August 2007 - Posts
(My battery is offering me 21 minutes to post this entry which illness and wifilessness prevented me from posting Friday. Ready, set, go!)
The one thing a person who works in the news doesn't want when then go on vacation is for any news to happen. So it was troubling on Friday when rumors of Fidel Castro's death were tearing up the Web . Such rumors aren't uncommon. Without paying very close attention I've seen similar "a reliable source tells me" blog posts ripple through the Web. Though I can't be sure, what appears to have made this particular rumor all the more potent was the assuredness of its reporting by renowned gossip blogger Perez Hilton . As crazy as it sounds to get new on matters of state from a gossip blogger, there was something about the very fact of that craziness that gave the rumor a new level of believability.
Something I notice about all the accounts that claim some first hand "reliable source" is that almost all of them cite increased preparedness by Miami police. I'm wondering if the whole thing was a case of police nearly creating a problem by trying to prepare for one.
The combination of the new season on Heroes approaching and the 18th birthday of Hayden Panettiere has put Miss Panettiere's name in a lot of headlines lately. Removed from that hype, however, her Got Milk ad may be the best one ever.
New Harold and Kumar trailer.
No sooner has YouTube come up with an ad idea than someone comes up with a Firefox extension to block them .
The World's Highest Escalator would be cooler if it wasn't enclosed. Meanwhile, was this building constructed for the purpose of being an action movie set or what?
"Experts have found a way to trigger an out-of-body experience in volunteers." Interesting idea about applications to video games.
"So-called thermobaric weapons have been used by the US against suspected al-Qaida and Taliban underground bases. Combined heat and pressure kill people over a wide area by sucking the air out of lungs and destroying internal organs ." Obviously I recognize the horror with which some people are linking to this story but from a more distant and cold perspective it's pretty amazing what the military is coming up with.
"NBC is getting into the ring with "American Gladiators," which has been revived by the Peacock for midseason." Could be cool if they don't let it devolve into a pro-wrestling variant, which is how I remember the old version. (Obviously MSNBC.com is partly an NBC property. I have no inside scoop however. I did see Jimmy Falon in 30 Rock the other day though, which has nothing to do with anything, but celebrity sightings are always cool.)
The Daily Show the other night made a joke about the police ammunition shortage being connected to the war (specifically their correspondent doing a lot of gratuitous shooting into sand dunes just to feel manly) and it reminded me to look back for this link I'd noted. Confederate Yankee not only explains the shortage more thoroughly but receives input from actual ammunition manufacturers. Remember that item about Google News allowing comments from those involved in the story? I imagine this is what it'd be like.
Design blog offers free Weight training workout sheet pdf . I'm not sure if this works if you pyramid both your weight and your reps, but still handy if you find yourself sitting at a machine and saying, "Crap, how much do I do on this machine again?"
This fake Zune phone ad is kind of mean but still pretty funny. I kind of like the idea of rotary on a cell phone.
Speaking of phones that do not exist, there's lots of enthusiasm for rumors of a Google phone .
The guy who unlocked the iPhone is auctioning "the second one " on eBay. What I'm seeing now are sites that are offering to do it for you. I haven't checked them out and I'm not sure I'd know a scam from the real thing anyway, but if you've already done your phone phreaking homework and want your iPhone unlocked, try here or here .
Kevin Drum takes a novel, though not illogical, approach to assessing the surge by comparing this past June/July to June/July 2006 .
"A historian quoted by President Bush to help argue that critics of the administration’s Iraq policy echo those who questioned the U.S. effort to bring democracy to Japan after World War II angrily distanced himself from the president’s remarks Thursday." Awkward!
Spirit Airlines CEO sends a "reply all" mail and accidentally tells the world what airline CEOs think of their customers . He basically points out that consumers aren't principled enough to do anything about their anger toward an airline ("[he] will be back when we save him a penny"). I'm not sure he's wrong about that.
Roll your mouse up and down the picture and watch the time of day change . Really neat but I can't think of what use it is. I'd like to see one with a clear sky and a view of the sun and/or moon so we can watch it move across the sky.
Speaking of cool photo stuff, I finally learned how to make these HD View images . The challenging part is that they're make with a command line tool, so you have to be familiar with what that is. The one thing I haven't figured out is how to put it on our server to show you what I made, but that'll be next.
Top 10 physically modified people - I thought this was going to be about photoshopped models or plastic surgery. "Modified" in this case refers to body modification, as in piercings and tattoos and its more extreme variants.
Ralph's Recommendation:
A Good Hunch -- Jumping Goat Challenge
Jump across floating rocks to escape each level.
This game offers a unique twist in that you control two goats, but your actions with the first goat determine what you can do with the second goat. It may sound complicated, but it's easy to get the hang of it.
Hope you have as much fun with it as I've had.
Woo Hoo! 10 minutes of battery left! Post!
It's a pisser to come down with a sore throat, fever and body aches on the day before you're to go on vacation for a week. Of course, once at the beach its a little easier to deal with it. Funny how that works.
One happy coincidence is that just as I was thinking about what to leave up for a week this link rose through the ranks of popularity: 15 Web addresses for wasting time - view at your own risk
Meanwhile, I thought for sure I'd find an easy wireless signal here and that's not been the case. I'm currently blogging from inside the rental car parked on some random residential road that finally offered up a signal I could piggyback on. Once online I checked WiGle to see if there was something I'm missing and I'm not. Wifi deadzone.
Of course, when you read a story about an accusation of news photo Photoshopping (and if you're a Clicked reader who likes to follow these stories of media distortion of body images) you want to see it for yourself. In this case we're talking about French President Nicolas Sarkozy looking a bit more streamlined in his friend's magazine than in original news shots. L'Express is making the accusation so you can see the photo comparison there .
The Google translator calls a love handle a "pad." I can only imagine what it says to French speakers when they try to translate "love handle."
NOTE: The article has a promotion for a Spencer Tunic slide show that includes one bare, if horizontal, breast. If you get in trouble at work for having this little boobie on your machine you have grounds for a maniacal rant. For my part, you've been notified.
So You Think You Can Be President? This proposes putting presidential candidates through a reality show of fictional but relevant-to-the-job challenges. Viewers (voters) learn about candidates from their performance on the show instead of the current clearly flawed system to stump speeches, debates and media coverage. How many times have you watched survivor and thought, "Even if this guy doesn't win you know he's going to be flooded with corporate recruitment offers after this display of problem solving and management skills." ...Plus... Is all this music free?, Viva guerilla gardening, and '...and the Pentagon had to hold a bake sale.'
CONTINUED >>
That may be the case for some, but it's equally likely that people aren't moving to new tools so much as adding them on top of what they already use - leading to what is being called the social graph problem. Count me in for wanting a central clearing site for all of my social apps. I'm already at the end of my attention span after logging into MSN IM, Blogger and Flickr. Then I'm supposed to play with Facebook and Twitter? ...Plus... Next e-mail check in 55 minutes, have your hog and ride it too, and Santa hates poor kids
CONTINUED >>
The Sunday talk shows ran clips of Karl Rove as a college student in 1972. It was part of a CBS newscast -a Dan Rather segment, ironically enough. The Rove bit is at the 4 minute mark, but the who thing is a pretty interesting look at the foundations of modern campaigning.
In criticizing the way iPhone billing is being handled, this blogger does some tree-to-paper math. We hear the expression all the time but I don't think I've ever learned an actual stat for how much paper comes from a tree. ...Plus... God in an eggplant, the future in the Onion, doing the wave and Ralph recommends.
CONTINUED >>
It's always a challenge to find what the Web has to offer on breaking news in a country where English isn't the primary language - in this case a powerful earthquake in Peru, specifically Lima .
There's some interesting information to be found on the USGS site , with more specific details here .
I wasn't familiar with the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System but they've got a pretty fascinating page put together as well, including damage risks assessments and more maps.
Speaking of risks, this isn't directly related to the earthquake but it shows areas of concern with regard to global warming related flooding in Lima . If the tsunami warnings come true, this is probably a fair projection of the areas of impact. (via this map site )
As far as I can tell, the best direct source for Peruvian news is a newspaper site called El Comercio. Folks are leaving comments and reactions there (in Spanish of course). The front page has extensive coverage and a few videos and I see they're soliciting reader media so we may see some photos and video from the street. (I made the mistake of hitting the refresh page and now the site is hung up. No doubt some heavy traffic headed their way.) ADDING: They've added a Twitter link to receive updates. Great idea and a nice reminder to check out Twittervision . This will probably only work while the news is breaking but you can literally watch the world talking about the earthquake. Fascinating.
I'm checking this Lima blogger periodically for updates. Speaking of Peruvian bloggers, can someone explain what this one is saying about the light in the sky ? "Sali a la calle y vi el cielo iluminado, como si un rayo hubiera partido la noche."
In checking YouTube I found this video of an earthquake in Peru from 1970 . I'm not clear if that's real footage or some kind of dramatization, but I did find some details in Wikipedia . "Combined with a resultant landslide, it was the most catastrophic natural disaster ever recorded in the history of Peru." Comparisons will likely be forthcoming regardless of the outcome of today's event. At the very least it put the public panic in context. ADDING: The more I poke around, the more it appears that Peru has a lot of familiarity with big earthquakes. The article on MSNBC.com now mentions, "The last time a quake of magnitude 7.0 or larger struck Peru's central coast was in 1974 when a magnitude 7.6 hit in October followed by a 7.2 a month later." And there was the one in 2005 and the one in 2001 (this model of the resulting tsunami is worth seeing).
By the way, I've been using Babelfish to help fill in on translation where my memory of Spanish class is failing. Results are mixed.
I see Nightly News got their video from something called America TV but that video doesn't appear to have made it to their site yet .
Great coverage at Cronica Viva .
ONE MORE UPDATE: "One of the most peculiar things is that in spite of the intense movement, the connection to Internet continued working. Neither the MSN Messenger nor Skype succumbed." (That's in Bablefish's words with a tiny edit.) The blogger tells the story of talking to people in Santiago, Chile via IM who are trying to reach family in Peru and he was able to help relay their message.
I looked for the original CSPAN clip with no luck.
I've been traveling out to Redmond and back these past couple of days so this is a bit of a catch-up post for me.
"A new data-mining service launched Monday traces millions of Wikipedia entries to their corporate sources, and for the first time puts comprehensive data behind longstanding suspicions of manipulation, which until now have surfaced only piecemeal in investigations of specific allegations." ... Plus much more.
CONTINUED >>
*Note to RSS visitors, this is a largely linkless piece.
Since clicking on this item accusing CNN of deliberately avoiding an impeachment question in its YouTube debate, I've been thinking about what the debate questions would look like if they truly represented the interests of people who spend a lot of time online.
Given what we know about the themes of interest online, what would “the Web” ask presidential candidates.
Impeachment is the obvious one. Impeachment talk is everywhere online and almost no where in the mainstream press. The context of the video above is interesting because it’s about discouraging abuses by future presidents. More common are accusations of war crimes or complaints that polls show that a lot of people don’t like Bush and therefore Congress should move to impeach as part of representing the public will.
There would definitely be a 9/11 conspiracy question in there. It would probably have a thousand itemized points and the question would be almost rhetorical in the form of “How can it be that both x and y are true, and even if they are, how do you explain z ?”
There’d surely be a net neutrality question. Something about whether the candidates believe huge sites like Google owe some of the money they make to telecom sites that support the Web’s structure.
And from there we’d lead into a question or two about intellectual property rights, maybe something concrete like file trading or maybe something more abstract like if you pay for a song, shouldn’t you be able to do whatever you want with that song?
Also in that category would be a question about patent law. As the Web is tamed and tools are built, the big companies are trying to own every little idea, preventing small companies from developing tools on their own. (Or so the argument goes, as I understand it.)
Then someone would blurt a goatse photo.
Some religion questions would come up, but not the kind we usually hear that seek to determine whether the candidates can make themselves appealing to the Christian right with “values” talk or positions on abortion. Instead we’d get something about protecting the rights of secularists and defending science and education and rational thought from religious influences.
There’s a significant contingent of bloggers who are utterly fed up with the way Islam is never directly called out for its association with terrorism. A true Web question would ask something about pressuring moderate Muslims about their extremist brethren. Lately it sounds like Giuliani is speaking to this audience.
What else?
Oh! Environmentalism. The Web would definitely ask something about green energy, but not ethanol or nuclear. The environmentalism we see online is more innovative, more creative, and more radical. Maybe something about new solar efficiencies but also something about banning cars or charging corporations to dispose of the packaging of the products they sell.
Media bias is a standard topic online. Candidates might be asked about the recently resurrected discussion of the fairness doctrine. Otherwise maybe something about denying access to press outlets that don’t report responsibly or something along those lines.
Vote hacking accusations are also more prevalent online than in the mainstream. A typical Web question might be, “If you lose, how comfortable will you be that you lost fairly?” Of course it might be asked as "I CAN HAS FAYR ELEXUN?"
What other topics are unique to or characteristic of the online world that would be bound to come up in an unfiltered list of debate questions from the Web?
Hey Will,
Clicked is my favorite time waster, er, learning tool EVER! Back in June you posted about lightning porn. I loved it, and since then have been waiting for a chance to try that myself. Here is my first attempt, a squeezed and stretched storm in Arizona:
The still at 1:40 is lightning porn. It's like he's saying, "Come to Daddy!"
Hope you enjoy it...
Janis
Thanks Janis, that's great stuff. I've been meaning to share some really great lightning porn shots I got last Friday:
I took a ridiculous number of them, at some points catching a chain with every snap of the shutter. I know I've mentioned it before, but the new animated, drag-able, zoom-able, transparency adjustable map from weather.com is really amazing. The updates are generally only ten minutes behind real time and I was able to watch the storms on the radar at the same time I watched out my window as they came in over New Jersey, crossed the city and the harbor and moved out over Brooklyn.
I don't know if it's coincidence or if the Freakonomics guys wanted to arrive at the New York Times with a splash, but their two part series, If You Were a Terrorist, How Would You Attack? has really made some waves online. ...Plus... Double checking the double checkers, I wouldn't say that on TV, and friends don't let friends steer with their penis.
CONTINUED >>
If you bother to go to Barely Political you don't find much info other than that each girl has been given a name. I'd love to know if the operation behind all of this is making much money. They've definitely got the marketing side mastered.
Meanwhile, given the polygamy stereotypes associated with Mormonism, I can't imagine the Romney campaign is too pleased to be represented by three girls instead of one.
A quickie "post 'em if you got 'em" entry to keep things fresh as I chase the day. A look at new features on Google News, not-yet new features on iPhone, and understanding killing
CONTINUED >>
Jimmy Justice has to be the nerviest guy ever. He confronts municipal employees who break parking and other traffic laws. I always assumed cops and other officials were allowed to break these kinds of laws so I don't give it much thought, but Jimmy and his fans think it shouldn't be tolerated. If you watch a bunch of the videos, it starts to feel like he just likes to beat up on meter maids, but in the wake of yesterday's Dateline video and the idea of DIY media as a weapon, this is a prime example. ... Plus... Blogstorms in teapots, Minesweeper is hell, and walking the planet to death
CONTINUED >>
As one person wrote to me in e-mail (along with this transcript link ):
I think people are overlooking the obvious significance of this. YouTube allowed a bunch of scruffy young convention-goers to turn the tables on the press!
That's what I found most impressive about it as well. When I saw the video yesterday it has slightly fewer views but still more than a third of a million people saw it in the span of not much more than a day. Definitely the most literal taking back of the media I can think of.
Related BoingBoing coverage here and here . Including an excerpt from a Wired report that Defcon has a mole at Dateline.
In light of the spanking readers gave me earlier this week for not posting and facing a day's worth of non-Clicked related meetings, I'm posting the most coherent parts of my notes at the moment. A little disorganized but at least it's not fallow.
CONTINUED >>
Right now I'm using two local blogs to lead me to ther local sources of citizen reporting on the bridge collapse in Minnesota. Metroblogging Minneapolis has a pretty thorough link round-up and the community at MNspeak is sharing links through the thread here . I hope to have a narrower list of highlights like this one later this morning.
I'll have a bigger update in a bit but before this gets flooded or turned off, I wanted to share it. It's the live traffic cam still pointing at the now mostly gone bridge.
UPDATE II: What else I clicked:
Flickr photos
Diversey - Includes some long shots of the river rescue
Flickr tags (Usually Flickr will bundle tags like this into one group but I don't see a link for that yet.)
This is a collection of photos from different sources in a Slide.com presentation.
Minnesota public radio coverage
MN Stories has a bit of self-shot video. Mostly gives a feel for what it's like to be a spectator there.
Wikipedia coverage
e-democracy.org also has a wiki, just links
The Star Tribune slide show is getting high marks from locals.
ONE OTHER: Tony Webster has been submitting his stuff to media so you've probably seen one or two of his shots on TV. He's got them all in one place here .
Could it be that watching porn actually makes men less interested in real sex with real women? The argument in this article is that contrary to concerns that porn would turn men into sex maniacs, the gap between the expectations set by stylized porn sex and the practical realities of actual sex with actual women is such that actual women are losing ground in their ability to draw the attention of men. Plus... Vote hacking, Death mapping, and speed stacking
CONTINUED >>
It's a funny thing that I don't feel the slightest bit self conscious when I write something that is seen by thousands or tens of thousands (or very rarely hundreds of thousands) of people, but when I don't write anything I feel really self conscious that all the world is looking at my fallow blog. No doubt there's a researcher out there studying the psychology of the blogger who's found this strain of paranoia (vanity?) a common trait.
