Dave Kordalewski

Shared posts

21 Aug 00:05

Huh?

by Andrew

I received the following bizarre email:

Apr 26, 2013

Dear Andrew Gelman

You are receiving this notice because you have published a paper with the American Journal of Public Health within the last few years. Currently, content on the Journal is closed access for the first 2 years after publication, and then freely accessible thereafter. On June 1, 2013, the Journal will be extending its closed-access window from 2 years to 10 years. Extending this window will close public access to your article via the Journal web portal, but public access will still be available via the National Institutes of Health PubMedCentral web portal.

If you would like to make your article available to the public for free on the Journal web portal, we are extending this limited time offer of open access at a steeply discounted rate of $1,000 per article. If interested in purchasing this access, please contact Brian Selzer, Publications Editor, at brian.selzer@apha.org

Additionally, you may purchase a Noncommercial Common Use License (NCUL) for $500. This license enables readers to use your article for noncommercial purposes without the need to purchase permissions, and it also permits free reproduction of your article. The NCUL does NOT permit reproduction in commercial products such as book chapters or Journal articles. Permission must still be purchased for such use. If interested, please contact Brian Selzer, Publications Editor, at brian.selzer@apha.org.

Sincerely,

Brian Selzer
Publications Editor
American Public Health Association

Huh? I guess this is the last time I will publish something in the American Journal of Public Health. How rude! I supply them with content for free (this is part of the “research and service” aspect of my job), and this is their attitude? “A steeply discounted rate,” indeed.

P.S. More here. I can’t actually remember writing anything for the AJPS and I searched their website and couldn’t find any papers by me there.

The post Huh? appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.

16 Jul 18:04

New Edit and Revert Stats

by Erik

Finally on popular request edit/revert stats will now be generated each month for all Wikimedia projects. For the largest Wikipedias some new charts are already online: English, Japanese, German, Spanish, Russian, French, Dutch. Other wikis will follow in coming weeks.

For each wiki there will be a separate page with charts and tables. Charts come in two variations: raw data and trend lines (this may see overkill, but on some wikis one variation is more readable than the other, depending on line patterns) . Tables tell you what kind of content is reverted most, for which users, and by which users and bots.

Some examples:

Edits and reverts on English Wikipedia
The sharp peak in bot edits in 2013 is caused by the migration of interwiki links to Wikidata. You will see in coming months that on many wikis bot edit counts will decline to far below Dec 2012 level, as most interwiki bots stopped working.
Revert ratio on Dutch Wikipedia

On many wikis there is a very distinct seasonal pattern for revert ratio. Here you see how on the Dutch Wikipedia far less anonymous edits are reverted in summer, and a bit less around Christmas. Most probably there is less vandalism in those periods, as schools are closed. Perhaps there are also less edit patrollers on duty during vacations, and more bad edits slip through?
Revert ratio on Spanish Wikipedia

On the Spanish Wikipedia the dip in revert ratio occurs every half year. Same goes for the Portuguese Wikipedia (new charts not yet available). There is a simple explanation: both wikis are edited intensely in the northern and southern hemisphere, with different holiday seasons.
Reverts by actor and acted upon
Breakdown of reverts on English Wikipedia
Most active reverters

Who reverts most? Who and what is reverted most? Here for the English Wikipedia.
09 Jul 20:58

God is not a Good Theory (Sean Carroll)

by S. Abbas Raza
09 Jul 20:56

WOODY ALLEN ON LIFE: “THE WHOLE THING IS TRAGIC”

by S. Abbas Raza

From The Talks:

Woody-Allen-01Mr. Allen, do you truly believe that happiness in life is impossible?

This is my perspective and has always been my perspective on life. I have a very grim, pessimistic view of it. I always have since I was a little boy; it hasn’t gotten worse with age or anything. I do feel that’s it’s a grim, painful, nightmarish, meaningless experience and that the only way that you can be happy is if you tell yourself some lies and deceive yourself.

I think it’s safe to say that most people would disagree.

But I am not the first person to say this or even the most articulate person. It was said by Nietzsche, it was said by Freud, it was said by Eugene O’Neill. One must have one’s delusions to live. If you look at life too honestly and clearly, life becomes unbearable because it’s a pretty grim enterprise, you will admit.

I have a hard time imagining Woody Allen having such a hard life…

I have been very lucky and I have made my talent a very productive life for me, but everything else I am not good at. I am not good getting through life, even the simplest things. These things that are a child’s play for most people are a trauma for me.

More here.

09 Jul 11:47

Hate Comic Sans? Blame this Microsoft virtual assistant

by Casey Johnston
The Windows 95 "Microsoft Bob" interface. Twenty years ago, not only did we write birthday letters, but they were so easy, a cartoon dog could tell us how to do it.

It’s hard to disagree that virtual assistants have wrought little good in this world. From Clippy’s benignly stupid questions to BonziBuddy’s spyware and evil homepage resets, it’s a wonder that Siri or Google Now have been able to reclaim any goodwill. But it turns out virtual assistants have a more lasting negative impact than general annoyance: the font Comic Sans.

Comic Sans lore says that Vincent Connare, a designer on a Microsoft consumer software team, saw a working prototype of the assistant Microsoft Bob back in 1994. This featured a cartoon dog named Rover speaking in text bubbles and, incongruously for a cartoon, Rover spoke in Times New Roman.

In what can now only be described as dramatic irony, Connare was shocked and appalled at how ugly Times New Roman looked coming, ostensibly, out of a cartoon’s mouth. He decided that a more comic-like typeface was needed.

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

09 Jul 11:46

D-Wave’s quantum optimizer might be quantum after all

by Chris Lee

Quantum optimizer manufacturer D-Wave Systems has been gaining a lot of traction recently. They've sold systems to Lockheed Martin and Google, and started producing results showing that their system can solve problems that are getting closer to having real-life applications. All in all, they have come a long way since the first hype-filled announcement.

Over time, my skepticism has waxed and waned. Although I didn't really trust their demonstrations, D-Wave's papers, which usually made more limited claims, seemed pretty solid. Now, there is a new data point to add to the list, with a paper claiming to show that the D-Wave machine cannot be doing classical simulated annealing.

Once again in English, please

Annealing is a process where you carefully and slowly allow a physical system to relax. As it's relaxing, it will carefully arrange itself so that it has the lowest possible amount of energy, called the ground state.

Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

09 Jul 11:42

Internet troll “weev” appeals 41-month sentence for AT&T/iPad hack

by Megan Geuss

Yesterday, the EFF filed a formal appeal with the Third Circuit US Court of Appeals to overturn the conviction of Andrew “weev” Auernheimer, who is currently serving a 41-month sentence at Allenwood Low Federal Correctional Institute in White Deer, Pennsylvania.

Auernheimer, a hacker and self-described Internet troll, was sentenced in March. The court found him guilty of encouraging his co-defendant, Daniel Spitler, to collect about 114,000 e-mail addresses through a security vulnerability on AT&T's servers. The two defendants found that AT&T was running a script that would return an iPad user's e-mail address if the iPad's ICC-ID was entered into a URL that AT&T was using to auto-populate its website with account holders' addresses for easy log-in. Because ICC-ID's come in a predictable range, Spitler was able to gather these e-mail addresses en masse using a program he wrote called the “account slurper.” Auernheimer then disclosed the information that Spitler obtained to Gawker. In doing so, he was charged with identity theft and with felony hacking under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

Spitler entered into a plea agreement and has not been sentenced.

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

09 Jul 11:41

Why good deeds don’t go unpunished

by Kate Shaw Yoshida
Nonconformists may eventually find themselves worn down by their peers.

From an early age, we are taught that cooperation, generosity, and altruism are generally things we should strive for. But altruistic acts aren’t always lauded, and researchers have found that generous individuals are sometimes punished for their behavior. Studies suggest that people often react negatively to large contributions, are suspicious of those who offer help, and want to expel particularly charitable individuals from cooperative endeavors. These seemingly counterintuitive behaviors are called “antisocial punishment” and are more common than you might think. But why would people want to punish anyone who is particularly charitable?

The answer to that question would explain a puzzling human behavior, and it could have important ramifications for public policy. Tackling many of the major problems we currently face—from climate change to political stalemates—requires cooperation and collaboration. Understanding why people are sometimes willing to undermine joint efforts out of what appears to be nothing more than spite could go a long way to improve cooperation and discourse in many areas.

Sociologists Kyle Irwin and Christine Horne suggest that our inclination to punish do-gooders may stem from our adherence to social norms. Using a clever experimental design that allowed them to manipulate the level of conformity among group members, the researchers investigated the relationship between antisocial punishment and social norms.

Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments

09 Jul 11:40

Can scientists predict a suicide from Facebook statuses?

by Casey Johnston
Suicide and self-harm indicators may be threaded throughout our social media actions and interactions.
Casey Johnston

Can your Facebook friends predict from your status updates that you’re contemplating suicide? A new study purports to find out whether it's possible by collecting data from a number of volunteer social media and mobile phone users to create a tool for real-time analysis of suicide risk factors.

The experiment is named for Emile Durkheim, a sociologist who conducted a broad survey and analysis of suicide statistics in 1897. In his book, Suicide, Durkheim classified suicide victims into distinct types and found correlations between the lives they led and the likelihood they had to kill themselves.

The Durkheim Project’s participants are drawn from a number of US military veterans. The data collection will rely several apps “available on Facebook as well as for iPhone and Android devices” that will forward the actions and content of participants’ mobile activity—from tweets to LinkedIn interactions to text message content—to a medical database.

Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

09 Jul 11:38

France also scoops up phone, Internet metadata on its citizens

by Nate Anderson
DGSE headquarters, blurrily hiding near the Parisian Périphérique
Google Maps

While Americans were celebrating the July Fourth holiday, French newspaper Le Monde was busy stirring up controversy across the Atlantic with news that the French security services are involved in NSA-style tapping of Internet and phone communications, text messages, and faxes. They have been successful enough that most electronic communications in France are now vacuumed up by the direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (DGSE), which warehouses them in servers occupying three floors of the DGSE's Parisian headquarters.

The focus is on metadata, not content, and as with the NSA, is apparently used to graph webs of connection between groups and individuals. Should useful patterns emerge, intelligence operatives can seek "more intrusive techniques, like wire-tapping or police tails."

Le Monde argues that the system is "perfectly illegal"—or at least extra-legal in the sense that nothing like it had ever been anticipated under intelligence laws passed in the early 1990s. The DGSE data is also not tightly compartmentalized—six other French intelligence agencies can make requests for database searches, used for everything from customs to money-laundering. But the stated goal of the system is—surprise!—terrorism. From Le Monde:

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

09 Jul 05:03

Two Principles of Mathematics

by robert

I was explaining something in probability theory to somebody last night, and I offhandedly said the following remark:

You know, it’s interesting what sorts of mathematics come up. For example, a usual exercise in undergraduate probability is the following: Flip a coin repeatedly until a heads comes up. What’s the expected number of coin flips required?

The person asked me what the number was, and I realized that I actually didn’t know. I gave an offhand guess of three, since we’re asking about a very particular sequence of coin flips (which has exponentially small density in the measure of all sequences of coin flips, and so it should be small). I sat down to work on it before bed, and rather quickly derived the following expression.

Let X be the random variable in \{1,2, \ldots\} = \mathbb{N} with the interpretation that X = i if the ith coin flip in a sequence of flips is a head after i-1 tails. It’s straightforward to calculate \Pr[X = i] — assuming we’re flipping a fair coin, the probability of getting i-1 tails followed by a single head is (1/2)^{i}. This means our expected value will be E[X] = \sum_{i=1}^{\infty} i \Pr[X = i] = \sum_{i=1}^{\infty} i 2^{-i}.

And, wait a minute, but this sum is not trivial to evaluate! At first I did what any self-respecting mathematician/computer scientist would do (i.e. HIT IT WITH YOUR HARDEST SLEDGEHAMMERULTRATOOL AND DYNAMITE THE PROBLEM TO ACCESS IT’S SWEET GOOEY INSIDES) and applied generating functions.

MMMMMMMMMMMMM

This (alas) didn’t work and I fell asleep dejected.

And I woke up with the cutest solution!

To begin, here’s a secret that your math teacher just won’t ever bloody tell you:

(1) Every inequality/sum/identity in the history of mathematics just comes from writing the same thing in two different ways.

Of course, with our friend hindsight bias this is obvious — once we have the identity x = y in front of us, it’s easy to say “oh, well of COURSE x = y, it’s so obvious, duh!”.

Now, here is a second secret that your math teacher won’t ever bloody tell you:

(2) Every result ever obtained in mathematics can be broken down to a sequence of tiny, local, or otherwise easy steps.

When you say something as simple as I did in these two principles the questions of mathematics suddenly become significantly less daunting. To illustrate both of these principles, I’ll use them to evaluate our sum \sum_{i=1}^{\infty} i2^{-i} from the probabilistic puzzle above. First, let’s recall what an infinite sum actually is, as it’s kind of easy to forget: the sum

\displaystyle \sum_{i=1}^\infty i2^{-i}

is really defined as a limit of partial sums

\displaystyle \lim_{n \rightarrow \infty} \sum_{i=1}^n i2^{-i}.

So, applying our first principle from above, we’re going to rewrite \sum_{i=1}^n i2^{-i} as another function f(n) so that we can actually evaluate the limit above.

Now, how do we do this? First, just to simplify notation for ourselves, let f(n) = \sum_{i=1}^n i2^{-i}. Let’s apply our second principle from above — what are some really stupendously obvious facts about the sum f(n) = \sum_{i=1}^n i2^{-i}? Well, since it’s a frigging sum, we know that

\displaystyle f(n+1) = \sum_{i=1}^{n+1} i2^{-(i+1)} = f(n) + (n+1)2^{-(n+1)}.

Alright, here is a start. If we can apply our first principle to the sum f(n+1) and write it down in another way then maybe we’ll end up somewhere interesting. Well, what about this sum? Let’s write it down explicitly, so that we can actually see some of the structure of the terms. I’m also going to make the substitution r = 1/2 and instead write

\displaystyle f(n) = \sum_{i=1}^{n} ir^i.

Time for a side rant. Now, a math teacher, jerks as they are, will tell you to do this kind of substitution because your result is more general (or, even worse, tell you nothing at all, leaving you swimming in a soup of variables/indeterminates with no flotation device).

Everyone in any math class, ever. THE OCEAN IS VARIABLES

As usual, this is the correct information but stated in a way so that humans can’t understand it. Another way to say this “generality” assumption is, simply, people hate magic numbers! Notice that NOTHING! about the sums we’ve considered so far have needed the 2 to be there (other than the fact that our problem happens to be about coins). Well, if there’s no reason for it to be there, then why should it be there? The sum \sum_{i=1}^n ir^i is even a bit easier to swallow visually. Anyways, side rant over.

Back on track, here are the sums f(n) and f(n+1), both written down explicitly:

\displaystyle f(n) = r + 2r^2 + 3r^3 + \cdots + nr^n

\displaystyle f(n+1) = r + 2r^2 + 3r^3 + \cdots + nr^n + (n+1)r^{n+1}.

Well, recall that I said that we were trying to rewrite f(n+1) in a way other than

\displaystyle f(n+1) = f(n) + (n+1)r^{n+1}.

Applying our first principle — and this is really the leap of intuition — let’s just transform f(n) into f(n+1) in another way! How? Well, multiply f(n) by r and compare it to f(n+1):

\displaystyle rf(n) = r^2 + 2r^3 + \cdots + (n-1)r^n + nr^{n+1}.

\displaystyle f(n+1) = r + 2r^2 + 3r^3 + \cdots + nr^n + (n+1)r^{n+1}.

We’ve almost got f(n+1)! The only thing that’s missing is a single copy of each term in the sum! Phrased mathematically, we now have the identity

\displaystyle f(n+1) = rf(n) + (r + r^2 + r^3 + \ldots + r^n + r^{n+1}).

Now, the sum \sum_{i=1}^n r^i is a geometric sum which has a simple formula (fact: this simple formula can be derived in a way similar to our current investigation):

\displaystyle \sum_{i=1}^n r^i = \frac{1 - r^{n+1}}{1 - r} - 1.

So, substituting in this new simple formula gives

\displaystyle f(n+1) = rf(n) + \frac{1 - r^{n+2}}{1 - r} - 1

and then, finally finishing our application of the first principle, we can apply our early “stupid” identity for f(n+1) and get

\displaystyle f(n) + (n+1)r^{n+1} = rf(n) + \frac{1 - r^{n+2}}{1 - r} - 1.

The rest is algebra/boilerplate. Collecting the f(n) terms on the left hand side, we get

\displaystyle (1- r)f(n) = \frac{1 - r^{n+2}}{1 - r} - 1 - (n+1)r^{n+1},

then dividing both sides by (1-r) finally gives

\displaystyle f(n) = (1-r)^{-1}\left(\frac{1 - r^{n+2}}{1 - r} - 1 - (n+1)r^{n+1}\right).

Taking the limit as n \rightarrow \infty and using our knowledge that r = 1/2 < 1, we see that the terms involving r^{n+1} will disappear. This leaves

\displaystyle \lim_{n \rightarrow \infty} f(n) = \frac{1}{1-r}\left(\frac{1}{1 - r} - 1\right).

Substiting in r = 1/2, we get

\displaystyle \lim_{n \rightarrow \infty} f(n) = 2(2 - 1) = 2.

And we’re done. In expectation, you will see a heads after 2 coin flips.

You see, math is not mystical. Unless you’re a Newton or an Euler (viz. an absolutely genius), math proceeds pretty much the same for everybody. There are underlying principles and heuristics that help you do math that every established mathematician actually uses — the secret is that no one ever tells you them. Of course, I have a sneaking suspicion that this due to the fact that our high school math teachers don’t actually understand the principles themselves (while this may seem like a bit of an attack, I did graduate with people who were going to be math teachers. Most of those people should not have been math teachers).

09 Jul 03:29

animals_without_necks.jpg

animals_without_necks.jpg
09 Jul 00:08

ive_made_a_huge_mistake3.jpg

ive_made_a_huge_mistake3.jpg
09 Jul 00:05

william_tell.gif

william_tell.gif
09 Jul 00:01

Glass Ceiling.

Dicks have properties that make them particularly good at smashing glass.
05 Jul 02:23

Goodnight Reader

by Robert Farley

Goodnight Reader

In the great google cloud
there was a full text feed
and folders and tags
and sharing with…
A random collection of internet “friends”
And there were stars and there were trends
And bundles
And recommended items
And details and statistics and RSS mush
And an angry old troll who was shouting “hush”

…Goodnight cloud
Goodnight feeds full text
Good night trends
And good night internet “friends”
Goodnight folders
Goodnight tags
Goodnight stars
And Goodnight recommended items
And Goodnight bundles
Goodnight details and statistics
Goodnight RSS mush
And goodnight to angry old troll who was shouting “hush”
Goodnight Reader

Going with Feedly and Pocket. Liked the concept behind OldReader, but it just doesn’t have the features I want.

    
05 Jul 02:16

so_subtle.jpg

so_subtle.jpg
05 Jul 02:09

#5283: the math/porn part of my mind
03 Jul 01:16

A final farewell

by A Googler

Thank you for stopping by.

Today, we powered down Google Reader. We understand you may not agree with this decision, but we hope you'll come to love these alternatives as much as you loved Reader.

Sincerely,

The Google Reader Team

Frequently-asked questions:

1. What will happen to my Google Reader data?

All Google Reader subscription data (eg. lists of people that you follow, items you have starred, notes you have created, etc.) will be systematically deleted from Google servers.

2. Will there be any way to retrieve my subscription data from Google in the future?

Note -- all subscription data will be permanently, and irrevocably deleted. Google will not be able to recover any Google Reader subscription data for any user after July 15, 2013.

3. Why was Google Reader discontinued?

Please refer to our blog post for more information.
03 Jul 00:57

Guessing the Ending (7 Comments)

by Wes + Tony

Being Alive ★★☆☆☆ ''Too Predictable''

Haha! Movies, right? Also, death is pretty crazy!

Anyway, I’m going to be in Oregon for the week but thanks to the power of the World Wide Web I can be pretty much anywhere on the planet and be writing this for you, even in the remote wilderness of the Pacific Northwest. In fact, I’m writing this from an airplane! Not on in-flight WiFi, though, that’s for the cloud-computing Business Class types. Perhaps one day I’ll join their ranks, or maybe even First Class, where there’s more legroom and never any turbulence. Until then I’ll be saving files directly to my hard drive like a peasant.

Alright, I gotta finish up before I cross the Oregon state line and my computer turns into a microbrewery.

Wes

03 Jul 00:53

[video] New Wearable Computer Also Sucks Your Dick

Tech Trends looks at the new Samsung Apex, a wearable computing device that streams videos into one eye, the internet into the other, and sucks your cock all at the same time.
30 Jun 07:02

Friends Don't Let Friends Carpool

by Lance Fortnow
The AAA foundation measured cognitive distraction while driving and reported that having a passenger in the car is as dangerous as using a cell phone. On a scale of 1 to 5, a handheld cell phone caused a distraction level of 2.45, a passenger 2.33 and a hands-free phone 2.27. On top of this, distraction causes risk to a passenger as well as a driver, whereas the other side of the cell phone conversation can't be harmed by a driver's distraction.

Since the popular media ignores this risk, as a public service I present some guidelines:
  1. Avoid carpooling whenever possible. While there are some advantages (less traffic, pollution and loss of natural resources), it is worth putting lives of the driver, passengers and others at extra risk?
  2. If you do carpool, do not talk to each other except in case of emergency.
  3. If you need to talk, pull over to a safe place and turn off your engine before engaging in conversation.
Car manufacturers must share some of the blame by building cars with multiple seats and not physically separating the driver from the other passengers.

In the same study, the AAA foundation rated solving difficult math and verbal tasks at the top distraction level of 5. So some words of advice particularly for readers of this blog
Don't Drive and Derive
30 Jun 06:17

California Couples Line Up to Marry After Stay on Same-Sex Marriage Is Lifted

by By MALIA WOLLAN
Hordes of couples in San Francisco took advantage of extended hours at the county clerk’s office to get married on Saturday.
    


29 Jun 19:42

Mystery solved: meteorite caused Tunguska devastation

by Ars Staff
Vast areas were flattened by a meteorite in Tunguska in 1908.
Leonid Kulik

On the morning of June 30 in 1908, a gigantic fireball devastated hundreds of square kilometres of uninhabited Siberian forest around the Tunguska river. The first scientists to investigate the impact site expected to find a meteorite, but they found nothing. Because no traces of a meteorite were found, it many scientists concluded that the culprit was a comet. Comets, which are essentially muddy ice balls, could cause such a devastation and leave no trace.

But now, 105 years later, scientists have revealed that the Tunguska devastation was indeed caused by a meteorite. A group of Ukrainian, German, and American scientists have identified its microscopic remains. Why it took them so many years makes for a fascinating tale about the limits of science and how we are pushing them.

Big ball of fire

Eyewitness reports of the Tunguska event help paint a partial picture. As the fireball streaked across the sky, a blast of heat scorched everything in its wake, to be followed by a shock wave that threw people off their feet and stripped leaves and branches from trees, laying a large forest flat. Photos reveal the extent and force of the impact, showing trees that look like bare telegraph poles, all pointing away from the impact site.

Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

29 Jun 19:35

Leak of powerful malware tool like “handing a bazooka to a child”

by Dan Goodin
Some of the goodies included with Carberp.

The recent leak of source code for a powerful piece of bank-fraud malware may spawn a surge of advanced botnet attacks carried out by copycat hackers who previously didn't have the skill to pull off such feats, security researchers warned.

Carberp, as the botnet-creation toolkit is known, previously sold in underground crime forums for as much as $40,000 a license. In the last week, source code for the crimeware began circulating online for free and can now be acquired by many people who have a few hours to poke around. While the leak is a boon for researchers who want to know as much as possible about the inner workings of sophisticated malware, it also comes with a dark side: it isn't that hard for malware newcomers to get their hands on the 1.88 GB package of code.

"In short, it does not take a genius to get a copy of the leaked source code, which makes this whole thing dangerous," Christopher Elisan, principal malware scientist in security firm RSA's FirstWatch department, wrote in a blog post published Friday. "Any script kiddie, who probably does not understand the technology, can use this which may result in dire consequences. It's like handing a bazooka to a child."

Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

29 Jun 11:16

Tumblr Logic of the Day: Tall People A**holes

Tumblr Logic of the Day: Tall People A**holes

Submitted by: Unknown (via Tumblr)

29 Jun 00:01

Rise of the Get-Passive

by Erik Loomis

Language is always changing. I find the organic transformation of language quite fascinating, even when it leads to new forms of language that drive some people crazy, like using the word “grow” in ways such as “growing the economy.”

I think my support for changing language comes from a grammar snob aunt who used to correct people for using supposedly bad grammar.

    
28 Jun 22:48

Rules of Animism

28 Jun 00:12

The System Works

by Erik Loomis

Jeebus.

Jeff Olson, the 40-year-old man who is being prosecuted for scrawling anti-megabank messages on sidewalks in water-soluble chalk last year now faces a 13-year jail sentence. A judge has barred his attorney from mentioning freedom of speech during trial.

According to the San Diego Reader, which reported on Tuesday that a judge had opted to prevent Olson’s attorney from “mentioning the First Amendment, free speech, free expression, public forum, expressive conduct, or political speech during the trial,” Olson must now stand trial for on 13 counts of vandalism.

In addition to possibly spending years in jail, Olson will also be held liable for fines of up to $13,000 over the anti-big-bank slogans that were left using washable children’s chalk on a sidewalk outside of three San Diego, California branches of Bank of America, the massive conglomerate that received $45 billion in interest-free loans from the US government in 2008-2009 in a bid to keep it solvent after bad bets went south.

The Reader reports that Olson’s hearing had gone as poorly as his attorney might have expected, with Judge Howard Shore, who is presiding over the case, granting Deputy City Attorney Paige Hazard’s motion to prohibit attorney Tom Tosdal from mentioning the United States’ fundamental First Amendment rights.

“The State’s Vandalism Statute does not mention First Amendment rights,” ruled Judge Shore on Tuesday.

Evidently, the Constitution does not apply to state law unless the relevant parts of it are explicitly mentioned in each statute. And I’m sure 5 Supreme Court justices would agree.

Our corporate overlords will not be challenged. Especially by chalk.

    
26 Jun 23:55

Cool Design of the Day: A Typeface Designed to Thwart NSA surveillance

Cool Design of the Day: A Typeface Designed to Thwart NSA surveillance

Check out ZXX, a freely available typeface that may be able to protect your messages from being easily detected or scanned by the big brothers over at the NSA. Designed by South Korean artist Sang Mun, who spent two years gathering intelligence for the NSA during his mandatory military service, and named after the U.S. Library of Congress code for "No linguistic content, Not applicable," ZXX is available in four illegible styles (Camo, False, Noise, and Xed) with each version uniquely camouflaged to confuse the optical character recognition devices from properly scanning the letters.

Submitted by: Unknown (via Fast Company)