usa

You are currently browsing articles tagged usa.

Links for 19 July 2009 through 23 July 2009

23 July 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | 2 comments

Stilgherrian’s links for 19 July 2009 through 23 July 2009, with more than a little apathy:

The sexual habits of British men and women over 40 years old | Wiley InterScience: A large population-based study which provides the first report on the frequency and timing of sexual activity in British men and women. Over 40.
saving paradise: Liz Mwambui’s blog, written for Nature Seychelles, is a great example of “personal voice” in an NGO’s corporate blog.
Washing/Moscow Hot Line: A history of the direct communications link which went into service in 1963.
Encyclopedia Astronautica: A wonderful compendium of information about spacecraft — actual, projected and mythical.
Google Flu Trends: Google has found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity up to two weeks faster than traditional systems.
Nirvana vs Rick Astley: Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit Up | YouTube: A very fine (and scary!) mashup by German-based DJ Morgoth. I’ve had to play it several times now, it’s that good.
Narcissism and Social Networking Web Sites | Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin: Research by Laura E Buffardi and W Keith Campbell at the University of Georgia (US) shows that people using social media sites like Facebook can actually tell, just by looking at a person's profile, whether they're narcissistic or not.
Totally Wasted | Mother Jones: A major feature on America’s War on Drugs. Plenty to ingest. I mean digest.
The folly of pretence | Daniel Dennett | The Guardian: One of the greatest philosophers of the mind, a man I’ve actually had the pleasure of meeting, explains why everyone needs to move on from “the God question” — including the militant atheists.

Links for 12 January 2009 through 18 January 2009

18 January 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | No comments

Stilgherrian’s links for 12 January 2009 through 18 January 2009, gahered with care and moistened with love:

All the ephemera that’s fit to print * | Noisy Decent Graphics: A lovely idea: take all the cool stuff your friends have written in the last year and print it in newspaper format.
P2P is Killing the Porn Star | Perceptric Forum: Hollywood is not the only casualty of P2P, it seems. A nice essay.
Business Sense | News.com.au Business: Buried in here is Business Sense TV, some Internet-based video productions. I have a reason for bookmarking this which is 100% Secret Squirrel.
Twitter Spreads News Of US Airways Crash In An Instant | InformationWeek: Yet another story about Twitter spreading the news of an event before the mainstream media could touch it.
Victoria Cross citation for Trooper Mark Gregor Donaldson | Department of Defence: The official Australian Army citation for the first Victoria Cross awarded to an Australian in 40 years. Terse, army bureaucratic language hides an amazing story of bravery.
Child porn laws being turn on their heads – by the kids themselves | The Inquisitr: Child pornography laws were designed to cover situations when an adult was coercing a child into sexual contexts. But what if the “child pornography” in question is “just” teenagers taking photos of each other?
Report Finds Online Threats to Children Overblown | NYTimes.com: A task force set up by 49 US attorneys general to find a solution to the problem of online sexual solicitation of children finds that there actually isn’t a significant problem.
Right Whales, Wrong Whales | Media Watch: It's from September 2008, but a great story about how journalists got it all wrong because they didn’t fact-check with people who know something about whale. There’s also a bonus photo of a whale penis. I rediscovered this story while researching a piece for Crikey.
Ten things every journalist should know in 2009 | Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog: What struck me about this list is that any modern journalist should been across this knowledge well before now. Knowing that your readers are smarter than you on specific topics? Knowing how to use Google’s advanced search? How to use RSS feeds? Are working journalists really this far behind the pace?
wordpress wiki plugin | Instinct Entertainment: This new plug-in which can turn selected WordPress pages into Wiki-style editable objects could be useful. I should look at it. If I had the time. Would you like to look at it for me and report back?
BT-1 Bluetooth Webcam for Mac: The new BT-1 wireless webcam streams H.264 video and AAC audio. It’s compatible with Skype and iChat, so presumably it’ll work with Cam Twist and therefore Stilgherrian Live. I want a couple NOW. Available “late Q1″.
In Venting, a Computer Visionary Educates | NYTimes.com: Ted Nelson’s book Computer Lib: You Can and Must Understand Computers Now was an enormous influence on me and many others. He’s now 71, and this piece based on a recent interview is a reasonable introduction to his work.
How I Use Twitter at Volume | chrisbrogan.com: “At volume, [Twitter is] a bit different. It’s a lot like showing up to a very busy, very loud cocktail party, but also a business meeting, plus a focus group, plus several other social situations. Twitter, unfiltered, is like someone with mind reading powers walking down 38th Street in Manhattan. It’s not especially easy to manage, and it’s very different how things work at this pace. Looking at unfiltered Twitter at this volume just doesn’t cut it.”
You are the President of Your Career | chrisbrogan.com: One person’s framework for focusing on your goals in an economically tough year. I like the reminder that a “career path” was something for your father, but not for you.
The Bush Administration’s Most Despicable Act | Time: Joe Klein summarises the Bush II government’s contribution to the wonderful world of torture.

Links for 22 June 2008 through 24 June 2008

24 June 2008 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | No comments

Stilgherrian’s links for 22 June 2008 through 24 June 2008, gathered with care and compassion:

Read the rest of this entry »

Links for 02 May 2008 through 03 May 2008

04 May 2008 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | No comments

My links for 02 May 2008 through 03 May 2008: one funny, one serious, and one combining both moods.

Read the rest of this entry »

Links for 27 April 2008

27 April 2008 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | No comments

I’ve decided to have another go at publishing the links I find online. So, thanks to del.icio.us and some mild semi-automation, here’s today’s batch.

Read the rest of this entry »

The world laughs at Americans because they seem so unaware of anything outside their own borders. Well, a client reports on an American colleague returning to the US head office after a business trip to Sydney. “You know Australia?” he told his office-mates. “It’s almost like another country!” Yeah. Almost. God bless America.

24 April 2008 by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

Lesson from Iraq: don’t ignore international law

24 March 2008 in Defence, Politics by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Photograph of Mary Ellen O’Connell

Of all the writing about the 5th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, one of the more interesting pieces is by Mary Ellen O’Connell (pictured) of Notre Dame Law School. In Learning from the Iraq War: The Wisdom of International Law, she argues that the most tangible lesson is that the US ignores international law at its peril.

Going into Iraq, we ignored the UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force except in self-defense or with Security Council authorization. Once in Iraq, we ignored the Hague Regulations, requiring us to put a stop to looting and to make only necessary changes to local law and government. We ignored the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit secret detention and abuse of prisoners of the kind we saw at Abu Ghraib.

The talk on Iraq is all about what went wrong, whether the surge is working, and when we can get out. We hear virtually nothing about international law and look set to repeat our mistakes. Violating the law has cost our nation and Iraq dearly. It has denied us the guidance of rules based on long experience and moral consensus. We have lost standing in the world, a literal fortune, and precious lives. Rather than internalizing the lesson of law violation in Iraq, we continue to defy the law in serious and self-destructive ways.

At some point, sooner or later, America needs to understand that international law does indeed apply to everyone — including America. Otherwise any US action against any other nation breaking the law is nothing but hypocrisy. (Hat-tip to Blog Them Out of the Stone Age.)

Where Americans live

23 August 2007 in Politics, Religion by Stilgherrian | No comments

I’m a sucker for beautiful maps, so I simply must share this population density map of the US which I stumbled across today.

It’s part of a Time cover story from last year, An In-Depth View of America by the Numbers, which also includes What We Believe (31% of Americans believe in an “authoritarian God”, for example, while it seems only 6% don’t believe in God), Denomination Nation (exploring which kind of Christians live where) and Who We Are (which, being American, starts off by talking about race).

Recent Articles

Talking major sports’ future on ABC 702 Sydney

07 February 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Media

If you’d asked me last week what I thought I’d be doing this week, the answer would not have included “writing and talking about the future of the major sporting codes as televisions events”. But I wrote this thing in the newspaper… Last week federal court judge Justice Steven Rares ruled that Optus’ TV Now [...]
The 9pm Edict #17A

07 February 2012 in The 9pm Edict

Residents of the depressingly tight-sphinctered Melbourne suburb of Prahran torture their dogs. True. And it’s ugly. Also this week, Australia gets a new masthead for quality journalism, and everyone goes all wet and judgemental. Something something football on the internet. And I finish all the things that I meant to do on New Year’s Eve [...]
Talking “The Global Mail” on Radio 2SER

06 February 2012 in Conversations, Internet, Media

I thought I’d be too busy today to pay much attention to the new quality Australian news outlet The Global Mail. But then around 2pm I got a call from Radio 2SER in Sydney asking for a comment. And so it was that at 2.30pm I was interviewed for the station’s current affairs program The [...]
Weekly Wrap 87: Rain, unseasonable risk and videos

05 February 2012 in Weekly Wrap

My usual weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. This post covers the week from Monday 30 January to Sunday 5 February 2012. It was an odd week. It rained. A lot. And the continual greyness felt like it was threatening to trigger seasonal affective disorder unseasonably. I figured it was [...]
Gold Coast again, for Kickstart again

05 February 2012 in Internet, Media, Personal

Oh dear. It’s that time of year again. The annual Kickstart Forum on the Gold Coast is coming up at the end of February. This is a start-of-year get-together for IT journalists and the vendors who wish to spruik to them. There is also drinking. Allegedly. I’ll be there along with the usual suspects from [...]

Subscribe to feed

usa

Links for 19 July 2009 through 23 July 2009

Links for 12 January 2009 through 18 January 2009

Links for 22 June 2008 through 24 June 2008

Links for 02 May 2008 through 03 May 2008

Links for 27 April 2008

Lesson from Iraq: don’t ignore international law

Where Americans live

Categories

Upcoming Events

Broadband and Beyond 2012

Travellings

More Stilgherrian

Recent Comments

Recent Articles

Talking major sports’ future on ABC 702 Sydney

The 9pm Edict #17A

Talking “The Global Mail” on Radio 2SER

Weekly Wrap 87: Rain, unseasonable risk and videos

Gold Coast again, for Kickstart again