The Blimp-Maker

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/a-new-generation-of-airships-is-born?mbid=nl_160224_Daily%20A&CNDID=27124505&spMailingID=8583208&spUserID=MTE0MzE0NDEyNDUyS0&spJobID=862402181&spReportId=ODYyNDAyMTgxS0

Algorithm Bias

From Slate - 

A Tale of Four Algorithms

Each of these government algorithms is supposed to stop fraud and waste. Which works better—the one aimed at the poor or the rich?

By Virginia Eubanks

Algorithms don’t just power search results and news feeds, shaping our experience of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Spotify, and Tinder. Algorithms are widely—and largely invisibly—integrated into American political life, policymaking, and program administration.

Algorithms can terminate your Medicaid benefits, exclude you from air travel, purge you from voter rolls, or predict if you are likely to commit a crime in the future. They make decisions about who has access to public services, who undergoes extra scrutiny, and where we target scarce resources.

But are all algorithms created equal? Does the kind of algorithm used by government agencies have anything to do with who it is aimed at?

Bias can enter algorithmic processes through many doors. Discriminatory data collection can mean extra scrutiny for whole communities, creating a feedback cycle of “garbage in, garbage out.” For example, much of the initial data that populated CalGang, an intelligence database used to target and track suspected gang members, was collected by the notorious Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums units of the LAPD, including in the scandal-ridden Rampart division. Algorithms can also mirror and reinforce entrenched cultural assumptions. For example, as Wendy Hui Kyong Chun has written, Googling “Asian + woman” a decade ago turned up more porn sites in the first 10 hits than a search for “pornography.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/02/a_close_look_at_four_government_algorithms_designed_to_stop_waste_and_fraud.html?sid=554654ea10defb39638b510d&wpsrc=newsletter_futuretense

Agree?

A sampling from The Root - 

The 15 most racist Oscar films of all time: Here’s why #OscarsSoWhite is not a surprise 

#OscarsSoWhite isn't just about the absence of Black nominees—it's about the Academy's history of racist narratives 

IBRAM X. KENDI

10. Rocky (1976)

3 Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing (plus eight more nominations)

If “Planet of the Apes” epitomized racists’ defeated sentiments amid the antiracist movements in 1968, then “Rocky” epitomized their fighting sentiment in 1976. Rocky Balboa—a kind, humble, hard-working, slow-talking journeyman boxer—symbolized the pride of racist White masculinity in the late 1970s. Rocky refused to be knocked out by the avalanche of punches from the antiracist movements—as symbolized by the rich, unkind, cocky, fast-punching Black heavyweight champion. Apollo Creed is a fictional stand-in for the actual heavyweight champion in 1976, Muhammad Ali, the personification of antiracist resistance.

~~~~~~~~~~

7. The Blind Side (2009)

1 Academy Award for Best Actress (plus nomination for Best Picture)

Possibly even more than the interracial buddy film, the #OscarsSoWhite enjoys honoring the White Savior Flicks. In these flicks, paternalistic White parents or coaches or journalists or soldiers or lawyers or educators are portrayed as saving needy Blacks from bad situations, or their inferior selves, or the Black jungle. Of all the White Savior Flicks in Hollywood history—and there are many—”The Blind Side” may have been the most egregious. It shared the “true story” of a White family caring for a homeless boy who they guide into professional football. The contrast between the film’s Black characters hindering and holding Michael Oher’s character back—and Sandra Bullock’s helpful White characters are intense to even the least discerning viewer. Filmmakers enjoy regularly searching out and projecting “true stories” of White saviors, hiding the reality of many Black saviors and White discriminators, reinforcing racist ideas of White paternalism and Black dependence.

http://www.salon.com/2016/02/24/the_15_most_racist_oscar_films_of_all_time_heres_why_oscarssowhite_is_not_a_surprise/?source=newsletter

The Thought of Him Representing Us on the World Stage is Nauseating

From Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone - 

In person, you can't miss it: The same way Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house, Donald on the stump can see his future. The pundits don't want to admit it, but it's sitting there in plain view, 12 moves ahead, like a chess game already won:

President Donald Trump.

A thousand ridiculous accidents needed to happen in the unlikeliest of sequences for it to be possible, but absent a dramatic turn of events – an early primary catastrophe, Mike Bloomberg ego-crashing the race, etc. – this boorish, monosyllabic TV tyrant with the attention span of an Xbox-playing 11-year-old really is set to lay waste to the most impenetrable oligarchy the Western world ever devised.

It turns out we let our electoral process devolve into something so fake and dysfunctional that any half-bright con man with the stones to try it could walk right through the front door and tear it to shreds on the first go.

And Trump is no half-bright con man, either. He's way better than average.

~~~~~~~~~~

That put him in position to understand that the presidential election campaign is really just a badly acted, billion-dollar TV show whose production costs ludicrously include the political disenfranchisement of its audience. Trump is making a mockery of the show, and the Wolf Blitzers and Anderson Coopers of the world seem appalled. How dare he demean the presidency with his antics?

But they've all got it backward. The presidency is serious. The presidential electoral process, however, is a sick joke, in which everyone loses except the people behind the rope line. And every time some pundit or party spokesman tries to deny it, Trump picks up another vote.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-america-made-donald-trump-unstoppable-20160224#ixzz419HnFTGQ
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

Atlas, The Next Generation

From Wired -



ONE OF THESE days, Boston Dynamics—the Alphabet-owned robot company from Beantown—is going to push its robots too far. I mean, just look at their latest video, in which they shove, trip, and play keep away from a robot named Atlas. Sure, the droid walks funny, but if they keep messing around I swear Atlas is going to flip the script on these guys and next thing you know it’s Judgment Day.

http://www.wired.com/2016/02/boston-dynamics-new-robot-wicked-good-getting-bullied/?mbid=nl_22416

Quote

From Vox - 

Clarence Thomas has now gone 10 — 10! — years without asking a question at a Supreme Court oral argument. Jeffrey Toobin explains why that's a problem. [New Yorker / Jeffrey Toobin]

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/clarence-thomass-disgraceful-silence?platform=hootsuite&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%202/24/16&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All

Note - this article was written two years ago.

Great Articles

Some of the most interesting articles I come across are featured on The New York Times "What We're Reading."

Their blurb:

Get recommendations from New York Times reporters and editors, highlighting great stories from around the web. What We’re Reading emails are sent twice a week.

Take it from me - 

Sign up today and be enlightened, enraged and entertained.

http://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/what-were-reading?nlid=38867499

What Do You Think?

From The American Prospect - 

Prospect Debate: The Illusion of a Minority Majority America

THE EDITORS

FEBRUARY 11, 2016

Four knowledgeable commentators respond to Richard Alba’s argument in the Prospect that America will continue to have a white majority. 

In his Winter 2016 article “The Likely Persistence of a White Majority,” Richard Alba argues that highly publicized projections by the U.S. Census have misled the public into thinking that whites in the United States are destined to become a minority by the middle of the century. That projection is incorrect, Alba suggests, for two primary reasons. First, the census data mistakenly assume that children of mixed marriages where one parent is white will identify as nonwhite. Second, the census sees the white “mainstream” as a fixed category even though the conception of whiteness has changed in the past and will likely change again. As a result, Alba contends, America will probably have a white majority for some time to come.

Is that analysis correct? And what does America’s demographic future say about its political future? Four contributors respond to Alba: Kenneth Prewitt, former director of the Census Bureau and now Carnegie Professor of Social Affairs at Columbia University; William Darity Jr., Arts and Sciences Professor of Public Policy at Duke University; Harold Meyerson, the Prospect’s executive editor; and Frank Bean, Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Alba has the last word.

Follow the link to read their responses.

http://prospect.org/article/prospect-debate-illusion-minority-majority-america

This Simple Gesture . . .

Means so much.

An excerpt from The Washington Post - 

This photo of Obama and a little visitor at a Black History Month celebration is remarkable

The look in Clark's eyes offers one half of America's current story. A country once determined to import and enslave black Americans is now, indeed, led by one. That is a transformation so profound and complex that when another young black child, Jacob Philadelphia, visited the White House in 2009 and asked the then-new president if they have the same hair. Obama bent down and advised Jacob to find out. The answer -- yes -- said much more to Jacob, the millions of Americans who have seen the Souza photo of that moment since. It said, I am like you. You are like me. The most powerful elected office in the world is mine and is truly possible for all of us. Obama reportedly gave the photo a permanent and special home in the White House.

But then, there is Obama's tender touch on Clark's cheek this week. It is another remarkably familiar gesture between strangers which also reveals something deep and true. It speaks to the other half of America's current story. Obama is our president. Still, this remains a country where children who look like Clark, but are perhaps a decade older, are widely regarded as a menace. They are to be feared and contained. Obama's touch says, this child is precious and valuable because of who he is and what he can become. But when Obama said as much -- telling reporters in 2012 that if he had a son, that son would look like Trayvon Martin -- a good portion of America reacted as if that reminder was itself an extreme affront.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/20/this-photo-of-obama-and-a-little-visitor-at-a-black-history-month-celebration-says-a-lot/

The President and Kids

Fingers crossed that this video works.

Here's hoping because it's adorable.

Coding App For Kids

Featured in the iTunes App Store -

Kids'n'Code

Description:

Solve puzzles, control robots and learn basic concepts and principles of programming. With Kids'n'Code it's easier than ever.

What children will learn?

Kids will recognize basic patterns, learn problem solving, consistent and algorithmic thinking, spatial visualization, debugging programs. The game develops skills that are useful in algebra, geometry, logic and computer science.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kidsncode/id1046906529?mt=8

id1046906529

Crazy Overload

Beautiful Maps

Paula Scher’s Insanely Detailed US Maps Elevate Data Viz to Fine Art

http://www.wired.com/2016/02/paula-schers-insanely-detailed-us-maps-elevate-data-viz-to-fine-art/?mbid=nl_22216#slide-2

This Guy is Scary

Quote 2

From Vox - 

"'Poverty is not just a sad accident,' he said. Yes, it’s partly about lack of jobs, 'but it’s also a result of the fact that some people make a lot of money off low-income families and directly contribute to their poverty.'" [Matthew Desmond to NYT / Jennifer Schuessler]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/20/books/a-harvard-sociologist-on-watching-families-lose-their-homes.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%202/22/16&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All

Quote

From Vox -

Why do we teach boys it's important to be fearless — but girls that it's cute to be scared? [NYT / Caroline Paul]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/opinion/sunday/why-do-we-teach-girls-that-its-cute-to-be-scared.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%202/22/16&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All

Makes Me Wanna Holler!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDCRhTSUaLA

H\T Houran

We Choose to Forget

From Upworthy - 

During World War II, a young boy was forced from his home with his family, placed on a cramped train, and sent to an isolated camp across the country with no knowledge of when he would be able to return home. He and his family were confined to camps for years, solely on the basis of their ethnicity.

This isn’t the story of an inhumane atrocity that happened across an ocean or in another country. It happened on U.S. soil in 1942.

Kids boarding a bus for relocation in Byron, California. Photo via U.S. National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia Commons.

And the young boy in this story is George Takei, the "Star Trek" actor, who was one of more than 117,000 Japanese-Americans detained in U.S. concentration camps during the early 1940s. He talked about his experience on Democracy Now!:

"We had nothing to do with the war. We simply happened to look like the people that bombed Pearl Harbor. But without charges, without trial, without due process — the fundamental pillar of our justice system — we were summarily rounded up, all Japanese Americans on the West Coast, where we were primarily resident, and sent off to 10 barb wire internment camps — prison camps, really, with sentry towers, machine guns pointed at us — in some of the most desolate places in this country: the wastelands of Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, the blistering hot desert of Arizona, of all places, in black tarpaper barracks. And our family was sent two-thirds of the way across the country, the farthest east, in the swamps of Arkansas."

Japanese internment is a dark period in America's history, but in many history classrooms, the camps are only touched on briefly — if at all. 

http://www.upworthy.com/a-mini-history-lesson-about-the-concentration-camps-on-american-soil?c=upw1

Hmmmmm . . .

An excerpt from The Washington Post - 

The big question about driverless cars no one seems able to answer

By Brian Fung

Wow. A lot of you guys had some very passionate responses to last week's news that the federal government had recognized Google's software, not the human passenger, as the "driver" in its self-driving cars. There was one, big theme running through many of your comments. See if you can identify it:

So does the software have to get a driver's license and insurance? –ikeaboy

So if I get drunk, get into my Googlemobile and crash into someone the software is going to jail? Seems awkward to put flash memory in with the other prisoners. –InAVanByTheRiver

Who is charged if there is a fatal accident and there is an occupant in the driverless car? What happens if there is a lawsuit? Who pays the fine or serves time if the driverless car is found guilty? –scoon42

All of these questions target the issue of liability, which is about to get very interesting. As computerized, self-driving cars come closer to fruition, car accidents are likely to become vastly more complex. What will happen when you get into a crash, and who will be to blame?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/02/17/the-big-question-about-driverless-cars-no-one-seems-to-have-an-answer-to/

Pelham High Double Amputee Wrestler Hasaan Hawthorne Wins State Title

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/22/this-teenage-wrestler-has-a-perfect-record-and-a-state-title-he-also-has-no-legs/?hpid=hp_no-name_morning-mix-story-c%3Ahomepage%2Fstory