Glenn Fleishman argues that bad data leads to a basic misunderstanding about the risks to children from strangers: As with most crime and violence, children are exposed to the greatest risk either because of family members or their own choices. More here.
Time for the annual celebration of the value of the UK’s creative industries. “From Art to Architecture, Film to Fashion, British talent leads the world” “The UK’s Creative Industries, which includes the film, television and music industries, are now worth £76.9 billion per year to the UK economy.” Strange to mention the creative activities with…
Hans de Zwart discusses the present and future of surveillance and privacy, including some tips on how to hide: So what can you do to escape ubiquitous government surveillance? We know how Obama tries to do it. Whenever he is outside the US and needs to have a private conversation or read a secret document…
A consideration of the effects of Master and Servant laws at Flip Chart Fairy Tales: For most of the period since the middle ages […] labour law was firmly on the side of the employer. […] State intervention in the labour market is nothing new. The only aspect that is relatively new is its intervention…
When did ‘innovation’ stop being a dirty word? How does progress occur? The eighteenth century embraced the idea of progress; the nineteenth century had evolution; the twentieth century had growth and then innovation. Our era has disruption, which, despite its futurism, is atavistic. It’s a theory of history founded on a profound anxiety about financial…
I woke up the next morning and Fox News was reporting that unknown suspects had vandalized City Hall. I went back to the entrance and handed the guard my driver’s license and a letter explaining what I’d done. Several police officers were speaking in hushed tones near the gates, which had been washed clean. I…
At foreignpolicy.com, Charlie Stross considers generations, loyalty, work and surveillance: Generation Z will arrive brutalized and atomized by three generations of diminished expectations and dog-eat-dog economic liberalism. Most of them will be so deracinated that they identify with their peers and the global Internet culture more than their great-grandparents’ post-Westphalian nation-state. The machineries of the…
A neat digest from xkcd of worries about the pace of modern life here, including the following from 1907: Our modern family gathering, silent around the fire, each individual with his head buried in his favourite magazine, is the somewhat natural outcome of the banishment of colloquy from the school. Meanwhile, one hundred and four…
Business Insider discusses a recent report from the Pew Research Global Attitudes Project entitled ‘The Global Divide on Homosexuality’ which finds strong links between GDP, religion and tolerance: If you want to be accepted, your best bet is a rich country full of Catholics. Full Business Insider article here.
At thetangential.com, Jay Gabler responds to the recent n+1 editorial ‘Too Much Sociology’: …sociology has provided many explanations for the rise of sociology, among them Émile Durkheim’s theory of functional differentiation and Max Weber’s theory of rationalization. Durkheim and Weber both predicted that as a society, we would increasingly come to see ourselves in rational—that…