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Kevin Champion

UN nuclear chief attacks hostile US claims on Iran - Yahoo! News - 0 views

  • UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Sunday he had no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders of adding "fuel to the fire" with recent bellicose rhetoric.
  • "Second, even if Iran were to be working on nuclear weapons ... they are at least (a) few years away from having such weapon," he said, citing Washington's own intelligence assessments.
  • "My fear (is) that if we continue to escalate from both sides that we will end up into a precipice, we will end up into an abyss. The Middle East is in a total mess, to say the least. And we cannot add fuel to the fire."
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  • ElBaradei has been vindicated in his pre-war belief that Iraq was not resuming its own nuclear arms program, contrary to claims by Bush and Cheney.
  • "But have we seen Iran having the nuclear material that can readily be used into a weapon? No. Have we seen an active weaponization program? No."
Adam Bohannon

On Facebook, Scholars Link Up With Data - New York Times - 0 views

  • “One of the holy grails of social science is the degree to which taste determines friendship, or to which friendship determines taste,” said Jason Kaufman, an associate professor of sociology at Harvard and a member of the research team. “Do birds of a feather flock together, or do you become more like your friends?”
  • Facebook’s network of 58 million active users and its status as the sixth-most-trafficked Web site in the United States have made it an irresistible subject for many types of academic research.
  • Nicole Ellison, an assistant professor at Michigan State University, and colleagues found that Facebook use could have a positive impact on students’ well-being.
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  • An important finding, Ms. Ellison said, was that students who reported low satisfaction with life and low self-esteem, and who used Facebook intensively, accumulated a form of social capital linked to what sociologists call “weak ties.” A weak tie is a fellow classmate or someone you meet at a party, not a friend or family member. Weak ties are significant, scholars say, because they are likely to provide people with new perspectives and opportunities that they might not get from close friends and family. “With close friends and family we’ve already shared information,” Ms. Ellison said.
  • Ms. Ellison and her colleagues suggest the information gleaned from Facebook may be more accurate than personal information offered elsewhere online, such as chat room profiles, because Facebook is largely based in real-world relationships that originate in confined communities like campuses.
  • Eszter Hargittai, a professor at Northwestern, found in a study that Hispanic students were significantly less likely to use Facebook, and much more likely to use MySpace. White, Asian and Asian-American students, the study found, were much more likely to use Facebook and significantly less likely to use MySpace.
Kevin Champion

Advertising Age - Digital - 23-Year-Old Mark Zuckerberg Has Google Sweating - 0 views

  • Owen Van Natta, Facebook's chief operating officer, said a visit to Amazon.com will uncover all the product recommendations one might want but the value can be limited in the anonymity of the people posting the reviews. On the other hand, if you take your online activities and put them through the filter of the people you know well, those actions take on greater meaning.
    • Kevin Champion
       
      This is exactly what I have been saying about the web for a long time, and especially recently. We need intersection of real and virtual worlds. I use the internet to connect with people I know. Connecting with random people is only marginally useful and usually novelty. Facebook, however, has a long way to be what it could be... or rather what I want from the web. An extension of, and motivation force for, community. Connections with people I know.
  • All of this works, Mr. Van Natta said, because Facebook inhabits the intersection of the web and real life, and its connections are between real people who know each other.
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