Meet with a community group that’s promoting better urban planning, everyone I spoke to was shocked that I had taken the bus from Atlanta instead of a private shuttle.
Source : Salon
Tag: USA
Arthur Brisbane and selective stenography
This isn’t merely the practice of journalists; rather, as Rosen points out, it’s virtually their religion. They simply do not believe that reporting facts is what they should be doing. Recall David Gregory’s impassioned defense of the media’s behavior in the lead-up to the Iraq War, when he rejected complaints that journalists failed to document falsehoods from Bush officials because “it’s not our role“ and then sneered that only an ideologue would want them to do so (shortly thereafter, NBC named Gregory the new host of Meet the Press).
Source : Salon
Quote of the week – Education
And although literacy rates are notoriously difficult to assess, there is sufficient evidence (mostly drawn from signatures) that between 1640 and 1700, the literacy rate for men in Massachusetts and Connecticut was somewhere between 89 percent and 95 percent, quite probably the highest concentration of literate males to be found anywhere in the world at that time.2 (The literacy rate for women in those colonies is estimated to have run as high as 62 percent in the years 1681-1697.3)
– Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
Inside Forbes: The Inspiring Data Behind Two Digital Reporting Strategies
“What works best on the Web, short or long-form journalism? The monthly audience statistics for two accomplished FORBES reporters prove that online news consumers crave both. They devour brief and timely information and seek out the in-depth coverage that news stalwarts feared would disappear in the digital age.”
Source : Forbes
Why Microsoft’s ‘Avoid Ghetto App’ Takes Us the Wrong Way
MSNBC, which is owned by Microsoft, attempted to weigh in on the budding controversy by mentioning that they never used the term “ghetto.” An AOL reporter actually did some reporting, talking to experts who compared the tool to redlining and found it “appalling” and others who said it was “creepy” but useful.
Source : Polis
Digg Data Reveals What We Read But Are Too Scared or Embarrassed To Share
Specifically, vs what they shared to their Facebook Timeline in part through the new Digg Social Reader Open Graph which has helped boost Facebook referral traffic by 67 percent. It discovered telling psychological trends in how people want to portray idealized versions of themselves.
According to Digg’s data,”Entertainment stories were 14 percent of all stories read but less than 4 percent of those added to the Timeline. Likewise, political stories comprise less than 2 percent of those added to a user’s Timeline but close to 10 percent of what people read”. Gaming was another content type rarely shared.
Source : Techcrunch
Stop the Public University Tuition Spiral
Students of the University of California at Berkeley may pay a proposed $23,000 in tuition by the 2015-2016 school year, up from $11,160 this year (2011) that in turn is up from $2,716 in the academic year 2001-2002. In short, tuition for resident undergraduates has more than quadrupled in ten years.
Source : Common dreams
Payroll Tax Cut Raises Worries about Social Security’s Future Funding
The payroll tax cut changes that. Instead being a protected program with its own stream of funding, Social Security, by taking money from general revenue, becomes more akin to other government initiatives such as Pentagon spending or clean-air regulation — programs that rely on income taxes and political jockeying for support.
Source : Common dreams
Don’t Worry, America: China is Rising But Not Catching Up – Harvard – Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Because of the one-child policy, China will soon suffer the most severe aging process in human history. The ratio of Chinese workers per retiree will plummet from 8:1 today to 2:1 by 2040. The fiscal cost of this swing in dependency ratios alone may exceed 100 percent of China’s GDP. The American working-age population, by contrast, will expand by 17 percent over the next 40 years. America’s fiscal future may not be bright, but it is brighter than China’s
Source : Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Collected Reading 