I can’t count the number of times I’ve wondered what the difference was. By way of analogy:
When you talk about how much you like a tune, you don’t say: “That’s a great MP3”; you say: “That’s a great song”. An MP3 is the delivery mechanism, not the creative work, just as a font is the delivery mechanism, and a typeface is the creative work.
(via Cameron.io)
I like the simplicity of this site, which simply aims to count all the times the US presidential candidates, their running mates, and their campaigns tell obvious lie. Like all and sundry, their is likely to be dispute of the political truth, but the sites definition of lies seems reasonable:
When a politician makes a point that can be clearly refuted with non-partisan sources, or even better their own words, we call that a lie. Given the claims each campaign has made regarding their own competence and ‘readiness’, we don’t believe there is room for ‘mistakes’ of speech either. So we mark any and all wrong statements as lies.
(via Yewknee)
Amos pegs it:
Sometimes a good graphic can put the issue into perspective.
Do go have a look at what would, in a perfect world, stop all related arguments cold.
You’d have good reason to condemn this analysis as simplistic, silly, or absurd, but I think it’s just enough of all of those things to share. The real contrast: Obama’s site is written in PHP, McCain’s in ASP.
(via clusterflock)
World opinion diverges enough to shock Blake Houshnell. While the greatest number of people appear to believe that it was Al Qaeda, Israel and America also won big votes. Israel was most often blamed by Arabs, with Egypt showing 43%, Jordon 31, and Palestine a (mere) 19.
Curiously, Mexicans were the second most likely — at 30% of those polled — to blame the United States. Turkey (36%) was the first, Palestine third at 27, and Germany fourth at 23.
I’m ashamed to say that I’ve never looked nearly this closely at the stuff.
(via Neatorama)
There’s nothing too remarkable in Gizmodo’s interview with Alton Brown. They breifly discuss his new show — Feasting on Waves — and talk at length about the technology he used while filming it. So, I guess the point is that I’m mostly just linking to this because Alton Brown is cool.
The Paralympics are now occurring in Beijing, and among their events is the new-to-me five-a-side soccer, a version of the sport for the visually impaired. As Passport explains:
Each team has five players on the field — all of whom are blind or visually impaired, with the exception of the goalkeeper, who may be sighted. All except the goalkeepers wear eyeshades to ensure fairness. The ball makes a noise when it moves, and each team has a guide behind the opponent’s goal to direct players. The field is surrounded by walls, so there are no throw-ins.
I’d love to see a game. The photos of people playing soccer blindfolded are themselves intriguing.
While recent unemployment numbers give us more reason to fear, it’s worth considering the oddball effects of the recession, like that the toothfairy can now only afford about $1.50 per tooth. The rate was over $2 not more than six months ago.
(via Ideas)
Postscript: I’m aware I may be inaccurate in calling this a recession, but I prefer it’s brevity to “economic crisis”, “credit crunch”, “economic readjustment”, etc.
Perhaps topping Firefox 3’s about:robots easter egg is Google Chrome’s about:internets, which unveils the 3D Pipes Window screensaver (you know the one) and the invocation: “Don’t Clog the Tubes!”
Passport has put together a list of 20. Jack Shafer has ten more.
And, somewhat related, Kevin Drum is sick of the lies about Ms. Palin and the Bridge to Nowhere and thinks the fact that the McCain campaign is still able to talk about it is an indictment of the press.
Spoke the BuzzFeed:
Colonel Sanders’ secret handwritten recipe for fried chicken was relocated to a temporary location today. Security details included a locked box being handcuffed to a security guard who boarded an armored car under police escort. Apparently, it’s so important that only two executives have access to it, making this paper one of the most closely guarded corporate secrets.
My only question is: was this operation financed by their marketing department?
Today, in the regularly-provacative Ideas section of the Boston Globe, lurks a piece to warm the hearts of “tax-and-spend liberals” (and will no doubt lead to at least one smug declaration of “That’s what I’ve said for years”). A sampling:
Lindert’s work surveyed a century of data across numerous countries and found that high taxes and social spending did not slow the growth of productivity or GDP. Statistically speaking, Lindert found no relationship between the level of social spending and economic growth. High tax nations like Norway grow rapidly and produce high standards of living. Even the income per hour of work in nations like France and Germany is equal to or even exceeds America’s.
The Wired Science blog has a cool compilation of the relevant Digg bait.
Steven Levitt points to a rather absurd study: scientists used Google Earth to determine that cattle — and other large herbiovores — are more likely to graze while standing in a north-south direction. They think it has something to do with magnetic fields.
There are no doubt hundreds of posts like this one floating around the internet, chronicalling all the small houses one can find within a few Google searchs. None the less, I really liked browsing through this one.
(via MeFi)
While most of America is still obsessed with what scandal will next be dug up about Sarah Palin, Foreign Policy offers an interesting list of Barack Obama’s ten worst policy proposals. It’s unlikely that you could ever find consensus on such a list, but it’s worth seeing what they’ve come up with.
UPDATE (9/2/08): As a counterpoint (or maybe just because I liked it), I offer a recent Op-Ed by Sarah Vowell.
UPDATE (9/10/08): Just noticed they have the same feature for McCain. That would have been a better counterpoint.
Metafilter user WCityMike put together an exhaustive list of all that is available on the internet related to the “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog” project I mentioned a few weeks ago. Be warned, the list is daunting.
And if you liked Dr. Horrible, haven’t seen it yet, and have at least a vague understanding MMO games like World of Warcraft, you’ll probably like The Guild.
Google Blogscoped shares (of all things) a comic book explaining Google new browser initiative. I wasn’t expecting much from the book, but it’s really quite good. It offers plain-spoken explications of all that they’ve tried to do with browser. Now I just want to try it out.
UPDATE (9/2/08): It’s now available for Windows XP and Vista. I’m using it to write this update and have to say that it’s pretty smooth. It seems faster than Firefox 3, but then it’s also not been running with 20 tabs open for three days. Oh, and there is, as promised, (at least) one system-visable process running for every open tab.
Andrew Ferguson, of The Weekly Standard, does something I’ve always been curious to do — watch a party platform in progress — and comes to, among others, this conclusion:
“Republicans,” the platform says, “will attack wasteful Washington spending immediately,” even though they can’t. They can’t impose anything on anybody, either, but nevertheless “we will impose an immediate moratorium on the earmarking system.”
Powerlessness opens up a limitless future. It has the fierce urgency of not right now.