High-tech apps help drivers evade police By Larry Copeland, USA TODAY Updated 03/21/2011 02:47:10 AM | Drivers looking to avoid pricey citations for traffic offenses such as red-light camera violations and speed-trap busts are turning to technology to level the playing field. By Ethan Miller, Getty Images By Ethan Miller, Getty Images As red-light cameras proliferate across the USA and cash-starved police agencies pump up coffers with traffic-ticket revenue, many drivers are using devices and applications that give them a heads-up when it's time to stop or slow down. One of the most popular is PhantomAlert, an online database that drivers can download to GPS devices or smartphones. The apps' DUI checkpoint feature — which sends alerts about drunken-driving checkpoints that have been reported by other drivers — is troubling for some police agencies. "They're only thinking of one consequence, and that's being arrested. For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's.
Will religion ever disappear? Atheism is on the rise around the world, so does that mean spirituality will soon be a thing of the past? Rachel Nuwer discovers that the answer is far from simple. A growing number of people, millions worldwide, say they believe that life definitively ends at death – that there is no God, no afterlife and no divine plan. “There’s absolutely more atheists around today than ever before, both in sheer numbers and as a percentage of humanity,” says Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, and author of Living the Secular Life. While atheists certainly are not the majority, could it be that these figures are a harbinger of things to come? It’s impossible to predict the future, but examining what we know about religion – including why it evolved in the first place, and why some people chose to believe in it and others abandon it – can hint at how our relationship with the divine might play out in decades or centuries to come.
Customer-centricity Begins with Creating a Culture of Change Brian Solis inShare564 Customer-centricity or getting closer to customers is often the focus of many executive meetings I attend these days. The question always arises, “how can we use new media to get closer to customers?” The answer is not, develop a social media strategy to start engaging with customers. Social media is as rewarding as it is complex. Its importance lies in maturation and the stages we experience as we experiment and learn. Innovation and collaboration is an outside-in and an inside-out process. It’s time to take new media to the next critical phase, the need to understand the needs of the market and deliver against them. The future of business isn’t created, it’s co-created. Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook ___The New ENGAGE! ___ Get The Conversation Prism: ___ Image Credit: Shutterstock
Rafael Nadal superstitions: Ballboy fixes water bottle at Australian Open 2015 Take a look at just some of Rafael Nadal's crazy idiosyncracies which has landed the world number three the title of the most superstitious player on tour. Featured Video More videos available at the News video hub Golf: Brandt Snedeker has produced one of the more unlikely shots that surely has to be put down to luck during the first round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill. NRL: Brisbane Broncos Adam Blair put in a much improved performance against the North Queensland Cowboys, but it was almost undone with this attempted through the legs pass. AFL: Gold Coast Suns coach Rodney Eade speaks following his side's draw with the Brisbane Lions. AFL: Collingwood recruit Jack Crisp is being investigated by the AFL integrity unit over betting activity when he was a Brisbane Lion early last season. Cricket World Cup: Australia's captain Michael Clarke speaks after his side defeated Pakistan. A new poll shows falling support in Boston for hosting the 2024 Summer Games.
Sasha Frere-Jones: Good Things About Twitter Several light-years ago in Web time, Jonathan Franzen spoke at Tulane University and said that he found Twitter “unspeakably irritating,” expressing a concern for “serious readers and writers” and the medium’s inability to “cite facts or create an argument.” I like that Franzen doesn’t sound like a celebrity worried about reducing friction and shifting units. He is the Kanye West of fiction: popular, gifted, influential, and willing to make unpopular statements without the intervention of handlers. But Thomas Jones at the London Review of Books points out that Franzen makes a “category error” by pitching Twitter users against serious readers/writers. One of the most felicitous uses of Twitter is to promote long-form nonfiction by circulating a blurb leading to the full text. Four years ago, the New York Times Magazine published a cover story by Emily Gould that included anecdotes about her blogging while young and appearing on television because of that blogging. That’s the vegetables.
Playing Rock Band together lowers stress and makes people more empathetic, study says Empathy seems to be in short supply these days, especially on the internet. But there's an easy solution, according to a new study published yesterday in the journal Current Biology: Just play some Rock Band. Previous research has established that lower mammals such as mice, in addition to humans, are capable of empathy. It turned out that the pain reactions didn't differ for people who were alone or with a stranger. "It would seem like more pain in the presence of a friend would be bad news, but it's in fact a sign that there is strong empathy between individuals — they are indeed feeling each other's pain," said Mogil. The researchers saw the same heightened reaction in people who had been given metyrapone, a drug that suppresses the "fight-or-flight" stress response. The final group of students played Rock Band with strangers prior to the ice water challenge.
Essay on Thomas Kinkade An old rule of etiquette -- still endorsed by Miss Manners, at last report -- says not to talk about politics or religion while in mixed company, or among strangers. Civility demands keeping the passions in check, and nothing inflames them like those two topics. By extension, one should also avoid discussing Thomas Kinkade, who died over the weekend. His paintings of lighthouses, cozy cottages, and nostalgia-tinged city streets inspire adoration or disgust, but very little in between. Kinkade was the single best-known artist working in the United States over the past two decades, and almost certainly the best-paid. Even stating these seemingly inoffensive facts will offend some readers -- either for calling Kinkade an artist (which makes people in the art world unhappy) or for failing to say that he dedicated his life to the Lord, not the dollar. In a culture supersaturated with imagery, we tune much of it out just to get by. There’s no accounting for taste, as another old saw runs.
iPhone Separation Anxiety A recent clever study by Russell Clayton and his colleagues at the University of Missouri School of Journalism has spawned quite the stir in the news media. Here’s a sampling of the headlines:iPhone Separation Makes You DumberiPhone Separation Anxiety is real, Study SaysOur iPhones, Ourselves: Cellphone Separation Anxiety is Real, Study FindsiPhone Separation Anxiety Hinders Cognitive Abilities, Says Study Clayton’s results fit nicely with ones from Andrew Przybylski’s lab at the University of Essex in the UK, Bill Thornton’s lab at the University of Southern Maine as well as those from my own lab. Let me tell you a bit about each of their studies to build up a picture of how important our smartphones have become in our lives. In Clayton’s study, college students were asked to do word search puzzles in two conditions. In Przybylski’s study college students who had never met took part in a 10-minute face-to-face conversation discussing both casual and more meaningful topics.
Is the Digital World Killing Creativity? [INFOGRAPHIC] Sure, you can use that smartphone to create an emotionally stirring Instagram of the waffles you had for brunch in mere seconds. But that same device can also serve as a ball and chain for the working world: emails constantly arrive, even during off hours; LinkedIn requests buzz after networking events; and has that important new contact followed you on Twitter yet? While our current age of digital disruption has opened a cornucopia of new casual creative endeavors, the networked generation's ability to multitask — and the constant need for instantaneous action — may also be hindering creativity. Consider this: In a recent global study, three-quarters of respondents said their creative potential is being stifled. More than 60% of American said their education systems squelch creativity, and a majority of total respondents said pressure at work hurts creativity. Yet 80% of respondents worldwide said allowing creativity to flourish is critical to economic growth.
Behind the Gates of Gomorrah: Stephen Seager tells what it is like treating the criminally insane Scene from the 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs, with Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter. Image supplied Source: Supplied EVER wondered what makes some people commit truly horrendous crimes? American psychiatrist Stephen Seager has spent decades trying to find the answer to that question. Seager spent years working in Unit C at California’s Napa State Hospital, known locally as Gomorrah, treating the criminally insane. Seager has interviewed some of the worst mass murderers, rapists, serial killers and real-life Hannibal Lecters of the world who have been deemed by a judge not guilty by reason of insanity or unfit to stand trial and he has detailed his experience and insights into the minds of these madmen in his new book Behind the Gates of Gomorrah which is on sale Jan 3. News.com.au has been given this exclusive first look at the book which will no doubt open your eyes to what makes sick people tick. On the psychiatric spectrum of disease, where exactly do mass murderers come from?