Domain: wnyc.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to wnyc.org.
Comments · 110
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This is not a one-sided coin
Let's hope other countries do the same thing too.
Remember, agencies of the US government regularly attempt to influence elections overseas, and, oppose the natural desires of their electorate
Below are a selection of links about the same, from across the political spectrum that are quite well-documented.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
https://www.channel4.com/news/...
https://www.straitstimes.com/w...
https://www.telesurtv.net/engl...
http://www.latimes.com/nation/...
https://www.wnyc.org/story/his...
http://www.truth-out.org/opini...
https://www.foreignaffairs.com...
https://www.thenewamerican.com...
https://www.npr.org/2016/12/22...
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Re:And hilarity ensues!!!!
You forgot to directly mention the 100,000 voters purged illegally from the primary rolls in just the Bronx alone. There was widespread voter fraud across the USA during the primaries and the presidential election, but it was carried out domestically, in clear violation of the law, even destroying evidence under subpoena, with zero punishments. It's going to happen again, and spread, because they can get away with it clean and free.
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Re: Finally!
Where would you live in NYC on $75k.
Apparently lots of places in NYC. "The median household income across New York City stands at $50,711, according to 2010-2012 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau."
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Re:You're missing the point
While they couldn't use propaganda as overtly racist, crack was preferred by poor black people, while powder cocaine was preferred by rich white people. So thinly veiled racist propaganda led to requiring 100x as much powder cocaine to trigger the same mandatory prison terms as crack.
This contradicts the historical record. The Black Leaders of the time were the ones calling for the stiff penalties due to out of control crime. For example gangs were massively prevalent in the 80s - urban homicide rates corroborate this.
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Online privacy is a mirage...
According to "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" by Antonio Garcia Martinez, who combined Facebook data with third-party demographic data to determine the identity of a user either logged in or browsing anonymously, there's no such thing as online privacy. And the author ain't sorry for compromising online privacy in this podcast.
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Quite a bit actually...
According to "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" by Antonio Garcia Martinez, who combined Facebook data with third-party demographic data to determine the identity of a user either logged in or browsing anonymously, quite a bit. And he ain't sorry for compromising user privacy in this podcast.
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Re:Good enough for practical situations
You have to read very closely, but unintended fatal shootings in the US from 2005-2010 resulted in 3800 deaths, or roughly 760 per year.
You need to read more carefully as there are known flaws with the reports.
As a frame of reference, approximately 250,000 people die from medical mistakes at hospitals every year, yet there aren't any politicians trying to ban hospitals or regulate doctors.
WTF man? Banning hospitals wouldn't solve the problem, but instead create a whole new one (not that Trump isn't willing to cause hospitals to shut down, mind you..) and there's a shitload of regulation of doctors. Including programs to reduce medical mistakes.
(as evidenced by the fact that gun ownership is at an all time high, but accidental shootings are at nearly the lowest they have been ever).
Sorry dude, we don't have any rigorous data collection on that. Sure, there's Gunfail, but its author notes the lack of actual substantive reporting.
Instead, the errors are well known.
As with any tool in this imperfect world, there are accidents, misuse and abuse, but we must weigh the cost vs benefit of guns, something that the fascist progressives and Dims refuse to do (and have prevented the FBI from collecting statistics on; there is a very cynical reason that you can't find statistics on incidents where citizens save lives or property using their lawfully owned firearm, you can only find "gun deaths").
Nope, it's actually something that the Republicans and the NRA are known to make up numbers/a> about, and furthermore, it's well known that they refuse to let data be collected on gun injuries.
Maybe if you didn't lie so much, you wouldn't have so many problems.
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Re:Could be worse
To rate how good/bad better/worse things are, it's worth listening to the WNYC "On the Media" broadcast "What we know about the border". It begins with one of their own journalists being stopped and takes it from there.
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This is nothing new
CBP has been confiscating and rummaging through telephones and computers for years. They don't need your FB password if they can break into your computer. http://www.wnyc.org/story/my-d...
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Re:I like
+1 for Radiolab. The best explanation I've come up with for it so far is that it's a variety series of incredibly well-produced audio micro-documentaries. I listened to one on a whim (Bigger than Bacon, which was about the mystery of a crackling sound one of their reporters used to hear at boat dock near their house) and was immediately hooked. It finds the perfect balance between being educational and entertaining.
I also love their More Perfect podcast. It's worth a listen for anyone who wishes they knew more about the US Supreme Court but doesn't actually want to devote any time to the subject. They manage to find the human interest side to each story and present them in a way that keeps you on the edge of your seat, despite the fact that in most of the cases I knew how the cases would turn out.
As for my complete list and why I like them, it's pretty short:
- Accidental Tech Podcast - Three guys talking about tech and cars. They play well off each other and, between the three, usually have some decent insight into the tech community and how it interacts with a mostly inscrutable company (i.e. Apple).- Radiolab - See above
- Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - See above
- Serial - Everyone and their grandma listens to this one, so it needs no explanation
- Under the Radar - Two guys talking iOS development. I'm not in the space, but it's always under 30 minutes, they stay on topic, and they frequently provide a veteran's perspective that runs contrary to what an outsider like me might think makes sense, so I find it to be a decent listen. Others will likely find it boring.
I'm also going to give the just-begun The Important Thing a shot in the next few days, since the guy doing it writes a frequently-insightful blog that I really enjoy reading and is typically really good on the other podcasts I've heard him on. I expect it'll become part of my usual group of podcasts, but I can't yet offer that recommendation.
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Re:It's dramatic how quickly the shift happened
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Re:Population density
And once again, the average American's commute time is 25.4 minutes.
We're talking about distance, not time, Han Solo.
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Re:Population density
And once again, the average American's commute time is 25.4 minutes.
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Re:Infrastructure vs Independence
Average commute times in the US are 25.4 minutes. Just how many people do you think your scenario cover as a percentage of the population of the United States?
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Re:It's about landmass
How many suburbs are so far away that newer EVs can't make the drive without a charge? Seriously, you're reaching very hard to try to justify continuing use of gasoline-burning vehicles where that justification is shrinking rapidly.
And no one says that all uses of gasoline or diesel vehicles are out, or that EVs are for everyone, but if urbanization is your argument, it's absurd. According to this site, average commute times in the United States are 25.4 minutes.
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Re:BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN
In 1963, a guy named Vaungh Meader released a comedy album about the Kennedies, "The First Family".
Among the skits,was a press conference, in which President Kennedy was asked, "When will we send a man to the Moon", and the answer was, "Whenever Senator Goldwater wants to go. . . "
Just update it with Obama, Mars, and Donald Trump. . .
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Re:A suggestion
My son subjects me to awful contemporary pop music and it's surprising how much of it appears to lack much in the way of instrumentation. Quite often it's *just* a simple beat with repetitive rapping type lyrics, which often seems more like yelling than singing.
Yes, actual real professional musicians. There was an exceptionally interesting bit about modern Pop music on Studio 360 a few weeks ago. http://www.wnyc.org/story/hit-...
Present day pop music is indeed a factory. Computer generated, and people "pick" the songs they will have hits of. Zero creativity, and one funny part is how two separate "artists" picked the same music to do. As well as today's op music, with it's multitude of hooks with no music meat in between, you have music made for ADHD people. And that's no joke.
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Re:Wait a minute...
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... CPR has a success rate of ... 6%For what it's worth, CPR is a last ditch procedure, only recommended when the patient is otherwise effectively dead. You're improving a 0% survival to a 6% one.
Upon "survival", with a 50 % chance being a veggie. Have you ever seen a brain dead human on live support, maybe a loved one?
The convulsions, twitching, empty eyes, nobody home?
By my papers, very bad odds ending up like that and doctors being in the business opt out to almost 100 %:http://www.radiolab.org/story/...
http://www.wnyc.org/i/raw/1/Ga...
Give me pain relieve, all else sucks!
http://www.cepamerica.com/news...By default in US, CPR will happen unless you have two documents on your body, preferable on your chest:
- Advanced Directive for Surgical/Medical Treatment (Living Will)
- Patient's or Authorized Agent's Directive to Withhold CPR
(may differ from state to state)If you have to take off, and you will - at least, do it in dignity and at your own terms!
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Re:Wait a minute...
So you know shit about CPR, the results of it and the working of respirators. Why should we listen to you?
Sure - a "We" person, how cute - here you go, Mr. or Ms. "We":
http://www.radiolab.org/story/...
in there:A chart of doctor responses from the Precursors Study:
http://www.wnyc.org/i/raw/1/Ga...and from there:
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/20...
Now we see a huge Japanese study of more than 400,000 people who experienced out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, published in the JAMA on March 21, 2012. Approximately 18% of those who were administered CPR and epinephrine did achieve spontaneous circulation but fewer than 5% survived 1 month and fewer than 2% survived 1 month with good or moderate cerebral performance.Maybe you are watching too much TV?
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/...
keep trying...
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Emotional investment
I find that many people claiming aging is absolutely inevitable are suffering from a case of sour grapes. SENS is a very real, very realizable goal. The human body is of limited complexity and we're putting the pieces of the puzzle together fast. Skepticism is understandable, after all people have been promising cures for aging ever since the emperor of China ate mercury. But recent advances show real promise and are based on real research.
It's popular to say one wishes for death at an arbitrary age... until one is that age and it's time to try to live or try to die. The upshot of recent newsis there's a very real chance that the first person to reach escape velocity is already alive. Here's to hope for a prosperous and very long life for each of us. -
it's got to be the genes
"The pot of money is up for grabs, for any runner, anywhere in the world."
Really?? The post fails to mention the most important factor in running long distances fast: being Kenyan, or specifically, being Kalenjin.
From http://www.wnyc.org/story/how-... :
"""Kenyan Wilson Kipsang won this year's [2013] Berlin Marathon in 2 hours, 3 minutes and 23 seconds [...]. It was easily the fastest marathon time ever recorded [...].
But perhaps equally remarkable was that his fellow Kenyans also came in second, third, fourth and fifth place in this major international race. On the women's side, Kenyans placed first, second and fourth.
Two weeks later in Chicago, Kenyan runner Dennis Kimetto broke the course record there -- after only having run for four years. Next in line behind him? Three more Kenyans. [...]
while we tend to think of Kenyans as really good distance runners, all these runners are actually from the same tribe of Kenyans known as the Kalenjin. They number around 5 million, making them a small minority, even in Kenya [...]
"There are 17 American men in history who have run under 2:10 in the marathon," Epstein says. "There were 32 Kalenjin who did it in October of 2011." """
From http://www.theatlantic.com/int... :
"""In 1990, the Copenhagen Muscle Research Center compared post-pubescent schoolboys there to Sweden's famed national track team [...]. The study found that boys on the high school track team in Iten, Kenya, consistently outperformed the professional Swedish runners. The researchers estimated that the average Kalenjin could outrun 90% of the global population, and that at least 500 amateur high school students in Iten alone could defeat Sweden's greatest professional runner at the 2,000-meter.
A 2000 Danish Sports Science Institute investigation reproduced the earlier study, giving a large group of Kalenjin boys three months of training and then comparing them to Thomas Nolan, a Danish track superstar. When the Kalenjin boys trounced him, the researchers -- who had also conducted a number of physical tests and compared them against established human averages -- CONCLUDED THAT KALENJINS MUST HAVE AN INBORN, PHYSICAL, GENETIC ADVANTAGE."""
What's truly amazing is how people try so hard to find any excuse to deny the genetic evidence. "Eugenics deniers" are far worse than "climate change deniers" in that the scientific evidence for eugenics is far greater than even that for anthropomorphic global warming.
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Re:P.S.A. in you live in NYC
well, im sure glad i didn't bring you as my attorney to correct the judge when he ruled in my favor. point is, there IS ambiguity, and cops ARE using it as a means to generate extra revenue. Don't roll over and pay if you get ticketed and can afford to fight.
decent article on it: http://www.wnyc.org/story/2842... -
Why So Few Fatal Bike Crashes Lead to Arrest - NYC
Nothing new here. In NYC criminal prosecution doesn't occur unless the driver broke two laws while hitting the pedestrian or cyclist.
A couple of quotes from that article, statements by one of the prosecutors in the Bronx about why these cases don't get prosecuted:
"We as a society have chosen to drive these big cars," said Joe McCormack, Assistant District Attorney for the Bronx. It's his job to prosecute traffic crimes. "And we also as a society have chosen not to criminalize every single small mistake that just has a dramatic consequence because you're driving a car," he said.and
"There are times where the factual situation that is presented to us doesn't rise to a crime," McCormack said. "And it's important to realize that the reason it doesn't rise to a crime is that society has made that decision that it doesn't want it to be a crime."
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how about a dose of common sense?
Or, you could just actually use the access controls already built into your systems and train your people to not share their credentials.
No, it's much better to go from criminally negligent and sloppy to overreacting and stomping all over everybody's freedoms. -
Re:Not just the government.
I tried New York's system and it kept insisting that I wasn't a real person. This was after I entered in personal information which, as the victim of identity theft, made me very uncomfortable entering into an online form (Social Security number, date of birth, etc) but that I rationalized was needed for this process. I did eventually get in, but via a roundabout way that involved signing up for an account with the DMV. Don't ask me what the DMV has to do with health care (beyond using the same login schema).
Yes, but after you signed up through the exchange, did you ever get an insurance card (or even a bill?) from your NY provider? Empire Blue Cross of New York is dropping the ball on their applicants long after they get the data from their exchange.
I've added them and a few more to the list of incompetent insurance carriers, with news stories on BCBS Texas and Illinois as well as Anthem Blue Cross CA.
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Re:Show time
ask your friends and family whether they would consider a ban on non-automated driving acceptable.
Most of my friends and family are old and stuck in their ways. Ask a kid. Kids don't even care if they get a drivers license anymore. The idea of driving=freedom is old fashioned, unsustainable, and destined to die.
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Watch it from start to finish
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM Sugar, the bitter truth.
Also
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/heresthething/2012/jul/02/
(transcript)
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/heresthething/2012/jul/02/transcript/Just try, for 2 weeks - see just how hard it is.
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Watch it from start to finish
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM Sugar, the bitter truth.
Also
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/heresthething/2012/jul/02/
(transcript)
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/heresthething/2012/jul/02/transcript/Just try, for 2 weeks - see just how hard it is.
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Cars are dying, so...
The rate at which 16-year-olds are getting driver's licenses is dropping quickly, so it makes sense that anything attached to the car industry is going to be in its end days (see WNYC report). Look at who's buying cars, too - baby boomers are far more likely than young adults to be buying cars (see NBC Business report). They have the money, plus they've had decades of conditioning that a car is a necessity of life. Young folk haven't been brainwashed, and are far more likely to structure their lives to use more efficient and enjoyable modes of transportation (walking, biking, public transit). Once the baby boomers are too old to drive, I bet this entire sector of the economy will shrink rapidly.
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Re:I've lived it - you haven't
$175K in NYC doesn't go far when even a crappy condo can easily cost $500K
AH yes, because medical jobs in NYC probably pay the mean salary. Just like every other job in an expensive urban area pays shit wages.
And if you're making $175k in NYC, you're living nicely. Stop with the whining - 175k is well above the median for every borough of NYC, and in fact, there are only a few areas where the median household income (not individual) exceeds that: http://project.wnyc.org/acs2011/income.html#12.00/40.7310/-73.9809. Boo hoo, you might have trouble affording the Upper East Side, but there's precious few other places in NYC where you wouldn't be one of the richest motherfuckers in the neighborhood on $175k per year.
You're just another 1%-er, asking for our sympathy because "gosh guys, you don't even know how hard it is to find a good car service to ferry me around the city! If they keep raising their prices, I may have to stop buying my entire office $200 worth of Starbucks coffee every day!"
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Better kick Bloomberg out, as a start...
Just remember what happened when New York decided to use technology to solve a little payroll challenge...
Hiring SAIC to do something was bad enough, letting the project get so out of hand that the cost increased by a factor of ten, half a billion dollars of which was recovered by the feds as being directly tainted by fraud...
The rest of the participants should probably just tell mean jokes about the Bloomberg terminal's embarrassing little spying-on-customers-who-really-don't-like-that problem until he goes away.
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Credibility, Lost
You lost your credibility in the second line:
Perhaps the decade long dearth of any good television is nearing its end!
In chronological order, an abbreviated list:
- Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000)
- The Shield (2002)
- The Wire (2002)
- Arrested Development (2003)
- Deadwood (2004)
- Battlestar Galactica (2004)
- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005)
- Lost (2006)
- 30 Rock (2006)
- Friday Night Lights (2006)
- Dexter (2006)
- Big Love (2006)
- Mad Men (2007)
- Breaking Bad (2008)
- Parks and Recreation (2009)
- Party Down (2009)
- Community (2009)
- Louie (2010)
- Downton Abbey (2010)
- Homeland (2011)
Yeah, it's been a pretty crappy decade. (Any show listed before 2003 had a significant number of episodes in 2003 and beyond.) There are a lot of people out there that feel that this is the new golden age of television.
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Re:No-fly list should be a no fly
Haven't you heard? He's a great president.
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Possible $30,000 Fine For $300 Rental
It's not just in Amsterdam but also in New Amsterdam - this is playing now on New York Public Radio's morning news program:
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Re:Don't PANIC!
You live below sea level.
YOU FAIL!
Well, Some parts of Manhattan Island aren't much better...some areas of lower Manhattan are only about 5ft above sea level.
And, over 300 yrs ago...when people were settling in NOLA....they didn't exactly have GPS and all to see what levels are. And, even with that..it is quite important as a port city at the mouth of the MS river into the Gulf.
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Re:This device empowers criminals.
If you're getting frisked, we're no longer talking about "law abiding citizens".
LOL! You aren't familiar with NYC and NYPD.
I could go on (and on and on and on), but if you really are interested a google search will suffice...
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Re:umm
I want to add one thing, though. It's not just the President:
"Both houses of Congress denied Obama's funding requests to shut down Guantanamo and relocate the most dangerous prisoners to the United States. The vote in the Senate was 90-6; all but a half-dozen Democrats opposed their own President. That is why I was optimistic, but only cautiously so."
http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/its-free-blog/2010/dec/02/leaked-cables-demonstrate-guantanamo-dilemma/
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Re:IE Patch
Sure, here you can't smoke in pubs and clubs etc anymore, but smoking in public is still allowed.
http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2010/oct/14/new-york-city-considers-public-smoking-ban/
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Re:Enforcing culture...?
Really. This is a studied phenomenon; those who don't know words for things have a nearly impossible time using the "thing" in their thoughts (be it a noun, verb, adverb, etc.) Child development can be marked by what words they learn and when; prior to learning certain words they will blatantly fail simple logic tests that those with a full vocabulary have no problem passing. If you are curious, there was an *excellent* RadioLab piece on this very subject, available here: http://blogs.wnyc.org/radiolab/2010/08/09/words/
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Re:Enforcing culture...?
Your children probably had cognitive functions before language, but then lots of animals besides humans have cognitive functions too, and don't have as complex a linguistic structure as human speech.
For example, according to this Radio Lab episode, rats can be trained to find food behind the left door, and they can be trained to find food behind the blue door, but they only find food 50% of the time if they have to find the food behind the door to the left of the blue wall.
And children up to the age of about 4? 5? 6? (I can't remember anymore, but well past learning to talk) have the same deficiency. Also, so do adults, if you give them a demanding verbal task to do at the same time.
So, I'd have to agree with GP: It's pretty difficult to think about things you have no words for.
Unless (s)he meant that it is impossible to do so. It is possible, but clearly very, very difficult.
Here's the link. The experiment with the rats starts at about 11 minutes in and the kids version starts at around 15 minutes in (on the podcast, anyway, which has an extra intro)
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Re:Thoughts.
Along with the TAL episode, check out this Radio Lab show on memory and forgetting. Our memory is a strange and beautifully imperfect self reinforcing system that modifies its self enjoy your time with your wife and treasure the experiences you have with her. They will be worth more than anything you collect. http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/06/08
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Re:If a game like this didn't make money
The people who play those games should be filtered out of life by having their money taken away from them until they don't have enough to pay for the basics of life.
Ann Klinestiver will be glad to know you approve of her former predicament.
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2009/09/11/segments/133414 -
Re:It makes sense
After all, America is the country that was sure it was being attacked by Martians only a couple generations ago, when Orson Welles did his "War of the Worlds" radio show.
Radiolab did an episode on this a while back. Welles timed the broadcast so that people would tune from the bogus big band show and hear the opening to the immensely popular Bergen & McCarthy show before flipping back in time to hear the "special bulletin" and conveniently missing the disclaimer that it was all a work of fiction. -
Re:Computer Solving Physics - brain like
or the actual radiolab link: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2010/04/16/segments/149570
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Re:Orson wells, WTF?
This is correct, except it's spelled "Welles."
There are also a number of very good reason why people thought the radio episode was actual news reporting, outlined in this Radiolab episode.
There was a disclaimer at the beginning of the broadcast, which most people missed. There was a (fictitious) musical act "scheduled" for the show. The music was first interrupted to bring "breaking news" of "explosions seen on Mars." The next interruption reported that the explosions were rockets leaving the surface of mars, and a third said they were heading towards earth. Every time a report was finished, the music returned, leaving people to wonder. Every time there was another interruption, the whole thing gained more credibility.
Then they brought in actors portraying astronomers, government officials, and others, all of this offered up with the seriousness of the Hindenburg coverage--which Welles listed as one of his inspirations. One of the freakier parts that gave me chills even knowing it was fake is an on-scene reporter at the landing site. He sees something come out of the spacecraft, and it attacks the soldiers in front of him (with requisite gunfire and other sound effects). The reporter is emotionally distraught but still trying to report when suddenly---silence, he is cut off in mid-sentence. There's a good five or ten seconds of silence, which is almost unheard of on radio even today.
Welles knew what he was doing. He knew that War of the Worlds presented as originally told would be stale and get no listeners. He wanted to trick people, though he originally denied it, in order to teach them not to believe everything they see or hear from mass media. The lesson has obviously not been learned--people have pulled the same stunt successfully at least 3 times, discussed on Radiolab along with the occasionally disastrous results, and this makes a fourth.
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Radio LabRadio Lab did a great radio story about 3 different iterations of the War of the Worlds broadcast - Welles' version, one in Central America and one in upstate New York in the 70's.
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This happens all the time.
I heard a Radiolab episode all about War of the Worlds, the original broadcast and repeat performances all over the world. "From Santiago, Chile to Buffalo, New York to a particularly disastrous evening in Quito, Ecuador." This doesn't surprise me in the least, and it wouldn't be any more surprising if it happened in Kansas or California. The backlash has been worse than the threat of lawsuits--several employees of the news agency in Quito were killed when people realized they'd been tricked and stormed the news building, setting fire to it with them inside.
Welles' point, explained by him in an audio clip during the show, was to get people to realize that they can't automatically believe what they hear on the radio or any form of mass media. It's a lesson that never sank in, which is what makes it possible to continue pulling these stunts.
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Re:Set Theory
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2009/10/09 was where I heard most of it.
An example of the endpoint thing, specifically dealing with Amazon tribesmen: They'd ask them what's halfway between one and nine, and the answer would be three. These are experiments dealing with adults, not children, who've never been exposed to the type of math used worldwide. It's much harder to do this sort of thing with children, because we don't let them grow up isolated and "corrupt" them with modern math as soon as we're able.
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Re:Pfft
I started using Linux in 1999 and it was definitely a hobbyist OS at the time. Today, Ubuntu provides a very nice user environment, is largely crash free, and certainly performs well. If anything the Windows UI is what seems to suck to me. The major issue remains momentum. Linux OSes achieving feature parity isn't good enough to knock Windows off the OS throne.
It is interesting because it says a lot about the value of free, and human behavior. Free isn't as enticing as we thought, unless it is exactly the same product minus the cost. People would generally pay for a known safe choice than learn a device that should do all the same things. In summary, the OS game is generally Microsoft's to lose.
As an example there is the case of IE where Microsoft screwed up and lost market share. We would still be bitching about IE6 if there weren't serious risks that were widely discussed that scared users over to the generally accepted alternative browser Firefox. We can win converts to open source when companies screw up, but simply building a better browser wasn't sufficient. In part because it wasn't better in any way that users understood.
So to boil down the situation to one has a crap GUI or a crap kernel is certainly an easy argument. Although it is one of pure opinion. The situation is far more complicated. Users make choices based on a range of reasons with heavy bias to the incumbent. It makes me think of the European browser choice system. How much would it affect the market if users were provided a boot-time choice with a variety of free OSes and Windows, where the users had to pay for Windows after they bought the computer rather than pre-paying and enticed to try free?
It reminds me of the very interesting WNYC Radio Lab episode on Choice. http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2008/11/14
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Musical DNA
An earlier (2006) piece about David Cope's EMI program was part of the Radiolab podcast. You can listen to it at:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/04/21/segments/58293