Links - 14th March 2012

"This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it." - William Goldman

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Evgeny Morozov: The IGod: Steve Jobs’s Pursuit Of Perfection—and The Consequences. - "The piece about Jobs in Der Spiegel shed no light on his personality, but it stood out for two reasons. The first was its title: “Der Philosoph des 21 Jahrhunderts,” or “The Philosopher of the Twenty-First Century.” The second was the paucity of evidence to back up such an astonishing claim... For Jobs, consistency was truly the hobgoblin of little minds (he saw little minds everywhere he looked) and he did his best to prove Emerson’s maxim in his own life... He talked up the virtues of contemplation and meditation, but did everything he could to shorten the time it takes to boot an Apple computer... Jobs famously expressed his utter indifference to the customer, who in his view does not really know what he wants. Apple’s most incredible trick, accomplished by marketing as much as by philosophy, is to allow its customers to feel as if they are personally making history... For much of the last decade, Apple was not just selling gadgets; it was also selling technologically mediated therapy... If gadgets and devices in their ideal form exist independently of reality and are to be discovered by epistemologically privileged designers, then the science of making customers out of thin air can be justified only on the grounds that the designer is a kind of prophet who has access to a higher truth and needs to spread that truth as widely, as evangelically, and as remorselessly as possible. Those who attack Apple as a quasireligion are more correct than they know... Jobs wanted every household in the world to have an Apple product so that he could teach the bastards proper aesthetics: this was emancipation from the top down. It is a strange way to promote empowerment... Ironically enough, the most consequential of Apple’s threats is not to the physical but to the virtual: the company may eventually suffocate the Internet. Apple’s embrace of the “app paradigm”—whereby activities that have been previously conducted on our browsers shift to dedicated software applications on our phones and tablets—may be destroying the Internet in much the same way that the automobile destroyed the sidewalks and the playgrounds... his own tragic limitations were on full display when Rolling Stone asked him about the future of technology—whether genetic research and cloning “were pushing it all too far.” He rolled his eyes. “You know—I’d rather just talk about music. These big-picture questions are just—zzzzzzzz,” he said, and started snoring. The philosopher of the twenty-first century, indeed."
For a book review, very little of the article is about the book

Lindsay Lohan Hosts Saturday Night Live - iVillage - "A wine-chugging Cinderella then introduced her husband Prince Charming, whom the other housewives can tell is secretly gay.
"Here's some good advice: Never marry a guy who's really into shoes," Cinderella slurred."

Cold Oil French Fries (Chips) Absorb Less Oil - "Absorbing oil has nothing to do with how long the potatoes fry for but how high they’re fry at, because that high temperature will drive away more moisture"

Factors that affect fat uptake during French fries production - "Very high temperatures shorten the life of the fat. Raising the temperature of the fat higher than 185°C causes the fat to break down more rapidly due to an increased rate of oxidation and polymer formation in the fat... On the other hand, if French fries are cooked at lower temperature, or the ‘boiling action’ on the surface ceases due to a lower heat input, the crust does not form on the surface. This allows extra fat to penetrate into the core of the French fries... When fat-containing food such as chicken, sausages, and other meat products are fried, some of the fat from these foods is extracted during cooking and replaced with the cooking fat. This exchange of components, including fat and salt, changes the composition of the frying fat
during the cooking process. Moreover, this extracted fat is in a natural unrefined state that is more unstable and causes darkening of the fat. Potatoes fried in this fat are of reduced quality. Therefore it is preferable to use a separate fryer for the cooking of French fries and the same fat should not be used for frying of different foods"

Blocked on Weibo - "What's not allowed on China's version of Twitter"

not sticking your dick in crazy - "you love your dick.
why would you KNOWINGLY
stick it in crazy.
this is a public service announcement.
KEEP YOUR DICK OUT OF CRAZY."
"Don't stick your dick in crazy"

In Scramble for Land, Oxfam Says Ugandans Were Pushed Out - NYTimes.com
#kony2012! Woo hoo!

Is decoupling real? « Consider the Evidence - "Since the 1970s, income growth for middle-class American households has become decoupled from growth of the economy... The measure [below] includes all sources of cash income. It adds in-kind income (employer-paid health insurance premiums, food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid benefits), employee contributions to 401(k) retirement plans, and employer-paid payroll taxes. Tax payments are subtracted... The story is virtually identical"

Airlines Studying the Science of Better In-Flight Meals - NYTimes.com - "Until recently, airline food seemed in terminal decline — another victim of widespread cost cuts in this long-troubled industry. Industry experts trace the problem back to 1987, when American Airlines removed a single olive from its salads to save a little money... "Ice cream is about the only thing I can think of that tastes good on a plane""

Facebook faces flak over surname mess - "The All Assam Chutia Students' Union (Aacsu) on Saturday raised serious concern against a social networking site blocking the accounts of thousands of Chutia community subscribers believing the accounts to be fake and fabricated. Chutia, pronounced Sutiya, is a community in Assam while the word is a commonly-used derogatory term in Hindi... The students' organization also decided to burn an effigy of the social networking site... "We think it may be a deep-rooted conspiracy against our community""

Why should my bike subsidize your car? - "Drivers do not bear the true economic costs of their choices, let alone the environmental ones. Instead, the supermarket takes the cost of providing the parking and, since we all pay the same prices for grocery items, redistributes it among everyone who shops there. In effect, cyclists, walkers and those who take public transit subsidize the parking of those who don’t."
Comments: "The analysis is defective. There would be no food store there without roads to bring in the food. Cars pay for the roads thorugh fuel taxes. Bikers are "free riders' who do not pay for the roads. Bikers want roads to ride on, and food in the store, but both require cars and trucks. Reducing externalities is a legitimate goal. But you can't cherry pick only the cost's you dont like."
"How dare you carp about an “unequal” burden you and your tree hugging sect pay! I am a resident of Northern Virginia and part of the taxpaying citizens who built and maintain a bike trail for your less than 1% of the population to use absolutely free. Included in this amenity are several multimillion dollar flyovers, parking areas and rest areas. The quality of this path is maintained by tax dollars that even your sect pays – though you are only 1% of the tax base. So suck it up, Dude, you got the clean end of the stick!"

MODEL-MORPHOSIS - T Magazine Blog - NYTimes.com - "The photographer Greg Kessler captures the transformations of the Fall 2012 Fashion Week in Paris"
I actually prefer the Before shots of many of them

African voices respond to hyper-popular Kony 2012 viral campaign - ""This is me talking about the danger of portraying people with one single story and using old footage to cause hysteria"...
She urges those concerned about human rights in Africa to "think before you give"...
"I was concerned at the simplicity of the approach that Invisible Children seemed to have taken"...
"The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening"...
He says he wants to "bang my head against my desk" to "make the dumb-assery stop""

Malaysia safest country in Southeast Asia, 19th in the world - "Malaysia has been recognised as the safest country in Southeast Asia and 19th the world, in the Global Peace Index (GPI) report for 2011, said Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein."
Evidently their education system isn't very good, since they misunderstand what the GPI measures

Samurai Yetis and Ninja Werewolves: How One Teacher Turned Sixth Grade Into an MMO

Department of Deportment: How to Get VIP Treatment at Pretty Much Any Restaurant

WTF QR CODES

Girl who posed as a boy to molest teen girls is jailed - "She wore hats and baggy clothes to hide her real identity when she met them. Barker sexually assaulted one girl up to 20 times, and the other one up to ten times. She also fooled her victims' families, and was rumbled only after one girl began suspecting her "boyfriend" was not who he claimed to be. Her alter ego Aaron Lampard was arrested for sexual assault — and her real identity was revealed when cops took off her hat and her long hair tumbled out. The fraud charge came after Barker tried to win compensation by breaking her own jaw, then claiming she had been assaulted by one of her fake male characters"
And you thought the Chinese kungfu stories of women disguising themselves as men were improbable

The writer of 'Sh*t My Dad Says' on why your team doesn't give a damn about you - ""This doc, he got real sweet on one of the strippers there. And he started coming back from lunch and telling everybody how he was sure this girl was sweet on him too, and that she was telling him he was different than the other guys, and blahbitty fuckin' blah. This goes on for a few months. Then, on Valentine's Day, he shows up at the titty bar with a bunch of flowers to ask this stripper to be his girl or whatever. Guess what happened."
"She said no."
"No. He never even asked her, 'cause when he walked in she was grinding her ass on some guy's hard-on...
"What he failed to recognize — that any sane human being would — is that a stripper is always gonna be just nice enough to you to keep you coming back, but at the end of the day, she doesn't give a fuck about you. You're just a hard-on she rubs up on for money. That's her job. And guess what? That's the same goddamn way the San Diego Chargers and any other team feels about you""

LATIN IS THE BEST LANGUAGE | More Intelligent Life - "To learn Latin is to learn rigour. The price for the rigour is the mortis"