Jalopnik: Yes, Tesla Really Is Working On A Robotic Snake To Charge Its Cars. http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIw2aqKzSA
From Great Universities to “Knowledge Factories”: Another American Institution in Decline
Thomas Frank, perhaps best known for What’s the Matter with Kansas?, an examination of America’s new conservatism, has an article in Salon, “The New Republic, the torture report, and the TED talks geniuses who gutted journalism.” Toward the end, he writes this:
The new press lord’s deeds are all made possible by the shrinking significance of everyone else. Compared to the patois of power, the language of journalism is but meaningless babble. Compared to once having been a friend of Zuckerberg, no form of literary genius matters any more. Compared to the puissance and majesty of the CIA, we amount to nothing. We are playthings of the powerful, churned out by the millions every year from the nation’s knowledge factories. We are zeroes to their ones, ready to rationalize monopoly or rectal hydration at a moment’s notice.
We’ve been through all of this before, though Frank doesn’t write…
View original post 525 more words
Readers and Writers Battling Censorship in Kuwait Have a Hard Road Ahead
An interesting peek into Kuwaiti book censorship and the battle that authors face there. While I understand censorship in a world that is becoming wildly uncensored, I also believe in the rights of each individual to choose what they want to consume. I feel that age censorship is more appropriate method. Eventually we all become adults, and as adults, we should be allowed to make our own decisions.
According to Kuwaiti Minister of Education and Higher Education Bader Al-Essa, rumors of “sex books” in Kuwaiti libraries are greatly exaggerated:
The Kuwait-based Arab Times wrote earlier this week — in an article titled ‘Presence Of Sex Books In Public Libraries Rumors’ — that Al-Essa had said:
What is being published about the presence of sex books in public libraries…he called it news promoted by the social networking websites such as Twitter and others, but there is no evidence or an iota of truth in such news.
Al-Essa went on to say that anyone with “proof” should submit it to the concerned authority.
But he also promised to check up on any of these allegations, as “Essa said there are hundreds of news reports that need to be checked and confirmed and that the ministry wants to check and confirm their authenticity.”
From a relatively free 1960s and 1970s, Kuwait has become one…
View original post 792 more words
E-Book Sales Update
Word on the street, according to Publisher’s Weekly, is that e-book sales dipped ever so slightly in the third quarter of 2014, going from a previous 23% to 21%. The majority of the sales going to Amazon who held steady at 57% market share. The closest runner up, who wasn’t close at all, was Barnes & Noble/Nook at 14% share. Amazon the clear winner.
While e-book sales dropped, paperback sales bumped 1% from 42% to 43%. Hardcovers remained at 25%.
As e-book sales continue to bounce around, we will see what happens in 2015 as the industry, and the world, continue to move further into a fully digitalized experience.
Happiness: Danes vs Americans– A Response to, “Report From the Flatlands of Statistics”
Photo Courtesy: UN World Happiness Report 2013
Even though the Danes are ranked number one in Happiness, they still suffer the same woes as the rest of us, but with a couple more benefits, according to Mathilde Walter Clark.
As easy as it is to knit pick everyday life, every country has trains that run late, clouds that rain, and of course, not so flattering people. Personally, compared to America, I think the Danes have it pretty good.
But we always want more. We always want what we can’t have–as outplayed as it sounds, it’s true across all societies. Even when you have free education, teachers that get paid $60k/year, and universal healthcare like the Danes do, we can all still find something to complain about.
According to the U.N. “World Happiness Report of 2013” Denmark is the happiness country in the world–a great place to hang your hat, raise a family, go to school, seek medical attention, you name it.
However, in Mathilde Walter Clark’s English translation of “Report From the Flatlands of Statistics,” rather than cherishing her country’s elevated status, she actually takes a jab at it. She peels it apart like an orange to find its pulp.
Throughout her essay you can’t help but sense an undertone of irony running through it like a river– Clark never fully accepting her country’s coveted spot, never fully agreeing that the U.N.’s objective research is reality, though she claims to foil this idea of irony early in her essay. I’m uncertain it ever fully subsides.
After noting her split childhood, spending time between Denmark and America, due to her parents’ separation, she declares that “I am still a divided missionary. I find myself in a state of perpetual provocation: in America by inequality, and in Denmark by conformity. It is the compulsion toward uniformity that pains me most about the Danish spirit.”
Clark argues that sometimes the equality and need to be one community in Denmark actually inhibits the ability to feel unique, to feel special, and subsequently hints that this potential to be unique in America is what makes it so great.
But there is a downfall to this.
Without the community to support one another, each is left to his own woes and consequentially fights alone. Thus coming full circle with Clark’s concern about American inequality.
I argue that the comfort and happiness achieved through a sense of community and stability is far greater than the satisfaction achieved by Americans’ aptness to be unique.
Clark’s says, Danes are always “trying to even out things. It’s in their nature.”
But what’s wrong with that? (I can already hear the socialist comments). But really, would not evening things out create less starvation in the world, create better paying jobs, provide education to those who can’t afford it, medicine to those who need it most? And aren’t these all the reasons why the Danes are on top?
This world is ruthlessly off kilter. I think, “evening things out” a bit would be great.
Country Rankings by Happiness
The perpetual feeling of failure in America if you aren’t going above and beyond and doing more with your time and pushing harder is equally hard to deal with and unsatisfying, especially for those that still aren’t getting ahead. The stressful and hectic consequences that come with living in a society that is almost too ambitious, and quick to declare someone lazy if they aren’t spending their entire day, week, or life running around incessantly, can be deeply unrewarding.
A recent article by Libby Fordham entitled, “So You’re Not Up At 5am To Work? What’s Wrong With That? Nothing” describes the very same problem.
Since when was it expected to wake up before dawn and have answered all your emails, gone to the gym, and wrote two chapters in your next memoir?
The idea of being able to just live and feel alive via the societal norm of community and equality in Denmark sounds like bliss to me as an American. Not because I am lazy and unmotivated, but because I am tired of people running around like robots to their overcommitted responsibilities, trying to undercut each other to get ahead, to be the next big boss, and say “I did more than you!” There is strength in numbers, in unity.
But Clark claims that a classic poster well-known in Denmark of a police man helping a family of ducks cross the road is “a bit disjointed from how things really are…it shows us what we’ve really lost.”
She ultimately argues that an image is separate from its own truth, like a picture of two people smiling on a tropical vacation. You cannot know the truth behind the picture just by looking at it. There is much more under the surface. And thus she surmises that though the idea of Denmark being the happiest place on earth is flattering, it is only a picture, not a story, not a subjective point of view.
I agree with Clark. There’s always more under the surface. But nothing is ever going to be perfect, and here in America, I think we have a lot more work to do on that front than a country like Denmark. We have strayed far from the original intent of the forefathers of this country. Each day I become more convinced that America is just becoming a soulless, empathy-less humming machine with no ability to see outside its own fixed mechanical processes. It’s become merely a mad dash to snatch up as much money as we can, in the process of screwing over the next guy, and then hoping to retire at a decent age (if we make it) and not end up in a nursing home.
That’s it.
So I say, let’s be a little bit more like the Danes. Let’s help each other, let’s establish community, let’s be okay with just being, and stop for a moment.
Editors’ Picks of the Year: Notable Reads on WordPress.com
Our editors dove into the archives to resurface top posts published on WordPress.com this year, from personal essays to comics, and photography to fiction. Here’s a glimpse of what you published — and what the community especially loved — in 2014.
“Ever Wished That Calvin and Hobbes Creator Bill Watterson Would Return to the Comics Page? Well, He Just Did,” Stephan Pastis, Pearls Before Swine
“Bill Watterson is the Bigfoot of cartooning,” writes comic artist Stephan Pastis of the legendary Calvin and Hobbes creator. This summer, Pastis collaborated — in secret — with Watterson. Their awesome idea: Watterson would silently step in and draw Pastis’ comic strip, Pearls Before Swine, for a few days, pretending to be a second grader. Pastis recounts the experience, offering a rare glimpse of Bigfoot.
Pearls Before Swine; Stephan Pastis; June 4, 2014.
“No Apology,” Mehreen Kasana
I will apologize for ISIS when every…
View original post 1,358 more words
Leigh Anne Tuohy, Racism, and the White Saviour Complex
Leigh Anne “That Nice Woman Sandra Bullock Played In The Blind Side” Tuohy recently posted the following picture and caption on her Facebook and Instagram accounts:
“We see what we want! It’s the gospel truth! These two were literally huddled over in a corner table nose to nose and the person with me said “I bet they are up to no good” well you know me… I walked over, told them to scoot over. After 10 seconds of dead silence I said so whats happening at this table? I get nothing.. I then explained it was my store and they should spill it… They showed me their phones and they were texting friends trying to scrape up $3.00 each for the high school basketball game! Well they left with smiles, money for popcorn and bus fare. We have to STOP judging people and assuming and pigeon holing people!…
View original post 862 more words
How to Read Moby-Dick
While out walking my dog very early one morning I ran into a frantic woman, beseeching directions to Starbucks.
My reflexive internal response was, “I’m sorry to tell you this, ma’am, but he went down aboard the Pequod,” but I kept the joke to myself, stifled my giggles, and directed the woman towards the coffee shop.
For the most part, everything I’ve ever read about Moby-Dick has been either beautiful and solemn like a dull sermon, or dismissive of it as a baggy boring relic of bygone days. The book invites comparisons to the whale itself: the sheer size and density, a brick of over 600 page, as though its treasures must be gleaned from crosshatched ink scars carved in white slabbed pages.
For many, it is A Book To Be Read, almost a Jonahian duty that cannot be shirked lest the gods be angered, an…
View original post 1,156 more words
Why you don’t need to be rich to be a cultural tourist, and why it’s probably better not to be (really!)
Great post from a fellow blogger. Staying in the thick of it: Europe
I remember the exact moment: after a morning of winding our way uphill through the medieval Albayzín neighborhood of Granada in Southern Spain, we reached the San Nicholas Viewpoint. We picnicked while taking in the enchanting view of the Alhambra and surrounding mountains and I mentioned to HOB that, according to our guide book, this view is Bill Clinton’s favorite sight in Europe. And somehow our idle chit-chat crystallized it for me–I have everything I want. I spent the entire day yesterday exploring the Alhambra. There’s nothing about this experience that would be better if I were rich, famous or a former American president.
Ever since having this rather obvious, but nonetheless life-changing illumination, I’ve become convinced that not only are we not missing out by traveling on a modest budget, but we are far better off. A great example is the last day from our trip this spring to…
View original post 730 more words
Big Oil and the new $35k Tesla–Musk better roll up his sleeves
Photo Courtesy MotorTrend
Last week CNET posted an article mentioning the announcement of new $35,000 Tesla, aptly named the Model 3.
The new ride estimated to debut in 2017 will hang on the ability to make a cheaper battery. CEO of Telsa, Elon Musk, claims the biggest factor in making a more affordable, high-volume-production electric car is battery making capacity. Right now, such capacity does not exist to manufacture Tesla’s on a level equal to that of traditional gas-powered vehicles. But when the ability does exist, Tesla is promising us it will be game on.
That’s when Big Oil just might start feeling their mortality.
As the Oil Industry continues to rake in trillions, many of us know, that the real future exists in alternative energy.
Though sales projections on oil consumption gathered and presented by Big Oil claim sales will continue to rise, other research shows that such estimates are inaccurate. Big Oil argues that countries beginning to develop into industrial nations will makeup the majority of the increase as they burn more gas to fuel their economic needs. However, with climate change at the forefront of the world’s problems and environmental standards becoming more stringent, these countries are not likely to consume as recklessly as the world once did despite their growing need for fuel.
This combined with the mounting problem of extracting oil in hostile territories (both politically and geographically) at a high cost is sure to create profit woes for Big Oil. According to The Economist, “Half the supermajors’ long-term capital spending now goes on costly unconventional or deep-water oilfields, largely because production-sharing arrangements and licenses to drill in the NOCs’ backyards are increasingly hard to find. The big NOCs now make up six of the ten largest oil producers in the world.”
As a result, oil companies have turned to shale for supplemental revenue, though such an investment can be seen as counterproductive to their central business model–oil. The Economist reports that both Shell and Exxon are achieving more than 40% of their energy production from gas. However, with a potential gas surplus on the horizon being predicted by economists, natural gas prices could fall below that of oil, thus providing far less benefit and more headache to Big Oil’s plans, especially with gas’ high extraction costs.
The Model 3 Tesla could very well be a sign of Big Oil’s impending doom. If Tesla can manage to create an affordable, yet high-powered lithium-ion battery through its relationship with Panasonic and it’s gigafactory idea (yet to be actualized) it could bring volume production of electric automobiles onto the playing field with traditional automakers.
Tesla could change the game.
Mr. Musk better get his bodyguards ready though, because Big Oil isn’t going to let him go without a fight.
Unwinding Thoughts 