Posts – page 12 of 74

2014: A Facebook Odyssey.

A recent Gallup poll shows new highs in acceptance of various morality issues.

The American public has become more tolerant on a number of moral issues, including premarital sex, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia. On a list of 19 major moral issues of the day, Americans express levels of moral acceptance that are as high or higher than in the past on 12 of them, a group that also encompasses social mores such as polygamy, having a child out of wedlock, and divorce.

Women Listening To Men In Art History

This is a picture of my dad (on the right) receiving the UW Parkside Alumni Scholarship. My mom say he looks a bit like Clark Kent. I can see the resemblance.

The Economist examines Gartners techno-hype chart.

The annual “hype cycle” chart from Gartner, a market research firm, tries to depict the degree to which certain technologies are exaggerated. Smart robots? Don’t hold your breath. Big data? Not yet. In the firm’s view, innovation advances in stages: from exuberance to pessimism to adoption. Not every technology progresses at the same speed, so Gartner assigns each an estimated time until the end of its ride.

Humans Need Not Apply. via Kottke.

Besides capturing them while they are sleeping, the only way to get the boys to stay still long enough for an in-focus closeup photograph is to have one of their favorite movies on for them to watch.

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Astronaut Neil Armstrong, back in the lunar module, after his historic moonwalk. (NASA)

What an incredible accomplishment. Someone should go back to the Moon today and take a selfie. via

via SMBC

One of the greatest things about living in South Florida is the natural beauty of our beaches and the wildlife that inhabit them. This timelapse video by Cameron Michael captures two of our best beaches, Fort Myers Beach and Sanabel Island.

I’m glad to call this place home.

Disneyland’s original prospectus : Boing Boing has an in-depth look at the original plans behind the development of Disneyland.

Michael Reid Roberts has a piece in The American Reader about the grammer employed by Upworthy and other websites to attract clicks:

The key element in these titles is the relationship between the first sentence and the second. The first is relatively traditional, while the second sentence is short, annoyingly informal, and conspiratorial. We might call these couplets epodal because of the relative line lengths, but I think the effect is more similar to catalexis in that the second line’s brevity emphasizes something unfinished or incomplete. The second sentence is intentionally vague: click here to finish the thought, answer the question, solve the riddle! And, like most unfinished stories, the conclusion is rarely satisfying. But as someone who rarely clicks on Upworthy links, I have come to appreciate the beauty of these teases. Read the above titles again, but without registering the hyperlink: now they read like Buddhist koans. You want to know how you might be a war mercenary, but can you know, really? Bask in the not-knowing.

Collar stays.

GooBing Detroit uses images from Google Map’s street view to show the decay of one of America’s once-great cities. Here’s a powerful example.

From The Economist:

Waistlines are widening everywhere. The percentage of adults who are overweight or obese has swelled from 29% in 1980 to 37% in 2013, according to a new study in the Lancet.

Marketers that figure out the LTV of their customers before their competitors will win.

Ben Legg, CEO of digital marketing firm Adknowledge, provides background and insight into LTV, or lifetime value. It’s the business measurement that tells a brand what its customers are worth over time, and subsequently, what it should spend to attract them. LTV can quickly allow one brand to outpace its competitors.

Paris’ Grevin Wax Museum painter Franck Bruneau prepares the head of Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger’s statue in their workshop before it is shipped to Prague for the opening of the museum on April 11, 2014. (Reuters/Philippe Wojazer)

Well, no need to sleep tonight…or ever again. Via In Focus.

dailyoverview:

Easter Sunday

There were long lines both on the website and at enrollment centers to sign-up up for insurance in the days leading up to the end of the ObamaCare open enrollment period. But these lines lacked the enthusiasm of an iPhone release. James Taranto wrote in his WSJ post, Yes, We Can Wait:

The first thing we thought of when we saw the pictures was the photos we’ve recently seen on Twitter of Venezuelans waiting in bread lines. Waiting in line to purchase necessities is a characteristic not of a prosperous free society but of command economies under repressive regimes. Closer to home, one doubts even the Transportation Security Administration would be so tone-deaf as to advertise long airport lines as an indication it’s doing a great job.