Vid: Wall Street's New Cryptocurrency Headquarters: Inside the Bitcoin Center NYC

“I was in college, and now instead of going to college I’m doing
Bitcoin,” says Louis Parker, an entrepreneur who has set up shop at
the Bitcoin Center NYC, a
cavernous storefront in lower Manhattan’s financial district that’s
fast become a central gathering spot for New York City’s
cryptocurrency traders, programmers, and enthusiasts. “There’s no
college class on Bitcoin, except in Cyprus, and I wasn’t ready to
move there,” he says.

Every Monday night, Bitcoin traders hold a meet up called
Satoshi Square, named in honor of Satoshi
Nakamoto
, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin, in which
participants exchange virtual currencies for U.S. dollars. Before
Satoshi Square relocated to the Bitcoin Center NYC a couple weeks
ago, it was held in the shopping aisles of a Whole Foods grocery
store
on the Lower East Side.

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Spontaneous Order on the Free-Range Playground

PlaygroundNew Zealand has encountered the same problems
with playground bullying and acting out as schools in the United
States, and has responded with the same tightening web of red tape
we’ve seen in the northern hemisphere. “There was so many
ridiculous health and safety regulations and the kids thought the
static structures of playgrounds were boring,”
commented
Professor Grant Schofield. As Director of the

Human Potential Centre
at Auckland University of Technology,
Schofield was in a position to do something about that. Along with
colleagues at Otago University, he came up with a research project
involving reducing or even eliminating playground rules and letting
the kids set their own limits. Then they actually persuaded schools
to sign on to what constituted an experiment in free-range
parenting
. The results aren’t surprising to those of us who ran
free in our own childhoods, which is to say they’re very
encouraging.

Writes
Marika Hill at Stuff.co.nz
:

Ripping up the playground rulebook is having incredible effects
on children at an Auckland school.

Chaos may reign at Swanson Primary School with children climbing
trees, riding skateboards and playing bullrush during playtime, but
surprisingly the students don’t cause bedlam, the principal
says.

The school is actually seeing a drop in bullying, serious
injuries and vandalism, while concentration levels in class are
increasing.

Principal Bruce McLachlan rid the school of playtime rules as
part of a successful university experiment.

“We want kids to be safe and to look after them, but we end up
wrapping them in cotton wool when in fact they should be able to
fall over.”

Letting children test themselves on a scooter during playtime
could make them more aware of the dangers when getting behind the
wheel of a car in high school, he said.

“When you look at our playground it looks chaotic. From an
adult’s perspective, it looks like kids might get hurt, but they
don’t.”

Youth is a relatively low-risk time to test your limits and
discover what hurts and what doesn’t. Kids are practically rubber,
so when they fall down off a bike or out of a tree, it may be a
jolt, but it’s unlikely to do permanent damage. The lessons they
learn about what’s fun and what’s painful can be retained for later
in life when the stakes are higher. I know that I gained a
relatively low-cost understanding of the world wandering the
streets unescorted as an eight-year-old than I would have if I’d
been “protected” from the world around me, and I suspect the same
is true of most kids everywhere.

And, of course, kids get to burn off a lot more steam when they
play free than they do when adults ban
tag
and
running
. Those rules are imposed by adults who live in fear
that children will damage their little selves, but that leaves the
tots chock full of unreleased energy and uncertain of the limits of
their worlds—limits they’ll have to discover when they’re older and
the consequences can be more severe (or else they won’t discover at
all as they internalize the fear in which they’ve been
marinated).

Principal Bruce McLachlan
told TVNZ
that resistance to the free-range experiment came not
from parents, but from teachers who were afraid they’d be blamed
for any injuries the kids suffered. Not that parents can’t be
control freaks themselves—the term “helicopter parent” evolved for
a reason—but nothing embodies fear of risk like a bureaucrat. And
it’s hard to get in trouble for piling on more rules
rather than stripping away the ones that cause problems.

The New Zealand research has yet to be published, and it will be
interesting to see the formal results. In fact, the research was
originally intended to just encourage more activity, and the
behavioral improvements were unexpected gravy.

Grant Schofield is also something of a paleo guy on his Twitter feed and blog, Reasonoids may be interested to
know.

(H/T CharlesWT)

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A.M. Links: DOJ, Internet Companies Agree on How to Disclose Government Demands for User Information, Obama Wants Higher Pay for Federal Contractors, Prince Suing Over Internet Links

  • hit n run!The Justice Department and several Internet
    companies, including Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, have reached
    an
    agreement
    on how the latter may disclose demands for user
    information by US security services.
  • President Obama is
    expected
    to propose a minimum wage of $10.10 for federal
    contractors in his State of the Union address tonight.
  • Chuck Schumer is using the death of an autistic child in New
    York City after the student went missing to
    push
    for a federal program that would provide tracking devices
    for autistic children.
  • South Africa’s opposition parties, including the Democratic
    Alliance, the largest of the group, are
    coalescing
    around the candidacy of a former anti-apartheid
    activist who is challenging Jacob Zuma for president.
  • Prince, who once claimed the internet was a fad that would
    pass, is
    suing
    22 fans for providing links online to bootleg recordings
    of his performances. Quentin Tarantino, meanwhile, is also claiming
    copyright infringement to
    sue
    Gawker for posting a script for a Western the director was
    planning to film.
  • Folk singer Pete Seeger
    died
    at the age of 94.

Follow Reason and Reason 24/7 on
Twitter, and like us on Facebook.
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can also get the top stories mailed to
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Lauren Galik on Secret (and Likely Illegal) Execution Drugs

Death Penalty

Just after midnight tonight, writes Lauren Galik, convicted
murderer Herbert Smulls will be executed by the Missouri Department
of Corrections. On February 5, Christopher Sepulvado, convicted of
killing his stepson in 1992, will meet the same fate in Louisiana.
It’s likely that both men will die not knowing what exactly is
being shoved into their veins. Information about the drugs that
will be used to kill these men—including where they came from, or
if they’ve been tested for purity—has been kept a closely guarded
secret by state correctional departments in both Louisiana and
Missouri.

View this article.

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Timothy Carney on Crony Capitalism vs. Market Morality

Lobbyists and CEOs will always have a
free-market-sounding defense to make. Sometimes the defense will be
legitimate. Frequently it will not. Libertarians need to probe
those defenses, asking businessmen and their hired guns tough
questions. Keep it up, says Timothy Carney, and perhaps one day the
businessmen will start asking those questions of themselves.

View this article.

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Brickbat: Viral Photos

A German court has
ordered Google to block any search
results
 on its German site that might lead to photos of a
sadomasochistic orgy involving former Formula One chief Max Mosley.
A French court had earlier blocked Google from providing any links
to those images to French users.

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Are you better at worrying than you are at praying?

Let’s admit it: we are worriers.

Sometimes our worries are ridiculous. For several years, a woman was having trouble getting to sleep at night because she just knew someone was going to break into her house and steal her fine china. She was scared to death. One evening, her husband did hear a noise, went downstairs and encountered a real burglar.

He said, “Good evening. I’m so pleased to meet you. Will you please come upstairs and meet my wife? She’s been wanting to meet you for years.”

read more

via The Citizen http://www.thecitizen.com/blogs/dr-david-l-chancey/01-28-2014/are-you-better-worrying-you-are-praying

A Majority of U.S Technology Professionals Would Accept Bitcoin as Payment Reports WSJ

There’s no telling exactly how accurate this survey is, and whether or not the participants are thinking in terms of part of their paychecks or the entire thing, but if the figures are anywhere near the reported 51%, it is a very positive signal.

People being paid in bitcoin represents a huge step in the process of the currency transitioning into something more akin to the role fiat money plays in everyday life. We may be much closer to this reality than many people think, particularly with the recent launch of the very innovative BitPay Payroll API, which makes it incredibly simple for employees to receive a portion of their wages in bitcoin.

From the Wall Street Journal:

A majority of U.S technology professionals would welcome being paid in bitcoin, according to a survey by event organizer Tech in Motion.

Out of 847 responses to a questionnaire sent to Tech in Motion’s 18,000 members, 51.12% answered “yes, absolutely,” to the question “Would you be interested in being paid for your work in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin?” A further 18.06% ticked “Maybe, let’s see where Bitcoin is in a year or two,” with the remainder saying that they would prefer to be paid in traditional currency. Just 9.92% rejected the option because they “do not think Bitcoin will last,” and 1.18% said they didn’t know what bitcoin was.

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Icy driving conditions already

Part of Peachtree Parkway north near McIntosh temporarily shut down

This photo is from Robinson Road in Peachtree City, contributed by Seth Langford

Multiple wrecks are being reported countywide as icy road conditions have taken hold, causing vehicles to slide off the road, according to police radio traffic.

At 12:42 p.m. today police shut down northbound traffic on Peachtree Parkway from Walt Banks Road. Public works crews are expected to go spread sand in an effort to get the road passable for traffic.

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Ramsey-McCubbin wedding

Erin Margaret Ramsey and Stephen William McCubbin were married in an outdoor ceremony on Saturday, Nov. 30, 2013 by the Rev. Dr. Mark Jordan of Cokes Chapel UMC, Sharpsburg, at the Foxhall Sporting Club in Douglasville, Ga. A and reception followed the ceremony.

Erin is the daughter of Thomas and Genevieve Ramsey of Peachtree City. Erin graduated from Samford University, Birmingham, Ala. with a BA in Communications and a MS in Environmental Science. She is the Associate Director of Counseling at Mt. Vernon Presbyterian School in Sandy Springs, Ga.

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