Don't worry, the aliens are here
Posted: Thursday, May 24, 2007 9:11 AM by Will Femia
I'm not a political scientist but when politicians aren't doing what they were elected to do (full version) and no one likes the bills they pass and for that matter a good number of people aren't sure they were properly elected anyway (yes, on both sides), you have to wonder if we aren't seeing the outlines of a crisis. Not that it really matters now that the aliens are here.
(Although apparently they've been here before and I don't recall them doing a whole lot.) (Here's the Flickr account.) Among the hoax accusations are that it's a marketing ploy by the Transformers movie. As much as I hate ruining a good UFO fantasy (I want to believe.), if that's the case it's a pretty brilliant campaign.)
Speaking of our new mechanized overlords, Google wants to run your life. This article feels like that kind of thing history looks back on as the "they didn't see it coming" turning point. Or maybe it just seemed extra creepy when paired with this: "A three-week wave of massive cyber-attacks on the small Baltic country of Estonia, the first known incidence of such an assault on a state, is causing alarm across the western alliance, with Nato urgently examining the offensive and its implications."
"May 23, 2007, represents a major demographic shift, according to scientists from North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia: For the first time in human history, the earth’s population will be more urban than rural."
"A battle between a pride of lions, a herd of buffalo, and 2 crocodiles at a watering hole in South Africa’s Kruger National Park." Completely worth watching and hopefully violent enough to rebuff concerns by readers that I've been veering into Helen Lovejoy-ism.
Speaking of me being a ninny, Angelina's listing of the geographic coordinates of where she collected her children makes her look like some kind of human game hunter in a "collect 'em all and win" contest. If you connect the coordinates do they spell out her initials?
Trailer for The Golden Compass - The voiceover guy in this trailer is starting to sound like a parody of himself but the movie looks good.
Speaking of making things talk with CGI, did you see the Fantastic Four clip in the Heroes finale? That Silver Surfer looks cool, but if you can't make his mouth move accurately to the words he speaks, don't make him talk.
Real life pirate hang outs. The actual sea sailing kind, not file traders.
A blog about angry notes people leave to each other.
"Can an elderly father give police permission to search a password-protected computer kept in his adult son's bedroom, without probable cause or a warrant?"
Speaking of tech-law questions for our times, "A Michigan man is being prosecuted for using a cafe's free WiFi... from his car." There should be a default assumption that non-WEP wifi is free for all. If that cafe doesn't want people on its line they should hand out passwords with each order.
Drawn with lines - Has kind of a student film feel to it but a pleasant little movie.
How Scoble reads all those feeds - He uses Google reader and has developed a good technique for skimming through them. (Did I ever mention how much I love Viddler and that idea of commenting and tagging in the timeline?)
Slow motion water balloon drop
Bush Authorizes New Covert Action Against Iran - ABCNews seems to have found the perfect storm blog entry. Folks are linking on the substance of the story and also to accuse them of treason and also to talk about limits on freedom of the press. See the comments for examples of all.
Rolling Stone’s 25 Best Road Trip Songs Ever - No links to the actual songs but you know most of them. As the weather has been getting nice I've been thinking about the albums that represent summer for me, especially summer driving. It's not quite the same as this list, but what are your favorite driving-with-the-window down records? Bjork, Debut; Metallica, Ride the Lightning; Van Halen, Van Halen; Johnny Winter, Highway 61.
One Schrutebuck. More accurate than this one.
Google's got a new toy called Hot Trends. Which would seem to work well with what I'm trying to do here at Clicked, but I'm having a hard time drawing useful conclusions from it. For example, why is Judd Apatow number one today? That said, seeing MSNBC anchor Amy Robach at number 54 was probably more useful than spending an hour next to the water cooler.
Star Wars actors, where are they now?
Digg Banning Users For Not Reading Stories - This blog entry goes on to think about other ideas besides banning to encourage users to actually read what they're digging, but I was interested to see the issue come up at all because I've had similar discussions with colleagues here about our message boards. There's some anecdotal indication that when we put a headline next to a "discuss" prompt with a link to the message board, people go to the board assuming they know what the story is about and fire away without having read the story. I had concluded that reading and opinionating (What? It's my blog, I can make up words.) are entirely separate activities in most people's minds, so the suggestion that reading before remarking could be enforced seems like a pretty radical notion.
This Slashdot book review of The Myths of Innovation turns into a worthwhile comment thread discussion on the properties of innovation.
Nader Redux: Should Dems Fear Mike Gravel? The same could probably be asked about Ron Paul.
I'm prepared for this to turn out to be a hoax, but folks online are talking about the iGasm. "A device which connects to any music player and offers users an erotic vibrating treat in time to the beat." Apparently Apple doesn't appreciate the similarity to their products.
President Bush shown driving without seat belt during 'Click it or Ticket' campaign - Not quite the gotcha item it sounds like because he's not required to wear one when driving on his own ranch. More funny to me was how their casual research showed that leaders don't wear seatbelts.
