Clay Shirkey strongly contests the statement, most recently made by Kofi Anann, that half the world has never used a telephone. A very good analysis.
The search for root causes of the epidemic of controlled substance abuse has to include doctors as active participants, says a pediatric physician in the _NY Times_. More doctors are prescribing more potent drugs without taking a moment to think about whether their patients actually need them, especially patients with histories of substance abuse.
Physicians have filed a brief with the Israeli Supreme Court asking that the Israeli army be stopped from breaking the sound barrier over the Gaza Strip. They charge that the “sonic bombs” cause anxiety and other symptoms among children and in some cases even induce miscarrages. Here is a firsthand account of the psychological terror caused by the “bombings” and a follow-up entry (via Global Voices).
In October the _New Yorker_ profiled comedian Sarah Silverman (no relation, that I’m aware of). It is a fascinating read because it captures the strange tension between the character she plays and the person she is. Reading it might leave one with the impression that Silverman doesn’t even understand herself, however it combined with an interview she gave on _Fresh Air_ convinces me that there is a very clear divide between who she is as a person and who she is on stage. The most telling graph from the _New Yorker_ piece is where she talks about her character being an “unreliable narrator,” and her disinclination to dissect her act.
Roger Ebert’s list of the best films of 2005. I’ve only seen 3 of them, clearly I have a lot of catching up to do. Time to renew that NetFlix membership?
Rove Implicated In Santa Identity Leak: Clarke criticized the leak as “foolhardy,” saying it was “the kind of conduct you would expect from dangerous zealots who routinely confuse short-term political gain with the national interest.”
A new alliance of electronic manufacturers plan to make setting up a high definition home theater system trivial. They want to use FireWire as a common connection standard, allowing all of the devices to talk to each other and coordinate through a single cable. This was the hope of FireWire when it was introduced years ago and specifically designed to not require a computer “master” in order to operate. I’m glad electronic makers have *finally* realized that interoperability is a *good* thing.
In the opening scenes of _Shrek_ there is an effect that involves “mud poop.” Apparently generating said objects was much harder than you might imagine (PDF). (via Kelly)
After ten years of waiting, are wearable computers finally ready to burst onto the scene? Gosh I hope so, I’ve been waiting so long…
Closing on Mars
I’ve finished season 1 of _Veronica Mars_ and I think it is some of the best television I have ever witnessed. Episode 21, “A Trip to the Dentist,” is one of the best if not *the best* things I have *ever* seen on television, period. Episode 22, “Leave It To Beaver,” is one of the most intense. I’m not very good at writing reviews, especially in trying to balance what makes a piece of art tick without blowing important plot points. And there is so very much important plot that you do *not* want blown. So I promise that I’m going to post a review of _Veronica Mars_: Season 1 very soon, and I promise that I am not going to reveal *anything*. I’m also going to caution you that if you are at all interested in watching _VM_, please let me give you all of season 1 (or better yet, buy it on DVD) but *don’t* read anything else about it, online or elsewhere. It is way too easy to be spoiled, in fact I know from reading them that many of the published reviews contain major spoilers, and you don’t want to be spoiled. Trust me.
It’s just. So. Good.
Do you dig it?
On one of the early episodes of _Veronica Mars_ (1×05: “You Think You Know Somebody”) there is a scene in Veronica’s car with the radio turned on. The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” comes on and Troy says, “I dig this song.” Veronica responds, “me too.” Completely irrelevent to the conversation at hand and very random. Some strange product placement opportunity? Trying to be authentic to teenage conversations? Or just a writer slipping in a note about one of his favorite songs? Beats me. Sorta weird.
Cute Overload is a blog full of pictures of small furry animals and the like. Watch out, it might just make your head explode. (via BB)
Paul bought a pair of those shoes with the little wheels in them: What. Yes I realize maybe a 25 year old guy shouldn’t be into 8 year old kid fads, but these are shoes with wheels on them. This has to be the greatest innovation in shoe technology since nike invented the sneaker! Yeah, whatever dude.
Having just finished Vernor Vinge’s excellent novel _Marooned in Realtime_, I feel the need to revisit his paper about the coming technology Singularity, in which he states that within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly thereafter, the human era will be ended. For other viewpoints, there is always the Wikipedia article.
In recent weeks Wikipedia bashing has become all the rage. This Slashdot poster puts it best when he tells people, “oh, shut up already”. (Follow the links to find out why.)
_Veronica Mars_ cinematographer Victor Hammer uses a Nikon digital camera to communicate his intent to the color timer. Basically what’s going on here is that _VM_ is shot on super 16 (16mm widescreen) film with some very interesting lighting and color effects. It can be difficult to communicate to the person developing the film just how you want the colors to turn out. This guy’s brilliant idea was basically to put some filters in front of a digital still camera and crank up the saturation and such until he had the look he wanted. He then sends those stills to the developers so that they can know how a scene should come out. Oh, and also, for some of the weird distortion/lines for the flashback scenes? He uses Vaseline in front of the lens, and shapes it with a comb. You learn something new every day… At this rate by the time I’m a hundred and eighty I’ll know enough to do some neat camera work.
A LiveJournal community lists the deaths of MySpace users. Each person is linked to their MySpace profile and their picture is displayed. There seems to be a high correlation between pictures of people getting trashed at parties and deaths due to alcohol-related causes, most frequently drunk driving. Occasionally the cause is a gunshot or something else. And some of the people, still living, are responsible in some way for *other* people’s deaths. (via Waxy)
A sad decline
I just visited Salon.com for the first time in a while and I’m not sure there is anything more they can do to make that so-called publication any worse. The ad creep has reached insane heights, they’ve abolished all of their sections (and probably fired the section editors), and scaled back their wide-ranging coverage to include only a few blog posts and a few articles each week. I’m glad I let my subscription lapse a while back — there is nothing left worth paying for. A sad state of affairs for what was once a pretty good, well-read, and influential online magazine, if one that teetered on the brink of bankruptcy for *years*.
Interesting explanation of why there are so few television shows about college and why the ones that are created usually don’t do very well in the ratings. The author claims that some of the problem is a lack of good stories to tell, part is that college is not a shared experience that all of society can relate to (only about 25% of us have attended a four year residential college), and part of the problem is that old standby, Nielsen Media Research, which measures TV consumptions in family homes, not college dorms, apartments, or public venues like bars.