August 2006 - Posts
I've been a regular viewer of Lost from the start, so I'm a little embarrassed to say I wasn't aware that there were random clips of video around the Internet that could be assembled to give more clues and background into the story. Luckily, this guy was aware of it.
This is as close to a one-liner as a 911 operator gets. I'd be interested to know the full story since obviously the caller knows his name and he knows not to take her very seriously. NOTE: Page has some ads on it with a girl in a thong. Potentially unsafe.
New engine combusts old ideas - The Scuderi engine is a split cycle engine. The article includes a very helpful 4 minute video of what that means. The claims are exciting, but I'm still having trouble imagining what kind of power comes from a cylinder that fires with the piston already on the way down.
I did a double take when I heard an advertisement for Kurdistan during today's Hardball. I guess they're looking for investors. I wonder if they ever saw the ad for pork, however.
The Best Word Book Ever,1963 and 1991 - Highlights changes in the book between the two editions. Strangely, most of them seem to be gender related.
Washington hit by curse of the kid bloggers - As a culture we don't really hold parents accountable for their kids' actions, so I'm not sure these stories are as scandalizing as some would like.
It probably behooves Americans to pay attention to news events in Pakistan. I'm not sure if this blogger is actually in Pakistan or just relaying events there but his perspective is certainly insightful.
New York to L.A. in two hours - They're working on a 12-seat passenger jet that would travel at 1,200 mph without making a sonic boom. Oh, and it'll be invisible. (jk)
Create your own panorama planet (Photoshop trick)
Lumalive textiles remind me of the kinds of costumes they wear in low budget sci fi movies set in the future. Could wearing clothes like a Times Square billboard really catch on? (Having said that, if they made an adult sized sneaker with those motion triggered blinking lights in the sole, I'd buy a pair in a second.)
CNN anchor's mic broadcast live while she's in the bathroom
engaging in a bit of girl talk. She doesn't say anything really controversial but does bash her brother's wife as being a control freak. That should make for a comfortable Thanksgiving dinner.
"Senators Tom Coburn and Barak Obama have proposed S.2590, legislation that would create a single website with access to information on nearly all recipients of federal funding. The bill cannot proceed, however, because one or more Senators placed a "secret hold" on it."
Bloggers and blog readers are calling their respective senators to find out who has secretly put a hold on the bill. The list of possible suspects is rapidly narrowing.
UPDATE: No sooner have I written the explanation than I see Wonkette pointing the finger at Senator Stevens. If true it would hardly be a shocker that Mr. Bridge to Nowhere doesn't want American citizens to easily find out where federal money is going.
Seconded.
For the past few days I've been keeping an eye on English Russia. "English Russia is a daily entertaiment blog devoted to the events happening in Russian speaking countries, such as Russia (Russian Federation), Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, etc."
Check out this series of photos from the Moscow subway.
Wow, check it out, the media team has published 360 degree video tours of parts of the Mississippi coast. Note that's not a 360 photo, it's video that plays and you can look around and point the camera where you want.
It can be a bit of a drain on the computer's resources, but it's really cool to play with.
The way the comments works is that I have to approve them before they show up. Right now that means going through them only once or twice a day. the good thing about it is that it forces me to read them all, the bad thing is that there ends up being some redundancy in some of them because people can't see when they're making a comment similar to one that's already been submitted. We're just going to have to forgive each other for overlapping comments in those cases.
If you don't want to leave a public comment you can do two things, either tell me when you post the comment that you don't want it to be public and I won't approve it. Or else send me a mail. I'm still reading everything that comes in to Spotter@MSNBC.com (and yes, I'm now aware that the new blog doesn't a link to that address, I'll get that fixed too).
The other good thing about having to approve all the comments is that it gives me a chance to reply to them. I'm not sure there's a good way to know when it happens, but I am trying to participate in the threads as well as doing the posts.
That password link I posted wrong the other day?
This is the page it was meant to link to.
With the vast resources of the Web, why would someone look for porn on Wikipedia? (This page itself is clean and interesting and really not that porny.)
...people reporting feel-good
acts of kindness.
... of
speech bubbles.
"Can We Set Up An Online Learning Class About Our Screwed Up Patent System?" The specific example is of overbroad patents being granted, but there are a lot of fed up people in the comments section. Seems like it'd be a smart idea to help the economy by making sure the patent system is well functional.
Holy moly, did you see
the hail they got in
Northfield, Minnesota?
Look,
Kittens!!
"Flickr's great for exploring photos by photographer, tag, time, text and group, and now it's also great for
exploring photos by place." The actual map to play with is
here.
The thing to note is that the photos are plotted based on your zoom level, so there might be 3 photos in your area at a far out zoom, but as you go in you see more photos in your area. On the plus side, you can see who takes pictures in your area, great fun. On the minus side I already found one person who put a photo of a restaurant in the wrong place in my neighborhood. This could end up being a real mess.
Speaking of prominent arts blogs, remember the Lonelygirl15 story I mentioned last month? Businessweek's Jon Fine has gone through considerble effort to find out what the real story is. While there aren't many real answers, he at least figured out that it is, in fact, a performance.
Question 2 in Hugh Macleod's interview with Seth Godin asks why more prominent bloggers aren't in the arts. I disagree with both the question and the answer. The question's premise is flawed because in fact there are plenty of prominent arts bloggers. It's more a question of measure because arts bloggers don't participate in the commerce of links that pundit bloggers use to evaluate success. Photobloggers post photos, not links. Poetry bloggers post poems, not search engine keywords. And if the measure of prominence is traffic, prominent arts bloggers are already here. Alexa puts Stereogum and Gaping Void in pretty close alignment traffic-wise, but who's more prominent?
Note to self: If you know so much about arts bloggers, why don't you link to more of them?
Reply to self: Good point. I'll try.
The advertising for shavers has become so ridiculous (not to mention the actual products) that I have half a mind to switch to
wet shaving just to spite the industry. Plus, the idea of having a "kit" full of tools and a shaving ritual has real appeal.
...is a Swiss Army knife,
fully loaded. Looks even more ridiculous than I would have pictured. (FWIW, after losing my old one to airport security, I now carry the
Explorer.
It's a video
tour of a massive Web storage facility. When they talk about "soft targets" for terrorism, this is the kind of place that comes to my mind first. I know the point of a "net" is that it's distributed, but still, there are hubs in the system that would turn the country upside down if anything ever happened. (Sounds like they're prepared though.)
Calling all Indianapolis bloggers...
This site is focused on Indianapolis, but is drawing attention for its potential as a hub for bloggers in the region.
Speaking of local blogging, did you see the story about the folks going naked in Vermont? I happen to have met the fine folks who run the citizen powered iBrattleboro, so I was pleased to find a reason to visit that site for some local perspective. (I didn't see any photos of naked people in any of this coverage, but obviously the potential is there.)
Catching up on the HBO shows I missed over the weekend, I find myself again driven online to hunt down the songs. The closing song on Entourage that sounded like it was from some great new 70s retro band? That wasn't retro, that was actual 70s, Ted Nugent's Stranglehold. (Here's the ten minute live version but NOTE some cursing.)
And the funk song playing in the new promo for The Wire is Ball Of Confusion (That's What The World Is Today) from the Temptations.
(You may have noticed that I like to link to Napster for songs. I actually really like the service they provide. I have the free account, which allows me to listen to a certain amount of music per month (or something) and that's enough for me to look up songs or check out bands I hear about. It's not enough for music at work all day every day, but still very handy and the only service of its kind that I know of.)
Hot library *** is what this site is calling a collection of beautiful photos of libraries (totally safe for work, no actual ***, sorry). This got me to thinking of which have been the most beautiful libraries I've visited. Poking around, I had a remarkably hard time finding photos of them, which makes me that much more impressed with the presentation here.
I think Seattle's relatively new central public library was the most photographed on on my list.
***Here's an interesting find with regard to this new software, it appears to have some words automatically censored. The one above is $mut, which I wouldn't have thought was so bad on its own. Also odd that I can say "porn" but not $mut in the body.
Pluto defriended
Speaking of learning to get along without Pluto, Jason Kottke posts the results of his Pluto mnemonic device contest.
"The parents of 17-year-old Liam Ashley, who was beaten to death en route to prison, say they were the ones who charged him with theft."
... is actually your child
figuring out which inate grammar structure he was born into.
I'm keeping an eye on blog posts tagged with
Ernesto on Technorati. It's not a very fine toothed comb, but if you check back and pick through you can find some worthwhile first-hand perspective.
This is the first time I've run into a commercial in the midst of playing an online game. It's an interruption, like any commercial, but I don't hate the idea. Of course, it helps that the game itself is fun.
Re: Column frequency
Hey Will, it seems as if the frequency of your column has really dropped off. It is one of my personal favorites. What gives?
— Jerry
Will replies: Hi Jerry, sorry to be such a slacker. The answer is that I've been on paternity leave for August so I've just been trying to keep the blog warm so I don't totally lose all my readers while I'm out.
What's more, this week I'm on an actual vacation without regular Internet access (I'm at a Barnes and Noble right now). I thought I'd be able to keep working from the road but that's not worked out as I planned after all, so this week has been a dead fish.
The good news is that I'm not fired or cancelled or anything like that. I'll be back in full force (actually with more time to blog because we re-arranged some of my work responsibilities) after Labor Day.
As further good news (I hope) we're going to migrate Clicked to some more traditional blogware, which means smaller entries, categories, comments, RSS feed, etc. I hope to make that happen as early as next week. I'll be back in regular Internet range on Monday and hopefully I'll put up an entry in a few minutes before my quarter runs out here at the bookstore.
Thanks for your interest,
Will
What I clicked before I entered the naked airless space of Internet disconnectedness:
LaShawn Barber points out that the recent case of plane passengers refusing to fly with Middle Eastern looking men on board is a symptom of a lack of confidence in authorities' abilities to ensure our safety. I think there is also an element of the public being asked to contribute to the effort but not really being trained how to do it. In New York City we have signs on the subway that say, "If you see something, say something." But of course, if you say something you could tie up the city in security alerts that could cascade into a dip in the global economy. It's a fascinating parallel with what news agencies are wrestling with as they try to incorporate public news reports and photos. How to solicit help from the public without jamming the system with junk, and how to separate the useful stuff from the not-useful stuff. Of course, no trains blow up if we publish a bogus cell phone camera photo. With a movement toward participatory media and participatory journalism and participatory security (and participatory justice), when will we begin to see discussion of Democracy 2.0?
Actually, there already is something called Democracy 2.0. It's an exercise in participatory legislation in wiki form. If the country were starting from scratch, what laws should we have?
Aerial photography blog
10,000 reasons civilization is doomed — As I write this there are only 955. They want you to add your own reasons to the list. As might be expected, the list is a little messy toward the end.
On the implausibility of the Death Star's trash compactor
Slate presents: The 9/11 report: A graphic adaptation — It's done comic book style.
Weapons as women's accessories — very pretty hand grenades.
How much ice would I have to store up in the winter in order to air condition my house all summer? Short answer: a million pounds of ice, or a cube the size of your house.
The Shrinking Value of the Dollar — A chart showing the value of the dollar against its value in 1913. "In 2002, for example, it took $17.89 to buy what $1 bought in 1913."
"The legendary economist Milton Friedman's television show "Free to Choose" is now available on Google Video for free."
All your snakes are belong to us dance remix with video — Hysterical revolutionary war flag parody around 1:50. The Sally Struthers slide at 2:20 is good too. No nudity.
They ridiculous story of the CIA's cyborg spy kitty.
Tracing the fine line in marketing between treating your customers well and being a manipulative lying jerk just out to make a buck. Seeks to answer the question of how to push your stuff without being one of those people/companies who are always pushing their stuff. I found this interesting because I hate being marketed to, but if I had something to sell, how would I do it without marketing?
Speaking of trying to sell you something, 5 ways people waste money — The note on number 4 says, "A rule of thumb: always initiate your own purchases and never let anyone else start the process for you."
Weird Al has a MySpace
Armor of God pajamas. (Yes, they work.)
Even as Tropical Storm Debby shapes up, it's hard to ignore the slow hurricane season we've had so far in contrast with the hyped predictions a couple months ago and last year's record. While the first chart at this link is interesting in showing storm rates, the second graphic map of ocean temperatures is particularly intriguing. Mostly normal water temperatures with a lot of areas cooler than normal, but the northern waters are where the temperatures are higher than normal. I wonder if melting ice at the poles can keep down water temps elsewhere and mitigate some of the forecasted turmoil.
With all the northern manatee spottings I would have expected more red on the water temperature averages map on the East Coast.
Instead of body/mass index, Researchers say waist-to-hip ratio may paint better picture of fitness. "Ratios above 0.8 for women and 0.95 for men are linked to obesity-related complications and diseases." So I've got to make sure my butt is bigger than my gut to pass the test.
"Look At All Of These Passwords!" — This is mostly jibberish to me, but it's the most explicit I've seen in showing what a security weakness looks like. I've seen "watch what I can do" demos, but with these examples, even not understand the computer code you can see parts that make you say, "Oh, that's probably bad."
"With TrackMeNot, actual web searches, lost in a cloud of false leads, are essentially hidden in plain view." Given the filtering and automation performed on search databases, I'm not sure this solves anything.
Giant perplexing nests — Is there anything more exciting than an article that begins with "To the bafflement of insect experts..."
Aggregating peer reviewed research on social networking sites.
Why the dark matter theory is an example of good math. By the way, this is the link everyone is pointing to as a good explanation of dark matter. I'm copying the text out to read later when I'm back in the void of normal non-web space.
I've played this
acoustic version of Hey Ya four times in a row. Slammin'.
... is
finally out and it rocks. So good, I'm afraid to see the movie. (I love the lost Mars probe idea. Don't tell me you're not secretly convinced there's more to that story.)
Where are the (liberal) female flacks?
I am not a woman blogger
Popsugar is "a blog network, and more recently a social network, targeting young, hip women." I don't know much about female demographic code words, but reading through the site I'm thinking "young hip women" means teenage girls. It sounds like iVillage 2.0.
... from a reader the other day about guitar tab sites shutting down because of legal threats over copyright?
Ultimate Guitar is not afraid.
At some point, at least once, everyone who has seen "Who wants to be a millionaire" has said, "Can you imagine if someone got the first question wrong?"
Yeah.
"SOM’s tower in Guangzhou, China, aims to generate more energy than it uses." SOM is Skidmore, Owings & Merrill the architecture firm. "The tower will harvest wind, humidity, and solar power from the environment and use it to maximum efficiency through myriad interwoven systems." Click the slide show on the right for more specific examples of what they plan to do. Then imagine a city of these.
Meanwhile, in spite of the president's insistence that the country break its oil addiction, the nation's train system is apparently not a considered alternative. One person relays their slow sag from hope to despair on a recent train trip.
... of the
world's more attractive subway stations.
... and gave you one minute to describe everything there is to know about human behavior,
what would you say?"
Free stream of the
best of Stereolab
Particularly since the president has now name "
Islamic fascism," we ought to know what we're talking about.
Andrew Sullivan points out that according to British law, authorities can hold someone for 28 days without filing charges and so far they have not charged anyone with anything in relation to last week's terror plot. Ultimately his point is that he has more faith in the judicial system than the "trust me, they're terrorists" administration.
On the implausiblity of the explosives plot — This is the most detail I've read of how a bomb of the kind described by accounts of the plot would be made.
"I bet it will turn out to be a hoax." This guy was on Tucker's show the other day. His argument boils down to "they were wrong before, they're probably wrong now." As Tucker and many bloggers have pointed out, this is not a particularly sound basis for a national defense.
Olbermann: The nexus of terror and politics
In spite of the above, I'm inclined to wait for the due outcome of each case on its own merits. The conclusion I do feel compelled to draw, however, is that terrorism is losing its teeth, both politically and as a global extra-governmental tactic. People are becoming increasingly cynical about terrorists and terrorism and that cynicism may ultimately be the most effective tool in fighting terror.
Shorter Ann Althouse: Forcing a kid to spend 9 hours a day memorizing the Koran in a language he doesn't understand at an American madrassa is illegal and abusive and ought to be reported as such.
(And in case I'm sounding too confident in my conclusions, links like the above are the sort being pointed to by some bloggers to make the point that Islamic extremism (and therefore the threat of terrorism) is more common and closer than even the media hype would have us believe.)
Authorities Warning Women Not to Wear Gel Bras As Worries of Possible Female Bombers Increase — The report mentions baby bottles with false bottoms and containing peroxide found at a recycling center in the U.K. Can you imagine if the terrorists end up being convicted because they put the evidence in the recycling instead of destroying it? They don't have a problem littering the ocean with the charred remains of a plane and its contents, but polluting the Earth with empty baby bottles is just wrong.
Speaking of things not being allowed on planes, how about a tiny gun that shoots tiny bullets? Check the "gallery steel" for a look at how tiny it is.
Speaking of potentially dangerous portable things, "A portable hacking device equipped with hundreds of exploits and an automated exploitation system will go on sale in the United States in October."
Sort of spoiler: The Harry Potter fans at MuggleNet have posted a photo of Tonks in costume from the shooting of the new movie.
Yet another collection of AOL searchers — These are mostly obscene. They mostly follow the pattern of searching for normal stuff and then suddenly searching for something completely raunchy. Or searching for sex terms and then searching for something completely normal. Part of me thinks we should all have a good laugh over this and part of me says no way, there's a lot of sickos out there.
Related: What Are Web Surfers Seeking? Well, It's Just What You'd Think
What If 9/11 Never Happened?
16 Common Myths About Atheists
I'm not sure who J.D. is but this is indeed an amazing jump.
Jason Kottke gives color photos from a 1939 to 1943 collection a Photoshop treatment. Not the falsifying kind of treatment but the sharpen image, improve contrast kind of treatment.
CBS.com to stream hit shows for free — Now you can admit to watching Numb3rs without necessarily admitting that you were home watching TV on Friday night.
"Science has just published a short comparative study of international acceptance of evolution. Thirty-four countries were polled, and guess what? We score 33rd - edging out Turkey for last place."
Death to the Caps Lock key — All good points here. It's a huge key, it's in the way so that it gets hit accidentally. And who the heck uses it?
How to Do Nothing at Work, and Get Away With It — I'd settle for doing nothing on vacation.
101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006
The Top 20 Fitness Mistakes Beginners Make
Lightning hits a yacht — another good one for our casually collected lightning photo series.
Mormons: the correct answer
"There are now more overweight people across the world than hungry ones, according to experts." Um... that's a good thing, right?
Ahmadenijad Blog Contains A Little Surprise For Israeli Readers Using Windows and Internet Explorer (Not a happy surprise.)
Sneeze ring — I like the idea of making a cell phone less annoying by making the ring be something more natural and less jarring than those annoying beeps, but I'm not sure I like the idea of choosing a symptom of illness. Here in the cube farm people leave their desks and let their cell phones ring through to voicemail. I'd hate to listen to sneeze after sneeze.
This is probably one of those test crash flights, right?
I'm having a hard time caring about the whole "makaka" story (though I'd probably care more if that guy was representing me in Congress) but it has at least led to my clicking this list of ethnic slurs.
Commuter Click: "Studies of the mental processes of chess grandmasters have revealed clues to how people become experts in other fields as well"
10 Ways to Make Your Digital Photos Last Forever — Short version: delete nothing and take advantage of cheap storage by saving everything... twice.
"Here's a list of specific foods that raise your metabolism and help burn body fat." I wonder how cumulative these are. If you eat all this stuff, do you turn your body into a furnace? P.S. Don't take medical (or nutritional) advice from a random Web page.
I hope I'm not seeming obsessive about the AOL search term database story, but it really is fascinating. I clicked this blog entry doing some data crunching. If you scroll to the bottom you find a link to another entry of profiles compiled from search terms.
The 7 ways that people search on the Web — From this story I clicked through to ValleyWag's digging and then on to the tools listed on Consumerist and from there I just did a bunch of privacy invading until I got bored.
The Hotel Chelsea blog was able to check up on a couple guests.
AOL search record poetry
Speaking of drawing information from a huge collection of data, the
YouTube trends report #2 provides a window on how the video service is being used. It's a little dense, but good info if you're interested in this sort of thing.
Encyclopedia Brown And the Mysterious Presidency of George W. Bush — The Morning News had a PDF to an excerpt. I haven't read an Encyclopedia Brown book (and this is not a real one) in a million years, but I'm now feeling the urge to buy the whole set. How is it possible that this series hasn't been exploited by Hollywood/TV yet?
Remember that pirate political party in Sweden? They've announced the world's first commercial darknet called Relakks. Surf in total anonymity. Imagine what those search logs would look like.
Meanwhile, I had to read this description of Brightnets twice and I'm still not sure I get it. I think the idea is similar to what we saw a while ago (see the Monolith item at the top) regarding digital existentialism. Digital files are just ones and zeros, so whether those ones and zeros represent copyrighted material depends on how they're rendered. So if you take an mp3 file and render it as a jpg, you get nothing, noise if you're lucky, and certainly not anything anyone has a copyright on. Anyway, I think this works on a similar priciple. Give it a read and tell me if that's what you get out of it.
Post a list on your blog and possibly win prizes (and probably win traffic).
Blogger is rolling out some new features but on a sheer buzz level I'm seeing more discussion of Windows Live Writer, which is a desktop application that helps you compose a blog entry before publishing it.
Endgame is another Google Maps game. I recently clicked one that let you fly an airplane over a Google Maps image, but it eventually crashed my machine so I didn't bother posting the link. Anyway, the trend to note is Google game mashups.
And speaking of Google mashups, here's a mix of maps and video. The video is old, and I always thought it was a fast-motion movie with fake sound effects dubbed on it, so I'm not sure about the description on this page. But again, the point is to note a cool capability. I found it more interesting to watch with it zoomed in all the way.
The Old Time Radio Network
How to become a regular
Why Every Man Should Lift Weights — Oddly, no mention of aesthetic or "chicks dig muscles."
The collected clips of the Mike Wallace Ahmadinejad interview. I tried finding this on the CBS site, but couldn't find it easily so screw it, I'll watch the YouTube version.
Yesterday I clicked this Lebanese joke. Today I read more of them in this Washington Post article.
Video Jug is a collection of how-to videos produced by citizens of the Internet. Note: How to do a *** exam is the most viewed. No nudity on the main page but that video obviously contains bare boobies.
Everyone is talking about the grumbling geriatric widower videoblogging on YouTube. Catch up now while there are still only a few.
Robin Williams plays John Stweart as Presidential Candidate — This is a trailer for a movie called Man of the Year in which a commedian fake news host runs for president and wins. The campaign parts look the most satisfying.
Portland making progress in the war on cars
b5 Media is looking to hire (partner with) bloggers. You do the blogging, they handle the technicals. See the first comment for the answer to the pay question.
Second Lifers get first look at new hotel chain — Before they build a new hotel, they're building a virtual one in Second Life to see how people use the space and field any criticism. Could those kinds of virtual lessons really translate to the real world? I'm skeptical.
How to detect lies
Did you see this in the Times? A picture of a three neurons compared with a simulated picture of the universe, strikingly similar.
Law and Order: Special Letters Unit
Gamers are tickled to see a new Grand Theft Auto inspired Coke commercial with a happy ending.
Speaking of games, Tilt — Use your mouse to balance the thing on the tip of your finger. The cool part is that to play again you just keep trying. No load waits.
Advanced pong — Actually called "Insane Orb."
What if they threw a terror campaign and no one showed up?
Last week's terror arrests in the UK have produced more blog entries that I usually see that are critical of how we respond to terror news.
CONTINUED >>
18 Ways to Stay Focused at Work — Disregard number 17.
CONTINUED >>
Of the non-news coverage of today's events, I found myself appreciating the commentary at BoingBoing. Their liveblogging the news of the new carry-on item list included a mention that Transformers are explicitly allowed. That's no joke, they're on the list. Or is there some other definition of "toy transformer robots" that I don't know?
CONTINUED >>
Via internal note it is pointed out to me that friend and colleague Bob Sullivan got a more complete story of the Lieberman site and it's closer to hacking than the links I pointed.
Speaking of things I got wrong...
Re: Your item on the "Gallery of HDR photos of Cambridge University"
Hi Will:
I found this note on the last page of the HDR tutorial at the site you clicked. Seems to say these aren't really HDR photos after all.
Note: In response to multiple emails, no photo within my gallery uses the HDR technique. Only when necessary, I prefer to use linear and radial graduated neutral density filters to control drastically varying light. If used properly, these do not induce halo artifacts while still maintaining local contrast. Further, these have been a standard by landscape photographers for nearly a century. In some situations, however, I can certainly see when the photo would be unattainable without HDR.
Thanks for all the clicks!
—Eric
Will replies: Oops, goes to show what I know. I'm sure I stepped right onto a sore spot between experienced photographers and the new wave of digital picture takers. I assumed they guy was using a trendy new technique when in fact he was using a time tested practice of experienced photographers. Ug.
Will,
You asked about dust devils after viewing that video clip. I am from Nevada and I have seen ones this big and bigger appear. Usually they are away fields and on the outskirts of town but they are indeed just dust devils, slower and not nearly as strong as a tornado, but still impressive looking.
—Jason
About your video of a "tornado", you asked the questions, "How big can a dust devil get? Is this one?" The answer is YES it is a dust devil and they definitely can get many times bigger than the one in the video. I am a 55 year old native of Arizona and have seen these all of my life. A few years ago, west of Tucson, I watched one of the bigger ones move a compact car a couple of feet.
—David M.
Hello Will,
I don't know if you've seen this (it's old and deals with a 60 Minutes report from 2000) but it reflects directly on the skepticism some people have about the Lebanon images and how it isn't really a conspiracy theory but rather concern over deceptive manipulation of media.
I came close to just stopping it at times because it had that "Conspiracy Vibe" about it, but after seeing the snippets used by 60 Minutes and the raw footage I was fairly annoyed at how obviously staged the whole thing was.
—Sean
Will replies: Thanks Sean, that was interesting. It reminded me of something I read once about some Arabs simply not believing the 9/11 news footage. It's a compelling challenge: how you do you know that the news you're getting really happened? Of course, that answer is a lot easier now than it was when media choices were much fewer.
re: "The Philosophy of Liberty"
Will - "Clicked" is a standard part of my day - thank you!
This piece is one of the best explications of Libertarianism I've ever seen! It's the political philosophy I and tens of thousands live by now - and which we believe more people would adopt, if they were exposed to explanations as clear as this one.
Thanks for the link!!
— David
Will replies: Hi David. Is there an official Libertarian position on the war(s) or abortion?
Hello Will,
Take a look at AdvancedSearchBar.com.
Regards,
—Chad
Will replies: Thanks Chad. I confess, I'm not a fan of toolbars. If I could do all my surfing with keystrokes I'd get rid of all of them. That said, if I were a toolbar person it looks like this is a good one to have. (Although I wonder if more people are using Firefox extensions instead of toolbars lately.)
Emilie du Chatelet has always been one of my favorites.
Four other tasties I remember:
- The husband gave her and Voltaire permission to use his estate at Cirey outside of Paris for over 20 years. The deal was, though, that Voltaire had to update and keep stocked the game preserve as a payment. No mention of having relations with his wife; the husband didn't care.
- Emilie was handsome and tall, not pretty, and her parents despaired of marrying her off; all parties felt lucky when the older husband material showed up when she was well past the usual very young marrying age.
- Emilie translated Newton's Principia Mathematica into French. Thereby, she became the first French expert, and also, expert on Calculus. She basically brought Calculus and Newton's Laws of Motion, etc. to France. To this date, hers is the only translation of Newton into French.
- She used to act in Voltaire's plays during the summers at Cirey to the cognescenti from Paris. Then, later in the evening continue her scientific and mathematical studies and investigations. A real party girl and artist, and a real scientist.
Also, you might look up Lou Andreas Salome, famous for being Nietizche's favorite when she was 17, and then many others including Freud, and, when she was in her forties, the 19 year old German poet Ranier Maria Rilke. She was a deservedly famous and published philosopher in her own right. I call her the Isidora Duncan of philosophy. Some photographs exist; when she was young she looked like a young Catherine Deneuve.
Both amazing.
Best,
George
Will
Getting history form newspapers is a bad idea. Emilie du Châtelet has
been adulated plenty.
One site of refs.
—Dave
Will replies: Your point is well taken Dave. The phrase "that history forgot" is probably pretty obnoxious for historians to hear. That said, even the list you provide relies heavily on sources that describe her in the context of being a woman or her relationship with Voltaire. I wonder if a more appropriate headline would have been "the scientist that science forgot."
Speaking of history...
As the Arabs see the Jews...
This fascinating essay, written by King Hussein's grandfather King Abdullah, appeared in the United States six months before the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In the article, King Abdullah disputes the mistaken view that Arab opposition to Zionism (and later the state of Israel) is because of longstanding religious or ethnic hatred. He notes that Jews and Muslims enjoyed a long history of peaceful coexistence in the Middle East, and that Jews have historically suffered far more at the hands of Christian Europe.
I got it onto reddit yesterday...the comments were interesting. I'd love to see it hit your blog so a wider audience could have a look.
—Jason
Will replies: Thanks Jason. This calls to mind the blog entry we saw a couple weeks ago about why bloggers avoid talking about the Mideast situation. There is so much history and such specific facts and claims that it's hard to evaluate any position without doing a ridiculous amount of studying. Although "don't kill me" is a pretty simple position that doesn't need much studying. And I have a feeling some of today's terrorists aren't very well studied. P.S. Here's that Reddit discussion.
Here's a link for you Will...President Bush is apparently a robot piloted by a tiny German man! Pretty amusing video...
Love the blog, and keep up the clicks!
—Jeff
Will replies: Thanks Jeff. I'm trying to imagine what foreign leader an American parody would target. Surely not German, even after the "groping" thing. Kim Jong Il and Castro are probably the only two that would work.
There was a design concept a few years ago to generate electricity from the wind of passing cars on a freeway. The highway divider wind turbine concept seemed like a great way to recycle some wasted energy. Thought this fit in with your theme. However, I can surprisingly find very little info on what happened after the concept stage.
— Michael
Will replies: Thanks Michael, that's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. Surely there's a way to harness all that wasted energy. The other day I was thinking of something like this for subway tunnels because the trains push so much air. Surely setting up some turbines wouldn't add too much extra resistance to the train.
Re: Verbal pauses when giving speeches.
Howdy,
I am currently in the Air Force, and as part of our progression, career-wise, we have to attend a small course conducted by the Air Force to develop our knowledge on our profession of arms, leadership and speaking skills. As such, when I attended the course, I had to give 3 speeches on differing topics in front of the class. My assigned duty as a meteorologist has afforded me plenty of opportunities to speak in front of large groups of people, as there have been numerous briefings wherein I had to give a detailed explanation of what weather phenomena the crew was going to encounter on their specific flights. How this helped was that I was not afraid to speak in front of the class. How it hurt was that there were habits I had picked up along the way that were distracting and/or bad practice. How these were fixed has already been discussed: We were videotaped and our speeches were reviewed for the verbal "pauses". There was also discussion on the physical hiccups most people commit when giving speeches: the clicking of a pen if you have one in hand, the hand gestures that don't match the speech, things like that. What helped me was when going over my first speech, it was suggested that I place my hands on either side of the podium. This helped in two ways; 1) I had an "anchor" so that my hands wouldn't fly around and distract from the speech and 2) I was more able to focus on what I was saying. I am not suggesting that all people place their hands on a podium...there may not be one. Rather, I am suggesting having an "anchor" of some sort to help focus. This works with speech, too, because with my mind partially paying attention to keeping my hands on the podium, (only letting them come up on occasion for effect), that part of my mind that tended to let the "uhs" and "umms" was distracted, and I tended to use those verbal crutches a lot less.
Hope that was helpful to you,
V/R,
Stoney
Will,
The best "uhm" remedy I've ever heard is to get over your discomfort with silence. We've seen repeatedly in public-speaking classes that what feels like interminable pauses to you are not even noticed by your audience, or just make you sound thoughtful. So if you need to stop to think, just stop talking.
Love the column,
- Dan
Will-
Next up in the music industries fight with the Internet, guitar tab sites. Apparently knowing how to play a song written by somebody else and then passing that information on is illegal. Ridiculous.
—Scott
P.S. I read your posts daily, keep up the good work.
Will replies: Scott, I totally agree with you about the guitar tablature. We saw so
