telescreen.org

Aieeeeee!  My eyes!  My eyes!  (via XQUZYPHYR.)

 

Found Photos is the latest website that I'm addicted to.  Rich Vogel, the webmaster, searches peer-to-peer networks for photos that people are sharing, then posts what he finds.  Fascinating; there's some oddly compelling things on there.

Roger Ebert, my favorite critic, has posted a very nice essay on the tough year he's had, and the meaning of life...and movies.

Hey, a site I suggested (and blogged about) got BoingBoinged.  (Thanks for the link, Xeni.)

Kevin Walsh of Forgotten NY (one of my favorite websites) is hosting one of his periodic walking tours in a couple weeks.  This one will cover Hamilton Heights, Sugar Hill, and the CCNY campus in Upper Manhattan.  The tours have always looked like fun.

Jay Rosen, chair of the NYU J-school, has some interesting reactions to Dan Rather's announcement that he'll step down.  Go read it, but here's a brief excerpt:

Rather never fit the TV mold. He was "hot" where the prevailing style was cool. He took chances where the prevailing ethic was risk adverse. He was willing to be weird; is Brian Williams willing to be weird?

Part of the reason he generated such intense dislike is this refusal to become the "smooth" TV type we so expect these days. Not only is there value in that; there's something courageous about it. The pressure to be predictable is huge in network television; in the anchor's chair even more so. Rather remained an edgy figure, a creature of emotion, an individual.

Some of his other achievements I question. I don't see it as some journalistic advance that he was the first to take his broadcast to big events and anchor the newscast on location. It was an enlargement of the anchorman's celebrity, a stunt that had nothing to do with reportage and everything to do with ego, Bigfoot-ism and the ideology of hype. He wanted to do both: anchor the broadcast and be the star reporter on location. If the show remained in New York he would have to choose.

In talking with the New York Observer Rather made much of his interview with Saddam Hussein before the 2003 war. "The Saddam interviews—I know not everybody thought they were good or worth doing or what have you," he said, "but by any objective standards, any journalist worthy of the name would’ve killed to have those interviews."

I think this quote gets to the heart of my problem with Rather. He had no idea why he was interviewing Saddam, or what he hoped to accomplish. His reference point for it was not Saddam within history, but Dan Rather within journalism.

I think it'll be very interesting to see Rather's work as a correspondent once again.  I think he'll do a very good job, and he'll be free from having to wrestle with these two contradictory parts of his self-image:  to be the anchor and public face of a broadcast, vs. the dogged investigative reporter.

Mark Hasty contemplates the death of a toaster.

Some better disclaimer stickers for science textbooks.

I just saw a sign advertising an energy drink called "Liquid Ice."

Wouldn't that be, umm, water?

I know we're all contemplating leftovers today, so I thought some food safety music would be appropriate.  I'll let Dr. Carl Winter of UC-Davis introduce himself:

As a serious food toxicologist with 17 years of experience as a University of California faculty member, I enjoy conducting research and developing food safety educational programs.

For the past eight years, I have combined my previous background as a musician with my scientific and communication training to develop an innovative, humorous, and effective musical approach for food safety education.

Technological advances is music synthesizers and computer-based sequencing programs have allowed me to become a "one-person band."  I develop parodies of popular songs by re-writing their lyrics, composing and recording musical arrangements, and producing the music.

The website includes lyrics, video clips, and streaming audio of such songs as "A Case of Norwalk", "Don't Get Sicky Wit It", "I Sprayed It On The Grapevine", and "Beware La Vaca Loca."

XYZ, GWB:

As if you didn't have enough reasons to stay away from Benihana...

Stolen shamelessly from Defective Yeti, a constitutional amendment that I'd wholeheartedly endorse:

A fucking yacht?

My goodness:  I see (on Newsweek's site and in this Reuters article via CNN) that there's a new computer "game" out that simulates JFK's assassination forty-one years ago today.  JFK Reloaded, "the world's first interactive reconstruction", is an argument that Oswald shot JFK, and it puts you in Oswald's perch on the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository, firing your Mannlicher-Carcano down into Dealey Plaza toward the presidential limousine.

It actually sounds interesting, and it looks like they've modeled everything incredibly thoroughly.

Now here's the sick aspect:  Traffic, the British game publishers that released JFK Reloaded, are giving away up to $100,000 to the person who most closely duplicates Oswald's actions (as depicted in the Warren Commission report.)  Monumentally bad taste, if you ask me.

Wow, I got Screenheaded the other day and didn't know it till now.  (I've got company in town and haven't been online too much lately.)  Thanks, Dong!

Matt is right:  Best.  Story Image.  Ever.

All of life seems to be about denial - the denial of death, the denial of reality, the denial of everything that it is convenient for us to deny. Photography, because of its causal relationship to the world, seems to give us the truth or something close to the truth. I am skeptical about this for many reasons. But even if photography doesn't give us truth on a silver platter, it does make it harder for us to deny reality. It puts a leash on fantasy, confabulation and self-deception. It provides constraints and borders. It circumscribes our ability to lie - to ourselves and to others.

The great documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, writing in the NYT about the videotape of a U.S. Marine shooting an unarmed wounded prisoner, and how seeing isn't always believing.

For your Friday edification, rat enemas.  (via lex icon.)

Yes, I know Dana got there first, but I really liked this short story by Allan Gurganus in this week's New Yorker.

God Loves Everybody:  A gorgeous and touching WaPo article tells the story of one red-state Oklahoma town who stood up for one of their own when he was under attack by homophobic bigot Fred Phelps.  (via MetaFilter.)

What is wrong with everyone nowadays? . . .

People think they can all be pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. . .

This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history.

Kind of rich, especially when you consider the source, a man who got his job through sheer accident of birth, and retains it independent of any shown natural ability...

So, didja hear that New York City Councilmembers Madeline Provenzano (D-Bronx) and Philip Reed (D-Bronx/Manhattan) want to make bike riders register their bikes?

And that if you don't display your license tag, you risk a fine of up to three hundred dollars...and/or fifteen days in jail.

Seems like an overly stiff penalty to me.  Registering bikes isn't a terrible idea (especially if proceeds from the bike registrations go to improvements such as bollards and better bike lanes), but we should encourage bicycling, not throw the book at people who don't comply.

...and so the purge begins:

WASHINGTON -- The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

Chuck said it better than I could:

That's a great policy -- get rid of all of your suspected political opposition from your intelligence agency (an agency that's actually supposed to be unbiased and apolitical), and replace them with people who are only going to tell you what you want to hear. As a commenter on dKos said, "[D]oes this sound like the behavior of a democratically elected leader of a free nation?"

I guess Bush will spend the next four years burrowing even deeper inside his custom-built echo chamber.

Just posted this on MetaFilter:

The ESA tells you how to see the International Space Station. Enter your location, and they'll give you times, tell you which direction to look, and provide a star map. And after you've seen it (and taken a picture of it), you can log it as a geocache find.