By Lindsay Bell
Welcome to the 78th edition of The Three Things, the weekly update of three links, podcasts, videos, or books you can’t miss – from Howie Goldfarb (Blue Star Strategic Marketing), Joe Cardillo (Visual.ly), and yours truly.
For those of you new to this series, The Three Things arrives in your inbox on Sunday mornings (unless you don’t subscribe, but that can easily be fixed if you hurry over and enter your email address or add to your RSS feed) so you have some extra time to spend perusing the obscure content we’ve curated for you (and one another) before your week begins and deadlines, meetings, and work takes over.
Today we explore a shocking driving and texting case, what social media usage does to our brains, and a crazy, gun-toting guy from Nevada!
Texting Driver Who Slammed Cyclist: I, Like, ‘Just Don’t Care’
Howie on Why Gini Dietrich Should be Happy to Live in the US and not Australia…or at Least Take Up Mountain Biking.
I mean I don’t know what to say. This one article brings together so many topics of discussion. Are road bicyclists people? Do they deserve proper protection on the road? Is texting while driving bad and dangerous? While in the US we jail way too many people, don’t other countries jail too few? Why do rich white people seem to get lesser sentences than poor ethnic people (think Lindsay Lohan)? Could bringing back a little domestic discipline on kids be a good thing? Should parents go to jail for raising jerk kids? Should we go back to ‘an eye for an eye’, and in this case let the bike rider run down this girl while she rides a bike? How about televising these events and allow betting? Discuss!
The Journal of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking
Joe on the Data Behind our Impressions of how Social Media is Changing Communications. When people declare that social media is changing how we talk with each other – followed by their latest favorite anecdote – I usually end up thinking to myself “huh that’s crazy, but does it really happen regularly?”
The interesting thing is there is actually a journal that deals with this exact area. If you take a poke around you’ll notice they ask questions like “Does Facebook use affect body image in teenage girls” and “Does YouTube drive social movements like Occupy?”
Personally, I like to think qualitatively and quantitatively, so it’s neat to see someone actually running our everyday impressions of what social media does to our brains through a scientific lens. There are some fascinating insights there, and it makes me all the more grateful for open access.
The Irony of Cliven Bundy’s Unconstitutional Stand
Lindsay on WTH is Even Happening Down in Nevada?? Ok, we all know that Nevada is a tad ‘out there’. Nevada’s like that distant cousin who frequents swingers clubs and never gets invited to any family reunions (not that I’m speaking from experience). But even by Nevada’s rather liberal standards, this whole “Give me back my cows or I’ll shoot” fiasco has my head reeling. I mean, who does that? And what government actually acquiesces and returns the flipping cows!!??
I know, no one wanted another Waco, but jeeze-Louise, the whole thing just sounds crazy to me. This article provides a very thorough explanation of the history behind Cliven Bundy’s claims, but I’m not ashamed to admit I still don’t understand how an American can say he doesn’t “recognize the United States government as even existing,” yet still proudly wave the American flag! Come on friends to the south, help a sheltered gal from Canuckistan understand.
Now it’s your turn. Is there a book, podcast, article, TV show, blog post, or story we should read?