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In the Battle Between Facebook and MySpace, A Digital 'White Flight'

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:00:59 GMT

clipped by: michellezm
clipper's remarks: Who knew! Interesting read.

This morning, Danah Boyd was spitting out the social media Kool-Aid at Personal Democracy Forum. "Many of us believe that technologies can be these great equalizers," said Ms. Boyd, a social media researcher for Microsoft and fellow of the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society, during her keynote speech at the Jazz at Lincoln Center auditorium. "They can bring everybody on board, they can make a welcome, lovely place and that anybody can participate in if only they had the access."

But in fact, she said, sites like MySpace and Facebook are mirroring, even magnifying, our social, political and class divides.

"MySpace has become the ghetto of the digital landscape," Ms. Boyd explained to the crowd. And many of us in these social environments, she said, "have gotten into the habit of crossing the street like we always do to avoid the riff-raff."

The hidden cables under a Cornish beach feeding the world's internet

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:53:07 GMT

clipped by: michellezm

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Hastily snapped on a camera-phone, the picture below shows where the internet feeds into Britain from New York. The super-high-speed cable is now hidden under six feet of Cornish beach - which is just as well, because if it were discovered and damaged, the entire web in Britain could turn to treacle. Warren Pole reports on the fragile network of ocean cabling that keeps the modern world turning

It's ironic, then, what children building sandcastles on the Cornish beach in this main picture would find if they dug down six feet. There they would see the Atlantic's newest internet connection - lasers fire the signal along the cable at the speed of light.

Most people think the internet is beamed around the planet by satellites. In fact, 90 per cent of global internet traffic is carried by a vast cable network, thousands of miles of which snake under the oceans.

You don't want to look down the cable. If it was on, it could burn your retina out in seconds

God's Away On Business - Tom Waits

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 21:57:55 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

The coolest thing in space - Europe's Planck satellite

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:30:13 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman
clipper's remarks: chilled to a staggering minus 273.05C

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

PLANCK SPACE TELESCOPE

Planck is now the "coolest thing in space"

Planck will survey the famous Cosmic Microwave Background

This ancient light's origins date to 380,000 years after the Big Bang

It informs scientists about the age, shape and evolution of the cosmos

Planck's measurements will be finer than any previous satellite

Planck prepares to go super-cold

The observatory's detectors have been chilled to a staggering minus 273.05C - just a tenth of a degree above what scientists term "absolute zero."

Launched in May, Planck will survey the "oldest light" in the Universe.

Although laboratory set-ups have got closer to absolute zero than Planck, researchers say it is unlikely there is anywhere in space currently that is colder than their astronomical satellite.

This frigidity should ensure the bolometers will be at their most sensitive as they scan the sky for the target light.

Chocolate Jesus - Tom Waits

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 19:03:47 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Homeopathetic A&E

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:49:03 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: blogs.discovermagazine.com

[Video]

Pimp This Bum

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:42:58 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: www.ascendgence.com

Pimp This Bum

a new kind of charity

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Earlier this year in Houston, Texas, the viral marketing expert Kevin Dolan and his son Sean had an idea to help the homeless: select and focus on one rough-sleeper, offer them assistance and then, with their co-operation and consent, record their story for a new website

They approached Tim Edwards, homeless for five years and living under a bridge. He was amused by their plan, and from February this year, Tim's progress was broadcast on the website. Tim is a highly sympathetic subject, or rather collaborator, whose eloquence, intelligence and absence of self-pity are proving useful for his many webcasts. Almost two million people worldwide have watched Edwards's journey from the streets to stability via rehab and a reunion with family. He has suffered from depression and drink problems, confessing to having made some "bad choices", and tells us about his life.

Clip Source: www.ascendgence.com

[Video]

Is twitter boring you? @davewiner says yes.

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:24:35 GMT

clipped by: egoldstein
clipper's remarks: I've been hearing this quite often lately, so figured i'd clip @davewiner's tweet and ask if others are feeling the same way. personally, i have always found twitter to be a volatile blend of boring and rewarding.

my biggest disappointment with twitter is that it's not tapping into people's innate desire to give, but is instead being positioned and treated as a massive "look at me" platform. i think this stems from management's decision to put the focus on a bunch of boring, attention seeking celebrities in their recommended list. that damaged the vibe of the site and overall user experience.

Clip Source: twitter.com

BTW, I confess that Twitter is boring the heck out of me. It's an ineffective communication medium that retweets endlessly. What's next?

davewiner

Tags: dave winer, twitter

Montana Meth Project’s Billboards

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:06:04 GMT

clipped by: skwirlinator
clipper's remarks: WOW

Clip Source: www.joeydevilla.com

Montana Meth Project’s Billboards

Tags: montana meth project’s billboards, addiction, meth, psa

Glenn Beck gets all worked up about an obscure French book nobody's reading

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:22:00 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar
clipper's remarks: Where Willie gets his usual helping of B.S. as do the rest of the right-wing wackos.

I mean Glenn "Chicken Little" Beck, really?

Clip Source: crooksandliars.com

Glenn Beck was frothing at the mouth this week -- just before he went on an obviously much-needed vacation -- about an obscure French book that is hard to obtain and which no one appears to be reading, aside from a handful of anarchist aesthetes:

While the government warns that right-wing extremists could be domestic terrorists, and The New York Times, says I could incite those crazy conservatives to violence, the extreme left is actively calling for violence!

This started in France and spread to countries like Greece and Iceland, where people are out of work, out of money and out of patience.

Now it's coming here. The book comes out in English in the U.S. in August. I have one of the first English copies.

Funny thing about that. The extreme right -- the people Glenn Beck wants you to forget all about -- have actually been calling people to arms for a number of years now.

They've done it with books like The Turner Diaries and Hunter,

Tags: glenn, chicken, little, beck, insane, right-wing, talk, hate, media, faux news

Geithner Neuters FDIC's Sheila Bair in New Regulatory Overhaul. She Thinks Her Job is To Protect Peo

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:19:09 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar
clipper's remarks: This is how you do valid, credible, intelligent criticism of a sitting President. So Republicans, why don't you get off the conspiracy theory/anti-Christ crap and actually do something useful for a change, if you really care about your country and want to have a debate about things instead of banding words about like "Socialism" and the like.

Clip Source: crooksandliars.com

The New Yorker has a great profile of Sheila Bair, the populist Republican who's at the helm of the FDIC. (h/t Riverdaughter)

As you may already know, Bair is not well liked by the Wall St. crowd that's running the White House show. (Apparently she has this bizarre idea that her job is to look out for working folk. Crazy talk!) Well, she's very popular with regular people - the administration wouldn't get rid of her, it would make a stink. Instead, they've just neutered her:

Geithner could appoint the F.D.I.C. to do the technical work of cleaning up the firm, but between late March and mid-June — when Bair’s aggressive ideas about how to handle Citigroup leaked to the press — Bair’s agency had been downgraded from Treasury’s equal partner to a sidekick.

So I think it’s a starting point.” I said that she sounded disappointed. “I don’t know if ‘disappointed’ is the right word,” she replied.

Tags: treasure, oversight, lack, there, off, economy, policies, obama, owns, mess

A Fresh Fourth

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:28:55 GMT

clipped by: debbyski

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Looked at from a certain distance, all of the Independence Days in one’s life resemble a string of firecrackers. Bang, bang, bang, bang, and suddenly here you are in the present, on another Fourth, thinking about the difference between this one and the ones that came before it — the weather and the menu and the fireworks and the friends and family you celebrate with.

The Declaration of Independence speaks of truths and rights, but we are more likely to understand that document in terms of the freedoms we feel. And yet how often do we really enumerate those freedoms, really assess their costs and count up the obligations they imply?

It’s tempting to seek a kind of refuge in the Saturday-ness of this Fourth, to let the meaning of the holiday slip a little in the interest of a relaxing day in the backyard or at the beach

But there is a special understanding and joy in having struggled for it

Caturday: Obey Our Cat Overlords Edition

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:27:58 GMT

clipped by: ratilfar

Clip Source: icanhascheezburger.com

Tags: cats, kitten, pics, caturday, humor, internet, meme, lol, lolcats

Behind The Facade

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:18:29 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: "Reality is unforgiving. There is no escape.
The Michael-mania that has erupted since Jackson’s death — not just an appreciation of his music, but a giddy celebration of his life — is yet another spasm of the culture opting for fantasy over reality. We don’t want to look under the rock that was Jackson’s real life.

As with so many other things, we don’t want to know."

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Meeting Michael Jackson in the mid-1980s was one of the creepier experiences of my life.

There was something about his overall behavior that weirded me out. He seemed, even then, to be a person who was trying with all of his being to step outside of reality and leave it behind.

Emmanuel Lewis, the child star of the hit TV series “Webster,” was with Jackson that evening.

I remember thinking as I left the Garden that Jackson had treated Lewis almost as a pet.

In many ways we descended as a society into a fantasyland, trying to leave the limits and consequences and obligations of the real world behind. Politicians stopped talking about the poor. We built up staggering amounts of debt and called it an economic boom. We shipped jobs overseas by the millions without ever thinking seriously about how to replace them. We let New Orleans drown.

A California Dream: Saving State Universities With an Online Campus

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:16:41 GMT

clipped by: RayWatkins
clipper's remarks: July 2, 2009—Josh Fischman

Clip Source: chronicle.com

Of the four universities linked originally by the proto-Internet in 1969, two of them were part of the University of California system: the Los Angeles and Santa Barbara campuses. Now, as the system grapples with a staggering budget crisis that might close institutions and forever alter what’s considered one of the crown jewels of public education, a proposal comes suggesting that salvation lies in going online.

A new cyber-campus “would have selective admissions; tuition somewhere between community college and the on-campus UC price, part-time and ‘anytime’ options and lectures by the best faculty from the entire UC system,” wrote Christopher Edley Jr., dean of the law school at the system’s Berkeley campus, in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times. “Our online students might miss the keg parties, but they would have the same world-class faculty, UC graduate student instructors, and adjunct faculty.”