Not a happy camper this morning… Oliver-Quinn Spring ‘12 (Taken with Instagram)

emergentfutures:

Is Bioengineering More Efficient Humans the Solution to Climate Change?

A new paper, published in Ethics, Policy, and the Environment by NYU bioethics professor S. Matthew Liao, poses an answer: engineer humans to use less. The general plan laid out by Liao is straightforward, ranging from using pharmacological behavior modification to create an aversion to meat in people, to using gene therapy to create smaller, less resource-intensive children. The philosophical and ethical questions, on the other hand, are absurdly complicated.

Full Story: Mother Board

soupsoup:

Apple Is Now Bigger Than The Entire US Retail Sector

emergentfutures:

Computer Scientists Create Algorithm That Measures Human Pecking Order

The way people copy each other’s linguistic style reveals their pecking order and so could help rank the power of individuals in online discussions

Paul Higgins: One wonders where the flamers and the haters would sit. I am pretty sure that where they think they sit and where others think they sit are totally different.

Full Story: Technology Review

Mitt Romney, flubbing his own first name, which is actually Willard.

The line came after CNN host Wolf Blitzer, moderator for last night’s GOP debate, asked the candidates to introduce themselves and urged them to keep it short with the following example: “I’m Wolf Blitzer, and yes, that’s my real name.”

parislemon:

*No Facebook employee is actually on an assembly line building phone hardware.

There are two things I like about the AllThingsD (or as John Gruber likes to call them “some website”) report on the “Facebook Phone”.

1) The complete and utter lack of any link to or mention of TechCrunch even though we broke this story over a year ago.

Do they have new information? Yes, namely the codename, “Buffy”, and the partnership with HTC. But it is the same project, as they even acknowledge: “Although it has changed scope and leadership, Buffy has been an ongoing area of concern at the social networking giant for the past two years.”

2) While Facebook denied the project at the time of our report, there’s no question it has been real the entire time. I’m going to stick by what I wrote last September: Facebook Is Not Working On A Phone Just Like Google Was Not Working On A Phone.

In that post, I outlined exactly what these new reports suggest. Namely that Facebook has been working on their own version of Android with social deeply ingrained — which Dan Frommer was first to point out on Business Insider also over a year ago, and I reiterated hearing this past February. And working with a third-party to manufacturer the hardware (again, HTC). 

Read More

emergentfutures:

UK’s debts ‘biggest in the world’

“According to the consulting firm, by the end of March this year, the aggregate indebtedness of the UK - that’s the sum of household debts, company debts, government debts and bank debts - had risen to 492% of GDP, or almost five times the value of everything we produce in a single year.

That compares with 481% at the end of 2008.”

Full Story: BBC

First attempt at Violin for Oliver Quinn O’Keefe, age 2 (@Boston Symphony Hall)