Underfulfilled

Academics love platitudes.  It’s something I’ve never really understood, since, in general, scholarly inquiry tends to be somewhat conservative.  Claims have to be reified by dozens of publishers and other academics before it is safe to put them into writing.  Even novel empirical findings have to be squared with existing literature before anyone will take a second look at them, which means, in…

What happened to diversity?  I could have sworn, growing up, that genetic diversity was supposed to be a good thing.  Now everyone is asking the “moral” questions about whether or not to edit a baby’s DNA — as if giving generations of British royalty Hemophilia is really a “moral” problem for the rest of us?

Ok, just checking.

Rich white guy praying that their train won’t get stuck in Baltimore, is actually a perfect metaphor for Libertarianism.

Two days ago, The Washington Post reported on a study that aims to map American racism by charting Google searches for “the n-word”.  On the surface, it is a completely idiotic plan.  Racism can’t be reduced to naughty words.  Even if you concede that the term describes a set of beliefs — which many will argue, it doesn’t — it is hardly clear why thatword provides the best indicator.  I mean, who…

There is something incredibly nefarious about analytics.

Twenty years ago, you could read an article you didn’t agree with just to find out what other people were up to.  Today, just clicking a link makes you complicit in whatever lies at the opposite end of that threat — like shooting people full of cancer right before they smoke.  Marketers cash in on your sudden “interest”, driving up ad…

This is one of the strangest things I’ve read in very, very long time.  Among other gems: Google is building a super-secret diversity program, fears hiring too many women/African-American, and employs someone named Laszlo Bock as its Senior Vice-President of “People Operations”.

For the record: I’m not bagging on Google for its diversity efforts.  They will, of course, fail.  Encouraging women to…

PRISM, also known as SIGAD US-984XN, is the largest and probably most invasive surveillance program exposed by Eric Snowden back in 2013.  It was, and probably still is, reasonably simple.  Analysts with the Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU) receive lists of target criteria (i.e. Columbian drug traffickers, Venezuelan military technology) which they translate into specific data requests (i.e.…

Transcript from an as yet unresolved customer complaint:

For three days I have been waiting on package. During that time, FedEX claims it attempted three deliveries — which is remarkable given that I was here on each alleged occasion, and not once has my doorbell rung.  What, I wonder, do they consider an “attempt” at FedEx?  Must one get out of the delivery vehicle, or is it enough that the…

“The Man” is always power.

It is something I have always found odd, given that one need not be a man to be theman.  Indeed, all sorts of men are categorically prohibited depending on the context in which power and “man-ness” are considered: gay men, trans men, men of different races, ethnicities, social classes, disabilities.  Sure, bureaucrats may fill in a particular dot beside your name.…

What is “Militarization”?

The bullet that claimed Michael Brown’s life wasn’t fired by a sub-machine gun.  He wasn’t run over by a tank, disabled by a percussion grenade or levelled by an LRAD sonic blast.  Michael Brown, so far as anyone knows, was shot six times by a single police officer wielding standard issue weaponry — likely a .45 Glock, which, according to the manufacturer, “approximately…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc

Only in Los Angeles is selling this guy a basketball team called “improvement”.

Atlah (Part II)

This is part of an ongoing series examining signage at the Atlah World Missionary Church on 123rd and Lenox.  Located in a rapidly gentrifying part of Harlem, the Church and its pastor David Manning became infamous several years back for their visceral anti-Obama rhetoric.  Recent messages have targeted homosexuals, white people, “sellouts”, Jews, Columbia University, Macy’s and a whole host of…

E = MC Scwarez

Interesting little article in the Guardian recently about an attempt to demonstrate a central tenant of special relativity: the fluid relationship between matter and energy.  It’s basic formulation comes from two Americans physicists, Gregory Breit and John Wheeler, who proposed in 1934 that — under specific conditions — photons (light particles) will produce electrons (matter particles) and…

Don Rickles is a Nightmare

This morning I stumbled into Times Square, where a circuitous loop of Don Rickles doing whatever Don Rickles does streamed across one of the massive pixelated screens.  It was, for an instant, pure horror.  His shiny head dripping with sweat and candor, assuring all who pass-by that indeed space is infinite; meaning and love vapid symbols contrived by weak minds unsuited for survival.

Immediately…