Taylor Gordon, Author at Blerds

April 21, 2015April 21, 2015

Remembering the Legendary Dr. Levi Watkins Jr.: A Medical Pioneer Who Helped Change the Face of Medicine

It has been more than a week since Dr. Levi Watkins Jr. passed away due to complications from a stroke, but both the Black community and the medical community are still feeling the sorrow of a great loss and the wonders of the legacy he left behind.

While there are still serious disparities in the medical world, it isn’t nearly as unusual today to come across Black physicians as it used to be.

Watkins is one of the many iconic figures the Black community has to thank for that now.

Watkins was a man who seemed to effortlessly break down barriers and pack his 70 years of life with historical achievements.

In 1980, Watkins solidified his place in history as he became the first surgeon to implant an automatic heart defibrillator in a patient suffering from irregular heartbeats. It’s an accomplishment that continues to impact millions of people today.

“His spirit lives on in the 3 million patients around the world whose hearts beat in a normal rhythm because of the implantable defibrillator,” a statement by Watkins’ brother posted on the American Heart Associate website explains.

But Watkins ground-breaking achievements were never limited to the surgery room or the confines of an office.

Those who may not remember his legacy as a medical icon will certainly recall his work as an activist and civil rights pioneer.

“Watkins joined Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1970 after having graduated from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine where he was the first African-American admitted to the school,” according to NBC News. “At Hopkins, he became the first African-American to serve as the chief resident in cardiac surgery.”

Watkins could have easily touted such accomplishments as proof that Black people can achieve anything if they simply pull up their bootstraps and try harder. Like some accomplished Black stars today, he could have deemed himself the “new Black” and insisted that his ability to break down seemingly indestructible barriers was evidence that there were no real racial disparities barring Black people from the medical field.

Unlike today’s stars, however, Watkins knew that simply wasn’t true.

He used his role as a medical pioneer and civil rights leader to drastically increase the number of Black students attending Johns Hopkins University’s medical school.

“In 1979, he joined the admissions committee at Johns Hopkins University’s Medical School,” an article chronicling the history of Black students at the school noted. “Thanks in large part to his efforts, by 1983, minority representation at the school had increased by 400 percent.”

The president of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System and executive vice president of the Johns Hopkins Medicine, Ronald R. Peterson, gives Watkins credit for drastically influencing the overall culture at the hospital.

“It is inarguable that Levi’s impact on our hospital — on its culture, on its care — will endure, just as will our immense admiration for him and thanks for all that he did here,” Peterson said of Watkins in a press release.

It’s proof that even as Watkins has been laid to rest, the impact of his lifetime continues to thrive in the medical field.

A memorial service for Watkins has been scheduled for April 21 at Union Baptist Church in Baltimore.

April 20, 2015April 20, 2015

Neil deGrasse Tyson: ‘It Would Be Really Cool if There Were More Visual Thinkers in the World’

The education system has a very limited view of autism. It’s seen solely as a disorder. Children who have it are treated like they have been given nothing more than a disadvantage. Their alternative ways of thinking are not praised but rather questioned and often scrutinized.

Some would argue, however, that autism deserves a completely different kind of reaction from the public.

Some of the world’s greatest minds belong to autistic people like Temple Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State University.

She is hailed by many as an incredible asset when it comes to research, and famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson pondered the impact of her autism during the latest episode of Star Talk.

“Does [autism] give something to her or take something away,” he questioned before his guest joined him.

Her mind is “fascinating,” in Tyson’s words, but is that the result of her autism or just her “insightful” nature.

Grandin, an autism activist whose own life was chronicled by HBO in a self-titled film, joined Tyson and explained that she indeed offers a different way of thinking that is absolutely necessary in the world of science.

“In science we need both kinds of thinking,” Grandin told Tyson.

The two kinds of visual thinking she was referring to are “object photo-realistic thinking” and “more visual, spatial, where you are in space thinking.”

Object photo-realistic thinking is often associated with more artistic minds. This is the kind of thinking that makes Grandin stand out in science.

The latter form of visual thinking is more typically associated with math and science.

“What I’m really good at, when I read a journal article, is the methods — because when I read the methods section of an animal science or biology paper, I want to be able to understand how they did that experiment,” Grandin said.

That’s where other researchers tend to fail by focusing too closely on statistics and programs.

“Yes, you need to do statistics — that’s why I work with a statistician —but you also need my kind of mind to make sure people are fully describing how they did an experiment,” she added.

She believes that many more great minds like hers could be innovating STEM fields if they were pushed and shown their true potential.

Unfortunately, much more focus is placed on the areas where autistic people struggle rather than where they can excel.

“I’m worried that with all the emphasis on math, my kind of mind is being pushed off the team because we can’t do the algebra,” she added.

Tyson even noted that in his own field of astrophysics, much of the field is visual.

“You have to get into the computer and program it, but there are things we can only look at — you can’t poke it, you can’t stick it in a petri dish,” Tyson said as he cut away from the interview to insert commentary that was added later. “So it would be really cool if there were more visual thinkers in the world.”

Getting more of the visual thinkers who operate the way Grandin does even has the potential to vastly improve research and expedite scientific discoveries.

The key, Grandin says, is to make sure children with autism are being encouraged to try new things and expand their minds.

“I’m seeing far too many smart, geeky kids ending up in the basement playing video games because things aren’t being done to nurture their [visual] ability,” she added.

That’s because they aren’t being encouraged the way Grandin says her mother encouraged her.

“When I was a child my mother nursed my ability with art,” she added. “A lot of these kids want to draw the same thing all the time, and I did horse heads — but I was encouraged to draw lots of other things,” she continued. “I was taught to broaden that fixation out, to turn it into a skill you can use.”

It seems like such a simple solution, but it’s effective nonetheless.

Grandin just hopes that as time goes on, the stigmas around autism will vanish and more unique visual thinkers will find their place in the sciences.

April 17, 2015April 17, 2015

As Social Media Grows in Popularity, So Do Cyberattacks That Could Potentially End in Tragedy

If you were to ask most parents about their feelings toward social media, they would likely express some disdain toward the way the youth interact online. They may express their concerns about teens being too engulfed in such sites or discuss the unhealthy relationships that could form in cyberspace.

What some parents fail to realize, however, is just how mentally and emotionally devastating social media can be for teens as they navigate through middle school and high school.

Social media abuse is far from something that happens in occasional isolated incidents, and it is by no means something users can protect themselves from by toggling privacy settings or blocking certain users.

Whether it’s a classic example of one person bullying another or more extreme cases of “expose pages” that dedicate an entire social media profile to exposing a teen’s alleged promiscuous behaviors or slamming his or her physical appearance, social media abuse is extremely prevalent even after years of warnings and initiatives aimed at improving the digital landscape for young people.

The abuse of social media is even using “games” as a disguise. Users will start group messages rating different users’ appearances and share screenshots of the often-insulting conversations with their social media followers.

With a plethora of social media sites to pick from, online attacks are now rampant, especially among middle school and high school-aged children, and have even been the cause of many teenage suicides.

According to a survey led by Poco Kernsmith, an associate professor of social work at Wayne State University, roughly 54 percent of students at low-risk schools, which tend to be in wealthy areas with low crime rates, admitted to misusing social media.

Roughly 45 percent of students in high-risk schools admitted to the same thing.

Kernsmith believes the difference is simply caused by the different levels of access students have to new technology that connects them to social media but ultimately proves that cyberbullying and social media abuse plagues teens of all socioeconomic backgrounds.

One 14-year-old from Allen Park, Michigan, Taylor Goodwin, said she witnesses the negative effects of social media abuse all the time.

She told researchers that talking trash online “causes all kinds of drama” and incidents of “throwing shade” have frequently sparked bigger brawls in person.

“It spreads around the school like wildfire,” she said of the subliminal social media attacks that refer to a specific person but doesn’t necessarily include that person’s name.

“It gets pretty nasty out there,” Chad Gross, an 18-year-old who graduated from Annapolis High School in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, told USA Today. “Everyone feels invincible behind a computer screen.”

That feeling of invincibility is quickly eradicated once some students come face to face with their online attackers.

Students admit to seeing how online attacks sparked fights at school or influenced suicide attempts by classmates.

“These kids don’t think about the very real impact that these little messages and s**t have,” said one Georgia mother who chose not to be identified.

Her daughter, a 14-year-old girl who attends a middle school in Gwinnett County, was subjected to cyberattacks after an ex-boyfriend spread rumors about her throughout the school.

“She refused to go to school. … I asked her why and she showed me her [Twitter] account,” the Georgia mother said. “I mean there were pictures, videos, messages everything. Kids were making like edited images of her and they thought it was funny. This little knucklehead lied about my daughter, and it took so long for her to get past it.”

She went on to express concerns about the fact that social media has helped to divert students’ attention away from learning and forced them to focus on what kind of personas they have to take on in order to avoid falling victim to cyberattacks.

As the popularity of social media continues to grow and certain platforms inadvertently make it easier to facilitate online bullying and sexting, parents are scrambling to find a solution.

For some parents, they host frequent conversations with their teen about the proper way to behave online and trust their child to follow the rules presented to them during such discussions.

Others may have the same talks but also insist that their children hand over their social media passwords and usernames.

“I only go in there if I suspect something is wrong,” Melissa Goodwin, Taylor’s mother, told USA Today. “I try to give her her privacy… We have conversations about what you can and can’t do.”

Kernsmith urges parents to remind their kids that “nothing is private online, remember nothing online can be taken back, be aware of pressure and coercion, consider the reaction and feelings of others and remember nothing is truly anonymous.”

She hopes that with those tips in mind fewer teens will engaged in the harmful behaviors that lead to bullying, sexting and other negative trends that could push some young social media users into the depths of depression.

April 16, 2015April 16, 2015

Networking in Cyberspace: Accepting LinkedIn Invitations From Strangers Comes With Potential Reward, Greater Risks

The rules and etiquette behind using LinkedIn are relatively simple when compared to other social media sites that are plastered with unwritten, unspoken rules.

The one gray area that still confuses users on the professional networking site, however, lies in the decision to accept or reject invitations from people you don’t actually know.

The very principle of LinkedIn encourages users to grow their network on the site for the sake of possible opportunities and positive partnerships.

The idea of having a vast network of hundreds of professionals can be enticing and often drives people to accept invitations from almost anyone who comes across their page.

After all, there can’t be a real downside to expanding your connections, right?

Of course not. The problem is that you aren’t actually expanding your connections by blindly accepting invitations from strangers on LinkedIn.

That’s because many things tend to be true of those anonymous connections.

For one, you probably won’t ever interact with those people, which makes their presence in your list of digital connections relatively worthless and potentially dangerous.

“I soon discovered the downside to getting linked with people I didn’t know,” USA Today’s Steven Petrow writes. “… If I did connect with someone I didn’t know, I felt even more uncomfortable — you know that old saying about being judged by the company you keep? I realized I didn’t want to be professionally associated with people I don’t know (especially when I heard that one of my connections had been fired from her job for dealing drugs in the workplace!).”

That’s the reality of those seemingly harmless digital connections.

They are real enough that when one of your connections earns a troubling reputation, it could also cause other LinkedIn users to question your integrity as well.

Not to mention the fact that linking with people you don’t really know often just leads to a pointless virtual relationship that eventually gets lost in the sea of faces that are actually familiar to you.

It all points to the fact that there should be some sort of caution in selecting who you want to link with on the site, but that doesn’t mean you should deny every invitation that comes from a person you haven’t shaken hands with.

LinkedIn gives you access to people you may have never had the chance to meet otherwise.

If you are going to accept invitations from strangers, make sure those decisions are industry specific.

Is there something for you to gain from that connection and is there a reason you would want to reach out to them relatively soon?

These types of pairings could lead to potential clients or mutually beneficial professional relationships.

Perhaps the best tool to navigating the tricky waters of “accept or not to accept” is to invest in going premium on the site and first communicate with people via InMail.

It will allow you to actually have an interaction with that person before connecting with them, eliminating the problem of connecting with “strangers” all together.

Other than that, don’t let the desire to have a large number of connections fool you. That number may impress LinkedIn newbies, but the business veterans on the site won’t be moved by a staggering number of accepted invitations paired with a body of work that shows a stunning lack of real connections and face-to-face networking.

April 15, 2015April 15, 2015

10 Amazing Creations You Won’t Believe You Can Make With a 3-D Printer

Working Guns

While it has always been possible to make replicas of guns even in the early days of 3-D printing, today’s technology has allowed the nonprofit corporation Defense Distributed to create a working firearm from 3-D printing. Defense Distributed allows users to download all the files they’ll need to create their own working firearm with options to fire in semi-auto and full-auto modes.

Sculpture of Your Unborn Child

It sounds creepy, but let me explain. A Japanese company is offering an alternative to a grainy picture of your ultrasound. That alternative is called “Shape of an Angel,” the 3-D printing creation of your unborn child. The one-of-a-kind printing will cost you $1,275 unless you have the technology at home to print out a fetus on your own. Still creepy? Yea … OK.

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April 13, 2015April 13, 2015

Apple Watch Makes Its Online Debut as Mixed Reviews Make It Unclear Whether It’s Worth the Money

After much anticipation from general tech lovers and Apple fans alike, the Apple Watch is finally making its big debut. But is it living up to all the hype?

That’s a hard question to answer considering the fact that the watches only became available to order this week although tech reporters got a first glance at the new devices.

Based on the reviews, however, people still aren’t too sure how to feel about the watches.

That didn’t stop them from rushing online to get their own Apple Watch though.

While the Apple Watch didn’t have an overflow of rave reviews that Apple products usually garner, it quickly sold out online and was placed on back order for many consumers who were ready to shovel out at least $350 for the cheapest model.

There is no general consensus out yet on whether the watches are worth the hefty price tag.

The New York Times insisted that the watch is hard to appreciate until you really take the time to figure out how to use it, which is easier said than done.

Unlike today’s releases of new cellphones or iPads, the publication warns that there is a pretty “steep learning curve” for the watch.

That’s, of course, only to be expected considering the fact that the smart watch business is a relatively new venture.

Others praised Apple’s new device as the best on the market, but others had a clear message for those trying to decide if they should give up a few hundred dollars to own one.

“You don’t need one,” another review quipped.

Not to mention the staggering price tag that left many longtime Apple followers feeling a little betrayed and cheated.

“What was Apple thinking with these breath-catchingly high prices,” an article from Yahoo questioned. “Is it hoping to depict these as exclusive, rarefied, aspirational products? By offering a $10,000 model, is it hoping to make the $350 and $550 watches look like bargains?”

It isn’t clear what drove Apple to release the watches with such hefty price tags, but in all fairness it’s not as if Apple built a brand of affordability.

Should anyone really be surprised that the tech giant is charging so much for its debut smart watch?

The only thing that’s really shocking is the fact that Apple’s new watch seems to be riddled with the kind of bugs you wouldn’t expect from such an expensive gadget.

Tech reviews have complained about the watch’s slow speed, short battery life and lack of a charging stand unless you’re trying to purchase the $10,000 model.

Ultimately, the watches release only proved how strong of a following Apple has garnered and how loyal these consumers are.

There have not been many reports that justify the watch’s prices while there are a collection boasting cheaper smart watches that are arguably more appealing than Apple’s version.

Either way, consumers will have to wait until April 24, when consumers actually start getting their hands on the watches, to see if the watch really measures up to expectations.

April 9, 2015April 9, 2015

Diverse Emojis Finally Arrive and Black Twitter Couldn’t Be Any Happier

What Black Twitter demands, Black Twitter gets.

So is the case with the official arrival of diverse emojis that finally made their way to Apple device owners everywhere who installed the latest iOS update.

The new update comes with an abundance of new features but none seemed to take over social media quite like the introduction of the long-awaited Black emojis.

From now on, texting and tweeting will never be the same.

Black users can now set their Apple devices to use a plethora of icons that more closely identify with their own appearance.

In usual Black Twitter fashion, users celebrated the new diverse faces with comedic tweets.

“Y’all finna see this Black power fist all over your time TL,” one user tweeted.

Another wrote, “Shoutout to this Black queen emoji! Let our girls know!”

“#ByeFelicia has so much more impact with this dark-skin hand next to it,” another quipped.

Of course, the wave of celebrations was short-lived for some who couldn’t help but look to the future and sigh at what is only the inevitable.

“Y’all gonna rethink asking for these diverse emoji when someone hits you w/ a little black face next to watermelon during a racial spat,” one user tweeted.

Another added that the diverse emojis will take over as the “Black best friend” excuse.

“White people gonna be like I’m not racist. I use black emoji all the time,” the tweet read.

Others acknowledged that the new emojis are certainly going to shake up social media and disturb racists, but they didn’t seem too concerned about their possible reactions.

“Oh man, I can’t wait to use this new black Santa emoji to enrage conservative friends and family next holiday season,” another user wrote.

In fact, controversy has already been bubbling with some users getting a head start on making offensive posts about the diverse digital faces.

“Where’s the emoji for black on black crime,” one user wrote.

Still, no tweet garnered as much backlash as Clorox’s failed attempt to ask for a bleach emoji.

With the addition of 300 new emojis there are certainly a lot more symbols for users to play with and only time will tell what new meanings the Black Twitter subculture will give to the new icons.

After all, it would be hard to find a single person who identifies as a part of Black Twitter who uses the eggplant emoji to symbolize the unpopular fruit.

Among the 300 new emojis, however, a bottle of bleach was not present, which drove Clorox to send out its own misguided request.

“New emojis are alright but where’s the bleach,” the tweet read along with a bottle of bleach composed of emojis.

It wasn’t long before the social media site was sent into a frenzy.

“You guys couldn’t possibly think that tweet would be a good idea,” one user wrote.

Another added, “Someone’s social media intern is in deep [poop emoji].”

Others questioned if the tweet was purposefully offensive or just the result of someone not thinking things all the way through.

“I don’t even think they were trying to be racist,” one tweet read. “Just bein stupid.”

“Ah… Should have ran that by someone first. Bad call,” another tweeted with a screenshot of Clorox’s controversial post read.

Clorox has since responded and insisted that it had no intention to hurt or offend anybody.

The tweet was definitely a misstep as far as interpretation and showed a lack of consideration of the current landscape on social media as race relations continue to crumble in America.

Either way, the Clorox tweet should be the least of Black Twitter’s problems.

According to a report released in 2014, 50 percent of Clorox’s independent board of directors are “minorities” and roughly 10 percent of their employees are Black.

While that number can certainly use a boost, it’s actually a larger number than the current percentage of Black employees at companies like, oh let’s say, Twitter and Apple.

Only about 2 percent of Twitter’s own workforce is Black and Apple shouldn’t be excused for its own diversity issues simply because it rolled out some diverse emojis under serious pressure from their consumers.

While it’s refreshing to see Black social media users attempting to take on the watchdog role against would-be racist corporations, their focus on a Clorox bottle tweet may also be a little misguided when the very platform they are using to launch the attacks seems to show no interest in hiring any of them.

Meanwhile, in the midst of the diverse emoji celebrations, nobody has mentioned the fact that there are now probably more Black people on an iPhone’s keyboard than there are actually working at Apple.

April 8, 2015April 14, 2015

International Space Apps Challenge Puts ‘Citizen Scientists’ to the Test

When a group of people come together to contemplate how to use certain data from space to benefit people here on Earth, it’s easy to assume that this crowd would consist of veteran scientists or elite researchers.

From April 10 to 12, however, anyone from the general public will have the chance to take part in the 2015 International Space Apps Challenge.

The challenge calls for “citizen scientists” all over the world to use those three days to come up with creative ways to use data from space in order to solve modern-day issues.

These people will be provided with a plethora of information collected by space probes and other high-end space-agency instruments to help them “develop mobile applications, software, hardware, data visualization tools and platforms” that could revolutionize the way people function and operate across the globe, NBC News reports.

While the participants themselves may not be STEM elite, there will be experts on hand at the annual code-a-thon.

Astronaut Cade Coleman and NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan will be present at the event in New York City, but it isn’t clear just how much help they will be able to provide to the contestants.

So what kind of development platform will be used to host the massive crowd of innovators?

Thanks to IBM, the participants will have access to state-of-the-art resources in every way possible, even when it comes to the very platform they are building their apps on.

IBM is granting the crowd of developers free access to its Bluemix cloud-development platform, according to NBC News.

This means, in addition to the resources provided by NASA, they will also be able to draw their apps using IBM’s ever-expanding collection of cloud-based development tools.

Among these tools are IBM’s famed Watson Analytics.

Outside of the bare foundation of the annual challenge, the rules allow the public to have quite a bit of flexibility when it comes to how they want to work and what exactly they want to accomplish with their app.

NASA provides the group with over 30 different suggested challenges that fall into four main categories including human health research and robotics.

Participants are welcome to kick off their own challenge and are not obligated to stick to NASA’s suggestions.

It’s also up to each individual to decide if they would like to work in a team with other people or take on the coding challenge by themselves.

April 7, 2015April 8, 2015

Twitter’s New ‘Retweet with Comment’ Feature Garners Mixed Reviews as It Symbolizes the Platform’s Ongoing Evolution

Depending on what kind of social circle you have immersed yourself into in the Twitterverse, your timeline may have been excitedly squealing about Twitter’s new “Retweet with Comment” feature or angrily smashing their keyboards to push out expletive-filled tweets cursing the new feature’s existence.

It’s one of the moments that truly underlines the great Twitter divide that tends to exist between the social media platforms original, classic users and the newer users who are turning to Twitter as a blogging platform.

The new addition at the center of the digital discourse is the “Retweet with Comment” feature that the tech giant has been testing since last summer.

The feature allows users to add a comment within a retweet to make adding commentary to tweets easier and more convenient.

The feature is being rolled out on the site’s iPhone app, but the site promises that the feature will be coming to its Android app in the future.

From a general view, it’s a new feature that adds a lot more flexibility for users and caters to the desire to make ongoing dialogue easier to follow.

Previously, if users wanted to comment on a retweet they would have to make due with whatever space was left in the already short 140-character limit.

This often resulted in users shortening the original tweet, which could sometimes alter the context of the message. In other instances, users would have to significantly shorten their own comments or use other third-party apps to find their way around the character limit.

This new feature gives users their own additional 140 characters to use to comment on whatever interesting tweets they decide to share on their timeline.

Seems like there is very little not to like about the new feature if you are a part of a growing community of bloggers who use Twitter as a space for dialogue and general dissemination of news.

This is a population that is relatively new to the Twitterverse.

Long before the arrival of a wave of users driving extensive dialogue on the site, however, the brevity of 140 characters was an essential part of the platform’s appeal.

It was a restriction that presented a challenge for those who originally ushered Twitter into social media spotlight — the virtual comedians.

It’s a culture that’s hard to explain but easy to witness if you find yourself in certain digital subcultures like that of Black Twitter.

The brevity of the messages when commenting on retweets laid the foundation for certain emojis to be granted new meanings, shortened phrases and hashtags to hold greater context and essentially helped formulate secondary digital languages within certain subgroups on Twitter.

While commenting within the same retweet was often messy, difficult for some to follow and lacked any real sense of organization, it was also a cherished part of the Twitter experience.

For that reason, some users aren’t taking too kindly to the new feature that seems to have a Facebook-ish design behind it.

When the official Twitter page sent out a tweet to demonstrate the new feature, these users were quick to urge the social media giant to take another stab at the new addition.

“Revamped? It’s garbage,” one user replied to the tweet.

Another user wrote, “Change it … it looks atrocious.”

“I HATE IT,” another added.

Others voiced their frustrations that they would now have to seek a different Twitter app to use while the official Twitter app would now be boasting the new “Retweet with Comment” feature.

Others, of course, were excited about the feature’s arrival.

A series of thumbs-up emojis flooded Twitter’s replies along with tweets like “finally!” and “THANK YOU.”

Others didn’t seem too interested in the feature and instead suggested Twitter should have been working on a way to allow users to save .gifs from tweets or be alerted of people taking screenshots of their tweets.

It’s also important to note that it is not possible to embed the full retweet with comment to other platforms and websites.

For now, Twitter users remain extremely divided on the new feature’s arrival, but there is also a simple solution for the users who aren’t happy about the feature’s appearance or how it may impact the platform’s previous strictly enforced culture of brevity.

Don’t use the new feature.