From the excellent xkcd

The full post is on the Guardian website. Via Elmyra’s del.icio.us feed.

“Krause postulates that the animal kingdom divides the acoustic spectrum so it’s inhabitants do not interfere with each other. However, human-made noise is increasingly disrupting this harmony and intrudes on a piece of the spectrum already in use - drowning out natures voice … Something similar is happening with the explosive adoption of social media tools and the information they generate.”

Keith Brophy writes an insightful post which looks at humans’ ecological impact, and relates it to the information overload people increasingly suffer as a result of the explosion in social networking. Absolutely fascinating, well written stuff. On his blog Every 108 Minutes, here, via Twitter.

From the Liberal Bureaucracy blog, here. Guardian article here.

Black America study as reported in the Washington Post, here.
New evidence about extent of America’s HIV problem on BBC News, here.

“Microsoft researchers studied the addresses of 30bn instant messages sent during a single month in 2006 … Examining the minimum chain lengths it would take to connect all the users in the database, they found the average length was 6.6 steps and that 78% of the pairs could be connected in seven links or fewer.”

The BBC reports on a Microsoft study, which asks whether the “six degrees of separation” theory holds true on their Messenger IM network. It’s an interesting idea, but I’m unconvinced - it seems more like marketing than good science. The study was limited only to their users, and geographic, social and economic factors must play a large yet unquantifiable part in building connections in this artificial environment. Full BBC News story here.

I love Indexed Comic here. Reproduced by permission.

“Yet the one slogan you never hear at the Olympics is that with dreams come responsibilities … And in the global neighborhood, any city’s treatment of its local problems is suddenly a matter of everyone’s concern. So evicting roughly 3 million of the capital’s residents, as Beijing has done, while spending perhaps $200 billion on reconstructing the city (more than 300 times as much as it spent on rural health care for the entire nation in 2006) raises terrible questions about what costs are legitimate in the pursuit of social and sporting acknowledgment.”

The Olympics may bring China many economic benefits and possibly even longer-term social ones, but in the short term it comes at great cost to those most vulnerable and oppressed by the state. Pico Iyer writes in Time, here.

Full story from BBC News, here.

“This is voting as handheld therapy to make us (and politicians) feel better. No one – not the Putney Debaters nor the Suffragettes – put their lives on the line for the right to be patronised madly by an aloof and idea-lite elite. They wanted the right to engage in serious politics on an equal footing, not to have their self-esteem massaged by someone like Hazel Blears or to get an ‘I’m special’ badge for using a biro to tick a box.”

James Panton quite rightly rallies against ridiculous and offensive government suggestions on how to get more people to vote. They include prize draws and stickers for those who take part in the democratic process. From Spiked.

The BBC reports on the story and the artist, here.

“If we only make standard fare, we cannot beat other studios. There were already adult videos with Lolitas or themes of incest, so we wanted to make something new. A relationship between wife and an old father-in-law has enough twist to create an atmosphere of mystery and captivate viewers’ hearts.”

Time has a bizarre insight into the Japanese trend for ‘elder porn’. In a country with an ageing population and one of the most sexless societies in the developed world, there’s been an explosion in demand for adult movies starring ‘mature’ stars. The article features Shiego Tokuda, a 73-year old pornstar whose 350 films include “Forbidden Elderly Care” More here.

So true… I’m sure most people who work in an office can identify with this I’m a big advocate of letting people pick one password and stick with it, or at the very least not making them have a different password for every single system they use. The problem with having too many passwords, and being forced to constantly change them, is that it has an adverse effect on security as people end up writing them down and sticking them under their keyboards so that they can remember them! Comic reproduced by kind permission of Shane Johnson, author/artist at My Life in a Cube.

“4chan is also very profane. A phrase from Star Wars comes to mind: It’s a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Spammers don’t even bother to spam 4chan; Google started searching it only six months ago. But it is the wellspring from which a lot of Internet culture, and hence popular culture, bubbles. In his way, moot is one of the most powerful people on the Web.”

Time interviews moot, founder of the 4chan.org bulletin board, which started Internet crazes such as I Can Haz Cheezburger. Time article here.

“Not long ago Dr. Joanne Lynn, a geriatrician who pulls no punches in her frequent critiques of America’s sorry system of end-of-life care, looked out from the dais of a Washington, D.C., ballroom at a sea of middle-aged faces: health policymakers, legislative staff, advocates for the aged and for family caregivers — an audience of experts … ‘How many of you expect to die?’ she asked.”

The New York Times has a fascinating article asking why people instinctively choose the most painful, undignified option when asked about death.

From Washington Times, via the Open Rights Group mailing list.

Via The Times, here, and the New York Times, here.

From the most excellent xkcd, here.

“Yesterday I was talking to someone about their experience at the GPs - the Doctor googled their question in order to answer it.”

David Evans blogs on the BCS website about the way in which healthcare information will be stored and accessed in the future. I find his thoughts about a web 2.0 collaborative system, which could be seen simply as the next stage in the evolution of textbooks and journals, fascinating.