The reporting of the protests in Burma represents a fascinating application of lessons learned in the past few years about organizing and reporting online - and probably even about censoring Web sites.  The tools of citizen journalism have been steadily improving since the DIY digital rally for tsunami stricken Southeast Asian regions raised the eyebrows of media watchers everywhere. And the professional media have done more than just watch citizen journalism grow. Nearly every mainstream media outlet has developed a means of actively soliciting content from their audience (ahem). While it can sometimes be the case that when the media can't report on a story it reports on the reporting of the story, as copiously as mainstream media is cranking out boilerplate citizen journalism articles, they're also ingesting and processing photos, videos and news tips straight from the street from people who are not being paid or assigned to cover the story.

The stand-out line for me in this Wall Street Journal article was, "One blogger dubbed 'Moezack,' whose photos and descriptions of the protests -- sometimes posted minutes after events occurred -- were picked up by the international press, had stopped blogging." (FWIW, This is Moezack's blog, Today Burma.)

Communication tools for the Web have been improving, becoming more efficient, mobile based, and with more useful features. Ironically, one of the more useful tools in disseminating information on this story is the "Cbox" a comment box that works almost like an old school chat room.

Sophisticated efforts by repressive governments to block, ban, cordon and censor the Web have also increased, but then corresponding efforts to circumvent those blocks and keep the flow of information free have also made gains - both in technology like proxy servers and wireless devices and organization with small news sites run by expats with friends still in-country and concerned activist groups like Reporters Without Borders.

And so we find it all come to a head in Burma. Citizens with cameras and camera phones and video cameras and blogs and YouTube accounts and Facebook pages. A global media poised to accept the help of amateurs to report a story that's difficult to access in an official capacity. And a network of expats and cyber activists working to find loopholes and hacks as fast as the government can cut cords and pull plugs.

What I clicked, including some examples of what I've mentioned above:

"Burma is blacked out now!" It is amazing the lengths the government is going to in order to keep its shameful secrets.

What a censored page looks like to someone in Burma (via Myo Chit).

And in case you were wondering, much of the media in Burma called it quits when they were being forced to print state propaganda.

Speaking of propaganda, Voice of America news reports on Burmese junta propaganda
(Link found among the many helpful posts at Bangkok Pundit.)

That Facebook page that's been making news: Support the Monks' protest in Burma

The Burma News Cbox - A scrolling newswire of tips, reports, rumors, links, photos. Clean and simple and one of the most useful things out there. A Cbox is a comment box that would usually appear in the margin of a blog for visitors to leave comments. The untranslated, original version is Niknayman.

Here's a collection of Cboxes on a single page.

Speaking of compiling and translating, Burma-Myanmar Genocide 2007 - "Here, we present you most updated news about current ongoing genocide in Burma/Myanmar. A translated English version of many Burmese/Myanmar blogs from within the country, for international viewers."

From that blog I saw this idea:

29 Sep 07, 11:30 - MyoThant: A group of 88-generation activists are urging UN and US & UK embassies in Rangoon to open a 1-page web service via WIFI access to general public just to submit news photos (with user name: 2007, pw: 2007). Please write to them to request this.

I wonder what kind of trouble it would cause if there was Wifi at the US Embassy in defiance of the national Internet shut-down. I imagine they'd simply deny access to the embassy.

The Burma Digest YouTube channel - Protest videos from inside the country.

Another YouTube channel of protest videos: Juvenilebirds

Those organizing expats:

• Democratic Voice of Burma - News from inside the country based in Norway.
• Mizzima News - Exiled Burmese journalists based in Delhi, India.
• Ko Htike - An expat blogging from London, relaying reports and photos from contacts inside Burma.

Global Voices - Myanmar (Burma) - For international news of this nature Global Voices should be your first click, not just for news but for further links and translations. It's certainly better than randomly clicking through blog directories for worthwhile blog content.

Of course, if you did want to randomly flip through a blog director, you can. If nothing else, it gives a sense of what normal life is like there.

Speaking of worthwhile blog content, Dr. Lun Swe's blog is not in English but you don't need language to look at the photos. This is where I first saw the now infamous series of photos of the Japanese photographer shot and dying in the street. (I've seen the photos with a Reuters credit but Reuters only names "stringer" as the source, so it's not clear to me who took the originals.)

Speaking of the shooting of the Japanese photographer, I'd heard there was video of the shooting as well. All I found of that was this news report. ADDING: There's also this. It's a split second at 3:40, replayed again in the last few seconds of the clip. The point here is not to be ghoulish about the death but to document the abuse and remove any deniability.

As I write this, rumors of a mutiny or coup are popping up on several sites. Andrew Sullivan rounds up links.

That Jim Carrey video - He's got a new one now about sending e-mail to the UN, but this is the earlier one in which he explains the situation in Burma. I mention it only because at some point you're going to be watching some serious news about this story and Jim Carrey is going to show up on the TV screen and you're going to say, "WTF is Jim Carrey doing on this serious news story??"

This McConnell/Feinstein video and two bucks will get you on the NYC subway.

I was looking at some of the reaction to that "bed-wetter" article we saw in yesterday's Clicked and saw an unexpected theme: defining maturity. I'm thinking the cultural context for the question is that we typically think of diplomacy and negotiation as part of a rational grow-up profile and conversely violence and rigidity are seen as symptomatic of impulsive immaturity. The challenge to that convention says that being a grown-up means learning from mistakes and not making them again. Immaturity is characterized by cowardice and avoidance of the facts to preserve a deluded comfort.

I also clicked this Hot Air interview with the author of The Death of the Grown Up. Some of the points here aren't as clear to me as they are to the author because it seems some aspects of the proverbial death are more a matter of changing styles, which are different from the more concrete, definitional aspects of adulthood. Being respectful might be part of the definition of maturity, whether a tucked in shirt is a way of communicating that respect is more a question of fashion than philosophy.

Speaking of maturity through experience, 12 Investing Mistakes I've Made (and How You Can Learn From Them) - Advice based on lessons from mistakes is so much more convincing and authentic to me than advice from "experts."  Admitting mistakes changes the tone of the advice from preachy to collegial.

Speaking of maturity, How to Accept Criticism with Grace and Appreciation

Still speaking of maturity (I think), remember those Canadian students who mocked the school bully by wearing pink? They've earned a day: Stand Up Against Bullying Day.

Beautiful hi-res moon photo

Birds in a fish tank - I feel like this would be somehow bad for the birds but I can think of any rational reason to justify that feeling.

Wall animation - It's a stop action film drawn on a wall. What's particularly cool is that as they make successive frames, they erase the previous frames, leaving a dark smear behind the animation.

Why municipal wireless networks have been such a flop.

Cops writing complaints about other cops who write them tickets. Obviously cops share a bond, but I almost wonder if this if fake because I can't imagine any of my cop friends complaining out loud like this.

Speaking of policing police, Missouri: Police Stake Out Brett Darrow Home - Darrow is the guy who got the cop fired by videotaping him making threats of false charges. I really like the idea of a blog devoted to the politics of driving. Considering the amount of driving Americans do it's surprising that isn't a designated news category.  We get reports on gas prices, crash tests, traffic conditions, etc., but not under the heading of "today's driving news."

Speaking of driving, Extreme car mods - Awesome sound on that first jet car video.

This crazy Excel error sounds like the stuff of conspiracy theories. Magical numbers and hidden calculations, surely coordinates for alien invasion or perhaps reflecting Lat/Long coordinates of a secret base or city where the world's elite will live after they nuke the rest of us off the planet. Send 20 bucks to me and I'll put you on the subscription list for the newsletter of the Church of the Excel Glitch. Don't be left behind. (Just kidding, don't send me money.) The actual explanation isn't quite as dramatic but I felt smarter for having read this so I encourage you to do so as well.

What does it mean when a nude-posing pop star has a high IQ? After giving it some thoughts and some clicks I'm pretty sure it means absolutely nothing.

Fight for Kisses - Babies train to fight back when they lose attention to cleanly shaven fathers. I didn't download the game so you're on your own there.

"$9.11 for Rudy"? Ick.

The Hardest Logic Puzzle in the World

Folks online are very excited for the new MP3 tab at Amazon.com. I read this review, which is generally positive. Lately people seem to cheer anything that represents a challenge to iTunes.

How to deal with unwanted friend requests, the ethics of de-friending, and other social networking etiquette predicaments. Not the most satisfying answers but a good summary of the problems.  The bottom line is that the more non-friends or distant friends you add, the less useful your Facebook account is.

As someone who has held up publishing a blog entry for lack of a good headline, whoever accidentally published a headline of "Think of a headline" has my sympathy.

"A film like Good Luck Chuck isn't made, so much as perpetrated, like the seedy murder of a pimp in a dingy alley." In the way that negative reviews can be fun to read, this one is.

Speaking of bad movies, I think I saw one like this: "Two tractor-trailers carrying 70,000 cans and 44,000 bottles of Moosehead Lager were stolen early Wednesday morning." Does Canada offer a nickel back on cans? If so, I have an idea for how to catch the thief.

Where vehicles go to die. There are more links in the comments but I don't see any mention of the Staten Island boat graveyard, which has yielded a lot of great photos.

Coming soon to a terror scare near you: Urballoon art. It's a projector hanging from a balloon that projects text and images to the ground. Log into the site to see the map of where the balloon is at the moment and to submit your photo or message to be projected.

Hand written lawsuit filed against Google: "When the social security number is turned upside down in its entirety it is a scrambled code that does spell he name Google."

I don't really buy the explanation that no one noticed that this building looks like a swastika until Google Maps came along and we could suddenly see it from the sky. There's no way an architect doesn't know what his/her building looks like from above. Could it be they just said, "Oh heck, who's gonna notice?"

The Smoking Gun has the lawyer letter asking the restaurant owner to take down his photo with Chelsea Clinton.

I don't understand this story at all. Either someone in the Clinton legal office is acting on standing orders without thinking or there's a story-behind-the-story that we don't know.

I had never heard of buttering a floor but there are a bunch of these in YouTube.

NOTE: The victim of the prank does quite a bit of cursing.

[YouTube:giORmFcFgKs]

Female 'Ninjas' Rob Richland Gas Station With Sword, Dagger - That's pretty much the whole story except that New York City has also been dealing with a ninja burglar. This can mean only one thing: it's time for a war on ninjas. Sorry al Qaeda, we're moving on. ADDING: Dear Ninja, what's the deal?

Speaking of fun with thievery, creative writing assignment seed line: "oh my god... bill this is the thief!! LOL" - Ready, go!  Actually, this hardly needs any creative thinking to be a good story. Someone uploaded photos to a Flickr account on a stolen laptop and because the Flickr account was cookied, they posted the photos to the account of the rightful laptop owner. The suspicion is that the photo is of the thief. I suppose there's something Web 2.0 about the idea of making your own mug shot.  BoingBoing has more links: Presumed idiot criminal uploads pix of self from stolen iMac

Speaking of creative writing, The World's Weirdest/Stupidest Conspiracy Theories - A list of most clever conspiracy theories would be fun too.

The Pollster.com Disclosure Project: "Starting today we will begin to formally request answers to a limited but fundamental set of methodological questions for every public poll asking about the primary election released in, for now, a limited set of states."

Speaking of defining the terms, how do you define sectarian violence?

Speaking of definitions, it is definitional to the Commuter Click that I'm initially discouraged by its length but find myself so absorbed that I have to print it out and take it with me. That's what happened with this piece when my curiosity about the "where is she now" of the angry segregationist in the famous Little Rock photo turned into a lot of lost time on a really compelling human story. (And by the way, this is the third Vanity Fair piece I've recommended in the past couple weeks.  Did they re-do their Web site? I don't recall every clicking their articles before.)

For those who think too visually to bother with text blogging there's Sketchcast. It's like recording your white board sketch or like a coach drawing a play with circles and crosses.

"Simpsons" Scenes and their Reference Movies - Frames from the Simpsons matched with their corresponding movie frame. This took some serious (and important) work.

Speaking of serious work, who are this year's MacArthur fellows? I'm not sure why I was so interested in this list. I think because as a whole it reflects standards we don't usually see celebrated. As far as I know, none of these people have been photographed exiting a car in a miniskirt without underwear.

Speaking of geniuses, Tattoo regrets - Spell check, people!

I think this is related spam but I still thought it was funny: Tattoo lovers dating. Every time I see a dating site I thank the stars I met my wife before the Internet age. I can't imagine dating this way.

Bush's UN Speech Full of Fone-eh-tick Pronunciations for World Leaders - I know this'll give Bush bashers a tickle but I don't think it's a fair shot.  Reading off a teleprompter is a whole different ball game from reading off a page.  I've seen phonetics in teleprompter scripts. I've even see "take a breath here" marks. I'm not saying I think the president really knows how to pronounce the names of these countries but the use of phonetics in teleprompter scripts isn't a scandal.

"A photographic collection of faces found in everyday places." Or, "Everything is staring at me."

Speaking of seeing things, the case of that missing girl Madeleine McCann has the peculiar element of sightings all over the world. I read this item and followed the link to the supposed photo of her in Morocco. (Yes, that tiny one of a girl on a person's back.) A missing child is serious, so I don't want to make jokes about Elvis sightings, but that's what came to mind.

Bed-wetter Nation - Compares the visit by Nikita Khrushchev in 1959 to the visit by Ahmadinejad this week and accuses America of becoming "a pants-piddling mess." I've been thinking lately, in light of our look at the application of the taser last week, that the frantic reaction to Ahmadinejad is more a reflection of our relatively new "zero tolerance" culture. Whether we're arresting 8-year-olds for having two inch pocket knives or electrocuting unarmed obnoxious people, we seem to have lost our wiggle room. I understand why: Wiggle room on students and weapons yields horrifying killing sprees. Wiggle room on terrorism yields 9/11. But sometimes the phenomenon does seem to get the better of our reason. I'm open to refutation and changing my mind on this, it's just a thought I've been nursing lately.

Other Ahmadinejad items I clicked:

• Scott Adams draws attention (not all of it good) for his sarcastic shot at American reaction to the whole episode.
• "If Columbia is not ashamed of the decision then why did they blacken out the podium and the backdrop?"

That's not Meg White in that sex tape. (This link is safe for work. Click beyond this at your own risk.)

Ravelry - A knitting social site launching soon. It's amazing how much power this hobby has online. I think the Today show needs a knitting reporter.

BoingBoing has all the deets and links on that MIT student who was arrested at the airport in Boston. I don't think mine is the majority opinion, but "She's lucky to be in a cell as opposed to the morgue" is one of the most galling remarks I've ever heard. In fact it's the over-reacting security team who's lucky - lucky their embarrassing string of knee-jerk panic and jumping at shadows hasn't been crowned with the loss of a promising young American life. I know the counter-argument is that I'm the one who should feel lucky that this security force is so zealous about my safety and protection. I might feel luckier if I thought they had the ability to recognize an actual bomb and not just freak out over everything that looks like a red wire/blue wire suspense scene from a Die Hard movie. God forbid another Shoey Shoebomber strolls through while everyone is dazzled by blinking lights.

At least there's Bruce Schneier or I'd think there was something wrong with me.

Speaking of airport security ridiculousness, how clever of this terrorist to try to use a nun's habit as a disguise.

Ten things to keep in mind to avoid getting tased, bro.

"A police officer is on paid leave after dash-cam video shows him using a taser over and over again on a woman even after she's handcuffed."

"Orange County sheriff's deputies on Tuesday defended their decision to use a stun gun on a 15-year-old autistic boy who ran away from his parents and later dashed into traffic." Contains another one of those lines about luck: "If that were your son, would you want him Tased or hit by a car?"

Remember that YouTube video of the guy pulled over by a cop who ends up threatening to make up charges against him? They fired the cop.

This is a comparison of two similar ad campaigns. I'm less interested in the competition than I am impressed with the rendering. The second set has kind of a Kuato quality.

Here's an interesting little story that may have a lesson for us all.  Chewywong took this picture of his friend. Someone else noticed that Virgin Mobile was using a Flickr photo in an ad with an insulting context added. Sure enough, it was the same photo. Now the family of the girl in the photo is suing Virgin. It's a pretty tangled Web.

Tecktonik dance craze takes Paris by storm - I love this part: "The leaders of the Tecktonik craze can be found at meeting spots around Paris, including in the centre near the Pompidou modern art gallery, where dance-offs are organised between teams." What's French for "Bring it on?"

Dan Rather's producer Mary Mapes sticks up for her former boss and gives her perspective on the whole "Killian Memos" affair. She's pretty self righteous about it all, arguing that the questions about the documents missed the point about Bush's military service - a gambit that has come to be derided as "fake but accurate." Ironically, a criticism that went largely overlooked at the time was that by sloppily rushing the story to air, Mapes and crew undermined the work of more serious efforts to bring the story of Bush's military record into the public arena. Mapes herself points this out without realizing it.

Yet another twist in the story of the hacking of the anti-piracy company MediaDefender. Apparently the exposed documents reveal that the company was involved in illegal activities against Pirate Bay trackers. "The charges are infrastructural sabotage, denial of service attacks, hacking and spamming, all of these on a commercial level."

Did you see the cast list on this Southland Tales movie? I'm predicting media saturation.

It's funny enough that God replied to a lawsuit against him (Him) but the associated AP photo is hysterical.

Sometimes sarcasm is hard to recognize, particularly if you're not familiar with the person doing the writing. The source he's quoting has a lot of interesting entries on the war experience worth reading.

Speaking of waiting for loved ones to come home from war, I don't mind saying my colleagues did a great job on this piece.

Dial DIR-ECT-IONS worked when I tried. It didn't give the same directions I would have given, but it gave me free directions across New York City. You have to be patient with the computer lady's questions but the directions arrived at my phone before I even hung up.

Speaking of getting local advice online, Rotten Neighbor says it's about finding out about bad neighbors before you move next to them. I reckon it's more about complaining about the neighbors you already live next to. I imagine if this catches on it'll be the source of some significant fighting.

This explanation of photographic lighting led me to "Lighting Essentials for photographers." There are a lot of ads here but it's not hard to find the free, easy to understand lighting set-ups used for different effects. If you're like me and your interest in photography stems from the fact that you own a camera and that's about it, the idea of using umbrellas and soft boxes is pretty foreign so this is handy. Frankly, the sample shots on the site look a little cheesy to me, but I was recently reading acclaim for this photographer (NOTE: Some artful nudes. Stray, unshrouded boobage possible.) and his skills with lighting were particularly celebrated. At least now I have some sense of what that means.

Speaking the basics, The AudioFile: basics of uncompressed digital audio - (In case you hesitate to get into something with a "next page" button at the bottom, it's only three pages.

"Welcome to the wonderful world of umbrage, the new language of American politics."

lolsecretz - Mixes lolcats grammar with Post Secrets confessionals.

Extreme rich/poor divides - They're photos of ghettos next to wealthy neighborhoods. Pretty amazing.

Speaking of rich/poor, "the politics and economics of inequality" is the theme of Paul Krugman's new (and now free) blog. ADDING: I remember the NYTimes Op-Ed writers being more relevant to the national discussion. Friedman, Krugman, even Dowd were important opinions to consider. I wonder if they'll regain some of that with the subscription wall down.

Speaking of the Times being all free now, "Now that the NY Times has discontinued their Times Select subscription program and made much more of their 150+ years of content available for anyone to read and link to, let's take a look at some of the more notable items that the non-subscriber has been missing."

Most Voters Say Election 2008 is Annoying and a Waste of Time - It's funny because it's true - but it's not an Onion headline (again, because it's true).

Ralph's Recommendations:

Urban Stickman Sniper 2: Vengeance
Get revenge on the stickman mob boss for making you kill your own father.

This one's pretty violent and very challenging. I still haven't beaten the first level. The key is to wait for the right shot. (Oh, and if you wait for the fuel truck in level one, you can shoot the driver and blow up the truck to kill some of the bad guys.)
 
Hope you enjoy it!
-Ralph

Will remarks: As with the first one, I'm amazed at how cerebral this game is in spite of its meager rendering.

Run away the ray-gun is coming: A test of US army's new secret weapon - We've already heard all about the new weapon that makes a person feel like they're on fire so it's not really news to watch this guy zap himself. What strikes me as I read this account, however, is how the tide has turned against non-lethal weaponry. I seem to recall there being a real call for non-lethal weapons in the face of disturbing statistics on gun related injuries. I'm not able to drag anything specific out of Google but my recollection is of a spate of stories about cops shooting inner city kids who were holding toy guns or Three Musketeer bars and one line of thought in response was that police officers needed a non-lethal tool of force - just in case (in searching I found a lot of stories from 1999 that also mention Amadou Diallo). But as bad press for tasers stacks up with outrage over torture accusations against the United States, the ability to manipulate people with excruciating pain does not hold as much promise as an alternative as it may have initially seemed. Somehow, at least in recent media coverage, it's become a tool for the suppression of the irretrievably outraged.

Speaking of bad press for tasers, Wheelchair-Bound Woman Dies After Being Shocked With Taser 10 Times. This actually happened in April of 2006 so it's not clear to me what the new hook is.

Here's another: "Norman 'was handcuffed, leg shackled, hog-tied, blindfolded and tasered numerous times,' according to a news release issued by her attorneys." If I was actually looking for these stories I'm sure I'd find more. These are just the ones I'm coming across as I look at what the online community is talking about.

Speaking of this subject occupying the attention of the online community, "Don't Tase Me, Bro!" Jolts the Web - A round-up of how the phrase has taken the Web by storm.

Why does it seem like the MediaDefender story has been a top headline for a week? Because it's actually three stories and now there are stories about how much this anti-piracy company is getting its butt kicked. Hackers are taking credit for at least three breaches at anti-piracy firm MediaDefender. --Oops, better make that four separate stories of MediaDefender leaks/hacks. Apparently among the anti-piracy strategies employed by MediaDefender is to pollute BitTorrent networks with bogus files.

Once I picked myself up off the floor, I came to the conclusion that I believe the Oscar De La Hoya crossdressing photos are fake. The photos are not exactly naked or graphic but unless you have a really peculiar job, these are not work safe. The most likely explanation appears to be that this is a prank connected to "a bet De La Hoya had previously made with Sugar Ray Leonard over a minor fight in which the loser would then handle ring card girl duties during the subsequent main event."

'Cancer cured' headline of the day: Cancer cure 'may be available in two years' - Y'know, I've been making this joke for a long time and I realized today that it may be losing some of its original edge. For the record, I think these stories - or at least the headlines - border on cruelty. Here's a guy facing a few months left to live, leaving behind a wife and three small kids, trying to keep a positive face. I hope he has a dark enough sense of humor to chuckle when he sees headline after headline announcing new cures.

"This unusual species of flying fox was recently discovered in the Philippines not long after it was deemed not to exist."

"Moral hazard" was not an expression with which I was familiar until I read this bit about Ron Paul putting the question to the Fed chairman. "How can it ever be morally justifiable to deliberately depreciate the value of our currency?"

Mint Wins TechCrunch40 Top Company Award; Takes $50,000 Prize - "Mint is a personal finance application that lets users track and monitor their financials in one place without the need of routine maintenance or accounting knowledge."

"San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders expressed his support for same-sex marriage, after revealing his daughter is gay." This is one of those videos you probably saw on TV in just a few seconds of video with the anchor talking over it. This is the full video of his announcement. Quite moving.

"This video is making the rounds among military folks." NOTE: Ends with a pronounced S bomb -no pun.

List of countries by current account balance - You know whenever you see "list of countries..." that it's meant to show some shortcoming in the United States. Still, it's quite a contrast in numbers.

I don't know what Dan Rather is thinking with his lawsuit against CBS. You'd no doubt heard about the story already so I won't belabor it except to remind you that Rather's downfall marked the coming of age for pundit blogs. There's little doubt they'd love to put on an encore performance of those facts and analysis. For that matter I'm sure there are more than a few liberal bloggers who wouldn't mind re-opening the question of Bush's military service.

I saw an brief story on TV about the role of black bloggers in generating energy for the Jena 6 rally yesterday.  Some bloggers feel the cause should have had more support from the progressive blogosphere and bloggers as a whole.

Here's a funny bit of fact checking. Yesterday President Bush said he got a B in Econ 101. "President Bush as an undergraduate at Yale did not in fact receive a grade of B in his economics course. Bush received a grade that would correspond with a C-."

The hard science of making video games. It looks at how the game designers have to figure out how to make the graphics behave like the real world.

I've been waiting to have the actual swag in hand before officially congratulating Julie Hulvey for being fastest on the draw with the tesseract answer to last week's Madeleine L'Engle contest. We were out of t-shirts but I was able to score a mug along with a baseball hat. Wear and sip from them in good health, Julie.

Congratulations also to Tim who correctly recognized that "dissed by the Manilow" was a play on "dissed in the Malibu" (last quote on the page) from "Say Anything." That was a non-swag challenge but an impressive job by Tim just as I was about to give up hope. 

Virtual worlds open up to blind - I scoffed at this at first, thinking it was the latest Second Life gimmick but it has some cool thinking at its root. In some cases they're talking about overt verbal descriptions of objects in the virtual world, and I can't think of any way around that.  But more is the use of 3D audio giving the feeling of a sense of place. I know we've talked about 3D audio before but I couldn't find the links.  Thankfully a couple of them are at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry.  Remember this one with the shaking matchbox? Or the hair cut? Remember to use headphones.

So this is how it ends:

• "An object recently detected orbiting a neutron star is among the strangest planet-mass bodies ever found, astronomers say."
• Also, "Hundreds of people in Peru have needed treatment after an object from space - said to be a meteorite - plummeted to Earth in a remote area, officials say."

One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; they will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted media personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their meteor craters.

Police kick some jerk's butt video of the day. No taser in this one. It may be time to establish an official accepted practice for dealing with disruptive jerks. Zapping them with a taser feels a little extreme. In this case, no matter what he said to the cop, that kind of butt kicking looks more appropriate to a bar at 3 a.m. UPDATE: The video appears to belong to the local NBC affiliate.  Find it, and the story, there.

Next time I'm out in Seattle I'll definitely want to look into spending time on the SLUT.

"Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released its third annual report on the most corrupt members of Congress."

Speaking of corruption in Congress, "It's not every day that a witness admits in open court to having bribed a sitting U.S. Senator..."

Speaking of not being terribly proud of Congress, here's a quick round-up of indiscretions (and worse) committed by members of Congress. Could this really be true? I wonder if there's an annotated version with the names attached. UPDATE: My skepticism was well founded, as pointed out in the comments, this is bogus.

"The * * * you'll see all day" - It's a wild card Google search so you get matches that fit that format.

Here's that clip from The View showing a new co-host who's not sure if the world is flat. Ridiculousness layered on top of absurdity served on a bed of morning talk show. (Not to invoke Godwin's Law but my mind did drift to The Illustrated Road to Serfdom I'd seen recently (slide 16).)

"LucasArts announced today that Krome Studios is developing a version of the game for the Nintendo console, and players will finally get to use the Wiimote for its intended purpose - as a lightsaber!" I'm not sure how you have a saber duel when there's no physical resistance but I'm open to the possibility of this being really cool.

Speaking of things of video games helping you live a fantasy, how about a double backflip coffin?

"Viewdle is a facial recognition powered digital media platform for easily indexing, searching & monetizing video assets." This is the page that gives an idea of what the tool does. It looks at first like the app just runs on top of live video but instead the diagram makes me think the facial recognition is part of the indexing process. After a bit of digging I found the answer to my next question: "Indexes a blinding 55 frames per second."

Here's another one of those videos of finding little batteries inside a big battery. I don't know why I have such a hard time believing it's this easy and you don't come away with chemical burns.

Part 2 in Michael Totten's Ramadi series is up. I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say that this is why some people want the U.S. to stay in Iraq longer.

Google Docs is a new way for groups to collaborate on documents. I haven't tried it yet but it sounds like an easier alternative to creating a wiki. The explanation video is pretty funny.

Kaltura sounds like the same idea only with video.

Folks online have been watching closely as the Canadian dollar is getting closer in value to the American dollar. I always thought the reason books and magazines have separate prices printed on them had to do with the difference in the value of the currency. If the two become equal (and really, they basically are at this point) will Canadians still have to pay more? Will we see Canadians at the border coming to the U.S. for Barnes & Noble as Americans go in the other direction for prescription drugs?

Today is Talk Like a Pirate Day.

This is a neat photo, but more interesting is what the photographer wrote underneath.
I never heard of Active Undelete but it sounds borderline miraculous.

"By opting to go chairless, I increased my productivity and improved my relationships with my staff." My father recently tried this set-up and swears by it.  I'd love to work standing up instead of hunched over at the machine. I'm setting up a new workspace/home office and I plan to use a counter-height desk.

On the equinox it is possible to balance an egg on its end, but a week or so before that equinox the same can be done with a baseball bat.

Trent Reznor: "Steal My Music!" NOTE: Contains rock star curses.

Speaking of music's legally gray areas, "Winamp 5.5 (PC-only) will be released sporting two new and potentially controversial features: support for mp3 blogs and the ability to stream your music collection over the Internet..." It's coming October 10th.

A whole bunch of "a guy walks into a bar" jokes.

Burning Man '07 seen from above.

Digestion Time Of Foods - Just a list, but the information seems important - like something I should already know.

This is an odd story because when I saw it last night I wasn't sure I'd even mention it because frankly there are taser videos online all the time and there are stories of people being tasered all the time and this one isn't too much different from the ones you've seen in the past - right down the uncomfortable shift in tone from outraged defiance to frantic screams and whimpers for mercy.

But then this morning I saw that the story had made the news cycle, I guess because TV was able to get hold of the videos through whatever wire services they consume, so I figured it was so big a story that it didn't need any linking from me.

However, having just watched another segment on it I was annoyed by two of my biggest TV pet peeves: The first is a TV person saying, "If you see the video, it's really amazing," while they talk over the video and only a little piece is shown. The second is that the entire segment was about the tasering and there was no mention of the guy's question or the circumstances. I understand that from the legal perspective the event's preamble is not especially relevant, but as a news consumer I want to know what happened.

There appear to be a number of versions of this video out there.  This is the best one I've seen so far: UPDATING: This looks like the video the TV folks are running. It's part two of a series.  Part 1 is here and Part 3 is here.

For the record, this is the one I initially posted:

[YouTube:SaiWCS10C5s]

And this is the one I saw last night. It doesn't have the best perspective on the tasering but it has the full exchange and you can hear Kerry pretty well while the whole thing is going on. I'm a little curious to know what Kerry's answer was about how he feels about conceding.

OK A FEW MORE: The arrested guy, Andrew Meyer, has a Web site.

John Kerry's Online Communications Director gives the Kerry perspective.

"How it really went down." (Witness account relayed in a Kos diary basically says the guy had it coming. I think this is becoming clear from some of the news accounts.)

And a new Web meme is born!

I admit I actually watched most of the Emmy Awards - or at least, it was on the TV while I sat on the couch editing photos of motorcycles, but to the extent that it seeped into my brain while I did so, I watched.

It would have been easy to believe that the cut away was a mistake given the remarkably poor production of the show, but it was pretty clear Sally Field was veering into an "off-script" moment. While looking for a bootleg or transcript of what happened I learned that "the cut-out was only in the USA and that Canada had an uninterrupted feed."

Sure enough, a Canadian blog had the line: "If mothers ruled the world, there'd be no goddamn wars in the first place."

ADDING: Finally, here's the unedited clip.

P.S. The right way and wrong way to blog the Emmys (Also worth a look is his entry on that head-scratcher of an award category, Interactive TV. I thought it was just an excuse for Fox to cross promote another Murdoch property, particularly with MySpaceTV blurring the definition of broadcast network. Awarding Current TV doesn't fit that conspiracy theory very well, however.)

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has managed to kick up a bit of dust from the equine corpse of the bloggers vs. journalism argument with an odd bit of straw man-ism seasoned with a dose of red herring. The old ghost is the notion that bloggers, citizen journalists and "user-news sites" will bring about the extinction of the professional journalist. The means of laying this specter to rest (again) is to look at headlines from sites like Digg, Reddit and Delicious and compare them with the headlines leading traditional news media. Of course we learn that the latest apples of the online world's eye are nothing like the MSM's oranges (sorry, I ran out of dead horse metaphors).

It would be easier to convince myself that the PEJ study isn't trying to say anything that isn't written on the page if it wasn't for the fact that people who speak the same language as the PEJ received their message loud and clear.

More reasonable analysis is abundantly available.

Speaking of mainstream outlets in conflict with online communities, CBS speaks that PEJ language.

Speaking of online upstarts encroaching upon the hallowed ground of tradition, D.C.'s New Young Blogging Elite

Speaking of the respectability of bloggers, "It seems the more major bloggers tend to ask for the same rights, privileges and respect given traditional journalists, the more frequently I'm seeing some of them violate best practices for information sharing and news gathering." The issue here is blogs that link to themselves instead of more relevant source material. I always thought that was a search engine trick and fair game but apparently some people see it as a real offense.

Speaking of the infallibility of traditional journalists, "Former President Bill Clinton, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan have added their names to the list of people who say they were the subjects of fake interviews published in a French foreign affairs journal under the name of Alexis Debat, a former ABC News consultant."

Speaking of fake facts, Beyond Wikipedia: 20 References You Can't Do Without - The funny thing is, this list pretty much confirmed to me that I'd rather just use Wikipedia. Obviously you can't use Wikipedia to write a formal report, but I tried to find the Rudyard Kipling poem from yesterday's Clicked and I got muddled search results, sign-up pages, membership restrictions... no poem.  Yesterday in a single Google search I got the whole poem on the first try and was able to share it with my readers easily.

Speaking of Wikipedia and facts, FCU: Fact Checker Unit (with Bill Murray) NOTE: This is 9 minutes long. P.S. Chopsticks has lyrics???

Speaking of having fun with facts, this is why life online is more interesting: This conspiracy theory reads like the jacket cover of a thriller novel. Instead of "Impeachment now!" it should say "On shelves this Fall at a bookstore near you."

Speaking of conspiracy theories, remember that bit about the government doing sneaky things while the populace is shocked or otherwise distracted? That's the first thing that came to mind with this set of headlines:

• Russian 'sex day' to boost births
• Russia PM goes as Putin dissolves government
• Russia tests giant fuel-air bomb

Good thing it was only Sex Day and not Sex Week.

Police outrage of the day: Guy mistakenly arrested for soliciting a prostitute still ends up paying almost 5 grand for having his car unnecessarily impounded. To follow up on the item at the end of yesterday's post, there really is one of these a day.

The College Humor prank war has escalated to a new level with a cringe-inducing, very public fake marriage proposal. If you have the time to flip backward through these, they are absolutely excruciating.

"The award-winning producers of TV shows Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life are taking their latest project online, citing 'frustration' at US TV networks." I like everything about this idea except for the segment length. "So far, about one hour of material has been shot, which will be divided into six or seven episodes." Less than ten minute episodes? Why is everything about this show being done to network/broadcast standards except the length?

How to buy a new car without getting screwed.

Speaking of new cars, Hybrid plane/car could soon be a reality - All of our problems would be solved if only we had plane cars.

Hey check it out, the next item on that list is a battery powered motorcycle. A range of 40 miles, so no touring the country on it, but a trip to work and home again and plug it back in sounds workable. Here's the company site.

I Hate Young People - The second home page says, "We want you to create a video of yourself explaining what you hate the most about young people. ... The most passionate and creative entries will be a part of a national cable television pilot..."

"Cancer cured" headline of the week: Tangerine peel 'kills cancer'

Lessons on the surge from economics 101 - I don't remember playing the "dollar auction" in economics class but it's an interesting analogy. I'm not sure I agree that we entered the war/auction because of the lure of a bargain.

I saw this item about Yahoo hacks/mash-ups and didn't think too much of it.  But then I saw this amazing map made on their new MapMixer that puts a map of Lower Manhattan from 1660 over the current Lower Manhattan street grid.

Bruce Schneier highlights a recent New Yorker piece on light pollution to point out that simply lighting something doesn't make it more secure - in fact, quite the contrary. I'm making the original article a Commuter Click for myself because a recent construction project has moved a street light to my kitchen window and I'm suddenly very interested in understanding why street lights don't have reflective hoods that keep the light directed down at the street (instead of sideways into my apartment).

Microsoft sneaks 1GB of memory into new laptop mouse - "[I]t's especially good for taking PowerPoint files and presentations along on the road." It seems cool, but I'm still not sure I get it.  Why is this better than a thumb drive?

"Commercial director Joseph Kosinski is in final negotiations to develop and direct "Tron," described as "the next chapter" of Disney's 1982 cult classic."

Two of Seven Soldiers Who Wrote 'NYT' Op-Ed Die in Iraq - This seems to have been a bigger headline online than on TV probably because there was a bit of a grass roots push to raise the profile of these guys.  The back story is that anti-war bloggers were very critical of a New York Times Op-Ed supporting the war. Later, when the seven soldiers wrote a Times Op-Ed with their own, less rosy perspective on the war, anti-war bloggers were again outraged, this time because the seven didn't receive as much mainstream media attention as the war supporting authors of the earlier Op-Ed. This is the kind of pundit blogger drama I usually avoid, but you can see how the death of two of the soldiers (in addition to the one who was shot in the head during the time when the Op-Ed was being composed) would add authority to that account.

Speaking of liberals feeling neglected (and pundit drama I usually avoid), The Conservative Advantage in Syndicated Op-Ed Columns - Media Matters looked at the nation's newspapers and found that conservative syndicated columnists are published more than progressive syndicated columnists. And while I'm not much of a fan of bias baiting, one reaction did stand out to me: "Another contributing factor in the puzzling overrepresentation of conservative columnists is that how 'interesting' an opinion is largely depends on how much it diverges from yours." I'm always aware of using the word "interesting" when I write this column. The word doesn't have enough good synonyms and it often feels like a cop out. Next time I'll have to consider writing "divergent from my opinion" instead.

A couple of mails:

Will,
Thanks for linking to MadMariner.com on August 15. You were part of a lot of traffic for those crazy falling boat photos. We just launched (pun intended) a boat docking game on the site, and it's crazy addictive. Hope Ralph likes it!
-Ted Sawchuck
Mad Mariner.com

Will,
I think you're about my age, so this new band's debut song should resonate with you as much as it did with me.
 
Wax on!
-J.D. Kern

Will replies: Thanks J.D., I always wondered what happened to that guy. I don't really understand the final scene with Ralph Machio in the car though. By the way, it was only recently that I learned that Cobra Kai isn't just a fictitious name.

[YouTube:kHmvkRoEowc]

I can't decide which is more mind blowing, this guy's freak out on behalf of Britney or the seriously mass media numbers hitting it. When I noted this link last night around 10 p.m. ET it was at 2.5 million. He's added more than a million more just this morning. Say hello to your newest Web celebrity. NOTE: Contains F-bombs and other cursing. You'll want headphones regardless if you're within earshot of others because it's pretty over-the-top.

UPDATE: Hey, my colleague Helen Popkin has already interviewed him.

Brains of liberals, conservatives may work differently, study finds - I'm seeing this story linked in various forms all over the place. The source study is here but you need a subscription to view it. A problem I always have with studies like this (or at least the reporting of the study) is the way they treat something like "liberal" or "conservative" as though it has some kind of biological basis. From what I can see, college students who demonstrated increased activity in a certain part of the brain self-identified as liberals. We don't actually know if their views are liberal. It's also not clear that the brain activity came before (is the cause of) the liberalism. Could the headline also be that college students who'd been taught to be sensitive to nuance and change had greater brain activity when processing changes in patterns (and were more likely to self-identify as liberal in college)? For me to begin to be convinced that this study shows a genuine difference between liberals and conservatives I'd want to see it over years and years from birth. Do the kids who lose fastest at Simon Says and Red light/green light grow up to be conservatives? This is all more than you care to hear from me, but as you know I'm not a fan of divisive partisanship and this study (or its reporting) doesn't help.

Speaking of things that divide us, Fact checking the testimony of Petraeus (and the Bush administration). The numbers don't add up. For your own checking, here are the slides and here's the Petraeus statement. The criticisms I've seen of the Petreaus testimony seem to fall into two categories.  The first, like the item above, cite other sources of the same information he used, that come to different conclusions. The second is to point to peculiar definitions or lack of specificity where the facts and plans don't support the argument well.

Speaking of Petreaus, I caught a bit of an interview with him in which he mentioned taking solace in Rudyard Kipling's "If." It's not hard to see why.

Speaking of the situation in Iraq, Michael Totten makes a timely trip to Ramadi, the capital of the much-talked-about-lately Anbar province.

Still speaking of Iraq, Iraq poll September 2007: In graphics - This is the poll that so many people are citing, saying the Iraqi people don't feel the surge has worked.

"Tor exposes sensitive information when not used with encryption." You may recall Tor is an anonymizer, essentially hiding your identity while you surf. But apparently, personal information can be seen on the Tor node. All of this is explained in greater detail in the story, of course, but the part I don't quite get is why this has anything to do with governments. The U.S. and Swedish governments use Tor? I'm missing something.

Speaking of warnings, "People should avoid using Wi-Fi wherever possible because of the risks it may pose to health, the German government has said." "And Germany's official radiation protection body also advises its citizens to use landlines instead of mobile phones, and warns of "electrosmog" from a wide range of other everyday products, from baby monitors to electric blankets." I don't know if there's already a band called "Electrosmog" but if there is I'd buy the t-shirt. It's not clear what the specific concern is about WiFi other than that they don't feel all of the proper tests have been done.

Hidden method of reading revealed - That's a weird headline, but what it means is that they figured out that when we read, our eyes work independently.

Have you had enough Belgium yet?

35 years of Shinjuku (area of Tokyo) for 10 seconds (From July 1969 To July 2004) - Every city should do this.

Speaking of spanning time, French prints circa 1919 anticipate the year 2000.

Speaking of visions of the future, a vision of 1999 A.D. seen from 1967.

14 Great Programs You Didn't Even Know You Needed

Speaking of lists, the Mashable folks have made a list of their lists: 5000+ Resources to Do Just About Anything Online - OK, now that's just silly.

The Science of Gangsta Rap - A few rap lyrics interpreted in flow charts and Venn diagrams. The lyrics are completely offensive of course.

Confederate Yankee raises the question of how much MoveOn paid for that ad in the Times (somewhere between $65,000 and $167,157). Tangentially, both of those numbers raised my eyebrows. It gives some real insight into the financial situation newspapers are dealing with when you consider ad rates like that.

The Shock Doctrine Short Film - It's ironic that while watching this film which is essentially about how psychologically shocking events leave us vulnerable to propaganda all of my "you are being subjected to propaganda" alarms went off.  Still an interesting argument and good use of the medium.

"An animated tribute to the internet people of the world, wherever you may be."

A fascinating use of crowdsourcing to help in the search for Steve Fossett. They serve up pieces of satellite imagery and you say yes or no if there's anything of note.

Windows Live has a new translator. To test it I picked an Italian article about Beppe Grillo, whose name I see online often but I've never totally understood who he is or why he's so acclaimed. First I tried copy/pasting a paragraph for translation and got the typical, almost understandable translation result.  But in a much cooler feature, plug in the URL of the story and watch it compare the translated version with the original, highlighting the matching sentences as you mouse over them.

7 amazing holes - This is one of those photo collections that are basically empty calories but since I've been on an "underground city" kick lately it stuck with me.

Josh's iTunes Album Art Grabber - Enter the artist and album and it plumbs the depths of iTunes. Worked for me.

I saw this IronMan trailer on the DailyShow the other day. Awesome. I don't know why I was surprised to hear the Black Sabbath theme song. That's not what that song is actually about, is it?

Speaking of movies to be excited about, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the freshly revealed name of the new one.

Chocolate Zen - Making an extreme sport of chocolate tasting.

A couple of mails:

I wish this were a joke, but it's not.

• Link
• Link
• Link
• Link

The last link is to info about the book "The Alex Papers."

Sigh.

Rob of UnSpace 
(Who has two African greys living with him and his wife.)

Will follows: And I clicked this. They're all about that really smart parrot that died recently.

This next one was sent to an MSNBC.com public mailbox, not to me specifically but I've seen seeing the link pop up around the Web:

This cop deserves some outrage.

I hope you guys report this.
-Chris

Will has to chime in one more time for some context: This is footage of a guy who gets himself pulled over in a place where he knows the cops are especially aggressive. You might say he trapped or tricked the cop, but the cop didn't need much help to drift in the direction of crazy. The popularity of the clip online is reflective of a convergence of interests in Web culture: liberals who see signs of impingement on civil liberties under the Bush administration and libertarians who see big government out of control.

All day long, the Petraeus/Crocker testimony was peppered with condemnations, excoriations, denunciations and assorted Helen Lovejoyisms over a "General Betray us" ad in the New York Times. The only problem is, for those of us who only read the dead tree version of the Times on weekends there was no way to see the ad so we had to take the word of Congressmembers who seemed quite confident that it was the most horrible, inappropriate, offensive over-the-line piece of work since the last Sarah Silverman monologue - and you know members of Congress never exaggerate or over-dramatize.

Anyway, a pdf of the ad is here. I finally found it on the MoveOn.org site itself.

50 Great Widgets For Your Blog - Wow, these would take forever to randomly learn about through the course of surfing. Very handy list for dressing your blog.

Speaking of lists of links, 40 Unusual Websites you should Bookmark. Some you've probably already heard of but again, a list like this is easier than waiting to come upon them by chance and recommendation.

17 best time machines

The 10 Best Foods You Aren't Eating - and recommendations for preparing them.

Speaking of food ideas, have you ever heard of gelatin filtration? It reminds me of the movie Harold and Maude and the smelling machine. The basic idea is that a food's flavor is captured in a clear liquid. The article also refers to the Ideas in Food blog.

Speaking of cooking, if you're the kind of person who can't even make toast, a transparent toaster might be a suitable tool for you (when it becomes reality).

The idea that America's climate of pedophile/predator hysteria has created a situation in which men are afraid to go anywhere near children is something I see raised online from time to time, which explains the resonance of this article. Lately my son has been in the habit of calling out loud, "Mama! Mama!" When he does it in public and she's not around I admit part of me worries people will think I'm kidnapping him. Thankfully, at least he looks like me.

Wow, Madeleine L'Engle died. Hey, we haven't had a contest in a while. I'll find a bit of MSNBC.com swag for the first person who can tell me the name of the thing Charles Wallace was trying to construct in A Wrinkle in Time. No cheating! You have to actually remember all the way back to the 70s. And if I'm asking the question not quite accurately it's because I'm also trying to remember back to the 70s so really this is a contest to guess the question I'm trying to ask and give the answer. First correct answer wins.

Given my vacation WiFi mooching experience this cartoon gave me a laugh.

Judging by what I've heard from colleagues here at MSNBC.com, Ron Paul has some active and passionate supporters online. Fox News has by now learned this lesson in the wake of their hosting of a debate between Republican candidates. Complaints that Paul was treated unfairly have permeated the Web, exemplified in this Open letter to Fox News.

Weirdest spam I've ever received: "Take the hassle out of entering a bonspiel." I wouldn't have guessed there was much hassle involved in the sport of curling, but I guess it makes sense that practitioners of the sport have a low hassle tolerance.

Last week there was a lot of noise about Microsoft's Flash competitor Silverlight. The story feels a little beyond the scope of Clicked, but it's worth recognizing the name and even playing one of the videos to get the download out of the way or at least recognize it when it comes up some day. One that came recommended to me is the Halo 3 trailer.

One way to get corporate influence out of politics, take away "corporate personhood."

Sea Organ: Holes in a shelf built over the water are actually pipes that play a note as waves displace the air in the hole. I really like this idea, though I suspect I wouldn't want it under my hotel window. The point is to make music, but I wonder if there'd be a way to build one to convey information like the tide level and direction or water conditions.

You've probably seen Darren Brown on SciFi channel. I'd seen clips of his British show on YouTube before it came to the States. One thing I'd never seen explained well before is how card counting is done. I'd heard about it (Warrick knows how to do it on CSI) but the explanation at 8:55 in this hour and a half long special was news to me.

"The US Justice Department has said that internet service providers should be allowed to charge for priority traffic." See also the recent revelation that Comcast will shut you down if they decide you're downloading too much - though they won't say how much is too much. When I think about all the forecasting about watching TV online and downloading movies (legally) online and other high bandwidth activities we can expect to become commonplace in our lives, it seems pretty clear that we consumers will ultimately end up presented with different packages of service the way we are with cable TV.  Basic Web or some kind of premium subscription? If you want the Web version of HBO, you'll probably end up paying for the Web version of premium cable.

And also: Is Comcast's BitTorrent filtering violating the law? (This might seem a little complicated but stick with it, the actual legal argument is pretty interesting and not that difficult to understand.)

Reading the sheer bewilderment of football player Matt Hasslebeck I almost feel bad for him - particularly in that he seems to think that President Bush's divisiveness is indicative of politics as a whole.

"There are compelling religious/cultural reasons to oppose gay marriage and compelling libertarian reasons to oppose non-discrimination laws, reasons not based on animus against gays." The assumption behind the hypocrisy accusations against closeted gay lawmakers who vote against gay issues/interests is that they're driven by some kind of denial or self loathing. Other perspectives do exist.

Remember all the hype about the disappearing bees? Nature reports on a new theory that the culprit is a virus.

Dear colleagues at NBC Entertainment, if a freak lawyer who represents alternative people isn't the premise for a hit TV show I don't know what is. Put it on USA or SciFi, I watch those channels more than NBC anyway.

"Here we show that the moray eel (Muraena retifera) overcomes reduced suction capacity by launching raptorial pharyngeal jaws out of its throat and into its oral cavity, where the jaws grasp the struggling prey animal and transport it back to the throat and into the oesophagus." It also drools acid.

Google Book Search now lets you link directly to passages found in search results.
I didn't quite understand what this feature did so I gave it a try:

Hmm... not sure that worked. I think my selection area was too small.

I only barely passed the Film Critic quiz, but if you're good at movies you should do better.

Since reading this article about YouTube sensation Marie Digby having the secret help of a record label to bring about that sensation I've also read that she is the sole driving force behind her YouTube campaign (an impatient response to lack of record label promotion). Regardless, it's a good lesson in remembering one's skepticism on matters of the Internet. 
(If you can't access the article, you can at least see her videos here.)

With that in mind it's hard to not be skeptical about this little item - especially given the recent question of whether a new Jurassic Park movie involving weapons attached to dinosaurs would be cool or ridiculous. Hmmm... where did this image come from? NOTE: VERY prominent four-letter word in the middle of the screen.

I saw this link in the context of marveling over the size of the screen but what I saw was the future of advertising. Surely it's just a matter of time before someone figures out that there's a whole new ad sales frontier in the "immediate overhead" market. And then I saw deeper into that future in this look at the past.

Hopefully the Congressional testimony by General Petraeus will occupy tomorrow's news, but on the chance that this article is correct and the world is abuzz with talk of how terrible the Spears comeback performance was, you can watch it here on the Mtv site in better resolution than you'll see it on YouTube. Or, take my word for it, she was as bad as the article says.

Listening to news reports today of the McCann parents coming under police scrutiny I heard them read a quote from the father's blog.  That's this. NOTE: Plays sad music even before the page loads and I don't see an "off" button. Mute before clicking.

OK, I just wanted to catch up on these news items. I'll have a regular post later.

This is not the new bin Laden video that's making news this morning, and in fact earlier today I heard NBC's Pete Williams say this threat had been discounted, but y'know how we always hear about "threats made on Islamic Jihadist Web sites" but we never really see the primary source (and even if we did it wouldn't mean a whole lot)?  In this case The Jawa Report takes a more detailed look at the "special gift" threat we heard about earlier this week.

The matter of Apple gadgets and the related hype are best left to MSNBC.com's gadget coverage but since it has indeed seized the attention of a portion of the Web community, this is what I clicked:

The letter from Steve Jobs to people who feel like they've been ripped off for buying the more expensive iPhone a couple months ago. Bottom line, a hundred dollar store credit.

Apple screwed you: So now what?

Jobs didn't screw you - Bottom line: If you though the phone was valuable enough to you that you'd pay $599 for it, that shouldn't have changed. It's the same phone it was when you didn't feel ripped off.

Want your $200 back? - This was before the Jobs letter when there wasn't yet an official Apple policy but it implies that complaining works.

General consensus about liveblogging coverage of the recent Apple event is that Engadget was the best place to go. Even non-live it's a nice record of the event.

iPod touch may do more than Apple expects - I mention this because it's exactly what I said when I heard about it:  "Imagine, if you will, being able to get to your e-mail, use AIM, play games, and use whatever other applications you so desire, all without carrier lock-in and monthly fees." And I can go back to having a nice small phone.

Everyone's been talking about the Craigslist hookers - mostly in a thick tone of "duh!"(NOTE: Racy/appropriate photo on this one) - but for me it calls to mind a question I wonder every time a story like Senator Craig's comes up. With so many lower risk ways of obtaining sex for hire, particularly through the Internet, why are people still soliciting sex via foot taps in public bathrooms? Even if you don't have access to the Web, aren't all those ads in the back of the free weekly newspapers for prostitutes? Or is there really a large demand for "she-male" massages?

Maybe it's a matter of the drive through convenience of the bathroom? How far in advance does one plan ahead for bathroom sex? Christopher Hitchens mostly implies that it's a matter of tradition or even the sexually charged atmosphere of some "tearooms" that keeps men coming back, though in the last paragraph he veers to the conclusion that the men subconsciously want to be caught.

(By the way, speaking of being caught, that blogger who is threatening to expose gay Republicans blogs at blogActive.)

But speaking of paying for it, "Marry Our Daughter is an introduction service assisting those following the Biblical tradition of arranging marriages for their daughters." The pages give errors sometimes but a couple refreshes will eventually bring them up. 
Snopes is still debating whether this is real but it's leaning toward hoax. I'm inclined to agree. The real question is whether it's some kind of joke meant to mock Bible followers or whether it's an actual scam that tries to rip off losers who think they can buy a 15-year-old bride. Then again, lately I've been getting Filipino mail-order-bride spam. Those are exploitive, of course, but don't some people actually get brides from them?

Speaking of making fun of Bible followers, I almost didn't read this one because the title, "The time I helped some Jews," sounded like it was going to be offensive. But it's actually a story of a gentile who helps an Orthodox Jewish woman navigate through loopholes in her strict religious behavioral restrictions when she accidentally locks herself out of her house. Vaguely reminiscent of the Seinfeld when Elaine's boyfriend doesn't care that she's going to hell.

Speaking of cultural clashes, is there such a thing as "too sexy for this plane"? Apparently there was for one woman. (Shorter version.) I mean really, if Hooters girls want to fly on planes they should just start their own airline... oh yeah. Maybe attractive women in smallish clothing should be added to the list of people who have to buy two seats.

Loud Twitter sends your tweets to your blog. Twitter already keeps a log of what you send so that's sort of a blog but if you don't want to switch away from your blog or you want to mix in other content, this isn't a bad idea.

"Sutton received a heart transplant and her original ticker is on display as part of the Wellcome Collection's educational exhibition."

Speaking of surreal, the creator of this Droste effect photo shows explains how to do it here.

Speaking of surreal photos, Escher's "Relativity" in LEGO.

Still speaking of surreal photos, this shot of the twisted big rig sculpture at this year's Burning Man is the best (of very many) I've seen in the last few days.

Speaking of Flickr photos, Flickr River describes itself as a new way to view Flickr photos. It's basically just an updating scrolling page but somehow, I guess because of the ease of use, it's very addictive.  Though it's a little dense with super-saturated sunset photos and macro flowers and bugs, there are enough nice ones that it can become a real bottomless time suck.

The superiority of Bon Scott is no joking matter. C'mon now. (Reminder: let it buffer.) Random: Is there any band that got better when a prominent member was replaced?

Jason Kottke assembles reports and links on the new season of The Wire with the result of generating even more respect for the people behind that production.

Who's blogging New York Fashion Week? Annoyingly non-clickable. You have to copy/paste the urls.

Why Teachers Don't Use Web 2.0 - an historical perspective - This entry is a bit dense but still interesting, particularly because the challenge of adapting Web tools to a purpose for which they weren't necessarily intended is a point I often make to my colleagues in the news business. Almost everyone is in the same boat in this regard. The latest generation of online tools help people communicate and network and combine information for new purposes - if you can figure out what that purpose is. The flip side of this challenge is how to avoid adding every trendy new application just because it seems like it would be good for something. (This item calls to mind an NPR segment I heard a while ago about a private school that held classes online instead of having a snow day.)

That said, I finally got around to reading "What the Web Strategist should know about Twitter." (And what a handy looking site this is. Definitely a "come back later" link.

Personalized fishing lures

Loss of Arctic ice leaves experts stunned - You already know what this story says, but it stood out to me because recently global warming anti-hypists (?) were having a laugh at a British sailor stuck in ice he thought global warming would take care of for him. Going back to the Guardian article, maybe he just needed to wait a little longer: "So much ice has melted this summer that the Northwest passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the Northeast passage along Russia's Arctic coast could open later this month."

Slow growing grass seems like a good idea as does the idea of deeper roots. But I'm not sure I'm ready to buy into the idea of a conspiracy among gardening stores to keep people buying fertilizer and other lawn care products. Interesting discussion in the comments as people try to sort out the practicalities.

Facebook is going to make its contents available to search. It looks like they're going to give users the option to hide from search engines so if your Facebook account has photos of you at a bowling alley wearing a fake moustache and a viking helmet (um... for example) you might want to pay attention.

Speaking of Facebook, I clicked an ad for an "R rated" trailer for that new Shoot 'em up movie. When I tried to find the source link on the movie site it asked me for all kinds of personal age information that it then tried to match against a drivers license database. Anyway, here's the Facebook link instead. The R rated part is one quick curse and a lot of violence. (The mix is by something called Addictive TV. Click their "Clips" menu for more.)

Ralph's recommendations:

Bubble Struggle 2: Rebubbled
It's the long-awaited sequel to Bubble Struggle! Once again, you play a little devil popping the deadly bubbles coming your way. This time, however, there are lots of new challenges and new types of bubbles. But don't worry. You also get lots of new powerups to deal with them.

This is a great game, and it's worthy of the Bubble Struggle name. Oh, and things start to get really interesting around Level 19.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I do. You might want to set a clock nearby so you don't spend all day playing!
-Ralph

Will adds: And the controls are nice and simple.

The story of Senator Craig is hardly exclusive the blogosphere and by now you've likely seen the news that he may not resign after all.  But an interesting side note is a voicemail the Senator accidentally left at a wrong number, obtained by Roll Call, that gives some insight into the kind of maneuvering that goes on behind the scenes. The audio doesn't play with a direct click, but right click and save it to your machine and then play it and it works. It's a quick mp3.

Google Earth has a hidden flight simulator in it? Keyboard controls listed here. I thought I had the latest version of Google Earth from when I checked out their new Sky layer a couple weeks ago but I still had to go through a pretty heavy download.  Once I did that though, the Ctrl + Alt + A keystroke worked and I was in the air in a matter of seconds.  Of course, minutes later I was spinning out of control, narrowly avoiding crashing into the mountains.

Speaking of flying and Google maps, this mashup tracks inbound flights to major airports. Clicking on an airport name zooms in on that airport, but the really cool part is when you zoom out and see all the planes destined for that airport. And it auto-refreshes.

The St. Petersburg Times has a site called "PolitiFact" that checks the veracity of politicians' quotes. It has a magazine feel that makes it very easy to browse.

Anyone ever tried EasyWifiRadar? It looks like this would have been useful with my wifi dead zone problems last week. I was actually driving from block to block, parking, refreshing the list, finding nothing, drive to the next block, stop, refresh the list... madness.  I know they sell hand-held devices that tell you when a signal is near. Maybe I should shop for one of those.

Name that color - It's a colorwheel that also tells you the name of the color. I think in a lot of cases color names come from brands, so your Benjamin Moore paint color names aren't necessarily match your Crew catalog color names. Still, this is interesting.

Salon has published the Opus cartoons that a lot of newspapers thought were too offensive to Muslims to print.

Speaking of cultural gaps, "They don't think like us." This is one person's very blunt assessment of the essential components of Arab culture and how it differs from Western culture. Of course it's always opening a can of worms to make broad generalizations about a large group of people, but I do appreciate some straight talk on this subject. I don't recommend reading into the comments if you don't have a good mental filter for hate, however. (This appears to be the original.)

Many bloggers are accusing John Edwards of state nannyism for his idea of requiring everyone to go to the doctor. I also clicked Ann Althouse's reaction. I haven't been to a doctor in years.  I imagine being required to go would feel a lot like getting a jury duty notice.

Gangster daughter sheds light on Japan underworld

If Julian Beever did swimming pools...

A century of helicopters (photo slide show). Check out the Airscooter, slide 20.

"The Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network in June in the most successful cyber attack on the US defence department, say American officials." A long time ago I worked in a warehouse with a pretty rough crowd. One of the tales they liked to tell was of intimidating one of the managers by breaking into his car, moving it to a different parking spot, leaving an empty bag of chips inside and re-locking it. That's what this story reminds me of.

20 Simple Ways to Become a Bookworm - "If you're reading a lot of stuff online, you probably don't have enough time to read books."  Hmm.

Speaking of too much reading online, Commuter Click: "For the first time, Gore and his family talk about the effect of the press attacks on his campaign—and about his future plans—to the author, who finds that many in the media are re-assessing their 2000 coverage." I'll be interested to get to the re-assessing part because so far the coverage of 2008 looks a lot like the coverage of 2000.

Speaking of long form online, "In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan ... all » Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide." It's an hour and a half long so save it for when there's nothing good on TV.

Panoramas.dk has 360 QTVR panoramas of the new 7 wonders of the world.

15 Stunning Images Using Blur to Portray Movement - "Stunning" might be a bit overboard, but the cool thing is that it says how long the exposures are on some of them.

Why you should discount all the bomb Iran talk - The short version is that the threat of war is not about intimidating Iran but about pushing European countries and the IAEA to crack down on Iran out of fear that the U.S. is crazy enough to start another war.

I love these eye tracking studies that show with heat maps and other graphics where a person's eyes looked at a page in order to gauge how effective the design is.

[YouTube:lj3iNxZ8Dww]

I don't know how much mainstream media played this last week, but one thing I missed while I was away was the clip of Miss Teen South Carolina answering a question about why Americans aren't better at geography. Her answer may be more revealing than if she'd managed to actually put two words together.

UPDATE: OK, I actually looked around and I see she was on every TV show in the world. Most relevant is probably the Today show clip with Anne Curry and Matt Lauer trying to make her feel better and give her another shot at the answer.

OK, JUST ONE MORE UPDATE (probably): I know it's ridiculous to rehash week-old news but I got sucked into a mini-clickathon with this Miss South Carolina thing. A Clicked reader named Lawrence shared with me a letter he sent to the Today show disputing the accuracy of the question itself (so it's really Lawrence's fault I got sucked into this story). He also provided this link to the most likely source of the question's basis. It doesn't make Americans look good, but it also disagrees with the "1 in 5" stat in the question.

The "dumb question" argument is made well on this Salon blog:

"She was asked a dumb question, and the world's beating her up for the sin of not being able to arrive quickly enough at the sort of meaningless sound bite that we expect from our politicians."

I also appreciated this point:

"Upton could have answered, because people can easily find where things are, and there's less appreciable difference, in our era of instant knowledge, between knowing things and knowing how to find things."

What else I clicked: Miss South Carolina's geography quiz on People Magazine's site kind of makes me hate her (I think it's that smile).

Speaking of hating her, Jezebel picks her apart via her Facebook page.

From there I followed a link to a clip of a guy from gossip site TMZ making people look stupid with questions about 9/11 (pretty funny to see a guy trying to push an alternate explanation of what happened on 9/11 on people who don't even know the official explanation). Of course, we've seen that before and looking around for "stupid Americans" reveals no shortage of material - particularly foreign comedy shows. The perpetuation of that stereotype is probably the worst thing about Miss Teen South Carolina's garbled answer.

OK, ONE LAST ONE: Since Bill Maher mentioned it on Hardball, George Bush answers a question on tribal sovereignty.