[ed. Someone retrieved this from the archives and I thought I'd repost it. Still relevant as ever.]
via:
Friday, May 9, 2014
Mother Gaia
[ed. Someone retrieved this from the archives and I thought I'd repost it. Still relevant as ever.]
via:
The Solutions to All Our Problems May be Buried in PDFs that Nobody Reads
[ed. Halleluja, somebody finally confirmed what I've always suspected. Current pdf design/technology needs to go the way of the dinosaur.]
What if someone had already figured out the answers to the world's most pressing policy problems, but those solutions were buried deep in a PDF, somewhere nobody will ever read them?
According to a recent report by the World Bank, that scenario is not so far-fetched. The bank is one of those high-minded organizations -- Washington is full of them -- that release hundreds, maybe thousands, of reports a year on policy issues big and small. Many of these reports are long and highly technical, and just about all of them get released to the world as a PDF report posted to the organization's Web site.
The World Bank recently decided to ask an important question: Is anyone actually reading these things? They dug into their Web site traffic data and came to the following conclusions: Nearly one-third of their PDF reports had never been downloaded, not even once. Another 40 percent of their reports had been downloaded fewer than 100 times. Only 13 percent had seen more than 250 downloads in their lifetimes. Since most World Bank reports have a stated objective of informing public debate or government policy, this seems like a pretty lousy track record.
Now, granted, the bank isn't Buzzfeed. It wouldn't be reasonable to expect thousands of downloads for reports with titles like "Detecting Urban Expansion and Land Tenure Security Assessment: The Case of Bahir Dar and Debre Markos Peri-Urban Areas of Ethiopia." Moreover, downloads aren't the be-all and end-all of information dissemination; many of these reports probably get some distribution by e-mail, or are printed and handed out at conferences. Still, it's fair to assume that many big-idea reports with lofty goals to elevate the public discourse never get read by anyone other than the report writer and maybe an editor or two. Maybe the author's spouse. Or mom.
I'm not picking on the World Bank here. In fact, they're to be commended, strongly, for not only taking a serious look at the question but making their findings public for the rest of us to learn from. And don't think for a second that this is just a World Bank problem. PDF reports are basically the bread and butter of Washington's huge think tank industry, for instance. Every single one of these groups should be taking a serious look at their own PDF analytics the way the bank has.
What if someone had already figured out the answers to the world's most pressing policy problems, but those solutions were buried deep in a PDF, somewhere nobody will ever read them?
According to a recent report by the World Bank, that scenario is not so far-fetched. The bank is one of those high-minded organizations -- Washington is full of them -- that release hundreds, maybe thousands, of reports a year on policy issues big and small. Many of these reports are long and highly technical, and just about all of them get released to the world as a PDF report posted to the organization's Web site.The World Bank recently decided to ask an important question: Is anyone actually reading these things? They dug into their Web site traffic data and came to the following conclusions: Nearly one-third of their PDF reports had never been downloaded, not even once. Another 40 percent of their reports had been downloaded fewer than 100 times. Only 13 percent had seen more than 250 downloads in their lifetimes. Since most World Bank reports have a stated objective of informing public debate or government policy, this seems like a pretty lousy track record.
Now, granted, the bank isn't Buzzfeed. It wouldn't be reasonable to expect thousands of downloads for reports with titles like "Detecting Urban Expansion and Land Tenure Security Assessment: The Case of Bahir Dar and Debre Markos Peri-Urban Areas of Ethiopia." Moreover, downloads aren't the be-all and end-all of information dissemination; many of these reports probably get some distribution by e-mail, or are printed and handed out at conferences. Still, it's fair to assume that many big-idea reports with lofty goals to elevate the public discourse never get read by anyone other than the report writer and maybe an editor or two. Maybe the author's spouse. Or mom.
I'm not picking on the World Bank here. In fact, they're to be commended, strongly, for not only taking a serious look at the question but making their findings public for the rest of us to learn from. And don't think for a second that this is just a World Bank problem. PDF reports are basically the bread and butter of Washington's huge think tank industry, for instance. Every single one of these groups should be taking a serious look at their own PDF analytics the way the bank has.
by Christopher Ingraham, Washington Post | Read more:
Image: World Bank
Two Problems With One Solution
On Monday, sports labor lawyer Jeffrey Kessler filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA on behalf of college basketball and football players, attempting to remove the market restrictions on college athletes.
As the introduction to the suit explains, “The [NCAA and five major conferences] and their member institutions have lost their way far down the road of commercialism, signing multi-billion dollar contracts wholly disconnected from the interests of ‘student athletes,’ who are barred from receiving the benefits of competitive markets for their services even though their services generate these massive revenues. As a result of these illegal restrictions, market forces have been shoved aside and substantial damages have been inflicted upon a host of college athletes whose services have yielded riches only for others. This class action is necessary to end the NCAA’s unlawful cartel, which is inconsistent with the most fundamental principles of antitrust law.”
That paragraph neatly encapsulates a conversation we’ve been having for a few years now. What’s happening to college athletes is bullshit. We know this.
Maybe it wasn’t bullshit 50 years ago, but now that TV revenue has pushed the whole college sports economy into the billions, refusing to pay the actual labor force has become increasingly reprehensible, and generally untenable, as more and more people slowly connect the dots. The lawsuit from Kessler & Co. is the latest installment in a steady stream of litigation, and none of it will end until the college model gets overhauled forever.
“We’re looking to change the system. That’s the main goal,” Kessler said Monday. “We want the market for players to emerge.”
And that will happen. Maybe it’ll be this lawsuit that does it; maybe it’ll happen in a few years. But this is a problem that’s going to get fixed, because it’s too obvious to ignore for much longer. (...)
Meanwhile, it’s March, and the entire country’s about to fall in love with college basketball again. The March Madness broadcast rights are worth $771 million alone every year. That’s before you factor in a merchandise industry that was worth $4.62 billion in 2012. Or events like the Final Four, held in an 80,000-seat stadium where prices on the NCAA-sanctioned secondary ticket market range from $130 to $2,750. Everyone knows NCAA players are getting screwed out of a fortune, but sometimes it’s good to repeat the numbers out loud just to make sure we’re all on the same page.
If you’re one of the people who still thinks college athletes are fairly compensated with a $40,000 scholarship, think of it like this: That’s not even $40,000 they’re getting. That’s a voucher. It costs the schools nothing. It’s like cooking at a restaurant that clears hundreds of millions of dollars every year, and they pay you by giving you free food for the year. It’s total bullshit.
As the introduction to the suit explains, “The [NCAA and five major conferences] and their member institutions have lost their way far down the road of commercialism, signing multi-billion dollar contracts wholly disconnected from the interests of ‘student athletes,’ who are barred from receiving the benefits of competitive markets for their services even though their services generate these massive revenues. As a result of these illegal restrictions, market forces have been shoved aside and substantial damages have been inflicted upon a host of college athletes whose services have yielded riches only for others. This class action is necessary to end the NCAA’s unlawful cartel, which is inconsistent with the most fundamental principles of antitrust law.”
That paragraph neatly encapsulates a conversation we’ve been having for a few years now. What’s happening to college athletes is bullshit. We know this.Maybe it wasn’t bullshit 50 years ago, but now that TV revenue has pushed the whole college sports economy into the billions, refusing to pay the actual labor force has become increasingly reprehensible, and generally untenable, as more and more people slowly connect the dots. The lawsuit from Kessler & Co. is the latest installment in a steady stream of litigation, and none of it will end until the college model gets overhauled forever.
“We’re looking to change the system. That’s the main goal,” Kessler said Monday. “We want the market for players to emerge.”
And that will happen. Maybe it’ll be this lawsuit that does it; maybe it’ll happen in a few years. But this is a problem that’s going to get fixed, because it’s too obvious to ignore for much longer. (...)
Meanwhile, it’s March, and the entire country’s about to fall in love with college basketball again. The March Madness broadcast rights are worth $771 million alone every year. That’s before you factor in a merchandise industry that was worth $4.62 billion in 2012. Or events like the Final Four, held in an 80,000-seat stadium where prices on the NCAA-sanctioned secondary ticket market range from $130 to $2,750. Everyone knows NCAA players are getting screwed out of a fortune, but sometimes it’s good to repeat the numbers out loud just to make sure we’re all on the same page.
If you’re one of the people who still thinks college athletes are fairly compensated with a $40,000 scholarship, think of it like this: That’s not even $40,000 they’re getting. That’s a voucher. It costs the schools nothing. It’s like cooking at a restaurant that clears hundreds of millions of dollars every year, and they pay you by giving you free food for the year. It’s total bullshit.
by Andrew Sharp, Grantland | Read more:
Image: uncredited
The Real House Candidates of Beverly Hills
Brent Roske lives on a 45-foot yacht off the coast of Marina del Rey, which is technically on the Pacific Ocean, but for jurisdictional purposes is considered part of the city of Los Angeles and, more to the point, the 33rd Congressional District of California. In January, Henry Waxman, the liberal stalwart who has represented the district with little resistance since the year after Roske was born, announced that he would not seek re-election. Now Roske, who is 39, is part of a field of 18 candidates hoping to represent the heartland of Beverly Hills, Malibu and Bel-Air in the United States Congress.
A former creative director at NBC Universal, Roske is not without assets. He is the producer of a web series called “Chasing the Hill,” which chronicles the campaign of a fictional Democratic congresswoman. He also has support from the White House — or at least the soundstage White House of “The West Wing.” Richard Schiff, who played Toby on the series, has a big role in “Chasing the Hill” and is a Roske friend. So is David Hasselhoff, who played the governor of California on the web series. Should Roske get elected, he already has some bold ideas. He plans, for instance, to hire a film crew to document his every move in office. “People have a right,” he says, “to know what their elected representatives are doing.
Roske describes Waxman as “an honorable man,” but one whose extended status in D.C. has meant that he “no longer really represents the people.” This raises the question of what it means to represent “the people” in America’s second-wealthiest congressional district. (It trails only the 12th District of New York, which includes parts of the East Side of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.) California 33 is, after all, home to what might be the highest per capita population of political dilettantes, “creative activists,” foreign-policy hobbyists and flush Democratic donors in the nation, not to mention large numbers of people who like to tell you about their good friends Bill and Hillary. (And how they were just talking to Bill the other day, in fact, and stay tuned for who they think Hillary’s running mate will be.)
News of Waxman’s departure unleashed a kind of political anarchy on the Botox Belt. “When you represent a district for 40 years, it does tend to produce pent-up demand,” Waxman told me. Initially, fantasies were spun about celebrity candidates jumping into the race and vying “Survivor”-style for the privilege of serving in the People’s Chamber. Roll Call, the Capitol Hill publication, put out a call via Twitter for the likes of Courteney Cox, Danny DeVito and Betty White, as well as a roster of other A-through-C-listers. Ricki Lake and Richard Simmons replied — to say no. Lorenzo Lamas came back with a maybe.
Even so, the existing field reflects the vibrant collection of humanity that resides in California 33. Some are serious candidates, some not — three Republicans, three Independents, one Green, one Libertarian, the rest Democrats. You’ve most likely not heard of any of them except Marianne Williamson, the self-help guru, who dislikes being called a “self-help guru.” (Her spokesman has suggested the term “thought leader.”) Williamson has spoken of turning our political dialogue into “a conversation of the heart.” Katy Perry shows up at her events, as do multiple Kardashians. Kim officially endorsed her in a blog post just before press time. Williamson also received the support of Alanis Morissette, Nicole Richie and, for added sex appeal, Dennis Kucinich. (...)
None of them, however, are enjoying themselves as much as Brent Roske. I met him last month at a diner in West Hollywood. He ordered a meatloaf sandwich, and after a few minutes, Richard Schiff showed up. I wanted to call him Toby — because he is Toby, basically, self-serious, intense and irritable. A group of about a dozen schoolchildren filed into the diner for milkshakes. One had a distinctive, shrieking laugh, which kept making Schiff jump slightly in his chair. “I almost shot that kid right in the head,” he said at one point. “This is why we shouldn’t have a gun culture, because I would have shot him.”
Schiff has many opinions about politics, which we were obligated to hear because he once worked in a TV White House. At one point he said that people from the Obama campaign told him how much “The West Wing” inspired them to get into politics. I don’t doubt this, as Washington is filled with operatives who routinely quote lines from the show and have come to mimic the characters’ fast-talking mannerisms and heady sense that they are always shaping history. “I came to the conclusion that without ‘The West Wing’ — ” Schiff said, then slightly changed gears. “I don’t think Obama — ” He seemed to be struggling for a way to credit the show he was on with the Obama’s election. By contrast, today’s political productions, like “House of Cards,” are darker shows for darker times. Schiff joked that people probably “go up to Kevin Spacey and say, you’re the reason I decided not to” get into politics.
A former creative director at NBC Universal, Roske is not without assets. He is the producer of a web series called “Chasing the Hill,” which chronicles the campaign of a fictional Democratic congresswoman. He also has support from the White House — or at least the soundstage White House of “The West Wing.” Richard Schiff, who played Toby on the series, has a big role in “Chasing the Hill” and is a Roske friend. So is David Hasselhoff, who played the governor of California on the web series. Should Roske get elected, he already has some bold ideas. He plans, for instance, to hire a film crew to document his every move in office. “People have a right,” he says, “to know what their elected representatives are doing.Roske describes Waxman as “an honorable man,” but one whose extended status in D.C. has meant that he “no longer really represents the people.” This raises the question of what it means to represent “the people” in America’s second-wealthiest congressional district. (It trails only the 12th District of New York, which includes parts of the East Side of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.) California 33 is, after all, home to what might be the highest per capita population of political dilettantes, “creative activists,” foreign-policy hobbyists and flush Democratic donors in the nation, not to mention large numbers of people who like to tell you about their good friends Bill and Hillary. (And how they were just talking to Bill the other day, in fact, and stay tuned for who they think Hillary’s running mate will be.)
News of Waxman’s departure unleashed a kind of political anarchy on the Botox Belt. “When you represent a district for 40 years, it does tend to produce pent-up demand,” Waxman told me. Initially, fantasies were spun about celebrity candidates jumping into the race and vying “Survivor”-style for the privilege of serving in the People’s Chamber. Roll Call, the Capitol Hill publication, put out a call via Twitter for the likes of Courteney Cox, Danny DeVito and Betty White, as well as a roster of other A-through-C-listers. Ricki Lake and Richard Simmons replied — to say no. Lorenzo Lamas came back with a maybe.
Even so, the existing field reflects the vibrant collection of humanity that resides in California 33. Some are serious candidates, some not — three Republicans, three Independents, one Green, one Libertarian, the rest Democrats. You’ve most likely not heard of any of them except Marianne Williamson, the self-help guru, who dislikes being called a “self-help guru.” (Her spokesman has suggested the term “thought leader.”) Williamson has spoken of turning our political dialogue into “a conversation of the heart.” Katy Perry shows up at her events, as do multiple Kardashians. Kim officially endorsed her in a blog post just before press time. Williamson also received the support of Alanis Morissette, Nicole Richie and, for added sex appeal, Dennis Kucinich. (...)
None of them, however, are enjoying themselves as much as Brent Roske. I met him last month at a diner in West Hollywood. He ordered a meatloaf sandwich, and after a few minutes, Richard Schiff showed up. I wanted to call him Toby — because he is Toby, basically, self-serious, intense and irritable. A group of about a dozen schoolchildren filed into the diner for milkshakes. One had a distinctive, shrieking laugh, which kept making Schiff jump slightly in his chair. “I almost shot that kid right in the head,” he said at one point. “This is why we shouldn’t have a gun culture, because I would have shot him.”
Schiff has many opinions about politics, which we were obligated to hear because he once worked in a TV White House. At one point he said that people from the Obama campaign told him how much “The West Wing” inspired them to get into politics. I don’t doubt this, as Washington is filled with operatives who routinely quote lines from the show and have come to mimic the characters’ fast-talking mannerisms and heady sense that they are always shaping history. “I came to the conclusion that without ‘The West Wing’ — ” Schiff said, then slightly changed gears. “I don’t think Obama — ” He seemed to be struggling for a way to credit the show he was on with the Obama’s election. By contrast, today’s political productions, like “House of Cards,” are darker shows for darker times. Schiff joked that people probably “go up to Kevin Spacey and say, you’re the reason I decided not to” get into politics.
by Mark Leibovich, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Holly Andres
[ed. Remember when computers almost seemed to have personalities of their own? Maybe not.]
How I Introduced a 27-year old computer to the web.
via:
This is the Life
Any culture tells you how to live your one and only life: to wit as everyone else does. Probably most cultures prize, as ours rightly does, making a contribution by working hard at work that you love; being in the know, and intelligent; gathering a surplus; and loving your family above all, and your dog, your boat, bird-watching. Beyond those things our culture might specialize in money, and celebrity, and natural beauty. These are not universal. You enjoy work and will love your grandchildren, and somewhere in there you die.
Another contemporary consensus might be: You wear the best shoes you can afford, you seek to know Rome's best restaurants and their staffs, drive the best car, and vacation on Tenerife. And what a cook you are!
Or you take the next tribe's pigs in thrilling raids; you grill yams; you trade for televisions and hunt white-plumed birds. Everyone you know agrees: this is the life. Perhaps you burn captives. You set fire to a drunk. Yours is the human struggle, or the elite one, to achieve... whatever your own culture tells you: to publish the paper that proves the point; to progress in the firm and gain high title and salary, stock options, benefits; to get the loan to store the beans till their price rises; to elude capture, to feed your children or educate them to a feather edge; or to count coup or perfect your calligraphy; to eat the king's deer or catch the poacher; to spear the seal, intimidate the enemy, and be a big man or beloved woman and die respected for the pigs or the title or the shoes. Not a funeral. Forget funeral. A big birthday party. Since everyone around you agrees.
Since everyone around you agrees ever since there were people on earth that land is value, or labor is value, or learning is value, or title, necklaces, degree, murex shells, or ownership of slaves. Everyone knows bees sting and ghosts haunt and giving your robes away humiliates your rivals. That the enemies are barbarians. That wise men swim through the rock of the earth; that houses breed filth, airstrips attract airplanes, tornadoes punish, ancestors watch, and you can buy a shorter stay in purgatory. The black rock is holy, or the scroll; or the pangolin is holy, the quetzal is holy, this tree, water, rock, stone, cow, cross, or mountain and it's all true. The Red Sox. Or nothing at all is holy, as everyone intelligent knows.
Who is your "everyone"? Chess masters scarcely surround themselves with motocross racers. Do you want aborigines at your birthday party? Or are you serving yak-butter tea? Popular culture deals not in its distant past, or any other past, or any other culture. You know no one who longs to buy a mule or be named to court or thrown into a volcano.
So the illusion, like the visual field, is complete It has no holes except books you read and soon forget. And death takes us by storm. What was that, that life? What else offered? If for him it was contract bridge, if for her it was copyright law, if for everyone it was and is an optimal mix of family and friends, learning, contribution, and joy of making and ameliorating what else is there, or was there, or will there ever be?
Another contemporary consensus might be: You wear the best shoes you can afford, you seek to know Rome's best restaurants and their staffs, drive the best car, and vacation on Tenerife. And what a cook you are!
Or you take the next tribe's pigs in thrilling raids; you grill yams; you trade for televisions and hunt white-plumed birds. Everyone you know agrees: this is the life. Perhaps you burn captives. You set fire to a drunk. Yours is the human struggle, or the elite one, to achieve... whatever your own culture tells you: to publish the paper that proves the point; to progress in the firm and gain high title and salary, stock options, benefits; to get the loan to store the beans till their price rises; to elude capture, to feed your children or educate them to a feather edge; or to count coup or perfect your calligraphy; to eat the king's deer or catch the poacher; to spear the seal, intimidate the enemy, and be a big man or beloved woman and die respected for the pigs or the title or the shoes. Not a funeral. Forget funeral. A big birthday party. Since everyone around you agrees.
Since everyone around you agrees ever since there were people on earth that land is value, or labor is value, or learning is value, or title, necklaces, degree, murex shells, or ownership of slaves. Everyone knows bees sting and ghosts haunt and giving your robes away humiliates your rivals. That the enemies are barbarians. That wise men swim through the rock of the earth; that houses breed filth, airstrips attract airplanes, tornadoes punish, ancestors watch, and you can buy a shorter stay in purgatory. The black rock is holy, or the scroll; or the pangolin is holy, the quetzal is holy, this tree, water, rock, stone, cow, cross, or mountain and it's all true. The Red Sox. Or nothing at all is holy, as everyone intelligent knows.
Who is your "everyone"? Chess masters scarcely surround themselves with motocross racers. Do you want aborigines at your birthday party? Or are you serving yak-butter tea? Popular culture deals not in its distant past, or any other past, or any other culture. You know no one who longs to buy a mule or be named to court or thrown into a volcano.
So the illusion, like the visual field, is complete It has no holes except books you read and soon forget. And death takes us by storm. What was that, that life? What else offered? If for him it was contract bridge, if for her it was copyright law, if for everyone it was and is an optimal mix of family and friends, learning, contribution, and joy of making and ameliorating what else is there, or was there, or will there ever be?
by Annie Dillard, Billemory.com | Read more:
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Conjuring Images of a Bionic Future
Dick Loizeaux recently found himself meandering through a noisy New York nightclub. This was unusual; Mr. Loizeaux, a 65-year-old former pastor, began suffering hearing loss nearly a decade ago, and nightclubs are not really his scene. “They’re the absolute worst place to hear anybody talk,” he said.
But this time was different. Mr. Loizeaux had gone to the club to test out theGN ReSound Linx, one of two new models of advanced hearing aids that can be adjusted precisely through software built into Apple’s iPhone. When he entered the club, Mr. Loizeaux tapped on his phone to switch his hearing aids into “restaurant mode.” The setting amplified the sound coming from the hearing aids’ forward-facing microphones, reducing background noise. To play down the music, he turned down the hearing aids’ bass level and bumped up the treble. Then, as he began chatting with a person standing to his left, Mr. Loizeaux tapped his phone to favor the microphone in his left hearing aid, and to turn down the one in his right ear.Photo
Dick Loizeaux, 65, who began suffering hearing loss nearly a decade ago, recently had a “comfortable conversation” in a noisy New York nightclub using the GN ReSound Linx hearing aid.
The results were striking. “After a few adjustments, I was having a comfortable conversation in a nightclub,” Mr. Loizeaux told me during a recent phone interview — a phone call he would have had difficulty making with his older hearing aids. “My wife was standing next to me in the club and she was having trouble having the same conversation, and she has perfect hearing.”
It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that the latest crop of advanced hearing aids are better than the ears most of us were born with. The devices can stream phone calls and music directly to your ears from your phone. They can tailor their acoustic systems to your location; when the phone detects that you have entered your favorite sports bar, it adjusts the hearing aids to that environment.
The hearing aids even let you transform your phone into an extra set of ears. If you’re chatting with your co-worker across a long table, set the phone in front of her, and her words will stream directly to your ears.
When I recently tried out the Linx and the Halo, another set of iPhone-connected hearing aids made by the American hearing aid company Starkey, I was floored. Wearing these hearing aids was like giving my ears a software upgrade. For the first time, I had fine-grain control over my acoustic environment, the sort of bionic capability I never realized I had craved. I’m 35 and I have normal hearing. But if I could, I’d wear these hearing aids all the time.
IPhone-connected hearing aids are just the beginning. Today most people who wear hearing aids, eyeglasses, prosthetic limbs and other accessibility devices do so to correct a disability. But new hearing aids point to the bionic future of disability devices.
As they merge with software baked into our mobile computers, devices that were once used simply to fix whatever ailed us will begin to do much more. In time, accessibility devices may even let us surpass natural human abilities. One day all of us, not just those who need to correct some physical deficit, may pick up a bionic accessory or two. (...)
Imagine earpieces that let you tune in to a guy who is whispering across the room, or eyeglasses that allow you to scan the price of any item in a supermarket. Google and several international research teams have been working on smart contact lenses. In the beginning, these devices might monitor users’ health — for instance, they could keep an eye on a patient’s blood pressure or glucose levels — but more advanced models could display a digital overlay on your everyday life.
Or consider the future of prosthetic limbs, which are now benefiting from advances in robotics and mobile software. Advanced prosthetic devices can now be controlled through mobile apps. For instance, the i-Limb Ultra Revolution, made by Touch Bionics, allows people to select grip patterns and download new functions for their prosthetic hands using an iPhone. The longer you use it, the smarter your hand becomes.
But this time was different. Mr. Loizeaux had gone to the club to test out theGN ReSound Linx, one of two new models of advanced hearing aids that can be adjusted precisely through software built into Apple’s iPhone. When he entered the club, Mr. Loizeaux tapped on his phone to switch his hearing aids into “restaurant mode.” The setting amplified the sound coming from the hearing aids’ forward-facing microphones, reducing background noise. To play down the music, he turned down the hearing aids’ bass level and bumped up the treble. Then, as he began chatting with a person standing to his left, Mr. Loizeaux tapped his phone to favor the microphone in his left hearing aid, and to turn down the one in his right ear.Photo
Dick Loizeaux, 65, who began suffering hearing loss nearly a decade ago, recently had a “comfortable conversation” in a noisy New York nightclub using the GN ReSound Linx hearing aid.The results were striking. “After a few adjustments, I was having a comfortable conversation in a nightclub,” Mr. Loizeaux told me during a recent phone interview — a phone call he would have had difficulty making with his older hearing aids. “My wife was standing next to me in the club and she was having trouble having the same conversation, and she has perfect hearing.”
It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that the latest crop of advanced hearing aids are better than the ears most of us were born with. The devices can stream phone calls and music directly to your ears from your phone. They can tailor their acoustic systems to your location; when the phone detects that you have entered your favorite sports bar, it adjusts the hearing aids to that environment.
The hearing aids even let you transform your phone into an extra set of ears. If you’re chatting with your co-worker across a long table, set the phone in front of her, and her words will stream directly to your ears.
When I recently tried out the Linx and the Halo, another set of iPhone-connected hearing aids made by the American hearing aid company Starkey, I was floored. Wearing these hearing aids was like giving my ears a software upgrade. For the first time, I had fine-grain control over my acoustic environment, the sort of bionic capability I never realized I had craved. I’m 35 and I have normal hearing. But if I could, I’d wear these hearing aids all the time.
IPhone-connected hearing aids are just the beginning. Today most people who wear hearing aids, eyeglasses, prosthetic limbs and other accessibility devices do so to correct a disability. But new hearing aids point to the bionic future of disability devices.
As they merge with software baked into our mobile computers, devices that were once used simply to fix whatever ailed us will begin to do much more. In time, accessibility devices may even let us surpass natural human abilities. One day all of us, not just those who need to correct some physical deficit, may pick up a bionic accessory or two. (...)
Imagine earpieces that let you tune in to a guy who is whispering across the room, or eyeglasses that allow you to scan the price of any item in a supermarket. Google and several international research teams have been working on smart contact lenses. In the beginning, these devices might monitor users’ health — for instance, they could keep an eye on a patient’s blood pressure or glucose levels — but more advanced models could display a digital overlay on your everyday life.
Or consider the future of prosthetic limbs, which are now benefiting from advances in robotics and mobile software. Advanced prosthetic devices can now be controlled through mobile apps. For instance, the i-Limb Ultra Revolution, made by Touch Bionics, allows people to select grip patterns and download new functions for their prosthetic hands using an iPhone. The longer you use it, the smarter your hand becomes.
by Farhad Manjoo, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Stuart Goldenberg
The Revenge of the Lawn
Although visually open to the street, the lawn was a barrier—a kind of verdant moating separating the household from the threats and temptations of the city. … [It separates] the family by real estate from intruders into private space.Securing the perimeter of the nuclear family’s compound, the inevitable white-picket fence stood guard, a Leave It to Beaver update of the frontier stockade. “He put up a barbed wire fence/ To keep out the unknown,” Joni Mitchell sings, in “The Hissing of Summer Lawns” (1975), a Didion-esque indictment of the same status-seeking, spiritually arid suburbanites Malvina Reynolds mocks in her 1962 folk song, “Little Boxes” (inspired by the Levittown-like California housing development of Westlake), and whom Didion submits for our sardonic consideration in her essay “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream” (1966). Like Didion, who sets her morality play in San Bernardino, Mitchell uses The Valley and its sprinkler-swished lawns as a metaphor for the blank-brained narcissism and materialism that for many (especially New Yorkers of the Woody Allen persuasion) are L.A.’s gifts to American culture:
He bought her a diamond for her throatEven now, when we experience the crack-up of the suburban dream as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order through movies like American Beauty and Revolutionary Road and TV shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Weeds, the lawn endures in the public mind as a symbol of the American idyll, or at least a white, middle-class idyll. (...)
He put her in a ranch house on a hill
She could see the valley barbecues
From her window sill
See the blue pools in the squinting sun
Hear the hissing of summer lawns
Despite such tectonic shifts, the suburban lawn remains an imperishable symbol of the American Dream, even of America itself, the deflation of its symbolic currency and its environmental unsustainability notwithstanding. The perfect lawn has always been environmentally unsustainable, its non-native grasses guzzling precious water and nourished by chemical fertilizers, its unblemished sward a victory over insurgent flora and fauna achieved through sustained carpet-bombing with toxic herbicides and pesticides. In an age of water wars and global warming, it’s morally obscene. According to a 2002 Harris Poll, 50-70% of all urban fresh water is squandered on lawns, more than half of which is wasted “because of inappropriate timing or dosage. Nearly all the water used could be saved by appropriate use of native landscaping that does not require any watering beyond natural rainfall.” We dose our lawns with 67 million pounds’ worth of synthetic pesticides annually, three times the amount used, per acre, on agricultural crops. We spend $5.25 billion on fossil-fuel-derived lawn fertilizers, whose fringe benefits include poisoning surface and ground water. Our gas-powered mowers produce as much pollution in one hour as our cars do over the course of a 20-mile drive; every year, they guzzle 580 million gallons of gas.
by Mark Dery, Boing Boing | Read more:
Image: via:
Deadbeat Dams
Of the more than 80,000 dams listed by the federal government, more than 26,000 pose high or significant safety hazards. Many no longer serve any real purpose. All have limited life spans. Only about 1,750 produce hydropower, according to the National Hydropower Association.
In many cases, the benefits that dams have historically provided — for water use, flood control and electricity — can now be met more effectively without continuing to choke entire watersheds.
Dams degrade water quality, block the movement of nutrients and sediment, destroy fish and wildlife habitats, damage coastal estuaries and in some cases rob surrounding forests of nitrogen. Reservoirs can also be significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
Put simply, many dams have high environmental costs that outweigh their value. Removing them is the only sensible answer. And taking them down can often make economic sense as well. The River Alliance of Wisconsin estimates that removing dams in that state is three to five times less expensive than repairing them.
The message has been slowly spreading around the country. More and more communities and states have reclaimed rivers lost to jackhammers and concrete. Last year, 51 dams in 18 states were taken down, restoring more than 500 miles of streams, according to the group American Rivers. Nearly 850 have been removed in the last 20 years, and nearly 1,150 since 1912.
But the work is far from done. I was disappointed to see the Energy Department release a report last week on the potential to develop new “sustainable” hydroelectric dams on rivers and streams across the country. The report follows President Obama’s signing of two laws last year to encourage small hydro projects and revive nonproducing dams.
New dams are a bad idea. We’ve glorified them for decades, but our pride in building these engineering marvels has often blinded us to the environmental damage they cause. The consequences run the length of the river and beyond. Our many complex attempts to work around these obstacles would make Rube Goldberg proud. Interventions like fish elevators and trap-and-haul programs that truck fish around impoundments don’t lead to true recovery for wild fish populations or reverse the other environmental problems caused by blocking a river’s flow.
But we do know that removing dams brings streams and rivers back to life and replenishes our degraded aquifers.
by Yvon Chouinard, NY Times | Read more:
Image:Marta Monteiro
In many cases, the benefits that dams have historically provided — for water use, flood control and electricity — can now be met more effectively without continuing to choke entire watersheds.
Dams degrade water quality, block the movement of nutrients and sediment, destroy fish and wildlife habitats, damage coastal estuaries and in some cases rob surrounding forests of nitrogen. Reservoirs can also be significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions.Put simply, many dams have high environmental costs that outweigh their value. Removing them is the only sensible answer. And taking them down can often make economic sense as well. The River Alliance of Wisconsin estimates that removing dams in that state is three to five times less expensive than repairing them.
The message has been slowly spreading around the country. More and more communities and states have reclaimed rivers lost to jackhammers and concrete. Last year, 51 dams in 18 states were taken down, restoring more than 500 miles of streams, according to the group American Rivers. Nearly 850 have been removed in the last 20 years, and nearly 1,150 since 1912.
But the work is far from done. I was disappointed to see the Energy Department release a report last week on the potential to develop new “sustainable” hydroelectric dams on rivers and streams across the country. The report follows President Obama’s signing of two laws last year to encourage small hydro projects and revive nonproducing dams.
New dams are a bad idea. We’ve glorified them for decades, but our pride in building these engineering marvels has often blinded us to the environmental damage they cause. The consequences run the length of the river and beyond. Our many complex attempts to work around these obstacles would make Rube Goldberg proud. Interventions like fish elevators and trap-and-haul programs that truck fish around impoundments don’t lead to true recovery for wild fish populations or reverse the other environmental problems caused by blocking a river’s flow.
But we do know that removing dams brings streams and rivers back to life and replenishes our degraded aquifers.
by Yvon Chouinard, NY Times | Read more:
Image:Marta Monteiro
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Young Blood
[ed. Good news Boomers! Another avenue to parasitize the young (and you thought the resurgence of vampire themes in recent culture was just a coincidence?)]
Two teams of scientists published studies on Sunday showing that blood from young mice reverses aging in old mice, rejuvenating their muscles and brains. As ghoulish as the research may sound, experts said that it could lead to treatments for disorders like Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease.“I am extremely excited,” said Rudolph Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the research. “These findings could be a game changer.”
The research builds on centuries of speculation that the blood of young people contains substances that might rejuvenate older adults.
In the 1950s, Clive M. McCay of Cornell University and his colleagues tested the notion by delivering the blood of young rats into old ones. To do so, they joined rats in pairs by stitching together the skin on their flanks. After this procedure, called parabiosis, blood vessels grew and joined the rats’ circulatory systems. The blood from the young rat flowed into the old one, and vice versa.
Later, Dr. McCay and his colleagues performed necropsies and found that the cartilage of the old rats looked more youthful than it would have otherwise. But the scientists could not say how the transformations happened. There was not enough known at the time about how the body rejuvenates itself.
It later became clear that stem cells are essential for keeping tissues vital. When tissues are damaged, stem cells move in and produce new cells to replace the dying ones. As people get older, their stem cells gradually falter.
In the early 2000s, scientists realized that stem cells were not dying off in aging tissues.
“There were plenty of stem cells there,” recalled Thomas A. Rando, a professor of neurology at Stanford University School of Medicine. “They just don’t get the right signals.”
Dr. Rando and his colleagues wondered what signals the old stem cells would receive if they were bathed in young blood. To find out, they revived Dr. McCay’s experiments.
The scientists joined old and young mice for five weeks and then examined them. The muscles of the old mice had healed about as quickly as those of the young mice, the scientists reported in 2005. In addition, the old mice had grown new liver cells at a youthful rate.
The young mice, on the other hand, had effectively grown prematurely old. Their muscles had healed more slowly, and their stem cells had not turned into new cells as quickly as they had before the procedure.
The experiment indicated that there were compounds in the blood of the young mice that could awaken old stem cells and rejuvenate aging tissue. Likewise, the blood of the old mice had compounds that dampened the resilience of the young mice.
by Carl Zimmer, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Getty Images/Zoonar RF via:
Kinetic Beauty
"Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.
The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body.
Of course, in men’s sports no one ever talks about beauty or grace or the body. Men may profess their “love” of sports, but that love must always be cast and enacted in the symbology of war: elimination vs. advance, hierarchy of rank and standing, obsessive statistics, technical analysis, tribal and/or nationalist fervor, uniforms, mass noise, banners, chest-thumping, face-painting, etc. For reasons that are not well understood, war’s codes are safer for most of us than love’s.”
David Foster Wallace
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