For what it's worth
Posted: Friday, July 27, 2007 4:00 PM by Will Femia
Filed Under:
Games
A subgenre of the "taking it to the Internet in the name of justice" trend that I pointed out not too long ago is the framing of the struggle against the authority of the Bush administration. When Michael Moore was on Hardball the other day, someone in the audience asked if he thought Bush's low approval numbers (and correspondingly high disapproval numbers) was a sign that the country was ripe for revolt. Moore was amusedly dismissive and answered by emphasizing the importance of voting. I don't see any revolts in our future either but online activist are working to make the case that it's already begun.
In the past day and a half I read about a guy arrested for shouting at Dick Cheney, and a woman given the bum's rush for shouting at Fred Thompson (CNN has video), and I even scrolled through a 20 minute clip of a 74-year-old selling impeachment buttons and eventually being arrested for trespassing or vending without a license or something. [I realize that Fred Thompson isn't part of the Bush administration but the point is that free speech rights are gone under Bush.] Maybe I'm just cynical but I couldn't help but chuckle at the 60s protest music dubbed onto the button seller video. Will these clips and stories one day be cast in the same valiant "power to the people" light that protests of the 60s and 70s currently enjoy? Is this what it was like then?
I'm still baffled at how this Holly Hunter interview made it out of ABC. Gumption? It's on par with the eternally famous "Boom goes the Dynamite" video.
[We're past the need for Harry Potter spoiler warnings, right?] Fans of Harry Potter are excited to see these follow-up insights from JK herself on what exists beyond the epilogue of the last book. But fans of Jen Brown, whose cube is adjacent to mine here at MSNBC HQ and who know that Jen read books 5 and 6 back to back before the release of 7 and who had to suffer her challenges to prove her theory wrong that Harry is/was the 7th horcrux, are excited to see Jen's byline and especially photo credit on close shots of Rowling. Way to make the inner circle Jen! You go!
Speaking of fanatical protection of intellectual property, this cartoon leads me to think that brain scans instead of those security tag detectors should be employed at book stores.
It's time to drop the www. Doesn't www serve any useful function? Why does it exist in the first place?
The Darjeeling Limited is garnering online buzz.
I don't mean to contribute to the ridiculous amount of attention paid to Hollywood's rehab roundabout, but there's an interesting trend on this Access Hollywood video that's worth noting. Billy Bush got an e-mail from Lohan while on Larry King's show and reported on it as it came to his mobile device. Later, Maria Menounos receives a copy of Lohan's mug shot while on the air on The View and shares that through her mobile device. I predict lots more "this just in on my Blackberry" reports.
How to Use a Bidet - OK, yeah, kinda gross, but I've never used one even though I've seen a few in travels. "You can use a bidet to quickly wash your feet." "Drinking from a bidet is not recommended." See? Lots of good advice here.
The trailer for an upcoming first person mystery adventure game based on ABC's LOST.
"The Malaysian government has warned it could use tough anti-terrorism laws against bloggers who insult Islam or the country's king."
Speaking of bloggers under fire, Fox attacks bloggers - Well, not exactly, but in fighting with liberal bloggers Fox does arguably characterize all of the blogosphere for its viewers. Somehow I think this relationship is working well for all involved, however.
Sharp Decline in Support for Suicide Bombing in Muslim Countries - This is part of a Pew report that shows people in the developing world increasingly satisfied with their lives. I have to give it a closer read though because my understanding was that it has already been established that suicide bombings and other acts of fanaticism are not connected to economic destitution. The general impression from this report is that there's a correlation so I'll be interested to see if I can find them making the case for one.
Speaking of the war on terror, this is a speech by President Bush about the War on Terror with all the words removed except Iraq, Al Qaeda, 9/11 and Osama bin Laden. I guess the point is to show the president making an association between the two. I don't really see this as shocking as some people are trying to make it. If anything, the fact that he mentions Osama bin Laden as much as he does is surprising to me. I thought that was something he avoided mentioning.
A purportedly leaked clip of the new Madonna/Justin Timberlake collaboration. If you act quickly you can brag to your kids that you heard it before YouTube deleted it.
Will Bic lighters blend? I love their "don't try this at home logo." I wonder if I can get that on a t-shirt. Maybe the TSA should have considered a blender for confiscated lighters.
Painful wince of the day. As is usually the case, it's all about the sound.
MySpace looking for TV pilots
Speaking of pilots of a different kind, World's first flying car enters production. As exciting as that headline might seem, the video does not inspire much confidence.
Speaking of headlines on autoblogs that don't quite live up to their billing, Nude woman buys smokes in German gas station, leaves in Ferrari. At the end of the item there's a link to the original German news story with a couple (NSFW) photos. The whole thing looks much more ordinary than I anticipated.
1. Copy the link of the page with the video on it and paste it in the textbox bellow.
2. Choose desired format : AVI, MOV, MP4, 3GP, MP3.
3. Click Convert button.
4. Download the converted file.
I know there are a few sites that do this, but I've been working on an idea for a weekly video compilation of things surfaced in Clicked and had made a mental note to look for a site like this and lo and behold, I found one before I started looking.
"When you have several levels of redundant power, what could bring your customers' servers down other than something like an employee physically ripping the plugs out of the wall?" Here it is blogged in greater detail with a nice collection of error screens from affected sites.
The Best 8 Beverages in the World - I'm embarrassed to say I don't already have a person desert island list for beverages. I can say that for the longest time I knew no better Root Beer than Virgil's and it's associated flavors. (Yes, I do pay that much for a bottle of root beer.) But just a couple weeks ago I found Fitz's Root Beer at a local gourmet supermarket and while it doesn't have the complexity of flavor of Virgil's, I really like the lingering taste of fermentation (or is that just hops?). P.S. Fitz's orange flavor doesn't do it for me, however.
Speaking of the finer points of junk food appreciation, I'm beginning to wonder if my deli is part of some kind of early-release Dorito test network. Check these babies out:
I haven't tried them yet. The collector in me wonders if there's any value in collecting unopened bags of new Doritos flavors. Do you think there will be a market for it?
"Welcome to part three of my behind the scenes case study in viral/buzz marketing." I've only read this one, not the previous two, but this is pretty dense so it's going to take me a bit of time to work backward. Even if you're not totally interested in the topic, a quick scroll of the article is revealing in the way that it shows how much there is to consider after hitting the "publish" button.
Kameraflage images only show on digital - This is the coolest. It reminds me a little of an article I saw once about new technology that would interfere with the digital cameras of paparazzi. I think it was some kind of reflector or something and its effect would be invisible to the naked eye but would make a mess of digital photo images.
Monkey v. Dog v. Wikipedia - It's the story of a guy who created Wikipedia entries for different combinations of competitive animal fighting but I can't tell where the story ends and the joke begins.
"Why people rent super-stretch limos in a city that's mostly hills I will never know." After college I had the opportunity to drive an RV full of students around the country. It was a 32-foot mobile home with ten feet of it hanging after the rear wheels. As we passed through San Francisco, more than once we scraped the under side of that rear bumper.
2504 Steps to closing your Facebook account. "You see, you can't really close your Facebook account once you open it; you can only deactivate it, which I somehow missed when reading their 913 page privacy policy." The general complaint has been raised elsewhere that once you plug yourself into a social site, you can't get yourself out. I didn't realize someone was actually trying to do perform such an extraction.
Today's Cracked.com linkbait numbered list that I still fell for even though the shamelessness of it all bothers me: The 10 Most Unlikely Celeb Porn Stars. What hooked me was the number of people who did regrettable things before they were famous. The writing is curse-laden but (and?) fun.
The Strangest Sights in Google Earth - We've seen this kind of thing before of course, but it's noteworthy that they also offer a Google Earth KMZ download so you can see them on the actual map instead of flipping through the slides. In looking for who is finding ways to "think beyond the browser" this is a nice effort.
I'm not familiar with the Giant Napkin but these Onion-like articles are pretty funny.
Speaking of the Onion, Study: Iraqis May Experience Sadness When Friends, Relatives Die
Shark with webbed feet touches off massive evolution debate.
Speaking of the evolution debate, Texas has apparently put a creationist at the head of its Board of Ed, so we can probably expect more textbook debates in the near future.
Remember that paper on how MySpace and Facebook reflect class differences? A pretty big flare-up of discussion followed that piece and now the researcher is back with a response to criticism. Interestingly, one of the points of confusion has been the mixing of her non-scholarly blog writing with her scholarly paper writing.
Blackle is Google only black, with the idea being that it takes less energy to display a black page than a white one.
Someone needs to explain this Chore Wars site to me. Are these real world chores? The must be, because who would want to do virtual chores. But then, what's the game for?
Here's a quickie handy graphic that shows how climate change is manifesting generally around the world. The vague area described as "contradictory" is not very helpful, however.
Here's one for the "are you nuts?" tattoo file. It's the text of a Windows error.
If it turns out that time does not exist, can it still be Friday anyway? I'm ready for a weekend.
Speaking of probing the limits of time, this one goes in the other direction, looking farther and farther ahead to what happens to the known universe.
11 things you may not know about "Star Wars" - I justify the inclusion of this link because we like to think about gender roles on this blog and the first item on the list is that there was consideration that Luke should be female. I think I might have actually liked Lucy Skywalker better than Luke, though I don't reckon they'd have done right by her given the date of the movie.
An abandoned village in Italy - from a cool site that collected abandoned images.
Game recommendation from my friend Matt: Stair Fall 2 - How much damage can you do to the stick figure guy by chucking him down the stairs? 471 is my top so far.
And we'll end with a Ralph Recommendation:
Super B: The Box Who Became a Superhero
Box City has been overrun by villains. Help Super B fly around and blast them out of existence!
This one's a fun little flying/shooting game. As you might expect, though, it gets pretty challenging the farther you go. Hope you enjoy it.
-Ralph
Will adds: I like these kinds of games but you totally need a mouse for this. Touch pad is impossible.
