Recently in society Category

UK riot police raided a 30th birthday barbecue because they thought the organizer, who had invited his friends via Facebook, was staging a rave. UK police have the power to stop raves (see Part V, 63), but in this case, they removed about 15 people ready to eat some burgers.

In 2007 Curtis Melvin started a project (North Korea Uncovered) to designate places he visited during two trips to North Korea using images from Google Earth. Since then the project has ballooned to include North Korean released publicity shots and information from other civilian and military visitors to the country in what Mr. Melvin calls "democratized intelligence". The WSJ refers to it as the Wikipedia approach to spying. Whatever you call it, the results are powerful. Unveiling the secrets of a nation hell bent on isolation. The inner workings of the country from nuclear sites, dams, electricity grids, airfields, and transportation networks have all been uncovered to some degree.

Richard Florida - whose "creative class" theory I spoke about before - recently wrote a blog entry on the merits of high-speed rail and its place in the economic recovery (crisis/opportunity).

To review, the "creative class," he states, will be an important socioeconomic group if this nation stands a chance going forward. Our nation was ruled, first, by an "agricultural class," then a "working class," and finally a "service class." But Florida says it will be the "creative class" that will drive our ace in the hole: innovation.

His three necessities for a thriving "creative class," or the Three 'T's:

1. Talent, or the need for a highly talented, educated, and/or skilled population

2. Tolerance, or the need for a diverse community and a "live and let live" ethos

3. Technology, or the need for technological infrastructure necessary to fuel an entrepreneurial culture.

Tolerance, as Friedman wrote in The World is Flat, is a cornerstone of every thriving society in the world. (And the United States were built for tolerance.)

Technology, or rather a technological infrastructure, is important. And although you may not think about high-speed rail as a technological advance, it is. But it isn't being employed enough, especially in America.

High-speed rail. It doesn't sound important, interesting, or particularly life-advancing, but it is. This isn't the Monorail to EPCOT that we're talking about.

It is 95.6 miles from New York to Philadelphia. Driving time is roughly 1 hour 49 minutes. Utilizing the current fastest high-speed rail? 36 minutes! And North America only needs 12 rail lines (one per mega-region; see below). It even makes us happier. (Emphasis mine.)

Philadelphia becomes a veritable suburb of NY, its commute time shrinking from nearly two hours to slightly more than a half hour. Washington-NYC and Boston-NYC become hour-and-a-half trips. San Diego becomes a bedroom suburb of Los Angeles. And commute times shrink considerably across Cascadias' main cities: The time to get from Portland to Seattle shrinks to just over an hour, while travel between Seattle and Vancouver is reduced to less than an hour. It would take just slightly longer than an hour and a half to get from Charlotte to Atlanta. And commutes between Dallas and Houston and Dallas and Austin shrink to an hour and a half or less.

Better high-speed rail connections promise considerable economic efficiency gains. And they also promise to relieve the psychological burdens of commuting by car. Research by behavioral economists like Nobel prize-winner Daniel Kahneman finds that long car commutes are among the things that most adversely affect our happiness.

Tweet, tweet. That's where it's at right now (and probably will be for a while).

Where the people go, so we go. Follow us, or sign up and come follow us: twitter.com/memeticians.

Phone updates, micro-blogging, and - my favorite - the aggregation possibilities. (See: Twitter Trends). What's not to like.

The Delaware Department of Transportation has issued a memo to it's employees entitled: Diversity Spotlight: Comments you never want to make to a coworker - Work Place Faux Pas

The memo is sectioned by race, age, and sexual orientation, and is absolutely jaw-dropping. In this day and age, who needs to send out a memo like this? My guess is that the Delaware DOT is having some issues, and need to do this to cover their own ass in case they need to fire someone.

Hispanic/Latino Co-workers

• You know we should send all of you back across the border.

Don't assume because people look differently or speak differently that they are not natural-born Americans. Where did your ancestors come from?

• It is never ever acceptable to refer to aHispanic/Latino co-worker as a "spic" "wetback" or "hot footer."

This is derogatory.

• Can you help me out with my landscaping?

Why would you assume that all Hispanics/Latinos are landscaping experts?

• Can you recommend a good Mexican Restaurant?

This is stereotyping and shows ignorance. All Hispanics/Latinos are not Mexicans.

Alex Wolf lives in Leeds. She has a list of 101 things she is trying to do within 1001 days. She's keeping track of it online of course. Check it out.

Ah, New Jersey. Every stereotype regarding North Jersey is in this video. It's hilarious.

47-year-old Michael Harold Lynch, of Bellevue, WA, took his anger over a speeding ticket to a new level when he paid his $206 fine in small change soaked in urine and mailed it to the payments division of the Multnomah County courthouse.

Even better, federal law had not been broken, since it is not against the law to mail a box of bodily fluids, as long as it's properly packed and doesn't emit an obnoxious odor. Court staff could only smell the contents once they opened the package.

Good to know.

As the title of the below video suggests professional bike messengers are a bit crazy.

I have a fixed gear myself and never had the courage, let alone the skill to ride through the city so carelessly and two doorings over 10 years (one not my fault and one regrettably so) have done wonders to affect any potentially detrimental courage I may have been cultivating. Minus the ability to stop quickly (as is the case on a fixed gear) these riders are relying solely on the ability to maneuver at high speeds and in tight confines to avoid accidents.

Just yesterday I was riding up Walnut Street on the right side of a moving car in the center lane as a messenger was on the left side of the same car. That car, without using any turn single, abruptly pulled left into a parking garage entrance and ran the messenger off the road. Fortunately he didn't crash and no one was hurt. But as you can see below, accidents still occur. In this case, it appears to be the fault of a reckless cyclist who attempts to cut across the front right bumper of a moving van. Though it is admittedly hard to tell.

NY Times columnist Paul Krugman lays out the right plan for solving two immense problems at once:
1. Economic depression
2. Environmental ruination

Let's today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it's telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall -- when Mother Nature and the market both said: "No more."

He says - surprise, surprise - that Americans need to "greenify" (my word) the marketplace. Or else.

"Just as a few lonely economists warned us we were living beyond our financial means and overdrawing our financial assets, scientists are warning us that we're living beyond our ecological means and overdrawing our natural assets," argues Glenn Prickett, senior vice president at Conservation International. But, he cautioned, as environmentalists have pointed out: "Mother Nature doesn't do bailouts."