DigressEd

ericmortensen: Jonathan Schmock

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 07:57:15 -0500

ericmortensen:

Jonathan Schmock

thisbigcity: humanscalecities: Red Squares Indicate Land that...

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 02:02:10 -0500

thisbigcity:

humanscalecities:

Red Squares Indicate Land that is 100% Dedicated to Parking in Midtown Atlanta

紅框區域全是美國亞特蘭大市中心的停車場。

Los hermanitos (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:43:41 -0500

Los hermanitos (Taken with instagram)

What "Big Data" can Learn from Dubai's Skyscrapers & Sewage System

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 07:10:08 -0500

dbreunig:

Suddenly, we love data. It’s the hero in our TV shows, saves our baseball teams, generates our art, and is the topic of the moment at Davos. Our obsession borders on religion: we believe data is infallible, containing a single, emergent truth (the Guardian’s Datablog’s subtitle is “Facts are Sacred”). If our businesses or institutions are failing we say they need more data.

But when we embrace “Big Data” we neglect the operations and environments we hope the data will improve. Which is unfortunate because data’s value is determined by how well we capitalize on the intelligence it produces. If a film studio identifies a new trend they’re limited by how long a film takes to produce. If a retail outlet discovers that peanut butter buyers can also be sold bananas, they’re limited by how quickly employees can rearrange shelves.

Adding more data to the mix doesn’t help if infrastructures aren’t upgraded. If we ignore the systems we aim to improve, the data we crave is worth only a fraction of its potential value.

For those of us investing in or producing data, the bottleneck is our users, culture, and infrastructure. We’d be wise to learn from examples in other fields and scenarios. Take Dubai, for instance, where skyscrapers sprung up while sewage systems stagnated.

No One Wants their Name on a Sewer

Dubai’s record-setting skyline emerged over the last decades, fueled by rising fuel prices. Wikipedia lists 195 skyscrapers built or under construction in the once quiet city, whose population has more than quintupled in the last 30 years.

But all is not rosy: while the skyline was funded the sewage system was ignored. In 2008, The Wall Street Journal wrote, “By one estimate, some $300 billion in new projects are going up in Dubai in the next 10 years… But Dubai’s single, 30-year-old sewage-treatment plant isn’t keeping up. Sewage output here is rising by 25% a year.” The 160-floor Burj Khalifa alone was designed to house 25,000 people, nearly a 10th of Dubai’s total population when their sewage treatment plant was built.

Read More

On the news. Kunitoraya, Paris. France.

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:11:05 -0500

On the news. Kunitoraya, Paris. France.

Wooden moose (Taken with Instagram at Goodys)

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:25:03 -0500

Wooden moose (Taken with Instagram at Goodys)

This way to… (Taken with Instagram at Manatee Springs State...

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:20:05 -0500

This way to… (Taken with Instagram at Manatee Springs State Park)

Memories of Bilbao. (Taken with Instagram at MAM - Museum)

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 11:41:55 -0500

Memories of Bilbao. (Taken with Instagram at MAM - Museum)

Kills me. newsomz: npr: I wonder if they are Chewie? —...

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:01:14 -0500

Kills me.

newsomz:

npr:

I wonder if they are Chewie? — Tanya

kqedscience:

Darth Vader and Jedi Hamburgers at Quick in France

I think the French have out-Americaned Americans with this one. Gross!

Heli at sunrise. I was up way too early this morning.

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:27:01 -0500

Heli at sunrise. I was up way too early this morning.

erinnn: I went for a hike in Morningside Park today in...

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 03:51:12 -0500

erinnn:

I went for a hike in Morningside Park today in Gainesville. Weather was gorgeous, and the trails were beautiful.

Everyone, take advantage of your local parks while you still can! As I write, the Florida Legislature is slashing the budget for both the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Community Affairs.

thepeopleseason: Where can I get these?

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:44:18 -0500

thepeopleseason:

Where can I get these?

Jon Stewart Crushes Fox News In The 2011 Ratings

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 02:46:27 -0500

Jon Stewart Crushes Fox News In The 2011 Ratings:

The reason why Fox News feels so threatened by Jon Stewart is because his program is more popular than anything not named Bill O’Reilly on the network. Not only is Stewart popular, but he is popular with the coveted young demographics that Fox News struggles with. The average Fox News viewer is 65 years old. For years, the Fox News model of success has been powered by viewers literally aging in to watching Fox.

However, Jon Stewart has thrown a wrench in the Fox News cycle of life by educating his millions of younger viewers about Fox News. Stewart spends segments debunking the propaganda, exposing facts, and uncovering the edited video that is the bread and butter of America’s top cable news network.

Every night Stewart is teaching Americans how to not watch Fox News. The Daily Show host has become the media critic with the biggest platform and loudest voice in our country, and most often that voice is targeting Fox News for their brand of “journalism.”

erinnn: The city of Gainesville produces more solar energy per...

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 21:32:37 -0500

erinnn:

The city of Gainesville produces more solar energy per capita than the state of California! Go Gainesville!

Our feed-in tariff (FIT) program is discussed in this Think Progress article. By the end of 2011, Gainesville will be generating roughly 1.5 million kilowatt hours per month of electricity from solar panels, which is enough to supply 1,600 average American homes.

Water beams

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 21:30:32 -0500

Water beams

Taken with Instagram at Key Biscayne Lighthouse

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 10:35:04 -0500

Taken with Instagram at Key Biscayne Lighthouse

Rose and cactus (Taken with Instagram at Casa das Rosas)

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 18:18:53 -0500

Rose and cactus (Taken with Instagram at Casa das Rosas)

neil-gaiman: I’m ridiculously rich by most standards (including...

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 04:52:36 -0500

neil-gaiman:

I’m ridiculously rich by most standards (including mine, for most of my life), and pay taxes on my income without begrudging it, and I considers myself mostly lucky that the stuff I like to write is the stuff that other people like to read… So this struck a chord…

areasofmyexpertise:

“Leon Cooperman the Omega Advisors Inc. chairman and former CEO of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)’s money-management unit…. [wrote that] Capitalists “are not the scourge that they are too often made out to be….’

“[Now] Cooperman, 68, said in an interview that he can’t walk through the dining room of St. Andrews Country Club in Boca Raton, Florida, without being thanked for speaking up. At least four people expressed their gratitude on Dec. 5 while he was eating an egg-white omelet, he said.”

***

Max Abelson wrote a story today for Bloomberg about the hurt feelings of many bankers and CEOs who feel they are for some weird reason being cast as the villains in ~~“A Christmas Carol”~~ the bleak economy.

Allow me to tell you a story.

At one point on my book tour, I was approached in the airport by a former banker.

He told me he was a life long Democrat and a huge fan of The Daily Show, but he also felt that Jon and the show had it all wrong.

(Because he was a multi millionaire, he has the right to just start critizing anyone in the airport he wants.)

He said that the bankers were not the bad guys in the subprime mortgage scandal and near financial collapse that they had everything to do with. They were just doing what the government allowed them to do.*

And so: he felt it was unfair and hurtful to make the bankers out to be the bad guys.

I was very happy to finally have the chance to say this to someone’s face:

I told him that as a freelance person, I had no idea how much money I would make this year. I never do.

But during the previous few years, due to hard work and exceedingly strange circumstance, I had made more money than I had ever conceived of making in my life. I had also paid a huge bucket of local, state, and city taxes, and that was JUST FINE WITH ME.

Because I knew that I had very little to worry about when it came to providing for my family and me this holiday season. And I suspected he didn’t as well.

But there are many, many people who are VERY worried about this. And out of consideration to them, it seemed to me a little unseemly for wealthy to care so much about the names they might be called.

“From my point of view,” I said, “I think you and me and other wealthy people should just suck it in and take it.”

I have never said anything like this out loud to a stranger before in my life, never mind a stranger who has money; but as I am now a Deranged Millionaire, I now have that right to speak my mind.

Naturally, he just ignored what I said and offered to consult on the Daily Show if we wanted.

***

LOOK: I do not mean to suggest that anyone in this piece is a monster. I am sure they are smart, innovative, and good to their families and employees. I respect success IMMENSELY and I am a capitalist.

However, I know better now than ever that wealth deranges.

It disconnects you from the world. It inflates your self-regard. It allows you to believe that four people congratulating you at your country club makes you a GODDAMN HERO OF AMERICA.

And it leads you to say things like former banker John A. Allison said in the article linked:

“Instead of an attack on the 1 percent, let’s call it an attack on the very productive.”

Because of course, you non-millionaires are not productive, and not worthy.

I know this from experience: when wealth takes hold, the brain creates a new reality in order to explain your new fortune over the poor fortunes of others.

It is not enough to say, as some of these men do, “I am wealthy, and I got some lucky advantages, but I also worked really hard and found some opportunities, and I am proud of it.”

You must instead say: “my extreme wealth proves that I DESERVE to be wealthy, because I am better.”

This logical fallacy is the core of Social Darwinism, but you’d think after a while that Homo Robber Baronensis would have bred some thicker skin.

But it’s like no one around these rich and powerful men have ever called them a name or even disagreed with them!

Oh! That’s right: no one has. At least, not for a long time.

Well, some of these guys are childish, and some of them are creeps.

That is all.

AMAZING IMAGE OF ME AS A POOR DERANGED MILLIONAIRE COURTESY: THE AMAZING APE-LAD.

*This was his actual argument. It is not an argument an adult makes. It’s the actual argument that TEENAGERS make at prestigious high schools where cheating is rampant: everyone was doing it, and no teacher was stopping them. So they WERE FORCED to cheat in order to be competitive. TEENAGERS ARE NOT JOB CREATORS.

parislemon: Dear HBO

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 04:46:57 -0500

parislemon: Dear HBO:

parislemon:

First and foremost, I love your content. You’ve produced several of my favorite shows over the years, and the hits keep on coming. I’d love to watch Game of Thrones now, but I can’t. You see, the only way to get your service is to be a cable subscriber, and several months ago I cut the cord.

…

"Indian cell phone subscribers, of which there are 900 million accounts, have a monthly average..."

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:32:59 -0500

“Indian cell phone subscribers, of which there are 900 million accounts, have a monthly average revenue per user of $3, which is rock bottom low for even a developing market.”

- In India, the “missed call” as a means of communication and interaction has developed into a cultural and business norm.

Also:

Missed calls are being incorporated into mobile apps and services as a standard type of messaging like a text or an answered call itself. For example, an Indian cloud telephony service provider startup called KooKoo has been working with a Bangalore-based company to create an information market based around missed calls. If you want to know the latest weather, the latest Groupon-style deal, or the real-time bus schedule, you can send a missed call to the designated number and get an automated or manual voice call back with the answers you need.

(Via GigaOm)