I like that this book review knits together several books that do not quite hit my interest, and makes them into one review that does.
Ouch.
…I will know my course has been successful when my students understand that Coursera’s business model, while offering free higher education (along with the promise of greater social equality) globally, is an exciting venture capital investment opportunity that will ultimately increase privately held wealth and lock in existing educational hierarchies.
Bob Meister
P.S. Would you be willing to co-teach this course with me? I’m sure that together we could reach a very large audience indeed.
lovely home experimental photography app from http://rossscrivener.co.uk/projects/slit-camera/
The Universal Shape of Economic Recession and Recovery after a Shock — Economics E-Journal
Thinking about this paper, the method of their data about transition from one “dead wood” regime to a new one has a characteristic shape - there is a cost while adapting to a new, more viable shape and that cost is predictable and has a characteristic shape. But the shape is, more or less, a decade of pain. Message: Reform has a recovery time longer than a government term, so no sane government will truly reform. Best to stick to the status quo, even if it eventually destroys you, rather then get booted out by a myopic electorate while someone else takes credit for your making things better.
Corollary: If you made the reforms 10-years ago and you’re still in trouble, then you failed.
Next question: Do I believe this model?
(via Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part Two)
So they try harder to make you feel hopeful and positive about the situation. You explain it again, hoping they’ll try a less hope-centric approach, but re-explaining your total inability to experience joy inevitably sounds kind of negative; like maybe you WANT to be depressed. The positivity starts coming out in a spray — a giant, desperate happiness sprinkler pointed directly at your face. And it keeps going like that until you’re having this weird argument where you’re trying to convince the person that you are far too hopeless for hope just so they’ll give up on their optimism crusade and let you go back to feeling bored and lonely by yourself.
Funding: Australia’s grant system wastes time : Nature : Nature Publishing Group
HAH! Australia, one of the richest countries on earth, has a research funding scheme SO counter-productively tight-arse that it makes Nature. Truth is a dangerously large amount of the applications were for stuff that the Man from Snowy River wouldn’t have understood, and how can that be good for the country?
This kinda shit works for my music-review-reading heart.
Light a candle. Draw the required sigils. Now, raise your arms above your head and slowly, gently, exhale your soul. You won’t need it here. This is Audioccult, and it’s time to get low. Illustration: SHALTMIRA
7AM
Another Berlin morning finds me sitting cross-legged on my patio, surrounded by a ring of incense-filled pizza boxes. My Damir Doma pants have been pressed according to the seven Hermetic principles. My Traktor controller coordinates the correct ritual music (durrty pumping party bass), seriously impressing my neighbors and this fucked up-looking bird who’s perched on the table. If all goes according to plan, and if thee spiritz will it, my COMPLETE-FRASIER torrent will be completed within the minute. If not, I will cry out violence to those on the street below. A distant PING from the bedroom, a cloud of incense smoke taking the shape of David Hyde Pierce sobbing and contemplating a gun. My ceremony is successful: I’ve summoneda really good time.
- See more at: http://www.electronicbeats.net/2013/05/03/audioccult-vol-53-cure-of-the-tumblr-ancient/#sthash.maM7Dorv.dpuf
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