✖ Via Tom Scott: Journalism Warning Labels
It seems a bit strange to me that the media carefully warn about and label any content that involves sex, violence or strong language — but there’s no similar labelling system for, say, sloppy journalism and other questionable content.

I figured it was time to fix that, so I made some stickers. I’ve been putting them on copies of the free papers that I find on the London Underground. You might want to as well. (more)

About Tom Scott:

Tom Scott is a geek comedian. He won the 2008 Kevin Greening Award for Creativity at the Student Radio Awards, once got in trouble with the Cabinet Office for his version of their Preparing for Emergencies site, and has been described as a “sometime internet funny man” by The Register.

He runs the British part of International Talk Like A Pirate Day, and accidentally got elected as president of his students’ union after running as “Mad Cap’n Tom”.

His work has been shown on BBC One, Channel 4, and at the paraflows net-art exhibition in Vienna. (About)

First spotted via Information About Information


↳Share Aug 22 notes technology  communication  critic  humor  media  integrity  news  journalism  information  bias  judgment  health  mind 

The sacrifice serves to protect the entire community from its own violence; it prompts the entire community to choose victims outside itself. The elements of dissension scattered throughout the community are drawn to the person of the sacrificial victim and eliminated, at least temporarily, by its sacrifice.
✖ Via Violence and the sacred by Rene Girard, tr. Patrick Gregory, Continuum International Publishing Group, [1972]2005 p. 8

Original French text:

C’est la communauté entière que le sacrifice protège de sa propre violence, c’est la communauté entière qu’il détourne vers des victimes qui lui sont extérieures. Le sacrifice polarise sur la victime des germes de dissension partout répandus et il les dissipe en leur proposant un assouvissement partiel. (éd. Bernard Grasset, coll. Hschette Littérature / Pluriel, Paris, [1972]1998, p. 18

Consider this for example. It doesn’t really matter (for what’s at stake here) if it’s true or not. What matter is that some people find it necessary to see McChrystal resignation as a sacrifice and are representing that belief by their talkings and writings:

Respected conservative Toby Harden of the UK Telegraph notes: “the way Obama fired McChrystal was choreographed to humiliate the general and bolster the President’s credentials as a macho man. So much for ‘no drama Obama.’ The manner of the firing came dangerously close to putting political theatre and image-burnishing above the conduct of a war.” Mortified, dishonored, ruined? I think not. General McChrystal may no longer be commanding the troops in Afghanistan, but his act of valor may very well have won the war here at home. Army General Stanley McChrystal may have taken a bullet, but crawling through the trenches on his belly the wounded patriot managed to set off a warning flare alerting America it is presently under presidential siege. (American Thinker: “McChrystal’s sacrifice?” by Jeannie DeAngelis, June 24th, 2010)

Previously on Skandalon : Rene Girard, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal



↳Share Jul 05  link  notes communication  sacrifice  violence  victim  community  sacred  immunitas  communitas  Esposito  protection  order  war  McChrystal  United-States  news  representation  anxiety  Girard 
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✖ Via Harper’s Magazine: “Nose For Trouble” by Mr. Fish, July 1st, 2010

About Mr. Fish:

Mr. Fish (mrfish@clowncrack.com) lives in Los Angeles, California. He never asked to be born. Occasionally, he laughs his head off. His mother has no idea what he’s up to. She cries easily. For more information, date him. (source)

Previously on Skandalon : Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal


↳Share Jul 02  link  notes communication  journalism  power  critic  liberty  autonomy  humor  illustration  comic  caricature  artist  art  corruption  news  information 

We report the design, synthesis, and assembly of the 1.08-Mbp Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 genome starting from digitized genome sequence information and its transplantation into a Mycoplasma capricolum recipient cell to create new Mycoplasma mycoides cells that are controlled only by the synthetic chromosome. The only DNA in the cells is the designed synthetic DNA sequence, including “watermark” sequences and other designed gene deletions and polymorphisms, and mutations acquired during the building process. The new cells have expected phenotypic properties and are capable of continuous self-replication.
✖ Via Science Magazine: “Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a Chemically Synthesized Genome” by J Craig Venter and al., May 20th, 2010. [pdf]
“John Craig Venter (born October 14, 1946) is an American biologist and entrepreneur, most famous for his role in being one of the first to sequence the human genome[1] and for his role in creating the first synthetic cell in 2010.[2] Venter founded Celera Genomics, The Institute for Genomic Research and the J. Craig Venter Institute, now working at the latter to create synthetic biological organisms and to document genetic diversity in the world’s oceans. He was listed on Time Magazine’s 2007 and 2008 Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.” (wikipedia)

Just to keep things in perspective:

“Some other scientists said that aside from assembling a large piece of DNA, Dr. Venter has not broken new ground. “To my mind Craig has somewhat overplayed the importance of this,” said David Baltimore, a geneticist at Caltech. He described the result as “a technical tour de force,” a matter of scale rather than a scientific breakthrough.

“He has not created life, only mimicked it,” Dr. Baltimore said.

Dr. Venter’s approach “is not necessarily on the path” to produce useful microorganisms, said George Church, a genome researcher at Harvard Medical School. Leroy Hood, of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, described Dr. Venter’s report as “glitzy” but said lower-level genes and networks had to be understood first before it would be worth trying to design whole organisms from scratch.

In 2002 Eckard Wimmer, of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, synthesized the genome of the polio virus. The genome constructed a live polio virus that infected and killed mice. Dr. Venter’s work on the bacterium is similar in principle, except that the polio virus genome is only 7,500 units in length, and the bacteria’s genome is more than 100 times longer.”” (The New York Times)


↳Share May 22  link  notes technology  human  life  cell  genome  genetic  biology  replication  self-replication  science  news  synthetic 

Gus Van Sant and author Bret Easton Ellis will team to write a feature about the double suicide of artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake. PalmStar Entertainment, Celluloid Dreams and K5 Film have acquired screen rights to “The Golden Suicides,” a Vanity Fair article written by Nancy Jo Sales. Van Sant, who helmed “Milk” and is prepping the Columbia Pictures drama “Restless,” is involved only as writer at this point. Ithaka Entertainment’s Braxton Pope will produce with PalmStar’s Kevin Frakes and Celluloid Dreams’ Hengameh Panahi. Duncan and Blake formed a popular couple on the downtown New York and Venice, Calif., art scenes. She was one of the first videogame designers for girls, and his “digital paintings” — kaleidoscopic images shown on plasma screens — established him as a rising star on the circuit. The couple descended into a paranoid spiral when the artists developed a consuming belief that government and religious organizations were conspiring against them. She killed herself in 2007. Blake found her body on the floor of their bedroom, and walked into the Atlantic Ocean a week later, ending his life.
✖ Via Variety: “Scribes make suicide pact. Gus Van Sant, Bret Easton Ellis team on film” by Michael Fleming, Oct. 13, 2009

↳Share May 21  link  notes art  movie  suicide  destruction  lost  loser  artist  movie  film  script  news 
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✖ Via The New York Times: “2009 Debt As A Pourcentage of G.D.P.” By Kevin Quealy and Karl Russell (Sources: European Commission; Eurostat; Bloomberg)
“Greece’s debt troubles are far from unique. Thirteen of the 27 European Union countries face debts equal or more than 60 percent of their gross domestic product, the limit set by the European Commission. And that group includes some of the rgion’s biggest economies, such as Britain and France.”

Read the related article “A Trillion for Europe, With Doubts Attached” by By Landon Thomas Jr. and Jack Ewing (May 11, 2010).


↳Share May 16  link  notes economy  news  Europe  crisis  destruction  lost  debt  Greece 
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✖ Via

Fotoglif: “Welder Raymond Vanwinkle of Magnolia, Texas, works on the BP Pollution Containment Chamber” May 3rd, 2010, REUTERS/Sean Gardner

“Welder Raymond Vanwinkle of Magnolia, Texas, works on the BP Pollution Containment Chamber at Wild Well Control, Inc. in Port Fourchon, Louisiana May 3, 2010. Energy giant BP Plc, its reputation battered by a catastrophic oil spill threatening the U.S. Gulf shore, said on Monday it was working to stem the gushing undersea leak and promised to pay for the cleanup and compensation claims. BP is working on to try to seal the ruptured well with an undersea containment system that would capture the leaking oil and channel it to a tanker on the surface.”


↳Share May 05  link  notes Environment  United-States  art  disaster  ecology  energy  hack  news  oil  photograph  technology  BP 

✖ Via LIFE - Hosted by Google: Vol. 68, no 18, May 15, 1970

It happened 40 years ago: the Kent State shooting. Four unarmed college students were shot dead by the National Guard. Learn more about it on Wikipedia.


↳Share May 04 notes history  protest  America  United-States  students  killing  politic  revolution  war  University  news  army  government 
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✖ Via Boston.com / The Big Picture: “Oil spill approaches Louisiana coast” April 30th, 2010. AP Photo/The Sun Herald, William Colgin
“Two brown pelicans and a flock of seagulls rest on the shore of Ship Island as a boom line floats just offshore Thursday, April 29, 2010 in Gulfport, Miss. Several hundred yards of boom line has been set up on the north side of the island to try and contain the oncoming oil spill. Crews are placing the boom in different areas on Coast waterways to help protect against an approaching oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico.” (more)

The photo is related to the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion.


↳Share May 03  link  notes animal  catastroph  disaster  industry  nature  news  oil  technology  BP 

Anyway, not feeling too guilty about this, the real purpose of my job is to make capital markets more efficient and ultimately provide the U.S. consumer with more efficient ways to leverage and finance himself, so there is a humble, noble and ethical reason for my job ;) amazing how good I am in convincing myself !!!
✖ Via Reuters: “Goldman’s “Fabulous” Fab’s conflicted love letters” by Steve Eder and Karey Wutkowski, Apr 25, 2010

Here are some more excerpts from Fabrice Tourre’s email:

“The SEC’s complaint only included Tourre referring to himself as “fabulous Fab” and talking about “standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!”

“When I think that I had some input into the creation of this product (which by the way is a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: “Well, what if we created a “thing”, which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?”) it sickens the heart to see it shot down in mid-flight… It’s a little like Frankenstein turning against his own investor ;)”

Fabrice Tourre

” is a London-based Executive Director at Goldman Sachs who was charged by the SEC on 16 April 2010 in a $1 billion landmark fraud case.” (wikipedia)

You may remember Jerome Kerviel’s case.



↳Share Apr 27  link  notes technology  economy  capital  capitalism  bank  money  news  America  fraud  destruction  lost  loser 

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