Here are some images from the lac de Joux a few weeks ago. I had not had enough of the frozen landscapes so I travelled further afield. I walked on the ice but there are moments when I could feel it creak as I walked. I didn’t fall through the ice.
[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157629184590941″]Monkey Thieves is a documentary about the Gulta Gang, a gang of monkeys in India wreaking havoc. What I love about this documentary is that it’s a great topic in HD. You see all the details. You see the faces, you see how they eat a grape but throw away the skin for example. You see wide shots of the city and you see other animals.
It’s all about the visual wealth that documentaries can offer you. It’s just a well shot and humorous look at monkey behaviour. You see smiling faces in the background. The scene is monkeys stealing ice creams and eating them. They hold it with the stick, take little bites and more.
Here are more pictures of frozen Nyon. These were taken with an Olympus rather than the iPhone. Notice the texture of the ice and the berries that have been captured within the ice. Beautiful setting. I wore quite a few layers. They kept me warm.
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Every single day they publish articles about why social media is bad for us. Every day they ignore that we meet people via social media rather than bars. Every day they ignore that those I meet through social media work on interesting projects. Every day they ignore that if it wasn’t for social websites I would not have taken up via Ferrata, rock climbing and other sports.
Every day they assume that we prefer alcohol, weed and hard drugs rather than textroverted conversations with people we get to feel comfortable with online, before meeting them in person.
Do you really think that Facebook users would be happy sitting at a bar with a half empty glass of alcohol?
The findings? Using Facebook was tightly linked to compromised social, physical and psychological health. For example, for each statistical jump (away from the average) in “liking” other people’s posts, clicking their links or updating one’s own status, there was a 5% to 8% increase in the likelihood that the person would later experience mental-health problems.
The article doesn’t spend a single word discussing introversion and geographic locations as reasons for people to socialise more via Facebook than in face to face meetings. If you’re not the happy go lucky, soul of the party, then do you have much motivation to socialising in the physical world where you listen to conversations without being heard?
Still, there are some nuances to consider. Why would online social activity be so damaging to health and well-being in this study when the same activity was found to be correlated with longevity in a 2016 study co-written by Prof. Christakis? The bottom line, he says, is that replacing in-person interactions with online contact can be a threat to your mental health. “What people really need is real friendships and real interactions,” he adds.
Online social activity is not damaging to health and well-being. It is not because you socialise online that you do not have fun in the real world. The article ignores that the nefast nature of social media comes from marketing and public relations. Social media is all about the conversations. The more conversations you have with people the happier you are. If you’re a passive follower of people of brands then, of course, you’ll felt left out and alone. Academics, marketers and public relations people should study how best to make brands conversational and warm rather than cold and utilitarian.
Do we want to follow brands on Facebook that post the same message twice a day for weeks in a row? Of course not. We want brands on FB and other social networks to provide us with the adventures they’ve been on. Look at Crosscall, Petzl, Mammut and other brands. I follow them because I like to see the videos, the photographs and the stories they tell. I like it to be an ongoing conversation.
At this moment I have no concrete plans to go to New Zealand and yet I follow Wildwire Wanaka because they reflect my passion for Via Ferrata.
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Social Media are positive[/caption]
Facebook and other social media platforms are conversational tools for people planning trips, preparing for events or simply keeping in touch with university and school friends, colleagues and more. If academics and marketers took the time to understand why people use social media they would see that they are an enhancement to our social lives rather than a replacement. We build relationships and collaborations through social media.
In recent months we have seen articles about self driving cars and ethics. The question the research asks is whether to kill, a group of people, the driver of the car or others. The question is perfectly logical if you have never driven a car. If you have never driven a car then you believe that accidents may be unavoidable.
So these guys posed these kinds of ethical dilemmas to several hundred workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to find out what they thought. The participants were given scenarios in which one or more pedestrians could be saved if a car were to swerve into a barrier, killing its occupant or a pedestrian.
When you learn to drive in Switzerland you need to spend a number of hours being made aware of the dangers of the road. During these lessons you learn about where to look, about how to gauge people’s age, attention and intention. You are trained to look at their eyes and their body language, to anticipate their actions.
Road awareness also progresses to road conditions. Is it raining, is it snowing, are you in the middle of a drought and other such questions. The reason these questions are asked is that the stopping distance, risk of skidding and other dangers increase.
We also find that their are zones where cars are meant to be particularly attentive and may be asked to drive slower. Schools, pedestrian zones and other areas expect drivers to slow down and be able to stop instantly in case there is the need.
In light of everything that we are expected to consider as human drivers it makes sense to provide autonomous cars with the same knowledge and intelligence. If there has been a drought for six months and rain is falling then the car’s software should anticipate the longer stopping distances and the chance of skidding. The car should slow down.
When they decide on the ethics of self driving cars they should spend time writing code that is friendly and safe to cyclists using the roads. The software should be written to slow down and wait for a safe place to overtake. The software should be written to overtake from a safe distance. The same is true of cars near horses and other animals. You don’t want self driving cars to scare animals.
As a driver it is expected of me to anticipate all dangers and threats to life. It is for me to decide to drive at or below the speed limit. It is for me to assess the risk of someone crossing the road, of someone turning left on a roundabout and more. If I was to make a mistake that would cost someone their life then it would be my fault, according to insurance because i had failed to adapt to the situation. Self driving cars should be programmed to anticipate all problems and issues and be held to the same standard as humans.
These problems cannot be ignored, say the team: “As we are about to endow millions of vehicles with autonomy, taking algorithmic morality seriously has never been more urgent.â€
Self driving cars should in no circumstance cause death. They should never face the decision. If they face the decision then the programmers have not spent enough time consulting with drivers, emergency services and road safety professionals. Death should be eliminated from the equation.