The Procrastinator (some) Times Sunday 29th of June Edition

EDITORIAL

Morning friends! I have been reading a lot of interesting stuff, mostly related to festivals and counterculture, but not that many articles, so this is another concise edition. This is the moment where I remind all of you friends and ocasional visitors, that if you want to collaborate with us in any section, please do it!

The whole edition is about all things not Luis Suárez, enough is enough. In Science and Technology, The Atlantic published an interesting article based on a recent research that shows that animals are more or less motivated to engage in these sickness behaviors, depending on their social context, meaning that you can feel too sick to go to work... but not to go out. I knew it. Also, employees in the search of meaning appear via Quartz in our Design, Business & Innovation section. Glastonbury, of course, and the best 10 films of 2014 so far according to Dazed Magazine,in our Culture & Entertainment section. Finally In Dog We Trust by La Guía del Perro introduce us to the lovely Canelo, the cutest pitbull I've ever seen.

Happy Sunday and happy reading!


NEWS

Illustration via Quartz.

This is very #SickSadWorld of Iraq: "As an insurgency threatens to drag Iraq back into sectarian civil war, plans are still underway to build a vast new $1-billion parliamentary complex in Baghdad. The well-known London-based, Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid has been tapped to design a 2.7-million-square-foot building on the 49-acre site, even though her proposal—which remains secret—came in third in the international architecture competition." Read full article in Quartz. E.T.P. 3'  

Photo via Mashable.

A Venezuelan classic: "A massive blackout left more than half of Venezuela without electricity on Friday afternoon, according to news reports. The blackout affected as many as 13 Venezuelan states, leaving around 60% of the country without electricity." I could add here that is outrageous specially in the country with the largest oil reserves blah blah blah... but you already know that, and I'm tired of these things not being extraordinary or even news. Anyway, read full article in Mashable. E.T.P. 2'

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Photo: Family Walking by Marc Cohen, 1977.

"Any experienced parent will tell you: You really can't expect your kids to start reading until long after they start talking. If your daughter or son can make out words at 4, jump for joy. And this parent, like many others, learned the hard way that it's a bad idea to try and force your kids to learn before they're ready. But reading to a child is something entirely different. After all, you're the one doing the work, and your son or daughter is sure to enjoy simply being in your presence and listening to the sound of your voice as you tackle, say, the tongue-twisters in some vintage Dr. Seuss. As one reading expert put it to me once: Kids understand that being read to is an act of love. When they get older, they "transfer" that love to the book." Read full article in LA Times. E.T.P. 3'

Too sick to go to work, but not too sick to go out. Super interesting article (that makes all the sense in the world!) by Julie Beck in The Atlantic. "In the face of dragging yourself out of bed for yet another day of expectations and responsibilities, illness on top of it all can seem at times an insurmountable obstacle. How can you be expected to work? You’re sick. It’s not fair.
But if you haven’t shaken off the cold by the time the weekend rolls around, sickness might seem more manageable in the face of a party you were really looking forward to. You suddenly feel like you can power through." Read full article in The Atlantic. E.T.P.

DESIGN, BUSINESS & INNOVATION

Photo: Reuters/Jim Young via Quartz.

The title of this article written by Jeremy Eden and Terri Long in Quartz is "The talent that your company needs may already be on the payroll", but I honestly prefer the accurate caption of the photo as a title: Meaning. Employees want meaning. "In that classic of management science, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy gives the secret to finding a talented team of people who have intellect, passion, and courage when she says: “if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard.”Read full article in Quartz. E.T.P. 6'

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Photo via The Telegraph.

Bernardette McNulty compares her first Glastonbury experience with the 2014 edition. "For my first Glastonbury (1994), I snuck in in the middle of the night hidden under a blanket in the back of a decrepit transit van with several other stragglers, as the driver flashed his trader’s pass. In fact, for most of my early twenties my friends and I used to hitch down to the festival, much as the first 1,500 hippies did in 1970. Nobody could beat Marc Bolan’s grand entrance that inaugural year, arriving in a velvet-covered car." Full article in The Telegraph. E.T.P. 3'

Full coverage of the 2014 in videos, photos, articles, podcasts and tweets by the BBC live from Worthy Farm, here. 

And the Sunday edition of the Glastonbury Free Press here: http://cdn.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/GFP-Issue-3Web.pdf

Photo via Dazed Magazine.

"From the mad Dane's sex-addict epic to bellboy hijinks à la Wes, here are the films that got us excited this year. " The ten best films of 2014 so far according to Dazed Magazine. We've only seen 3 (shame). What about you? Read full article in Dazed Magazine. E.T.P. 5'

IN DOG WE TRUST

Photo: the adorable Canelo with his Colombian football shirt via his Instagram.

 

 

Hello dog lover! Hope you're having a beautiful weekend!

Here are some links you might like:

Treating chronic pain in dogs

10 tips for choosing the right vet

How to build a Murphy Bed for your dog

Best use of Photoshop yet may find abandoned dogs a new home

12 ways your pet can improve your mental health!

Video of the week: Beagle freedom project Viva Las Vegas rescue

Enjoy your Sunday! And follow Canelo on Instagram

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In Dog We Trust is edited by: Carola Melguizo from La Guía del Perro. 

The Procrastinator (some) Times Sunday 22th June Edition

EDITORIAL

Morning friends! This is going to be a super concise edition as this past week I was very busy with my graduation (: Hope you like it. Articles about Argentina and Venezuela in our News section. In Science & Technology, Pluto debate continue as it has been discovered that the planet(?) have several moons in regular orbit around it, and also one interesting article about the UK dream of a robot heaven. In Design, Business & Innovation, Ryan Bradley tries to understand Facebook lost generation of teens via Fast Company. In Culture & Entertainment, articles about video games and scholarships and watching TV on the gym. Come to think about it, this is a very geek edition. Finally, In Dog We Trust is great as usual and share with us how many words dogs actually understand.

Happy Sunday, happy reading and happy summer/winter solstice!

NEWS

Photo via Quartz.

"If Argentina goes deep in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, their legions of international haters may have something to make them feel better: Imminent default on the country’s debt.

That’s because the US Supreme Court today declined to overturn a lower court ruling won by NML, an American hedge fund subsidiary of Elliott Capital Management, that would force Argentina to pay up on billions of dollars in bonds it issued before it defaulted on them in 2001." Read full article via Quartz. E.T.P. 

Caracas, Venezuela. Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.

"A new ranking of the world’s most expensive cities for expats knocked the usual candidates — New York, Tokyo and London — off of the list. The true epicenters of sticker shock were Venezuela, Angola and South Sudan." Of course. Read full article in TIME. E.T.P. 2'

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Image via The New Yorker.

Adam Gopnik on the heated debate over whether or not Pluto should be considered a planet: “Those who imagine that picking sides is the small thing, easily overcome by common interests or even common sense, are generally, on this planet and every other, proved tragically, catastrophically wrong.” Read full article in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 6'

 

Photo via WSJ Blog.

UK dreams of a robot heaven: "If everything goes according to plan, robots will decommission British nuclear sites, service offshore oil and gas rigs; zip Brits across the skies and deliver their pizza. Garbage-bots will also collect trash and carebots will look after the elderly. Life will be simpler, easier, and more efficient when humans let robots do all the work, so that we can do everything else." Read full article in the WSJ Blog. E.T.P. 5'

DESIGN, BUSINESS & INNOVATION

Illustration via Fast Company.

Ryan Bradley writes an interesting article in Fast Company: Understanding Facebook's Lost Generation of Teens: "Facebook is not cool. Everybody knows that, not just teens. "Coolness is done for us," Mark Zuckerberg said last year. This, more than anything, must be the reason teens are leaving, this lack of coolness. Facebook's chief financial officer, David Ebersman, said as much during a fourth quarter earnings call: The social network is not a cool hangout spot anymore, he said, which is why its user rates among young teens is dropping off. Some estimates have it at about a million teens a year, quitting Facebook entirely." Read full article in Fast Company. E.T.P. 7'

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Photo via Dazed.

Now you can get a uni scholarship for playing video games! "Robert Morris University in Illinois has become the first college in the United States to offer scholarships to professional gamers who play League of Legends, one of the biggest PC games in the world.
The university's new scheme is now seeking to recruit high-school gamers under the principle that this League of Legends – which attracts 27 million players a day – is a sport equal to other traditional athletic pursuits like rugby and soccer." Read full article in Dazed Magazine. E.T.P. 2'

Photo via the New Yorker.

Emily Nussbaum writes in The New Yorker about watching TV on the gym: "When you watch television for work, many questions come up regarding your viewing habits. How do you watch so much? And don’t you get tired of watching? No, actually: I like television. And in my case, I have the benefit of multiple screens. There are plenty of shows that I watch on a swanky flat-screen TV with high-definition magic. There are others that I watch on a computer, either full-screen or popped out in the corner, so I can type while I watch. There are shows that I watch on my iPhone, too, lying in bed, with headphones on. This approach works nicely with Netflix, and for a Hulu catch-up on network shows that I’ve missed, and whenever I watch this way, in the darkness, I can hear the distant screams of cinephiles, which sweetens the experience all the more." Read full article in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 5'

IN DOG WE TRUST

 

Photo via 3bulldogges Instagram.

 

 

Hello dog lover! Hope you're having a beautiful weekend!
 

Here are some links for you:

40 dogs and cats who just love to cuddle

Dog owners enlist professional pup photographers for pet portraits

What's does "Fido's" behavior say about the relationship between you and your dog?

Wackiest pet products

How many words do dogs understand?

Video of the week: Boxer puppies and baby

Enjoy your Sunday! And follow Sumo, Buddha and Ayumi on Instagram

 

 

 

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In Dog We Trust is edited by: Carola Melguizo from La Guía del Perro. 

 

The Procrastinator (some) Times Sunday 15th of June Edition

EDITORIAL

Morning everyone!  Hectic past week building up to a crazier one, but in a good way! And this is why: in our To Do List we invite you to Central Saint Martins Degree Shows' week, and specially to our Conference Night: Exploiting Chaos this next Wednesday night (:

In News, like the rest of the world, we share articles about the World Cup. In our Science & Technology section Anita Hamilton writes in Time an article about this (not-so) new behavior: bedtime procrastination. Larry Clark's US$100 photos and Haruki Murakami's short story "Yesterday" in Culture & Entertainment. And In Dog We Trust by La Guía del Perro share tips to take care of your pet during the summer and introduce us to Koda the puggle.

Happy Sunday happy reading, and follow the Procrastinator in Twitter, #whydontyou? ;)

NEWS

Still of John Oliver's HBO video.

Of course the World Cup is the big news of the week, and if you are having confused feelings about it, because football is fun, but FIFA is the devil and half of Brazil is unhappy about hosting the World Cup, you definitely need to see John Oliver on Fifa, (if miraculously you haven't done so, it's all over the Internet!). "Putting aside its perennial bribery scandals, the way FIFA does business with host countries is appalling. Here, Oliver walks you though the hundreds of millions in tax breaks, the new laws, and the new criminal courts the (nominally) nonprofit organization demands." Have a look in Gawker. E.T.P. 14'

Photo via Vice.

Vice also has been covering the World Cup from an alternative perspective. Have a look at their series of Contra a Copa: the other side of Brazil's World Cup videos here. E.T.P.: 10-12' each.

"The World Cup started in Brazil this week among celebration and protests. The host nation won the game opener in front of 62,100 fans at Corinthians Arena in Sao Paulo, and masses watched in various positions around the country and world. -Some in protest that a huge amount of funds are directed to this prominent event." See these 27 photos in The Boston Globe's Big Picture. E.T.P. 5'

Image via The Atlantic.

In a lighter note, Uri Friedman in The Atlantic explains why the Americans used the word soccer. "In May, Stefan Szymanski, a sports economist at the University of Michigan, published a paper debunking the notion that "soccer" is a semantically bizarre American invention. In fact, it's a British import. And the Brits used it often—until, that is, it became too much of an Americanism for British English to bear. The story begins, like many good stories do, in a pub." Read full article in The Atlantic. E.T.P. 5'

Stephen Collins via The Guardian.

Finally "The not giving a toss about the World Cup World Cup final", a cartoon by Stephen Collins in The Guardian.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Photo via TIME.

Anita Hamilton writes an interesting article about Bedtime Procrastination, because there's never enough time during the day to get all your procrastinating done... you know it resonates with you.

"It probably goes without saying that you’re super busy most days. So busy, in fact, that by the time you’re ready for bed, you feel like a zombie. But if you’re like a lot of people, it’ll be a while before your face actually hits the pillow and you drift off into dreamland. After all, you still need to Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, call your Mom and play with your cat before you hit the hay." Read full article in TIME Magazine. E.T.P. 3' (Thanks Lynch for the link!)

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Photo via Dazed Digital.

Larry Clark is selling his snapshots at £100 a pop. According to the director, this sale is for "all the kids that come to my shows in their thousands and could never afford ten to fifteen thousand dollars for a print... This is a pay back to all the skate rats and collectors who would like a souvenir so I can die happy". Read full article in Dazed. E.T.P. 2'

Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.

This past week The New Yorker shared Haruki Murakami short story Yesterday. This is how it begins: "As far as I know, the only person ever to put Japanese lyrics to the Beatles song “Yesterday” (and to do so in the distinctive Kansai dialect, no less) was a guy named Kitaru. He used to belt out his own version when he was taking a bath. Yesterday Is two days before tomorrow, The day after two days ago." Read full story in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 25'

IN DOG WE TRUST

 

Koda the puggle via his Instagram.

 

 

Hello dog lover! Hope you're having a lovely weekend!

Here are some links for your Sunday morning:

War Dogs

Pig: One dog's story of beating the odds

Healthy happy pets: How to look after your pet during summer

How to live longer: Have a dog

Are you getting a ruff night's sleep?

Video of the week: Dog gets a puppy for his birthday

Enjoy your Sunday! And follow Koda on Instagram

 

 

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In Dog We Trust is edited by: Carola Melguizo from La Guía del Perro. 

 

TO DO (OR NOT TO DO) LIST

Image via CSM website.

Granary Square looking all summery.

Conference rehearsal. And in your right hand side there's the bar ;)

This Wednesday 18th of June the second round of Degree Shows at my uni, Central Saint Martins, starts. I've seen the making of wonderful exhibitions to be like MA Narrative Environments, MA Architecture and MA Textile Futures and I cannot wait to have a proper look when they're ready. My course, MA Innovation Management, had also been working hard to put together a great conference night that will be the opening of our show.

Our lecturers will be Susie McKenna, Director of Hackney Empire, Dr. Carl Reynolds founder of the NHS Hack Days and Indy Saha, Director of Creative Strategy at Google Creative Labs. You can also have a look at all the students projects, the insights and opportunities for innovation we discover during of our final dissertation process (warm up with the articles in our website). I (Ana) will be there, as well as a lot of nice collaborators of the Procrastinator: Marie, Rita, Kerilyn & Jonny.

All the info of our show Exploiting Chaos: Innovation in the Making is available in our website. Tickets are now sold out, but most probably if you want to have a look (and a drink) the night of the 18th you should definitely come along around 7:30! (:

This is the moment we've been waiting and working for several months now, come and share our happiness and exhaustion with us!

(Also I have two extra tickets for the Private Show, if you want them, tweet me!)

The Procrastinator (some) Times Sunday 8th of June Edition

EDITORIAL

This week edition our News section features articles about the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, and John Oliver explaining Net Neutrality; also, a couple of infographic, one about gay rights in the world and another one about the economic split in Latin America between Mercosur and the Pacific Alliance. A glimpse into the humanoid robotics movement in Japan in our Science & Technology section. The future of work when (and if) robots take over and Van Gogh's ear in Design, Business & Innovation. In Culture & Entertainment we feature a moving portrait project by photographer Sasha Maslov with some veterans of the Second World War; and in a lighter note a fun campaign where glasses transform impressionism turns into hyperrealism. La Guía del Perro share with us how Panda-Dog craze sweeps China and how to tell if your dog is putting on weight, check In Dog We Trust.

Happy Sunday and happy reading!


NEWS

Photo via The Independent.

This past week The Independent published an article about Tiananmen Square 25th anniversary – the massacre as it happened as told by Michael Fathers, The Independent's then Asia Editor, who was there. These were his dispatches from the atrocity. It is a quarter of a century since the People's Army put down China's incipient protest movement with shocking brutality.  'Rows of troops advanced slowly, shooting directly into the crowd.' Read full article in The Independent. E.T.P. 18'

Meanwhile in 2014, China blocked Google ahead of Tiananmen Square anniversary to slience its discussion. Read article in Mashable E.T.P. 3'

"Being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender is illegal in almost 80 countries, and in at least five of them is still punishable by death. In honour of the International day against homophobia and transphobia on 17 May, explore the legal situation for LGBT people around sex, marriage or civil partnerships, adoption, workplace discrimination and hate crime by region, country and overall population." Great interactive infographic made by Feilding Cage, Tara Herman and Nathan Good. Have a look in The Guardian.

I really enjoyed this video of John Oliver explaining Net Neutrality. It's an easy and fun way of understanding a very serious problem that I hope we don't have to face anytime soon. "John Oliver took on net neutrality on Last Week Tonight in the way only he can on Sunday evening. "They should call it cable company fuckery," Oliver said. After tearing into the FCC, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and the Obama administration, Oliver called for help from someone unexpected — Internet trolls. Oliver pointed viewers (and, more importantly, web commenters) to visit www.fcc.gov/comments to vent about the FCC proposal, which was opened for comment in mid May. "This is the moment you were made for, commenters," Oliver said." Read full article and watch the video in Mashable. E.T.P. 17'

Finally Latin America's economic split explained by a Bloomberg graphic. The inflation one is a beauty: "Latin America is divided between fast-growth countries along the Pacific coast and stragglers facing the Atlantic." Have a closest look in Bloomberg. E.T.P. 3'

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Photo via Wired.

Joseph Flaherty in Wired: "Japan is famous for its robotics industry which has developed everything from faceless industrial robots that power factories to cybernetic cats that provide companionship to the elderly. There’s also a subculture of scientists trying to create robots that could pass as humans and London-based photographer Luisa Whitton has captured their stories in a series called What About the Heart?" Read full article in Wired. E.T.P. 6'

Photo via Fast Company.

Nathan Han, a 15-year-old from Boston fascinated by bioinformatics won the first prize of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for creating a computer program that can predict how harmful gene mutations related to cancer might be. Read full story by Ariel Schwartz in Fast Company. E.T.P. 3'

DESIGN, BUSINESS & INNOVATION

Photo via Fast Company.

"In the past 50 years, the number of people working in manufacturing, government, and agriculture jobs have all gone down or flat-lined. As technology infiltrates parts of the labor market that it could never reach before, employment of people who do repetitive or task-oriented jobs has seen less need for human oversight or action. And your job could very likely be next." Thor Benson asks in Fast Company what will the economy look like when the robots take your job? Read article here. E.T.P: 5'

Photo via The New York Times.

"A model of Vincent van Gogh’s left ear — you know, the ear — is on display at a German museum.

 Created using 3D printers and genetic material from a living relative of van Gogh, the Dutch painter, it was shaped to be the exact size of his ear and is kept alive in a nourishing liquid.

It is the first major work from the German-born artist Diemut Strebe, who is based in Boston. Ms. Strebe, 47, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that she had spent three years working with a team of scientists to regrow the ear that van Gogh is said to have cut off in 1888." This is definitely a really original way of procrastination I would say. Read article in The New York Times. E.T.P. 2'

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Dmytro Verholjak; Markova village, Ivano-Frankivs’k region, Ukraine. Via The New Yorker.

Faces of the Second World War. In 2010, while visiting Russia for an exhibition of his work, the photographer Sasha Maslov took the first portrait for what became his current project, “Veterans.” The portrait is of Piotr Dmitrievych Koshkin, a Red Army plane mechanic who served in the Second World War. Inspired, Maslov began a four-year project photographing and interviewing people who lived through the war. His subjects include not only soldiers but also medics, engineers, partisans, members of various resistance movements, prisoners of war, Holocaust survivors, and civilians who suffered as a result of the conflict. All of these people, Maslov told me, were those “who experienced the war in a dramatic way, in their own skin.”Read full article and have a look at the photos in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 6'

"In a campaign that's new to us but appears to have been running for a while now, Y&R Paris has created a series of ads for eyewear retailer KelOptic showing impressionist paintings brought into focus. The tagline is "Turning impressionism into hyperrealism." Another case of advertising sullying some of mankind's greatest artistry? Sure. But also pretty awesome." Have a look in AdWeek. E.T.P 3'

IN DOG WE TRUST

Photo: the charming René-Charles via his Instagram.

Hello dog lover!

Hope you're up to something really fun today! Here are some interesting links for you:

Panda-Dog craze sweeps China

Dog's breakfasts boots search performance, says study

How to tell if your furry friend is packing extra pounds

Interesting. Owning a dog is linked to reduced heart risk

European pet industry grows to € 8.5 Billion a year

Video of the week: Blind Kellar plays fetch

Enjoy your sunday! And follow René-Charles on Instagram

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In Dog We Trust is edited by: Carola Melguizo from La Guía del Perro. 

The Procrastinator (some) Times Sunday 1st of June Edition

EDITORIAL


This week's edition include an article about the controversial European elections highlighting that the results are only the reflections of what it awaits when the left (in this particular case, but it can be the other way around) fails to live up to its promises. Self-driving cars and surveillance is it something that we should be worrying about? Read about it in our Science & Technology section. In Design, Business and Innovation the cheapest 3-D Printer developed by Frog Ventures, and why is the dead of the hompage give rise to news that's more about readers? Nan Goldin taking children and Instagram via Dazed Digital and an interesting discussion on the perspectives of humanities Ph.Ds graduates via The Atlantic in our Culture & Entertainment section. In Dog We Trust talks about breeds and sterotypes, what happens if your dog behaves differently than he is "supposed" to, and introduce us to the incredibly cute Vegas, the boston.

Happy Sunday, happy June and happy reading!


NEWS

Illustration via Jean Jullien.

"The extraordinary success of Marine Le Pen’s National Front, in France, and of other right-wing, populist parties has, with good reason, been the main story of last weekend’s European Parliamentary elections. Running on an anti-euro, anti-immigration platform, Le Pen won a historic twenty-five per cent of the vote, handily outpolling France’s main conservative party, the U.M.P., which earned only twenty-one per cent, and trouncing the Socialist Party of President François Hollande, which received an alarmingly small fourteen per cent. But Sunday’s election also produced another surprising, historic result, which has received much less attention: in Italy, Matteo Renzi, of the Democratic Party, won forty-one per cent of the vote, the largest total ever for a left-of-center party in Italy, a curious countertrend on a day marked by the advance of the right.
Placed in juxtaposition, the result in Italy helps us to understand why the vote in France turned out as it did; the French election could serve as a sobering warning to Renzi about what may await him if he fails to live up to his promises." Read full article in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 5'

Photo Reuters via The Economist.

The World Cup is still two weeks away, but for children worldwide (plus disturbing number of adults), the race to complete the Panini Brazil 2014 sticker book started long ago. Panini, an Italian firm, hast produced  sticker albums for World Cups since the tournament in Mexico in 1970; this year's version has 640 stickers to collect. The market for the stickers is not just for kids, however; it is also for micro-economis. Getting every slot filled delivers an early lesson in probability; the value of statistical tests; the laws of supply and demand; and the importance of liquidity. Read full article in The Economist. E.T.P. 3'

THE World Cup is still two weeks away, but for children worldwide (plus disturbing numbers of adults), the race to complete the Panini Brazil 2014 sticker book started long ago. Panini, an Italian firm, has produced sticker albums for World Cups since the tournament in Mexico in 1970; this year’s version has 640 stickers to collect (Brazilians are being forced to find nine sponsor cards, too). The market for the stickers is not just for kids, however; it is also for micro-economists. Getting every slot filled delivers an early lesson in probability; the value of statistical tests; the laws of supply and demand; and the importance of liquidity. - See more at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/economist-explains-13?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/ee/tr/theeconomicsofpaninifootballstickers#sthash.QXGp6ZiJ.dpuf

THE World Cup is still two weeks away, but for children worldwide (plus disturbing numbers of adults), the race to complete the Panini Brazil 2014 sticker book started long ago. Panini, an Italian firm, has produced sticker albums for World Cups since the tournament in Mexico in 1970; this year’s version has 640 stickers to collect (Brazilians are being forced to find nine sponsor cards, too). The market for the stickers is not just for kids, however; it is also for micro-economists. Getting every slot filled delivers an early lesson in probability; the value of statistical tests; the laws of supply and demand; and the importance of liquidity. - See more at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/economist-explains-13?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/ee/tr/theeconomicsofpaninifootballstickers#sthash.QXGp6ZiJ.dpuf

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Image via Wired.

Camille Francois in Wired contends that self-driving cars will turn surveillance woes into a mainstream worry. "In the aftermath of the NSA spying revelations, our society is struggling to equip itself with the laws and public understanding necessary to deal with the spread of technology into every corner of our lives.
Self-driving cars are one place we can start to get it right. They provide yet another example of the challenges to autonomy and freedom brought by technology, and have the potential to bring the debate home for people who don’t feel as concerned by privacy issues related to email and laptops." Read full article in Wired. E.T.P. 7'

DESIGN, BUSINESS & INNOVATION

Photo via Fast Company.

A 3-D printer called the New Matter MOD-t was launched in Indiegogo a couple of days ago. It’s expected to cost $250, making it the most affordable 3-D printer to date. "It’s also being billed as one of the simplest 3-D printers: users buy and download designs for chess pieces or kitchen utensils or whatever they want to make in a storefront that crosses the App Store with Etsy. They can then edit these objects--changing size or adding texture--about as easily as adding an Instagram filter. The printer, engineered by inventor Steve Schell, is expected to be built with a third of the parts of its peers, allowing it to reach that $250 price point. The MOD-t is the first release of Frog Ventures." Read full article in Fast Company. E.T.P. 7'

Photo via The Atlantic.

What the Death of Homepages Means for the Future of News. Derek Thompson writes in The Atlantic: "Why should the death of homepages give rise to news that's more about readers? Because homepages reflect the values of institutions, and Facebook and Twitter reflect the interest of individual readers. These digital grazers have shown again and again that they aren't interested in hard news, but rather entertainment, self-help, awe, and outrage dressed up news. Digitally native publishers are pretty good at pumping this kind of stuff out. Hence quizzes, hence animals, hence 51 Photos That Show Women Fighting Sexism Awesomely. Even serious publishing companies know that self-help and entertainment often outperform outstanding reporting." Read full article in The Atlantic. E.T.P. 5'