We swim in a
sea of data … and the sea level is rising rapidly. Tens of millions of connected people, billions
of sensors, trillions of transactions now work to create unimaginable amounts
of information. An equivalent amount of
data is generated by people simply going about their lives, creating what the
McKinsey Global Institute calls “digital exhaust”—data given off as a byproduct
of other activities such as their Internet browsing and searching or moving
around with their smartphone in their pocket.
Human-created information is only part of the story, a relatively
shrinking part. Machines and implanted
sensors in oceans, in the soil, in pallets of products, in gambling casino
chips, in pet collars, and countless other places are generating data and
sharing it directly with data “readers” and other machines that do not involve
human intervention. The projected
growth of data from all kinds of sources is staggering—to the point where some
worry that in the foreseeable future our digital systems of storage and
dissemination will not be able to keep up with the simple act of finding places
to keep the data and move it around to all those who are interested in it. Government leaders, scientists, corporate
leaders, health officials, and education specialists are anxious to see if new
kinds of analysis of large data sets can yield insights into how people behave,
what they might buy, and how they might respond to new products, services, and
public policy programs. In March 2012,
the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced a Big
Data Research and Development Initiative, reporting that six U.S. government
agencies would spend more than $200 million to help the government better
organize and analyze large volumes of digital data. The project is designed to focus on building
technologies to collect, store and manage huge quantities of data. OSTP wants
to use the technology to accelerate discovery in science and engineering fields
and improve national security and education, the White House said. How could Big Data be significant? A 2011 industry report by global management
consulting firm McKinsey argued that five new kinds of value might come from
abundant data: 1) creating
transparency in organizational activities that can be used to increase
efficiency; 2) enabling more thorough analysis of employee and systems
performances in ways that allow experiments and feedback; 3) segmenting
populations in order to customize actions; 4) replacing/supporting human
decision making with. Read the 41-page
report at: http://pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2012/PIP_Future_of_Internet_2012_Big_Data.pdf
London's Tate Modern museum will turn off its lights
for out-of-hours visitors this summer as part of a new art project from Olafur
Eliasson. Eliasson, the Danish-Icelandic
artist who designed the Weather Project installation for the Tate Modern in
2003, on July 12, 2012 launched 'Little Sun', a solar-powered lamp which will be used to
view Surrealist works at the gallery during special 'Tate Blackout' nights. The artist also hopes that the lamp will focus
attention on how solar-powered light can improve the lives of approximately 1.6
billion people worldwide who live without mains electricity. Tate Blackout
events will take place on Saturday nights between 28 July and 23 September. During each night, around 500 people will be
able to view works in the suite of galleries devoted to Tate Modern's
Surrealist collection, using only Eliasson's lamp as a guide. The lamp will also be on sale for £16.50. Eliasson's The Weather Project
installation took over the Tate Modern's entire Turbine Hall, using humidifiers
to create a mist in the air, and a huge semicircular disc resembling the sun to
beam orange across the hall. In 2008, he created four man-made
waterfalls ranging from 90-120ft high in New York Harbour. The Tate Blackout nights, meanwhile,
have a precedent. In 1938, US artist Man
Ray supplied torches for visitors to explore the International Surrealist
Exhibition at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. See picture of Little Sun at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/9395022/Olafur-Eliasson-launches-Little-Sun-project-and-Tate-Blackouts-at-Tate-Modern.html
Tune in Next Week by Emily
Nussbaum (excerpt)
Narrowly defined, a cliffhanger is a climax cracked in
half: the bomb ticks, the screen goes black.
The great nineteenth-century novels were famous for their cliffhangers,
and many people associate the form with Charles Dickens, who wrote serial
novels so complex, yet so rewarding, that one might even say they resemble “The
Wire.” Printed episodically in
magazines, Dickens’s cliffhangers triggered desperation in his readers. In 1841, Dickens fanboys rioted on the dock of
New York Harbor, as they waited for a British ship carrying the next
installment, screaming, “Is little Nell dead?” (Spoiler: she was.) Yet the iconic cliffhanger derives not from
Dickens but from “A Pair of Blue Eyes,” a little-known novel by Thomas Hardy,
which was published in fifteen installments in Tinsley’s Magazine, in
1873. The true pioneer of cliffhangers
in movies was The Adventures of Kathlyn, arriving in 1913, a year earlier than
The Perils of Pauline. The TV
cliffhanger on March 21, 1980, an episode of Dallas where J.R. Ewing was shot
gave the nation a new catchphrase:
"Who shot J.R?" The New
Yorker July 30, 2012
Tim and Victor's Totally
Joyous Recipes: It seems the Texas Tommy is a Philadelphia invention. Cheese-stuffed, bacon-wrapped, and deep
fried. I had to look these things up and
found out that they’re pretty much on any Philadelphia restaurant menu that has
a grill and serves hot dogs. Nowadays
they are generally split and grilled, with the bacon and cheese being added
after the fact. Cheese Wiz is also used
a lot. They trace their history back to
the 1950′s and a few places still do the deep-fry. http://tjrecipes.com/?p=8500
Italian water ice, Pennsylvania Dutch pretzels, cheesesteak
(invented by Pat Olivieri in 1930), hoagies ("bread component is
critical"), pork roll and scrapple are all part of the Philadelphia food
scene. Read more at: http://www.phillywired.com/pages/Taste
You can read about the scrapple hoagie and see videos. Google search=592 hits. Bing search=40 hits. Yahoo search=15 hits. DuckGoGo=10 hits.
Stamata Revithi was a Greek
woman who ran the 40-kilometre marathon during the 1896 Summer Olympics. The Games excluded women from competition, but
Revithi insisted that she be allowed to run. Revithi ran one day after the men had
completed the official race, and although she finished the marathon in
approximately 5 hours and 30 minutes and found witnesses to sign their names
and verify the running time, she was not allowed to enter the Panathinaiko Stadium at the end of the race. She intended to present her documentation to
the Hellenic Olympic Committee in the hopes
that they would recognize her achievement, but it is not known whether she did
so. No known record survives of
Revithi's life after her run. According to contemporary sources, a second woman, "Melpomene", also ran the 1896
marathon race. There is debate among
Olympic historians as to whether or not Revithi and Melpomene are the same
person. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamata_Revithi
Updated 8/1/12 He
came to town to receive the prestigious honor, which is also known as “In
the Souls of the People” Award, from the Martha Heasley Cox Center for
Steinbeck Studies at San Jose State University. The award presentation also included a Q&A
session, moderated by Robert Santelli of the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, and
a short seven-song concert, featuring John Mellencamp and his six-piece
band. The whole package was a treat. The
Q&A, which basically came across as a conversation between Mellencamp and
Santelli, was insightful. The
mini-concert that followed was well-rehearsed and fun, focusing mainly on
greatest-hits material. Both parts of
the program helped to explain why Mellencamp was chosen to receive this honor,
previously bestowed on three other musicians — Bruce Springsteen (1996),
Jackson Browne (2002) and Joan Baez (2003) — as well as actor Sean Penn,
director Michael Moore, author Studs Terkel and other well-known figures. The Steinbeck Center presents the
honor to “writers, artists, thinkers, and activists whose work captures the
spirit of Steinbeck’s empathy, commitment to democratic values, and belief in
the dignity of people who by circumstance are pushed to the fringes.” Having started in the mid-70s as a rock-pop
idol performing cover songs and using the manufactured moniker Johnny Cougar,
Mellencamp dramatically matured over the years and became a champion of many of
the causes associated with Steinbeck, including, most famously, the plight of
the American farmer. He doesn’t take
full credit for his best tunes. He
thinks of himself as a conduit through which songs pass on their way to the
page — and sometimes it takes him a while to understand just what he’s written.
Link to John Steinbeck's biography, bibliography and more at The Martha Heasley Cox Center
for Steinbeck Studies, the only university research archive in the world
dedicated solely to John Steinbeck's life and work, promoting Steinbeck's goals
of empathy and understanding by supporting education, inquiry, and the literary
arts at: http://as.sjsu.edu/steinbeck/
Tana French (born 1973) is an Irish novelist and theatrical actress. Her debut novel In the
Woods (2007), a psychological mystery, won the Edgar, Anthony,
Macavity,
and Barry awards for best first novel. She is a liaison of the Purple Heart Theatre
Company and lives in Dublin. Books: In the
Woods (2007) The
Likeness (2008) Faithful
Place (July 13, 2010) Broken Harbor (July 24,
2012) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tana_French
Gibson Guitar Corp. agreed to pay a $300,000 fine to resolve a federal
criminal investigation into allegations that it illegally imported wood from
Madagascar and India, in a case that has fanned debate about whether the strict
enforcement of a century-old conservation law poses a threat to jobs. The case grabbed national attention nearly a
year ago after agents from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service raided Gibson,
seizing raw materials and nearly 100 guitars and shutting down production at
the Nashville, Tenn.-based company, whose guitars are used by musicians
including B.B. King and AC/DC's Angus Young.
Federal officials said that Gibson acknowledged it "may have
violated" laws in Madagascar, a country that has struggled with illegal
logging and deforestation, when the company acquired unfinished ebony
fingerboards through a supplier in 2008 and 2009. Under the U.S. Lacey Act, originally passed in
1900 to regulate trade in bird feathers used for hats, it is illegal to import
plant or animal products in violation of foreign laws. "Gibson has acknowledged that it failed
to act on information that the Madagascar ebony it was purchasing may have
violated laws intended to limit overharvesting and conserve valuable
species," said Assistant Attorney General Ignacia Moreno, with the Justice
Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division. Gibson also agreed to pay an additional
$50,000 to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to be used to promote
conservation of tree species used in the musical-instrument industry, implement
a compliance program and withdraw its claims to Madagascar ebony seized by
investigators and valued at $261,844. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443792604577573010767171448.html
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