NewsTrust - Sci/Tech - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

The Facebook Illusion

Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Ross Douthat - May. 27 (Opinion) - There were two grand illusions about the American economy in the first decade of the 21st century. One was the idea that housing prices were no longer tethered to normal economic trends, and instead would just keep going up and up. The second was the idea that in the age of Web 2.0, we were well on our way to figuring out how to make lots and lots of money on the Internet.

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California Considers DNA Privacy Law

Mon, 21 May 2012 02:15:00 -0700

Scientific American - May. 21 - The Best Science Writing Online 2012 Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way... Read More » California lawmakers are weighing a bill a

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Do You Want the Good News First?

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Thomas L. Friedman - May. 19 (Opinion) - I’ve spent the last week traveling to two of America’s greatest innovation hubs — Silicon Valley and Seattle — and the trip left me feeling a combination of exhilaration and dread. The excitement comes from not only seeing the stunning amount of innovation emerging from the ground up, but from seeing the new tools coming on stream that are, as Amazon.com’s founder, Jeff Bezos, put it to me, “eliminating all the gatekeepers” — making it easier and cheaper than ever to publish your own book, start your own company and chase your own dream. Never have individuals been more empowered, and we’re still just at the start of this trend.

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Not-So-Quick Fix: ADHD Behavioral Therapy May Be More Effective Than Drugs in Long Run

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Scientific American - May. 15 - Before stimulant drugs such as Ritalin, Concerta and Adderall began their rise to popularity in the 1970s, treatment for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) focused on behavioral therapy. But as concerns build over the mounting dosages and extended treatment periods that come with stimulant drugs, clinical researchers are revisiting behavioral therapy techniques. Whereas stimulant medications may help young patients focus and behave in the classroom, research now suggests that behaviorally based changes make more of a difference in the long-term. ...

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How to Use the Internet Wisely, for Your Health and Your Country's

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Howard Rheingold - May. 13 (Opinion) - Use the following methods and tools to protect yourself from toxic bad info. Use them and then pass them along to others. Promote the notion that more info literacy is a practical answer to the growing info pollution. Be the change you want to see. Although the Web undermines authority (by enabling anybody to publish), authority is still useful as one clue to credibility in a detective hunt that accounts for many other clues. Claims to authority, however, need to be questioned. I might add credibility to my assessment if a source is a verified professor at a known institution of higher learning, an authentic MD or PhD, but I would not subtract it from people without credentials whose expertise seems authentic. If you are going to grant credibility to people whose expertise is based on being a professor of something, make sure that assertion is accurate. Don't stop at simply verifying that the claim to be a professor is valid if you are looking for scientific credibility. The next step is to use the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index that derives a score from the scholar's publications, citations by other scholars, grants, honors, and awards. If you want to get even more serious, download a free copy of Publish or Perish software, which analyzes scientific citations from Google Scholar according to multiple criteria. Or use the h-index to calculate how many times other scientists have cited a particular source. Again, don't trust just one source; triangulate.

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Capitalists and Other Psychopaths

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By William Deresiewicz - May. 12 (Opinion) - is an ongoing debate in this country about the rich: who they are, what their social role may be, whether they are good or bad. Well, consider the following. A recent study found that 10 percent of people who work on Wall Street are “clinical psychopaths,” exhibiting a lack of interest in and empathy for others and an “unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation.” (The proportion at large is 1 percent.) Another study concluded that the rich are more likely to lie, cheat and break the law.

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Game Over for the Climate

Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By James Hansen - May. 11 (Opinion) - 'Global warming isn't a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read...that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves 'regardless of what we do.''

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Diageo to end funding of Heartland Institute after climate change outburst

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Leo Hickman - May. 06 - Firm has 'no plans' to work with thinktank following campaign comparing people concerned about climate to mass murderers Diageo, one of the world's largest drinks companies, has announced it will no longer fund the Heartland Institute , a rightwing US thinktank which briefly ran a billboard campaign this week comparing people concerned about climate change to mass murderers and terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, Charles Manson and Ted Kaczynski. On Thursday, a billboard appeared over the Eisenhower Expressway in Illinois showing a picture of Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who in 1996 was convicted of a 17-year mail bombing campaign that killed three people and injured dozens. The caption read: "I still believe in global warming. Do you?" A day later it was withdrawn. The London-based drinks giant, which owns brands such as Guinness, Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker and Moët & Chandon, said this year that it was "reviewing any further association with Heartland" following the release online of ...

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Op-Ed Columnist: How Chemicals Change Us

Wed, 02 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Nicholas D. Kristof - May. 02 (Opinion) - Scientists warn that chemicals we’re exposed to every day can cause genital deformities and even breast cancer. Is our government paying attention?

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The Art of Getting Net Smart

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Shel Israel, Howard Rheingold - Apr. 29 (Opinion) - Howard Rheingold is a teacher, thinker, futurist and grower of the tallest sunflowers I have ever seen. He’s one the most profound thinkers of what happens online and how it changes the world. Just about every ten years, he checks in with a new book that seems to chart the course for the next decade or so. In 1993, he wrote The Virtual Community , which portended a world where people would share friendship and information with each other online, just as the first browser for the worldwide web was being popularized.

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Wind farms can increase night time temperatures, research reveals

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Damian Carrington - Apr. 29 - Study in US claims building of huge wind farms in Texas has increased night temperatures by up to 0.72C Large windfarms can increase local night time temperatures by fanning warmer air onto the ground, new research has revealed. The study used satellite data to show that the building of huge wind farms in west Texas over the last decade has warmed the nights by up to 0.72C. "Wind power is going to be a part of the solution to the climate change, air pollution and energy security problem," said Liming Zhou, at the University of Albany in New York. "But understanding the impacts of wind farms is critical for developing management strategies to ensure the long-term sustainability of wind power." West Texas has seen rapid expansion of wind farms , with turbine numbers rising from 111 in 2003 to 2358 in 2011. Zhou's team compared the land surface temperatures at the wind farms with other areas across this period and detected a clear rise at night. They note, however, that the effect on the ...

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A third industrial revolution

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - By Paul Markillie - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - As manufacturing goes digital, it will change out of all recognition. And some of the business of making things will return to rich countries. Outside the sprawling Frankfurt Messe, home of innumerable German trade fairs, stands the “Hammering Man”, a 21-metre kinetic statue that steadily raises and lowers its arm to bash a piece of metal with a hammer. Jonathan Borofsky, the artist who built it, says it is a celebration of the worker using his mind and hands to create the world we live in. That is a familiar story. But now the tools are changing in a number of remarkable ways that will transform the future of manufacturing.

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How to Spot the Future

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Thomas Goetz - Apr. 25 (Opinion) - Thirty years ago, when John Naisbitt was writing Megatrends, his prescient vision of America’s future, he used a simple yet powerful tool to spot new ideas that were bubbling in the zeitgeist: the newspaper. He didn’t just read it, though. He took out a ruler and measured it. The more column inches a particular topic earned over time, the more likely it represented an emerging trend. “The collective news hole,” Naisbitt wrote, “becomes a mechanical representation of society sorting out its priorities”—and he used that mechanism to predict the information society, globalism, decentralization, and the rise of networks.

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Letters: Shale gas could fracture our renewables policy

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Apr. 24 - It beggars belief that fracking is recommended to be extended and earthquakes the only risk taken into account ( Gas fracking gets the green light , 17 April). Other risks are not just theoretical; appalling consequences have already happened on a wide scale in the US. Fracking has been carried out in rural areas where people's off-grid water supplies have been made unusable by pollution. There have been cases where people cannot use water from the tap at the kitchen sink because methane comes with it, with the risk of explosions. Only half the chemical-laden water used in the process is recovered. It is then kept in lagoons on the surface where it is allowed to evaporate volatile toxic chemicals into the air. We cannot afford the risk to our water supplies. We don't have the open spaces which have been affected in the US. Even now we are faced with water restrictions and drought. We don't have the necessary huge quantities of water available to be used and made dirty for ever. The landscape ...

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Whether the digital era improves society is up to its users – that's us

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Danah Boyd - Apr. 22 (Opinion) - Social media in particular has inexorably changed the world, driving openness and fear – but it is not beyond our control Most technology designers engage in their trade to make the world a better place. Technologists love to celebrate the amazing things that people can do with technology – bridge geography, connect communities and transform societies. Meanwhile, plenty of naysayers bemoan the changes brought on by technology, highlighting issues of distraction and attention for example. Unfortunately, this results in a battle between those with utopian and dystopian viewpoints, over who can have a more extreme perspective on technology. So where's the middle ground? One of my favourite maxims about the role of technology in society is called Kranzberg's first law . He argues that "technology is neither good nor bad – nor is it neutral". It's irresponsible to assume that the tools being built just wander out into the world with only positive effects. Technology doesn't determine practice, ...

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The Jig Is Up: Time to Get Past Facebook and Invent a New Future

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Alexis Madrigal - Apr. 22 (Opinion) - We're there. The future that visionaries imagined in the late 1990s of phones in our pockets and high-speed Internet in the air: Well, we're living in it. "The third generation of data and voice communications -- the convergence of mobile phones and the Internet, high-speed wireless data access, intelligent networks, and pervasive computing -- will shape how we work, shop, pay bills, flirt, keep appointments, conduct wars, keep up with our children, and write poetry in the next century."

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8 questions that will help define the future of journalism

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Google News - By Richard Gingras - Apr. 19 (Speech) - These are extraordinary times. These are exciting times. There has been tremendous disruption, but let’s consider the huge positives that underly that disruption. There are no longer the same barriers to publishing: everyone has a printing press, and there are no gatekeepers. There are new ways for people to both consume and share news. There are powerful new technologies that can change what journalists do and how they do it. In my view, the future of journalism can and will be better than its past.

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Tim Berners-Lee: demand your data from Google and Facebook

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Ian Katz, Tim Berners-Lee - Apr. 18 (Interview) - Exclusive: world wide web inventor says personal data held online could be used to usher in new era of personalised services Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the world wide web, has urged internet users to demand their personal data from online giants such as Google and Facebook to usher in a new era of highly personalised computer services "with tremendous potential to help humanity". Berners-Lee, the British born MIT professor who invented the web three decades ago, says that while there has been an explosion of public data made available in recent years, individuals have not yet understood the value to them of the personal data held about them by different web companies. In an interview with the Guardian, Berners-Lee said: "My computer has a great understanding of my state of fitness, of the things I'm eating, of the places I'm at. My phone understands from being in my pocket how much exercise I've been getting and how many stairs I've been walking up and so on." Exploiting ...

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Technology should help us share, not constrain us

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Richard Stallman - Apr. 18 (Opinion) - Companies like Amazon can control the way we use the ebooks we buy. Instead let's build a publishing model based on freedom I love the detective novel The Jehovah Contract , and I'd like everyone else to love it, too. I have lent it out at least six times over the years. Printed books let us do that. I couldn't do it with most commercial ebooks; it's not allowed. And if I felt like telling the publishers to take their evil rule and stuff it, the software in e-readers has digital restrictions management – malicious features that restrict access, so it simply won't allow it. And the books are encrypted in such a way to force you to use that malicious software. Many other habits that readers are accustomed to are not allowed for ebooks. With the Amazon Kindle, for instance, you're not allowed to buy a book anonymously. Kindle books are typically available from Amazon only, and Amazon doesn't accept cash so users must identify themselves. Thus Amazon knows exactly which books each user has read. ...

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Two years in the life of a Texas Planned Parenthood: ‘We’re figuring this out as we go.’

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Sarah Kliff - Apr. 15 - The funds for Planned Parenthood North Texas started drying up in 2011. That was when the state cut $73 million from its family planning budget, and five clinics around the Dallas/Forth-Worth area closed. This year hasn’t been any easier. In January, a change to the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s funding policies threw private dollars into jeopardy. Just two months later, more bad news: Texas would shutter a Medicaid program for low-income women in a dispute. On April 30, another $40 million will disappear. “We may have to consider more clinic closures, that’s the point we’re at right now,” said Ken Lambrecht, chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood North Texas. His affiliate covers Texas’ largest metropolitan area, alongside a handful of more rural locations like Plano and Sherman, near the Texas/Oklahoma border. Over the past two years, Planned Parenthood has seen both its private and public funding come under siege like never before. Nine states have, so far, passed laws that would ...

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Climate scientists are losing the public debate on global warming - Telegraph

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 06:54:06 -0700

Daily Telegraph - Apr. 08 - Green campaigners and climate scientists are losing the public debate over global warming, one of the movement's leading proponents has admitted.

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Rising Temperatures, Rising Health Problems

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 12:21:00 -0700

Voice of America - Apr. 04 - Scientists say the effects of climate change could actually make breathing more difficult for many people. They expect rising temperatures to bring an increase in cases of asthma and allergies, as well as infectious and cardiovascular diseases. De Capua

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Tracking Women: Now There’s Not An App For That

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Andrew Dowell - Apr. 01 (Opinion) - Score one small setback for creepiness. Location-based social network Foursquare Labs has cut off access to its technology for an application that made it possible for guys to pinpoint the location of nearby women on a map and view their personal data and photographs.

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Stop Panicking About Bullies

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Nick Gillespie, Wall Street Journal - Mar. 31 (Opinion) - Childhood is safer than ever before, but today's parents need to worry about something. Nick Gillespie on why busybodies and bureaucrats have zeroed in on bullying.

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Petrol crisis 'is our Thatcher moment', Tory MPs reportedly tell party members

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Damien Pearse - Mar. 31 - Unite accuses ministers of 'spoiling for a fight' after memo from MPs emerges comparing situation with 1980s miners' strike Tory MPs have compared the panic over fuel supplies to the 1980s miners' strike and urged party members to "humiliate" the unions by stockpiling petrol, it has been reported. In a private message from MPs to constituency associations, seen by the Daily Telegraph's Charles Moore , members were told: "This is our Thatcher moment." The message reportedly continues: "In order to defeat the coming miners' strike, [Thatcher] stockpiled coal. When the strike came, she weathered it, and the Labour party, tarred by the strike, was humiliated. In order to defeat the coming fuel drivers' strike, we want supplies of petrol stockpiled. Then, if the strike comes, we will weather it, and Labour, in hock to the Unite union, will be blamed." In his blog, Moore comments: "There is a key difference which ministers have not spotted. When Mrs Thatcher piled up the coal at power ...

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