"“Gamification” is a word and concept invented by idiocrats who confuse humane with manipulative.

Theory about how the mistake gets made

Everybody sees the trend toward simpler, more-focused, better-designed software. Enterprise developers see the consumerization of IT.

You could look at this trend and say, “As software improves, it respects its users more. It works better and looks better, is easier to learn, and leaves out the things that waste a user’s time.”

Or you could look at this trend and say, “As software gets simpler, it gets dumbed-down — even toddlers can use iPads. Users are now on the mental level of children, and we should design accordingly. What do children like? Games.”

Respect

It should be obvious that one conclusion respects people and one doesn’t. It should also be obvious that the first conclusion is correct and the second is incorrect, cynical, and low."

And so I became Pac fan. I began increasing my reading because he was an avid reader. I considered this the source of his power. I began reading periodicals every day, even if I was tired and had to reach for the dictionary for every other word. I didn’t care though, I knew it would help me in the long run. I started off with The Times for about two months and realised it was too right wing for me and so turned to The Guardian. After a while I wanted a completely different opinion so went to The Independent. I began asking my teachers about books that they hadn’t heard of, and thought I was taking the pee out of them. I didn’t care though. I wanted to aspire to that level of articulation and passion that Tupac seemed to deliver in his songs. Ok, so after about a year I came to realise that he had other talents such as rapping, which I’ll never posses, but it did not matter. I was hooked on knowledge, and every time I listened to one of his tracks he reminded me that I should be reading, learning and debating where possible.

"Once you are Turing'd it is much easier to believe other occupations which we humans used to do uniquely, can be done by computers. You tend to be open to disruptive technology in all parts of your life."

The big cities it seems, the established megacities of the US, Europe and Asia are just too big, too dangerous, too inefficient. So what do these top cities have in common? How exactly do you measure “liveability”?

Four years ago, a Chicago real estate agent stumbled upon a box of negatives. Little did he know that he'd discovered Vivian Maier.

The American Dream, sometimes in the phrase "Chasing the American Dream," is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. In the American Dream, first expressed by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement" regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.[1] The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the second sentence of the United States Declaration of Independence which states that "all men are created equal" and that they are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights" including "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."[2]

His idea goes like this: Assign each student a single, specific topic, which he or she will study over and over again, from every possible angle, from early elementary school through high school. Egan, a professor of education at Canada's Simon Fraser University, hopes that by the time such students finish high school, they will be world-class experts on their topics - as well as more effective citizens and better people.

That’s precisely why I can say that the future matters to me, even if I won’t experience it. That’s how values work: from here, they project everywhere and everywhen. That isn’t to say you can’t change your values, project other values onto the stream of time from some other time and place; but from right here, right now, my values project to every time and place; and I can’t choose to not give a shit about some particular time and place from right here, right now just because I don’t feel like doing whatever it is making sure the values I project onto the future would demand of me.

Small Change
Why the revolution will not be tweeted.
by Malcolm Gladwell

Is killing sometimes morally required? Is the free market fair? It is sometimes wrong to tell the truth? What is justice, and what does it mean? These and other questions are at the heart of Michael Sandel's Justice. Considering the role of justice in our society and our lives, he reveals how an understanding of philosophy can help to make sense of politics, religion, morality - and our own convictions. Breaking down hotly contested issues, from abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage, to patriotism, dissent and affirmative action, Sandel shows how the biggest questions in our civiv life can be broken down and illuminated through reasoned debate. Justice promises to take readers - of all ages and political persuasions - on an exhilarating journey to confront controversies in a fresh and enlightening way.

The scene is Baltimore. Twice every three days another citizen is shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned to death. At the cente of this hurricane of crime is the city's homicide unit, a small brotherhood of men confronted by the darkest of American visions. David Simon was the first reporter ever to gain unlimited access to a homicide unit, and his remarkable book is both a compelling account of casework and an investigation into our culture of violence. The narrative follows Donald Worden, a veteran investigator nearing the end of his career; Harry Edgerton, an iconoclastic black detective in a mostly white unit; and Tom Pellegrini, an earnest rookie who takes on the year's most difficult case, the brutal rape and murder of an eleven-year-old girl.

Something has gone profoundly amiss in our public affairs over the past thirty years. In the West we are wealthy and secure enough to allow ourselves to drift very far off course before anything has to be done. But we have forgotten how to think about the life we live together: its goals and purposes. Not only are we post-ideological; we have become post-ethical. When we ask ourselves whether a particular policy objective should be pursued – universal healthcare or investment in public transportation – we know only how to inquire about its efficiency: its profitability or cost, its impact upon growth and the National Product, its implications for taxation.

If you're hogging an extra train seat with your bags, I'll probably ask to sit there, even if others are free. If you're male, and sitting on a bus or underground train with that absurd, wide-legged, testicle-ventilating stance that implies the need for two seats, I may choose to sit next to you. And if you're obviously speeding when you screech to a halt at the zebra crossing where I'm waiting – well, don't be too surprised if you find that I cross slowly, with a limp. I'm dispensing justice, that's all.

Sallust, the Roman historian who made his name by connecting great events to the moral outlook of the people involved in them, said it more than 2,000 years ago: “The golden age is before us, not behind us.” Twenty centuries later, we still don’t seem to have learned his epigrammatic lesson: We—both the critical we and the popular we—spend an inordinate amount of time looking backward and mourning a golden age of culture that is likely irrecoverable, while looking at the present day as either approaching or having already arrived at an utter nadir.

James 'Jack Rabbit' Jackson is a retired police officer living in Detroit. With high crime and slow police response rates, he is one of a growing number of residents organising a local response to crime.

How unemployment will continue to rise, despite the recession being over. The effects this will have on an entire generation - personally, and at the family/community level.

'Cognitive fluency' is a measure of how easy it is to think about something. Whilst it is fairly straghtforward to accept that easy-to-understand concepts are more widely accepted, it is surprising just how far this permeates our thinking.

"On a hot afternoon in August, a mother, father, and son climbed into their car and set out for the Qihang Salvation Training Camp in rural China. The facility was only a half hour from their hotel in Nanning, but the drive felt much longer to Deng Fei and Zhou Juan. In the backseat, their son, Deng Senshan, said almost nothing the entire way. He wore a sickish look as he gazed at the whizzing tableau of warehouses, unfinished buildings, and open fields of southern China’s Guangxi province. He didn’t want to go to the camp — who would? — but his parents felt they had no choice."

"It's not permitted. It pisses people off. It makes you puke. It confuses you, and it brings clarity. It makes you an outcast, and it helps you meet wonderful strangers. Lessons from a man who did the unthinkable."

"We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth."

"It’s likely that when Kari Ferrell walked into the Vice magazine offices in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, last month to interview for an administrative assistant job, they thought they’d hit the jackpot. Ms. Ferrell—petite, 22 years old, of Korean heritage—had a huge tattoo of a phoenix across her chest and a cute pixie haircut. She was talkative, funny, charming, adorable. She had a tattoo on her back that read “I Love Beards.” She told them she’d been working for the New York office of the concert promotion company GoldenVoice, which puts on huge rock festivals like Coachella near Palm Springs, Calif., and that she’d moved to New York from Utah just a few months earlier. They hired her on the spot."

"The strange secrets of humor, fear and a guy who makes big money making little people laugh."

"Great cities attract ambitious people. You can sense it when you walk around one. In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message: you could do more; you should try harder."