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"DuPont is treating VX for disposal at its Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana. The agent, once neutralized, would be shipped to DuPont's Chambers Works plant in Deepwater, N.J., for ." But don't worry, if you're among the millions who get drinking water from that river, the EPA says it's OK. You trust the EPA, right? When have they ever given the thumbs up to subjecting Americans to a toxic environment before? (OK, I'll be fair. The EPA also recommended long term studies and the actual full report is still waiting for CDC approval.)
But speaking of trusting, by a local CBS station in Florida has a lot of bloggers buzzing about police intimidation. The reporter went into police stations asking for a complaint form and was generally met with hostility, veiled and not so veiled. The video pretty much speaks for itself, but I do think the guy's behavior is a little squirrelly. Can police in that area be trusted to take a complaint report fairly? Can police trust that stammering, shifty, nervous weirdoes who come in to the station at night asking oblique questions about complaints aren't... well, weirdoes? And for that matter, can police trust that complaints filed against them will be handled appropriately? This study doesn't necessarily give reassuring answers.
Speaking of trusting the system, if you have information about a company engaged in government business, who would you trust to do the right thing with it? Be careful how you answer, the wrong one could , even if your heart's in the right place.
Can a country's population be trusted to handle the sheer debauchery of the Internet? Not the UAE's population. Who knows what would happen if their government didn't protect them by blocking ? (Of course it's safe, that's the point.)
Speaking of trusting filters instead of sense, Wired has a because even though a MySpace girl recently , resulting in an arrest, this does not mean MySpace is now predator-free. It also does not mean you can stop paying attention to what your kids are putting on sites like MySpace as if there are cops everywhere keeping an eye out. And of course, you can't trust your kids.
I missed reading this by a few hours, so perhaps it's understandable that Howie Mandel and Donald Trump did too, but seeing Donald Trump blow up a rubber glove on his head would indeed be . He could have at least come on the show zipped in a duffel bag. (Am I the only one who remembers Howie Mandel's old act?)
"Twelve barrels of the , or enough to wipe out a medium-size army, when the Bruichladdich distillery revives the ancient tradition of quadruple-distilling today."
Speaking of questionable science in the UK's Times, this isn't a new item, but it seems worth highlighting in case there's any question. The WHO has never conducted research on the . The item actually reminded me of something I'd read earlier in the day about , but I had decided not to include it in today's entry because it seemed kind of dumb. If I'd bothered to read through to the end I would have seen that the article claims a WHO study predicted the extinction of natural blondes. It was only after I ran the WHO link through Technorati that I saw point out the false claim and put the two links together.
Random silly headlines I clicked:
- (This one is funny in the "Eats shoots and leaves" sense, not the actual substance.)
— This is some mind blowing stuff. If you've heard of something described as having the behavior of both a wave and a particle this explains what that means.
The big news at the end of last week was that Google is going to challenge MySpace with a of their own. Unfortunately every time I went to check it out it wasn't available. You can see it now though if you're curious.
Some guys give women a pretty hard time just for walking down the street. Enter the , on which women post photos of the men who harass them. It's not the same as those ex-boyfriend-cheating blogs, but similar.
now has a blog.
All things being equal, so does .
If all about what Microsoft's Origami project actually is are correct, then I was totally wrong. You may have read the news reports, but I reckon the only thing you really need to see is everyone's talking about. (Reader Stev also sends this if you prefer.) On our theme of trust, I think I've established that you can't trust me to have the inside line on new Microsoft products.
Also, my question about whether people would be willing to be strung along for three weeks with a viral campaign has sort of been answered. But there's another question that has come up as a result of the way Origami has been presented so far. With all this hype, it better actually be pretty cool or it's going to look like a loser even if it isn't, or, as one blogger put it, ?
Speaking of Microsoft products, this of what an iPod box would look like if it was a Microsoft product is really a joke among designers, but as you watch it, it's hard not to realize the bigger picture statement about the company itself.
A bill has been proposed in Ohio to . As I understand it, the legislation is real, but the whole thing is actually a joke to make a point about using junk science to justify bad legislation - specifically legislation to ban on gay adoption in Ohio which is not a joke.
A slide show of the in India.
You may have heard that John Lydon rejected any interest in the Sex Pistols being in the Rock n Roll hall of fame. You can see the actual hand written letter . "That hall of fame is a piss stain."
Speaking of things I heard about but didn't actually see until I was online, an autistic kid who'd been the manager/coach's helper for the high school basketball team is allowed to suit up and play in the last few minutes of the last game of the season. He scored 6 three pointers in a row. I think this is CBS with the . UPDATE: Looks like CBS made YouTube take the video down. That's fine, except that the CBS News video player and site as a whole is such a train wreck it's nearly impossible to link to. After some wrestling, .
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"We can't touch time, or smell it. Yet it is utterly inescapable. But, research shows, time is - at least partly - something we ." Scroll down to the section called "Does time fly?" to read about an experiment in which it was determined that perceptual time does slow under stressful conditions. The reporting here (and maybe the test itself) is not very thorough, but it's a cool idea. I've read that there's actually a that accounts for the sense of slowing time. To my frustration, I can't find a way to twist this into an explanation for why this entry is going up on Saturday night instead of Friday night.
While rounds up media reports on the fallout from the shrine bombing in Iraq this week, other bloggers are reporting from a closer vantage. continues to provide a compelling local perspective and has photos and other reporting from Baghdad (I like the map). It's interesting to note that the Interior Minister is accusing the news media there of making the situation worse, prompting Zeyad to a familiar quandary: "Should we all stay quiet and pretend things are 'not that bad' for fear of exaggerating, or blowing things out of proportion, or should we just continue to report what we see and hear around us?"
, "the Web's first fully reader-funded journalist-blogger," when the shrine was attacked and continues to report from the area. He's the "media is blowing this out of proportion" line.
Allbritton's blog reminded me that is also in Iraq right now. He hasn't posted since the bombing, but his tour of Kurdish Iraq is quite good.
makes an interesting case for why the shrine bombing is not a precursor to civil war an offers some Iraqi political analysis that I hadn't read elsewhere.
includes some of the above and does a nice job presenting it as a "decide for yourself" story.
— They're not very easy to read, but a blogger obtained notes taken by a Rumsfeld aid on 9/11 through the Freedom of Information Act and . The news they bring is that says "hit SH @ same time - not only UBL" — the interpretation being that the administration had sights set on Saddam from the beginning.
Non-medal winners at the Olympics could participate in a run-off competition for who is best able to .
— That's not quite literal yet, but they're working on it. This is the second time I've read about algae as a fuel alternative (If you read to the end of this article, they mention the algae as biodiesel idea.). There's a certain irony in the fact our energy solution may be a plant for which our fertile Midwestern soil is useless.
— Or at least, prolactin levels are 400% higher. The abstract for the doesn't mention how they measured whether the sex in the study was particularly good or not and whether that might have an effect on prolactin levels.
, this time among a bunch of frozen shrimp. My favorite line: "They could therefore have been fished in the Pacific, even in the waters where a Japanese trawler 20 years ago found the cadaver of what was believed to have been a plesiosaur."
Great insights on from the owner of a couple of "home entertainment stores" (which I gather means he rents videos). UPDATE: This item said "American movie tastes" in the initial draft. I saw "Athens" and thought "Georgia" without seeing the obvious "Location: Greece" in the blog header. (And I wouldn't have guessed anyone in the world other than Americans actually watch Steven Seagal... although David Hasslehoff is also popular abroad.) Reader Jay suggests, "Movie tastes same around the world" but part of me is resistant to that. I feel like there's surely a culture that isn't naturally drawn to guns and bikini girls... although, as I write that out loud, I think maybe Jay's right.
New VW ad campaign, "" — I saw one of these air while watching the other night. (I have no idea what "pinks" means, but that's gotta be the most hardcore game show ever. The loser literally has to give his car to the winner.) One thing VW's campaign doesn't seem to recognize is that part of the appeal of customization is personalization. UPDATE: "Pinks" refers to the pink slips that are the car's title of ownership. The show begins with the owners signing over the titles to their cars to the show. Thanks to everyone (possibly a record) who wrote in.
Today's clicking soundtrack:
- I followed a recommendation from the to expecting some noisy hipster rock, but instead found pleasant folk music.
- Links to this collection of . Led me to peruse the for a while.
- Lastly, I also took a listen to the , confirming my belief that Slash was the real reason for that band's success.
Speaking of music, the has a blog.
Still speaking of music, $85 bucks gets you an .
And on the way to not speaking about music anymore, I'm very skeptical that there was ever such a thing as a , but maybe a cat tuba .
This afternoon I played with a new video player called . It's like a video RSS aggregator. So you subscribe to the feed (it comes with a few already loaded) and you can sit back and watch it like TV. Of course, you're meant to watch legal video feeds like video blogs and webcasts. ()
Speaking of watching TV online, is a tool that's meant to make your TV viewing more social. On one end it automates your TV viewing scheduling. On the other end, it's got chat rooms and blog tools to put you in touch with people who are fans of the same shows you are. (Note: Still in beta.)
", a biweekly (or so) compendium of the best of the health policy blogs."
"Houston's police chief on Wednesday proposed placing surveillance cameras in apartment complexes, downtown streets, shopping malls and to fight crime during a shortage of police officers." In response, some folks in the online community have collected reward money for anyone who doing anything illegal.
" is the ultimate gaming utility. It's a small program that allows you to cheat in every game out there - published or to be published in the future!" I haven't tried this download so I can't vouch for it personally, but it seems to be well received.
Woah, remember those hidden passageways from earlier in the week? Check out this guy's (apparently now busted) .
All the popular Digg stories from earlier this week . I thought this was some kind of script that would keep the page current, but it looks like Urly Art uses this technique as a means of making money through advertising. Here's their .
A lot of folks are wondering what Microsoft's is all about. and unfortunately, I have to duck the question as well. As it happens, last time I was out in Redmond I saw an early demo of what I think this is. I'll be interested to see if Microsoft can keep the suspense up for three weeks. That seems like a pretty long time to tease people.
Commuter Click: ""
I've only recently begun to explore artisanal chocolates as they're available here in New York City, so I found the from a two and a half hour chocolate lesson to be very enlightening. (Plus, British people curse funny.)
"You always knew that dull, boring cubicles could suck the joy out of work, but now there's evidence that they can change your brain. Not mentally or emotionally, no, we're talking ."
Video of the Day: Mark Osborne's award winning 1998 claymation short, .
— Though most of the contents is unreadable for me, the Spanish and French lists are pretty interesting. Reddit shows what's popular within the community, not Web-wide, but I think there are still insights to be found in how the different languages differ.
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Just so we're keeping the record clean on the Pizza Hut item, and particular because I don't want to be sued by (or worse, banned from) Pizza Hut, reader jbm did some extra leg work:
Will:Before we get all torn up about that Milkweed PDF, there's something that ought to be seen (and I bring this up because a lot of your readers won't do the research--sort of like the writer for the Milkweed):Polymethylsiloxane is an ordinary, OTC medication ingredient used (somewhat ironically, given how we got into this in the first place) as a stomach gas reliever..Whether or not the product is on the GRAS list, there's sure a lot of it being used. Has to be pretty safe, because it's an ingredient in infant meds.So, that's it. You go to the Pizza Hut lunch buffet, overindulge, and end up taking Gas-X (r) in order to get some relief. Polymethylsiloxane helps you get into the mess, polymethylsiloxane helps you get out of it. Seems to me that the writer of the Milkweed article is practicing selective ignorance, because that article fails to mention the other uses of the chemical--but that's the nature of propaganda, isn't it?—jbm!
And furthermore...
.
Will replies: Thanks jbm for that extra work. I admit I was seduced by the idea that rubbery cheese might actually be closer to rubber than anyone realized. That Dow Corning link is pretty amazing when you consider it's about food. I love the kosher certificate. I'm trying to imagine a rabbi in a lab coat standing over a vat of chemicals saying "God bless this PMX-0001 Silicone Fluid 350 CST Foodgrade..."
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FOR SUBSCRIBERSA harrowing ordeal aboard an Israel-bound plane
FOR SUBSCRIBERSThe debate over AI’s future rages on both coasts
" contain chains of magnetic iron minerals that allow them to orient in the Earth's magnetic field, like living compass needles."
FOR SUBSCRIBERSA harrowing ordeal aboard an Israel-bound plane
FOR SUBSCRIBERSThe debate over AI’s future rages on both coasts
"Scientists have discovered with a full set of crocodile-like chompers."
Q: Can a mantis shrimp really punch a hole in its aquarium glass?
A:
and New Poison Frogs — The is worth a click. Straight out of King Kong.
Communications sensors can be placed on a battlefield by . I have only two questions. When will I be able to send my own autonomous communications robot into battle to report to me? And has anyone seen Sarah Connor?
Fred Phelps is probably the most despicable human being alive in America today. If the name doesn't ring a bell, you may know him as the "God hates fags" guy. The latest stunt from the Phelps clan is to protest at the funerals of fallen U.S. veterans with the twisted reasoning that bad things happen to American and therefore its soldiers because of tolerance for the nation's gays (or something like that). Now a group of bikers called the to the cause of drowning out the lunatic ravings of Phelps' followers and honoring the dead. Apparently the new national attention the group is seeing is crashing their national site. I was able to find and otherwise, . Also, this for the organization and photos from the .
Spot the Onion satire:
- By order of China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, TV shows and films featuring .
- White House had
Speaking of not being able to tell the difference between satire and reality, "A Texas woman alleges on her blog that with very liberal views on sexuality has led to a court forbidding her to have any form of contact with her son."
Video of the Day: — Much more from WFMU's .
"A seventh-grader tested ice and toilet water at South Florida fast-food restaurants. Seventy percent of the time, the ."
Speaking of incentive to move away from fast food, . **UPDATE: Not exactly, see clarification .
A theme I often emphasize is that the Internet is not a safe place for unsupervised children. A corollary to the rule that parents need to learn technology to protect their children, however, is that parents need to learn technology so they aren't .
completes his year of reader-sponsored blogging. Though by all measures it was a success, he's moving on to new projects.
I confess I haven't been all that engrossed in watching internationals fall down in the snow so I happen to be relatively well acquainted with this season's crop of (What do you mean they're not your idols? What kind of American are you?). Anyway, I was pleased to see come up as a popular link. He's my pick too.
Speaking of nothing good on TV, why force yourself to endure something crappy when there's so much good stuff online? Case in point, a 20 minute narration/video that "explains the world's ." (It's a .mov, but there's nothing to see in the video, just a spinning record.)
A huge list of companies and
The degree of tension in Iraq following the is well described by .
, edited for expediency — Which is not to say the isn't fun to play with.
I feel like I've clicked the before, but I can't find it in the archives. Tricks of the Trade is a blog to which people submit tips on the things they do to perform their jobs better.
New tech term to me: — "A new wireless technology could beat fiber optics for speed in some applications."
Like many Americans, my first thought on hearing all the fuss over the United Arab Emirates and U.S. ports was one of trepidation. Not seeing much to contradict that feeling on TV, I knew I'd find a counter to the conventional wisdom online. and both make the case for "no big deal." In this somewhat you can actually watch Glenn change his mind progressively with each update. does some hunting and decides the story is a mindless feeding frenzy. (He later goes on to point out the .)
None of the above really address the accusation of , however.
"Meet Rod Dreher, a conservative who is critical of capitalism." The new political term here is "" or Crunchy Cons.
Good stuff from Slate:
- (I'm ready for an "all doped" Olympics anyway.)
- — Hysterical. Who decided that the most authoritative image to deliver news is a blond woman?
- And something I've always wondered: (Answer: It's even more complicated than I thought.)
— I love this experiment. They passed out CDs to commuters, telling them in contained a Valentine's Day promotion. The test was to see how many people would go to work and open the CD on their machines.
— Powered by a leaf blower.
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The Washington Post published a story about a hacker and kept his identity secret. Someone looked at the metadata of the photo used in the online version of the story and found a town named which . There's some dispute about whether they really blew it for this hacker, but the bottom line is that there's a lot of data in an online image that isn't seen on the surface. The best "unseen info" image disaster story I know of is that of Cat Schwartz of TechTV who posted cropped photos of herself online. Geeks managed to uncrop the photos and it turned out she was naked in them. D'oh! (Find your own link for that one.) Second runner up would be the CNN.com photo editors who named a photo of the president with .
— He's talking mostly in terms of promoting a product, but there are public relations lessons here as well.
- Jason Calcanis points out that YouTube is the beneficiary of pirated material. That's true, but I have a hard time holding it against them because that material is often stuff that isn't available online from the legal source.
Speaking of YouTube's pirated material, I'm still making my mind up about my NBC colleagues on YouTube over the Chronic(les) of Narnia rap video from Saturday Night Live. My first thought was that it's a stupid, biting-the-hand-that-gives-your-tired-show-much-needed-buzz move, but I think it's wrong to assume the NBC folks don't "get it." They obviously understand well enough to use . The lesson: get yourself online or someone else will do it for you. Meanwhile, I've yet to see anyone in the mainstream actually harness (instead of being completely run over by) the power of viral distribution.
Speaking of viral distribution, while looking around to see if I could find the origins of "" I found , which claims to be able to track viral video and games. "By adding a “sprite” to each video clip, the clip itself will tell us when someone is watching it." (The video is an Ikea ad.)
— Though strikingly different from the current catalog, still not safe for work. The parent directory has other years.
The effort to patent the warp drive has "."
— It's been a while since I've seen an introduction to blogging. Actually, as you'll see if you click the link, Problogger has been working on this series for a while, but it apparently adding some new pages. It's a good chance to catch up if you're still wondering what it's all about.
— I understand that processing video so it looks like animation makes special effects easier, but I don't like it. One or the other please (although turning Keanu into a two dimensional object seems fitting).
A company selling for your house. It's all flash, so it takes a while to load up. The video tab has the best stuff, I think animation #4 is my favorite.
— Posted to great acclaim at .
- Includes a term I didn't already know: "Margaret Turnbull, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution of Washington announced her shortlist of so-called "habstars" — potentially habitable stellar systems." The idea is to start by looking for a star that would work, then look for planets near that star. covered the story .
has been excerpting and discussing declassified al Qaeda documents. They're pretty general documents but provide fascinating insight into the structure of the organization.
Trying to keep track of the various names and organizations in War on Terror coverage can be a chore. In addition to learning the difference between Zarqawi and Zawahri I've committed "" to memory since it seems to come up on blogs that . NOTE: Given the U.S. government's hair trigger with regard to terrorism, the fact that these places are still standing is probably (I hope) a good indication that they're not an immediate threat.
"How hard is it to build your own weapon of mass destruction? We take a crash course in supervirus engineering to find out." Short answer: .
— If you read to the end, however, the article takes a funny twist to reveal that Google's principled stand may in fact be more a matter of self interest in protecting their algorithms than standing up to a nosy government.
"" Um... what? What do you mean "hunts them down?" I'm having trouble believing this, but apparently, if their spam isn't reaching you, they run a credit report on you to find a valid e-mail address and send the spam there instead. At what point does marketing cross the link to stalking? More thorough report . I also clicked .
Speaking of nervy, here's a nice outrageous story to get your blood pumping. A guy went to Hawaii and lost his camera with over 500 photos on it. He started a blog of his trip using Flickr photos from strangers as a substitute for his lost shots. Then someone finds his camera, he talks to them on the phone, and they . Hoo!
Did you ever look at a dollar bill and try to picture George Washington as a flesh-and-blood human? not only did that, they age-regressed him, making models of Washington at 45 and 19-years-old. Cool video included.
— Excerpts a very brief passage from a journal of the mid-1800s. Noteworthy in that the holiday was celebrated at all. Was it the invention of the car (sale) that spoiled the holiday?
— Of all the headlines to come out of the war, this is the last I would have predicted. I guess it'd be a different story if American corporations saw Iraqis as potential customers.
— "Frey, prosecutors contend, apparently is a rather demanding guy. In fact, he actually drew up a bizarre four-page marriage document--a "Contract of Wifely Expectations"--that sought to establish guidelines for his spouse in terms of hygiene, clothing, and sexual activities." The Smoking Gun folks manage to find all the weirdoes. NOTE: This jumps right in at "twisted" with no warm up. Safe for work, but unsafe for the sensitive.
is a blog syndication service for bloggers. If I understand it, a site that doesn't have bloggers of its own would sign up for the service and have BlogBurst provide the bloggers.