More Brains Than I Know What to Do With

Hidden bombshell in an article about political advertising. This article was supposed to be about how political advertisers are having trouble reaching an audience. For me, though, the bombshell was this: 31% of us don't watch TV according to schedule. Almost a third of Americans use Tivo or some other time-shifting device, get their television through an internet source, or don't watch television at all. Television isn't a broadcast medium at all anymore: it's a supplier of media in inconvenient packaging, an inconvenience which more and more of us are routing around with technology.

The Kindle Fire: Deeply Evil. Forget the walled garden of Apple, and enjoy the panopticon of Amazon. Not only does Amazon "optimize" your experience by caching your results, they also get to see record absolutely everything you do. They capture purchase and behavior information for everything you buy, and use that information to "optimize" Amazon to be more attractive than any alternatives. The market persists only because both sides have incomplete information about the value of a sale; Amazon is making sure that only you have incomplete information, but Amazon will know everything.

Lifehacker recently had a pick your Kindle flowchart, but it's missing one: "Value your privacy? Go to a fucking bookstore before they're extinct already."

Oregon: Jurors convict "faith defense" of manslaughter. Good for Oregon to claim that faith, and faith healing, are no longer positive defenses when charging someone with manslaughter for failing to get medical assistance for a minor child. The comments are... special. "This is the state telling us what we can and can't do to our children." Well, yes, that's partially what the state is for, you fool: the watchmen assuring you do not, even by omission, inflict mortal pain and suffering on those to whom you have responsbility.

How Stastical Behaviorism made video games compelling, rather than fun. This is a genuinely creepy look at the way the statistics were generated, and are now used, to create "social" games where you feel obliged to participate, but don't actually get any pleasure out of them. At least one woman who'd I desperately like to get into the pants of take out on a date has disappeared down the rabbit hole known as Farmville.

A more progressive tax system Confirming results we've known for ten years, the more egalitarian and equitable the arrangement, the happier and wealthier a state will be. When income disparity is relatively low, those on high don't feel the need for excessive guard labor, a hidden drag on economies, and the general welfare goes up faster. High Gini coefficients are associated with general popular malaise and mistrust. Just like the United States!