Day: January 7, 2013

America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead

America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead | Mother Jones:

Put all this together and you have an astonishing body of evidence. We now have studies at the international level, the national level, the state level, the city level, and even the individual level. Groups of children have been followed from the womb to adulthood, and higher childhood blood lead levels are consistently associated with higher adult arrest rates for violent crimes. All of these studies tell the same story: Gasoline lead is responsible for a good share of the rise and fall of violent crime over the past half century.

[Amazing.]

Pain of the New

Pain of the New:

I predict that on each step towards increased realism new media take, there will be those who find the step physically painful. It will hurt their eyes, ears, nose, touch,and peace of mind. It will seem unnecessarily raw, ruining the art behind the work. This disturbance is not entirely in our heads, because we train our bodies to react to media, and when it changes, it FEELS different. There may be moments of uncomfort.

But in the end we tend to crave the realism — when it has been mastered — and will make our home in it.

The scratchy sound of vinyl, the soft focus of a Kodak Brownie, and the flickers of a 24 frame per second movie will all be used to time-stamp a work of nostalgia.

[Rings true to me.]

Source: The Technium

Welcome to “Learning by Shipping”

Welcome to “Learning by Shipping”:

As engineers we are trained to find the right solution(s) given a set of constraints.  Product development is about the inherent uncertainty of business and customer needs and desires, and those change depending on the context.  There are no right answers, only varying success in the marketplace at a given time.  The pendulum of ideas swings back and forth depending on the context–the availability of underlying technologies, the acceptance of different business models, or the solutions most valued by potential customers.  The same holds for approaches used by organizations building products–the right answer depends on the context and can change over time.  These choices and the pros and cons of different approaches are interesting topics that occupy many of us as we search for the right path for our development efforts.

[A really clear explanation.]

Source: Learning by Shipping

Stop bullshitting.

Thread: Stop bullshitting.:

This is the best piece you’ll read all day, maybe all year.

Don’t miss the opportunity to clean house and have a great rest of your life, even if you haven’t narrowly escaped death.

Stop Bullshiting – Bucketlistly Blog:

Facing with mortality, people become more open, and honest to themselves. The things that people usually do in their daily lives such as being right, being important, and being selfish suddenly vanished. That’s what made these people become more human than any of us. They are open to changes, even if they were certain for their entire lives that they were right. They apologize, They forgive, express love whenever possible.

[What a profound effect this can have for all of us. I lie and fool myself and worse, demand honesty and truth from others at a very high level. I will continue to be better at this. I’ve made the greatest strides so far at giving others space to not face the truth. Time for reach for more.]

Source: Scripting News