“We sit back and blame the leaders we elect without examining our own role in electing them.” – Barack Obama, in his farewell address
Quotation of the Day – April 28, 2018
Leave a reply
Monthly Archives: April 2018
Quotation of the Day – April 26, 2018
“Even if the world went zero-carbon today that would not save us because we’ve gone past the point of no return.” — Meyer Hillman, senior fellow emeritus of the Policy Studies Institute in London.
“We’re doomed. The outcome is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because we’re so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. There are no means of reversing the process which is melting the polar ice caps. And very few appear to be prepared to say so.”
“We’ve got to stop burning fossil fuels. So many aspects of life depend on fossil fuels, except for music and love and education and happiness. These things, which hardly use fossil fuels, are what we must focus on.”
Fake Reviews – April 25, 2018
A report yesterday in The Washington Post found that the buying of fake reviews by merchants hoping to boost sales of their products is a widespread problem on Amazon. According to the report:
“Many of these fraudulent reviews originate on Facebook, where sellers seek shoppers on dozens of networks, including Amazon Review Club and Amazon Reviewers Group, to give glowing feedback in exchange for money or other compensation. The practice artificially inflates the ranking of thousands of products, experts say, misleading consumers.”
The problem appears particularly bad when it comes to electronic items, such as Bluetooth headphones, but is not limited to such products. When it comes to book reviews, personally I have read some that were obviously written by people who had not read the book. According to USA Today, “Amazon bans on incentivized reviews, which includes reviews in exchange for free or discounted products, does not apply to its Vine program or book reviews.” (March 20, 2017) When I see that a reviewer is a member of Amazon Vine, I tend to regard their opinions with heightened skepticism.
Amazon also claims to give more weight to reviews by people “who actually bought the product.” In my experience, it would be more accurate to say it highlights reviews by people who bought books through Amazon.
Quotation of the Day — April 18, 2018
“Despite stiff competition, Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is by common consensus the worst of the ideologues and mediocrities President Trump chose to populate his cabinet. Policies aside — and they’re terrible, from an environmental perspective — Mr. Pruitt’s self-aggrandizing and borderline thuggish behavior has disgraced his office and demoralized his employees. We opposed his nomination because he had spent his career as attorney general of Oklahoma suing the federal department he was being asked to lead on behalf of industries he was being asked to regulate. As it turns out, Mr. Pruitt is not just an industry lap dog but also an arrogant and vengeful bully and small-time grifter, bent on chiseling the taxpayer to suit his lifestyle and warm his ego.” — NY Times, April 18, 2018
Editorials in the Times used to be pretty sleep-inducing, but in the past couple years they’ve become more lively. The only disagreement I have with this one is in the title: “Scott Pruitt Has Become Ridiculous.” The tense is wrong: Pruitt has not become ridiculous, he’s always been that way. That soundproof phone booth for his office? It’s not to keep foreign spies from listening in — it’s to keep his own EPA staffers from overhearing his nefarious schemes. This guy behaves so egregiously he probably does need his own security detail.
Quotation of the Day – April 16, 2018
“What is the precise moment, in the life of a country, when tyranny takes hold? It rarely happens in an instant; it arrives like twilight, and, at first, the eyes adjust. […] Tyranny does not begin with violence; it begins with the first gesture of collaboration. Its most enduring crime is drawing decent men and women into its siege of the truth.” – Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, Dec. 16 & 26, 2016
Quotation of the Day – April 9, 2018
A newly uncovered report shows Royal Dutch Shell understood its large contribution to climate change as early as 1988. The report estimated Shell alone was contributing 4 percent of global carbon-dioxide emissions. It also warned, “By the time global warming becomes detectable it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to reduce the effects or even to stabilize the situation.” – Washington Post
Stat of the Day – April 5, 2018
A study has found that people who spent more than two hours a day on social media were twice as likely to feel socially isolated as people who spent less than half an hour a day.
“We assume social media is a world that is social, that when you engage in this milieu you’ll feel more connected to others. But when you crunch the numbers you find the opposite,” said Brian Primack, director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Research on Media, Technology, and Health.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/04/youtube-shooting-suspect-nasim-aghdam-profile
Quotation of the Day – April 4, 2018
Facebook has “used AI-enhanced technology and tools like GPS to track users’ information in order to learn more and more about them, all while constantly improving the reach and power of the company’s advertising capabilities. In perhaps the creepiest example, Facebook applied for (and received, last year) a patent for a tool called Techniques, for emotion detection and content delivery. It would use the camera in your phone to take pictures of you as you scroll through content. Facebook would then use facial analysis to measure how much you did or did not like the content in question, so as to determine what kind of stuff to send your way. ” – Matt Taibbi, “Can We Be Saved from Facebook?” in Rolling Stone.
hamiltonbeck 