Data-Driven Torture Genetics Breeds Devil Debt
The Data-Driven Life by Gary Wolf (New York Times Magazine): These days, the rise of portable powerful computers (e.g., your iPhone) are making it easier and easier for people to monitor and share data about their own life. This has pros - you might find that you are not doing what you think you are doing, and can improve - and cons - machines don’t forgive. [via]
The Torture Colony by Bruce Falconer (The American Scholar): Falconer’s portrait of a utopian experiment in remote Chile basically sounds like the worst place on Earth. Cruel, cynical German post-war exile leader who was also a pedophile? Check. Community members effectively slaves? Check. Torture? Check. Implicated in the execution of political prisoners? Check. [via]
Debt: The First Five Thousand Years by Alexander Rose (The Long Now): The rise of money is historically associated with violence and slavery, and it’s arguable that the world’s current major religions developed, in part, to control the social implications of money. This fascinating article, in a way, has worrying implications for the present, given that we now live in a world where Goldman Sachs and the like can do what they want with money that’s really just 0s and 1s on a computer screen. [via]
Power Breeds Hypocrisy: Powerful People Judge Others More Harshly But Cheat More Themselves by Ed Yong (Not Exactly Rocket Science): One of those social psychology experiments you go “duh!” to (especially after reading the “Torture Colony” article), but then a lot of what psychology does is actually test the things we think we know.
No Angel, No Devil by Brantley Hargrove (Nashville Scene): Gaile Owens, a white Memphis housewife, is due to be executed later this year for ordering a hit on her husband; she will be the first woman executed in Tennessee in 200 years. Hargrove’s portrait of her is a fascinating and disturbing look at the seedy underbelly of the dignified South. [via]
How Mendel Started Genetics By Getting It Mostly Wrong by John Timmer (Ars Technica): Science is, at the core, not about facts. It is a method. And though Mendel’s facts were, broadly, wrong, the method he used to get at those facts was so very right.
