Archive for September 2010
Caveat faber…
An e-waste processing center in Bangalore, India. Source: Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition
From PC World, a list of “The Most Dangerous Jobs in Technology“… It won’t surprise readers to see “fixing undersea internet cables” or “communications-tower climbing” on the list. But items like “mining ‘conflict minerals'” and “unregulated e-waste recycling” are reminders of facets of the technology industry of which we too rarely think. Consider, for example, “internet content moderation”:
Think of the most disgusting things you’ve stumbled across online. Now imagine viewing the stuff that nightmares are made of–hate crimes, torture, child abuse–in living color, from 9 to 5 every day. That’s the work of Internet content moderators, who get paid to filter out that kind of material so you don’t have to see it pop up on a social network or photo-sharing site. Demand for the work is growing, especially as more Web-based services enable users to post pictures instantly from their mobile devices.
“Obviously it’s not the job for everyone,” says Stacey Springer, vice president of operations at Caleris. The West Des Moines, Iowa, company’s 55 content moderation employees scan up to 7 million images every day for some 80 different clients. “Some people might take it personally if they have a child and see images of children that might be sensitive to them, or if they see animal cruelty.”
Caleris content reviewers receive free counseling as well as benefits including health insurance, but for some the psychological scars don’t heal easily.
Contemplate the full list here.
As we think twice about replacing that iPhone, we might recall that it was on this date in 1888 that the first baby– Edith Eleanor McLean, who weighed 2 lb 7 oz at her pre-mature birth– was placed in a “hatching cradle””– or as now we call them, “incubator.” Designed by Drs. Allan M. Thomas and William C. Deming, it became a public curiosity before it settled in regular use in neonatal care. One of the most popular attractions at the 1904 World’s Fair, for example, was an “exhibit” of 14 metal-framed glass incubators, attended by nurses caring for real endangered infants from orphanages and poor families (whose care was funded by exhibit admission fees).
The World’s Fair in 1904 included “incubator babies” as one of the main attractions on the Pike. Source: neonatology.com
How many can YOU name?!?!?…
From Chilean designer Juan Pablo Bravo, “600 Hanna-Barbera Characters“…
The characters are shown in chronological order, with their respective names in English and Spanish (of the TV series and the characters). Excluded repeats and new versions of some series. The image sizes are not to scale.
The full catalogue looks like this:
… only, of course, much larger. To see the rendering full-size, click here.
TotH to Laughing Squid.
As we wonder why the live-action version of The Flintstones hasn’t been remade at least once, we might recall that it was on this date in 1989 that French law enforcement officials admitted that they had a computer problem: 41,000 Parisians had received letters over the prior weekend accusing them of murder, extortion, prostitution, drug trafficking and other felonious pursuits. But consolingly– if bewilderingly– to the accused, they were asked only to pay minor fines.
When the Gendarmerie came clean, they admitted that the recipients of the notices were in fact guilty of unpaid parking and traffic fines. Revised invoices were mailed– along with letters of apology.
Ripped From Today’s Headlines!…
Don Asmussen‘s daily strip “Bad Reporter” just keeps getting better…
As we decide between two scoops or three, we might recall that it was on this date in 1951 that the first television program was seen simultaneously across the U.S.– a news program, a speech by President Truman opening the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference in San Francisco– utilizing coaxial cable and microwave links that had been installed over the spring and summer. An estimated audience of 30 million watched the President, the largest television audience to date.
source: AT&T Labs
Some craven scruple of thinking too precisely on th’ event*…
Readers will know that your correspondent is a fan of infographics (c.f., e.g., “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah,”Victorian Visualization,” and “I See“). Today’s featured visualization is one that raises as many questions as it answers– but one that merits attention, if for no other reason, for its beautiful weirdness.
Stephan Thiel at the Interface Design program of the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam acted on an unquestionably noble impulse:
…to introduce a new form of reading drama to help understand Shakespeare’s works in new and insightful ways and to address our changed habits of consuming narrative works and knowledge through the capabilities of information visualization.
As a result, and based on data from the WordHoard project of the Northwestern University, an application of computational tools was explored in order to extract and visualize the information found within the text and to reveal its underlying narrative algorithm. The five approaches presented here are the first step towards a discussion of this potentially new form of reading in an attempt to regain interest in the literary and cultural heritage of Shakespeare’s works among a general audience.
The resulting images, captured at Understanding Shakespeare, may or may not help– but they are absolutely fascinating.
Consider one of Stephan’s five approaches, “Visualizing the Dramatic Structure”
The goal of this approach was to provide an overview of the entire play by showing its text through a collection of the most frequently used words for each character. A scene is represented by a block of text and scaled relatively according to its number of words. Characters are ordered by appearance from left to right throughout the play. The major character’s speeches are highlighted to illustrate their amounts of spoken words as compared to the rest of the play.
The Taming of the Shrew (click on image or here to enlarge)
Explore other plays in this way, or check out the other four approaches at Understanding Shakespeare.
* Hamlet, Act 4, scene 4, 40-41
As we reach for our facsimile First Folios, we might recall that in Britain on this date in 1752 absolutely nothing happened. There was no “September 3” (nor September 4-13) in Britain that year, as 1752 was the year that Britain converted from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, which required an adjustment of 11 days. Thus, that year British calendars went from Wednesday, September 2 directly to Thursday, September 14.
Most historians believe that persistent stories of riots in England at the time, demanding “give us our eleven days,” are an urban legend, fueled in part by an over-enthusiastic take on Hogarth’s 1755 painting “An Election Entertainment”:
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