ABOUT CLICKED

The modern news consumer ignores Weblogs and online citizen journalism at his own peril. But not everyone has the time to keep track of what's going on the Web. With this blog we hope to track the highlights of what's being discussed online so when news breaks from the Web, we're ready.

Will Femia is a Weblog enthusiast who, through good fortune and dumb luck, was introduced to the form as his position as chat producer for MSNBC.com careered into obsolescence. On any given day, Will can be found having already spent an unhealthy amount of time squinting at a computer screen.

Send a message to Will at spotter@msnbc.com



Home alone

Posted: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 12:36 PM by Will Femia

A missed Mother's Day link:  "Remember to give your mom $138,095 today to tell her just how much you value her."

Speaking of how much a household costs, The two-income trap - The tax rate is a key calculation in this but on the whole it will give you pause if you feel like you're working on a treadmill. (In case you're not familiar, the trap is that all the money you make through a second income is spent on things like daycare that are required in order for the second income to happen.

Speaking of how you live, I keep reading about the Flatland project.  The comments at Apartment Therapy aren't very enthusiastic but I find it oddly compelling.

Speaking of domestic design, Contemporary rugs of interest - Definitely the first time I've linked to a rug Web site.

Skyscraper Creates All Its Own Energy

Speaking of items on blogs that suck you in for a while, oil cooled computer in a fish tank.

Speaking of immersing technology in fluids, how to make an ice light bulb.

Speaking of how-to videos, The 10 Best Places To Find How-To Videos

Speaking of all of these home/how-to links, someone recently mentioned that I should check out houseblogging, which, judging by the Google results, looks like home improvement blogging.

Flickrvision is pretty much exactly like Twittervision but instead of seeing the Tweets you see the photos people are plotting on their Flickr maps. I really like the Flickr map idea and I've used it several times.  My only complaint is that as a user I lose patience with having to write a headline, caption, then think of tags, then think of pools to submit the photo to and then plot it on a map and maybe even add it to a collection or group.  And that's all after the actual production work on the photo.  I don't mean to complain but sometimes there is such a thing as too many features.

a.placebetween.us picks a location between two points. So if I want to have coffee with my boss in Redmond, the fairest place for us to meet is in South Dakota. The cooler feature is that if you decide that the geographic "place between us" isn't quite right, you can drag their little marker and it'll automatically call up new places around where you moved the marker.

Still speaking of maps, no link on this one, you have to fire up Google Earth.  But it might be fun to play Google Earth safari with a kid if you've got one:

BUFFALOS: 4°17′21.49″ S 31°23′46.46″ E
CAMELS: 15°17′40.32″ N 20°28′47.42″ E
ELEPHANTS: 10°54′13.66″ N 19°56′06.15″ E
FLAMINGOS: 21°50′36.15″ S 35°27′00.60″ E
HIPPOS: 6°53′53.00″ S 31°11′15.40″ E
6°54′00.10″ S 31°11′11.67″ E
ORYX: 24°57′18.60″ S 15°51′30.61″ E
SEALS: 18°26′45.45″ S 12°00′44.20″ E

The DNC threatens a Free Republic poster with a defamation lawsuit.  This Powerline blog entry looks at the big picture of whether such a lawsuit would hold up and accuses the DNC of thuggery.

Guy heckles Ken Griffey Jr. and receives his jock. I won't pretend to totally understand this but as sports stories go it's fun.  Note that I will not be mailing any undergarments to trolls however.

"May 14th [was] the official deadline for cable modem companies, DSL providers, broadband over powerline, satellite internet companies and some universities to finish wiring up their networks with FBI-friendly surveillance gear, to comply with the FCC's expanded interpretation of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act."

ThinkProgress frames the ban on photography at the scenes of bomb attacks in Iraq as part of an effort to cover-up the war and its atrocities. I don't have a link handy (anyone care to submit one?) but I know the counter argument well: those bomb attacks are for the benefit of the cameras, to the extent that the media is sometimes tipped off about an attack before it happens, just to ensure graphic footage. (I'm not speaking for NBC here, I'm just repeating the argument I've read so many times before.) The whole piece describes the belief that reporting the successes of the enemy emboldens the enemy. Can a democracy that relies on an informed citizenry conduct a war without allowing the revelation of bad news? Or is this all part of the reason why war should not be entered into lightly?

"Today CBSNews.com informed its staff via email that they should no longer enable comments on stories about presidential candidate Barack Obama. The reason for the new policy, according to the email, is that stories about Obama have been attracting too many racist comments." Tsk. Duh.

Drum machine

What's the deal with Alaskan bridges to nowhere?  TPM Muckraker follows the money.

By now you've no doubt seen the video of the BBC guy flipping out on the Scientology guy.  In case you wondered what the BBC guy could have to say for himself after that, he wrote about it.

Commuter Click: Shaping the future - "Here's a transcript of my talk, which discusses certain under-considered side effects of some technologies that you're probably already becoming familiar with."

"A bullied teenager will receive substantial damages and an income for life after a Supreme Court judge found NSW educational authorities failed in their duty of care to deal with playground assaults and bullying." NSW is New South Wales I think. It may seem like an outrageous result for something so common as bullying, but at least he didn't go on a shooting spree.  And to that point, I have to think it's better for the school system to see bullies as a financial threat than to see social outcasts as a murderous threat.

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Comments

The bullied teen story is sad... but what's really sad is that the mom knew about the bullying and still thinks it is all the schools' fault. Why didn't she pull the kid and put him in a different school? Why does she let him play videogames all day in his room? He should be seeing a therapist.

Dave. E, Seattle WA (Sent Tuesday, May 15, 2007 5:20 PM)

Hey Will, The talk by Charlie Stross was the best thing I've read in a good while - great fun and very provocative. Also, I (sadly) just bult a new computer. I put it in a box instead of an aquarium. It's things like these that keep me coming back. Thanks. Roger

Roger Asher (Sent Tuesday, May 15, 2007 5:24 PM)

Interesting. I used a.placebetween.us to look for a hotel between my house in FL and my parent's house in PA. Number one response? A hotel in Costa Rica. I think I'll take my chances finding something in North Carolina...

Mnementh, Callahan FL (Sent Wednesday, May 16, 2007 8:02 AM)

Are the Google Earth animal pictures real? They look like they're artificially pasted in, given how clear they are compared to the surrounding areas.

Meg, Hartford, CT (Sent Wednesday, May 16, 2007 8:30 AM)

Costa Rica came up for me as well? The marker doesn't show that. Is that just a google ad at the top?

Patrick, Chicago, IL (Sent Wednesday, May 16, 2007 11:11 AM)

Mnementh, Same here. I put in two close locations and the first place was Italy.

John doe, Seattle, Wash. (Sent Wednesday, May 16, 2007 12:12 PM)

I'm taking a vacation to Maine and Canada later this year, so I looked for somewhere to have dinner between Portland and Halifax. It dumped me smack into the middle of the Bay of Fundy. I like to fish and all, but...

LV (Sent Wednesday, May 16, 2007 12:54 PM)

I really like the idea of schools being held financially responsible for not doing enough to stop bullying on their property, if we had laws like this in America it would be a good way to have schools reduce or eliminate bullying.

Unless you live in an urban area, there is likely not another school to transfer to, and home school is not always adequate to allow some students to learn and would require a tutor, which of course is not affordable for every family.  Sometimes kids are stuck in a school where they are bullied and physically attacked by other children because there is no other school within an hour's drive to go to, and even in the cases where a bullied kid can transfer to another school, sometimes they have already suffered permanent emotional damage from the bullying they encountered.  Bullying should not be tolerated, especially when it involves physical attacks.  Schools should stop emotional bullying by punishing bullies for each incident or removing them from the school, and schools should report physical bullying incidents to the police so that kids disturbed enough to physically harm others can be dealt with by the judicial system.

None of that is an unfair thing to ask for, that bullies be punished or removed for mentally torturing other children, or that bullies be criminally punished for physically hurting other children, but most schools in our country do not want to help get rid of bullies because they already have plenty of problems to worry about with funding, staffing, and supplies.  As in the article, this is usually dealt with by telling bullied children and their parents "deal with it" "bullying builds character" "you win some you lose some" "go somewhere else" instead of putting an end to the bully who will just find more children to pick on once his target is gone.  Not stopping a bully will never fix the problem.

If schools found it financially undesirable to not make efforts to stop bullying, bullies would not be so prevalent, and there would probably not be so many disturbed children that are terrified to go to school, disturbed children who want to commit suicide, or disturbed children who want to kill their bullies in order to feel safe again.  Think of how many millions or billions of dollars our country would save on psychiatric care by treating a root cause of problems (bullies) instead of having to treat people with psychiatric problems caused by being bullied - there are much fewer bullies than there are people who have been bullied, the savings would be immense.

Sorry for the long discourse, I think the bully liability for schools is an important thing that our country and our society needs to integrate.  I also wanted to thank you, Will, for all the interesting articles you're always sharing with us!

Lydia, Chicago (Sent Wednesday, May 16, 2007 1:00 PM)

I'm not sure why you guys are getting those results. I just did New York City to Daytona, Florida and got a North Carolina marker. And I checked the midpoint from my Brooklyn neighborhood to Lower Manhattan and it correctly gave me a spot on the Lower East Side. Maybe there are some areas that aren't mapped correctly?

Will Femia (Sent Wednesday, May 16, 2007 1:47 PM)

Meg, I think they're real, but I think Google didn't bother collecting detailed satellite imagery from the surrounding areas. I don't know where those items came from so it could be part of some other project or exercise.

Will Femia (Sent Wednesday, May 16, 2007 2:02 PM)

Will, maybe it's what you type in the third box that matters the most. For my first try between two towns within 30 minutes of each other, I typed "pizza" and the first response was Pizza, a company in Italy. I tried NYC to Daytona, FL using Italian and the first link was El Italian in Tabasco, Mexico. So, maybe it searches for a business with that name before searching the area.

John Doe, Seattle, Wash. (Sent Wednesday, May 16, 2007 5:11 PM)

If bullying really is going on, then it definitely needs to be dealt with. The problem from a parent's standpoint of the supposed "bully" is that often the thing that has upset the other parent/child is minor and becomes blown out of proportion. Then your child who is really doing normal little kid things lets say, gets suspended by over zealous schools for something ridiculous. My 6 yr old son made a gun out of his fingers on the playground and was playing cowboys with other boys on the playground. A little girl on the playground decided it was "threatening" and my son got detention for this. Apparantly although most of us did these things when we were children, they are now horrible threats because of Columbine and Virginia Tech. Sometimes it's just kids being kids and schools are too over zealous now about every little thing. I don't need to be fined or sued for stuff like this, which is what would happen.

A (Sent Thursday, May 17, 2007 12:19 PM)

I am sorry but the story on the bullied child sticks me as the nanny state run mad. I, as an RN, have worked with kids with problems for much of my practice. This child is a result of multiple causative agents. To assign all blame and a financial burden to the school system is simplistic and wrongheaded.

Paul McFarland, Guy, Arkansas (Sent Friday, May 18, 2007 8:46 AM)

The last item on the list is debatable. Should the schools be responsible for a student's actions? Knowing how difficult it is to make my own children behave themselves on little stuff, I can't imagine how difficult it would be for teachers and school faculty to monitor groups of 30 and more students, and control each and every one of them from saying hateful things. Being harassed in school for me was the norm. It didn't make it right, but I didn't go on a shooting rampage either, and I certainly wouldn't consider suing the school or any of the student's I attended with. Unfortunately the world only gets worse from high school. If you can't deal with people your age making cracks about stupid infantile things, how are you going to handle when people start calling you down because of your religious or political views? Or how are you going to deal with the pressures of a career and marriage? Some of these kids need to get a clue... and so do their parents. Protecting your children from unnecessary harm is one thing. Coddling them and giving them the notion that they will never have to face anything hard in life without getting compensation for it is quite another.

AmericanMuslimahConvert (Sent Friday, May 18, 2007 2:14 PM)

http://geek.videosift.com/video/Secret-Places-of-Google-Earth This may be old news to you but a cool video of those links you posted

Charles Scercy (Sent Friday, May 18, 2007 6:29 PM)



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