This Is an Article About Good Comments on WIRED

Published on: 12:52 PM

Image: Jonathan Roberts/ George RR Martin Press

You got meta this week, commenters (and inspired our headline).

In a thread of remarkable self-awareness, you elevated one-liners to the heights of keen observations about the norms of commenting culture as a whole. You could call it “trolling with a point.” You could call it commenting prose poetry. But whatever you call it, we liked it.
Here’s how it started:

Keep reading for the “[link to imgur],” “Something about Zionist plot,” and the essential “Off topic comment filled with sensitive subject.”

It’s not a coincidence that this most-favorited comment thread of the week was left on a story about Game of Thrones. This whole week has been about Game of Thrones. We’re frankly shocked anyone was able to get any work done this week at all, what with the excitement of the new season starting on Sunday (OMFG this SUNDAY!) on the horizon. We dealt with that by making Game of Thrones anticipation a part of our work–genius, right? To help you prepare for this big premiere, WIRED offered recaps (in the form of words AND emoji, just to cover our bases), a close investigation into the secrets of the GoT official maps, Yelp reviews of the best and worst of Westeros, and an angry rant.

While you had some great things to say on non-GoT content, it was really these stories that made us most proud of you this week, readers.

Regarding the review for the Inn at the Crossroads, reader Andy Roekest pointed out:

Surprised there was no mention of the steadily rotting body hanging on the tree outside. Surely that made for some bad reviews during the summer months when there was still flesh on the ol’ girl’s bones, no?

Like most of us here, reader ShowmeMary could barely contain their excitement for Season 4. Reader Enticing Havoc, though clearly a GoT fan, expressed the worry that the show could go on too long, writing:

Without hesitation I can say that 9 seasons of GOT is way beyond any bearable pain threshold. As any show succumbs to an inane sequence of rehashes when aired for so long.
Big Bang Theory, once an entertaining and hilarious show full of geekish innuendos has become the embodiment of an embarrassment.

Dear Hollywood
Please don’t torture the audience with 100.000 installments.

Mr Ralph F could not disagree more:

While normally I would agree with you, it doesn’t really apply in this circumstance in my opinion. This is a TV series based on real books. It has a story to tell and a story to end, however many seasons it takes to do it right. Sitcoms (and poorly written storyline TV, like “Lost”) don’t really have a destination they are aiming for, and thus they eventually flounder.

Game of Thrones also brought out the sweeter side of some of you. When reader Cahuatijo joked that they had no one to watch the season premiere with, reader shmf stepped in and offered friendship. Aww, you guys.

OK, enough “Game of Thrones”. Other stuff happened this week that you cared about, too.

Commenting on How the U.S. Built the World’s Most Ridiculously Accurate Atomic Clock, Alamanach pointed out that, “Metrologically speaking, wouldn’t it be more correct to say that this clock is more precise rather than more accurate?” Go and read the whole comment, and the back and forth with the article’s author, Adam Mann aka adamspacemann.

On Facebook, Kyle Runge pointed out a major problem with cars getting cameras where we now have side-view mirrors:

Why do we need cameras? How does a mirror not work fine the way it is? So now what, instead of replacing a cheap mirror, we have to spend hundreds to replace a camera that fails?

You’re right Kyle–if and when we get side-view cameras, breaking them off the car when we back up too fast out of the garage is going to be a tad more expensive. Not that that’s ever happened to any of us. Though maybe the cameras will help with that? Fingers crossed.

Then, of course, there was the backstory behind the Scarlet Johansson Falling Down Meme, which many of you were not fans of. In fact, some of you just really hate memes in general, it seems. Here’s what we have to say about that:

Image: Memecrunch.com

Happy weekend — and “Game of Thrones” watching — everyone! Remember, winter may be coming back, but spring is supposed to be here any day, too. Finally.

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Sneak Peek: What the White House is Thinking About Antibiotic Resistance

Published on: 4:08 PM

e-Magine Art (CC), Flickr

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST for short) is preparing a major report on the problem of antibiotic resistance. The report won’t be published for a few months, but today PCAST held one of its periodic meetings, and aired what it thinks the most important issues are going to be. For anyone who cares about our dwindling ability to fight infections, or the responsibilities of healthcare to curb antibiotic use, or the large role that agriculture plays in causing antibiotic resistance to emerge, its live webcast was a satisfying listen. (The webcast will be archived here but is not yet up.)

PCAST not only webcasts its meetings; it also runs live auto-transcription at the same time. Below is a partial text, which I screengrabbed as this morning’s meeting was going on, and edited for clarity and length. I found it interesting, and reassuring in the breadth of the policy issues being considered, particularly the attention paid to the role of agriculture — as well as the possibility of tech contributions to farm and hospital surveillance, and to drug innovation. It makes me very curious what the final report will say.

The main speaker was PCAST co-chair Eric Lander, PhD,  president and director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and formerly one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project. He said:

On how resistance is rising: “The rate of loss of antibiotics — that is to say, the development of resistance — has been increasing. Right now it’s the case that we have 2 million people who are infected with antibiotic-resistant organisms, 17 different types of antibiotic-resistant bugs recognized by the CDC as important. There are an estimated 23,000 deaths per year due to antibiotic-resistant organisms, and that doesn’t even include additional issues like deaths due to C. difficile, an organism that outgrows other bacteria when people are treated with antibiotics.”

On the lack of new drugs to combat it: “The rate of production and approval of new antibiotics has been falling rather precipitously. It went from 20 years ago, four new antibiotics being produced per year, to, over the period of 2008 to 2011, averaging less than a third of an antibiotic being produced per year.”

On not conserving the antibiotics we have: “We don’t really have great stewardship programs comprehensively in place across this country: stewardship both in the healthcare setting, and also stewardship in agriculture, where, in percent, the bulk of antibiotics are used. We’re also losing the economic incentive to develop antibiotics.”

On getting new drugs made: “To biopharmaceutical companies, it is not such a compelling proposition to develop an antibiotic for resistant bacteria, when that might be a portion of the people with bacteria, and you might succeed in treating them in two weeks — meaning, while it’s a medically wonderful thing, it might be an economically hard proposition to justify tens of billions or hundreds of millions dollars of research into if you can’t figure out how to make the money back.”

On whether technology can help: “We don’t really have the kinds of surveillance systems we would like. Technology is happily making new opportunities available to us, and there are things that can be done on the high end of technology. But we lack a lot of basic infrastructure in the health system, and we certainly lack the ability to bring in this high-end technology. And there’s always a question, when it’s a complex topic like this that cuts across so many domains, from health to agriculture to industry, are we coordinating optimally?

“There are fabulous models of antibiotic stewardship programs, programs that have best practices for diagnoses and prescription and dosing and duration and data collection — the kinds of things that will minimize the rate at which bugs will become resistant. For example, when someone comes in for a respiratory tract infection, they may want you to give them an antibiotic, but the odds are pretty good they have a viral infection and that the antibiotic is not going to do them any good and actually may cause harm; there may be harmful reactions to it. It would be very good to make sure you were treating appropriately. We’re discussing: What are the ways that we can extend, throughout the nation, best practices of antibiotic stewardship in the healthcare setting?”

On measuring agriculture’s contribution to antibiotic resistance: “We use 80% of the bulk of antibiotics on the farm. They’re used primarily for growth promotion and disease prevention, and they’re used in sub-therapeutic doses, that is to say below the dose you would treat a sick animal with — because for reasons we don’t fully understand, you get more from meat-producing animals if you treat them that way. And you may reduce general infection by treating in this kind of prophylactic way.

“You also — the data are very clear — when you’re treating continuously with low amounts of antibiotics, you produce resistance. And resistant bacteria are present in farm animals as a result. We do know that those resistant bacteria can get into humans on those farms. So there’s no doubt there’s exchange into the human population. At this point, given our reading of the literature, I don’t think we know quantitatively what, fractionally, of the overall problem it contributes to. I wish I knew. I wish I could tell you 50% is due to overuse of the medical system, 50% is due to agriculture, but we don’t know. We do know it’s not zero. We do know it’s not 100.

“We take very seriously the need to produce food on the farms. You can’t say, well, growth promotion is not an important thing. So it’s important to ask whether science can find ways to replace antibiotics with other things: probiotic mixtures of bacteria that might produce the same beneficial effects; vaccines you might give to the animals that fight off and protect against those diseases. It might be that the right combination is both to increasingly limit the use of these precious antibiotics we need for humans, while serving the needs of agriculture by developing the science and technology needed to solve these problems through other means that don’t create antibiotic resistance that could be relevant to humans.”

On how to boost new-drug innovation: “Development of new drugs involves drug discovery, drug development, drug approval and finally drug marketing. You’ve got to ask if the pipeline has declined, in fact is nearly broken, why is that and where can you intervene? What can we do to increase drug discovery, and are there roles that greater research can play at those stages in helping to identify new targets or develop the discovery of new drugs.

“Drug development means you’ve got to go run clinical trials. Clinical trials for antibiotic-resistant bacteria are tough. Do we need massive-scale clinical trials? For many purposes we should. But for urgent agents like antibiotics against drug-resistant bacteria, maybe we ought to have a different kind of a standard here, to make sure that those can get on the market, in some limited way, for the patients who most need them. And it may be that narrower clinical trials, maybe you don’t have to demonstrate what’s called non-inferiority, maybe you just have to have efficacy.

“Then there’s the hard question of economic models. If in fact it is really uneconomic to produce these drugs, or not sufficiently economic to attract in enough private innovators to do it, we may have to ask: Can you shift that model and how do you do it? Where should that money come from?”

That’s my quick re-post of just a few of the things that were said this morning. I’m intrigued to see what the report recommends when it comes out.

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Wired the funniest, the most insightful comments about this week

Published on: 4:56 PM

Image: Gabriele Rigon

There was commenting a lot this week, and you were the challenge. Facebook engulfed oculus, Microsoft Office came to iPad (uh, finally), Facebook drones are Wi-Fi - rays, we learned have a look at Michael Bay's new Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles film, common and scientific graphs of height and depth of your favorite TV shows, and so on.

We can not every single moment you were clever to mark, but here is a strong choice.

Funny
Google + fan Phil Taylor, who comes from Downunder, had a perception of Huawei, the company the centerpiece of this article, like a Chinese tech company were the NSA monitoring nightmare.

At first, I was concerned about the potential for China to spy with Huawei equipment. Then I remembered, I live in Australia and our broadband network is outdated 15 years. I do not know whether Huawei modem dialing to make... ?

On the news that Facebook will build drones and satellites to beam Internet around the world, Ian Whittington and Leroy Barlow had some thoughts:

Attentive
Facebook fan Philip Jackson sure that advised the asteroid with Saturn-like rings around it looks an awful lot like a subwoofer. Look, Hey, you're kinda right, Philip.

Original images, from left: Lucie Maquet, Wiki Commons

Smart
At the bottom of the comment thread of this article, an informative discussion happened an amazing use for design and technology, "A giant basket, that used to collect condensation from a drinking water" highlight.

Testimony
Reader Juniper took the comments of "50 years ago this frightening one Megaquake jolted Ocean" to tell, to listen to a broadcast of the quake on the radio:

I heard a DJ broadcasting a recording in a geology class at the school during the quake. It's not so much what he tells in the earthquake, it is the fact, that the recording is over 4 minutes long, the what is so worrying.

This prompted the readers of Andriba, their terrifying first-hand to share experiences with a similar-sized Quake:

The Tohoku earthquake in March 2011 lasted 6 minutes, but our office in Tokyo was for 45 minutes vary. For the first 20 minutes or so we could move, then it was like on a ship in rough seas.

Acronymtastic
You are geeked out as best as possible in the comments of this post, "Google and Facebook team up to modernise old-school databases". If you vs. a server enthusiast and have strong feelings about PostgreSQL MySQL, read the whole thread.

Punny
Of course you didn't let the weekend without some word games. "Here one is we enjoyed by" comments "fieldwith Office for iPad, Microsoft kills his old ideology".

+ 1 indeed.

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Thoughts About Happiness

Published on: 8:00 PM

Happy kid (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Life coaching... hm, what a strange concept. Or is it?
After all, life is so precious, perhaps it should come with a guide that instructs you how to use your precious time, and how not to waste it by making irreversible mistakes.
I can't decide whether life coaching is a good idea, or a sad, ridiculous one. Perhaps I need a coach to help me decide on this one..
What's ridiculous about it is that some of the life coaches are so young that you can't imagine how can they possibly give any advice when they didn't experience life yet??
Now, seriously, I think that we made life so complicated that many of us are confused and need some guidance. There are so many choices you can make in life, so many options out there, and who knows if you chose the right one?

The answer is: you have to choose what's RIGHT FOR YOU.
You are the only one that can decide that for yourself. No one else can coach you or decide for you the best path to take.
These are the words of a psychologist I once talked to. She amazed me when she admitted that in fact, the people that go to see psychologists are usually not capable of taking responsibility for their own life. They are unhappy and they are not sure why... They can't think for themselves. They want someone else to think for them and give them the answers, to make decisions for them.
That was a shocking admission coming from a professional, nevertheless so true!

You are the only person that knows what makes you happy and no one else can decide for you what choice you should make...
That's why it is so hard to define happiness. It is due to the fact that happiness is very individual and what makes you happy may not bring joy to someone else.
The state of happiness usually comes from the relation between one's level of expectations from life versus the realization of these expectations.
So, if you wish to attain this state of well being you will need to think what things bring you joy or satisfaction, and pursue them.

Having said that, sometimes we are not sure what would make us happy, or worse, we think we know what we want but when we achieve it we realize that it didn't make us happier... in other words, we don't always know what's good for us. Sometimes we think that if we could only lose 5 kilo or if we had more money we would be happier...

Amazingly, many of the things we enjoy and make most of us happy don't cost anything: being surrounded by family or friends, creating things, discovering, learning new things (yes, learning), helping other people or animals in need, all these can bring huge satisfaction and feelings of achievement. These will give meaning to your life and enrich you with a spectrum of experiences, and will also make you feel more important. Feeling insignificant or powerless is one of our biggest enemies, and can lead to unhappiness.

Money has an interesting role in attaining happiness: whilst having money does not necessarily make you happy, the lack of it cam make you very unhappy. However some lottery winners have confessed in the past that winning the big jackpot did not make them happier, on the contrary...
Some other deeply unhappy people (some even born with the silver spoon) occasionally turn to drugs because they don't have a focus in their life such as an occupation, and so they lack the sense of achievement that comes from doing things, creating. Some just have too much time on their hands as they have never developed any serious interests, since they never had to work... So finding a focus, a project, an activity that you enjoy or even just bringing joy to others, yes, to others, is in fact paramount to your own well being and happiness.

Julia Sadeh is a contemporary British artist best known as creator of the style mosaic and collage on canvas. After studying Visual Art and Art History, Sadeh launched her artistic career in 1989 by publishing children books with her own illustrations, followed by numerous art exhibitions. In 1993 she started developing her unique style of mosaics on canvas using 'papier glasse' an exclusive technique which makes paper more resistant. Her canvases are now found in art collections around the world and her art is innovative and unique. Julia Sadeh can be contacted at: mathias.toni@yahoo.co.uk

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What Makes You Happy or Unhappy? Just Think About That!

Published on: 1:01 AM

English: The carbon footprint. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about." Dale Carnegie, 1888-1955
Now isn't that a gem of a reminder - maybe you already know it, maybe you are doing your very best to live this way, maybe you are not making the real progress you would like to have in this area, maybe you could focus a bit more on it today!
We are what we are because of our thoughts, we are our thoughts, in short. Thoughts are energy waves, they have a frequency, just like radio waves. The fact that you cannot see them does not mean they are not there - they are! We accept the radio waves as something normal nowadays - this was not the case with Marconi. He had a hard time with their family and friends to the point where he was admitted to a mental institution because they all thought he had gone bunkers!

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