Posted at 03:19 PM in Economic Development, Great Divergence, History, Human Progress, Social Media, Technology, Technology (Biotech & Health), Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet), Technology (Energy), Technology (Food & Water), Technology (Manufacturing & Construction)), Technology (Transportation & Distribution), Trends: Economic, Trends: Social | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Automation. great divergence, human progress, living standards, technology innovation
1. New York Times: Why Are Americans Staying Put?
... “This decline in migration has been going on for a long time now, through all sorts of ups and downs in the housing market,” said Greg Kaplan of Princeton University, who, along with Sam Schulhofer-Wohl of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, has studied the issue in depth. But even with the pressure of high housing costs in many areas, Americans are moving less, Kaplan said. “That might explain why people are moving from San Francisco to, I don’t know, Houston,” he said. “But you’ve seen a decline in migration from Texas to California as well as California to Texas.”
This is not a short-term supply-and-demand issue or a side effect of a slow-growth economy or a shift in demographics. The change is deeper. Kaplan and Schulhofer-Wohl have won applause from other economists for developing a novel theory to explain this creeping inertia: labor markets in the United States have simply become more homogeneous. Earnings have become more similar across the country, meaning there is less incentive to move from one place to another in search of a raise. The country has also become less diverse, work-wise. Pick any two cities, and chances are they offer a more similar mix of jobs than they did 20 or 50 years ago. We have become less a nation of Pittsburghs and more a nation of Provos. ...
... Even so, many economists believe that if Kaplan and Schulhofer-Wohl’s narrative is right, there is reason to suspect that a less-mobile populace might not mean a less-dynamic economy. Workers haven’t stopped moving because housing prices or other financial or social concerns are holding them back. They’ve stopped moving because they just don’t see the need to. “Whether it’s a good thing depends on why,” Kolko said. “If your job prospects don’t depend on having to move someplace else, the decline in mobility might be a good thing.”
2. The Atlantic: Stuck: Why Americans Stopped Moving to the Richest States
... "Americans are moving far less often than in the past, and when they do migrate it is typically no longer from places with low wages to places with higher wages," Tim Noah wrote in Washington Monthly. "Rather, it’s the reverse." Why America lost her wanderlust is not entirely clear—perhaps dual-earner households make long moves less likely; perhaps the Great Recession pinned underwater homeowners on their plots—but those still wandering a ren't going to the right cities. ...
... Americans aren't simply moving to the states with the lowest unemployment (Oregon, Tennessee, and North Carolina all have jobless rates above the national average). More importantly, we aren't moving to states with the best records for low-income families getting ahead. In fact, we're often fleeing the best places for a upwardly mobile middle class. ...
... This doesn't make much sense if you envision American families rushing to the most promising metros. It does make sense if you see American families rushing to the most affordable homes. ...
3. Huffington Post: U.S. Population Grows At Slowest Rate Since The Great Depression
... The U.S. population grew by just 0.72 percent in the year ended July 1, 2013, the Census Bureau reported Monday. That’s the slowest growth rate since 1937. Population growth has hovered at super-low levels for the past few years, according to William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan research organization. The trend is "troubling," Frey said, and is due largely to the weak economy. ...
4. New Geography: The Geography Of Aging: Why Millennials Are Headed To The Suburbs
One supposed trend, much celebrated in the media, is that younger people are moving back to the city, and plan to stay there for the rest of their lives. Retirees are reportedly following suit. ...
... But a close look at migration data reveals that the reality is much more complex. The millennial “flight” from suburbia has not only been vastly overexaggerated, it fails to deal with what may best be seen as differences in preferences correlated with life stages.
We can tell this because we can follow the first group of millennials who are now entering their 30s, and it turns out that they are beginning, like preceding generations, to move to the suburbs. ...
5. Business Insider: Female Mortality Rates Are One Of The Strangest And Most Disturbing Trends In The United States
Change in female mortality rates from 1992–96 to 2002–06 in US counties
6. Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States
Here you will find one of the greatest historical atlases: Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, first published in 1932. This digital edition reproduces all of the atlas's nearly 700 maps. Many of these beautiful maps are enhanced here in ways impossible in print, animated to show change over time or made clickable to view the underlying data—remarkable maps produced eight decades ago with the functionality of the twenty-first century.
7. Forbes: What Would The U.S. Be Like If We Had 124 States?
8. NPR: Overweight People In Developing World Outnumber Those In Rich Countries
... "Over the last 30 years, the number of people who are overweight and obese in the developing world has tripled," says , of the Overseas Development Institute in London.
One-third of adults globally are now overweight compared with fewer than 23 percent in 1980, the report . And the number of overweight and obese people in the developing world now far overshadows the number in rich countries. ...
9. Economist: The high rate of suicide in Asia
10. PBS Newshour: Japanese population declined by record number in 2013
The Japanese population, which has been shrinking for the last couple of years, declined by a record 244,000 people in 2013, according to health ministry estimates.
If the current trend persists, the BBC reports the country will lose a third of its population in the next 50 years. ...
11. Real Clear World: Easing China's One-Child Policy Won't Stop Demographic Decline
In an attempt to mitigate a near-certain demographic future of rapid aging, shrinking labor force and critical gender imbalance, the Chinese government has adjusted its one-child policy. The decision demonstrates that, irrespective of a nation's politico-economic system, governments cannot avoid demography's juggernaut consequences. This mid-course correction in population policy will have marginal effect as China is aging at a much faster pace than occurred in other countries. This, along with a shrinking workforce and critical gender imbalance, will increasingly tax the government. ...
(Related: New Geography: China Failing its Families)
12. Business Insider: These Facebook Maps Reveal Migration Trends Around The World
... The maps use two simple data points offered up by its 1 billion users — where you live and your hometown — to draw a map of how groups of people migrate from place to place. The Facebook Science team was looking specifically for “coordinated migration,” when a significant proportion of a population from one city moves collectively to another city. This could be the result of economics, wars, natural disasters or even state policies. ...
13. Atlantic Cities: Our Favorite Maps of 2013
Dustin Cable's stunning Racial Dot Map actually put every person in America (308,745,538 of us) on a map as individual dots of different colors.
14. Business Insider: Where Drivers Drive On The Left And Where They Drive On The Right
15. Top Public Health Risks
Posted at 08:35 PM in China, Demography, Generations, Health and Medicine, History, Links - Demography, Public Policy, Race, Social Media, Sociology, Trends: Economic, Trends: Social | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: driving conventions, Facebook, Female Mortality Rates, geographic mobility, global migration, Japan, Millennials, obesity, One-Child Policy, population decline, slowing population growth, suburbanization, suicide, top public health risks
1. Population Reference Bureau has a great resource that maps their 2013 World Population Data Sheet on an interactive map. Here is one example:
2. Modern family redefined: Say 'goodbye' to the typical American family
A New York Times story looking at the skyrocketing rate of birth outside of marriage among women under 30 (now over 50 percent of such births) pointed up one of the key differences between marriages and cohabitating couples:
Almost all of the rise in nonmarital births has occurred among couples living together. While in some countries such relationships endure at rates that resemble marriages, in the United States they are more than twice as likely to dissolve than marriages. In a summary of research, Pamela Smock and Fiona Rose Greenland, both of the University of Michigan, reported that two-thirds of couples living together split up by the time their child turned 10.
The research, in aggregate, says that things are changing for the American family, and quickly. There may be ways for the government to address the trend: increased financial benefits for getting and staying married, for example, or a macro-effort to actively battle rising economic inequality, but systematic change will be a long hard fight. The research seems to suggest that such a fight is worth the effort.
4. Young People Are Still Dropping Out Of The Labor Force
Kids are likely staying in school for longer (or avoiding work altogether) thanks to a tough labor market. On the other hand, the 65-and-over crowd has seen the sharpest uptick in participation. The financial crisis bled retirement savings, forcing older Americans to stay on the job for longer.
5. How Big Data Is Transforming The Mobile Industry
6. Millennials Now Bringing Their Parents Along On Job Interviews
7. Why Bigger Is No Longer Better
Every manager and entrepreneur wants to grow their business. Get bigger and more powerful, the thinking goes, and you'll have it made. The added heft will give you the upper hand in negotiations with suppliers and the doors of customers will swing wide open.
That used to be true to a certain extent, but not so much anymore. Digital technology has markedly evened out the playing field. Startups become billion dollar companies overnight while venerable brands like Kodak and Blockbuster hit the skids.
This turn of events presents considerable challenges for managers. While there are still some advantages to scale, the disadvantages often outweigh them. You have lots of customers, a large workforce and stodgy institutional investors to keep happy, all of which contribute to strategic rigidity. To compete in the new economy, we need a new playbook. ...
8. Can For-Profit Corporations Have Religious Purposes?
...Okay, some may respond (e.g., here), churches and other organizations have free exercise rights, but for-profit corporations do not. But why would this be? An individual sole proprietor — of, say, a kosher deli, to use Will's example — would clearly be able to press a religious liberty claim, whether or not she hopes the deli will make her rich (and whether or not she commits to donate her earnings to a religious charity). Does this individual lose such rights if she incorporated? Does that somehow make her religious motivations any less sincere? Any less judicially cognizable? I can't see how. What, then, if the deli owner formed a partnership with her equally devout brother? Would that matter? And, again, if an informal partnership would be okay, why would the adoption of a corporate form and limited liability matter?
The consequence of the "no religious liberty for corporations" position is that individuals who would like to go into business are penalized if they seek to go into business without any potential recourse, under RFRA or otherwise. The choice presented by the state is go into business or stay true to your religious beliefs. Although I suggested otherwise before, it seems to me this approach imposes a substantial burden on the exercise of religion. Whether this burden can be justified in a given case is a separate question, but the burden is there. ...
9. Five Insights About Private Property from Aquinas
10. Germans Revolt Against Germany's Green Energy Revolution
11. Brussels fears European 'industrial massacre' sparked by energy costs
Europe's industry is being ravaged by exorbitant energy costs and an over-valued euro, blighting efforts to reverse years of global manufacturing decline.
12. What If Roads Lasted Twice As Long?
If there were a better way to take care of roads in the Lone Star State, it would be a very valuable idea.
Enter Sahadat Hossain, an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington and the man behind a new state program to shore up crumbling roads using an underground support system of recycled plastic pins.
"Just think about it," Hossain says. "You need one million dollars to repair something. Or you can use a sustainable recycling material and do it for $200- or $300,000. You don't need to be an engineer to see that."
The scheme's low price is matched by its high effectiveness. In a two-year feasibility study that concluded this August, sections of Texas Route 287 with 10-foot-long pins drilled into the roadway slope moved only one to two inches. The control sections, left unsupported, moved 15 to 16 inches. ...
... The input cost of the pins, which have previously been tested in Missouri, is less than 50 percent that of traditional highway support measures like retaining walls. And because they are made from recycled plastic—each pin contains about 500 soda bottles—the pin concept turns plastic's non-decomposition from an environmental headache to an engineering solution. ...
14. Why So Many Articles Have Terrible Headlines Online
15. The 11 Most Common Grammatical Mistakes And How To Avoid Them
16. What would happen if your church was reviewed on TripAdvisor?
Churches spend a lot of time on the big things, like a glorious anthem and prophetic preaching. But a UMC pastor says small details matter, too, like lights that burn brightly, signs that make sense and greeters who greet. ...
Posted at 11:59 PM in Business, Demography, Ecclesia, Economics, Education, Environment, Europe, Generations, Health and Medicine, Links - Saturday, Politics, Public Policy, Religion, Social Media, Sociology, Sports and Entertainment, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet), Technology (Energy), Technology (Manufacturing & Construction)), Theology, Trends: Economic, Trends: Social | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Aquinas, Boomers, digital device usage, faith-based enterprises, Germany, grammatical mistakes, green energy, labor force participation, Millennials, online media headlines, Private Property, sustainable road construction, World Cup, world population
1. Mark Buchanan asks Is Economics a Science or a Religion?
2. Poverty has moved to the suburbs
I don't think this should be seen as necessarily a bad thing. A few decades ago, the idea was to "warehouse" the poor in large urban complexes. There has been an intentional effort at dispersal through various means including creating mixed-income neighborhoods.
3. Crime has plummeted in the rich world, even amid the recession.
4. 5 Charts That Perfectly Capture The Incredible Rise Of China
5. How (and why) Africa should solve its own problems
Africa cannot rely on outside people to come and feed our poor or treat our sick, says African businessman and philanthropist Mo Ibrahim. The key is good governance, in both the public and private sectors.
6. World Bank: Africa held back by land ownership confusion
Africa's economic growth is being held back by confusion over who owns vast swathes of agricultural land, according to a World Bank report.
7. Deforestation in Africa's Congo Basin rainforest slows
Tree loss in one of the world's largest rainforests has slowed, a study suggests.
Satellite images of Africa's Congo Basin reveal that deforestation has fallen by about a third since 2000.
Researchers believe this is partly because of a focus on mining and oil rather than commercial agriculture, where swathes of forest are cleared. ...
8. Brazil's Evangelicals A Growing Force In Prayer, Politics
... Recent polls show that evangelical Christianity is the fastest-growing sect in Brazil. According to the Pew Research Center, 22 percent of the Brazilian population identifies as evangelical Christian — up from 5 percent in 1970. Unfortunately for the Catholic Church, most of them switched from Roman Catholicism.
These days, only about 62 percent of people in Brazil say they are Catholic. In absolute numbers, however, this still makes Brazil the country with the most Catholics in the world. ...
9. For Developing World, a Streamlined Facebook
MENLO PARK, Calif. — Facebook has been quietly working for more than two years on a project that is vital to expanding its base of 1.1 billion users: getting the social network onto the billions of cheap, simple "feature phones" that have largely disappeared in America and Europe but are still the norm in developing countries like India and Brazil.
Facebook soon plans to announce the first results of the initiative, which it calls Facebook for Every Phone: More than 100 million people, or roughly one out of eight of its mobile users worldwide, now regularly access the social network from more than 3,000 different models of feature phones, some costing as little as $20.
Many of those users, who rank among the world's poorest people, pay little or nothing to download their Facebook news feeds and photos, with the data usage subsidized by phone carriers and manufacturers. ...
10. The Huge Threat to Capitalism That Republicans Are Ignoring (I don't agree with a couple of points but I think his thesis is spot on.)
11. Big Racial Divide over Zimmerman Verdict
12. The Wal-Mart Slayer: How Publix's People-First Culture Is Winning The Grocer War
Family-run Publix is both the largest employee-owned company and the most profitable grocer in America. Those two facts are linked, and they might be the formula for fending off Bentonville's retail behemoth. ...
... When a middle-aged woman asks about a box of crackers, no aisle number is blurted out. Instead, an employee races off to find the item, just as he is trained to do. At checkout, shoppers move to the front quickly, thanks to a two-customer-per-line goal enforced by proprietary, predictive staffing software. Baggers, a foggy memory at most large supermarket chains, carry purchases to the parking lot. Even Publix's president, Todd Jones, who started out as a bagger 33 years ago, stoops down to pick up specks of trash on the store floor.
"We believe that there are three ways to differentiate: service, quality and price," Jones says. "You've got to be good at two of them, and the best at one. We make service our number one, then quality and then price."...
... Publix, the seventh-largest private company in the U.S. ($27.5 billion in sales) and one of the least understood thanks to decades of media reticence, is also the largest employee-owned company in America. For 83 years Publix has thrived by delivering top-rated service to its shoppers by turning thousands of its cashiers, baggers, butchers and bakers into the company's largest collective shareholders. All staffers who have put in 1,000 work hours and a year of employment receive an additional 8.5% of their total pay in the form of Publix stock. (Though private, the board sets the stock price every quarter based on an independent valuation; it's pegged at $26.90 now, up nearly 20% already this year.) How rich can employees get? According to Publix, a store manager who has worked at the company for 20 years and earns between $100,000 and $130,000 likely has $300,000 in stock and has received another $30,000 in dividends. ...
13. Grocery shopping online: Can it replace trips to the store?
The website mySupermarket.com compares the prices of groceries online and works to reduce shipping costs. But a limited selection means grocery store runs aren't a things of the past just yet.
14. 25 Everyday Things Made Obsolete This Century. What would you add to the list?
Posted at 11:59 PM in Africa, Business, Capitalism and Markets, China, Crime, Culture, Economic Development, Economics, Environment, Links - Saturday, Politics, Public Policy, Race, Religion, Social Media, Sociology, South America, Technology, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet) | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Africa, Brazil, Capitalism, China, Congo, deforestation, Developing World, economics, evangelicals, Facebook, George Zimmerman, grocery shopping online, Mo Ibrahim, obsolete technology, poverty, property rights, Publix, Republicans, suburban poverty Walmart
1. Public Religion Research Institute: Survey | Do Americans Believe Capitalism and Government are Working?: Religious Left, Religious Right and the Future of the Economic Debate
2. Gallup reports Sub-Saharan Africa Is Wildly Optimistic About Its Future
3. U.S. could lead world oil production by 2017, study says
Domestic shale oil production could shoot up to 5 million barrels per day by 2017, making the United States the top oil producing country in the world, according to a researcher at Harvard Kennedy School.
4. Will Europe Hit a Demographic Tipping Point?
... In 1968 Paul Ehrlich’s doomsday tome The Population Bomb predicted mass starvation and civilizational collapse in much of the world due to overpopulation. But the more serious problem – particularly in traditionally higher-income countries – today is actually too few, not too many new people. The pivot to seeing this as the problem has come through something very basic: pension math. Across the developed world, public pension systems built on the assumption of continued population growth are now facing an actuarial day of reckoning as the bills come due while birth rates have plummeted.
A society needs a total fertility rate – that is, the average number of children born to each woman – of 2.1 just to maintain its population without immigration. Some European countries like France (2.03) and the UK (1.98) are in reasonably good shape, but they are the exception. The total fertility rate in Greece is 1.43, in Germany 1.36, in Spain 1.36, in Portugal 1.30, and in Poland 1.30. Much of southern and central Europe hovers near the so-called “lowest-low” rate of 1.3 in which the population is naturally being cut in half every 45 years.
Simple birth rates alone have caused some to posit a societal going out of business sale in Europe. However, just as extrapolation of high population growth rates in the past led to wildly alarmist claims that proved false, so today we must be careful about not proclaiming Europe is doomed. But with the population on tap to be halved every generation, the runway to turn things around is difficult to conjure. And while we’ve seen many countries make the shift from high to low birth rates, there isn’t a huge track record of success in the other direction. ...
5. Hunger Makes People Work Harder, and Other Stupid Things We Used to Believe About Poverty
The article includes this interesting graph:
6. Forget Microlending. India Needs Basic, Competent Credit Reporting - Businessweek
Development economists talk a lot about credit. Figure out a way to get it to people in a developing economy, rather than just large companies or the state itself, and you can encourage small-scale risk-taking. Microlending offers very small loans to individuals, often $100 or less. The idea won Muhammad Yunus a Nobel Prize in 2006. More recently, microfinance and mobile banking have offered ways to save and insure on a small scale, allowing people take risks with their own money. Speaking in Mumbai earlier this month, K. C. Chakrabarty, deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India, offered an additional way to expand credit: better credit reporting. No shepherds with phones, no happy mothers of four with new sewing machines. Just credit reporting, plain old attention to detail, and administrative competence.
7. Why We Need to Treat America's Poorest Neighborhoods Like Developing Countries
The article includes maps showing life expectancy across several metropolitan areas. Here is the one for my hometown, Kansas City.
8. Racial Disparities in Life Spans Narrow, but Persist
The gap in life expectancy between black and white Americans is at its narrowest since the federal government started systematically tracking it in the 1930s, but a difference of nearly four years remains, and federal researchers have detailed why in a new report.
9. The Unsettling Link Between Sprawl and Suicide
A new scientific working paper (spotted by Tim De Chant of Per Square Mile) contends that as population density decreases, the suicide rate among young people increases. This effect becomes particularly pronounced below 300 inhabitants per square kilometer — roughly the density of San Diego County.
10. Big Data, for Better or Worse: 90% of World's Data Generated Over Last Two Years
11. The one event that destroyed the PC industry
12. Tweets that got people arrested
13. Religion & Wikipedia: The 'Edit Wars' Rage On
Scientists have analyzed page edits in 10 editions of Wikipedia to determine the topics most often fought over by editors of the open encyclopedia. The most debated topics included many religious subjects, like Jesus and God, according to research done by Taha Yasseri, Anselm Spoerri, Mark Graham, and János Kertész.
Rather than merely citing pages that changed a lot, they identified pages involved in "edit wars," that involved editors making changes that were almost instantly undone by another contributor. This proved the best method of finding controversial pages, as pages often updated could simply belong to a rapidly changing field or topic. However, pages with words and phrases constantly removed and reinserted indicated a passionate disagreement surrounding the issue at hand.
The most controversial pages across all ten editions of Wikipedia were:
Other controversial subjects were Jesus, the Prophet Muhammad, and Christianity.
14. The curious case of the fall in crime
... Cherished social theories have been discarded. Conservatives who insisted that the decline of the traditional nuclear family and growing ethnic diversity would unleash an unstoppable crime wave have been proved wrong. Young people are increasingly likely to have been brought up by one parent and to have played a lot of computer games. Yet they are far better behaved than previous generations. Left-wingers who argued that crime could never be curbed unless inequality was reduced look just as silly.
There is no single cause of the decline; rather, several have coincided. Western societies are growing older, and most crimes are committed by young men. Policing has improved greatly in recent decades, especially in big cities such as New York and London, with forces using computers to analyse the incidence of crime; in some parts of Manhattan this helped to reduce the robbery rate by over 95%. The epidemics of crack cocaine and heroin appear to have burnt out.
The biggest factor may be simply that security measures have improved. Car immobilisers have killed joyriding; bulletproof screens, security guards and marked money have all but done for bank robbery. Alarms and DNA databases have increased the chance a burglar will be caught. At the same time, the rewards for burglary have fallen because electronic gizmos are so cheap. Even small shops now invest in CCTV cameras and security tags. Some crimes now look very risky—and that matters because, as every survey of criminals shows, the main deterrent to crime is the fear of being caught. ...
15. By 2030, Half of All Colleges Will Collapse
Posted at 11:59 PM in Africa, Business, Capitalism and Markets, Crime, Demography, Economic Development, Education, History, Kansas City, Links - Saturday, Microenterprise, Politics, Public Policy, Race, Religion, Social Media, Sociology, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet), Technology (Energy), Trends: Economic, Trends: Social | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: Africa, Big Data, capitalism, college closures, Credit Reporting, Developing Countries, hunger, ipad, life expectancy, Microlending, Muhammad Yunus, optimism, Paul Ehrlich, poverty, suicide, The Population Bomb, total fertility rate, Twitter, Wikipedia, world oil production
1. The Atlantic says Just 27% of BA's Have Jobs Related to Their Major? Don't Believe the Fed's New Stat
2. 100 fastest growing inner city businesses
From a pet relocation service, a wine lifestyle marketer, to a scrap metal regenerator, America's urban core is home to a variety of fast-growing companies. Here's the top 100, as ranked by the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City.
3. Factory safety: Battle of the brands
... This approach has been criticised by the Workers Rights Consortium because, unlike its plan, it contains no binding commitment to help fund improvements to make factories safe. Yet it is debatable whether wealthy factory owners really lack funds to make factories safe, as opposed to the lack of incentive due to the Bangladesh government's failure to enforce its own building code. WalMart points out that the government has now started to close unsafe fatories, 19 so far (presumably because of the constant protests by locals since the collapse of Rana Plaza). It says its new approach will detect unsafe factories significantly faster than the Workers Rights Consortium's plan.
Perhaps it would be better if everyone agreed on a common approach. But if there must be competition, it is surely better that it is over how to make factories safer than the alternative.
4. Economist Timothy Taylor with some interesting thoughts on Spending on America's Pets
5. Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories
While psychologists can't know exactly what goes on inside our heads, they have, through surveys and laboratory studies, come up with a set of traits that correlate well with conspiracy belief. In 2010, Swami and a co-author summarized this research in The Psychologist, a scientific journal. They found, perhaps surprisingly, that believers are more likely to be cynical about the world in general and politics in particular. Conspiracy theories also seem to be more compelling to those with low self-worth, especially with regard to their sense of agency in the world at large. Conspiracy theories appear to be a way of reacting to uncertainty and powerlessness.
6. Why You Feel Smart Around Some People But Dumb Around Others
... Experiments show that when people report feeling comfortable with a conversational partner, they are judged by those partners and by observers as actually being more witty.
It's just one example of the powerful influence that social factors can have on intelligence. Research in this area should prompt us to think about intelligence not as a "lump of something that's in our heads," as the psychologist Joshua Aronson puts it, but as "a transaction among people."...
... This research has important implications for the way we educate children and the way we manage employees. For one thing, we should replace high-stakes, one-shot tests with the kind of unobtrusive and ongoing assessments that give teachers and managers a more accurate sense of people's true abilities. We should also put in place techniques for reducing anxiety and building self-confidence that take advantage of our social natures. And we should ensure that the social climate in schools and workplaces is one of warmth and trust, not competition and exclusion.
Professor Aronson calls the doltishness induced by an uncomfortable social situation "conditional stupidity." We should use that insight to create the conditions for brilliance. ...
7. Do those who doubt climate catastrophism lack scientific credibility?
8. Everything Wrong With America In One Simple Image (INFOGRAPHIC) The article is a bit over the top, but this graphic was interesting:
9. America's Declining Teen Birth Rate, Explained in 3 Charts
10. Suburbia Needs Jesus, Too Interesting piece that has caused some buzz in social media. Her point about the centrality of everyday life is something I resonate with.
12. Methodists May Discourage Those Over 45 from Becoming Pastors
13. How does copyright work in space?
CHRIS HADFIELD has captured the world's heart, judging by the 14m YouTube views of his free-fall rendition of David Bowie's "Space Oddity", recorded on the International Space Station (ISS). The Canadian astronaut's clear voice and capable guitar-playing were complemented by his facility in moving around in the microgravity of low-earth orbit. But when the man fell to Earth in a neat and safe descent a few days ago, after a five-month stay in orbit, should he have been greeted by copyright police? Commander Hadfield was only 250 miles (400 km) up, so he was still subject to terrestrial intellectual-property regimes, which would have applied even if he had flown the "100,000 miles" mentioned in the song's lyrics or millions of kilometres to Mars. His five-minute video had the potential to create a tangled web of intellectual-property issues. How does copyright work in space? ...
Posted at 05:20 PM in Business, Christian Life, Demography, Ecclesia, Education, Environment, Health and Medicine, Links - Saturday, Music, Politics, Public Policy, Religion, Social Media, Sociology, Vocation | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: alarmism, climate change, Conspiracy Theories, copyright, cynicism, Facebook, factory safety, highest-paid public employees, inner city businesses, intelligence, Methodists, pet spending, suburbia, teen birth rate, Twitter
1. Atlantic: Could Earth's Population Peak in 2050?
"For the past two decades, demographers have generally agreed that global population growth will continue to inch steadily higher in the coming century, raising concerns about everything from pollution to housing to the world's water supply.
But a new study out of Spain suggests those estimates may be way off—we're talking several billion people off—and that the earth's population could instead peak as soon as 2050. Applying a mathematical model to global population trends, these researchers believe that there will be fewer people living on earth in 2100 than there are today. ..."
Since I started studying demography thirty years ago, low fertility estimates seem the closest to actual outcomes. People seem to be moving to lower fertility rates faster than most expected.
2. Speaking of world population, Chatham House writes about The End of Youth
"Advances in medicine and health care mean that people all over the globe are living longer, much longer. At the same time mothers in most countries are having fewer babies. The combination is a demographic timebomb. Sarah Harper looks at the challenges that lie ahead and the changes needed to cope with a grey new world."
3. Pew has published an interesting report on Demographics of Asian Americans
4. Forbes on Why China Is Finally Abandoning Its One Child Policy
"The policy was originally justified as necessary because of excess population and to promote economic development. Much has been written and can be found on the Internet about this policy and the current and long-term effects it is having and will have on China. The reluctance by China's central government to abandon the one child policy is not out of a failure to recognize its shortcomings. Rather, it is because the policy has been highly successful in achieving a principal objective, a unification of the public in support of an unelected, autocratic central government."
5. World Bank Aims To Eliminate Extreme Poverty By 2030
To reach that goal, Kim said the world need to reduce the number of people living below the poverty line of $1.25 per day to 3 percent globally by 2030, and raise the per capita incomes of the bottom 40 percent of every developing country.
The 3 percent level is a new target for the World Bank, which estimated in 2010 that 21 percent of the global population, or 1.2 billion people, lived extreme poverty.
Some World Bank estimates have put the 3 percent target at about 600 million people living below the poverty line by 2030.
6. Susan Brown writes about A 'gray divorce' boom
Until recently, it would have been fair to say that older people simply did not get divorced. Fewer than 10% of those who got divorced in 1990 were ages 50 or older. Today, 1 in 4 people getting divorced is in this age group.
7. Science reports on the prospects of One Drug to Shrink All Tumors.
8. The Genetic Literacy Project on Monsanto Protection Act? Separating the facts from the fury
9. Dean Kalahar says Economics Is Easy, And Can Be Learned In 5 Minutes
10. Rebecca Schuman on why you shouldn't pursue that Ph.D.: Thesis Hatement
11. Facebook 'Dislike' Button Not A Good Idea, Says Product Engineer Bob Baldwin In Reddit AMA
12. Finally, we have an answer to one of the most important questions of our generation: How Many Spaces After a Period? Ending the Debate.
13. ABP News with some interesting data on the future of Mega Churches: Small is big for Millennials
14. Goal Control 4D. How referees will be automatically informed of goals in World Cup 2014.
15. For those of you who have deficiencies in your cultural education about all things Whovian, here is a primer for you: 'Doctor Who' Explained in 25 GIFs
Posted at 09:48 PM in China, Demography, Ecclesia, Economics, Education, Generations, Health and Medicine, Human Progress, Links - Saturday, Public Policy, Race, Religion, Science, Social Media, Sociology, Sports and Entertainment, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet), Trends: Economic, Trends: Social | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: aging population, Asian American Demographics, demography, extreme poverty, Facebook, fertility rates, global population growth, GMOs, gray divorce, human progress, Millennials, Monsanto fact check, One Child Policy, Ph.D usefulness
1. Scientific American has some interesting thoughts on How Your Language Affects Your Wealth and Health
... Different languages have different ways of talking about the future. Some languages, such as English, Korean, and Russian, require their speakers to refer to the future explicitly. Every time English-speakers talk about the future, they have to use future markers such as "will" or "going to." In other languages, such as Mandarin, Japanese, and German, future markers are not obligatory. The future is often talked about similar to the way present is talked about and the meaning is understood from the context. A Mandarin speaker who is going to go to a seminar might say "Wo qu ting jiangzuo," which translates to "I go listen seminar." Languages such as English constantly remind their speakers that future events are distant. For speakers of languages such as Mandarin future feels closer. As a consequence, resisting immediate impulses and investing for the future is easier for Mandarin speakers. ...
2. Fair Trade 2.0? Coffee's Economics, Rewritten by Farmers
3. R. J. Moeller qutoes from John Mackey's (Whole Foods CEO) new book:
"Capitalism has a purpose beyond just making money. I think the critics of capitalism have got it in this very small box. That it's all about money. It's based in being greedy, selfish and exploitative. And yet, I haven't found it to be that way. Most of the hundreds of entrepreneurs I know and have met did not start their business primarily out of a desire to make money. Not that there's anything wrong with making money. My body cannot function unless it produces red-blood cells. No red-blood cells and I'm a dead man. But that's not the purpose of my life.
Similarly, a business cannot exist unless it produces a profit . . . but that's not the only reason it exists."
4. David Henderson with thoughts on the economic impact of marriage: "Get Married and Stay Married"
When I was writing a review of Dwight Lee's and Richard McKenzie's excellent book, Getting Rich in America: 8 Simple Rules for Building a Fortune and a Satisfying Life, I called Dwight to ask a question and we got talking about Rule #5: Get Married and Stay Married. Dwight pointed out that if you follow the other 7 rules but don't get married or stay married, you have a substantial probability of building a fortune and a satisfying life. But, he said, if you don't get married and stay married, you tend not to follow at least some of the other 7 rules.
5. With more thoughts on the economic impact of marriage, Glen Reynolds reflects on The other marriage inequality
While the upscale college-educated crowd continues to marry at very high rates, marriage rates are plummeting among those further down on the socioeconomic ladder.
6. Steven Pearlstein with a thoughtful essay: Is capitalism moral?
... A useful debate about the morality of capitalism must get beyond libertarian nostrums that greed is good, what's mine is mine and whatever the market produces is fair. It should also acknowledge that there is no moral imperative to redistribute income and opportunity until everyone has secured a berth in a middle class free from economic worries. If our moral obligation is to provide everyone with a reasonable shot at economic success within a market system that, by its nature, thrives on unequal outcomes, then we ought to ask not just whether government is doing too much or too little, but whether it is doing the right things.
7. Matt Ridley with an interesting piece on how Obsidian chronicles ancient trade. This conclusion was interesting.
Instead, Dr. Butzer argues that Sargon's conquest itself caused the collapse of trade by destroying cities and disrupting what had till then been "an inter-networked world-economy, once extending from the Aegean to the Indus Valley." In other words, as with the end of the Roman empire, the collapse of trade caused the collapse of civilization more than the other way around.
8. Speaking of economic History, Rewriting Biblical history? Agriculture might be 5,000 years older than believed.
A new find suggests farmers in Bible lands built channels for irrigation long before historians thought they did, allowing for cultivated vineyards, olives, wheat and barley.
9. Americans Just Keep Driving Less And Less
10. The New York Times on New Reasons to Change Light Bulbs. (To LEDs)
11. Science 2.0 on A Biological Basis For Gender Differences In Math?
... "Educational systems could be improved by acknowledging that, in general, boys and girls are different," said University of Missouri biologist David Geary in their statement. "For example, in trying to close the sex gap in math scores, the reading gap was left behind. Now, our study has found that the difference between girls' and boys' reading scores was three times larger than the sex difference in math scores. Girls' higher scores in reading could lead to advantages in admissions to certain university programs, such as marketing, journalism or literature, and subsequently careers in those fields. Boys lower reading scores could correlate to problems in any career, since reading is essential in most jobs."
Generally, when conditions are good, the math gap increases and the reading gap decreases and when conditions are bad the math gap decreases and the reading gap increases. This pattern remained consistent within nations as well as among them, according to the work by Geary and Gijsbert Stoet of the University of Leeds that included testing performance data from 1.5 million 15-year-olds in 75 nations. ...
12. Malcolm Gladwell was half right. Professor Jonah Berger on his new book, Contagious: Why Things Catch On.
13. Scientific Explanations for Why Spoilers Are So Horrible
14. Mashable has great advice with 5 Alternatives to Unfriending Someone on Facebook
15. David Brooks with insight on How Movements Recover
... Two rival reform movements arose to restore the integrity of Catholicism. Those in the first movement, the Donatists, believed the church needed to purify itself and return to its core identity. ...
... In the fourth century, another revival movement arose, embraced by Augustine, who was Bishop of Hippo. The problem with the Donatists, Augustine argued, is that they are too static. They try to seal off an ark to ride out the storm, but they end up sealing themselves in. They cut themselves off from new circumstances and growth.
Augustine, as his magisterial biographer Peter Brown puts it, "was deeply preoccupied by the idea of the basic unity of the human race." He reacted against any effort to divide people between those within the church and those permanently outside. ....
16. A great piece by someone who considers them unaffiliated with any religion. Every Christian and congregation needs to reflect on the insignificance of the church in this writer's life. His tribe is growing: The significant insignificance of religion
Posted at 05:45 PM in Capitalism and Markets, Demography, Ecclesia, Economics, Gender and Sex, History, Science, Social Media, Sociology, Sports and Entertainment, Wealth and Income | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: bible history, capitalism, fair trade, gender, marriage, math, miles driven, sociology, time orientation
1. I love maps and charts. Naturally, I was drawn to this: 36 Maps That Explain The Entire World. Here is just one example:
2. Roger Pielke, Jr., says It's Time to Bury the Easterlin Paradox.
"The Easterlin paradox suggest that in terms of human happiness -- a squishy concept to be sure -- there is a limit to economic growth beyond which there really is just no point in attaining more wealth. Further, a decoupling between income and happiness at some threshold would imply that GDP would not be a good measure of welfare, we would need some other metric.
A recent paper (PDF) by Daniel Sacks, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers argues that the Easterlin paradox is also wrong. ..."
3. John Danforth thinks We Need Less Religion in our Politics and Less Politics in our Religion.
4. I opined about this in yesterday's post, but I'm linking it again. One of the better Salon pieces I've read. When liberals ignore injustice
"Why isn't there more outrage about the president's unilateral targeted assassination program on the left?"
5. Arnold Kling with an interesting piece on the role of Jews in the rise of the modern urbanized economic order. The Unintended Consequences of God
"In those days, most people were farmers, for whom literacy’s costs generally outweighed its benefits. However, in an urbanized society with skilled occupations, literacy pays off. As urbanization gradually increased in the late Middle Ages, Jews came to fill high-skilled occupations. Botticini and Eckstein argue that literacy, rather than persecution, is what led Jews into these occupations."
6. New Geography wants to know Is Urbanism The New Trickle-Down Economics?
"But while progressives would clearly mock this policy [trickle-down economics], modern day urbanism often resembles nothing so much as trickle-down economics, though this time mostly advocated by those who would self-identify as being from the left. The idea is that through investments catering to the fickle and mobile educated elite and the high end businesses that employ and entertain them, cities can be rejuvenated in a way that somehow magically benefits everybody and is socially fair."
7. NPR has a nice piece on mini-reactors. Are Mini-Reactors The Future Of Nuclear Power?
8. Mark Perry excerpts a quote from green libertarian John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market.
“Capitalism is the greatest creation humanity has done for social cooperation. It has lifted humanity out of the dirt. In statistics we discovered when we were researching the book, about 200 years ago when capitalism was created, 85% of the people alive lived on $1 a day. Today, that number is 16%. Still too high, but capitalism is wiping out poverty across the world. 200 years ago illiteracy rates were 90%. Today, they are down to about 14%. 200 years ago the average lifespan was 30. Today it is 68 across the world, 78 in the States, and almost 82 in Japan. This is due to business. This is due to capitalism. And it doesn’t get credit for it. Most of the time, business is portrayed by its enemies as selfish and greedy and exploitative, yet it’s the greatest value creator in the world.”
9. Economist Gavin Kennedy with some interesting thoughts on the relationship between the state and the economy in developing nations:
The problem is to achieve the right balance between a competitive market economy and an effective state: markets where possible; the state where necessary.
10. Climate Change: Key Data Points from Pew Research. Highlights some interesting shifts in the public's priorities.
11. Great piece about yet another way family life is changing. Yes, I’m a Homemaker
I’m a guy. My wife works. We’ve got no kids. I’m a stay-at-home dude.
"... What a sweet picture this conjures: the stay-at-home dad nurturing his children, looking after the house and helping support his wife in her budding career and shelving his own big ambitions for later. Now it gets a little awkward. There is no adorable kid, nor plans to have one. No starter home that needs knocking into shape. I'm not just doing this temporarily until I find something meaningful to do. I’m actually a full-time homemaker ... not stay-at-home dad but stay-at-home dude. A conversational pause. Where do you mentally file this guy? Usually I just change the subject. ..."
12. The Atlantic reports that Women Are Often Remarkably Reluctant to Ask for Help Around the House
A new study shows that high-earning women are more likely to let their houses be messy than to hire a housekeeper or get their husbands and kids to pitch in. ...
... "You can purchase substitutes for your own time, you can get your husband to do more, or you can all just do less," Killewald says. "Whether women outsource housework in particular has less to do with resources, but whether or not paid labor is viewed as an appropriate strategy for undertaking domestic work.
Doing less housework seems to be a popular option. ...
13. Business insider reports on a finding that is no shock to me: Men Really Do Have A Harder Time Reading Other People's Emotions.
Psychiatrists have concluded that males take longer to assess facial expressions as their brains have to work twice as hard to work out whether another person looks friendly or intelligent.
14. Daniel Kirk with a thoughtful piece Homosexuality under the Reign of Christ
15. Facebook Unfriending Has Real-Life Consequences
In particular, researchers found that 40% of people say they would avoid someone who unfriended them on Facebook, while 50% say they would not avoid a person who unfriended them. Women were more likely than men to avoid someone who unfriended them, the researchers found.
16. The Future of Librarians in an EBook World
... Libraries are responding to the decline of print in a variety of creative ways, trying to remain relevant – especially to younger people – by embracing the new technology. Many, such as New York’s Queens Public Library, are reinventing themselves as centers for classes, job training, and simply hanging out. In one radical example, a new $1.5 million library scheduled to open in San Antonio, Texas, this fall will be completely book-free, with its collection housed exclusively on tablets, laptops, and e-readers. “Think of an Apple store,” the Bexar County judge who is leading the effort told NPR. It’s a flashy and seductive package.
But libraries are about more than just e-readers or any other media, as important as those things are. They are about more than just buildings such as the grand edifices erected by Carnegie money, or the sleek and controversial new design for the New York Public Library’s central branch. They are also about human beings and their relationships, specifically, the relationship between librarians and patrons. And that is the relationship that the foundation created by Microsoft co-founder’s Paul G. Allen is seeking to build in a recent round of grants to libraries in the Pacific Northwest. ...
17. 3-D Printing just gets more amazing. A 3D Printer That Generates Human Embryonic Stem Cells
3-D printers can produce gun parts, aircraft wings, food and a lot more, but this new 3-D printed product may be the craziest thing yet: human embryonic stem cells. Using stem cells as the "ink" in a 3-D printer, researchers in Scotland hope to eventually build 3-D printed organs and tissues. A team at Heriot-Watt University used a specially designed valve-based technique to deposit whole, live cells onto a surface in a specific pattern.
Posted at 11:44 AM in Capitalism and Markets, Culture, Demography, Economic Development, Economics, Education, Environment, Gender and Sex, History, Politics, Public Policy, Religion, Social Media, Sociology, Technology (Biotech & Health), Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet), Technology (Energy), Technology (Manufacturing & Construction)), Trends: Economic, Trends: Social | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: 3D Printed stem cells, Arnold Kling, climate change, developing nations, Easterlin Paradox, EBook, Gavin Kennedy, happiness and wealth, homemaking, homosexuality, Jews and the urbanized economic order, John Danforth, John Mackey, librarians. Maps collection, Mini-Reactors, nuclear power, Roger Pielke, urbanization
Peter Enns: 6 Helpful Hints for Blog Commenters So You Can Avoid Looking Criminally Insane
Enns writes:
I’ve been blogging for a couple of years now, and most of the comments I get are engaging–whether pro or con–and it’s been great fun and I’ve learned much from many of you.
But over the past year, mainly since my book The Evolution of Adam came out, I’ve seen an increase in comments that leave me wondering whether having an internet connection should be as closely regulated as becoming a foster parent.
So, for this next year, as you comment on my posts, please try to keep the following helpful hints in mind.
1. I hesitate saying this because it takes all the fun out of it, but blog posts are editorials, i.e., opinion pieces, meant to provoke conversation and stimulate minds. My thinking and experience fuel these posts, of course, and I stick by them, but they are also works in progress, not final “here I stand” moments. That’s why I allow comments.
2. Blog titles capture the emotive thrust of blog posts; they are not literal distillations of blog content. For example, ...
Read the whole thing. Good stuff!
Posted at 10:22 PM in Social Media | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: blogging, Peter Enns, social media
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I hope you had a great Christmas and are enjoying the holidays.
1. The Huffington Post offers their top religion stories of 2012: 2012 Religion Stories: The Top 10
2. David Gushee reflects on Glen Stassen's A Thicker Jesus: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age: The illnesses of American Christianity
"... The first kind of Christianity avoids reactionary authoritarianism but is often a therapeutic or vanilla mush that fails to ask anything of anybody out of fear of giving offense. The second kind of Christianity offers stern, clear moral directives that attract people seeking the "specific instruction, even confrontation that calls us to grow in discipleship" (p. 6), but disastrously embraces right-wing ideology and baptizes that as the content of Christianity.
Both of these versions of Christianity are so deeply flawed, says Stassen, that both are contributing to the alarming spread of secularism in the U.S. The first version of Christianity is so thin as to lack any particular reason why one would want to get out of bed on Sunday and go to church; the second is so reactionary as to drive thoughtful people into an anti-religious posture if they conclude that religion equals right-wing authoritarianism.
I believe this is a stark but actually quite accurate depiction of the primary problems afflicting the Protestantisms of the left and of the right in the current U.S. setting. ..."
3. When New England Progressives Won't Tolerate Evangelicals. "Once a center of 19th-century evangelism, Northfield, Mass., is unsettled by the prospect of a school with religious aims."
4. Peter Enns with another provocative post: What do Turkey, Bethlehem, and Tennessee Have in Common? They Don't Bode Well for the Conservative Christian Subculture
5. Peter Liethart offers a book review of Peter Brown's new book, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 Ad, at Christianity Today: How the Early Church Made Peace with Prosperity. (And, no, I don't know why everyone seems to be Peter this week ... Enns, Liethart, and Brown.)
6. Why Latin Americans top the happiness rankings
"While not exclusive to Latin America, the culture of family, support, and living a life to spend time with your family, I think, is an important part of Latin American culture that keeps people positive. Being with those close to you and finding other friends and partners that value that way of life is a key part of Latin American culture. That might be the main reason why people remain positive: they are never truly alone. Interestingly, many discussions and documentaries about immigrant groups in the United States show an internal conflict among many who move to the US and who do not wish to lose their support systems in a new culture rooted in individualism. While being motivated and entrepreneurial is valued, a life being with your family, where you are never truly alone, is the basis for many cultures in many parts of the world. Many new Americans frown on the thought that children can detach themselves from their family at 18 years of age. They believe people can only truly thrive as a family."
7. In contrast to Latin American happiness based in family connection, this survey of British children revealed that A 'dad' is tenth most popular Christmas list request for children.
8. Christian Science Monitor reports on Parental leave global comparison: US still among least generous
9. And yet another story on familial collections China orders children to visit their elderly parents.
10. Scientific American reports some positive news: Early Childhood Obesity Rates Might Be Slowing Nation-Wide
11. Men may want to think twice before taking up yoga. It seems men are more prone to serious injury from yoga. Wounded Warrior Pose
12. What are the ten most popular books of all time? The 10 Most Read Books In The World
13. Traditional Books On Decline, Survey Says
"A Pew Internet Research Center survey released Thursday found that the percentage of Americans aged 16 and older who read an e-book grew from 16 percent in 2011 to 23 percent this year. Readers of traditional books dropped from 72 percent to 67 percent. Overall, those reading books of any kind dropped from 78 percent to 75 percent, a shift Pew called statistically insignificant."
14. Here are nine interesting findings about state-by-state data from the Census Bureau: Here Are The States Where People Are Leaving, Moving To, And Having Lots Of Babies
15. When we think of transportation in the United States, few of us think about river and coastal water transportation. Yet a great many goods and commodities are shipped on our rivers. The Midwest drought is having an impact on a major artery of that transportation network. The Mississippi River's Water Levels Are Dropping, And Could Shut Down Trade Next Week
16. Facebook?! Twitter?! Instagram?! We Did That 40 Years Ago. "Three decades before Yelp and Craigslist, there was the Community Memory Terminal. ..."
17. America's Stuff Is Getting Really Old, And That's Bullish
"In other words, Americans are increasingly likely to have to purchase and replace these goods some time soon as they get more and more worn out. That's bullish for spending, jobs, and the economy as a whole."
18. From right here in my hometown, just a mile or two from where I live: In a Kansas City Neighborhood, Deep Investments and an Uncertain Future. The Atlantic Cities reports on Kansas City's experiments with Green Impact Zones.
19. Why are men, in the aggregate, better navigators than women? National Geographic: Of Men, Navigation, and Zits
"... Yet a few differences between the sexes do seem to hold up to scrutiny. One is spatial abilities. If men look at an object, for example, they are slightly faster at guessing what it would look like if it were rotated 180 degrees. There are plenty of women who do better than individual men. But overall there's a stasticially significant difference in their average performance. This kind of difference carries over from one culture to another. It's even detectable in babies. ...
... Whenever we reflect on human evolution, it pays to compare our species to other animals. And in the case of spatial abilities, the comparison is fascinating. Almost a century ago, the psychologist Helen Hubbet found that male rats could get through a maze faster than females. The difference can also be found in a number of other species. ...
... Clint and his colleagues propose a different explanation: male spatial ability is not an adaptation so much as a side effect. Males produce testosterone as they develop, and the hormone has a clear benefit in terms of reproduction, increasing male fertility. But testosterone also happens to produce a lot of side effects, including male pattern baldness and an increased chance of developing acne. It would be absurd to say acne was an adaptation favored by natural selection. The same goes for the male edge in spatial ability, Clint and his colleagues argue. They note that when male rats are castrated, they do worse at navigating a maze; when they are given shots of testosterone, they regain their skill. ..."
Posted at 08:48 AM in Africa, Central America, China, Culture, Demography, Economic Development, Economic News, Environment, Health and Medicine, History, Kansas City, Links - Saturday, Religion, Social Media, Theology | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: A Thicker Jesus, births, books, china, Community Memory Terminal, conservative christian, consumer goods, deaths, demography, Discipleship, durable goods, early church, elderly, Evangelicals, green impact zone, happiness, kansas city, migration, Mississippi River, Northfield, obesity, parental leave, Peter Brown, Peter Enns, Peter Liethart, population, prosperity, religion, wealth, yoga
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1. Several articles I saw this week reflect on data presented in The Pew Forum's The Global Religious Landscape: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Major Religious Groups as of 2010. Here is one interesting chart from the survey showing what percentage of each religion's adherents live in minority religious status in their own country.
2. This is really fascinating. Smithsonian: Why Japan is Obsessed with Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas. “Kurisumasu ni wa kentakkii!” (Kentucky for Christmas!)
3. Four Harvard and MIT grads are experimenting with direct aid to the poor. "GiveDirectly, the brainchild of four Harvard and MIT graduate students, is so simple, it's genius. Give poor Kenyan families $1,000 -- and let them do whatever they want with it." Can 4 Economists Build the Most Economically Efficient Charity Ever?
4. From the Guardian, Private healthcare: the lessons from Sweden
"... Despite its reputation as a leftwing utopia, Sweden is now a laboratory for rightwing radicalism. Over the past 15 years a coalition of liberals and conservatives has brought in for-profit free schools in education, has sliced welfare to pay off the deficit and has privatised large parts of the health service.
Their success is envied by the centre right in Britain. Despite predictions of doom, Sweden's economy continues to grow and its pro-business coalition has remained in power since 2006. The last election was the first time since the war that a centre-right government had been re-elected after serving a full term.
As the state has been shrunk, the private sector has moved in. Göran Dahlgren, a former head civil servant at the Swedish department of health and a visiting professor at the University of Liverpool, says that "almost all welfare services are now owned by private equity firms". ..."
5. Scott Annan writes in The Future Of Business Is Morality, And The Future Is Now
"... We have reached a point in our economy where it is becoming increasingly clear that businesses are being measured not just for their profit, but also for their impact. And I'm not just talking about writing a check or funding a charity; I'm referring to business models for which community involvement and inspirational brand building are the profit centers. (Think Warby Parker, TOMS, and startups such as SOMA.) I recently went to a conference where the founders of a startup posited a powerful idea: the future of marketing is philanthropy. But I think the even bigger idea is the future of business is morality. My grandfather saw this early on.
At a time when the moral framework of America appears to be fractured – or at the very least confused – businesses are in the propitious position to espouse cultural standards that can help restore values that our youth can use to build the next generation of positive enterprise. In fact, whether businesses succeed in creating and promoting positive cultures might determine whether they stay in business at all. The future of business is morality, and the future is now.
Whether it's the job of the corporation or not to set the moral tone for society, the expectation is trending towards companies setting the right example for others to follow. With the sharp rise in entrepreneurship, young companies have the opportunity to establish strong cultures early on and share them with their communities. Money must have a moral center, and from greater consciousness in business, greater profit will follow. ..."
6. Scientific American asks, After 40 Years, Has Recycling Lived Up to Its Billing?
7. AOL has a short piece about the rise of small nuclear reactors. The Next Big Thing in Nuclear Power: Going Small
8. Scientific American has a list of The Top 10 Science Stories of 2012.
9. Depression Surpasses Asthma as Top Disability Problem among U.S. and Canadian Teens
"New data show an increasing contribution of mental and behavioral disorders to deterioration in the health-related quality of life among teens in the U.S. and Canada over the past two decades, and increases elsewhere around the globe."
10. Robotic arm controlled by the mind allows paraplegic woman to feed herself
11. Interesting piece on Why We Prefer Masculine Voices (Even in Women).
12. Atlantic Cities looks into The Mystery of Our Declining Mobility.
13. People Are Leaving California In Record Numbers
More people moved out of California in 2011 than moved in, according to the latest report from the U.S. Census Bureau, signaling that the Democrat-run state's economic woes continue to drive residents away.
Most statisticians attribute California's net loss of 100,000 people last year to its high cost of living, increased population density and troubling unemployment rate.
The widening middle class in Mexico is also encouraging some immigrants to remain in that country instead of moving to California.
Texas — home to lower taxes, less regulation and what the Manhattan Institute calls a "labor pool with the right skills at the right price" — is one of the most attractive destinations for companies departing from California, according to the Census Bureau. ...
14. The United States Has Seen A Huge Drop In Executions Since 2000.
"The country reported 85 executions in 2000 but only 43 in 2012, according to a new report released by the Death Penalty Information Center. Plus, far fewer people are being sentenced to death row in the first place. The year 2000 saw 224 new inmates sentenced to death, while 2012 saw only 78, according to the report."
15. Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic had a great piece: Why 'If We Can Just Save One Child ...' Is a Bad Argument, referring to President Obama's statement at Newtown, CT. When dealing with complex topics like gun control, we always talk about tradeoffs. For instance, I know how we can save more than 30,000 lives. There were 32,367 traffic fatalities last year. Let's set the speed limit to 5 miles per hour. Nearly all those lives would be saved. Should we do this "if we can save just one more life"? I, like Friedersforf, am not advocating any particular policy. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of making such statements, as politicians often do.
16. The New York Times has an opinion piece by John Dickerson, The Decline of Evangelical America
"I found that the structural supports of evangelicalism are quivering as a result of ground-shaking changes in American culture. Strategies that served evangelicals well just 15 years ago are now self- destructive. The more that evangelicals attempt to correct course, the more they splinter their movement. In coming years we will see the old evangelicalism whimper and wane."
He speaks of an Evangelical "collapse" having happened. That may be a bit premature, but his articulation of trends is right.
17. I saw two interesting posts on the sociology Facebook this week. The New York Times had a piece about announcing bad news on Facebook: On Facebook, Bad With the Good. Mashable reports that Socioeconomic Status Predicts Number of Facebook Friends.
18. Gangnam Style hits one billion views on YouTube. K pop rules!
Posted at 06:58 AM in Business, Christian Life, Crime, Culture, Current Affairs, Demography, Ecclesia, Environment, Europe, Gender and Sex, Health and Medicine, International Affairs, Links - Saturday, Music, Politics, Poverty, Public Policy, Religion, Science, Social Media, Sports and Entertainment, Technology (Biotech & Health), Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet), Technology (Energy) | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: asthma, business, California, charity, Depression, evangelicalism, executions, Facebook, Gangnam Style, geographic mobility, givedirectly, Global Religious Landscape, Japan, Just Save One Child, Kentucky Fried Chicken, kfc, migration, Nuclear Power, poverty, private healthcare, Recycling, Religions, robots, small nuclear reactors, Sweden Texas
Fortune: Why stores are finally turning on to WiFi
Despite fears of so-called showrooming, some stores are opening up to wireless internet.
FORTUNE -- For years, retailers frowned on shoppers visiting their stores merely to scope out products before returning home and buying them online for less. The phenomenon became so common that it earned a name -- showrooming.
The practice has only expanded with the proliferation of smartphones. Shoppers can use them to quickly compare the price of a Fossil handbag, for example, with the same version on Amazon.com (AMZN). There's nothing store managers can do to stop them. The shoppers have won the war.
Recognizing their defeat, many retailers have made a u-turn and are now helping shoppers get online. ...
... To connect to a network, shoppers must first agree to a terms of service that appears on their smartphone screens. The agreement generally spells out that the network is not secure and that the stores will track the Web sites customers visit and the type of devices they use.
Such data could eventually be used to help stores offer personalized coupons and identify merchandise to add to their shelves, said Bryan Wargo, chief executive of Nearbuy Systems, a start-up that helps stores monitor customer behavior on Wi-Fi networks and dissect the data. Customers frequently using the Wi-Fi network to search a rival's Web site for red cashmere sweaters, for instance, could signal that the store should start stocking them. ...
Posted at 05:28 PM in Business, Social Media, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet) | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: in-store wifi
Time: Why I’ve Stopped Sending Holiday Photo Cards
"... I didn’t know it then but my world, my social world, was changing. Today, my 1,500 Facebook friends — 1,300 of whom I have never actually met—have already seen the best of the year’s haul of pictures of my kids. They also know where I’ve gone on vacation and sometimes, what I cooked for dinner or what I thought of a movie on a Saturday night in May. There’s little point to writing a Christmas update now, with boasts about grades and athletic prowess, hospitalizations and holidays, and the dog’s mishaps, when we have already posted these events and so much more of our minutiae all year long. The urge to share has already been well sated. ...
... Still, the demise of the Christmas photo card saddens me. It portends the end of the U.S. Postal Service. It signals the day is near when writing on paper is non-existent. Finally, it is part of a decline of a certain quality of communication, one that involved delay and anticipation, forethought and reflection. Opening these cards, the satisfaction wasn’t just in the Peace on Earth greeting, but in the recognition that a distant friend or relative you hadn’t heard from in a year was still thinking about you, and maybe sharing news about major events of the past 12 months...."
Is she right? Do you send cards and Christmas letters? Has social media changed how you communicate around the holidays?
Posted at 05:31 PM in Business, Culture, Social Media | Permalink | Comments (2)
Tags: Facebook, greeting cards, holiday photo cards, social media
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Here are this week's Saturday links.
1. To celebrate the Christmas season, Deck the Halls with Macro Follies
2. The Explosion of 15th Century Printing: A Data Visualization
"... Drawing on data from the [Harvard] university's library collections, the animation below maps the number and location of printed works by year. Watch it full screen in HD to see cities light up as the years scroll by in the lower left corner. ..."
3. Drive-through fast food not convenient enough for you? Burger King delivery: A new front in the fast-food wars?
4. a U-shaped happiness curve, consistent across cultures, shows happiness declines from childhood until about our mid-forties and then begins to improve as I grow old. It appears it may hold true in primates as well. Our ability to discount bad news, even when we shouldn't, follows the same U-shaped curve. Our brains and experience are optimal for discerning bad news in middle age. It turns out that ignorance (or maybe denial) truly is bliss. Viewpoint: How happiness changes with age. On a related note, it appears that Elderly Brains Have Trouble Recognizing Untrustworthy Faces.
5. The holiday season is in full swing, and many people falsely believe this is a time of elevated suicide rates. Actually, spring and summer have the highest rates, and Nov - Jan have the lowest. In 2010, July was the highest, and December was the lowest. Holiday suicide myth persists, research says
6. French sperm count 'falls by a third' but still within normal range. Researchers don't seem to know why.
7. The Atlantic has an interesting article on Why Don't Parents Name Their Daughters Mary Anymore? It includes this graph.
"Michael" was in the top 3 names for boys from 1953-2010. It dropped to sixth last year. Want to know how your name ranks for each year since 1880? Go to the Social Security Online's Popular Baby Names. The Baby Name Wizard is also pretty cool.
8. More Dads Buy the Toys, So Barbie, and Stores, Get Makeovers.
"For the first time in Barbie’s more than 50-year history, Mattel is introducing a Barbie construction set that underscores a huge shift in the marketplace. Fathers are doing more of the family shopping just as girls are being encouraged more than ever by hypervigilant parents to play with toys (as boys already do) that develop math and science skills early on.
It’s a combination that not only has Barbie building luxury mansions — they are pink, of course — but Lego promoting a line of pastel construction toys called Friends that is an early Christmas season hit. The Mega Bloks Barbie Build ’n Style line, available next week, has both girls — and their fathers — in mind.
“Once it’s in the home, dads would very much be able to join in this play that otherwise they might feel is not their territory,” said Dr. Maureen O’Brien, a psychologist who consulted on the new Barbie set...."
And this reminds me of last year, or the year before when cooking sets were becoming big with boys. They've been watching Emeril Lagasse on the Food Network. "Bam!" New merchandising angle.
9. Instead of indiscriminately sending kids off to college and saddling them with huge debt, maybe a New push for two-year degrees could be smart move for US, report says.
10. Business Insider lists The 12 Most Corrupt Countries In The World.
11. Love them or hate them, the Koch brothers are intriguing. Many political junkies know of them, but few others seem to know about them. Forbes has an interesting feature article in the most recent issue on the Koch Empire and its influence: Inside The Koch Empire: How The Brothers Plan To Reshape America
12. Is the two-party system fracturing? Coalition Is to Control State Senate as Dissident Democrats Join With Republicans
13. How is this economic recovery different from others? The Scariest Jobs Chart Ever
14. "Data-driven healthcare won't replace physicians entirely, but it will help those receptive to technology perform their jobs better." Technology will replace 80% of what doctors do
15. Another bright idea. New plastic lighting saves energy. Goodbye, fluorescent lights?
"Scientists have designed an energy-efficient light of plastic packed with nanomaterials that glow. The shatterproof FIPEL technology can be molded into almost any shape, but still needs to prove it's commercially viable."
16. Yet another good story about the rise of vertical farming. Salad in the sky: The rise of the vertical farm?
17. The Conservation Law Center has an interesting piece about the potential changes nanotechnology will bring to the use of resources and the economy. Nanotechnology: The Potential to Make Every Industry Sustainable
"... Last month, at the first ever conference of the Sustainable Nanotechnology Organization in Washington DC, Michail Roco of the National Science Foundation, and architect of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative provided a response. He said, “every industrial sector is unsustainable…and nanotechnology holds the promise of making every one of them sustainable.”
It’s my belief that that is true: nanotechnology, or the ability to manipulate matter at a scale of one billionth of a meter, has far-reaching implications for the improvement of sustainable technology, industry and society.
Already, it is being used widely to enable more sustainable practices. Safer manufacturing, less waste generation, reusable materials, more efficient energy technologies, better water purification, lower toxicity and environmental impacts from chemotherapy agents to marine paints are all current applications of nanotechnology. There is no reason for this technology to develop in an unsustainable manner.
In the past, a lack of foresight has resulted in costs to society – people, businesses, and governments, and— that could have been avoided by proactive efforts to manage risks. Today, the tools to develop safer technologies and less harmful products exist. Let us not miss this opportunity. ..."
18. The American Enterprise Institute has an interesting summary of a Nielson report about social media usage. 8 fun facts about the incredible rise of social media
19. Death On Facebook Now Common As 'Dead Profiles' Create Vast Virtual Cemetery
"It used be that news of death spread through phone calls, and before that, letters and house calls. The departed were publicly remembered via memorials on street corners, newspaper obituaries and flowers at grave sites. To some degree, this is still the case. But increasingly, the announcements and subsequent mourning occur on social media. Facebook, with 1 billion detailed, self-submitted user profiles, was created to connect the living. But it has become the world's largest site of memorials for the dead."
20. From the "That's just not right!" file. Harvard Economics Department does their version of "Call me maybe."
Posted at 08:19 AM in Business, Christian Life, Demography, Economic Development, Economic News, Economics, Education, Gender and Sex, Health and Medicine, History, Links - Saturday, Politics, Social Media, Sociology, Technology (Biotech & Health), Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet), Technology (Manufacturing & Construction)) | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: baby names, Barbie, Burger King, college, construction set, cooking set, corrupt countries, corruption, Democrats, demography, economic recovery, economics, energy-efficient, Facebook, fast-foood, FIPEL technology, fluorescent lights, France, happiness, Harvard, healthcare, jobs, Koch brothers, Mattel, memorials, nanomaterials, nanotechnology, physicians, plastic lighting, printing, recession, Republicans, social media, sperm count, suicide, two party system, two-year degrees
Posted at 10:52 AM in Science, Social Media, Sociology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Tags: charts, graphs, Statistics
Posted at 05:11 PM in Social Media, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet), Trends: Economic, Trends: Social | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: social media, texting
Here are the links for this week. Lots of interesting finds this week, and not nearly enough time to blog.
1. Google Fiber offers super-fast broadband to Kansas City. If all goes well, we will get connected in late spring of 2013.
2. Two Thirds of Ocean Life Remains Undiscovered. If they haven't found them, how do they know?
3. "British people - and many others across the world - have been brought up on the idea of three square meals a day as a normal eating pattern, but it wasn't always that way." Breakfast, lunch and dinner: Have we always eaten them?
4. What is the optimal rate of taxation according to the Laffer Curve? Goats hold the answer. Goat Economics: Why the Laffer Curve Is No Joke
5. The print media industry is rapidly morphing right before our eyes. Google Ad Revenue Now More Than U.S. Print Publications Combined [CHART]
6. Cyberspace continues to evolve. Text Messaging Declines in U.S. for First Time, Report Says
7. "It's a common grumble that politicians' lifestyles are far removed from those of their electorate. Not so in Uruguay. Meet the president - who lives on a ramshackle farm and gives away most of his pay." Jose Mujica: The world's 'poorest' president
8. You may have heard that there was a presidential election last week. Here is a map showing how the counties voted, with red being the most intensely Republican and blue being the most Democrat. (Source: The Real Reason Cities Lean Democratic)
9. Speaking of the election, a lot has been written about how the GOP will need to change if they want to win national elections. As a right-leaning guy, I thought this article in Slate, The New Grand Old Party, and Bobby Jindal's article, How Republicans can win future elections, were among the best.
10. China continues working on technological innovations to address its water problems. Industry Special: Desalination tech helps slake nation's thirst for fresh water.
11. The world is going to the dogs. The Dog Economy Is Global—but What Is the World's True Canine Capital?
12. As manufacturing becomes more automated, requiring fewer workers, we see The Emerging Professional, Scientific, and Technical Sector.
13. Nanotechnology just keeps getting more impressive. "The latest invention from Stanford University's Department of Electrical Engineering sounds like something a superhero would have. A self-repairing plastic-metal material has been developed by a team of professors, researchers and graduate students." New Self-Repairing Material Invented at Stanford
14. For the true narcissist, you now can replicate your image in 3D. 3D-printing photo booth gives you a figurine instead of a bad photo
15. Speaking of 3D-Printing, how big a deal is it? "Chris Anderson has exited one of the top jobs in publishing - Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine - to pursue the life of an entrepreneur, making a big bet that 3D printers represent a massive new phase of the industrial revolution." Chris Anderson: Why I left Wired - 3D Printing Will Be Bigger Than The Web
16. The debate about a historical Adam continues. Peter Enns with another interesting post, Who Needs a Historical Prometheus…uh, I mean Adam?
17. George Bullard asks, When is a Church a Church, and When is it a Flash Mob?
"A flash mob (or flashmob) is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a place, perform an unusual and seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and artistic expression. Flash mobs are organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails." [Wikipedia accessed 11.12.12] How do you define a church?"
18. This was me thirty years ago (in my dreams!)
19. Ever wonder how Cy Young award-winning pitcher R. A. Dickey manages to throw knuckleballs? Apparently, so do physicists. How a Baseball Star's Tricky Pitch Strikes Out Hitters—and Baffles Physicists
20. I loved these stat brain teasers. 5 Statistics Problems That Will Change The Way You See The World
Posted at 06:58 AM in Capitalism and Markets, Christian Life, Culture, Current Affairs, Demography, Ecclesia, Economics, Generations, Health and Medicine, Kansas City, Links - Saturday, Politics, Public Policy, Science, Social Media, South America, Sports and Entertainment, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet), Technology (Food & Water), Technology (Manufacturing & Construction)), Theology, Trends: Economic, Trends: Social | Permalink | Comments (4)
Tags: 3D-printing, Adam, Bobby Jindal, broadband, China, Chris Anderson, church, democrat, desalination, dogs, economics, election, Flash Mob, fresh water, George Bullard, Google Ads, Google Fiber, gop, historical, Kansas City, knuckleball, Laffer Curve, manufacturing, Nanotechnology, Ocean Life, print media, Print Publications, R. A. Dickey, religion, republican, statistics, taxes, Text Messaging, texting, three square meals, Uruguay, yahoo, Zlatan Ibrahimovic
Atlantic Cities: How Facebook and Twitter Are Making Developing World Cities Better
... In Latin America, Mexico City is not unique. Use of social media is growing at a breathtaking pace across the region. When Facebook passed the 1 billion user mark in October, few people noticed that 19 percent of those users live in Latin America (which only accounts for 8 percent of the world's population). The governments of virtually all large Latin American cities now use social media to engage with citizens, and smaller cities are quickly following suit. The Inter-American Development Bank recently found that social media is used by governments in 70 percent of the region´s 140 "emerging cities" (those having 100,000 to 2 million residents and above-average economic growth rates).
Although the press has focused on Latin American presidents who have embraced social media as a potent new channel for old-fashioned political communications, something very different is happening at the municipal level.
Mayors seem to be betting that by micromanaging urban issues via Twitter or Facebook, they will give voters concrete evidence of their effectiveness in office. This is a risky tactic, of course. Many local governments that find it easy to virtually "engage" with constituents may not have the budgets, the organization, or the staff to actually solve the problems that generate complaints. The result, in that case, could be a voter backlash amplified, ironically, over the same social media channels. ...
... Over the coming decade, hundreds of millions of city dwellers in emerging economies such as Mexico, Brazil, India and China are likely to rise from poverty. Much has been written about how their increasing expectations will pressure governments like never before to deliver tangible improvements that make urban life safer, healthier, and more egalitarian.
I predict that social media will have a highly disruptive but largely positive effect in this context. At a minimum, these technologies will give new vitality to the ancient ideals of participation and accountability. At best, they might shorten the wait for new lights in a darkened park. In either event, the next mayor of Mexico City, like others across the developing world, will not really have the option of ignoring social media. That's where people are choosing to speak, and where they expect to be heard.
Posted at 12:34 PM in Economic Development, Politics, Poverty, Public Policy, Social Media, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet) | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: cities, developing world, economic development, facebook, latin america, mexico, mobile phones, social media, twitter
Here are the links for this week.
1. Ever thought about starting your own blog? Michael Hyatt has some advice: My Advice to Beginning Bloggers
2. Is gender inclusive language taking hold? Good News, You Guys Everyone! English Is Becoming More Inclusive
3. How New Yorkers Adjusted to Sudden Smartphone Withdrawal
4. Paying for What Was Free: Lessons from the New York Times Paywall
Abstract
In a national online longitudinal survey, participants reported their attitudes and behaviors in response to the recently implemented metered paywall by the New York Times. Previously free online content now requires a digital subscription to access beyond a small free monthly allotment. Participants were surveyed shortly after the paywall was announced and again 11 weeks after it was implemented to understand how they would react and adapt to this change. Most readers planned not to pay and ultimately did not. Instead, they devalued the newspaper, visited its Web site less frequently, and used loopholes, particularly those who thought the paywall would lead to inequality. Results of an experimental justification manipulation revealed that framing the paywall in terms of financial necessity moderately increased support and willingness to pay. Framing the paywall in terms of a profit motive proved to be a noncompelling justification, sharply decreasing both support and willingness to pay. Results suggest that people react negatively to paying for previously free content, but change can be facilitated with compelling justifications that emphasize fairness.
5. The world is safer. But no one in Washington can talk about it.
... Beyond the United States, global statistics point undeniably toward progress in achieving greater peace and stability. There are fewer wars now than at any time in decades. The number of people killed as a result of armed violence worldwide is plunging as well — down to about 526,000 in 2011 from about 740,000 in 2008, according to the United Nations. ...
... Most top Pentagon officials say the statistics showing that the world is safer are irrelevant and don't reflect the magnitude of the risks. The result is what Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has dubbed a "security paradox." The world may seem safer, Dempsey says, but the potential for global catastrophe has grown as the planet has become more interconnected and potential enemies have greater access to more powerful weapons and technology. ...
6. A 51st state? Is Puerto Rico on Its Way To Becoming the 51st State? Possibly.
7. Mitt Romney joins a long list of also-rans. So how does he compare to other presidential also-rans?
8. Speaking of campaigns, Time has an interesting piece about the inner workings of the Obama data crunching team, Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win. Contrast this with the disaster that was Romney's get-out-the-vote operation. Romney's Get out the Vote Epic Fail.
9. How much difference is there in the coming-of-age experience between Baby Boomers and Millennials? Mother and daughter team Robin Marantz Henig and Samantha Henig are interviewed about their new book: What's the Matter With Millennials?
10. McDonald's Sales Fall For First Time In Nearly A Decade
11. Interesting piece on crowdsourcing in Harvard Business Review. Let the Crowd Fix Your Product's Bugs
"The online startup Kaggle assembles a diverse group of people from around the world to work on tough problems submitted by organizations. The company runs data science competitions, where the goal is to arrive at a better prediction than the submitting organization's starting 'baseline' prediction. Results from these contests are striking in a couple ways. For one thing, improvements over the baseline are usually substantial. In one case, Allstate submitted a dataset of vehicle characteristics and asked the Kaggle community to predict which of them would have later personal liability claims filed against them. The contest lasted approximately three months, and drew in more than 100 contestants. The winning prediction was more than 270% better than the insurance company's baseline.
Another interesting fact is that the majority of Kaggle contests are won by people who are marginal to the domain of the challenge — who, for example, made the best prediction about hospital readmission rates despite having no experience in health care — and so would not have been consulted as part of any traditional search for solutions. In many cases, these demonstrably capable and successful data scientists acquired their expertise in new and decidedly digital ways"
12. I can't wait to see this one!
Posted at 07:40 AM in Business, Current Affairs, Gender and Sex, Generations, History, Links - Saturday, Politics, Public Policy, Social Media, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet) | Permalink | Comments (5)
Tags: blogging, Boomers, crowd sourcing, gender inclusive language, McDonald's, Michael Hyatt, Millennials, New York Times, Obama, peace, politics, Puerto Rico, Robin Marantz Henig, Romney, Samantha Henig, smartphone, social media, statehood, violence, What’s the Matter With Millennials
How can my Church effectively use social media? Which social media services should my Church use? Aren’t we opening our congregation to abuse if we venture into social media?
I’ve been blogging for seven years, and because of that, I frequently get questions like these from pastors and congregation leaders. I can offer some help, but social media can be used in many creative ways. I’ve never focused on social media’s application for a congregation, so my input has always been incomplete. But now I have definitive-ish solution, or at least a starting place, for congregations that want to engage with social media fully.
Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow wrote a book, The Definitive-ish Guide for Using Social Media in the Church, earlier this year. Bruce was a church planter and a pastor. He is also a past moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). But most importantly, Bruce has been an avid social media user as a pastor in the congregational setting.
The book begins with Bruce highlighting cultural shifts that have reshaped how we communicate and connect. He writes about the spirituality of social media and the inherent dangers, offering insights on navigating this new world.
As a starting place, Bruce recommends five social media tools:
I use all five of these. Maybe you do too. But what was helpful for me was Bruce showing particular ways these tools can be helpful in the life of a congregation. He raised several ideas I hadn’t given much consideration. For instance, I use Yelp to look up stuff all the time. What are people saying about your congregation at Yelp? Have you encouraged people in your congregation to write a review so people who want to know about your congregation can get a flavor of what you are about? My congregation has one review. I’m going to work on that. In a later chapter, for the more adventurous souls, Bruce briefly explores several other social media tools like Twitter, YouTube, Goodreads, and Instagram.
Near the end of the book, Bruce offers some very helpful advice for pastors. You have been a congregation pastor for several years and now have taken a new call. In the PCUSA world, you are expected to severe pastoral relationships with your congregation so there is no confusion for the new pastor. But you are now Facebook friends with half your congregation and a member of groups the congregation has formed through social media. How do you manage this transition? I think Bruce offers some very helpful advice. He has had to live this himself.
Finally, Bruce closes out with a frequently asked questions chapter. He invites his readers to jump in and communicate what they learn along the way. He has an appendix that offers some practical help. The book is only available (I believe) in electronic format. That will allow Bruce to update the book easily as social media evolves. He tells me he is already working on a second edition.
This book is just awesome! If your congregation has been resisting social media, I’d encourage you to read this book. Even if your congregation has already been using social media, I think you will find tips and ideas you may not have considered. It is a relatively short book written in a very engaging style. I now feel like I have a tool I can give to others to help get them started. I recommend you get a copy today.
Posted at 09:30 AM in Books, Christian Life, Ecclesia, Social Media | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Blogging, Bruce Reyes-Chow, church, congregation, Dropbox, Facebook, Google Docs, guide, pastor, social media, twitter, Yelp
Atlantic: Surmounting the Insurmountable: Wikipedia Is Nearing Completion, in a Sense
And that's something of a challenge for the collaborative encyclopedia going forward
For about the last five years, Wikipedia has had trouble getting and keeping new volunteer editors. The foundation behind Wikipedia has made building up the editor base a major goal, and is attacking it from all angles, such as encouraging a culture that is friendlier to newbies, creating an easier sign-up page, and making the editing process more intutitive.
But what if the decline in engagement has little to do with culture or the design of the site? What if, instead, it's that there's just less for new Wikipedians to do?
It may seem impossible for an encyclopedia of everything to ever near completion, but at least for the major articles on topics like big wars, important historical figures, central scientific concepts, the English-language Wikipedia's pretty well filled out. (There is, of course, room for improvement in articles that have received less attention, but that is a different, yet still very important, set of challenges.) There's always going to be some tidying -- better citations, small updates, new links, cleaner formatting -- but the bulk of the work, the actual writing and structuring of the articles, has already been done. "There are more and more readers of Wikipedia, but they have less and less new to add," writes historian and Wikipedia editor Richard Jensen in the latest issue of The Journal of Military History. ...
This graph says a thousand words:
Posted at 11:23 AM in Social Media, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet), Trends: Economic, Trends: Social | Permalink | Comments (2)
Tags: Wikipedia
I spend considerable time scanning headlines each week as I look for stories to blog about at the Kruse Kronicle. I clip them into an Evernote Notebook and usually twice a day, I select one or two to link and discuss. Several interesting stories never make it onto the blog.
So this week, I'm beginning what I hope will be a regular Saturday feature. Each Saturday, I will post links I did not use the previous week. For now, I will call it "Saturday Links." Happy clicking!
1. Interesting video intro to Gen IV Nuclear Power at the Catalyst: Next Generation Nuclear Power
2. BBC L'Aquila quake: Italy scientists guilty of manslaughter. Scientists found guilty of bad predictions about an earthquake. That will put a chill in the scientific community.
3. Icon of the American Libertarian movement, Murray Rothbard, once asked, "Why won't the left acknowledge the difference between deserving poor and undeserving poor? Why support the feckless, lazy & irresponsible?" Chris Dillow gives a libertarian response affirming the need to support the undeserving poor.
4. I love historical restoration. The Atlantic has a great piece, Scientists Recover the Sounds of 19th-Century Music and Laughter From the Oldest Playable American Recording, about how scientists have restored a phonograph recording made in 1878 in St. Louis.
5. Chronicle of Philanthropy says Most Donors Plan to Give as Much or More in 2012, Survey Finds.
6. How did those Easter Island statues get into place? California State University archaeologists think they have the answer. See Easter Island Statues Could Have 'Walked' Into Positions in Wired. Here is the YouTube clip:
So where did they get the rope?
7. Think you "bought" a book for your Kindle? Gizmodo says think again: You Don't Own the Books on Your Kindle.
8. BBC has a report on the stuff people are printing with 3D printers:
But then there is also The Dark Side of 3D Printing.
9. Bryan Caplan explains that the rate of executions per capita in the U. S. has been in monotonic decline over the nation's history: U.S. Executions Per Capita Have Been Falling for 400 Years.
"I can easily imagine my graph in a Julian Simon or Steven Pinker chapter on human progress and the decline in violence. Even though I have no philosophical objection to the death penalty, it's hard not to interpret this 400-year pattern as a strong sign of human betterment."
10. Mark Roberts has a great piece about cross-generational misunderstandings using social media: Living in the Brave New World of Social Media: Posting a Death on Facebook
11. American Association of University Women (AAUW) says pay inequity begins right out of college: Does gender pay gap exist? Right out of college, says new study. But Elizabeth Dwoskin says "not so fast" on attributing this all to discrimination: Why Women Earn Less Than Men a Year Out of School.
12. Wildcat football rising! Kansas State moves up to No. 3 EMAW!
13. Sporting KC finishes first place in East with 2-1 win over Philadelphia Union. Awesome!
Posted at 08:07 AM in Christian Life, Crime, Gender and Sex, History, Links - Saturday, Politics, Poverty, Public Policy, Science, Social Media, Sports and Entertainment, Technology, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet), Technology (Energy), Technology (Manufacturing & Construction)), Trends: Economic, Trends: Social, Weatlh and Income Distribution | Permalink | Comments (2)
Tags: 3d-printing, amazon, American Association of University Women, archaeologists, books, California State University, catalyst, donors, Easter island, Elizabeth Dwoskin, executions, executions per capita, Facebook, Gen IV Nuclear Power, giving, Kansas State University, Kindle, L'aquilla earthquake, libertarian, Murray Rothbard, nuclear power, pay equity, pay gap, philanthropy, phonograph, poor, poverty, prediction, recording restoration, scientists, social media, sporting Kansas City, statues, undeserving poor
Fast Company: Email Is The New Pony Express--And It's Time To Put It Down
Email, like paper letters delivered by horseback, has become an unproductivity tool and may just be the biggest time killer in the modern workplace. Here's where companies are headed next. ...
So what's the solution? Our idea: Turn email into a conversation. Get rid of the inbox. Build an online platform where departments can post and respond to messages on central discussion threads, Facebook-style. Then integrate that with Twitter and Facebook so great ideas can be broadcast--with a click--to the world. Conversations isn’t a revolutionary concept; it’s a duh-it’s-about-time concept. And it’s worked for us and 5 million clients. A year from now, we may well be reading email its last rites. Here’s why:
Email has become an unproductivity tool. Right now, the typical corporate user spends 2 hours and 14 minutes every day reading and responding to email ...
Email is linear, not collaborative. Email was never intended for collaborative work. ...
Email is not social. Email is where good ideas go to die. ...
Your inbox is a black hole. You may be able to quickly and easily search your inbox, but odds are the rest of your department or company can’t. ...
Sharing documents on email is a joke....
I hope he is right.
Posted at 01:06 PM in Business, Culture, Social Media, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet) | Permalink | Comments (6)
Tags: email, Facebook, productivity, social media
USA Today: Political spats on Facebook spill into real life
Unfriending, blocking and ignoring: Political spats on Facebook affect real-life relationships with family, friends, colleagues and neighbors as the 2012 Election Day battle between Obama and Romney draws near.
12:25PM EDT October 13. 2012 - Jason Perlow thought it was just a spirited debate.
A friend posted some negative information about presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Facebook, and Perlow, who considers himself a moderate, pointed out what he saw as flaws in that commentary.
That online disagreement escalated into an offline disintegration of their more-than-10-year friendship.
"He got really angry with me," says Perlow, 43. "He defriended me on Facebook and told me not to send him any more e-mails. He also defriended my wife, who had nothing to do with it."
Most people know the social dangers of discussing politics at family gatherings, cocktail parties and the workplace. But the rise of Facebook brings about a tempting -- and treacherous -- territory to engage in such commentary.
It takes just a few posts to inadvertently damage a friendship, put a rift in family relations, alienate a once-friendly neighbor or infurIate a colleague. ...
... Yet as divisive as those Facebook comments can be, they can have an influence.
One in six social network users say they've changed their views about a political issue after discussing it or reading posts about it on a social networking site, according to a Pew Research Center survey fielded in January and February. ...
I have never defriended anyone over politics, but I have moved some people into friend groups where I can avoid them more easily. I unfollowed six people on Twitter in recent months because of their constant divisive political tweets, especially during the primary debates. Most have been pastors or academics, including one who has published several books and has a wide following. Her occasional barrage of tweets, especially during primary campaigns, was so obnoxious that I am no longer prepared to hear much of what she says about anything else. From retweets by others this fall, I see little has changed.
I'm particularly puzzled by the number of religious leaders who routinely go to excess on social media. (And let's face it, most of us who post regularly occasionally step across a line.) Most pastors I have known have been very judicious about making political remarks in face-to-face community. They would never say things from the pulpit or at a public gathering that they say on social media. Bruce Reyes-Chow wrote a post recently, An Open Letter to Pastors About the Dangers of Using Social Media. One of the dangers he lists is the "Here I can be the real me" mindset. He writes:
This is probably the most difficult aspect of online life to manage for a pastor. I understand the need for a place to vent, but as a general rule I advise you to never to vent online and when unsure, default to, "If you can't say it out loud and in public, don't say it online." because you just never knows who is tracking what, who taking screenshots for future use or who will eventually see what is said. Again, I do see how safe online space can be beneficial, but you risk much when intentionally compartmentalizing yourself into two or more personas. I choose to believe that most thoughtful folks in a church, even if they saw some venting, would be able to understand. But what I would not want is for people to see your online life and experience a completely different person. For generations we pastors have been told to live two separate lives, church pastor and real person, and this has only lead to trouble. We feel confined, churches feel lied to and our unhealthy and destructive behaviors can be hidden from view. Social media has the capability to draw us into the same kinds of unhealthy dualities that can lead to broken relationships, congregational disillusionment and pastoral misconduct, so we must be even more diligent in how we live online.
Bruce's post helped clarify why I might see so many pastors behave this way. But there is more here. Bruce writes about pastors, but his wisdom applies to anyone who wants to live a truly authentic life.
Posted at 09:07 AM in Christian Life, Politics, Social Media | Permalink | Comments (3)
Tags: Bruce Reyes-Chow, Christian witness, defriend, Facebook, pastors, politics, social media, Twitter
Reuters: Facebook crosses billion threshold, on quest for growth
(Reuters) - Facebook Inc passed the 1 billion user mark in September, a level of global penetration that is a remarkable achievement for an 8-year-old social network and a heightened challenge to its quest for sustained growth.
Facebook, which has endured a bruising four months in the stock market since a haphazard May 18 initial public offering, has acknowledged that a slowdown in new-user acquisition is inevitable as its worldwide reach expands.
But doubts over whether the company can squeeze more and more dollars out of each network member - given well-publicized struggles to monetize the growing ranks of users who access Facebook from mobile devices - have shaved more than 40 percent off Facebook's value since its IPO, although shares still trade at a lofty 45 times projected 2012 earnings.
Thursday's announcement that Facebook crossed the billion threshold on September 14 confirmed expectations on Wall Street that growth is actually trailing off.
The latest quarter's growth appeared likely to come in lower in raw numbers, let alone by percentage, than the April-June quarter's 54 million new users. About 45 million joined from the start of July, when it had 955 million users, through September 14.
And the previous quarter was way down from the 102 million who joined during the first three months of 2012. ...
Posted at 05:21 PM in Social Media | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: billion, Facebook, global penetration, social network
BusinessWeek: Because the Customer Is NOT Always Right!
Restaurant-goers can Yelp (YELP) about high prices and bad service; homeowners can carp about shoddy contractors on Angie’s List (ANGI); ripped-off customers can tattle to the Better Business Bureau.
Now small business owners have a place to share opinions of their own: BadConsumers.com. The site’s tagline: “Because the customer is NOT always right!”
“Everything’s geared for the consumers and their protection. What about us?” asks Peter Robideau, 48, the site’s founder and owner of TeleTechie, a Malverne (N.Y.) technology support company that employs eight and brings in about $1 million annually. Robideau, a database programmer who started the company in 2004, has long traded gripes with fellow entrepreneurs about customers who haggle on prices after agreeing to them, stop payment on valid invoices, or don’t ever pay.
He had for some time wanted to find a way for small business owners to share the bad customer lists that many of them keep internally. “I have 7,000 customers on Long Island, and most of them are great,” Robideau says. “But there are a handful out there who are repeat offenders, and they only do it to small businesses because they know you don’t have a room full of lawyers to sue them. They make you wonder why you’re in business in the first place.” Most problem customers are not reneging on payments because they’re poor, he says: “It’s not that they can’t afford to pay you. They’re like rich kleptomaniacs.”
Robideau built the BadConsumers database and had a friend design the front end; he’s invested about $5,000 in the project. The site, which went live in early September, is offering free six-month memberships to business owners nationwide who submit valid tax ID numbers. Robideau says almost 500 people have become members and figures he’ll eventually charge around $100 for annual memberships. He envisions the site as protection for entrepreneurs: the electronic equivalent of the bounced checks that retailers post at cash registers.
Bad debt is a pervasive problem for small businesses, and it’s maddeningly difficult to solve. In a Citibank (C) survey of 750 small business owners released in September, 30 percent identified slow or delinquent receivables and bankruptcies as their greatest cash-flow management challenge. Nearly one-quarter blamed late or nonpayments for sudden cash crunches during the past year and said making a collection call was “the most uncomfortable business finance challenge,” second only to reducing staff. ...
Posted at 08:31 PM in Business, Social Media | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: BadConsumers.com, customers, Peter Robideau, social media
Atlantic: Survey: 75% of Homeless Youth Use at Least One Social Network
Even without a roof over their heads, young adults find ways to access the Internet.
... Guadagno argues that the results should lead us to rethink the concept of the digital divide of Internet haves and have nots. "To the extent that our findings show a 'digital divide' between undergraduates at a four-year university and age-matched participants in a program for homeless young adults, it is mainly in types of Internet use and not access to the Internet, and that divide is relatively minor," we read. "Since it is clear that the proportions of undergraduates and homeless young adults accessing social networking sites are similar, we assert that the term digital divide is not descriptive of the young adult population." ...
Posted at 06:09 PM in Poverty, Social Media | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Homeless Youth, Social Network
Christian Science Monitor: The Bookscore: the new Rotten Tomatoes for books?
The website The Bookscore rounds up book reviews, assigns a ranking, and lets readers discuss literary news.
Why rely on one book review when you can read five?
The website The Bookscore aims to fill that need with its collection of aggregated reviews for new titles. On The Bookscore, the articles for a certain book are gathered so that, like on movie websites like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, a website visitor can look at a title and get an overall score for a book, averaged from multiple reviews. For example, “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed currently holds a score of 8.8; “Bring Up the Bodies” by Hilary Mantel” is the proud possessor of a 9.1.
“The Bookscore sets itself apart by including reviews from the only the most trusted sources, by giving users a complete online forum for news and discussion to go along with the reviews, and by allowing the users to contribute to the content directly by requesting books to be scored,” said co-founder Sam Griswold, who founded the site with Chris Laursen. ...
Posted at 08:00 AM in Education, Social Media, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet) | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: rating books, The Bookscore
USA Today: Why shopping will never be the same
... The convergence of smartphone technology, social-media data and futuristic technology such as 3-D printers is changing the face of retail in a way that experts across the industry say will upend the bricks-and-mortar model in a matter of a few years.
"The next five years will bring more change to retail than the last 100 years," says Cyriac Roeding, CEO of Shopkick, a location-based shopping app available at Macy's, Target and other top retailers.
Within 10 years, retail as we know it will be unrecognizable, says Kevin Sterneckert, a Gartner analyst who follows retail technology. Big-box stores such as Office Depot, Old Navy and Best Buy will shrink to become test centers for online purchases. Retail stores will be there for a "touch and feel" experience only, with no actual sales. Stores won't stock any merchandise; it'll be shipped to you. This will help them stay competitive with online-only retailers, Sterneckert says.
Branding strategist Adam Hanft says this all might sound futuristic, but much of it is rooted in reality. He says satellite stores will open in apartment buildings and office centers. FedEx and UPS will delve deeper into refrigerated home delivery. Google trucks will deliver local services. Clothing — even pharmaceuticals — will be produced in the home via affordable 3-D printers.
"Every waking moment is a shopping moment," says Steve Yankovich, head of eBay's mobile business, which expects to handle $10 billion in transactions this year. "Anytime, anywhere."
Game-shifting tech — such as smartphones, location-based services, augmented reality and big data, which makes sense of all the data on mobile devices and social networks — will most assuredly upend several multibillion-dollar retail markets, forcing retailers to adapt or die, say venture capitalists and analysts.
Eventually, 3-D printers will let consumers produce their own towels, utensils and clothes. While in their infancy, the devices have been used to print hearing aids, iPad cases and model rockets, says Andy Filo, an expert on 3-D printers. The technology is several years away, however, from being widely available and affordable, he says.
And almost all of it will be paid with … your phone. ...
... Driving the future
All of this will be possible within several years because of:
•Smartphones. Location-based services and the growing adoption of Near Field Communication — a wireless technology standard for one-tap payment — will turn consumers' phones into stand-ins for credit, debit and loyalty cards, says Bill Gajda, head of mobile at Visa. Meanwhile, Nordstrom, among many, is phasing out cash registers this year in favor of smartphones with store-designed apps for purchases and inventory.
•The death of cash. If credit cards diminished use of cash in the 1950s, powerful smartphones and tablets will hasten its demise. Both are reshaping the relationship between merchant and customer as newfangled wallets, and each is edging toward becoming credit card readers and (cash) registers.
"Cash has dug in its heels for small-value transactions, but with the arrival of each new tech offering (providing) an alternative way to pay for little stuff — text your parking payment, Starbucks mobile app, Square, etc. — cash is being further and further marginalized," says David Wolman, author of the book The End of Money.
•Augmented reality. The increasingly popular technology adds a visual layer of information on top of surfaces such as a mirror. One breakthrough might come at the mall, with AR mirrors that let consumers shop based on data projected on glass, say social-media experts such as Brian Solis.
Another intriguing option is Google Glass, which puts computer-processing power, a camera, a microphone, wireless communications and a tiny screen into a pair of lightweight eyeglasses. Ultimately, Google hopes the "smart" glasses — which are a few years away — will be able to access information in real time, including the ability to identify locations and provide additional information about your whereabouts.
Harnessing social media
As smartphones and tablets grow in popularity, retailers are trying to get their hands around Facebook, Twitter and social media, and cater to consumers, says Niraj Shah, CEO of Wayfair, an e-commerce company that recently passed Crate & Barrel to become the No. 2 Internet retailer of home products. It racked up a record $500 million in revenue last year.
Only 8% to 13% of retail shopping in the USA is done online. Impressive as future retail technology might look, it will take good old-fashioned customer service to boost those figures, says Will Young, who heads Zappos Labs. ...
Posted at 11:04 AM in Business, Capitalism and Markets, Social Media, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet), Technology (Manufacturing & Construction)) | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: 3D printing, augmented reality, retail, smartphone technology, social-media
Atlantic City: Map of the Day: Soda vs. Pop vs. Coke
The map above is the latest play on the old "pop" vs. "soda" map of the United States. Edwin Chen, a data scientist at Twitter who conducted math and linguistics research at MIT, compiled tweets that used either "coke," "soda," or "pop" when describing a soft drink. The red on the map shows places where "coke" is more prevalently tweeted, green indicates "pop," and blue is for "soda." Chen describes his method for organizing, cleaning, and aggregating the data: ...
Posted at 08:37 PM in Culture, Social Media, Sociology | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: soft drink names
Posted at 10:26 AM in Globalization, Human Progress, Social Media, Technology, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet), Trends: Economic, Trends: Social | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: abundance, artificial intelligence, human progress, Niel Degrasse Tyson, technological innovation
Who says the entrepreneurial spirit is dead in Europe?
Buy a group of Belgian soccer fans to root for your country during euro 2012.
For sale: Belgian soccer fans for euro 2012. Second hand but mint condition. Not been used since Fifa World Cup 2002.
Once again we Belgians have no team to root for at the euro 2012 soccer championship. Since tournaments are much more fun when you have a favourite team, we decided to put our fandom for sale at ebay.
All profits will be sent directly to Unicef.
What is for sale:
During Euro 2012, all members of this facebookgroup:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/414750861890585/
will root for the national soccer team of the highest bidder, or the national team of his choice. Even if it's Holland. We will watch the games, wear the colours, possibly even buy the flag and learn the national anthem. Pictures and videos will be made and sent to the winning bidder to be posted on his or her website.
Slight hooliganism is available at extra cost. We can, for example, kick a pigeon or smoke in a non-smoking area if such pleases our master.
Once the team is eliminated, we will grieve for 24 hours and then put ourselves for sale again on ebay. Hopefully joined by the previous winner since he or she will also have become an orphaned soccer fan by then.
Posted at 10:00 AM in Business, Capitalism and Markets, Humor, Social Media, Sports and Entertainment | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: Buy Belgian soccer fans, Euro 2012
DJChuang.com: A List of Churches on Pinterest
While there are articles (here, here, here, here, there) that give great ideas for how a church could be using Pinterest, right now it’s kinda elusive to find churches actually actively using Pinterest.
Aside: I myself have 624 pins and my dear wife has over 2,127 pins.
Here’s a list of churches on Pinterest I’d found, with a current count of pins when this list was compiled (please do add more) : ...
Posted at 09:38 PM in Ecclesia, Social Media | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: churches and Pinterest
Forbes: Here's Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years
We think of Google and Facebook as Web gorillas. They’ll be around forever. Yet, with the rate that the tech world is moving these days, there are good reasons to think both might be gone completely in 5 – 8 years. Not bankrupt gone, but MySpace gone. And there’s some academic theory to back up that view, along with casual observations from recent history. ...
... In the tech Internet world, we’ve really had 3 generations:
With each succeeding generation in tech, it seems the prior generation can’t quite wrap its head around the subtle changes that the next generation brings. Web 1.0 companies did a great job of aggregating data and presenting it in an easy to digest portal fashion. Google did a good job organizing the chaos of the Web better than AltaVista, Excite, Lycos and all the other search engines that preceded it. Amazon did a great job of centralizing the chaos of e-commerce shopping and putting all you needed in one place.
When Web 2.0 companies began to emerge, they seemed to gravitate to the importance of social connections. MySpace built a network of people with a passion for music initially. Facebook got college students. LinkedIn got the white collar professionals. Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon showed how users could generate content themselves and make the overall community more valuable. ...
... Social companies born since 2010 have a very different view of the world. These companies – and Instagram is the most topical example at the moment – view the mobile smartphone as the primary (and oftentimes exclusive) platform for their application. They don’t even think of launching via a web site. They assume, over time, people will use their mobile applications almost entirely instead of websites.
We will never have Web 3.0, because the Web’s dead.
Web 1.0 and 2.0 companies still seem unsure how to adapt to this new paradigm. Facebook is the triumphant winner of social companies. It will go public in a few weeks and probably hit $140 billion in market capitalization. Yet, it loses money in mobile and has rather simple iPhone and iPad versions of its desktop experience. It is just trying to figure out how to make money on the web – as it only had $3.7 billion in revenues in 2011 and its revenues actually decelerated in Q1 of this year relative to Q4 of last year. It has no idea how it will make money in mobile.
The failed history of Web 1.0 companies adapting to the world of social suggests that Facebook will be as woeful at adapting to social as Google has been with its “ghost town” Google+ initiative last year. ...
... The bottom line is that the next 5 – 8 years could be incredibly dynamic. It’s possible that both Google and Facebook could be shells of their current selves – or gone entirely.
They will have all the money in the world to try and adapt to the shift to mobile but history suggests they won’t be able to successfully do it. I often hear Google bulls point to the market share of Android or Eric Schmidt’s hypothesis that Google could one day charge all Android subscribers $10 a month for value-added services as proof of future profits. Yet, where are all the great social success stories by Web 1.0 companies? I imagine we’ll see as many great examples of social companies jumping horses mid-race to become great mobile companies. ...
... The Googles and Facebooks of tomorrow might not even exist today. And several Web 1.0 and 2.0 companies might be completely wiped off the map by then.
Fortunes will be made by those who adapt to and invest in this complete greenfield.
Those who own the future are going to be the ones who create it. It’s all up for grabs. Web monopolies are not as sticky as the monopolies of old.
Posted at 01:28 PM in Business, Social Media, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet) | Permalink | Comments (1)
Tags: Facebook, Google
From: Online Universities Blog
Posted at 06:09 AM in Education, Social Media | Permalink | Comments (0)
USA Today: Pinterest changes the way brides plan their weddings
To get a glimpse at the Pinterest phenomenon, look no further than Trish Smith. Her childhood pal Tiffany Loken was so sure she'd join the ranks of the addicted that she created a 50-pin "my best friend's wedding" board for Smith — even though the IT education adviser from Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., wasn't engaged.
"Yeah," says Smith, 29, laughing. Posted to the wildly popular, photo-driven social media platform were "all the ideas we had talked about since I was a little girl" in pretty, pictorial form.
Six months later, in December, with a proposal in hand, Smith seized the wedding planning reins and cemented her Pinterest obsession, creating seven boards over one to three hours every night related to her Nov. 10 nuptials. One showcases two dozen potential hairstyles; another displays 29 possible bouquets. But the topper on the cake? The 366-pin catch-all "my countrytale wedding" board, with its photo patchwork of gowns, favors, boutonnieres and, yes, a baker's dozen cake toppers.
Meet the Pinterest bride. For her, planning a fairy-tale wedding without the tool is, well, inconceivable. Indeed, Smith estimates that 90% of her rustic mountain event will be inspired by or pulled directly from Pinterest, as she wishes.
With its heavily female demographic and emphasis on DIY derring-do, Pinterest and brides go together like love and marriage. But it's not just the women in white who are touchscreen-tapping into the power of the 2-year-old site.
"It's changing the industry" for vendors, planners and magazines, says Anne Fulenwider, editor in chief of Brides. Since she took over the title in November, Pinterest has "exploded and really changed the conversation." A majority of her readers are pinners — repinning other users' favorites, culling the Web for new stock and uploading their own pictures. She estimates that Brides' 55 boards, supplied with fresh images every day, are gaining about 500 followers a week. A favorite? "Couture-inspired wedding gowns," with more than 10,000 followers. ...
Posted at 12:39 PM in Business, Culture, Social Media | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Pinterest, weddings
Pew Internet: Social networking sites and politics
Here are some interesting graphs about how liberals, moderates, and conservatives deal with the political differences they encounter on social networking sites (SNS). Seems liberals and conservatives or more likely than moderates to discover a friend has different political views than they expected. Liberals are a little more likely than moderates or conservatives to drop or block someone they disagree with. The more to the extremes you are, the more likely you are to say that you agree with most posts by your friends, suggesting the presence of echo chambers.
I've never dropped a FB friend over political issues. I have dropped several Twitter feeds from people (from both sides of the spectrum) who continually tweet snarky political comments, and I've moved FB friends to categories in my feed where I see them less often. I enjoy discussing politics, but echo chamber snarkiness is wearisome no matter which perspective it comes from.
Posted at 09:36 PM in Politics, Social Media | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: social media, social networking
Nielsonwire: Buzz in the Blogosphere: Millions More Bloggers and Blog Readers
Blogs are sometimes overlooked as a significant source of online buzz in comparison to social networking sites, yet consumer interest in blogs keeps growing. By the end of 2011, NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company, tracked over 181 million blogs around the world, up from 36 million only five years earlier in 2006. ...
... Bloggers: Who are they?
It’s no surprise that the growing number of blogs mirrors a growth in bloggers. Overall, 6.7 million people publish blogs on blogging websites, and another 12 million write blogs using their social networks.
So, who are blog writers and what else do they do online?
UM Portal: Faith and Facebook: UM churches finding their way with social media
... So how can churches encourage congregants to interact with their church’s Facebook page? Here are some ways churches have engaged people through Facebook:
• Custer Road UMC in Plano, Texas, hosted a competition for its college students who attend universities across the country. “Post your stories of the worst possible roommate experiences. The best worst stories will get a $10 gift card.” In the next two weeks, the church’s college students posted more than 100 comments and stories.
• Several church youth groups report using their Facebook page for “scavenger hunts.” Youth have to find something or record their group doing something. They post it on the Facebook page where the youth minister can then tally points. In the process, the youth are sharing their youth group activities with all of their Facebook friends, since every video shows up on their profiles as well as the church’s Facebook page.
• The Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, pastor at House for All Saints and Sinners, an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America mission church in Denver, Colo., posts on Facebook while preparing sermons. Sometimes she seeks stories; sometimes she wants to know what people think about the lectionary text for the week. Facebook and Twitter afford the opportunity for her congregants and friends to contribute to her sermons.
• Good Shepherd UMC, Mr. Richardson’s church, posts an abundance of pictures from church events on Facebook and tags its members. Not only does this then show up on church members’ walls for all of their Facebook friends to see, but many of their members have used the photos as their profile picture, linking their online identity to their church.
• Bed Start, a ministry that helps low-income families in Plano, Texas, uses Facebook to mobilize volunteers to address immediate and unexpected needs.
• White’s Chapel UMC in Southlake, Texas, uses Facebook as a primary means for communication with its local and online congregation. The church advertises across North and South America, welcoming Brazilians, Canadians, Chileans, Hondurans, Venezuelans, Americans and others into online worship several days a week.
• Multiple church youth groups report using Facebook to give updates to donors, parents and congregation members while they serve on mission trips and choir tours.
• University Park UMC in Dallas posts close-up pictures of parts of their building and challenges members to identify the subject.
• Lake Highlands UMC in Dallas spent minimal amounts on Facebook advertising for its Christmas Eve worship services. The ad appeared on screens in the church’s ZIP code 1.4 million times. About 400 people clicked for more information.
But does all of this online interaction actually further the missions of congregations?
The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project released 2011 data that challenges many assumptions of social media critics.
“The findings suggest that there is little validity to concerns that people who use social network sites experience smaller social networks, less closeness or experience less diversity,” the Pew report said, adding that frequent use of Facebook is associated with having more overall close ties.
Using independent metrics, the study further established that Facebook users have stronger total support, emotional support and companionship. Social network site users are half as likely to be socially isolated as the average American. ...
Posted at 08:00 AM in Christian Life, Ecclesia, Social Media | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: social media, United Methodists
bruce reyes-chow: We’re Starting a New Presbyterian Church
... For a while now I have had an inkling that the “social media amplifies the local church” paradigm could be flipped upside-down resulting in a powerful way to be church. If this shift were to be taken seriously, some interesting questions are raised:
Well ask “What if?” no longer because the church that I am planting is going to be one that tries to answer these questions. Peering through the lens of social media, I am excited to push the bounds of traditional church formation, while maintaining all that is good about traditional church. To be clear, the online nature of this idea certainly creates great technological possibilities, but my intention is that we will build just a church like any church: one that worships, serves, studies and prays together . . . we will just happen to gather online. There will be no justifications seeking legitimacy, no quotes inferring that this is not a “real church” and no posture that we are competing for people, resources or notoriety . . . just a church. ...
... Again I know that there are many of questions that we need to address before a full launch - “What about X?” and “How will we do X?” - but I also know that only way this new church will be able to respond well is to keep widening the circle of involvement. With this in mind our first step is to gauge the interest of folks and begin to gather people for some conversations and planning. Some of you are ready to dive right in, others will want nothing to do with this craziness and still others of you will need to lurk around the edges until the time is right. However you might see yourself connected to this church that has yet to be named, as we begin to build up a spiritual community, develop organizational strategies and start being church together, you are invited to JOIN OUR FACEBOOK PAGE and FILL OUT THE SURVEY BELOW.
There is definitely more to come and I look forward to walking this journey with some of you. Please pass this along to any folks who you think might also be interested.
Posted at 01:57 PM in Christian Life, Ecclesia, Presbyterian Church, USA, Social Media, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet) | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Bruce Reyes-Chow, social media
Call & Response Blog: Tom Arthur: Theology of the cloud
In a recent article on Faith & Leadership, Verity Jones points out how many Christian leaders talk about how to use social media, but few if any offer a theology of it.
Well, I’ll give it a try. Here’s a brief theological sketch for social media using four biblical-theological concepts: people of the Book, the ascension, perichoresis and the parousia.
People of the Book
... He [Paul] was and is not physically Present to provide this kind of influence on individuals and whole communities, and yet he was and is present to them through the act of writing.
The ascension and perichoresis
The parousia
The cloud
Social media gives us more opportunities than ever before (some deeper and more significant than others) to be present but not Present. We -- like all the writers of the Book -- mentor, influence, encourage, rebuke, train and simply tell stories through social media. Social media puts us, like Jesus, in a cloud where we are present to our friends and family but not Present to them. Social media, like Jesus’ second coming, points to a time when we will be Present together. Social media often is used to prepare and coordinate and enhance times when we are Present together. It even builds within us a deeper longing to be Present. You need only ask my parents whether video chatting with my fourteen-month-old son makes them long more or less to be with him. ...
Posted at 10:29 PM in Christian Life, Social Media, Theology | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: social media, theology, Verity Jones
Faith and Leadership Blog: Quiz: The changing face of online religion
More congregations are following their members online. But many are still evolving in the way they use technology for ministry. Take our quiz to explore the latest developments in virtual outreach.
... The Faith Communities Today survey found a correlation between the number of different kinds of technology a congregation employed and its growth. Nearly six in 10 congregations using five or six new technologies such as email, websites, blogs, Twitter and Facebook reported growth in worship attendance from 2005 to 2010. Just three in 10 congregations using two or fewer technologies reported growth, according to the Faith Communities Today survey.
The survey also found that major users of new technologies tended to be newer congregations with relatively younger pastors and larger percentages of young adult members.
Overall, Thumma notes, the use of new technology is associated with several indicators of growth, including a willingness to make changes, an openness to being distinctive from nearby congregations and the embrace of innovative worship experiences.
Yet research also shows that churches may be missing out on a lot of the potential for social media to engage people in ministry.
Many new media users, young people in particular, are used to interacting online with websites and through social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
But much of the online presence of congregations is a one-way affair.
The 2008 U.S. Congregational Life Survey found that while more than four in five congregations with websites have event calendars online, just 6 percent feature online discussion groups or Bible studies.
The approach is almost like using technology as a billboard and “less about how can we serve you, how can we engage you,” said Deborah Bruce, project director for the congregational life survey.
At its most effective, Thumma said, technology can enhance the number and depth of ties among churchgoers. It can offer members and visitors opportunities to carry faithful living into everyday life in ways from sharing prayer requests on Facebook to participating in online church services.
Simply offering daily devotions or highlighting parts of a service online can send the message that “this church is really trying to make what happens on Sunday relevant to the rest of the week,” said Thumma, co-author with Warren Bird of the new book “The Other 80 Percent: Turning Your Church’s Spectators into Active Participants.”
Posted at 10:22 PM in Christian Life, Ecclesia, Religion, Social Media, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet) | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: 2008 U.S. Congregational Life Survey
New York Times: Online Data Helping Campaigns Customize Ads
Political campaigns, which have borrowed tricks from Madison Avenue for decades, are now fully engaged on the latest technological frontier in advertising: aiming specific ads at potential supporters based on where they live, the Web sites they visit and their voting records. ...
... The technology that makes such customized advertising possible is called microtargeting, which is similar to the techniques nonpolitical advertisers use to serve up, for example, hotel ads online to people who had shopped for vacations recently.
In the last few years, companies that collect data on how consumers behave both online and off and what charitable donations they make have combined that vast store of information with voter registration records.
As a result, microtargeting allows campaigns to put specific messages in front of specific voters — something that has increased in sophistication with the large buckets of data available to political consultants. ...
... The process for targeting a user with political messages takes three steps. The first two are common to any online marketing: a "cookie," or digital marker, is dropped on a user's computer after the user visits a Web site or makes a purchase, and that profile is matched with offline data like what charities a person supports, what type of credit card a person has and what type of car he or she drives. The political consultants then take a third step and match that data with voting records, including party registration and how often the person has voted in past election cycles, but not whom that person voted for.
Throughout the process, the targeted consumers are tagged with an alphanumeric code, removing their names and making the data anonymous. So while the campaigns are not aiming at consumers by name — only by the code — the effect is the same. Campaigns are able to aim at specific possible voters across the Web. Instead of buying an ad on, say, The Miami Herald Web site, a campaign can buy an audience.
Another advantage is that these ads can be bought quickly — using an auction process to obtain ad space — when campaigns need to move rapidly to aim at an audience, for example, to counter a bad debate performance or an unflattering newspaper article. ...
... Critics say that the ability to limit political messages to registered voters toes the line of social discrimination. Daniel Kreiss, an assistant professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, called some of the targeting techniques a form of political redlining. ...
There may be some ethical considerations to advertising this way, but I don't think "redlining" is one of them. If you feel you are being redlined, the solution is simple: Go vote! Then you will have political ads galore. Trust me. I speak from experience.
Posted at 07:29 AM in Business, Politics, Social Media, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet) | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: big data political campaigns, Online Data
Pew Internet: Speaking the language of the next generation
Director Lee Rainie will address the annual conference of the National Religious Broadcasters. He will focus on the media habits of Millennials and GenX and how their patterns of gathering and creating information are different in the digital age.
Posted at 10:29 PM in Christian Life, Generations, Religion, Social Media, Technology (Digital, Telecom, & Internet) | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Gen X, generations, Millennials
Fast Company: Why Pinterest Is So Addictive
I would have written this article sooner, but I was busy on Pinterest. If you are still among the uninitiated, the social platform for collecting, sharing, and commenting on of photos of personal passions is uniquely engaging, absorbing, and addictive.
The human instinct to collect things--be it baseball cards, miniature spoons, or teacups--is as old as stuff itself. But it took Pinterest to perfect this process online. So no wonder it’s having a moment: comScore found that Pinterest just hit 11.7 million unique monthly U.S. visitors, who spend an average of 98 minutes a month on the site, compared to 2.5 hours on Tumblr, and 7 hours on Facebook. It’s also driving more referral traffic than Google+, YouTube, Reddit, and LinkedIn--combined, according to Shareaholic.
But why would Pinterest, which has been around since 2008, be attracting such swarms of devotees now? Fast Company turned to the experts to uncover the psychology behind Pinterest’s winning formula, and why it’s resonating with thousands of new users.
Finding Your Happy Place and Sharing Your Ideal Self
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Posted at 08:30 PM in Business, Social Media, Sociology | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Pinterest, social media
The Atlantic: Know Your Internet: What Is Pinterest and Why Should I Care?
On the cold, crowded beach that is the Internet, another monster wave has been spotted on the horizon. This wave is called Pinterest and it looks like it could be -- or already is -- the Next Big Thing in social media. This week, Techcrunch blared, "Pinterest Reaches 10 Million U.S. Monthly Uniques Faster Than Any Standalone Site Ever," based on Comscore data. Last week, a study was making the rounds that claimed to show that Pinterest was driving more referral traffic than Google+.
We're getting to that point with Pinterest where (in tech circles at least) it feels awkward to ask what it is even if you're not exactly sure. This is your quick guide to the site.
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a social network currently in a loose invitation-only beta. It fits into the category of "visual bookmarking." Like Tumblr (or Ye Olde Delicious), the service uses a browser bookmarklet, which makes it easy to post things from around the Interwebs. Pinterest's user gimmick/interface is that it lets you "pin" any photo from the Internet to a "board" on its site.
Why should I care about Pinterest?
Pinterest has broken out of the pack of new social networks to become a formidable source of traffic, particularly to retail sites. It has a very slick user interface and strong revenue model. And the site has a fascinating demographic breakdown: it's strongest among young women in the center of the country. ...
I actually got hooked on Pinterest this weekend. It is an interesting concept. But I did notice many women with obsessions about clothes, shoes, and food. I'm curious to see in what other ways it might evolve.
(Also see Pinterest: Is It A Facebook Or A Grokster?)
Posted at 02:49 PM in Social Media | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Pinterest, social media
Economist: Professor Facebook: Social networking for scientists
GIVEN journalists’ penchant for sticking the suffix “gate” onto anything they think smells of conspiracy, a public-relations consultant might have suggested a different name. But ResearchGate, a small firm based in Berlin, is immune to such trivia. It is ambitious, too—aiming to do for the academic world what Mark Zuckerberg did for the world in general, by creating a social network for scientists. And it is successful. About 1.4m researchers have signed up already, and that number is growing by 50,000 a month. ...
... To make things more efficient and interdisciplinary, ResearchGate wants to help the academic world to grow more connective tissue, as Ijad Madisch, one of the firm’s founders, puts it. As on Facebook, users create a profile page with biographical information, list their interests and research skills, and join groups. They can see what others with similar interests are up to and post comments. They can also upload their papers and create invitation-only workgroups. ...
... At the moment, most of those users are in their 20s. Their favourite activity is to ask each other questions about practical research problems, from DNA-sequencing techniques to statistical tricks. They are also busy reading each other’s papers: more than 10m have been uploaded. (Most scientific journals now allow authors to post their work on “personal web pages”, which includes profile pages on social networks, according to Dr Madisch.)
The service certainly saves these young researchers trial and error, and therefore time and money. They will probably also like a new feature ResearchGate is planning to introduce in April: a feedback system which lets users rate each other’s contributions. This would allow them to build a reputation other than by publishing papers.
Scientists whose reputations are established may be more hesitant, though, and not just because they are set in their ways. Science is not only about collaboration but also about competition. ...
Posted at 08:01 AM in Science, Social Media | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Facebook, social networking for scientists
KansasCity.com: Urban homesteaders plant seeds of change in Kansas City
Jason and Candy Fields’ backyard in the Lykins neighborhood — one of the most blighted areas in Kansas City — is a patchwork quilt of urban farming ventures.
There are a vegetable garden fertilized with nutrient-rich fish waste and a lush swath of bamboo stalks waiting to be dried and used to stake tomato plants or to build a tree house or a lightweight bicycle.
Towering sunflowers wear paper grocery sacks draped over their heads, an effort to keep the birds away so the mature seeds can be roasted, then eaten as a snack. There’s a playhouse-turned-chicken coop for heritage breed hens.
On the driveway, tilapia swim in an aquaponics system fashioned from recycled, food-grade plastic drums that takes up as much space as an average living room. Fragrant basil grows in rock beds above the drums, cleaning the water for the fish while the nutrient-rich fish waste fertilizes the basil, all without the use of soil.
Nearby, duckweed grows in kiddie wading pools. The inexpensive, high-protein, easy-to-grow food for fish resembles green pond scum. A biodigester constructed from more plastic drums converts 800 pounds of restaurant and household food scraps into methane that could heat a greenhouse.
Word of these innovative, low-tech farming experiments has traveled rapidly through local food circles. One steamy weekend in late June, almost 300 people milled around the “Myrtle Plot” at the corner of 12th and Myrtle streets. The plot was a featured stop on the Urban Farms and Garden Tour sponsored by Cultivate Kansas City, a nonprofit that helps people learn how to grow food in urban settings.
Much of that grassroots popularity is a result of social media. Using his iPhone, Jason Fields routinely posts cleverly produced how-to or slice-of-life videos to www.theurbanfarmingguys.com. More than 8,000 people “like” the website and Facebook page, and their “Farmin’ in the Hood” video has gotten 47,000 views on YouTube since its debut last spring.
The idealistic newlyweds decided to ditch their comfortable suburban lifestyle, if not their sense of humor, in 2008. Only half-joking, they recall how they worried that the drug-dealing squatter came with the foreclosed property they bought for $21,000. ...
... These urban homesteaders are mostly white 20- to 40-somethings. Most also are members of the Rock, a nondenominational Christian church founded in 1999 with loosely affiliated networks of house churches in Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Wyoming, Texas, Ohio, Michigan and North Carolina.
The Rock’s mission is to “plant” house churches throughout the inner city so members can live in and work with the communities they are trying to serve. On the face of it, their tactics for revitalizing a racially mixed, economically depressed neighborhood are simple: walk the neighborhood streets, make eye contact and open your heart.
“The biggest problem in this neighborhood is fear,” Jason Fields says. “There’s a spirit of hope and community when you decide not to hide from this and own it. … Something happens when you’re in something together. You meet people you wouldn’t have met otherwise, and it turns into really deep friendships.” ...
Posted at 07:24 AM in Christian Life, Economic Development, Environment, Kansas City, Microenterprise, Poverty, Social Media | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Candy Fields, Christian economic development, Cultivate Kansas City, Jason Fields. Kansas City, Lykins neighborhood, The Rock, Urban homesteaders