The Kardashian is a unit I proposed a few classes back as a measure of attention. Conceptually, the Kardashian is the amount of global attention Kim Kardashian commands across all media over the space of a day. In an ideal, frictionless universe, we’d determine a Kardashian by measuring the percentage of all broadcast media, conversations and thoughts dedicated to Kim Kardashian. In practical terms, we can approximate a Kardashian by using a tool like Google Insights for Search – compare a given search term to Kim Kardashian and you can discover how small a fraction of a Kardashian any given issue or cause merits.
(I choose the Kardashian as a unit both because I like the mitteleuropean feel of the term – like the Ohm or the Roentgen – and because Kardashian is an exemplar of attention disconnected from merit, talent or reason. The Kardashian mentions how much attention is paid, not how much attention is deserved, so naming the unit after someone who is famous for being famous seems appropriate. Should the unit be adopted, I would hope that future scholars will calculate Kardashians using whatever public figure is appropriate at the time for being inappropriately famous.)
This image shows the biomass of popularly-eaten fish in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1900 and in 2000. Popularly eaten fish include: bluefin tuna, cod, haddock, hake, halibut, herring, mackerel, pollock, salmon, sea trout, striped bass, sturgeon, turbot. Many of which are now vulnerable or endangered. (via Information is Beautiful: Plenty More Fish In The Sea? | News | guardian.co.uk)
(via robot-heart-politics)
United States
Genie is the pseudonym for a feral child who spent nearly all of the first thirteen years of her life locked inside a bedroom strapped to a potty chair. She was a victim of one of the most severe cases of social isolation in American history. Genie was discovered by Los Angeles authorities on November 4, 1970.
Read more here.
This is so utterly awful. We humans can exhibit boundless cruelty sometimes. We placate ourselves by thinking that what was done to this child is only done by nut jobs and psychopaths, that that would never be us, but the fact is that all of us, even the best of us, are just mere stops away from descending to the depths.
This is so terrible. It really bummed me out.
Why don’t people understand the urgency of colonizing other planets?
The human race could be wiped off the Earth’s surface at any moment — so why don’t people understand the urgency of colonizing space? In this excerpt from his book Reopening the Space Frontier, Professor John Hickman explains our foot-dragging.
Read the full article at io9.com
40% Of Americans, Majority Of Republicans, Reject Evolution
This is rather… disheartening to say the least.
Wow. This is just terrible.
Hans Rosling - The good news of the decade?
Hans Rosling, the innovative statistician, re-frames 10 years of UN data with his spectacular visuals, lighting up an astonishing- mostly unreported- piece of front page worthy good news: We’re winning the war against child mortality.
A section of a partially built residential project with only two houses in place, near Fort Myers, Florida.
This image is one photograph from Big Picture’s enthralling series on Human Landscapes in SW Florida.
Two same-age salmon, one a genetically modified salmon (rear), the other a non-genetically modified salmon (foreground) appear in this photo provided by AquaBounty Technologies. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recently been studying whether to approve marketing a genetically engineered animal as safe for people to eat. (AP Photo/AquaBounty Technologies)
Hat Tip: The Big Picture
An excellent article in which Dyer talks about UN Millennium Goals, what they have achieved (which surprisingly, is a lot), and the outlook for the future. His analysis is wide-ranging and he gives credit where it is due while pointing out the fallacy in the tale that everyone is trying really hard to ignore.
V.S. Ramachandran: On Your Mind
This is one of my favorite TED videos of all time. It is inspiring, informative, still cutting-edge. It blows my mind every time I watch it. If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should.
I live in the Middle East. Not the part of the Middle East that you hear in the news everyday, but the quieter part, the more affluent part although that is arguable too. Lets just say the more stable part, you know, the oil producing super-rich nations.
There are many things that are taboo here, like homosexuality. It is rare to see a gay person, let alone talk to one. If you consider that homosexuality is frowned upon in this region, and then take into account the fact that almost 99.99% of the population here is immigrants, you come to understand quite quickly why this is the case. Why would you come to these lands if you were homosexual? You would have to spend your life living in secrecy and if you are lucky in the company of a handful of people that accept your sexual orientation and/or share your sexual preferences. It just doesn’t make sense that someone would come here if they know their lifestyle is not compatible with the region. There are exceptions of course, but the general trend is such.
This leads to an interesting dynamic though, and that is that even those immigrants who are from progressive nations like Canada, Sweden and even the US (some parts, lets say) who would otherwise be conscious of what they say, usually end up picking bad habits such as blurting out “That’s so gay!” whenever they come across a purple shirt or a stupid product or a particularly feminine hairstyle or whatever. Perfectly educated and otherwise intelligent beings start to use phrases that demean a group of people rather than using the appropriate terminology which could just as clearly state what they mean, but no, they would rather call it gay. It really ticks me off. It shows a complete lack of respect and demonstrates that even in those circles of society that are exposed to homosexuality, there is still a lot of work to be done to get people to switch their mindsets and start treating homosexuals with the same respect you would give to a handicapped person or a person of a different race.
I don’t know why I wrote all that. I know this kind of shit happens in America too. High school kids are actually being targeted in a recently launched ad campaign trying to promote greater respect for the LGBT community. I guess I just wanted to give a perspective on how things are here in the Middle East. And probably because it really really really gets under my skin. Its not funny. Its not even intelligent. It just makes the person saying it sound like a complete fool.
