Your Facebook Friends Probably Don't "Like" You: Gothamist

Facebook friend additions must be navigated very carefully, and once you've gotten past who you do and don't want spying on your online life, you then have to worry about not annoying those people... because: you will! A new study has arrived, tackling how women really feel about their Facebook friends, and of the 400 women surveyed, 83% are simply annoyed. On top of that:

• 65% hate that you share too many mundane updates too often
• 46% dislike that you "Like" too many posts
• 40% don't like it when you inappropriately or too frequently use Facebook to promote causes
• 40% wish you would stop projecting false information or images of a perfect life

Also, stop stalking, stop being a drama queen, stop talking about your kids, stop documenting your lunches, stop being a poser, and stop airbrushing your photos.

via gothamist.com

Click through for some revealing stats. Seems a large group of FB users really only care to use it to browse people's pages, not for the stream of info.

How Descartes Screwed Up Our Thinking about Emotions for Centuries, pt I

Recapping the first Cartesian error

In the previous post I explained that the first Cartesian error is the belief that ‘mind’ or ‘mental activity’ is pure cognition and that ‘body’ is an unthinking machine, responsive only to pleasure and pain and having nothing to do with cognition. I say this because Descartes begins the Passions of the Soul with the claim that the soul is the mind, the nonphysical source of thought, and the body is its vehicle; physical, extended, sensitive and mobile.
A couple of other important background points: He believes that by the 17^th century there had been little progress in understanding true human nature, in explaining ourselves to ourselves (You may agree!); and he believes his problem solving method will enlighten us as to the nature of dualism.
Descartes’ method
Descartes’ method, as explained in his justly famous and immensely influential work, Discourse on the Method, has four parts:

1. Never accept anything as true that you can’t obviously accept as true.
2. Divide each of the problems you are examining in as many parts as you can
3. Develop your thoughts in order, beginning with the simplest and easiest to understand
4. When you go to review, make sure you establish every indubitable claim possible and every link you possibly can among them and check that everything you’ve included is correct.

Descartes was convinced that this method, with its fundamental premise of breaking down problems into their smallest possible components, lead him to offer a good explanation why humans’ smallest parts are the nonphysical mind and mechanical body.
Read the rest at my Dissertation blog

Girl Scout Cookies? There is a 'pop up' store in every borough

Girl Scouts of Greater New York Cookie Pop-Up Shops

March 14 - May 5, 2011

Varieties available at $4 per box: Samoas, Thin Mints, Do-Si-Dos, Trefoils, Tagalongs &
Lemon Chalet Cremes

via girlscoutsnyc.com

Yum...Tagalongs

Political Journalist Joe Klein gives an apt description of the current Republican Prez 'candidates'

"This is my 10th presidential campaign, Lord help me. I have never before seen such a bunch of vile, desperate-to-please, shameless, embarrassing losers coagulated under a single party's banner. They are the most compelling argument I've seen against American exceptionalism.

Even Tim Pawlenty, a decent governor, can't let a day go by without some bilious nonsense escaping his lizard brain. And, as Greg Sargent makes clear, Mitt Romney has wandered a long way from courage. There are those who say, cynically, if this is the dim-witted freak show the Republicans want to present in 2012, so be it. I disagree. One of them could get elected. You never know. Mick Huckabee, the front-runner if you can believe it, might have to negotiate a trade agreement, or a defense treaty, with the Indonesian President some day. Newt might have to discuss very delicate matters of national security with the President of Pakistan. And so I plead, as an unflinching American patriot--please Mitch Daniels, please Jeb Bush, please run. I may not agree with you on most things, but I respect you," - Joe Klein.

via andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

Not a fan of Joe Klein usually, but I kind of have to agree with him here. In my heart I believe that Obama could beat the current Republican contenders in a Lyndon Johnson-like epic cake walk. But I do fear the possibility of one of these Republican 'candidates' winning. I'd rather face real competition and lose an election than risk the massive Fail that would be a presidency for one of the Romney, Pawlenty, Gingrich, Palin, etc crew.

via BrownChickenBrownCow: Who want's to be friends with a brand?

via katykelley.tumblr.com

Good question. Very good question.

Top GOP Contenders Become More Unpopular

March 28, 2011

Top GOP Contenders Become More Unpopular

Public Policy Polling finds that over the last two years the "leading quartet" of Republicans running for president have all become more unpopular. Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich have all seen their favorability spread fall by margins ranging from 15 to 23 points.

Said pollster Tom Jensen: "The fact that the more Americans are exposed to them, the less they like them certainly does not bode well for their competitiveness next year."

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via politicalwire.com

Good news for both Democrats and Republicans. Not surprising though.

insideIRAN | Prominent Conservative Cleric Refuses to Retract Criticism of Regime

Grand Ayatollah Vahid Khorasani, a prominent Shiite source of emulation, refused to modify his criticism of the judiciary and security forces, which he reportedly made in February and instead told a group of senior clerics that he had more to say about the topic.

According to BBC Persian Service, Ayatollah Khorasani had criticized in February 2011 the incarceration of many political activists by the judiciary and had called a number of security agencies “corrupt.” Khorasani’s harsh criticism of governmental bodies directly under the supervision of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was not received well in Tehran and pro-government clerics have consistently pressured Khorasani to either revise or refute his earlier comments.

In a meeting in late March with members of Qom’s Society of Seminary Teachers, a government sponsored clerical organization in Qom with tremendous political influence, Ayatollah Khorasani was asked to take back his comments and stop his criticism of the government. Instead, Khorasani responded that he had “thought long and hard” about his comments before voicing them and that he was not going to change course.

Ayatollah Abbas Kaabi, a hardline cleric with close ties to Khamenei, asked Grand Ayatollah Khorasani not to cause damage to the regime and the Vali Faqih, in this case Ali Khamenei. In response, Khorasani said: “Are individuals more important or Islam? Where is the founder of the Islamic Republic [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini]? How much longer are Mr. Khamenei and I are going to stay alive?” He implied that his criticism was in defense of Islam and that he did not care if his criticism angered the Supreme Leader.

Ayatollah Khorasani said, “I have more fundamental things to say that I will mention them gradually even if that bothers certain people.”

During Supreme Leader Khamenei’s visit to the holy city of Qom last fall, Grand Ayatollah Khorasani refused to follow his colleagues and meet with the Leader. In contrast, the conservative Khorasani has granted numerous audiences to families of political prisoners and has listened to their grievances.

It is interesting to note that Chief Justice Sadegh Larijani, the head of Iran’s judiciary appointed by Khamenei, is Mr. Khorasani’s son in law.

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via insideiran.org

More interesting internal trouble in Iran. The fact that it comes from a hard-line conservative is hopeful news. It wouldn't make anyone in that gov't squirm if it was from liberal groups.

'America': You Keep Using That Word…I don’t think it means what you think it means [Stonekettle Station]

A brilliant rant against the cognitive dissonance of the 'tea party' conservative by blogger Jim Wright of Alaska

http://www.stonekettle.com/2011/03/america-you-keeping-using-that-word.html#

Triangle shirtwaist Fire: 100 years later

via cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com

A benefit to having unions? - People can't lock you in a tinder box while you work.

Vanderbilt professor thinks its possible for some objects to time travel

via gearfuse.com

Here's a short summary, click on 'link' to get a more thorough article.

The basic idea is that these particles would travel so fast, they would appear to us to travel back in time: Consider if I saw you were in a car involved in a head-on wreck but were going so fast you 'arrived' 'again' at the scene before you originally did.

Always great to see my alma mater in the news!

Lawrence Taylor on girl, 16: 'I don't card them' - ESPN New York

"That's not my M.O. I've been around kids and people all my life," said Taylor, a former New York Giants linebacker and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. "I'm not the cause of prostitution. And sometimes I make mistakes and I may go out there. And I didn't go pick her up on no playground. She wasn't hiding behind the school bus or getting off a school bus. This is a working girl that came to my room."

Taylor blamed the institution of prostitution for the fact that he ended up with an underage girl.

"It's the world of prostitution," he said during the Fox News interview. "You never know what you're gonna get. Is it gonna be a pretty girl, an ugly girl or whatever it's gonna be."

Or a young girl? Smith asked.

"You can only ask," Taylor said. "I don't card them. I don't ask for a birth certificate."

via sports.espn.go.com

Amazing. LT is a legend, no doubt. And it looks like in a way he was 'set up'. But he clearly sees nothing wrong with what he did - or does - and that's a big problem. Especially when he apparently knows its quite possible the girl(s) are under age.

Inside President Obama's Top Secret Tent

via good.is

I've been getting into Fringe lately - I'm nearly done with Season 1 - and as soon as I saw this my first thought was 'Cool', but my second thought was, the Fringe team could really use this!

Historically Hardcore

via cargocollective.com

A very fun, good looking take on advertising history

America's Health Rankings - beautiful, informative, interactive data presentation

http://statehealthstats.americashealthrankings.org/#

A terrificly done interactive site showing the state of health care in the U.S. I'm particularly impressed by the graphics. They really visualize things for you. 

Tilting the US Map around makes it amazingly clear that the health of people in the Southern half of the country  is particularly bad. The highest rank of any state south of Virginia - all the way across the country to California - is #31. 

 

Seinfeld: "The Real Peterman" re-cut trailer

via youtube.com

Brilliant!

Pew: New Congress Increasingly Unpopular

March 22, 2011

New Congress Increasingly Unpopular

A Pew Research poll finds disapproval of the new Congress increasing among the American public. Key findings:

• About half of Americans think the debate over spending and deficits has been "generally rude and disrespectful," including 48% of Republicans and Democrats as well as 57% of independents.
• The percentage of Americans who feel that the Republicans are better at handing the deficit dropped from 35% after the election to 21% currently.
• The percentage of Americans who feel President Barack Obama is better at handing the deficit has also dropped from 24% to 20%.
• About 75% of Tea Party supporters back the GOP budget plans after the election, that figure has dropped to 52%.

via politicalwire.com

If any of these numbers surprise you, you're probably not living in the real world.

CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs | Onion News Network

via theonion.com

Absolutely hilarious and spot-on. "The CIA has...convinced the nation that constantly sharing information about everything that you're doing is somehow desirable instead of deeply unsettling"

Yglesias » Milton Friedman’s Rhetorical Problem: And Ours

Milton Friedman’s Rhetorical Problem: And Ours

(cc photo by LateNightTaskForce)

The fact that maximizing economic growth requires constant government intervention in the economy for the purposes of macroeconomic stabilization policy creates a rhetorical problem for people who believe in free markets. Milton Friedman devised a solution to this problem that, as Brad DeLong notes, though clever has also misled a lot of people. The first step is to deny that discretionary fiscal policy has a legitimate role in macroeconomic stabilization. The second step is to try to pretend that monetary policy is somehow not government intervention in the economy:

In the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s Milton Friedman faced a rhetorical problem. He was a laissez-faire libertarian. But he also believed that macroeconomic stabilization required that the central bank be always in the market, buying and selling government bonds in order to match the supply of liquid cash money to the demand, and so make Say’s Law true in practice even though it was false in theory.

Such a policy of constant government intervention to continually rebalance aggregate demand is hardly a laissez-faire hands-off libertarian policy, is it?

Friedman, however, set about trying to maximize the rhetorical distance between his position–which was merely the “neutral,” passive policy of maintaining the money stock growth rate at a constant–and the position of other macroeconomists, which was an “activist,” interventionist policy of having the government disturb the natural workings of the free market. Something went wrong, Friedman claimed, only when a government stepped away from the “neutral” monetary policy of the constant growth rate rule and did something else.

As a marketing tactic, this was a huge success. But it wound up obscuring from people the fact that there was no real disagreement between a Friedman position and the Keynesian one on the question of whether or not “big government” is charged with boosting demand to re-inflate a depressed economy. And as it happens you don’t need to go back to Friedman to find that, historically speaking, fans of unrestrained capitalism haven’t denied the importance of activist policy as a stabilizing measure. Here, for example, is Frédéric Bastiat on fiscal stimulus in “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen”:

As a temporary measure in a time of crisis, during a severe winter, this intervention on the part of the taxpayer could have good effects. It acts in the same way as insurance. It adds nothing to the number of jobs nor to total wages, but it takes labor and wages from ordinary times and doles them out, at a loss it is true, in difficult times. As a permanent, general, systematic measure, it is nothing but a ruinous hoax, an impossibility, a contradiction, which makes a great show of the little work that it has stimulated, which is what is seen, and conceals the much larger amount of work that it has precluded, which is what is not seen.

For the country to prosper over time, people on both the left and the right need to have this straight. As I put it in my article on the Fed:

This free lunch is available amidst deep recessions because such events are defined by the widespread idling of resources. A recession means the country has able-bodied people who aren’t working, factories that aren’t running, and office space and storefronts that are vacant. Fiscal and monetary stimulus aims to mobilize that excess capacity. When there is no excess capacity, printing money to keep rates low will simply lead to inflation. The country’s ability to produce money may not be limited, but its ability to produce goods and services is, and inflation is what happens when the government attempts to stimulate demand above the country’s ability to produce. Increasing productive capacity is the key to long-term prosperity, but adequately matching demand to current capacity is the key to the short-term employment and economic growth picture.

People on the right seem to have forgotten the conclusion of this argument, and I worry that we’ve seen over the past three years that all too many of the people on the left who have the right conclusion don’t fully understand the implications. Hence the otherwise baffling neglect of federal reserve policy on the progressive side.

via yglesias.thinkprogress.org

UNICEF: The disaster in Japan is going to affect the country's children for a long time

via secure.unicefusa.org

Everyone hopes and prays that Japan has seen the worst of this disaster. But the truth is that even if it has, the children of northern Japan, if not the whole nation, are going to be seriously affected by this tragedy for years, if not decades.

Please give what you can.

If for some reason UNICEF isn't your favorite, please go to

http://www.usaid.gov/

There's a bunch of choices there.

AT&T makes calling Japan free until the end of March (update: Verizon and Sprint, too) -- Engadget

via engadget.com

Japan

I haven't said anything about the disaster in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami because there's nothing I can say that would be in any way constructive.  Here's all I can do/say:

 

Give what you can here

 

Photo credit: NY Times: 

Happy Birthday Dale Murphy!

Dale Murphy was my all-time sports hero. I loved watching him nearly every day after school in the spring and then all summer on TBS. I can't even count how many times he had me jumping up and down celebrating from opposite field homers, RBI doubles and great running catches in the outfield. 

 Happy 55th birthday and thanks for the memories Mr. Murphy. In May I'm going to write a couple of blog posts dedicated to convincing the sketchiest group of voters on the planet - the BBWAA that Dale Murphy should already have been elected to the Hall of Fame.

See the full gallery on Posterous

The Bonddad Blog: Ayn Rand Is Full of Crap

via bonddad.blogspot.com

As someone trained in philosophy, I know that any opportunity to say Ayn Rand sucks is a good opportunity to say Ayn Rand sucks.

Nature and man-made material create beautiful tornado

via andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

This is really quite something! It really picks up around the 1 minute mark (pardon the pun). I can't imagine the odds of being here at just the right moment.

Nobel Laureate in Economics "not qualified" to be on Federal Reserve

From USA Today:

The nomination of a Nobel Prize winner to a seat on the board of the Federal Reserve will likely be blocked because a key senator says the economist is not qualified for the job.

Sen. Richard Shelby, the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, says he plans to oppose the nomination of Peter Diamond, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, for a third time.

The opposition, which he stated at the panel's hearing on the nomination, raises the likelihood that President Barack Obama's choice for the Fed will be blocked again.

The Senate Banking Committee twice approved Diamond's nomination last year along partisan lines. He was never confirmed by the full Senate because Democrats lacked Republican support.

Do I really need to say any more than this? The guy has a NOBEL PRIZE. That means he's really smart -- as in groundbreaking smart. As in smarter than the average Congressman (which I understand isn't saying much at this point).

And -- he won his Nobel Prize for work on LONG TERM UNEMPLOYMENT. God knows we shouldn't be listening to him, or asking his advice on anything. After all, he's obviously not qualified to do anything regarding the economy, is he?

via bonddad.blogspot.com

Facebook To Begin Offering Movie Rentals???

Facebook will begin rolling out movie rentals, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Warner Bros. will begin by offering The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan's Batman hit on the social networking site, through its official Facebook page.
The cost of a rental would be 30 Facebook credits, or $3. Users would then have 48 hours from purchase time to watch the movie. Facebook would continue to functional normally during that time.
"Facebook has become a daily destination for hundreds of millions of people," said Thomas Gewecke, president of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, told THR. "Making our films available through Facebook is a natural extension of our digital distribution efforts. It gives consumers a simple, convenient way to access and enjoy our films through the world's largest social network."
This first movie will serve as a test, but additional purchases will be available over the next few months for rental, and purchase.
All Things Digital points out that the move puts Facebook in competition with a host of companies: "Every digital heavyweight is making a play for your living room. Apple, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, everyone," Peter Kafka writes.

----

This will be a fail.
$3 to rent a movie on your laptop is nuts. Are people going to - like they can with neftlix, apple, etc - hook their laptop to a big tv screen? While fb is running? 

Oh - and Facebook currency? Anyone remember  Flooz? Or the supposed impending rise of the Linden Dollar to USD currency exchanges?

I also feel like a 1.5-3 hour visit to facebook is not really what people are after. And its probably not great for FB. Users might come to find out how little really happens there.
And just what is the licensing agreement between the studio and FB?
Perhaps its a loss-leader for WB - or a bargaining chip against netflix/redbox/apple/amazon, etc.
Either way, this is not long for this world.

 AOL is not coming back as Facebook no matter how hard FB wants it to.

.

What Everyone Ought to Know about Stoic Thought on the Emotions pt IV of IV

Was I being too hard on the Stoics?

I have strongly criticized the Stoics, concluding that their assumptions about the fundamental difference between the mind and the body, coupled with the insistence that you really must choose to ignore anything most people would say is ‘bad’ lead to impossible recommendations for how to act among people. You might think I’ve been too harsh, but I saved the best for last.

At §20 Epictetus makes the utterly stoic claim that “foul word or blows” are only an outrage because you judge them to be. §29 makes sure you get the point is serious, warning the would-be stoic that there are real costs to choosing the stoic life: grueling hours, you will have to “abandon your own people” and suffer the social humiliation of being looked down on by slaves and “ridiculed by those who meet you”. In fact, according to Epictetus, a true stoic gets the worst of every type of social good such as honors and offices, and even justice. And the reward for losing out on everything social is “peace of mind, freedom and tranquility”. So they shouldn’t care in any way about social norms or insults etc and they shouldn’t ditch their ‘stained’ friends.

So you see the Stoic position is simply a lost cause when it comes to the emotions and socialization. The two go hand in hand. And as we’ll see below the ad hoc revisions later Stoics make are nice only in the context of their assumptions and are intellectually spurious when viewed from outside the theory.

Read more at my dissertation blog

A great lesson from Ray Bradbury: Be your own self. Love what you love

via lettersofnote.com

Great lesson, great site to follow. Sometimes they have some real treasures.

Letters of Note (lettersofnote.com)

What Everyone Ought to Know about Stoic Thought on the Emotions pt III of IV

Son, friend, American, New Yorker, white, Hispanic, employee, writer, volunteer, customer, fan

Last time we finished up with the example that if you get ‘angry’ about your mom complaining about your driving, the Stoic view would be that you are misunderstanding the situation. You are choosing to believe you were slighted or violated by your mom’s comments, even though in reality, given that moms are supposed to care deeply about their children’s safety, you should expect such comments. It’s part of the parent-child relationship. And if you understand that, then it should eliminate the idea that you’re somehow being hurt by the comments. So you can and should choose to stop being angry. And when you do so, you will cease to be angry.

Epictetus goes even further than that in §42 of Enchiridion when he recommends that when a person “treats you ill or speaks ill of you” we should be ‘mild in temper” and say to ourselves “it seemed so to him”. The idea being that their opinion of you can’t hurt you unless you decide it is really a hurt and that in cases where they really are wrong about you they are the ones who get hurt because they are deceived and it’s bad to believe false things.

This can probably be summed up by the later Christian idea of “turning the other cheek”. You won’t find recommendations like that from the line of thought extending through Plato, Aristotle and Lucretius (which I’ve been calling P-A-L).

In fact, in the very first chapter of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle hits on a key problem with the idea of the weight of relationships in ethics. He advises that you can’t judge whether a person’s life was virtuous or happy until they have passed away because there is so much unpredictable stuff that can happen that could ruin the life or the person. Like a parent losing a child: A vivid example of this is in the classic movie Ordinary People.

The underlying idea here is that specifically because of the intimate, fundamentally important relationship you have with your family, your emotional well being  is not totally in your hands. To form those types of bonds and gain all that they can give you requires being vulnerable to the possibility of ruin. And the kicker is, as the heading above indicates about me, we can all be described by quite a few different relationships, we all wear many hats. And each of them works to change our frame of reference.

Aristotle, Enchiridion, Epictetus,Ethics, Judgment, Lucretius, Movies, Nicomachean Ethics, Ordinary People, P-A-L,Plato, Relationships, Socialization

Read the rest at my dissertaiton blog