shaunbwilson

My wife told me this is me. (via)

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 21:03:00 -0400

My wife told me this is me.

So China has an interesting new hobby.

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 23:28:23 -0400

At BGI Shenzhen, scientists have collected DNA samples from 2,000 of the world’s smartest people and are sequencing their entire genomes in an attempt to identify the alleles which determine human intelligence. Apparently they’re not far from finding them, and when they do, embryo screening will allow parents to pick their brightest zygote and potentially bump up every generation’s intelligence by five to 15 IQ points. Within a couple of generations, competing with the Chinese on an intellectual level will be like challenging Lena Dunham to a getting-naked-on-TV contest.

While the article starts with the summary of what’s happening, it’s mostly an interview of someone who has donated his DNA to the study. Here are a few of the Qs&As:

How will the research be applied?
Once you’ve got that information and a fertilized egg that’s divided into a few cells, you can sample one of the cells to figure out the expected intelligence if it’s implanted and becomes a person.

What does that mean in human language?
Any given couple could potentially have several eggs fertilized in the lab with the dad’s sperm and the mom’s eggs. Then you can test multiple embryos and analyze which one’s going to be the smartest. That kid would belong to that couple as if they had it naturally, but it would be the smartest a couple would be able to produce if they had 100 kids. It’s not genetic engineering or adding new genes, it’s the genes that couples already have.

And over the course of several generations you’re able to exponentially multiply the population’s intelligence.

Right. Even if it only boosts the average kid by five IQ points, that’s a huge difference in terms of economic productivity, the competitiveness of the country, how many patents they get, how their businesses are run, and how innovative their economy is.

“Is the Internet Good/Bad For You?” and Other Dumb Questions

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 23:35:00 -0400

“Is the Internet Good/Bad For You?” and Other Dumb Questions:

A recent example made a telling distinction between active and passive Facebook use (Burke et al., 2010). Passive Facebook use includes scrolling through other people’s photos and reading their updates while active use includes updating your status and writing private messages. Perhaps you’ll be unsurprised to learn that the active kind is the good one for increasing social bonding.

In a similar vein, there’s a new study looking at Facebook use and loneliness. It examines the old question about whether being online makes us lonely which, I’ve discussed along with other bugbears here.

Instead of doing a survey, though, they carried out an experiment (Deters & Mehl, 2012). They wanted to know if Facebook status updating could cause you to feel less lonely. Long story (as it must be nowadays) short; in the group they studied, it did.

When participants made more Facebook updates, they felt less lonely and this was caused by feeling more connected to their friends on a daily basis. Surprisingly it didn’t depend on whether their friends replied or not, or how they replied, just reaching out had the effect of reducing loneliness.

Now this won’t be the end of the argument about whether Facebook or the Internet in general is good for us, but it’s a great start and at least it asks the right questions. It looks experimentally at a specific aspect of Facebook usage, status updating, to look at the effects on loneliness.

thedailywhat: This Isn’t Photoshopped of the Day: Hand-Carved...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 22:37:21 -0400

thedailywhat:

This Isn’t Photoshopped of the Day: Hand-Carved Wooden “Glitch” Furniture

“Good Vibrations” is a storage unit by Italian architect and designer Ferruccio Laviani of Fratelli Boffi who wanted to challenge the idea that glitches are solely found online. Although it is expected to debut at a furniture exhibition later this year, some commenters on the design blog MoCo have invoked the rule of “pics or didn’t happen,” saying that they refuse to believe it is a real object until side angle shots or a 360-degree video is provided.

I have named the above four comic frames “Monday”,...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:19:32 -0400

I have named the above four comic frames “Monday”, “Tuesday”, “Wednesday”, and “Thursday”.

Photo

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 22:45:44 -0500

"The phone will track a user’s eyes to determine where to scroll, said a Samsung employee who spoke..."

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 20:00:21 -0500

“The phone will track a user’s eyes to determine where to scroll, said a Samsung employee who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. For example, when users read articles and their eyes reach the bottom of the page, the software will automatically scroll down to reveal the next paragraphs of text.”

- Samsung’s New Smartphone Will Track Eyes to Scroll Pages - NYTimes.com (via slantback)

vanityfair: TED-O-Matic | 9 Easy Steps to Your Own...

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 17:00:27 -0500

vanityfair:

TED-O-Matic | 9 Easy Steps to Your Own Audience-Flattering TED Talk.

Illustration by William C. Baumann

michmaybenot: explore-blog: Long before there was the Kindle,...

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 15:20:51 -0500

michmaybenot:

explore-blog:

Long before there was the Kindle, there was the 16th-century book wheel by Italian engineer Agostino Ramelli, an ambitious reading “interface” that would allow the reader to browse and reference multiple books.

Complement with other vintage versions of modern social technology, then wash down with 27 of history’s strangest inventions.

I finally know what to get Shaun for his birthday next week.

Statements like this are how Michelle won my heart.

RunPee.com

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 11:00:15 -0500

RunPee.com:

The RunPee app tells you when there’s a 3-5 minute gap in the movie you’re watching that you won’t miss anything if you run to the bathroom. The curators of the site look for these gaps starting 30 minutes into the movie and stop looking for gaps with about 20 minutes left in the movie.

slantback: The times displayed on Grand Central’s departure...

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 20:00:27 -0500

slantback:

The times displayed on Grand Central’s departure boards are wrong — by a full minute. This is permanent. It is also purposeful.

The idea is that passengers rushing to catch trains they’re about to miss can actually be dangerous — to themselves, and to each other. So conductors will pull out of the station exactly one minute after their trains’ posted departure times. That minute of extra time won’t be enough to disconcert passengers too much when they compare it to their own watches or smartphones … but it is enough, the thinking goes, to buy late-running train-catchers just that liiiiiitle bit of extra time that will make them calm down a bit. Fast clocks make for slower passengers. “Instead of yelling for customers to hurry up,” the Epoch Times notes, “the conductors instead tell everyone to slow down.”

You might call this time-hacking; you might call it behavioral engineering; you might call it comical. Regardless, it seems to be working. Grand Central boasts the fewest slips, trips, and falls of any station in the country — quite a feat given how many of its floors are made of marble. (via The Clocks at Grand Central Station Are Permanently Wrong - Megan Garber - The Atlantic)

(via The Argyle Sweater)

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 18:32:16 -0500

(via The Argyle Sweater)

newyorker: An Internet firm like Netflix producing first-rate...

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 20:29:41 -0500

newyorker:

An Internet firm like Netflix producing first-rate content takes us across a psychological line. If Netflix succeeds as a producer, other companies will follow and start taking market share. Maybe Amazon will go beyond its tentative investments and throw a hundred million at a different A-list series, or maybe Hulu will expand its ambitions for original content, or maybe the next great show will come from someone with a YouTube channel. When that happens, the baton passes, and empire falls—and we will see the first fundamental change in the home-entertainment paradigm in decades.

Tim Wu explains why the Netflix-produced series “House of Cards” could be the death of cable television: http://nyr.kr/Wo7J8A

Photo

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:35:26 -0500

The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 11:23:15 -0500

The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like:

Not only have most of coffee’s purported ill effects been disproven — the most recent review fails to link it the development of hypertension — but we have so, so much information about its benefits. We believe they extend from preventing Alzheimer’s disease to protecting the liver. What we know goes beyond small-scale studies or limited observations. The past couple of years have seen findings, that, taken together, suggest that we should embrace coffee for reasons beyond the benefits of caffeine, and that we might go so far as to consider it a nutrient.

(via)

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 17:00:27 -0500

(via)

Gamers hired by father to 'kill' son in online games

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 18:46:00 -0500

Gamers hired by father to 'kill' son in online games:

BBC:

A man in China hired virtual “assassins” to hunt down his son in online video games and kill off his avatar, according to local media.

Photo

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 17:00:14 -0500

gingerhaze: The mean girls of the White Council

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 14:00:14 -0500

gingerhaze:

The mean girls of the White Council

caseyagollan: How fast could you travel across the U.S. in the...

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 11:00:13 -0500

caseyagollan:

How fast could you travel across the U.S. in the 1800s?