Scant Kids Publishing Shakespeare Violence Vaccines
William Shakespeare, Gangster by Mike Dash (Past Imperfect): There’s not very much evidence about who Shakespeare was - only a few bits and pieces here and there. So it’s surprising in some ways that Shakespeare scholars have ignored one of the mentions of his name found in now-ancient records; the henchman of a corrupt businessman once requested a restraining order against Shakespeare and some of his associates. Could Shakespeare have been involved in organised crime?
The Truth About Violence by Sam Harris (samharris.org): Before Sam Harris became a professional atheist, he taught self-defense classes. And here he summarises what he has learned about self-defense: 1) avoid dangerous places and people; 2) your property is not worth defending; 3) escape as soon as possible and only use violence to make that escape quicker. For what it’s worth, Harris comes off as pretty paranoid here, he seems to dismiss the fact that a large proportion of violence is domestic (and would need a different set of skills to escape), and I’m not sure I’d like to live my life assuming the worst (as Harris seems to think is necessary), but some interesting thoughts. [via]
The Man Who Makes Money Publishing Your Nude Pics by Danny Gold (The Awl): Hunter Moore makes a living by publishing nude pics complete with a shot of the person’s Facebook profile, and by shaming the nude people and their attempts to get the offending pics removed for the amusement/lulz of his readers. This is apparently legal in the U.S. so long as the person taking the pictures doesn’t copyright the shots and is not underage. Hey presto, thirty million page views a month. [via]
‘Change Deafness’ - The Scant Attention We Pay To The Voice At The End Of The Phone by Christian Jarrett (BPS Research Digest): There’s a famous psychology experiment where people being interviewed in a university courtyard are interrupted by workmen carrying a big plank of wood (or something), who walks between the interviewee and the interviewer. After the workmen have gone past, the interviewer is secretly replaced with another person (who was walking behind the wood). Most of the time, the interviewee didn’t even notice. This is change blindness. Turns out there’s also change deafness - if a voice on the phone changes mind conversation we don’t notice, unless we’re specifically listening for it.
Why Kids Can’t Search by Clive Thompson (Wired): You are probably quite good at it - I mean you found this! But searching for stuff on Google is actually quite a difficult skill to learn - not so much the typing stuff in but more the critical thinking and “should I trust this source?” involved in determining which search result is most likely to be accurate. For example, according to Thompson, most eight-year-olds are unable to tell the difference between the World Trade Organisation’s website and a parody of the World Trade Organisation’s website. This is something, Thompson argues, which should probably get taught in schools (but does not). [via]
With Vaccines, Bill Gates Changes The World Again by Matthew Herper (Forbes): For someone who has literally saved millions of lives, Bill Gates doesn’t make it easy to like him. After all, with his foundation and billions of dollars, Gates has managed to set up a supply chain and gamed the economics of providing vaccines to poor people in such a way that Big Pharma feel it’s worth their while to actually work on vaccines for Africa. And Gates has done so because he thinks that saving lives with vaccines is the best way to reduce the population and avoid the Malthusian disaster he thinks we’re headed for. But then he says things like that both vaccines and computers are “up there with the printing press and fire”. [via]
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