I’d buy this:
The newspapers that survive will probably do so with some kind of hybrid content: analysis, interpretation and investigative reporting in a print product that appears less than daily, combined with constant updating and reader interaction on the Web.
But the time for launching this strategy is growing short if it has not already passed.
And I think this is undeniable:
I still believe that a newspaper’s most important product, the product least vulnerable to substitution, is community influence. It gains this influence by being the trusted source for locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting about public affairs. This influence makes it more attractive to advertisers.
Altogether, a worthy read.
(via Magnetbox)
One problem with digital photography is that you’ll never get the awesome (and accidental) exposure of two photos on a single square of flim.
(via Dean Allen)
While Democrats can always threaten to flee to Canada in the event of an election loss, where can conservatives flee to?
Lloyd points to an interesting slideshow from Scientific American profiling those who should have received (science) Nobel Prizes but didn’t.
On a related note: some analysis of this year’s so-far and likely winners.
Disney’s 57 page EULA before you can watch Sleeping Beauty on Blu-ray is why we should remove any legal force from EULAs. Or ban them outright. Or at least require an executive summary so that people will know what cr*p they’re accepting before they (inevitably) blindly do so.
(via BBG)
Though I’m guessing (perhaps hoping) that the nostalgia-filled Circus Animals will remain on store shelves — someone has to buy those memories and make money by allow us to keep revisiting them, no? — this feels like a blow.
(via Slashfood)
I link to this mainly to pointlessly say: I thought of this first. Like, when I was 14. That is not to say, I should note, that I think the idea’s completely correct. In any case, the idea:
“In ancient times half our children would have died by the age of twenty. Now, in the Western world, 98 per cent of them are surviving to the age of 21. Our life expectancy is now so good that eliminating all accidents and infectious diseases would only raise it by a further two years. Natural selection no longer has death as a handy tool.”
(via Ideas)
Lebanon has announced plans to sue Israel over the food copyright for tabouleh, kubbeh, hummus, falafel and fattoush. The suit relies on the absurdly named feta precedent; as David Kenner describes:
Six years ago, Greece was able to win a monopoly on the production of feta cheese from the European Parliament by proving that the cheese and had been produced in Greece under that name for several millennia.
If, like me, you had no idea what melamine is or why it was such a bad thing to find in Chinese milk, I suggest this Tech.view column (for that, and a whole lot more):
Melamine is used to make durable work-surfaces for kitchen cabinets and bathroom furniture, and is formed into heat-resistant jugs, bowls, dinnerware, and other household items. To be accurate, such products are made not from melamine, but from melamine resin—a thermosetting plastic produced by combining melamine with formaldehyde.
… Melamine itself is a different matter. In low doses, it is non-toxic; its so-called LD50 (median lethal dose) is on a par with table salt. But should it be combined with a closely related chemical called cyanuric acid, the resulting compound (melamine cyanurate) can cause fatal kidney disease. Melamine cyanurate is widely used as a fire retardant.
Makes me think Lex Luther. And get a little jealous.
(via kottke)
I wouldn’t be surprised if this never happens, but Ryanair’s CEO is willing to postulate that they’ll be able to cross the “pond” for £10 some day. The way:
It believes the crisis in the aviation industry and the prospect of more airlines collapsing is set to bring the cost of aircraft down, with a glut of unwanted jets coming onto the market.
(via PSFK)
I debated for a while whether to Twitter or post this new-to-me neologism (discovered here), I obviously chose the latter.
The etymology of this is a little vexing; my guess is that it grew out of the belief that the people who make or serve dogfood should try it before giving it to canines. Ah, Wikipedia confirms.
Speaking of international figures doing unexpected things, Demitry Medvedev has a video blog.
(via Passport)
The headline may be better than the video, but the video is still good for a laugh.
The day that thing stopped going up seems like a decade ago. Oh, it was.
(via Andrew Sullivan)
As ever shouldering his responsibility to tackle moral gray areas, William Saletan offers an enlightening (if unsettling) look into the battle over our organs.
How can we get more organs? By redefining death. First we coined “brain death,” which let us take organs from people on ventilators. Then we proposed to allow organ retrieval even if nonconscious brain functions persisted. That goal has now been realized through “donation after cardiac death,” the rule applied in Denver, which permits harvesting based on heart, rather than brain, stoppage.
Stoppage is complicated. There’s no “moment” of death. Some transplant surgeons wait five minutes after the last heartbeat. Others wait two. The Denver team waited 75 seconds, reasoning that no heart is known to have self-restarted after 60 seconds.
Think the “Northern Lights”. And someone named Paul has taken a lot of great pictures of them.
(via Delicious Ghost, who picked some of the best)
I recently heard — I wish I remembered where — Bill Clinton make the point that a moratorium on the use of the word “Africa” would likely make people see the continent as a little less bleak. While there are still big problems in places like Somolia, Chad, Sudan, and the DRC, there are a number of good and improving governments and economies.
The Ibrahim Index, a quantification of a sub-Saharan government’s quality, highlights the differences. While the aforementioned contries have the lowest scores, places you rarely hear about — Mauritius, Seychelles, Cape Verde, Botswana, Namibia — are relatively well run. (South Africa’s pretty good too, but we constantly hear about it.)
(via Passport)
I link to this primarily because it made me think of Louis CK — who isn’t afraid to use profanity when expressing his disdain for his wife and children — and Louis CK makes me laugh.
(via Buzzfeed, which is apparently letting us know what we missed in June)
I’m behind, but this is interesting:
For every congenial character who can warm a room, there’s another who can bring a draft from the north, a whiff of dead winter. And even if the thermometer doesn’t register the difference, people do: social iciness feels so cold to those on the receiving end that they will crave a hot drink, a new study has found.
(via kottke)