The prospect of cheap portable translation tools that are contextually savvy is thrilling. What it will do to culture, I can’t say. But these comments following a New York Times story on Google’s translation breakthroughs may illuminate the next few years.

This heightened state of absorption is emblematic of what Gopnik calls “the evolutionary division of labor between children and adults.” In this collaboration, the child’s protracted period of immaturity is indulged because it allows him to perform uninhibitedly the sorts of experiments that will eventually enable the more plodding and deliberate adult to alter—or at least to manipulate—the reality of his world.

Behold: a comic book written by a five year-old but illustrated by a 29 year-old; via MetaFilter.

I could be wrong but isn’t this kind of collaboration common in the history of fables and the like?

The kicker is that we’d just finished watching all three seasons in less than four days. It’s like getting off an epic rollercoaster and walking right back to the turnstile for another ride.

Think the original version of The Office meets season four of The Wire.

That’s a mouthful but CMU professor Jesse Schell delivers the facts and their implications with verve and humor.

later

In almost all philosophies, the premise that play is at the heart of meaning is old news. But how we play changes meaning just as surely as language shapes it. The possibilities created by our new games would certainly have delighted the philosophers and theologians of yesteryear.

even later

The strongest parts of Schell’s presentation are about “psychological tricks” that get people to spend more money. And while spending money might seem like a shallow activity, it’s one of the ways we communicate what we value. It’s a vote of confidence. And to get someone to vote for you is not an insignificant pathway to explore.

Many of the existential threats to our species require us to think about the future in ways our brains find difficult. It’s hard to connect the dots between what I do in the next five minutes and how that might affect me in fifty years. All the more reason to make a game out of it.

(Thank you Ana for asking, Wikipedia for defining, and the Measuring Worth aggregator for answering.)

Un activista anti gobierno se estrella contra un edificio federal en Tejas
Un ingeniero de sistemas informáticos manifestó este martes su furia contra el Estado suicidándose con una avioneta lanzada contra un edificio de la agencia tributaria en Austin (Tejas), donde trabajaban 200 empleados federales.

Translation: “An anti-government activist crashes into a federal building in Texas: an IT engineer demonstrated his rage against the government by killing himself with a small plane launched into the IRS building in Austin (Texas) where 200 federal employees worked.”

The Spanish have a long history of dealing with domestic terrorism. But I’m not sure that history is what prompted this language.

The answer was: “No, because of the economy.”

But instead I replied: “No, Goldman Sachs took it away.”

And then it hit me: guilt is coalescing around Goldman. First it was the Taibbi piece, then the Morgenson pieces and now the links to Greece.

via MetaFilter.

LD Desk by Jon Goulder

Desk by Hansen Family

Swag Desk by George Nelson

So often, musical groups try to steal and end up copying. Them Crooked Vultures have pulled off at least a half-dozen perfect heists on this debut record. Legendary.

In the face of conventional wisdom that asserts rock has nothing left to give and can only be plundered for remixes here is proof that technical mastery can unlock new rooms of possibility and unknowable feeling.

If you believe that musical culture is a dialectical conversation, Them Crooked Vultures are the rare synthesis of several styles (techniques, tastes) where the sum is greater than its parts. A phase transition.

As a response to computer-aided music, Them Crooked Vultures leap past the last decade’s trend towards sloppiness, rejecting the claim that only naif and primitive players can be sincere. Instead, the trio delights in pulling off magic tricks – by definition, acts you don’t notice but for their impossible by-products; the white rabbit, the lovely lady cut in two. These are the moments that sound too good to be true. The turns of phrase that turn heads and inspire hope by remaining mysterious, fleeting.

Then there are the many moments that sound good because they are so true, so familiar. The genuine expression of a harmonic “faith” once preached by The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. Layered into a chorus (with a computer, natch), lead singer Josh Homme becomes a fab four of one, as charismatic and erotic as Robert Plant or Mick Jagger ever were on their best nights.

Alcove by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec

Basket by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec

Yale by Jean-Marie Massaud

Dehors by Michele De Lucchi & Philippe Nigro

Zorro by Stephanie Knust

Stick by Todd Bracher Studio

Bend by Michele Menescardi

PLOF by Yonoh

mr. light by Tomás Alonso
more than a tube of metal but I like them so here they are.

A monologue that could make a great dialogue: you’re angry because you’re getting screwed.

The problem is that we like screwing ourselves over – and over again.

Breathtaking and heartbreaking: Days of Heaven.

Another peek at the future of interactions: an augmented reality game of rock paper scissors with t-shirts as the distribution platform.

There’s a stunning contrast between Cheney and Bush, who said about Obama:”I’m not going to spend my time criticizing him. There are plenty of critics in the arena. He deserves my silence.” And: “I love my country a lot more than I love politics. I think it is essential that he be helped in office.”

The Republican strategy of holding out for total surrender is working just fine. They had an interesting theory that if you refuse to cooperate with efforts to make the country better, things won’t get better and the out-of-power party will benefit. The theory appears to be true.

It’s not, as many in finance and corporate circles hold, that consumers were greedy, irresponsible and stupid (though many were, those attributes are evenly distributed across society.) Rather, it’s that most consumers were getting poorer while the marketplace and political establishment insisted they were getting wealthier:

Firstly, a lack of growth in real income, especially for middle and lower paid employees, made it difficult for [consumers] to achieve the material success that was daily sold to them by the media and advertising. Secondly, the rise of stated income and low or no documentation mortgage reflected the change in work practice where large parts of the work force were no longer employed full-time. Casual or part-time employment and contracting arrangements made the required proof of income difficult.

It’s not that the poor got into contracts they should have avoided, it’s that these contracts were being designed (created and marketed) for an increasing number of consumers trying to keep from losing their buying power — with the claim that such contracts, from credit cards to mortgages, would make these newly poor wealthier. Like magic.

This market in magic debt was no less pernicious than fake doctors who prey on the ill with miracle cures. (Imagine quacks selling a “clean bill of health” that is said to make the sickly bearer healthy again.)

When the contracts came due, relatively few (mostly in finance) were able to pass the buck, most were not. Our government, under the leadership of the prodigal son GW Bush, not only permitted such scams, it endorsed them with b.s. about creating a “society of wealth.” (More like a nation of debtors, from Wall Street to Main Street.)

Americans rejected this agenda in the election of 2008. Even the Republican candidates campaigned on change and learning to live with limited means. Palin touted a hardscrabble, “Alaskan frontier housekeeping” approach to domestic finance.

The Obama administration has proposed an agency that would prevent such consumer abuse, not unlike the way the FDA keeps companies from selling sugar pills to cure Cancer or meat made of glue and sawdust. That proposal may now be yanked given the lack of discipline among Democrats and the consistent discipline shown by Republicans (what the latter lack in ideas they more than make up for in groupthink.)

Nearly a century ago, the shocking scenes in the popular novel “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair helped create an appetite for the FDA. Today’s equivalent would likely be a feature film or a prime time scripted series about the horrors of consumer finance; the perps, their victims and the toll on us all.

I worry that America will only get poorer and more desperate without such a moment of clarity.

Out of the White by Michel de Broin

During the Administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Latino groups had repeatedly failed to coalesce around a candidate [for the Supreme Court.] This time, they were determined to wield their influence as a block…The Mexican-Americans did not have a superior candidate. The Puerto Ricans did not have the numbers. After hours of debate, Ed Pastor, a Mexican-American congressman from Arizona, made a motion: “The best candidate is Sonia Sotomayor, and we should take a vote right here.” The meeting ended with a unanimous vote for Sotomayor.

The individual pursuit of happiness as defined by consumer culture still absorbs much of our time and energy, or else the threat of being shut out of this pursuit through poverty, unemployment, incapacity galvanises our efforts . . . and yet the sense that there is something more presses in. Great numbers of people feel it: in moments of reflection about their life; in moments of relaxation in nature; in moments of bereavement and loss; and quite wildly and unpredictably.

The most painful political truth for Democrats is the nation won’t possibly be out of this jobs hole by the presidential election of 2012, even if the recovery is vigorous. Do the math. In order to get out of the hole, we’d need an average monthly increase of 400,000 jobs between now and then. But even at the peak of the 1990s jobs boom, the highest we ever got was 280,000 jobs a month. At the peak of the last recovery, in 2005, we got no higher than 212,000 jobs a month. Bottom line: Obama will be going into an election year with a higher total level of unemployment than before the Great Recession. He will have to argue that, were it not for his policies, things would be even worse. Counter-factuals like this do not sit well on bumper stickers.

Things that you might think would help a new teacher achieve success in a poor school—like prior experience working in a low-income neighborhood—don’t seem to matter. Other things that may sound trifling—like a teacher’s extracurricular accomplishments in college—tend to predict greatness.

Battles over textbooks are nothing new, especially in Texas, where bitter skirmishes regularly erupt over everything from sex education to phonics and new math. But never before has the board’s right wing wielded so much power over the writing of the state’s standards. And when it comes to textbooks, what happens in Texas rarely stays in Texas. The reasons for this are economic: Texas is the nation’s second-largest textbook market and one of the few biggies where the state picks what books schools can buy rather than leaving it up to the whims of local districts, which means publishers that get their books approved can count on millions of dollars in sales. As a result, the Lone Star State has outsized influence over the reading material used in classrooms nationwide, since publishers craft their standard textbooks based on the specs of the biggest buyers. As one senior industry executive told me, “Publishers will do whatever it takes to get on the Texas list.”

Until recently, Texas’s influence was balanced to some degree by the more-liberal pull of California, the nation’s largest textbook market. But its economy is in such shambles that California has put off buying new books until at least 2014. This means that McLeroy and his ultraconservative crew have unparalleled power to shape the textbooks that children around the country read for years to come.

Steve Jobs’s antipathy for buttons is well-documented. Why does he wear turtlenecks and sneakers? No buttons.

via Daring Fireball.

I found this detail interesting: at least 180,000 Facebook users have joined a group protesting the use of the word Allah in a non-Muslim context in Malaysia.

One of the ways Facebook has managed its growth is by encouraging that its users create walls. Most likely, I can see your page only if we’re already friends. Good walls make good neighbors, etc.

But what of the group that is overtly political on a site that is not entirely governed by Malay law. If any of its members are one click away from a “neighbor” with different beliefs, shouldn’t they ask for a generalized ban?