Friday, June 14, 2019

Kurt Vonnegut Report Card

Kurt Vonnegut Report Card


Kurt Vonnegut Creates a Report Card for His Novels, Ranking Them From A+ to D
in Books, Literature, Television | September 4th, 2015  14 Comments
http://www.openculture.com/2015/09/kurt-vonnegut-creates-a-report-card-for-his-novels.html



Graded
Player Piano, 1952, B
The Sirens of Titan, 1959, A
Mother Night, 1961, A Cat’s Cradle, 1963, A-plus
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, 1965, A
Slaughterhouse-Five, 1969, A-plus
Welcome to the Monkey House, 1968, B-minus
Happy Birthday, Wanda June, 1971, D
Breakfast or Champions, 1973, C
Wampets, Forma & Grandfalloons, 1974, C
Slapstick, 1976, D
Jailbird, 1979, A
Palm Sunday, C

Ungraded
2BR02B, 1962, P
Deadeye Dick, 1982, P
Galapogos, 1985, P
Blue Beard, 1987, P
Hocus Pocusj, 1980 P.


The 10 Best Kurt Vonnegut Books
By Marc Leeds | Nov 11, 2016
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/72006-the-10-best-kurt-vonnegut-books.html

The Rise of the Computer State

b The Rise of the Computer State

Steven Sinofsky (@stevesi)
4/28/19, 2:01 AM
https://twitter.com/stevesi/status/1122380315710803968

1/3 This new book on "Automating Inequality" puts for the thesis (according to the published excerpt) that 40 years ago computers did not help with decisions.
"The Rise of the Computer State" was published in 1980. All of the same, but without "AI", literally only "databases." pic.twitter.com/f8XIBeR66L 
[image] David Burnham, 1980. The Rise of the Computer State
[image] Virginia Eubanks, 2019. Automating Inequality

2/3 I suppose one could say it was right thought it took 40 years and was not the phone company and would happen in a completely different way that put forth.  
The jacket copy and forward from "The Rise of the Computer State" are all too familiar.
[image] Forward by Walter Chronkite 
3/3 How can this dialog get to discussing the humans and institutions and not keep transfering accountability to tools? Inequality, bias, bad/evil/awful choices, bad people, and poorly run institutions have existed before databases and before AI.

2:01 AM - 28 Apr 2019

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Summer Reading 2013: “The Rise of the Computer State” by David ...
By Caroline O’donovan,   Nieman Labs, 8 Aug 2013, 10 A.M.
https://www.niemanlab.org/2013/08/summer-reading-2013-the-rise-of-the-computer-state-the-threat-to-our-freedoms-our-ethics-and-our-democratic-process-by-david-burnham-1983/

  David Burnham's The Rise of the Computer State came out in 1983, a time when, for the most obvious of reasons, making comparisons between George Orwell's 1984 and real life was coming into vogue. ... And yet Orwell, with his vivid imagination, was unable to foresee the actual shape of the threat that would exist in 1984.
 
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The rise of the computer state : Burnham, David, 1933- : Free ...
https://archive.org/details/riseofcomputerst00burn
Oct 7, 2010
This book can be borrowed for 14 days.Log In and Borrow

The Rise of the Computer State is a comprehensive examination of the ways that computers and massive databases are enabling the nation’s corporations and law enforcement agencies to steadily erode our privacy and manipulate and control the American people. This book was written in 1983 as a warning. Today it is a history. Most of its grim scenarios are now part of everyday life. The remedy proposed here, greater public oversight of industry and government, has not occurred, but a better one has not yet been found. While many individuals have willingly surrendered much of their privacy and all of us have lost some of it, the right to keep what remains is still worth protecting.

Thursday, June 13, 2019

Superior: The disturbing return of scientific racism

The disturbing return of scientific racism ...

By Angela Saini, Wired (uK), 12 June 2019,
http://j.mp/2WAfSzk ...

The disturbing return of scientific racism
By Angela Saini, Wired, 12 June 2019
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/superior-the-return-of-race-science-angela-saini

Angela Saini's “Superior” charts the rise of race science that's being enabled by technology and genetics research. Discover the worrying new trend in this extract

This is an edited extract from Angela Saini’s new book, Superior: The Return of Race Science, published on May 30 (4th Estate)

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Angela Saini video interview: The return of race in mainstream science
By Lilian Anekwe, New Scientist, 22 May 2019
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2204322-angela-saini-video-interview-the-return-of-race-in-mainstream-science/

  In her latest book, Superior: The Return of Race Science, Angela Saini examines what she calls the “subtle” return of race within mainstream science. She tells New Scientist that part of the reason she wrote the book was to understand our beliefs on race, and whether scientific beliefs have really moved on since the era of eugenics and the racialised scientific ideas that were popular before the second world war. Saini argues science, and society, has not moved on as much as we like to think. Racialised ideas about who we are still exist now, and we need to understand why.

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Is race science making a come back? Angela Saini: Superior on Apple Podcasts
Kathryn Ryan, RNZ: Nine To Noon:, 19 June 2019
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018699220/is-race-science-making-a-come-back

  Kathryn speaks with award-winning British journalist Angela Saini, whose latest book exposes and ... also an anti racism campaigner, Superior: The Return of Race Science looks at racial biases in science history. Angela Saini has been described as one of the world's best science writers, regularly presenting science programmes for the BBC. She writes for the Guardian, and the New Scientist. Holding a Masters in Engineering from Oxford University, where she was also an anti racism campaigner, “Superior: The Return of Race Science” looks at racial biases in science history. Exposing the lie at racism's rotten core: that inequality is a result of genetics rather than political power, that race is a biological characteristic instead of a social construct.

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Race science: Angela Saini on the creeping resurgence of racism in science [interview]
By Alice Lipscombe-Southwell, Science Focus, 24 May 2019
https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/race-science-angela-saini-on-the-creeping-resurgence-of-racism-in-science/

  We like to think of science as being balanced, accurate, and devoid of prejudice. Yet according to Angela Saini, racism is insidiously worming its way into research.

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Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini – [review]
Alok Jha, The Guardian, M:on 27 May 2019 06.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/27/superior-the-return-of-race-science-by-angela-saini-book-review

  This timely book looks at the toxic origins of racism, which science continues to embrace

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Clive Cookson,  Financial Times, 30 MAY 2019
https://www.ft.com/content/92d2b56c-7ae5-11e9-81d2-f785092ab560

Superior by Angela Saini — are we all created equal?
Race science is undergoing a revival, after its horrific climax in the 20th century

A 19th-century British engraving depicting facial portraits from around the world — and European prejudice © Getty
The image of Neanderthals has been transformed over the past decade. These extinct hominins used to be regarded as stupid, brutish thugs. Now they are increasingly seen, at least in the western world, as intelligent and cultured people whom our aggressive human ancestors wiped out about 40,000 years ago.

The transforming event was the decoding 10 years ago of Neanderthal DNA extracted from fossilised bones, which showed that most living Europeans inherited about 2 per cent of their genome from Neanderthals through interbreeding, while Africans carry no Neanderthal genes. As Angela Saini writes in Superior, her brilliant analysis of race science past and present, the acceptance of Neanderthals as “people like us” is a recent example of a centuries-old European attitude — “casting humanity in our own image”.