CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-25 01:55:52 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

New Details on the Unroyal End of Richard III, 'King in the Car Park' | Wired Science  http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/king-richard-iii-grave/

2013-05-24 20:56:12 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 3 +1s)

The future that Norbert Weiner (founder of cybernetics) foresaw in 1949 is now coming to pass...

2013-05-24 17:11:01 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Did similar detours bring terrorism to streets of #Boston and #London? http://ow.ly/lmu2k

2013-05-24 14:16:44 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

"Although sexual violence has decreased nationwide over the past two decades, that downward trend cannot be taken for granted because we do not know why it happened. And, regardless, the number of incidents remains shockingly high. Within the military, 6.1 percent of female servicemembers and 1.2 percent of male servicemembers reported unwanted sexual contact in 2012. The prevalence of sexual assault within the ranks is a snapshot of the crisis facing the United States, where "13% of women and 6% of men are sexually coerced in their lifetimes," according to the CDC.

Military officials' attempts to blame the crisis on American society have understandably been clumsy. During a May 7 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Gen. Welsh attributed the rates of sexual assault in the military, in part, to the "hookup mentality of junior high." He later apologized for the... more »

2013-05-24 14:12:59 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

You know it's going to be an interesting weekend when the packing list includes both a chainsaw and a guitar.

And where does one buy 40lb propane cylinders in the Boston area?

2013-05-23 22:54:30 (4 comments, 4 reshares, 12 +1s)

'We Have Always Fought': Challenging the 'Women, Cattle and Slaves' Narrative

"Women have always fought. Shaka Zulu had an all-female force of fighters. Women have been part of every resistance movement. Women dressed as men and went to war, went to sea, and participated actively in combat for as long as there have been people...Half the world is full of women, but it’s rare to hear a narrative that doesn’t speak of women as the people who have things done to them instead of the people who do things." - Kameron Hurley

Read the full blog: http://bit.ly/WomenHaveAlwaysFought

2013-05-23 17:12:32 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 4 +1s)

2013-05-23 14:27:40 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 13 +1s)

NASA's Homer Hickam (yes, that Homer Hickam, portrayed in October Sky) collects enough money for the girl and her sister to go to Space Camp.

Rock on.

2013-05-23 14:24:10 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

Satellite view of Moore tornado destruction.

2013-05-22 20:07:14 (2 comments, 2 reshares, 7 +1s)

In 1979, McDonald’s introduced the Happy Meal.

Sometime after that, it was decided that the Bible teaches that human life begins at conception.

Ask any American evangelical, today, what the Bible says about abortion and they will insist that this is what it says. (Many don’t actually believe this, but they know it is the only answer that won’t get them in trouble.) They’ll be a little fuzzy on where, exactly, the Bible says this, but they’ll insist that it does.

That’s new. If you had asked American evangelicals that same question the year I was born you would not have gotten the same answer.

h/t +Jorgen Schäfer 
thought I'd followed some random links to here, I've been bouncing around all day :-P

2013-05-22 16:23:34 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

This is a really big, impressive change from Google, "conversational search" that's now live for those with Chrome.

2013-05-22 14:42:53 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Defamation charges for Instagram 'slut-shaming'

"Two Swedish teenage girls were officially charged with defamation on Tuesday for their involvement in the "slut-shaming" Instagram account that saw enraged teens in Gothenburg lay siege to two high schools last year."

2013-05-21 22:37:09 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

New on the blog: The new flickr design 

http://www.chuqui.com/2013/05/the-new-flickr-design/

2013-05-21 13:48:13 (19 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

If Apple doesn't come up with an answer to Google Now, they're going to become just another commodity platform.

They can do it. They know who I've called, who I've texted, where I'm driving, where my home and work and friends live. They actually have more data available to them on the iPhone, than the Google application does. But it's going to be an uphill battle, because Google knows so much more about what I search for on and off the iPhone.

The more data you have about me personally, as well as everyone else using the system, the better job you can do providing relevant information. And there's no way that Apple is going to match the data that Google has. They can make up for it a little with platform integration, and ease-of-use. But those are ephemeral gains. In the end, what they really need is a search engine, and I can't imagine that Microsoft... more »

2013-05-20 18:26:19 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

❝ majority are given to healthy animals…to compensate for unsanitary and overcrowded living conditions. ❞

2013-05-20 17:19:30 (7 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

An interesting editorial on the issues about Benghazi that neither side is talking about (presumably because there are no political points to score).

2013-05-20 17:14:58 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 3 +1s)

Ten million people live in Seoul, the heart of a huge sprawl that is home to half of the Republic of Korea's 49 million people. It is a hard-charging, high-pressure, high-tech hub of the 21st-century global economy – and sits in the cross hairs of an enemy who seems unaware the cold war ended a generation ago. http://ow.ly/lctqf

2013-05-19 14:44:14 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

How Drug Companies Keep Medicine Out of Reach

❝ Bill Gates, speaking to the Royal Academy of Engineers in London last March, managed to capture the problem that Love's idea would be leveled against: "Our priorities are tilted by marketplace imperatives," Gates said. "The malaria vaccine, in humanist terms, is the biggest need, but it gets virtually no funding. If you are working on male baldness or the other things you get an order of magnitude more researching funding because of the voice in the marketplace." ❞

2013-05-19 14:34:41 (0 comments, 8 reshares, 31 +1s)

2013-05-19 01:15:55 (3 comments, 3 reshares, 10 +1s)

sexy doesn't mean slut

I write. A lot about being sensual and feeling sexy and how to be comfortable in your own skin. I’m now unashamed of my body and it’s taken thirty something 40 years to feel this way.This has caused me some pain actually because as we all know sometimes we have to bounce off the walls to  find the middle… pendulum style. Bouncing hurts. Swinging too far the other way has it’s consequences. So let me elaborate as only I can do…

Just because a woman feels sensual and claims such does not give you the right to automatically think:

1. she’s talking to me

2. she’s talking about me

3. i can say whatever i like in whatever manner i choose to her because she LIKES sex

4. sensuality means i can be degrading in a sexually derogatory manner

5. she wants to bang me

A woman that likessex is not aut... more »

2013-05-18 17:05:39 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

2013-05-18 16:48:43 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Why Manhattan's Green Roofs Don't Work--and How to Fix Them: City rooftops covered with vegetation are seen as a way to reduce the urban heat-island effect and cut energy usage--but so far, the results have been unimpressive http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-manhattans-green-roofs-dont-work-how-to-fix-them

2013-05-17 17:47:19 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

This is interesting. Amnesty International accesses your Facebook information, and determines what types of crimes you could be convicted of around the globe.

http://www.trialbytimeline.org.nz/

(H/T +Alison Marlowe)

2013-05-17 14:19:27 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

New England's only exclusively science fiction theatre company.

I had no idea this existed.

❝ About Us

Our Past Productions

This will be Science Fiction Theatre Company’s fourth production.

Dark Matters followed a woman and her family coping with the idea that she may have been the victim of an alien abduction.

On Ego was the story of routine teleportation gone wrong resulting in two versions of the protagonist. He had to make the ultimate sacrifice to allow his other self to live on.

Our last show Man in the Couch was about a soldier being teleported into a woman’s living room. Only problem is now he’s fused with her couch.

If you haven’t caught on yet we like SciFi. Especially shows that have those make it or break it moments. Like teleporting a person into a couch. In front of the audience. Andmaking it... more »

2013-05-17 13:41:53 (12 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

Pat Robertson: "What you want to do is make a home so wonderful that he doesn't want to wander"

❝ "Here's the secret," the famous evangelical said. "Stop talking the cheating. He cheated on you, well, he's a man."

The wife needs to focus on the reasons she married her spouse, he continued.

"Does he provide a home for you to live in," Robertson said. 'Does he provide food for you to eat? Does he provide clothes for you to wear? Is he nice to the children... Is he handsome?" ❞

2013-05-17 13:37:54 (6 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

Republicans alter Benghazi emails?

I've been trying to ignore this tempest in a teapot, but this is getting ridiculous. If think it's time for the White House to respond to every Benghazi query with "I'm sorry, we have more important things  to worry about than a trumped up, fake scandal. Next question?"

2013-05-17 02:22:19 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

This looks promising.  I think the following from the series description says it all...

Back at the club, White Trash Billy, a hip-hop oil worker, has developed a fondness for blond-haired Aslaug and asks her to dance at his bachelor party. Guter becomes jealous, performs a violent dance routine for Billy, and gets suspended from Bordello's. To make matters worse, Aslaug becomes miserably homesick when she learns her estranged father was released from the German prison where he built Ikea furniture. Guter knows Aslaug's father is living in America, but to keep Aslaug dancing in North Dakota, she withholds the secret. Until Aslaug sees a photo of her father on the bingo hall bulletin board...

2013-05-17 01:56:40 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Why Congress's "useless" attempts to repeal ObamaCare have an impact.

❝ There was a great study on this phenomena last year that used speed limits as a restriction. It found that research subjects were generally okay with the new regulation, unless they were told there was a chance the city council would repeal it. Add that information in, and opinions about the law became significantly more negative. ❞

2013-05-17 01:53:38 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

IT Industry Ignores Silver Surfers at Its Peril: Design for Seniors to Tap Market, Industry Urged

❝ Hardware and software vendors are foolish to ignore the needs of the growing population of older computer and information technology users, the so-called "silver surfers." US researchers offer convincing evidence in a monograph to be published in the International Journal of Intercultural Information Management that from the business perspective, seniors represent a rapidly growing sector of the market with the most disposable income to spend on these companies' products. ❞

2013-05-17 01:29:54 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Let's start a movement to refer to trolls as hoydens.

❝ Hoyden is a curiosity because it once referred exclusively to men. We may now look indulgently on hoydenish young women but male hoydens were considered to be rude, ignorant, awkward or boorish. In 1593, Thomas Nashe (its first recorded user) wrote disparagingly of the hoydens of Trinity Hall at the University of Cambridge. Its members were exclusively male at the time, as they continued to be until 1977, when the college admitted its first female undergraduates. ❞

2013-05-17 01:23:27 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

What the heck is a liripipe?

We were examining Mollie's Master's Hood ("Chaperon", and yes, the word chaperone derives from the hood) and wondering what on earth the odd tail on the "hood" was.

❝ Nobody seems to know much about the origin of this word, except that it comes from medieval Latin liripipium, variously explained down the centuries as the tippet of a hood, a cord, a shoe-lace and the inner sole-leather of shoes. This suggests strongly that nobody has the slightest idea what it really meant. ❞

2013-05-17 00:49:15 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

The age determination of a deep-drill core from the Pacific Ocean showed that the supernova explosion must have occurred about 2.2 million years ago, roughly around the time when the modern human developed. Isotopic inspection of bacterial fossils containing tiny crystals of magnetite (Fe3O4) show some iron isotopes that would have decayed by now if not caused by a very recent supernova. We know lots more about the (pre-Noah) past than some folks allow into their philosophy, alas.  In this case, it makes you envision our australopithecine forebears staring up, in wonder.  And changing.

http://www.tum.de/en/about-tum/news/press-releases/short/article/30832/

2013-05-16 23:31:44 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 5 +1s)

Oh My Goodness

This is not quite . . . funny.

2013-05-16 19:13:27 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

BBQ Nation!
Lexington Battle-Green BBQ Festival.

Great BBQ to Eat! Great Live Music! State Championship BBQ Cookoff!

Saturday May 19 11-7!
Sunday May 20 noon-4!

Admission is $5. Under 13 free with adult. A portion of the proceeds go to the LABBB Programs for students with special needs.

2013 Registered Teams:
Hullabaloo BBQ Lexington, MA
Fatback Joe's BBQ Hampden, MA
Crazy Smoke N. Attleboro, MA
Que and a Half Men Rockland, MA
Chain Smokers Danvers, MA
ZBQ Cumberland, RI
Hart Attack Hopkinton, MA
Smokin' Hoggz BBQ Abington, MA
Howling Hog Barbecue E. Randolph, VT
Triple Barrel BBQ Plymouth, MA
Smokin Aces
Chicopee, MA
Rub This! BBQ Shrewsbury, MA
The Basic BBQ Team Hyannis, MA
Wizard of Qz Woburn, MA
DJ Smoke Sudbury, MA
Smoking Section BBQ Sharon, MA... more »

2013-05-16 16:49:31 (5 comments, 3 reshares, 6 +1s)

Inspired by +Lauren Weinstein and +Sai's posts on Google+'s poor handling of long text posts, I've updated +Replies and More to auto-expand text posts. 

This will automatically click the "Read More" link, and hide the "Show Less" link. Since +Replies and More is opinionated software, I've turned this on by default.

2013-05-16 12:34:31 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Something to consider. Useful not only in our everyday lives but also for world building, writing, and game design.

2013-05-16 01:24:41 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Anyone have a 2000 or later copy of Neuromancer? +Shireen Hinckley is looking for the full quote about this from the afterward for a paper:

In his afterword to the 2000 re-issue of Neuromancer, fellow author Jack Womack suggests that Gibson's vision of cyberspace may have inspired the way in which the Internet (and the Web particularly) developed, following the publication of Neuromancer in 1984, asking "what if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?"[139]

2013-05-15 20:42:33 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Not cool, Monsanto.

Lawmakers in Vermont are looking to regulate food labels so customers can know which products are made from genetically modified crops, but agricultural giants Monsanto say they will sue if the state follows through.

If the bill in question, H-722 (the “VT Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act”) passes the state Senate and House, manufacturers will be required to label products that are created either partially or in full from a genetically modified organism, or GMO. Such man-made crops have become a trademark of the billion-dollar Monsanto corporation, and in the past the company has gone to great lengths to keep themselves the number-one name in American agriculture, even if those profits are made possible from playing God.

Monsanto is going mad over the proposal, however, which would also make them unable to label their productions as“na... more »

2013-05-15 20:38:24 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

This won't have a large impact on developing nations AT ALL...I say with blatant #sarcasm  

2013-05-15 14:55:12 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

❝ Pretty soon everyone's going to have a mental disorder or two or three, and it's time we reconsider how we want to define this and whether the definitions should be in the hands of the drug companies, which is very much what's happened in recent years. ❞

2013-05-15 14:44:49 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Homeland SEcurity has frozen accounts between Dwolla and bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox.

This should be interesting, but it looks like BitCoin is headed back to being an underground currency.

2013-05-15 14:02:33 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

The Augustan Age. "forged amidst creeping tyranny and the demands of literary propaganda"

❝ Called the Augustan Age, it was a golden age of literature with Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphosis among its treasures. But they were forged amidst creeping tyranny and the demands of literary propaganda. Augustus tightened public morals, funded architectural renewal and prosecuted adultery. Ovid was exiled for his saucy love poems but Virgil's Aeneid, a celebration of Rome's grand purpose, was supported by the regime.
Indeed, Augustus saw literature, architecture, culture and morality as vehicles for his values. He presented his regime as a return to old Roman virtues of forbearance, valour and moral rectitude, but he created a very new form of power. He was the first Roman Emperor and, above all, he established the idea that Rome would be an empire without end. ❞

2013-05-15 13:34:22 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 13 +1s)

Take That!

I can't help but giggle.  This is so delightfully snarky.  Looks like they should have let the new Merida keep her bow.  :p

http://www.dorktower.com/2013/05/14/princess-makeover-dork-tower-14-05-13/

2013-05-14 22:36:08 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 7 +1s)

A brilliant reversal of gender stereotypes from a wicked smart and talented team. Well done. 

2013-05-14 16:59:16 (7 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Any publicity is…um…you know what? I’m not even sure anymore. #nsfw

2013-05-14 15:28:13 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Is Your State's Highest-Paid Employee A Coach? (Probably)

h/t +Blake Ulmer

2013-05-14 15:04:58 (4 comments, 4 reshares, 5 +1s)

Commander +Chris Hadfield talks about the guitar on the ISS, and some of the aspects of playing guitar while weightless.

via today's XKCD What-If on the cost of shooting a video on the ISS http://what-if.xkcd.com/45/

2013-05-14 14:27:52 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

2013-05-14 14:16:05 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Commute Listening: The Silk Road on In Our Time

❝ Melvyn Bragg and guests Tim Barrett, Naomi Standen and Frances Wood discuss the Silk Road, the trade routes which spanned Asia for over a thousand years, carrying Buddhism to China and paper-making and gunpowder westwards.

In 1900, a Taoist monk came upon a cave near the Chinese town of Dunhuang. Inside, he found thousands of ancient manuscripts. They revealed a vast amount of evidence about the so-called Silk Road: the great trade routes which had stretched from Central Asia, through desert oases, to China, throughout the first millennium.

Besides silk, the Silk Road helped the dispersion of writing and paper-making, coinage and gunpowder, and it was along these trade routes that Buddhism reached China from India.

The history of these transcontinental links reveals a dazzlingly complex meeting andm... more »

2013-05-14 13:34:42 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

Commute Listening: The Silk Road on In Our Time

❝ Melvyn Bragg and guests Tim Barrett, Naomi Standen and Frances Wood discuss the Silk Road, the trade routes which spanned Asia for over a thousand years, carrying Buddhism to China and paper-making and gunpowder westwards.

In 1900, a Taoist monk came upon a cave near the Chinese town of Dunhuang. Inside, he found thousands of ancient manuscripts. They revealed a vast amount of evidence about the so-called Silk Road: the great trade routes which had stretched from Central Asia, through desert oases, to China, throughout the first millennium.

Besides silk, the Silk Road helped the dispersion of writing and paper-making, coinage and gunpowder, and it was along these trade routes that Buddhism reached China from India.

The history of these transcontinental links reveals a dazzlingly complex meeting andm... more »