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 something similar with sheet music not long ago. I understand that the people who write music need some way of comodifying their product so they can be paid for it, but it seems odd that other than actually playing the song, there is no free legal way to tell someone about a song you heard.
Will:
Thought you might be interested in this, this week's Popular Mechanics Show, which features a lively discussion of our test of so-called 'fuel savers,' among other things.
Gas prices are spiking, and so are the appearances of gadgets that promise drastic improvements in gas mileage. Senior automotive editor Mike Allen returns to the Popular Mechanics Show this week to chat about his in-depth, scientific tests of automotive gas mileage boosters. After that, Robert Bigelow chats about his newest venture, the first-ever inflatable spacecraft (and possible future of space hotel) and Tom Jones talks about spacewalking. Plus: Richard Aboulafia on the Eclipse 500 and very light jets (VLJs). Bonus: The iCarta, the world's first iPod enabled toilet paper dispenser.
—Benjamin
Will,
Terrorism, I believe, is defined as a politically motivated act meant to grab attention and force compliance with a cause. In other words, terrorist acts are misguided attempts to change some facet of public policy. Hate crimes, on the other hand, are motivated by prejudice of some sort and are specifically meant to cause pain or suffering to an individual or group based solely on hatred for a stereotype.
—Holley
Will replies: Thanks Holley, that's as good a definition as I've read anywhere else. I'm still not sure what that means for the Jewish Center shooter. I guess we'd have to ask him if he thought his actions would have a political impact? I think we might end up back at the "deranged" diagnosis.
Will,
It seems the IRS is very thorough in defining "other income" on this page. Bribes, illegal income and stolen property are all taxable, and you must report them as such.
—Scott
Will replies: Out of curiosity I checked to see what the charges were on the most recent bribery case I could think of. Sure enough, Congressman Cunningham pled guilty to "bribery and tax evasion." I wonder if the tax evasion was for not paying taxes on his bribe money.
Dear Will,
I would like to introduce you to Tripmates – a new travel website that launched today that gives the most comprehensive travel tips and tricks while connecting users with a social networking travel twist. Think Yahoo travel meets MySpace – or MyTripSpace, if you will!
I have included some more information below for you to review. Please let me know if you’re interested in a “Travel 2.0” story.
Thanks!
—Jamie
Will expands: Jamie is a PR guy, so I cut his note short, but still, the idea of "Travel 2.0" and using the Web to make travel a more social experience is a cool idea. I know people who've met up with online friends while traveling, but I'm not familiar with any sites designed for that explicit purpose. (Of course, now that I've said that I'll probably get a bunch mailed to me.)
Hey Will,
Check out this post.
Looks like some bloggers want to get to the truth in New Orleans.
See the original post here.
This is an interesting idea I thought.
—Andy
Will replies: Thanks Andy. For those who like to know what they're clicking before they click, this blogger is offering a thousand bucks for someone to go down to New Orleans to get the "real story." This is what Jay Rosen's New Assignment project is meant to do. I have mixed feelings about this particular case because I know there are a lot of media down there still and more to come as the anniversary approaches, but at the same time, I don't know that I've seen a report on trailer communities in N.O., so I would be interested to hear more about that, whatever the source.
Regarding your mention of the Tesla Roadster.
I think that is an awesome looking ride, but it reminds me too much of a previous electric hotrod that made waves a few years ago. I wonder if it is the same people?
—Craig
The way to test a pineapple is to pull a leaf from the top. If the leaf comes out easily, it's ripe. (And I've never even been to Hawaii!!)
-Ann
Will replies: This not only explains how to tell if a pineapple is ripe, but also why the pineapples as the supermarket are missing leaves.
Will,
I was only 8 years old in 1971 but I sure do remember the horror of that era. This site details the atrocity that was 1971. Hope to see it included in a future Clicked!
—Kenny
Will explains: Kenny's being funny. It's the 1971 Sears catalog.
Birds for Bulbs — you switch at least one of your lights to a CFB (Compact Fluorescent Bulb), and she will draw you a bird. It's simple to do, for a good cause, and absolutely adorable.
—Diana
re: NPR story and the photograph
Hi, Will
It would be a good deed on your part to refer people to HungerSite.com where they can click for free each day and the sponsors donate to help the hungry. The site also includes additional tabs for other needs.
Regards,
Barbara
In today's posting of Clicked, you cited the NPR Story about the photographer Kevin Carter. You might be interested to know that the photo he won the Pulitzer for, and his subsequent suicide played a central role in the 2000 novel "House of Leaves" by Mark Danielawski. This book is one of the most disturbing and innovative books that I have read in years. Here is the wikipedia articles on House of Leaves, and Ergodic Literature, which this book falls under.
Thanks,
Daniel
Hi, Will. Love the blog, I try to catch it every day, provided work allows.
I recently wrote a blog post of my own on the headaches and hassles involved in lightning photography; check it out at Shards and Phractures.
Would love to hear what you think...
—AD
Will replies: Nicely done! I'm glad to read your description of what a pain it is to get those shots. When you just look at the final product it looks so easy. P.S. Folks who couldn't get my earlier links to load can find my meager attempts at lightning photos here and the stitched photos using Autostitch here.
Will,
I found this on another site that has a similar bit sized info/pop culture bent. Anyways, the Chinese seemed to have built a military installation with a giant diorama topographical map. It was found by people using google maps. It's pretty crazy. Turns out that the Chinese military built a model of a mountainous region on the border between China and India. But no one really knows why. Here is the link.
—Dan
AOL's disturbing glimpse into users' lives — Lists more sample search terms by specific users. These are really very fascinating. It's a shame there's no way to share them just for the sake of imagining the stories. I can see why someone at AOL would want to share them. The insights are really compelling.
If search records suggest that a person is planning a crime, say, murder, should authorities do anything about it? Isn't that essentially what the government wants to do with plotting terrorists?
The Times actually tracked someone down using their search info.
In spite of the scandal, you can still play with the database a little.
BBC Web editor on trusting photos
Meanwhile, there are so many of these bogus or misleading photos I can barely keep up. Here's one from a NYTimes slide show in which the guy who looks mortally wounded in one shot is seen clambering around the rubble in other shots.
And the toy photos, ug. All of this makes me wonder about the future success of citizen journalism. Are news organizations going to be less trusting of sources outside their immediate employ? It's ironic a lot of the bloggers who don't trust the mainstream media are the same ones exposing the freelancers who (one would think) would be outside the mainstream system.
Speaking of terrorism and manipulation, Only traitors try to make us afraid of terrorists — "[T]he case against being afraid of terrorism is laid out in irrefutable logic, backed with credible, documented statistics about terrorism's risks." Links to a 5 page pdf. A good commuter click.
George Galloway may have made a laughing stock of himself on that reality show, but I've never seen him speaking when he wasn't putting on a show. I saw this clip at a number of different links last night.
Speaking of clips that are all over the place, I'm also seeing a lot of this one. Some people are calling it a tornado, but I don't think there'd be anyone hanging around next to it like that. How big can a dust devil get? Is this one?
A weekend L.A. Times profile of the guy behind the Girls Gone Wild series portrays him as a real pig (surprise). A lot of bloggers took the bait and voiced their disdain for the man.
Only the best magic card trick in the world! This really is a pretty good trick. I hope this thing doesn't go too viral or it'll be worthless.
Duran Duran is having its own island built in Second Life, along with avatars, etc. How long before companies want to be represented in online games the way they want regular Web sites or MySpace pages?
Actors seek new scale for new media — It's not just advertisers that are trying to figure out how to evaluate downloadable content.
Swiss public toilet — You can see out of it but not into it. Apparently freaky nonetheless to see people in public while you're doing your business. Though probably pretty appealing to perverts, I think on the whole it would inhibit anti-social behavior in public toilets.
Ben and Jerry's is offering waffle cone room spray so your house can smell like an ice cream shop. For an extra 5 bucks they'll come to your house and rub ice cream on all your horizontal surfaces so they're nice and sticky, then they'll put a puddle of chocolate ice cream on your seat for you to sit in when you're not looking.
The Myth of the Living-Room PC — I was all set to disagree with this, but really he's not talking about simply computers in the living room, he's talking about some of the media center ideas that were the subject of a lot of hype but never really became anything. Using a computer that uses some of the characteristics of television (sitting back on the couch with a remote) hasn't quite caught on.
As for computers in the living room, I think progress has been amazing. Wifi and a laptop was the biggest step for me, but folks are doing online gaming and more with their Xboxes and even DVRs (Tivo) count as computers I'd say. I don't think it can still be argued that the computer is necessarily the thing in the corner of the home office/playroom with all the wires and boot discs scattered everywhere that no one ever plays with because they're all in the living room watching TV.
How to Make Stop-Motion Video Shorts with Your Digital Camera — It says to use iMovie, but at the very bottom there are alternative programs you can try. I haven't made one myself, but I think I'll play with it this weekend.
5 reasons to teach toddlers sign language — Don't skip the comments.
Speaking of lists, top 10 reasons to be a librarian — Not terribly convincing, but still interesting perspective on what that occupation is like.
7 Reasons the 21st Century is making you miserable — Related to this recent headline about loneliness in Americans.
Deviant Art has relaunched
An impressive photo of wake turbulence (The site in general has a lot of cool stuff, but I found it a little awkward to navigate. It seems mostly set up for people who know what they're looking for.)
Speaking of turbulence, dry ice bombs (and idiots)
A photo a day for three years, made into a movie — Just the head, no body. I'm thinking that if you're going to do this, you should probably also lose weight or choose a period in life when something significant happens that changes the way you look (ever see before/after presidential photo comparisons?). It looks like this woman lost a bit of weight, but otherwise the most interesting part to me was watching the winter season come and go in her turtlenecks.
The Time Fountain — He made a little strobe kit that flashes at or close to the rate of dripping water such that it looks like the drops are hanging in the air. It's the same principle that makes car wheels look like they're spinning backward on TV or under fluorescent lights.
There will be voting all week on the most influential Flash site(s) of the decade. (Flash is 10 years old.)
Giant Robot Imprisons Parked Cars — It's not a new version of "the boot" it's the story of how robot garage operators were fired and they took their software with them so now the cars are stuck. No word on Sarah Connor.
"Why I am no longer a Christian."
"The person who mailed anthrax spores in 2001 remains at large."
Dave Sifry is back again reporting on the state of the blogosphere. Still growing like crazy. I like the "daily posting volume" charts the best in these reports.
Gallery of HDR photos of Cambridge University. Comes with quite a list of tutorials.
Bicycle ballet
The weird thing about the crashing of Joe Lieberman's site yesterday was that everyone was talking about "the bloggers" like it's some kind of mystery force that makes sites crash. It looks like the real explanation has more to do with poorly anticipated hosting costs. UPDATE: Bob says it was a hack afterall.
This may be mainstream news by morning, or else it'll be old news, having happened over the weekend, in which case, it's good that it happened in the blogosphere where the historical record is better preserved:
Fresh in the Clicked mailbag: Another Fake Reuters Photo from Lebanon
Wait, another? Yeah, there was this one earlier.
Warblogging A listers figured out that Lebanese freelance photographer for Reuters, Adnan Hajj, has been fudging the photos. Unlike previous blog accusations which were taken seriously enough to deny but not seriously enough to act upon, this time it is real enough for Reuters to suspend the guy. (UPDATE: I originally had "fired" instead of "suspended," but of course, a freelancer can't be fired because he's not actually a Reuters employee. Instead they "terminated their relationship" with him. A reader who pointed this out (thanks Jay) also included this link to the Reuters announcement which explains that they've also removed all of this photographer's pictures from their database.)
Related: A history of bloggers vs. Reuters
The absurdity of it all yields humor for some. We can probably expect the question of war propaganda and media integrity to move past blogs to mainstream discourse this week (provided there are no celebrity drunk driving arrests).
Speaking of playing with photos, photo-deblurring may do in automatic post production when anti-shake features do in some higher-end cameras. The technology is based on something called a "blur kernel."
Speaking of mastering the blur, The astounding angry face — The expressions on two faces change depending on how far away you are when you view them. Also works to just squint at them.
Does the bump key mean the end of locks as we know them? And for all the time that locks have been in use, how did it take so long to figure out this idea? 3:45 has the explanation. Interesting to note that like the car stealing trick we read about earlier, insurance companies won't pay out because there's no damage and the lock is supposed to be thief proof. And by the way, this howto document was logged into Delicious in February of 2005. Has the industry corrected the problem since then?
"Travis Pastrana is the First Person to ever Land the Double Backflip in X Games competition...." And he does it so cleanly you almost wonder what the big deal is.
"In early 2005, a few people fed up with the way the Internet was heading, began in earnest to create a large wide area network that was secure and lived in its own space." As you know, this is what a "dark net" is, and it's an example of the concern some people have that a failure of net neutrality will result in a fragmenting of the Internet.
How to DJ your first set without knowing how.
Mainstream Media Meltdown III — A round-up of media statistics showing traditional media losing ground to the Internet.
Speaking of the Long Tail blog, this weekend I caught up on the criticism in the Wall Street Journal of the Long Tail theory (summarized here), as well as the reply and the reply to the reply.
And speaking of catching up this weekend, Robert Young's reply to Mark Cuban's open challenge to come up with ideas to get people to see a movie without spending a lot on advertising was worth keeping around until I had time to read it. It's a novel mix of coupons and word of mouth marketing.
Speaking of new ways to promote movies, how about Sam Jackson voicemails?
BBC timeline of 15 years since the Web went world wide.
Wow, Siskel and Ebert hated each other.
The philosophy of liberty — Flash movie of moderate length. Because I thought this was an anti-war video at first, I tried to think of pro-war arguments to disagree with the statements made. Then I got the idea that it was an anti-government video and tried to think of pro-government arguments. Then I thought it might be advocating a pro-choice position... Anyway, it's a good exercise in thinking about the definition of liberty and what that means in terms of governance.
Speaking of intellectual exercises, Juan Cole lays out at length a theory growing in popularity that the situation in Lebanon is part of a larger play for control of oil. Of course, we've seen "war for oil" arguments before, and Cole presents this one only as a "thought experiment," but for the sake of keeping up with ideas on the fringe, it's at least interesting to note the theme of controlling the oil in the ground, not the oil market.
Speaking of Juan Cole, I've finally read through a satisfying amount of the discussion of whether his blog played a role in his being denied a tenured position by Yale, and, for that matter, whether it should have.
"A study of 61 male university students found those who were hungry were attracted to heavier women than those who were satiated." I don't think that's what is meant by "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach."
Not really related but in a similar category: beauty is a female trait.
Though it doesn't work in all cases, Work Friendly transforms the Web page you're reading into something that looks work related.
The Wilhelm Scream Compilation — Yeah, it's a real thing.
Though I can't really fault the kids who thought up the idea of pairing a moped with playground equipment (what the heck do we call that in America? A merry-go-round, right?), they probably should have left the humans out of it.
The best explanation I've read for why search records, even when they're made anonymous, matter. And why AOL's voluntary release of a huge number of them has caused some to call for a boycott. (Why anyone (alive) would still be a customer of this company is beyond me.)
This looks like one of those videos that comes from a TV commercial. Could it really have happened that a tire fell off a vehicle and struck a person with such precision and was caught on security tape and published to the Internet? When I was a kid, I had a basketball hoop on a pole planted in cement on the edge of the yard facing the street. One day a pick-up drove by with a hitch trailer. The trailer came loose and skidded across the street, sheering the basketball hoop off at the ground. You know a trailer hitch is only a few inches across, and the post was maybe 6 inches or so in diameter, and yet they found each other by fluke (and the guy was apologetic and replaced the hoop). Anyway, that's the main reason why part of me believes the video. Meanwhile, the Digg thread on this video has lots of other similar cases, plus I clicked this.
Unsuspecting man gets into a cab with an insane driver who is actually a stunt person employed by a hidden camera show. The audience laughs riotously. The man...? (Only on Japanese TV.)
It's Darth Vader's own fault that so many people parody him. (That and the fact that parodies are not discouraged by StarWars.com.)
Speaking of all of today's YouTube videos, in case you were curious how YouTube decides what image to use in the video tease, it's the very middle frame.
The Wall Street Journal looks into who made a viral YouTube video mocking Al Gore and global warming and finds a path (tracing the IP info in the e-mails with the clip's creator) leading to a D.C. PR firm that also happens to represent Exxon Mobil. (Interesting comment from the Exxon guy given the relatively small number of views of this video, even with paid placement in Google and this WSJ article.)
Which brings me to my previous entry. By using the headline "Four degrees of viral" I meant to point out that there's the essentially viral watercooler type talk, the more formally viral "did you see this?" type of online distribution, the amateur production with a fan base kind of viral, and then there's the cynical, commercial, viral-because-we-say-it-is type of viral.
I was content to let the Agency.com video speak for itself, but I admit there's some joy in seeing it being torn apart by the online marketing community. The folks at Coudal crafted their own video response. And Steve Rubel pulled no punches with his headline, "Agency.com's YouTube Pitch is Lame."
There is the argument that if everyone is talking about it, it worked, but I think there's a limit to the "all publicity is good publicity" maxim, particularly when the publicity crosses the line into backlash.
Speaking of links in the last entry, that Colbert Report Wikiality video caused mayhem on Wikipedia.
Speaking of viral, check out the legitimately viral stars in this video from We Are The Web.
The Times has a well done before/after interactive of southern Beirut. (Before and after the recent bombings, that is.)
Cool rainbows — but cooler still is that once you flip through all the rainbow slides, it has slides about the science of rainbows that are really interesting.
DV Labs DVD quality online video that loads wicked fast — We may have linked to it before. The display is just a VW commercial, but still, you can imagine how the role of the Web would (will?) change if (when?) all online video is like this.
News agencies stand by Lebanon photos — Pretty fascinating that a blogger's conspiracy theory would be addressed by mainstream photojournalists.
"As Google becomes more crucial to the revenues of online news sites, its practice of withholding ads from edgy stories threatens Web journalism." This sounded alarming, but having read the article I think I understand what's going on. In fact, I was gabbing about something very similar today with regard to autopublishing wire stories and advertisements. When ads are based on a story's keywords, it can sometimes result in poor pairing. The article about the murderous slasher will draw an ad for kitchen knives. For advertisers, their threshold for what content they want associated with their ads goes beyond the obviously offensive to more general kinds of content. So while I don't know this for a fact, I'd guess that Google withholds ads on pages it thinks its advertisers won't want to appear next to. As for threatening Web journalism, I'm not worried.
The Reddit folks have surfaced a photo that has had quite a viral life in e-mail and may now be poised to make those rounds on the Web. Snopes says it's real.
YouTube highlights this clip of a tornado forming. You may have seen it previously on Discovery Channel. What I think is funny is the dynamic between Katie and Jim. I can't tell if they need separate trucks or if they should stop pretending and go get a room.
Dear Hollywood producers, someone call Hillary Swank right now and book her for the movie version of The Scientists Whom History Forgot. Amazing story.
How 'bout this lightning photo! (Now that I've been studying the technique I now notice what the long exposure does to the lights in the rest of the picture.)
"When you hear the words “World’s biggest” there is always a frisson of excitement." World's largest hedge.
I'm embarrassed to say, I don't hate this. Something I've been discussing with people lately is whether there's an accepted vlogging style or whether there's just a lot of Rocketboom rip-offs. To some extent, if you're working with limited resources the tools tend to dictate the format. But presumably Yahoo isn't working with the same limitations, so is their thing a rip-off or simple "vlog style?"
"This post is part of the Avant-Garde Blog-A-Thon." I clicked the one on Joseph Cornell. Scroll to the end of the post for the list of participants.
Treadmill dancing — Coming soon to a health club near you.
Dangerous Beauty: The Art of the Shiv
638 ways to kill Castro — Doesn't actually list them all but does tell some funny stories about efforts and ideas by his enemies, particularly the CIA. The title reminds me a little of those bunny suicide cartoons.
Speaking of animals dying, Chinese county clubs to death 50,000 dogs spawned some of the angriest Letters to the Editor I've ever seen.
Speaking of links on this site that showed up in my surfing elsewhere, Newsweek's explanation of what TMZ is was big. Folks who've been paying attention to gossip blogging have been familiar with TMZ for a while now, but for many people, this Mel Gibson story was a first exposure.
Also from MSNBC.com, Is heat wave a result of global warming? I was expecting this to be one of those "global warming doesn't really mean it's hotter out" stories, but this is the closest I've seen to saying this heat wave is unique and likely tied to altered weather patterns consistent with global warming. No mention of global warming in the South Africa harsh winter story, however.
I'm blogging as I watch the much-hyped Project Runway scandal episode. Without saying any spoilers, my vote is yes, the decision made was the correct one. (I worked at a restaurant with Bonnie the contestant back when she was an F.I.T. student, hence my interest in this season's show.)
Stephen Colbert hits another one over the viral fence with his word of the day: Wikiality. Wikiality is when something is true because enough people believe it. I wonder if they know after writing a script if a segment is going to catch fire online. They've probably figured out which topics draw that kind of attention.
Speaking of viral video, Chad Vader part 2 is out.
And still speaking of viral, sort of, is this movie by an ad agency trying to attract the attention of Subway subs in the hopes of landing them as a client. The success of the video by viral distribution is meant to demonstrate their ability as an online marketer.
Really Ready — Which means, maybe you thought you were ready, but you weren't and now that you've read this site you are. This is really jaw-droppingly nervy; revolutionary really, and I don't mean that in a bad way. In short Homeland Security put out a site with advice on how to deal with emergencies and the Federation of American Scientists disagreed with either the advice or the way it was presented (or both) and made their own site, Really Ready. Who do you trust more?
Buttermilk fried chicken recipe
Transparent Canoe-Kayak — What a great idea this is. I wonder if they've done anything to keep from scratching it up when you pull it to shore.
"Remix the Ring is the first in a series of interactive features in the Compose Yourself zone of the CBC Radio Music Commissions website."
Television commercials from the 50s and 60s. Lots of them.
Self Help and Personal Development for Lazy People
Knock-based commands for your Linux laptop — This link is way more technical than I usually post, but all that really matters is the headline and the video.
Essentially, this is a Fonzi hack. You computer can actually feel you hitting it and execute a command as a result. (Not that hard.)
Heath Leger set to play Joker — I thought Batman Begins was the best yet, and really good even judged on its own, so the best news in this article is that Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan are sticking around. I always thought Willem Dafoe would make a good Joker, but of course, he's already been in Spider Man (where they inexplicably covered his cool super villain face with a bulky mask!!)
Entries in a video game competition available for download for free.
"Whenever Congress passes a bill late on a Friday night, check your wallet." A deeper look at the minimum wage bill that just passed the House.
A password for your credit cards — The idea is that it generates a random one-time password that you use as authentication when you order online. The amazing thing is that they manage to fit a battery, chip, and display into a regular credit card.
Speaking of putting a lot in a small space, Sony has added even more new features to the Cyber-shot. (I keep an early model Cyber shot in my pocket at all times. You never know.)
And speaking of new Sony gizmos, not included with the camera, but working closely with it is a new GPS device. You connect the GPS to the camera when you take a picture so it records the exact location of the photo as metadata. From there it helps you plot your photo on a map. It's only 150 bucks, which is cool, but I got a handheld GPS for Christmas a couple years ago and it's almost worthless if you can't see a good amount of the sky. Caveat emptor. (But at least it'll impress the ladies.)
Railway passengers generate electricity — I love this idea. How much electricity could we generate if we wired up all the turnstiles and revolving doors? I once suggested that we should harness all the moving vehicles to generate a little power too, but took a little heat for trying to violate conservation of energy.
Evolution's foes lose ground in Kansas
Start collecting your weatherblogger links now, Tropical Storm Chris may turn into something.
"Josh is in jail and this is his mom." He has video of a protest march that a judge wants to see and he won't cough it up.
Bush Grants Self Permission To Grant More Power To Self
Juan Cole has been blogging the Israel/Lebanon conflict with zeal. As have the folks at PajamasMedia.
Perry Farrell interviews Shepard Fairey — You probably know him without realizing it. He's huge.
As the popularity of Qana as a search term on Technorati indicates, the deaths there represent a significant turning point for a lot of people in their assessment of the situation. If you pick through the list you'll also find some conspiracy theories developing about "what really happened" there. Some are based on the timing of the bombing versus the collapse. Others are based on the condition of the bodies in the photos from the scene (too terrible to link to). For some, the events at Qana were clarifying. For others, they only made matters murkier.
Speaking of links to the Jawa Report, we had a good watercooler buzz here at the cube farm this morning about the difference between an act of terrorism, a hate crime, and a deranged crazy person. Some bloggers are advocating the position that the Muslim guy who shot up the Jewish center in Seattle should be called a terrorist. Since surely terrorism is a subset of hate crime, what does it take to move a shooting like this from one category to the other? Is it the pressure of political correctness that keeps out the terrorism label or the political stakes of the war on terror? (Or is there a technical legal definition that I don't know and we need to get a lawyer to hang around our water cooler?) UPDATE: I see the shooter had recently converted to Christianity, but the overall question stands. Do you agree that MSNBC.com should have filed its story in the Crime and Punishement section or does it belong in the U.S. Security section with the terror related stories?
Speaking of terrorism, The Man Who Put Al-Qaeda on the Web — Interesting but pretty long. It always surprises me that we don't hear more about the cyber side of the war on terror.
I don't know if I've ever seen as much positive link frenzy over a Microsoft product as there is for Photosynth. It's a photo stitching software that figures out where your pictures overlap and puts them together into a navigable 3-D image. It reminds me a little of the AutoStitch software I mentioned last week. One really cool application that Adam Shepard mentions in this video is that they could use the photo recognition feature along with search such that you could take a picture of something and submit it to their database and get back information on what it is you're looking at. The video on the official page talks about moving through the world as everyone contributes images that are woven together. I also watched some of the Channel 9 video. (They're always too long for me to watch the whole thing.)
Speaking of new Microsoft stuff, contrary to the disastrous live presentation of Microsoft's new voice recognition software, I've heard it works pretty well (in a relative, the-old-version-was-way-worse kind of way). P.S. Look for "Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all" to enter common geek parlance along with phrases like "All your base are belong to us."
Man lifts car off pinned cyclist — A quick scan of comments found one mention of Superman and strangely no mention of the Hulk.
Can you imagine the sheer awe when the skaters first found this rail?
I cheated and used Scoble's Blogher notes to find good stuff from the conference including Christine.net, the Technorati tag category, and the official conference blog. I'm less interested in marketing than Scoble is, but was still struck by his points about the broader interests represented at this conference.
Movies whose copyright has expired and are therefore free to download. Nice if you like old movies.
Speaking of free downloads, How the Pirate Bay raid changed Sweden — To answer the headline's question, according to this piece it raised sympathy for filesharing to the point of creating an influential political movement. I'm having a hard time imaging how a "Piracy Party" could have enough issue-depth to draw a following, but I guess it's an important cause in Sweden. (The Pirate Bay is a hugely popular BitTorrent filetrading site that was recently raided by police as the result of pressure from groups like the MPAA.
Malaysia outlaws unsuitable names — Given the examples, I thought they were talking about online screen names, but apparently there's a tradition in some Malaysian cultures to give children unusual names. The Freakonomics blog pointed out the funny list of related stories at that link, which list all the things Malaysia has been banning lately.
Transponder car keys are billed as making the car unstealable, which looks like a false assertion. However, because everyone believes that's the case, insurers are using it as the basis to deny claims when the car actually is stolen. (An unstealable car can't be stolen and therefore you stole it yourself and are attempting to commit insurance fraud.) This article is also an indictment of the security of RFID tags. **The piece is actually two articles or else it's written backward because the cool part is page three and has nothing to do with transponder keys or insurance. It's about a cheat code hidden in his car's emergency brake. I know motorcycles have similar cheat codes to disable security systems without using the key fob.
The new Knitty, online knitting magazine, is out.
Speaking of cars, photos of a suspended Honda F-1. By "suspended" they mean all of its parts are hanging from the ceiling by threads, so it looks like an exploded maintenance diagram.
The televised footage of the original moon landing was apparently actually a camera pointing at a screen that was playing the real footage. This means there's a much clearer copy in existence somewhere. The question is where. I'm imagining the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The Big Bang – Common Misconceptions
I'm not sure what has brought it to the fore now, but the Flying Spaghetti Monster hate mail blog is sheer hilarity.
Congress again demonstrates its poor understanding of the Internet. They might as well ban kids from using the phone because a pedophile might call them. That last paragraph is funny.
Jeff Jarvis reinvents the publishing industry in a single blog entry.
Speaking of publishing, a publishing tycoon apparently has a book out about how to get rich. The review, however, seems to be more about how to be rich. Favorite line: "If it flies, floats or fornicates, always rent it — it’s cheaper in the long run." Steal that and the screenplay writes itself.
The popularity dialer — Funny but also kind of creepy. Not only can you schedule it to call you so it looks like your popular enough for someone to actually bother to ring your phone, but it plays half of a pre-recorded conversation. So you could answer on speaker phone and use a memorized script to pretend to have a conversation with someone who likes you.
Since we saw fruit-ripeness stickers the other day, why not egg boiling indicator ink? It changes color depending on how hard boiled the egg is. Again, I see the utility in this but I'm reluctant to give up on simply learning how to do it. You can use the magic ink, but aren't you cooler if you just know (by learning) how to make the perfect egg?
Commuter Click: Amateur hour; Journalism without journalists — Looks like he throws some cold water on the enthusiasm for collaborative public journalism.
