Occupy.here on de Correspondent

I was interviewed about Occupy.here for a recently-launched Dutch news site called de Correspondent. It was produced by Kel O’Neill and Eline Jongsma, who are wonderful people and doing very interesting things in addition to de Correspondent.

Link

(And yes, I am posting here again!)

Neil Freeman interviewed about his Electoral College Reform map

You may have seen Neil’s map before, where each of the US’s 50 states are redrawn to balance for population. It’s nice to see his project’s motivating ideas laid out like they are in this Paris Review interview:

I think that the biggest cultural change would be with the profusion of city-states. Many states overrepresent rural areas when it comes to divvying up funding for infrastructure projects and other spending. The alignment of metro areas and states would mean that decision-making power in land use and transportation would shift away from rural areas, which would probably mean less sprawl and more livable cities.

electoral10-1100

See also: Neil’s 50 states and 50 metros

The fifty largest metro areas, disaggregated from their states. Each has been scaled and sorted according to population.

Stephen Hawking on climate change

The video Pink Terror by Mike Barzman includes a short excerpt from a 2008 Charlie Rose interview with Stephen Hawking.

I like how straightforward Hawking is about climate change (about 48 minutes in).

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Charlie Rose: What worries you most about the future of the universe?

Stephen Hawking: I am not worried about the future of the universe. The universe will continue whatever happens. But the future of the human race, and of life on earth, is much less certain. We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our great insensitivity.

CR: What are we not doing to prevent these disasters that we absolutely should be doing?

SH: Not acting with sufficient urgency about climate change.

CR: Do you think we will survive?

SH: Maybe. (smiles)

I went to a public lecture by Hawking at CalTech a few years ago and was blown away by the experience. The first 10-15 minutes I was keeping up, but then suddenly I realized I wasn’t getting the math. The Q & A period was also well over my head, but I was struck by Hawking’s humor and stage presence.

Link via Jason Kottke and Beautiful Decay

TSOYA interviews Ira Glass

For my Multimedia 1 class tomorrow we’ll be covering audio, looking at interviewing as a form. I’m going to play an excerpt of an interview with Ira Glass from one of my longtime favorite podcasts, The Sound of Young America. I’m most interested in the last part, which starts around 33:38.

MP3 link

As part of the weekly homework assignment we’ll listen to a Studs Terkel piece from Fresh Air.

Link

The Mac startup sound and Sosumi

A great interview with the former head sound guy at Apple. The intro is in Dutch but the interview itself continues in English.

A gentleman in the comments with a NSFW user icon offers this bit of HTML geekery:

If you look at the Apple’s website source code, the element containing their copyright notice it’s actually called “sosumi”

Link via John Gruber

Paul Ford on the Harper's paywall

We're really into the idea of subscribers giving us money in exchange for our product ... I honestly, honestly do not say that we are doing it the right way, but I don't believe people know the right way. We are doing it in an interesting way and we are not spending very much to make that happen.

There’s also a bit about his intention of creating a Metafilter-style community for subscribers. This is a wonderful idea and I hope to join it one day.

Link