I served on a jury about seven years ago that convicted a person of criminally abusing their child. Much of the evidence was circumstantial and relied on medical practitioners. To this day, I firmly believe we got it right, but the thought always lingers - what if we didn't. Stories like this always bring up that case.
I spent an hour this morning head scratching on why connectivity to my blog had gone down overnight. I felt a bit silly when I realized that it was cloudflare and not my server. Oh well.
I'm in the desktop Linux contingent. Flash support on Linux (especially 64 bit) has always been extremely buggy and I will see massive CPU spikes whenever I have to view flash content. I also have no patience for sites that kick off sound or video automatically. So I can't functionally surf without an ad-blocker. With that said, if I know the site doesn't use flash ads and if they don't start sound, I'll try to whitelist the domain for ads so I can support the site.
My brother in law - an ER doctor - said that the flu vaccine isn't effective this year. I read a really good article about how they have to guess what strains of flu will be present ahead of flu season. Anyway, hope you feel better.
I would give my left nut to have heard Joy Division do the original. Sigh.
Yes, he's still on a paywall, but you can read the past month or so for free. Reading older articles invokes the paywall.
I don't see bullying as a good or character building thing. There have been multiple studies done that demonstrate worse outcomes for kids that are bullied versus those that are not. To me, the solution has to be holistic. Parents need to empower their kids to push back on bullies. Schools need to create an environment that reinforces that bullying isn't cool. Principals and teachers need to be prepared to discipline bullies when the issue is getting out of control. Kids need to learn empathy and that actions have consequences. Schools need to be held accountable to prevent systemic abuse. I don't think any of these items are particularly controversial. That doesn't mean that children can't learn problem solving or conflict resolution - not every situation requires a teacher to get involved. There is a dividing line between isolated incident, personality conflict, and systemic abuse. The school's response needs to be proportionate to the intensity. One of things to remember about being a kid in school versus an adult is that a kid has little choice on whether to go to school (or even what school to go to). If my boss is a dickwad, I can tell him to f himself and change jobs. If he assaults me, I can punch back or sue him. If he harasses me, then he gets to have a fun talk with HR. Most adults aren't in a situation where they will suffer eight straight years of abuse without recourse. My coworker R's son was being bullied several years back. R's son was noticeably depressed and down over being bullied. R handled the situation well - he got his son a bit of therapy, enrolled him in karate classes, and discussed the issue with the school. R's son confronted the bully eventually, words were had, bully lost face, and that was that. I would agree that the prevalence of bullying hasn't significantly increased from the good old 1960s, but I don't see that as a reason to not do anything. We don't have to tolerate the way things always were. Progress is possible.
In a lot of ways, Buffalo has a similar problem with 190 ringing the waterfront. As long as it's above grade, it'll be difficult for Buffalo to develop it's waterfront.
Facebook is also probably trying to pump up their numbers right now in order to strengthen their IPO at the possible expense of their longer term health
- I'd like ways to be able to more easily discover content that I'm interested in. Some form of a recommendation system might be a possibility. - If there is a large influx of people into Hubski, there will eventually need to be a way to control spam and so forth on popular hubs like politics or music.
I normally prefer to work in larger companies - having a large and diverse workforce usually keeps the lid on the crazy and requires a reasonable level of professionalism, but Walmart ::: shudder ::: I'll never work for.
I actually really enjoyed listening to the discussions between the guy who auctioned off going to church for a year on ebay and the buying church. It was interesting listening to both sides understand each other better. I'll have to dig that one up at some point.
My wife is in graphic design/illustration. She's been verboten from illustrating children's books as she tends to illustrate everything as creepy or will make political propaganda :D