Marketplace takes a look at how the iPad is made and who, exactly, builds it

Marketplace takes a look at how the iPad is made and who, exactly, builds it:

The unique privilege of jumpsuiting up and prowling the Foxconn factory floor may be reserved for the likes of Tim Cook and Nightline's Bill Weir, but thanks to American Public Media's Marketplace, we can all take a peek at the iPad production line. The above video is part of Rob Schmitz' ongoing look at Foxconn's factory conditions. Schmitz is partially responsible for debunking Mike Daisey's "theatrical" deception, and now hopes to educate readers on the reality of Foxconn's Longhua facility.

"When I gave examples of some of the American media coverage of the working conditions at Foxconn, many workers laughed, telling me it's not really that bad" Schmitz writes. "But that doesn't mean the workers don't have complaints." Through a series of interviews, Schmitz unveils how workers feel about their supervisors, jobs, pay, family back home and their dreams for the future. So, how's that iPad made? Check out the source link below, and find out.

Marketplace takes a look at how the iPad is made and who, exactly, builds it originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Apr 2012 23:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dork Tower Monday

Dork Tower Monday:

Dork Tower #1055 by John Kovalic

Read all the Dork Towers that have run on GeekDad.
Find the Dork Tower webcomic archives, DT printed collections, more cool comics, awesome games and a whole lot more at the Dork Tower Website.

Why So Few Women In Congress? Ctd

Why So Few Women In Congress? Ctd:

by Chris Bodenner
A reader writes:

With regards to your post about women not running, Fox and Lawless followed up the study with a book, It Takes a Candidate.  They found that women don't run for office because they feel less qualified than men to run.  Lawless and Fox interviewed women and men from four professions that candidates tend to come from: education, medicine, non-profits, and the law.  Women were far less likely to say they felt they were qualified to run for office than men, even though they have the same credentials.
Also, women are more likely than men to point to the invasion of their personal and family lives as reasons they don't want to run for office.  Therefore, it is the problem with gendered psyche and traditional family roles that tends to be the reason that women don't run.  The other problem they found was that men are far more likely to be asked to run by members of the political community, and as a result men tend to have better political support systems prior to declaring their candidacies.

Speaking of women in politics, below are some details about the upcoming HBO series "Veep" (trailer above):

Louis-Dreyfus plays Vice-President Selina Meyer, who is neither corrupt nor politically extreme but harried, maddened by her job’s taunting combination of power and powerlessness, and forever at risk of public embarrassment. Meyer’s dominant mood—panic blunted by exhaustion, as she attempts, cursing, to outrun a political shit storm—will be familiar to viewers of "The Thick of It," Iannucci’s fine BBC sitcom about British ministerial life, or "In the Loop," a companion film that used some of the same actors to tell a darker story of Anglo-American ineptness and bad faith in the prelude to an Iraq-style war.
"Veep" is the second attempt to bring Iannucci’s political satire to American television. The first, an ABC pilot made in 2007, transposed the action to the office of a goofily innocent U.S. congressman; Iannucci, who was not in charge of that production, says that the experience left him feeling "slightly soiled."

Intel Launches Z77 Motherboards, Preparing For Ivy Bridge

Intel Launches Z77 Motherboards, Preparing For Ivy Bridge:



MojoKid writes "In preparation for the arrival of their 3rd Generation Core processor products based on their Ivy Bridge microarchitecture, Intel has readied a new chipset dubbed the Z77 Express. New socket 1155 Ivy Bridge processors offer 16 lanes of PCI Express 2.0 or 3.0 connectivity on-die and they feature integrated dual-channel, DDR3 memory controllers with maximum officially supported speeds of up to 1600MHz. The processors are linked to the Z77 chipset via Intel's FDI (Flexible Display Interface) and 20Gb/s DMI 2.0 interfaces. The chipset itself is outfitted with 8 more PCIe 2.0 lanes, six ports of SATA (II and III), an integrated Gigabit MAC, and digital display outputs for up to three displays. Making its debut for the first time in an Intel chipset is also native USB 3.0 support with four USB 3.0 and ten USB 2.0 ports built in."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Trayvon Martin case: How 5 young black men see race and justice in US

Trayvon Martin case: How 5 young black men see race and justice in US:
The Monitor approached, at random, five young black men in Boston, Los Angeles, Coral Gables, Fla., and Louisville, Ky., and asked them to talk about the Trayvon Martin case, race relations, hoodies, and, of course, their own life experiences. Here's what they had to say.

Doctrine vs Faith

Doctrine vs Faith:

by Zoë Pollock
When questioned about Mormonism's stance on interracial marriage, Romney said:

This gentleman wanted to talk about the doctrines of my religion. I’ll talk about the practices of my faith.

Joanna Brooks supports Romney's explanation:

For Romney, “doctrines” versus “practices” is a perfectly workable distinction, one that reflects the pragmatic core of modern Mormonism as well as the rather fluid and uneven state of its theology.

Mormonism has no professional clergy, no theological-scholarly corps. There is no regularly recited doctrinal creed. For well over a hundred years the tradition has been conveyed by word-of-mouth in thousands of lay-taught Sunday School classes and around kitchen tables and campfires. A correlated, cradle-to-grave curriculum was developed in the 1950s, but beyond central tenets of what Mormons might call “the gospel”—faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism; the inspired origins of the LDS Church and Mormon scripture; the eternal significance of families—Mormonism remains a theological “jungle,” as one eminent LDS scholar put it.

CPU DB: Looking At 40 Years of Processor Improvements

CPU DB: Looking At 40 Years of Processor Improvements:



CowboyRobot writes "Stanford's CPU DB project (cpudb.stanford.edu) is like an open IMDB for microprocessors. Processors have come a long way from the Intel 4004 in 1971, with a clock speed of 740KHz, and CPU DB shows the details of where and when the gains have occured. More importantly, by looking at hundreds of processors over decades, researchers are able to separate the effect of technology scaling from improvements in say, software. The public is encouraged to contribute to the project."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Week in gaming: PS4 on x86? Whither American gaming arcades?

Week in gaming: PS4 on x86? Whither American gaming arcades?:







An x86 PlayStation 4 could signal a sea-change in the console industry: The next-generation PlayStation 4 will use an AMD x86 processor and AMD's Southern Islands GPU according to rumors this week. The next-generation Xbox is also rumored to use Southern Islands. Both rumors are plausible—but if true, they mean that the next-generation console market is going to be very different from the current one.

What ever happened to the American arcade?: Why do video arcades continue to prosper and flourish in Japan while struggling on life support in most other countries? We talked to one of the men behind a new documentary about the Japanese arcade scene to find out.





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Colony Collapse Disorder Linked To Pesticide, High-Fructose Corn Syrup

Colony Collapse Disorder Linked To Pesticide, High-Fructose Corn Syrup:



hondo77 writes "Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health '...have re-created the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder in several honeybee hives simply by giving them small doses of a popular pesticide, imidacloprid.' This follows recently-reported studies also linked the disorder to neonicotinoid pesticides. What is really interesting is the link to when the disorder started appearing, 2006. 'That mechanism? High-fructose corn syrup. Many bee-keepers have turned to high-fructose corn syrup to feed their bees, which the researchers say did not imperil bees until U.S. corn began to be sprayed with imidacloprid in 2004-2005. A year later was the first outbreak of Colony Collapse Disorder.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mike Capps: Epic Games has a PC-exclusive game in the works

Mike Capps: Epic Games has a PC-exclusive game in the works:

Gears of War and Fortnite dev Epic Games is getting back to its roots with a PC-exclusive project, creative lead Cliff Bleszinski and president Mike Capps announced today during a PAX East panel. "We might be working on a PC-only title," Capps teased, before Bleszinski picked up where he left off: "Let me say that again: we are working on a PC game."

The panel is still going on, but we'll be sure to chat to the Epic folks as soon as it's over.

Update: Epic Games prez Mike Capps told us after the panel that the unannounced PC project is currently underway, and that the current plans are to keep the game exclusive to the PC platform. Unsurprisingly, he wouldn't tell us anything else.

Mike Capps: Epic Games has a PC-exclusive game in the works originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 07 Apr 2012 13:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In my pile

In my pile:
Jonathan Schlefer, The Assumptions Economists Make.
Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent, by Edward Luce.   Here is his recent essay, related to the book.
Carl H. Nightingale, Segregation: A Global History of Divided Cities.
Ruchir Sharma, Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles.
Chris Mooney, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science — and Reality.
Non-Google digital library in the works, connected with Robert Darnton.

Add Wings to a High Chair to Prevent Food Spills [Parenting]

Add Wings to a High Chair to Prevent Food Spills [Parenting]:

If you're a parent of small children you know all too well how happy they are to drop food while sitting in a high chair. If you're lucky it will drop in front of them and land on the tray, but it seems like a lot of food is dropped on the left and right sides. To help prevent this install high chair "wings" by modifying placemats to fit the sides of your high chair. More »