Interesting Links for 24-5-2011

[andrewducker]

• MP looking to strengthen right to freedom of expression. Yaaay!
  (tags: rights uk)
• Geometry skills are innate, Amazon tribe study suggests
  (tags: mathematics sociology psychology)
• Rapture Clock Reset - Doom now booked in for October 21st.
  (tags: rapture religion)
• Windows 8 due out by the end of 2011
  (tags: windows software microsoft)
• Creationism banned from "free schools" in Britain
  (tags: creationism religion science uk school education)
• Top Ten Myths About the Brain
  (tags: psychology brain)
• Whites Believe They Are Victims of Racism More Often Than Blacks (Small sample size. Doesn't surprise me though)
  (tags: racism usa)
• Should we have any expectations of privacy in the Internet age?
  (tags: privacy internet)
• Twitter Buys TweetDeck For $40 Million
  (tags: twitter technology)
• Church of Scotland votes to allow gay ministers
  (tags: scotland religion lgbt)
• Libya's officers forcing troops to rape women.
  (tags: rape libya)

Comments

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

And yet whites overwhelmingly also believe that we live in a post-racial society.

God I wish cognitive dissonance were actively painful.

[andrewducker]

I believe it almost is - but people tend to turn in the wrong direction when hit by it.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The survey seems to be about racism in general. I'd be more interested in how much racism people say they've experienced.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

That privacy stuff is inherently ridiculous and often seems like people just trying to pimp the marketing dream espoused by facebook and the like. A lot of people buy into it though, sadly.

Yes, I can't hide what I do easily from advertisers, my ISP or whoever.

On the other hand, it's very easy for me to hide most things about myself from Facebook and thus my friends. It doesn't harm my relationships with people and as yet I've not had anyone question me as to why I don't reveal on FB which comics character I'm most like, or why they can't add random members of my family via my facebook, or even see my birthday. My presence in some places on the internet is entirely separate from my facebook and LJ and nothing links them together. Unless you were actively stalking me and doing things that are possibly or entirely illegal, it'd be completely private as far as friends, family, co-workers and a curious HR department went.

There shouldn't be an expectation of privacy for things you choose to make public, I entirely agree, nor should you be able to expect to make things private once they're already public.

But people who have a public blog/facebook that talks about personal things, use google latitude, facebook places, like the pages for brands on facebook and so on - well, they don't seem to want privacy and that's fine if they understand what they're doing. The problem is that a lot of them don't. The internet is, to a large degree, a public space. If you don't want someone to know you're doing something in the real world, you do it in private, or you speak quietly, in a dark corner. Some people don't seem to understand that this is true of the internet as well.

You've said things, for example, in public posts that could be problematic down the line if you were looking for a new job, depending on what you were doing. (although if it was a problem for a company, I imagine they'd be the kind you wouldn't want to work for). It's fine that you feel that sort of thing should be open, but on the other hand, I don't expect to go to a job interview and be asked in detail what I do outside work, what I eat, who I'm around.

Of course, the funny thing about all of this is that, to a large degree, unless you're a celebrity then no one cares because the kind of things people mostly reveal online are incredibly mundane and aren't the kind of things that it matters whether they're private or not except to advertisers. I couldn't care less which of my friends like Starbucks and which like Costa. I couldn't care one iota that Bob was in Ikea at 5pm today and in The Old Goat & Mangrove at 7pm unless I'm meant to meet him. It's great that someone can post "I had a bad day" or "I had a great day!" and you can just reply "~hug~" or click Like and they feel there's been interaction and that you care when, in fact, they're one of 200 FB friends and honestly you can't even remember why you added them in the first place and you're not even sure if they remember you.

There's plenty of privacy online, but people fountain so much of their lives onto the internet, others don't notice what isn't being said and assume that people are living in public when they're really not. Look at the kind of things that you don't put online any more.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

The "rapture clock reset" and "windows 8" items remind me of a joke from Microsoft from the 90s, adapted herewith:

"The bad news is we have to pull triple shifts to make the new ship date of October 15th. The good news is IBM stops shipping on the 21st."

I guess it was funnier in the 90s.

[crm.livejournal.com]

'Creationism banned from "free schools" in Britain'

Im not sure i agree with this, but then i dont agree with much in government, as somone else said, 'those who can, teach, those who cant, create and inforce laws about teaching'

If i were king, Creationism would be taught for maby half a day, and then the children would be given a big box of resources and asked to debate and disprove it.
Creationism stays in the curriculum, the kids get a foundation of understanding about the practicalities of the scientific method, and they are encouraged to perhaps challenge some other theories - therefore engaging in science as a activity, rather then just a heap of facts.

not that any government would stand for teaching children to challenge the stasis quo, but im also unlikely to be king either.

[andrewducker]

Aaah, but they can do that. They cannot teach it as valid science, but there's nothing against them teaching it as part of RE (or social science).