Worst Job Ever?

From the New York Times.

Policing the Web’s Lurid Precincts

The surge in Internet screening services has brought a growing awareness that the jobs can have mental health consequences for the reviewers, some of whom are drawn to the low-paying work by the simple prospect of making money while looking at pornography.

“You have 20-year-old kids who get hired to do content review, and who get excited because they think they are going to see adult porn,” said Hemanshu Nigam, the former chief security officer at MySpace. “They have no idea that some of the despicable and illegal images they will see can haunt them for the rest of their lives.”

FLGov (R): Rick Scott on HCA + McCollum

In this latest ad, Rick Scott, a health care entrepreneur [running for the GOP nomination in the Florida Gubernatorial race] addresses negatives about his time as CEO of HCA and hits Bill McCollum as a “career politician.”

 

Posted via web from Campaign Ads

Twitter in the Classroom

My alma mater is a very traditional liberal arts school, so the use of technology in the classroom seems a little heterodox to me, but I like the approach of embracing the distraction and turning it into an asset instead of trying to fight it.

Take a look at this video of how a UT Dallas professor is using Twitter to augment her classroom discussion.

I originally found this at Mashable.

Washington D.C. – Anglican + Catholic event

If you’re interested in learning more about Pope Benedict XVI’s recent efforts to unify Roman Catholics and Anglicans and Episcopalians, I want to invite you personally to Old St. Mary’s Church in Chinatown on Friday evening.  Pertinent details below:

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Please join us on Friday, January 22nd at 6:30 p.m. at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Washington, D.C.  Fr. Eric Bergman, chaplain of the Anglican Use Society, will be in town from Scranton, Pa. for the March for Life.  He has graciously agreed to stay an extra evening to meet with those in the Washington, D.C. area who are interested in the Holy Father’s apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus.

All who are interested, including non-Roman Catholics, are invited to attend and participate.

Please forward this information wide and far, but I do ask that people RSVP to me at eric.james.wilson@gmail.com so we will have enough bulletins.

Let me know if you have other questions.

Friday, January 22

6:30 p.m.

Evening Prayer & Benediction according to the Book of Divine Worship

Reverend Father Eric Bergman, Officiant

Followed by a talk on Pope Benedict XVI’s apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, which provides for the creation of personal ordinariates for Anglicans.

Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church

727 5th Street NW

Washington, D.C. 20001

Fr. Bergman is a priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Scranton.  He was ordained according to the Pastoral Provision of Pope John Paul II and is the Chaplain of the St. Thomas More Society in Scranton.  He was recently on EWTN’s The Journey Home.

The church has a small parking lot, but public transportation is recommended.  St. Mary’s is two blocks from both the Gallery Place – Chinatown & Judiciary Square Metro stations.

Please RSVP to eric.james.wilson@gmail.com or 202-642-5359

Per the Bible, God hates shrimp

This is a funny, clever example of parody, even though I don’t agree with their ultimate message.

Thoughts on Tumblr

A friend tried to turn me on to Tumblr a while back, but I’ve never really gotten into it for some reason.  Primarily, I don’t know many Tumblr users and I already get my info from a bunch of different sources.

But this observation from this post on “Best New Blogs of 2009″ makes sense as well:

Tumblr’s make-or-break premise was always that the semi-closed platform (insular, secular, participatory) would eventually make a deeper connection than the open online systems (cosmopolitan, egalitarian, populist) powered by Feedburner and retweets. Whereas anyone can read blogs or tweets, tumbling nearly demands participation.

And reblogging. Lots and lots of reblogging.

A compassionate release?

This morning, we saw the release of a terrorist responsible for bombing an airliner and murdering 270 people on ‘compassionate’ grounds.  Al-Megrahi has been diagnosed with a terminal cancer and physicians have told him to expect only 3 more months of life.

The commentariat has been abuzz about the controversy surrounding the release, focusing on the grief of the victims’ families.  Megrahi didn’t show compassion to those he murdered, so why should we be compassionate towards him, the reasoning goes.

Compassion isn’t supposed to be easy, though.  If we do what’s easy, that’s what we’re expected to do — that’s not compassion.  But how do we decide who is deserving of our compassion?  Is Megrahi sorry for what he did?  Or is he just facing the inevitability of death we should all expect?

Certainly the hero’s welcome he received when returning home to Libya was disgusting, but we don’t get to condition our compassion and everyone is free to respond however they choose.

I not sure whether Megrahi was deserving of his release or if he should have been released, but these are some of the questions I’ve been asking today.

Use the right symbol, please

With the health care debate in full swing, cable news networks need a medical symbol for their graphics, but they’re using the wrong one.  To be clear, the Rod of Asclepius is the appropriate symbol for medicine and the Caduceus is the inappropriate selection.

Asclepius’ Rod is associated with the Greek god of medicine and is, appropriately incorporated in the logo of the American Medical Association. The Wikipedia pages for the Rod and the Caduceus provide a pretty coherent outline of this confusion.

Needed: Headphone switcher

Here’s my desk.  I have a TV, a PC, and a Mac.  Before you say anything, Mom, I know it’s messy, but I know where everything is.

 

I have a set of very comfortable headphones that are plugged into the Mac where I edit videos and listen to Internet radio while I work.  Sometimes, there’s a web video on my PC, say a clip someone forwarded me on YouTube.  I have to take off my headphones and turn on the speakers.  I don’t like doing this since we’re in a pretty confined space in my office and it can disrupt conversations and concentration. 

 

Also, I keep the TV on mute unless there’s something of interest.

 

 

 

So there’s the problem.  I want to buy or make something that will allow me to switch from PC to Mac to TV on my one set of headpones.

 

Any suggestions?

New Google Maps Feature

Google Maps has added a feature that gives you a choice of two different suggested routes.

 

 

Before, you would have to drag a route around and it may not be the one you intended.

 

 

Very simple addition, but very cool and helpful.