July 7, 2012
Don't You Know Who I Am?
In 2011 Malaysia Airlines introduced what is believed to be the world's first airline integration with Facebook.
In February Air France KLM announced its Meet And Seat program, allowing customers to scan other passengers' social media profiles. to select or reject seatmates. (Previously).
It prompted safety and privacy concerns, while others said it showed how a company "gets" social media.
In June airBaltic announced it would trial SeatBuddy to make trips more pleasant by seating like-minded people next to each other.
Now, British Airways has decided to use the Internet to create dossiers on its customers, including using Google images to find pictures of passengers so that staff can approach them as they arrive at the terminal or plane. The Know Me service will initially be limited to first class passengers and other 'captains of industry'.
So-called 'social seating' is part of an emerging trend to marry data-mining with customer service.
America the Philosophical?
Is America the Most Philosophical Society on the Planet? "For the surprising little secret of our ardently capitalist, famously materialist, heavily iPodded, iPadded and iPhoned society is that America in the early 21st century towers as the most philosophical culture in the history of the world, an unprecedented marketplace of truth and argument that far surpasses ancient Greece, 19th-century Germany or any other place. The openness of its dialogue, the quantity of its arguments, the diversity of its viewpoints, the cockiness with which its citizens express their opinions, the vastness of its First Amendment freedoms, the intensity of its hunt for evidence and information, the widespread rejection of truths imposed by authority or tradition alone, the resistance to false claims of justification and legitimacy, the embrace of Web communication with an alacrity that intimidates the world: All corroborate that fact." [more inside]
As we used to say in marching band, "It's HOT."
Looking back at the past week, as thunderstorms finally rolled into the Midwest Saturday evening, it seems that the past week's extreme heat (previously) has broken more than 3,500 temperature records in the U.S. [more inside]
Barney Frank and Jim Ready, Newlyweds
Barney Frank has married Jim Ready, his boyfriend of several years [NYT], in a quiet ceremony officiated by MA Governor Deval L. Patrick on the banks of the Charles River in Newton, MA. Frank becomes not only the first out gay Congressman in the US, but now the first one to enter into same-sex marriage.
I prefer a ruin to a monument.
A liquor store in Amsterdam. A veteran in Bagdad. A family in Rome. A WWII veterans memorial in Berlin. A house in Oxford. Edouard Levé photographed towns in the United States that shared names with famous cities. He photographed fully-clothed actors reenacting scenes from rugby and pornography [nsfw]. He also wrote some novels, influenced by Oulipo. Autoportrait, describes his life in 120 pages of unordered vignettes and brief, declarative sentences—"The girl whom I loved the most left me. [...] I am uneasy in rooms with small windows." and so on. His fourth novel, Suicide, is a one-sided conversation between an anonymous narrator ("I") and his friend ("you"), who committed suicide twenty years ago. It's a painfully intimate meditation on the act and its fallout on its own merits—"Your life was hypothesis. Those who die old are made of the past. Thinking of them, one thinks of what they have done. Thinking of you, one thinks of what you could have become. You were, and you will remain, made up of possibilities."—but few will read Suicide unburdened with the knowledge that Edouard Levé killed himself several days after completing it, at the age of 47. [more inside]
135 Shuttle Launches
The Shuttle Launches, all 135 of them, playing simultaneously.
Edited by McLean Fahnestock.
If you're looking for the Challenger video, it is in the second row from the top, the 6th frame from the right.
'SOFEX was so-so'
SOFEX: The Business of War (video, ad). VICE magazine reports on 'experiencing the military-industrial complex's trade show' [more inside]
What happens when you get your stockings in a bunch
If only "sudo pick up your toys" were valid syntax.
John Goerzen, an IT development manager in Kansas and a developer for Debian, has been teaching his two sons, ages five and two, respectively, how to use Linux. [more inside]
Weak as I am
Weak as I am is a webcomic by Nigel Auchterlounie, about a guy who accidentally steals a superhero's powers. The story ended today. [Some of Auchterlounie's work is mildly NSFW]
World's largest musical Tesla Coils
DNSChanger servers get shut down
On Monday hundreds of thousands of computers will lose their ability to connect to the Internet. [more inside]
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (previously), R-MI 11, is a very conservative politician and a colorful character, to say the least. [more inside]
...smashed-trashed-bashed-mashed-muzzy-fuzzy-dizzy-merry-screwed-and-glowing-and-nuked-and-blowing-a-two...
Ali Spagnola's Synonyms for Drunk is a remarkably catchy song featuring 91 words for "Drunk" in less than one minute. [slyt]
Harlem 1927
In 1927 Miguel Covarrubias
published Negro Drawings ( nsfw ).
Here are some of his cartoons for Vanity Fair and other publications.
Here are some of his cartoons for Vanity Fair and other publications.
Prohibition
Iran confronts its alcohol problem. 'After years of denying the prevalence of illegal alcohol in Iran, officials are addressing the issue, while continuing to treat drinking as a sin and a crime.' 'Recently, two men in a northeastern province were given rare death sentences for drinking, as part of the country's three-strikes law. Each man had been convicted of drinking twice before.' [more inside]
"If I had my own .45 'matic, I'd be dangerous too."
It's just around the corner, English civil war
The Quiet Carriage (slv). Author Geoff Dyer discourses on the politics of the quiet carriage in trains. Part of the 5x15 initiative.
You eat too fast, and I understand why your antidyspeptic pill-makers cover your walls, your forests even, with their advertisements.
In 1891 author and lecturer ”Max O’Rell” (being the pen name of one Léon Paul Blouet) published an amusing account of his travels through the States and Eastern Canada - "A Frenchman In America" - that, along with the charming illustrations, reflect on then popular national stereotypes and character and is presented on Project Gutenberg in its entirely. (via)
100 famous guitar riffs in one take
If you wouldn't mind just watching this guy play 100 famous guitar riffs in one take, I'm feeling a sudden urge to grab my Fender Stratocaster.
Structural change in high finance
What can be done to prevent another financial meltdown? While some cry for armed revolution, others are whispering for incremental changes that could have a substantial impact on how high finance works – or doesn't.
John Coates, a former Wall Street derivatives trader and now a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, has done novel research on how testosterone skews the thinking – and thus the behavior – of traders, inspiring them to take on more risk than benefits society. His research is now available in a book.
Would programs that encourage more women to enter – and/or climb the ranks of – trading groups make finance more responsible?
(If this strikes you as biological determinism, there are other lines of inquiry that may be headed in the same direction: how managers exploit subordinates in ways that shape overall behavior and could be modified via both incentives and regulation; how cheating happens and the best ways to prevent it.)
The Final Dark Days of Don Caballero
In November of 2001, Chunklet Magazine published Fred Weaver's tour diary chronicling the The Final Dark Days of Don Caballero (14 scanned JPGs). The final tour documented in this article marked the end of the collaboration between Damon Che and Ian Williams, the original creative machine behind the notable math rock band. [more inside]
Recent Video of North Korea
A few American students visited North Korea last month (SLYT) and took some amazing footage. While mostly within the confines of the official guided tour it still offers a fascinating glimpse of life in North Korea under Kim Jong Un. A "relentless stream of hyper-positive propaganda."
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