The Narcissism Epidemic - Living in the age of entitlement

p.1 A book called "My beautiful mommy" explains plastic surgery to young children whose mothers are going under the knife for the trendy mommy makeover.

p.14 As an NBC public service announcemnet puts it, "You may not realize it, but everyone is born with their one tru love -themselves. If you like you, everyone else will, too." ... "loving yourself means knowing how great you are and not letting any person, any place, or any thing ever get in the way of that," writes Diane Mastromarino in her aptly titled 2003 book, The Girl's Guide to loving Yourself."

p.20 Narcissistic Personality inventory (NPI) test

p.26 New methods in social psychology have made it much easire o answer such questions. The Implicit Association Test (IAT), developed by Tony Greenwald of Uni. of Washington and Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard, measures how fast people can associate 2 concepts. The IAT was first used to measure racial prejudice. in that version, pictures of what and blck faces appear on a computer screen enxt to words like good and bad. in the first round, test takers press the key on the side of the keyboard under "good" if a white face appears and under "bad" if a black face appears. They then do the reverse, pairing white faces with "bad" and black faces with "good". The computer measures how fast people can press the key for wach pairing; being able to pair white faces with good faster than black faces shows a preference for whites (http://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit). Many people who express little prejudice in explicit surveys still show an implicit racial prejudice on this test. Aythor Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote about unconscious associations in his book Blink and who is biracial himself, was embarassed to discover that he found it hard to pair blac faces wth good but easy to do the same for whiate faces. The test is an intriguine measure of out true beliefs--the unconscious feelings and associations we have absorbed from our culture.

p.34 A majaroty (57%, oin a June 2009 national poll of more than 1000 college students) said that one of the main reasons for their generation's self-centeredness was social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and twitter.


p.50 Self-esteem also isn't a consistent predictor of status or leadership. WHEN GROUP MEMBERS VARY IN SELF-ESTEEM, HIGH SELF ESTEEM PEOPLE GAIN STATUS IN THE GROUP. but when most people in the group are high in self-esteem--which happens more and more with self-esteem on the rise-- high-self-esteem peopl cant all attain the status they seek. At that point, those who are likable and care for others emerge as the group leaders.

p.94 Kendall Myers hired the company Celeb 4 A Day to send 3 "personal paparazzi" to folloe her and her friends around on a girlls' night out.
"It's as of being famous has become a right."

p.109 Social networking for narcissists
Less positive is the sizable number of people who apparently use MySpace and Facebook to seek as much attention as possible for waring as little as possible.
"Is there narcissism [on fACEBOOK]?
.. "like that eternally distracting reflecting pool of Greek lore, the Facebook profile can become an abyss of self-love that consumes one entirely... [E]ven the most socially competent among us tend to enjoy photo=documenting our social successes, so that those poor souls who are less gifted migt at least witness our revelry. Facebook turns out to be the perfect venue for such showcasing. However, most people are still more interested in "stalking the profiles of others than in primping their own."

p.110 The structure of the sites rewards the skills of the narcissist, such as self-promotion, selecting flattering photos of oneself, and having the most friends.

p.113 teh MySpace personaily
Social networking sites encourage users to highligh only certain aspects of themselves. First users can choose to present only the most attractive or cool pictures of themselves.
1
p. 117-8 Blogs, comment sectons, and the valuing of everyone's opinion (Even if it's stupid)
In practice, they often descend into uninformed thirdhand banality reminiscent of the way urban legends get started... no, journalists aren't always right, but they've at least been trained to consider issues with a degree of objectivity. Our modern culture instead says, "Everybody's opinion is just as valid as everyone else's," and now backs up this notion on the Internet with the proliferation of blogs and comment sections. The problem is that most of the people who leave comments have no earthly idea what they are talking about. They think they do--common among people with a tendency toward narcissim--but they're clueless. The comments that do say something intelligent are often lost in the mountain of ignorance.
Comments also invite conflict. The comments sections on sites like YouTube descend into hostility remakably quickly. perhaps becuase they can be anonymous, people say things on these sites that they would never say to someone's face. Political arguments on newspaper comment sites get contentious quickly, and it's very difficult to separate truth from opinion. Web 2.0, says Andrew Keen in The Cult of the Amateur, is "ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule."

p.101 the quest for infamy and the rise of incivility
Much of this is driven by the anonymity of the internet, uet these viriolic commens display an unmistakable narcissim. There is the nager and verbal aggression against someone who dares to disagree. There is the assumption that "my opinion matters." yet, at the same time, the stubborn insistence that other people's opinions are wrong or irrelevant.

iPod & iTunes portable genius (2nd edition) -- Jesse David Hollington

p.51 BPM Bears per minute
MIXmiester BPM Analyzer: free for Mac/Windows, no AAC support
iTunes-BPM (blacktree.com) free for Mac.
Tangerine (potionfactory.com) $25 for Mac
beaTunes $25 for Mac/Windows

p.52 Tagging multiple tracks simultaenously
1. Select tracks
2. Choose fILE-> get info
3. Fill in the common properties. Check the boxes
4. ok

p.65 Adding lyrics automatically
Sing That iTune! Dashboard widget. (Windows version: widgets.yahoo.com)
Get Lyrical (shullian.com/get_lyrical.php)

p.83 Sound Check
iTunes analyzes the volume levels for balanced listening.
1. iTunes preferences -> Playback
2. Sound Check -> OK


p.223 Hand Brake
handbrake.fr
iPod preset: H.264 video files in a 640x480 resolution at 1500 bps.
1. Insert dvd
2, start HandBrake
3. Browse under Destination
4. Universal preset.

If you want to convert multiple titles from the same DVD in one session, click the Add to Quque button instead of the Start button. HandBrake adds the currntly selected title to the quque, and you can then select another title from the same DVD. When you are finished adding to the queue, click the Start button to begin conversion.

p. 285 Moving your iTunes library to an external HD
Specifying a different iTunes Media folder location
1. iTunes preferences -> Advanced
2. Change
3.new folder location. OK.

P.287 Moving and consolidating yout itunes media
iTunes -> new location ->File -> Library -> organize Library -> select Consolidate files.

p.329
3hive.com: free MP3
garageband.com
mfiles.co.uk: fre classical music

iPod: the missing manual -- J.D. Biersdorfer with David Pogue

p.66
double-tap: Cut/Copy/Paste
hold for magnifying glass, lift for Select
Select -> Copy
undo: shake the iPod

p. 83 multitask on your touch
cligk the Home button twice: a row of 4 icons sprouts from the bottom of the screen, flick.

p.118 Load songs onto an iPod from more than one computer.
Manual management
Options-> Manually manage music and videos
com+E or Ctrl+E: eject

p.121 Move the iTunes media folder to an external drive
make sure iTunes has been putting all your songs/videos in the itUNES media/Music folder by opening the preference box (com+comma) and confirming the folder location. tHEN:
1. Advanced->Keep iTunes media folder organized
2. Change-> externtal HD
3. New Folder->name-> Create
4. Change Media Folder Location -> Open
5.. OK
6. File-> Library-> Organize Library -> Consolidate files

iPod and iTunes for dummies (7th) -- Tony Bove

p.243
AIFF: uncompressed sound on a Mac
WAV: uncompressed for Windows
Apple Lossless: cd quality in 55% size of an AIFF.
AAC:

MacbOOK all-in-one for dummies -- Mark L. Chambers

MacBook for dummies (3rd)-- Mark L. Chambers

p.61
2-finger zooming:
2-finger rotating
3-finger paging: to page though a document or move to the next/previous image in a set

p.73
com + Tab: switches between open applications
com + Option + M: minimizes all Finder windows to the Dock
com + Option + W: closes all finder windows
com + Shi + Del : empty the Trash

p.94 Adding Dock icons
Applications: drag to the left of the separator line
Folders: add to the right of the separator line
Web URLs: drag to the right

p.87: Take a screen snapshot
File -> Grab -> Timed Screen

p.88-9 Dashboard
WebClip widget:
1. Safari to preferred site
2. Open This Page in Dashboard (toolbar)
3. Select the portion you want to include in your widget
4. Drag the handles at the edges of the selection border to resize your widget frame to the right size, and then click Add.

p.90 Switching between apps with Expose
com+Tab, or--
* Press he All Windows key (F3)
*Press the Application Windows key (Control + F3)
*Press the Desktop key (Command + F3)

p.91 Switching between desktops with Spaces
Control + <- or Control + ->
You can activate Ecpose, Spaces, and Dashboard by using your mouse rather than keybord.
1. System Preferences
3. Expose & Spaces
3 pop-up menu

p.370 Audio hardware
USB Piano keyboard
KeyRig 49 from M-Audio

p.387 Keepest thy home folder encrypted
System Preferences -> Security -> FileVault

Mac OS X Snow Leopard for dummies - Bob LeVitus

Shortcut
com +M: minimize
com +`: cycle through windows
com + N: new finder window
com + Shi +N: new folder
com + O: open
com + I: get info
com + A: select all
com + C: copy
com + D: duplicate
com + Shi + H: home
com +. : cancel
com + P: print
com + X: cut
com + V: paste
com + F: find
com + Z: undo
com + Q: quit
come + Delete: move to trash

p.264 Preview
Almost every OS X program with a Print command lest you save your document as a PDF file. Just click and hold the PDF button and choose Save As PDF.

p. 352-3 Boot Camp
Boot Camp is Snow Leopard's built-in technology that allows you to run Microsoft Windows XP or Vista on any Intel-based Mac. if your Mac meets the following requirements, you can run Windows on you Mac: 10GB HD, upartitioned HD, CD, printer, a full install copy of Windows.
1. Launch the boot Camp Assistant aplication, which is in you applications/Utilities folder.
This step creates a partition on you hard drive for Windows and then burns a specia cd with all the drives you'll need to use windows on your Mac.
2. Install windows on the new partition.
3. Install the drivers from the cd you jsut burned.

From now on, you can hold down Option during startup and choose to start up from either the MAC OS X or the Windwos partition.

p.366 Firewall: Yea or nay?
1. Sytem preference
2. Security -> Firewall
3. Deny incoming connections except for essential services radio button.

p.369 Locking down files with FileVault
If you absolutely, positively don't ever want anyone to be able to access the files in your Home folder, FileVault allows you to encrypt your entire home folder and its contents. It protects your data with the latest fovernment-approved encryption standard-- Advanced Encryption Standard with 128-bit keys (AES-128).
If you turn on FileVault and then forget both your login password and your master password, you can't log in to our account -- and your data is lost forever.
FileVault is always encrypting and decrypting files, if often slows down our Mac when you add or save new files, and it takes extra time before it lets you log ou, restart, or shut down.
1. Security System preferences -> fILEvAULT
2. set master password
3. Turn on.

p.374 Activity monitor
Window -> CPU Usage (or com+2), CPU History (com+3), floating CPU window.

p.380 Grab
screenshot
Utility Chest

p.381 Keychain Access
A keychain is a way to consolidate all you passwords.

NYTimes: Dealing With Julian Assange and the Secrets He Spilled

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Wikileaks-t.html?pagewanted=1&hp

free press in a democracy can be messy. But the alternative is to give the government a veto over what its citizens are allowed to know. Anyone who has worked in countries where the news diet is controlled by the government can sympathize with Thomas Jefferson’s oft-quoted remark that he would rather have newspapers without government than government without newspapers.

The intentions of our founders have rarely been as well articulated as they were by Justice Hugo Black 40 years ago, concurring with the Supreme Court ruling that stopped the government from suppressing the secret Vietnam War history called the Pentagon Papers: “The government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people.”

..................

Your obligation, as an independent news organization, is to verify the material, to supply context, to exercise responsible judgment about what to publish and what not to publish and to make sense of it. That is what we did.

But while I do not regard Assange as a partner, and I would hesitate to describe what WikiLeaks does as journalism, it is chilling to contemplate the possible government prosecution of WikiLeaks for making secrets public, let alone the passage of new laws to punish the dissemination of classified information, as some have advocated. Taking legal recourse against a government official who violates his trust by divulging secrets he is sworn to protect is one thing. But criminalizing the publication of such secrets by someone who has no official obligation seems to me to run up against the First Amendment and the best traditions of this country. As one of my colleagues asks: If Assange were an understated professorial type rather than a character from a missing Stieg Larsson novel, and if WikiLeaks were not suffused with such glib antipathy toward the United States, would the reaction to the leaks be quite so ferocious? And would more Americans be speaking up against the threat of reprisals?

iPod & iTunes portable genius (2nd edition)

by Jessy David Hollington