned the discovery of a “smoking gun” in the Catholic Church’s abuse scandal: a 1997 letter to Ireland’s bishops… Storero’s letter instructed the bishops not to report sexual abuse cases to secular authorities, but to keep it in the Church. …it’s available here as a pdf file…
If we use Sam Harris’s moral calculus here, the Vatican is weighing the well-being of abused children against potential embarrassment and career damage to priests and bishops, and the Holy See decided that the scales weigh heavier for the latter.
- Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Plugin Releases for 1/19
- Theme-Check is an easy way to test your theme and make sure it’s up to spec with the latest theme review standards. With it, you can run all the same automated testing tools on your theme that WordPress.org uses for theme submissions.
- Race, Gender, and The Green Hornet
- [Fantastic Fangirls: Comics and Culture - Jennifer]
…while I left both the first and second Iron Man films with a glow of contentment that was quickly followed by nitpicks regarding their handling of race and gender, The Green Hornet left me with exactly the opposite reaction – no great love for the film as a whole, but an extremely high level of respect for the way it managed to tell a story about women and people of color as competent, fully-realized human beings who have to face the kinds of struggles rich white men never experience.
(Spoilers for the film follow…)
- An uprising in Tunisia
- [The Big Picture]
Beginning in December of last year, a series of ongoing protests in the streets of Tunisia escalated to the point where President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali – who had ruled the country for 23 years – at first declared he would not seek re-election, then fled the country on January 14th. An interim government was assembled, but protesters remain in the streets, demanding removal of all traces of Ben Ali's old RCD party. Protesters' frustrations with high unemployment, inflation and corruption drove them to the streets after a pivotal event, when a young Tunisian vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire after police confiscated his produce cart. Bouazizi died of his injuries days later. Collected here are images of the turmoil in Tunisia over the past couple of weeks. (40 photos total)
- THIS JUST IN: Baby Elephant Alarmed by Disproportionate Foot-to-Head Ratio
- [Cute Overload - Not That Mike The Other Mike]
- TaxProf Blog: University of Colorado Student Pays Tuition With $1 Bills
- To protest the rising cost of education at the University of Colorado, economics major Nik Ramos paid his $14,309.51 tuition bill in $1 bills (and a 50-cent piece, and a penny). Three university employees spent three hours counting the money.
- Warning: Not All E-Mails Are Created Equal
- [Legal Blog Watch - Brendan McKenna]
The attorney-client privilege extends to e-mails exchanged between a lawyer and his or her client … unless you send it from work. A California court of appeal held an e-mail sent from a client to his or her attorney from a work e-mail account is not a privileged or confidential communication. The unanimous decision held that this type of communication was comparable to consulting your lawyer in your “employer’s conference room, in a loud voice, with the door open” where any reasonable person would expect the employer to overhear it.
[In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. Signal boosts are awesome! --L.]
The Of interest (Wed, Jan 19th, 10am) by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.