I’ve decided that from now on I’m going to dedicate each Articles of the Moment post to whatever random and strange holiday happens to fall on that day. Because why not?
So…Today happens to be National Dessert Day. Treat yourself to some delicious pastries.
- There’s a lot of fearmongering going on lately about all the chemicals and “toxins” we’re potentially exposed to all the time, and how many of them are untested and have unknown biological effects. Well, those are actually some good points. I don’t have much hope that companies will start voluntarily testing all of their products and additives extensively before release, but I do have hope that blood and DNA testing will become cheap and easy enough for individuals to self-examine. Eventually, this will lead to greater awareness in the public, which will put economic pressure on companies, which will ultimately lead to better ground-up testing and a safer environment for us all. But then, I’m an optimist.
Of course, another way of looking at it is that cancer rates haven’t really risen that much despite all of these new chemicals around us, so maybe we should embrace our exposure and breed future generations of super-immune cockroach kids! - You should always be healthily skeptical of any images you see, as they’ve always been doctorable, but with further changes in technology like this algorithmic image builder, you have even more reason to be wary.
- Here’s a long and in-depth, but very well-written & researched article about just how short-sightedly fearful and greedy Big Content as been over the last hundred years. It’s nothing terribly surprising, other than the fact that Big Content has been so dense and slow to adjust to the Internet Age.
- Continuing the environmental and technological thread of the other articles today, I present a very long but highly engrossing exploration of Earth’s fiber networks, which happens to be by my favorite author, Neal Stephenson. If you’re interested in networking, communications, technology, or geography, you won’t regret spending the time to read it. Enjoy!