Ratcheting Pruning Shears! Since it’s December, let’s use my new pruners as the kick-off for our first 2012 in retrospective thread – what’s the best tool/gadget/gizmo/hack you’ve found this year?
Science
Nugget of Awesome: welcome to evo psych redux
[Evolutionary psychology hardly covers] the evolution of morality, the evolution of politics, of cuture, of the artistic sense, etc … There is instead an obsessive focus on gender roles.
Matt Honan on the End of the Age of the Password
Times have changed. We’ve entrusted everything we have to a fundamentally broken system. The first step is to acknowledge that fact. The second is to fix it.
Terrible horrible no good very bad science journalism headline of the day
I really don’t think that’s what any scientists did say, actually.
Conroy backs down on internet filter
It’s good to see Stephen Conroy finally face the facts: his filter proposal was about as clever as equipping a blue whale to pursue a vulture.
Argument is the human condition, but public argument is not (until the Internet arrived)
A fascinating long post from Clay Shirky on the information age’s transformation of the media landscape, via @Colvinius who referenced it as part of his 2012 Andrew Olle Media Lecture.
Privacy, anonymity, pseudonymity, outing, accountability: where are the boundaries?
There are competing ethical imperatives, and there’s a balance to be found. It is basic courtesy to respect a pseudonym or some in-confidence knowledge about a person generally, but should that expected courtesy take precedence over the protection of other people from harm which could be avoided if they knew what you know?
Friday Hoyden: Ada Lovelace Day roundup
It was Ada Lovelace Day on Tuesday this week, celebrating women’s achievements in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields. There’s lots of excellent weekend reading. Did you go to any Ada Lovelace Day events this year? Tell us about it if you did.
ObFreeFallSpaceJump post: a little detail I was glad to discover
Because I obviously haven’t been paying enough attention, I hadn’t realised that Joseph Kittinger, the USAF officer who previously held the record for highest/fastest freefall parachute jump after the 1959-60 Project Excelsior research into high-altitude bailouts, was part of the team for Felix Baumgartner’s successful attempt on those records.
Helpful Hint of The Day: being *on the internet*
A Handy Test for Reddit Users: Are You on the Internet Right Now?
Hoyden About Town 