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Ars writer Casey Johnston on Why I hate read receipts:

The cases above are real, but it's safe to say that most messages are written to be responded to. Therefore, when someone doesn't respond to your message, it can be a blow to your ego. What was wrong with what you said? Too flip? Too harsh? Too dumb? Too boring? Has the conversation been boring the entire time and you didn't notice? Have you been bored this entire time but just didn't have the wherewithal to end the conversation first? Curse that other person for being braver than you and cutting ties first! You are now the hanger-on, just slightly more desperate than before.

A commenter adds:

The fact that I know if someone got my message to pick-up something important while they're in town is far, far more valuable to me than the potential for some BS social awkwardness as the author suggests.

Lavabit, email service Snowden reportedly used, abruptly shuts down - Boing Boing.

AllThingsD:

"Previous smartphone owners buy Apple iPhones much more than first-time owners," according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. "Almost 50 percent of previous owners buy an iPhone, while under one-third of first-time owners buy an iPhone."

In other words, as more and more people become "previous smartphone owners," things are looking up. 🙂

Executive version: you can't.

The minimum wage in this country is reprehensible. If the minimum wage had kept up with inflation it would be over $10 an hour. If it had kept up with productivity? It would be $21.72.

Seriously… wow.

How many can you name without looking at the names of the characters or movies?

Famous Guns

Apple's lone-wolf strategy backfires. Gruber adds:

In other words, word on the street in Washington is that it's a shakedown, pure and simple. The smart move for Apple would be to just pay up, but that's sad.

Science education vs. high-profile ignorance | Ars Technica

In what passes for political discourse in the US these days, state school board hearings provided citizens with the opportunity to accuse the new standards of being simultaneously fascism and socialism. The Courier-Journal quotes a Baptist minister as saying, "Outsiders are telling public school families that we must follow the rich man's elitist religion of evolution, that we no longer have what the Kentucky Constitution says is the right to worship almighty God. Instead, this fascist method teaches that our children are the property of the state."

Meanwhile, another person suggested they could be a platform for socialist genocide: "The way socialism works is it takes anybody that doesn't fit the mold and discards them… we are even talking genocide and murder here, folks."

Two useful tools for quickly building charts that are usable within a CMS.

It's a KBase article, and I like it. I also like that you'll be able to BLOCK people in iOS 7.

I wonder if they regret ever putting that out there.

I call fakesies.

I like Southwest - a lot, actually. They are friendly, funny, and don't charge for baggage. I don't like the way they board planes, but it has its advantages, too.

This, however, is a sad tale: a Southwest plane crash landed, and then things were stolen from the passenger luggage before being returned. Shame on the Southwest employees (very little shame on Southwest - I don't think they could have trained everyone there to handle that kind of situation very well).

When you're old, things seem to rush by. Why?

Possible answer: because we stop learning.

It’s simple: if you want time to slow down, become a student again. Learn something that requires sustained effort; do something novel.

ICR, together with the rest of the creation science movement, has made great strides in the last 40 years. In many areas, the superiority of the creation worldview has been clearly demonstrated. Even now, ICR is making exciting discoveries in the fields of biology and geology, and we have started new research initiatives in the field of astronomy. However, there is much work that still needs to be done, and this work is hindered by a lack of trained scientists.

Ya don't say?!?!?!