Hydrgnc

May 10 2013

“Protecting children on the net is a responsibility of their parents in the first place. It cannot be outsourced to Facebook. It is a matter of educating them about the difference between between privacy, publicity and a circle of trust.”

BBC News - Censoring Facebook: Social network’s violent video dilemma

- lots of food for thought in this report. I picked the above quote because it illustrates something I’ve referred to in conversation several times so far this year, regarding the way ‘systems’ handle issues of identity, privacy, interaction, and so on. The average parent - and indeed a Facebook user in general - now needs to get to grips with online security concepts that ten years ago were almost exclusively the preserve of the IT sysadmin.

“Residents were astonished when they woke up and found new signs with their street name spelt backwards. Families living in Muriel Street in Barnsbury discovered they were, from now on, living in Leirum Street. The name change aimed to reduce the confusion of emergency services and visitors unaware that the street is divided into three separate roads.” From Muriel to Leirum: tenants get their street’s name flipped back-to-front - London - News - London Evening Standard

May 8 2013

“People find birdsong relaxing and reassuring because over thousands of years they have learnt when the birds sing they are safe, it’s when birds stop singing that people need to worry. Birdsong is also nature’s alarm clock, with the dawn chorus signalling the start of the day, so it stimulates us cognitively.”

BBC News - The surprising uses for birdsong

- a blackbird has recently taken to perching on the TV aerial outside our flat and I’ve been enjoying its song, so this is timely.

“I have never forgotten that conversation. It showed Thatcher conscientious to a fault yet insensitive to someone she perceived as a non-achiever. This became ever clearer over the years in her attitudes towards poverty, social problems and the ethos of organisations such as the NHS.” Mental health and Mrs Thatcher: “All due to a lack of personal drive, effort and will”

May 7 2013

“There are ten rules in the law as defined by Sandemose, all expressive of variations on a single theme and usually referred to as a homogeneous unit: You are not to think you’re anyone special or that you’re better than us.” Law of Jante - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

May 6 2013

“The discontent that people might reasonably feel against bankers, capitalists and managerialists has been diverted into a hostility towards immigrants and the three main parties, and to the benefit of yet another party with a managerialist and pro-capitalist ideology. In this way, even “protest” votes help sustain existing class and power structures.” UKIP: the victory of the ruling class

May 4 2013

“Music has emancipated me, pornography has emancipated me, people, lovers. And I think art in general is here to soften social transitions… Potentially, people who come to see us play, they will receive a sound, they will receive a word, and something will happen. They will go back home and maybe they will look at their husbands differently, look at their family differently, friends, lovers, their job, what kind of music they listen to. Because nothing else is asking you to think about these things! Where are the things that make you reflect?” Savages - Silence Yourself / Releases / Releases // Drowned In Sound

Apr 23 2013

“I’ve saved my favourite graph until the end. This is the share of income, after tax, of the top 1 percent of earners. Like the other charts, there is a dip in the 1970s and then the trend reverses. It has the shape of a broad smile doesn’t it?” Did the left win the 20th century? | Flip Chart Fairy Tales

Apr 22 2013

“Excel fans are often treated pejoratively. “‘You can’t learn this is in a spreadsheet, kid,’ said the old man, his weather-beaten face grimacing as he swiftly removed the caribou’s entrails” is a line found in many books. But spreadsheets have a beauty all of their own. They speak to a need deep inside of us to arrange things in rows and columns. Ever since the first town planners pored over drawings of grids in the Indus Valley, man has wanted to locate points by how far over and up they were.” BBC News - The mysterious powers of Microsoft Excel

Apr 21 2013

“… the last five years of economic prediction have told us one thing: No one knows anything any more and the people who say they know something know even less.” BBC News - The mysterious powers of Microsoft Excel