TOW Post #19

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/02/20/its-unanimous-facebook-buying-whatsapp-is-the-best-or-worst-deal-ever/

Facebook recently bought the mobile messaging service WhatsApp for $19 billion, acquiring a 5 year old company that was well on the rise towards becoming a popular application that consumers could use to reach their friends without having to go through text messaging. Most analysts seem to agree on the fact that this deal was simply not worth the money that Facebook has invested. According to people like Jon Swartz from USA Today, the deal was "downright silly", and due to Rob Enderle it seemed to be a desperate move by Facebook, who is currently having to deal with a massive slowing of user growth and advertisement growth. The author of this piece, Forbes' own Jeff Bercovici, seems to agree with these points of view. His favorite quote regarding Facebook's purchase was from Henry Blodget, who calls the decision, depending on how it turns out, either brilliant or incredibly moronic. Throughout, the Bercovici uses exemplification, or repeated testimony from analysts, to convey the idea that this purchase was probably not a good idea for Facebook. He uses a lighthearted diction to almost make it seem as though he's making fun of Facebook, or not taking the purchase seriously due to how bad of a decision it was. But due to the amount of negative commentary he added to the article, it appears that he seems to agree that WhatsApp wasn't worth $19 million.

IRB Intro post

The book that I've been considering reading is called Moneyball by Michael Lewis. It's about how, despite having a lot of money to spend on good players, the Oakland Athletics ends up being one of the best teams in baseball in 2002.

TOW #18

http://sports.yahoo.com/photos/quirks-of-sochi-construction-1391548019-slideshow/

Sochi, the site of the 2014 winter Olympics, isn't exactly up to the standards of the visitors who have come to watch the games. To add to the political controversy circling Russia over their treatment of LGBT citizens with the recent anti-gay propaganda law, the town appears to be not quite ready. To give the people who worked to develop Sochi credit, they transformed a virtually unimportant plot of land into an Olympic-ready game town very quickly, but it doesn't exactly match up to the 2008 Beijing summer Olympics with their huge glass dome. TIME Magazine calls it one of the worst Olympics destinations ever. After people get by the hotels that are either in shambles or unprepared for their arrival, they have to worry about terrorism or nonfunctioning equipment in rooms. The visas are expensive, and people are simply not having a good time. The pictures shown in this slideshow help to show viewers exactly what the people are seeing, along with the ethos of the prestigious Olympic games, and adds an irony that is hard to ignore when thinking of the games overall.

TOW #17

This is a picture that went viral recently through social media sites like Facebook, Reddit, Instagram and Tumblr. The caption reads that a shark collapsed at the Discovery science center in Kuwait, and that it's something people on these sites should like or upvote because it's something they'll only see once in a lifetime. As it turns out, however, this picture was a hoax, and it wasn't originally designed to make people believe that there were actually sharks swimming in a mall. Jamie King, a photoshop expert, made this photo to be a joke and posted it on his twitter. Someone else added the caption and, before we knew it, the picture went viral. This is just one example of many where people simply believe things without checking the sources of what they've found interesting. A recent "disease" was shared on the internet called Alexandria's Genesis where a child is born with purple eyes, they have no hair on their armpits or their legs, for girls they wouldn't menstruate, and fair skin that would never burn. People shared this diagnosis on Tumblr for months, not knowing that it was an interesting character trait made by an author of fanfiction. No one really knows why people change the meaning of certain things to make large numbers of people believe something that isn't true.  It does, however, prove that we, when we use the internet and see something, need to check before we share it, effectively making more and more people "dumber".

TOW #16

http://news.yahoo.com/trial-sought-sc-boy-14-executed-1944-172035983.html


In 1944, a young man, 14 years old, by the name of George Stinney was executed by the state of South Carolina for the murder of two white girls, aged 7 and 11 years old. He was found guilty in a trial which only lasted 2 hours, and was held and interrogated by multiple police officers, grown white men, before confessing to the crime. A full story was included in the confession detailing how he did it and why. However, what people are  beginning to find out is that this crime would have been impossible to commit. The murder weapon, which was found near the two bodies of the young girls, was a rail spike weighing over 20 pounds. Stinney would have barely been able to lift the weapon, let alone swing it multiple times in the way that crushed the skulls of the two young victims. In South Carolina in the 1940s, however, racism ran rampant, and Stinney happened the last person to see them alive. If he had been a white boy, there is almost no doubt that Stinney would have been acquitted or not even tried for the crime. Now, however, there may be retribution as Stinney gets another day in court, mainly to clear the name of the youngest person ever executed.

TOW #15

http://www.grindtv.com/outdoor/nature/post/giant-squid-caught-by-net-fisherman-off-japan/

Recently, on the internet, a story of a giant squid, measuring up to about 160 feet due to radiation poisoning from the recent power plant explosion in japan, was circulating, along with a photoshopped image and quotes from experts who actually didn't exist. People on social media sites didn't quite fall for it however, knowing that it was just a hoax. 160 feet? Really? That would be about 16 floors tall for a building. I don't even know if there are whales that big. An actual giant squid was caught, however, with more more reasonable, although still pretty big, measurements of 12 feet long and 330 pounds in weight. They swim at depths of 300 feet, and this one was caught by a net fisherman from Japan named Shigenori Goto who is more used to catching buri yellowtail at depths of 300 feet. If the size was unbelievable at first, it'll be interesting to hear that giant squid can grow to sizes of up to 40 feet and can weigh nearly a full ton - 2,000 pounds. To me, this rare species is definitely one of the more interesting that Earth has kept guarded from the dangers of human beings.

TOW # 14

http://www.thestreet.com/story/12205467/1/more-pathetic-pictures-from-a-dying-sears.html?puc=yahoo&cm_ven=YAHOO

Stores seem to be lacking in multiple areas, as shown by Twitter user Brian Sozzi, who takes pictures of different areas of the stores where they seem to be having trouble maintaining a decent upkeep. He even makes jokes about the stores, saying that there are places that you should check when trying to gauge the quality of a store. Like, for example, under empty shelves that have been placed slightly away from the wall, blocking items. Or on racks that boast a hot selling item but that have been empty for days. Or, in many cases, racks that are simply empty. These stores, namely JC Penny and Sears, were quoted by the article to be "dying", but it could just be that they need to hire a new staff team. Brian Sozzi, the man who was taking the pictures, seems to be a credible source, as he is the CEO of Belsus Capital Advisors and a writer for TheStreet. He mainly took pictures of stores tagging them #fail to describe the picture and #shld to tell the viewer what the picture was about.