The House Republican budget is intended to balance in 10 years.
via POLITICO – TOP Stories http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/ryan-budget-targets-obamacare-oil-drilling-88722.html
Michel Gondry debuts “The We & The I†in Harlem
One of the stars of Michel Gondry’s latest film, “The We and The I,†finished her shift as an MTA bus driver in The…
via NY Post: Page Six http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/movie_express_KP00XA4TjKFyNOQMfbxSTO?utm_medium=rss&utm_content=Page%20Six
Bloomberg reveals his own fake Facebook at Sheryl Sandberg book bash
Mayor
Bloomberg joked about his own adventures on social media while introducing Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg at a party for her book “Lean In.†Bloomberg…
via NY Post: Page Six http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/mike_fun_face_iVHvj4Li3LzsaRF6mHZ0zL?utm_medium=rss&utm_content=Page%20Six
the ultimate in spyware
Meet the men who spy on women through their webcams – “If you are unlucky enough to have your computer infected with a RAT, prepare to be sold or traded to the kind of person who enters forums to ask, “Can I get some slaves for my rat please? I got 2 bucks lol I will give it to you :b” At that point, the indignities you will suffer—and the horrific website images you may see—will be limited only by the imagination of that most terrifying person: a 14-year-old boy with an unsupervised Internet connection.”
via MetaFilter http://www.metafilter.com/125844/the-ultimate-in-spyware
After Rough Patch, ‘The Bachelor’ Wins Back Viewers
After several seasons in decline, ABC’s “The Bachelor†has had a resurgence rare among network reality shows thanks to social media, casting and a push to attract younger viewers.
via NYT > Television http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/business/media/after-rough-patch-the-bachelor-wins-back-viewers.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
What Really Smart People Worry About At Night
What
do you lay awake at night worrying about? Are your worries different than
those far smarter than you? Perhaps.
John Brockman of Edge magazine asked what the world’s most intelligent
brainiacs – including Physics Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek, technologist
Tim O’Reilly, musician Brian Eno, The Black Swan author Nassim
Nicholas Taleb – about their professional worries and got a lot of responses.
One hundred and fifty distinct worries, in fact. Thankfully, VICE’s Motherboard
blog has summarized
it for us:
1. The proliferation of Chinese eugenics. – Geoffrey Miller,
evolutionary psychologist.2. Black swan events, and the fact that we continue to rely on models
that have been proven fraudulent. – Nassem Nicholas Taleb3. That we will be unable to defeat viruses by learning to push them
beyond the error catastrophe threshold. – William McEwan, molecular
biology researcher4. That pseudoscience will gain ground. – Helena Cronin, author,
philospher5. That the age of accelerating technology will overwhelm us with opportunities
to be worried. – Dan Sperber, social and cognitive scientist6. Genuine apocalyptic events. The growing number of low-probability
events that could lead to the total devastation of human society. –
Martin Rees, former president of the Royal Society7. The decline in science coverage in newspapers. – Barbara Strauch,
New York Times science editor8. Exploding stars, the eventual collapse of the Sun, and the problems
with the human id that prevent us from dealing with them. — John Tooby,
founder of the field of evolutionary psychology9. That the internet is ruining writing. – David Gelernter, Yale
computer scientist10. That smart people–like those who contribute to Edge–won’t
do politics. –Brian Eno, musician11. That there will be another supernova-like financial disaster. –Seth
Lloyd, professor of Quantum Mechanical Engineering at MIT12. That search engines will become arbiters of truth. –W. Daniel
Hillis, physicist13. The dearth of desirable mates is something we should worry about,
for “it lies behind much human treachery and brutality.â€
–David M. Buss, professor of psychology at U of T14. “I’m worried that our technology is helping to bring
the long, postwar consensus against fascism to an end.†–David
Bodanis, writer, futurist15. That we will continue to uphold taboos on bad words. –Benhamin
Bergen, Associate Professor of Cognitive Science, UCS
Humanity, start worrying! Or, you can just accept it all, like Terry
Gilliam of Monty Python, who said:
I’ve given up asking questions. l merely float on a tsunami of acceptance
of anything life throws at me… and marvel stupidly.
Read the original post over at Edge: Link
| Summary at Motherboard
blog
Cuts Give Obama Path to Create Leaner Military
Administration officials, and even some Pentagon officers, see a possible opening to argue for reductions in programs long in President Obama’s sights.
via NYT > Most Recent Headlines http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/us/politics/mandatory-cuts-could-open-path-to-deeper-defense-trims.html
‘The Man Who Sells the Moon’
This short documentary looks at Dennis Hope, a Nevada man who has made a living “selling†plots of land on the moon.
via NYT > Most Recent Headlines http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/opinion/the-man-who-sells-the-moon.html
WSJ staffers told to ‘stay the course – and accelerate’
Memo to the Wall Street Journal staff
From: Narisetti, Raju
Date: Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 5:23 PM
Subject: Stay The Course
Colleagues
On an average weekday in the last 12 months, our total circulation was 2.3 million for all three print editions of The Wall Street Journal combined. We should all be very proud of the great print offerings we provide, once a day, every single day to this audience.
On an average weekday in the last 12 months, WSJDN actually had 3.9 million readers a day coming to our websites, every single week-day.
The green line in the chart below is when readers come to us looking for the terrific journalism WSJ promises them, as measured in the % of daily readers who come, each hour.
The blue line was when we were publishing our stories, by the hour, in 2011-12.
The red line shows how all of you moved the needle significantly in recent months to get more of your great journalism to your audiences when more of them were looking for it on our site.
May you all stay the course. And accelerate.
Thank you. Goodbye
Raju
via JIMROMENESKO.COM http://jimromenesko.com/2013/03/10/wsj-staffers-told-to-stay-the-course-and-accelerate/
Just What is Going on at Lake Vostok?
Earlier this week, Russian scientist Sergei Bulat, a researcher at the St. Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, announced that a new life form had been found in an ice sample from the gigantic Lake Vostok, which lies deep beneath Antarctica. The Russians had to drill over 12,000 feet to get to the frozen lake, which is underneath a place that had the lowest recorded temperature in history. Needless to say, the sample from Lake Vostok was extremely hard to obtain, and the Russians were rewarded for their hard effort with some spectacular scientific findings.
Bulat described the discovery on Thursday:
After excluding all known contaminants…we discovered bacterial DNA that does not match any known species listed in global databanks. We call it unidentified and ‘unclassified’ life.”
“Unidentified” and “Unclassified,” very cool! Unfortunately for Bulat however, the next day Russia backed away from their claims, saying that what they found had in fact been contaminants.
So why would an incredibly well-respected scientist like Dr. Bulat jump the gun on the new bacteria? Because we’re in the middle of a multinational underground lake race, that’s why!
Bulat was under enormous pressure to provide results, coming weeks after American scientists found their own bacterial life in Lake Whillans, another giant underground Antarctic lake. British scientists have also tried to get in on the underground lake game, failing to reach Lake Ellsworth this December.
Nations want to get to these lakes to study microorganisms that have not been tampered with for thousands of years. As the Russians found out, contamination is a major obstacle to the study. However, the financial windfall, in grants and private funding, that will come to whatever group cracks the DNA of the new organisms first is more than enough to rekindle some cold, cold war-style competition.
via Gawker http://gawker.com/5989807/just-what-is-going-on-at-lake-vostok