nswd

Perdy I’m afraid it’s all up to us

310.jpg

A handful of technology companies from Knack.it Corp. to Evolv Inc. are doing just that, developing video games and online questionnaires that measure personality attributes in a job applicant. Based on patterns of how a company’s best performers responded in these assessments, the software estimates a candidate’s suitability to be everything from a warehouse worker to an investment bank analyst.

Welcome to hiring in the age of big data, an ambition marrying automation with analysis in the race to better allocate talent. […]

Some 3.7 million U.S. jobs went unfilled in July, even though more than 11 million Americans were looking for work, according to Labor Department figures.

“You have this enormous pool of people that’s being missed because of the way the entire industry goes after the same kinds of people, asking, did you go to Stanford, did you work at this company?” said Erik Juhl, head of talent at Vungle Inc., a San Francisco-based video advertising startup, and formerly a recruiter at Google Inc. and LinkedIn Corp. “You miss what you’re looking for, which is — what is this person going to bring to the table?”

To aid that search, Juhl this month will begin using an online video game designed to track, record and analyze every millisecond of its players’ behavior. Developed by Knack in Palo Alto, California, Wasabi Waiter places job-seekers in the shoes of a sushi server who must identify the mood of his cartoon customers and bring them the dish labeled with the matching emotion. On a running clock, they must also clear empty dishes into the sink while tending to new customers who take a seat at the bar.

{ Bloomberg | Continue reading }

photo { Dennis Hopper }

Don’t look back, you ain’t staying

39.jpg

By 1790, the new republic was in arrears on $11,710,000 in foreign debt. These were obligations payable in gold and silver. Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the Treasury, duly paid them. In doing so, he cured a default.

Hamilton’s dollar was defined as a little less than 1/20 of an ounce of gold. So were those of his successors, all the way up to the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. But in the whirlwind of the “first hundred days” of the New Deal, the dollar came in for redefinition. The country needed a cheaper and more abundant currency, FDR said. By and by, the dollar’s value was reduced to 1/35 of an ounce of gold.

By any fair definition, this was another default. Creditors both domestic and foreign had lent dollars weighing just what the Founders had said they should weigh. They expected to be repaid in identical money. […]

The lighter Roosevelt dollar did service until 1971, when President Richard M. Nixon lightened it again. In fact, Nixon allowed it to float. No longer was the value of the greenback defined in law as a particular weight of gold or silver. It became what it looked like: a piece of paper.

Yet the U.S. government continued to find trusting creditors. Since the Nixon default, the public’s holdings of the federal debt have climbed from $303 billion to $11.9 trillion.

If today’s political impasse leads to another default, it will be a kind of technicality. Sooner or later, the Obama Treasury will resume writing checks. The question is what those checks will buy.

{ Jim Grant/Zero Hedge | Continue reading }

art { Luigi Serafini }

Every day, the same, again

37.jpgGerman Groom Forgets Bride at Gas Station.

US Army explores predicting suicides as way to prevent them.

China to install GPS in government cars to track misuse.

A German scientist is developing a new way of testing prices by measuring brain waves. Some marketing critics are horrified by the idea of feel-good pricing, but others argue it could make products more successful.

The brain of a female migraineur looks so unlike the brain of a male migraineur, asserts Harvard scientist Nasim Maleki, that we should think of migraines in men and women as “different diseases altogether.”

Calling in sick, from America to Zimbabwe: Research shows attitude toward absenteeism differs between cultures.

Search engine optimization is filling the Internet with misinformation about human bathroom habits and more. How Google flushes knowledge down the toilet.

In a room with no cell service, Verizon works on the future of mobile.

Hollywood talent agency paid $150K to Satisfy Gambler’s Debt to Deadmau5, settling a dispute over what might be the most expensive five minutes ever at a Las Vegas nightclub.

Whatever all this neo-Cicciolina bs is all about, graphically it looks like the rinky-dink work of some bottoming-out artist.

13 Things You Didn’t Know About Deleuze and Guattari, Part I and Part II and Part III.

Where the food is great, and so is the wait!

These crazy inventions are the latest sign that entrepreneurship in China is alive and well.

First internet-connected e-cigarette.

10 London & U.K. - Album Cover Locations. More: Annie Hall Rooftop Balcony Scene.

MIT’s Self-Assembling Robots.

Rise Of The Ghost.

To digg the dust encloased heare

44.jpg

Cursing, researchers say, is a human universal. Every language, dialect or patois ever studied, whether living or dead, spoken by millions or by a single small tribe, turns out to have its share of forbidden speech, some variant on comedian George Carlin’s famous list of the seven dirty words that are not supposed to be uttered on radio or television. […]

Researchers point out that cursing is often an amalgam of raw, spontaneous feeling and targeted, gimlet-eyed cunning. When one person curses at another, they say, the curser rarely spews obscenities and insults at random, but rather will assess the object of his wrath, and adjust the content of the “uncontrollable” outburst accordingly.

Because cursing calls on the thinking and feeling pathways of the brain in roughly equal measure and with handily assessable fervor, scientists say that by studying the neural circuitry behind it, they are gaining new insights into how the different domains of the brain communicate — and all for the sake of a well-venomed retort. […]

“Studies show that if you’re with a group of close friends, the more relaxed you are, the more you swear,” Burridge said.

{ SF Gate/Natalie Angier | Continue reading }

De trailer de trailer alias de plane de plane

36.jpg

When people want to direct the attention of others, they naturally do so by pointing, starting from a very young age. Now, researchers reporting in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, on October 10 have shown that elephants spontaneously get the gist of human pointing and can use it as a cue for finding food. That’s all the more impressive given that many great apes fail to understand pointing when it’s done for them by human caretakers, the researchers say.

{ EurekAlert | Continue reading }

images { 1 | 2 }

‘Time, which is the author of authors.’ –Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

42.jpg

You are doing something new in making exclusive use of second-hand images.

{ David Bourdon interviewed by Andy Warhol | Continue reading }

art { Andy Warhol, Knives, 1981-82 | Andy Warhol, Knives, 1981-82 }

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

35.jpg

England is the only country in the developed world where the generation approaching retirement is more literate and numerate than the youngest adults, according to the first skills survey by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

In a stark assessment of the success and failure of the 720-million-strong adult workforce across the wealthier economies, the economic thinktank warns that in England, adults aged 55 to 65 perform better than 16- to 24-year-olds at foundation levels of literacy and numeracy. The survey did not include people from Scotland or Wales.

The OECD study also finds that a quarter of adults in England have the maths skills of a 10-year-old.

{ The Guardian | Continue reading }

Even though the ways languages grasp the world may vary widely from one language to another, they all build, in fact, the same contents, and equivalent conceptions of the world. Any text in any language can be translated into a text in another language.

43.jpg

On October 9th South Koreans celebrate the 567th birthday of Hangul, the country’s native writing system, with a day off work. South Korea is one of the few countries in the world to celebrate its writing system. […]

The day commemorates the introduction of the new script in the mid-15th century, making Hangul one of the youngest alphabets in the world. It is unusual for at least two more reasons: rather than evolving from pictographs or imitating other writing systems, the Korean script was invented from scratch for the Korean language. And, though it is a phonemic alphabet, it is written in groups of syllables rather than linearly. How was Hangul created?

{ The Economist | Continue reading }

photo { Ray Metzker }

With my teeth, I have seized life

2.jpg

No one had previously looked specifically at the differing responses in the brain to poetry and prose.

In research published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, the  team found activity in a “reading network” of brain areas which was activated in response to any written material. But they also found that poetry aroused several of the regions in the brain which respond to music. These areas, predominantly on the right side of the brain, had previously been shown as to give rise to the “shivers down the spine” caused by an emotional reaction to music.

{ University of Exeter | Continue reading }

art { Bridget Riley, Arrest 3, 1965 }

Mama-say mama-sah mama-coosah

d.jpg

{ Men Feel Worse About Themselves When Female Partners Succeed, Says New Research }

[on Dave’s return to the ship, after HAL has killed the rest of the crew] Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this.

41.jpg

In the industrial revolution — and revolutions since — there was an invigoration of jobs. For instance, assembly lines for cars led to a vast infrastructure that could support mass production giving rise to everything from car dealers to road building and utility expansion into new suburban areas. But the digital revolution is not following the same path, said Daryl Plummer. “What we’re seeing is a decline in the overall number of people required to do a job,” he said.

{ ComputerWorld | Continue reading }

photo { David Campany }

The sadness will last forever

33.jpg

There are many theories about why humans cry ranging from the biophysical to the evolutionary. One of the most compelling hypotheses is Jeffrey Kottler’s, discussed at length in his 1996 book The Language of Tears. Kottler believes that humans cry because, unlike every other animal, we take years and years to be able to fend for ourselves. Until that time, we need a behavior that can elicit the sympathetic consideration of our needs from those around us who are more capable (read: adults). We can’t just yell for help though—that would alert predators to helpless prey—so instead, we’ve developed a silent scream: we tear up. […]

In a study published in 2000, Vingerhoets and a team of researchers found that adults, unlike children, rarely cry in public. They wait until they’re in the privacy of their homes—when they are alone or, at most, in the company of one other adult. On the face of it, the “crying-as-communication” hypothesis does not fully hold up, and it certainly doesn’t explain why we cry when we’re alone, or in an airplane surrounded by strangers we have no connection to. […]

In the same 2000 study, Vingerhoet’s team also discovered that, in adults, crying is most likely to follow a few specific antecedents. When asked to choose from a wide range of reasons for recent spells of crying, participants in the study chose “separation” or “rejection” far more often than other options, which included things like “pain and injury” and “criticism.” Also of note is that, of those who answered “rejection,” the most common subcategory selected was “loneliness.”

{ The Atlantic | Continue reading }

photo { Adrienne Grunwald }

She was more like a beauty queen from a movie scene

34.jpg

In the construction of advertisement images, emphasis is placed on information that is thought to be influential within the dominant culture of the target audience, such as commonly held values and beliefs (Wolin, 2003). Goffman (1978), proposed the idea that human models in advertisement images are intentionally choreographed to convey particular values concerning social identity and expectations. The values chosen for representation by human models in advertisement images are a reflection of the dominant cultural beliefs regarding social identities. As a result, the representation of human relationships in advertisement images offers research a unique view of normative discourses regarding social identities related to sexual orientation and gender.

{ The Qualitative Report | PDF }

photo { Leo Berne }

Every day, the same, again

321.jpg9-year-old sneaks onto flight without boarding pass, flies to Vegas alone.

Google wants a patent on splitting the restaurant bill.

Chicago eatery serves burger with communion wafer garnish. [Thanks Tim]

How to make (and where to eat) the best dim sum.

A robot that hunts the coastline for swarms of jellyfish and destroys them has been developed by scientists in South Korea.

Korea’s plan to shred a jellyfish plague with robots could spawn millions more.

Dolphins are one of the few animals that can truly imitate.

Canadian researchers have worked out how to send text messages using chemical spray.

How four car companies are forging ahead on fuel efficiency.

No other vertebrate is known to have green blood.

Algorithm writes people’s life histories using Twitter stream. And: How your Facebook profile reveals more about your personality than you know.

A new study claims to identify the times of the week that women are feeling the most insecure about their bodies, and recommends that brands “concentrate media during prime vulnerability moments.” [Thanks Tim]

FBI profiler talks serial killers, deception and danger.

A spoon for people with Parkinson’s.

The older $100 notes will eventually get returned to the Federal Reserve, where they will be destroyed.

Signage for the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.

For forty days and forty nights the law was on her side

32.jpg

To measure the degree of relatedness between populations, we used genetic distance. […] Genetic distance is like a molecular clock – it measures average separation times between populations. […] Our hypothesis is that, at a later stage, when populations enter into contact with each other, differences in cultural traits create barriers to exchange, communication, and imitation. […]

Our model implies that after a major innovation, such as the Industrial Revolution, the effect of genealogical distance should be pronounced, but that it should decline as more and more societies adopt the innovations of the technological frontier.

{ Vox | Continue reading }

You’re stuck in the middle (yeah yeah), and the pain is thunder

4.jpg

I’ve been a massage therapist for many years, now. I know what people look like. People have been undressing for me for a long time. I know what you look like: a glance at you, and I can picture pretty well what you’d look like on my table.

Let’s start here with what nobody looks like: nobody looks like the people in magazines or movies. Not even models. Nobody. […]

Women have cellulite. All of them. It’s dimply and cute. It’s not a defect. It’s not a health problem. It’s the natural consequence of not consisting of photoshopped pixels, and not having emerged from an airbrush. […]

Adults sag. It doesn’t matter how fit they are. Every decade, an adult sags a little more.

{ Cory Doctorow | Continue reading | Thanks Tim }

image { Alis Pelleschi }

Convinced you’ve been wronged in a past life?

31.jpg

In a male-supremacist society, female power must logically appear illogical, mysterious, intimate, threatening.

{ The New Inquiry | Continue reading }

Every day, the same, again

3.jpgTreasury reimburses dog owner whose pet ate $500.

Eye contact may make people more resistant to persuasion.

New study finds that superstitions actually do “reverse” perceived bad fortune.

Altered wine chemical helps kill cancer.

Genetically Modified Bacteria Produce 50 Percent More Fuel.

Scientists have engineered “unjetlaggable” mice.

How traffic actually works.

How one transportation business survived hurricane sandy.

Humans Could Walk On Water.

The effect of diminished belief in free will.

Remember that crazy story about the dude in Mississippi who mailed ricin to Obama and then tried to frame some other dude in Mississippi for the crime? Well, the story is a thousand times crazier than you thought.

Many groups lack privilege, here in the discriminatory Babylon that is the USA. But who lacks privilege the most?

Guy gets ticketed for not riding in bike lane, makes video of himself smashing into things in bike lanes.

Ivanhoe Reservoir Covered With 400,000 Black Plastic Balls. [thanks quarqonia]

A pool filled with lagoon water from which every 3 minutes a replica of the Giardini in Venice emerges for a few seconds and then sinks back down.

There is no lake in this photo, tilt your head to the right.

Master the art of making potions

5.jpg

{ giveitbackto.us | See also: US Government Shutdown: Good News For Patent Trolls }

Every day, the same, again

321.jpgNew York police search for parachutists who landed near Ground Zero.

A 111-year-old’s secret to a long life? 20 cigs a day and a pint of sherry for breakfast.

Neuroscientists have identified the location in the brain’s visual cortex responsible for generating a common perceptual illusion: Seeing shapes and surfaces that don’t really exist when viewing a fragmented background.

The Science of Why Girls Love flowers.

Why airline food is so bad.

FDA approves portable artificial pancreas. The device syncs the results of a continuous reading of the wearer’s glucose levels with a pump that provides appropriate amounts of insulin.

China is known for its pirated DVDs and fake designer gear, but these criminals were producing something more intellectual: fake scholarly articles which they sold to academics, and counterfeit versions of existing medical journals in which they sold publication slots.

Peru exports more illegal gold than cocaine, and it’s the world’s biggest exporter of cocaine.

All you have to do is place your phone next to your keyboard to provide a direct channel for anyone to read what you are typing - and it’s all down to the vibration of the keys.

Internet reputation systems let individuals rate other individuals over the internet and provide recommendations based on those ratings. The Problem of Trust in the Sharing Economy

What makes an image go viral?

Madness and hallucination in The Shining.

Demon Hill.

A4 papercuts.



kerrrocket.svg