The Procrastinator (some) Times

Sunday, 8 June 2014

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

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

Sunday, 1 June 2014

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

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'

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Photo: "Elio At Dusk". Nan Goldin via Dazed Digital.

Talking children, movies and Instagram with the godmother of the snapshot. "At 60, Goldin is still incorrigibly herself: direct, a bit difficult, a bit mischievous, dead smart, dead self-possessed and terribly beautiful. She has those thick golden Goldin curls and wears a crisp dark-blue suit. She has a husky New York-tinged drawl, and regularly uses ‘honey’ as a form of address. She’s back in the room, and she wants to know how old I am. I am 32. She is glad! She makes one of her exasperated proclamations: “I am never talking to another person under 30 again as long as I live.” Phew." Read full article in Dazed Digital. E.T.P. 10'

Photo via The Atlantic.

Elizabeth Segran explores in The Atlantic the work perspectives of graduates from humanities Ph.D.s. "There is a widespread belief that humanities Ph.D.s have limited job prospects. The story goes that since tenure-track professorships are increasingly being replaced by contingent faculty, the vast majority of English and history Ph.D.s now roam the earth as poorly-paid adjuncts or, if they leave academia, as baristas and bookstore cashiers. As English professor William Pannapacker put it in Slate a few years back, “a humanities Ph.D. will place you at a disadvantage competing against 22-year-olds for entry-level jobs that barely require a high-school diploma.” His advice to would-be graduate students was simple: Recognize that a humanities Ph.D is now a worthless degree and avoid getting one at all cost." Read full article in The Atlantic. E.T.P. 6'