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Archive for August, 2008

Vice in Go-Go Boots?

Posted by Ted Hopton on August 31, 2008

I love Maureen Dowd!

Imagine my delight when the hokey chick flick came out on the campaign trail, a Cinderella story so preposterous it’s hard to believe it’s not premiering on Lifetime.

read more | digg story

Posted in Humor, Politics | 1 Comment »

Lines and Bubbles and Bars, Oh My! New Ways to Sift Data

Posted by Ted Hopton on August 31, 2008

An experimental Web site allows users to upload the data they want to visualize, then try sophisticated tools to generate interactive displays.

read more | digg story

Posted in Metrics, Web 2.0 | Leave a Comment »

Corsica, France’s Isle of Beauty

Posted by Ted Hopton on August 30, 2008

Places I want to go…

Storybook citadels, bold mountains, gorgeous beaches and a light that seduced even Matisse: Corsica is nothing less than a revelation.

read more | digg story

Posted in Travel | Leave a Comment »

Hail: Winter in August

Posted by Ted Hopton on August 10, 2008

I’ve never been in such a furious hailstorm before. My little cottage is literally getting pounded by hail that ranges in size from marbles to golf balls (really, I am not exagerrating). Wind is blowing both rain and hail pretty close to horizental when it gusts. I am not happy that my car is uncovered in all of this.

And I’ve been watching one horse’s odd reaction. Rather than seeking shelter in her run-out shed, she started running wildly all over the field. I wonder what was going through her equine brain.

The storm seems to be letting up now, after maybe ten minutes of intense downpouring and wind, not to mention thunder and lightning.

Very strange to see essentially an ice storm in the middle of the summer!

Posted in Human Interest | Leave a Comment »

Paris Hilton’s Video Response to McCain

Posted by Ted Hopton on August 6, 2008


This is too funny and clever! It’s called Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad on FunnyOrDie.com.

Posted in Humor, Politics | Leave a Comment »

Online Trolls Haunt the Internet

Posted by Ted Hopton on August 3, 2008

I’d heard and basically understood the term “troll” for a long time, but this long NYT magazine article, The Trolls Among Us, provided an enlightening look at the underside of human behavior with technology. Here’s the article’s definition of “troll“:

In the late 1980s, Internet users adopted the word “troll” to denote someone who intentionally disrupts online communities.

Here’s a glimpse of how this aberrant community thinks:

clipped from www.nytimes.com
“Lulz” is how trolls keep score. A corruption of “LOL” or “laugh out loud,” “lulz” means the joy of disrupting another’s emotional equilibrium. “Lulz is watching someone lose their mind at their computer 2,000 miles away while you chat with friends and laugh,” said one ex-troll who, like many people I contacted, refused to disclose his legal identity.

The author interviews and stays with several prominent trolls, showing what they are like in person as opposed to the way they act online. While that is interesting on one level, I liked more the exploration of what the prevalence of trolls says about human beings and society. For example:

clipped from www.nytimes.com
Does free speech tend to move toward the truth or away from it? When does it evolve into a better collective understanding? When does it collapse into the Babel of trolling, the pointless and eristic game of talking the other guy into crying “uncle”? Is the effort to control what’s said always a form of censorship, or might certain rules be compatible with our notions of free speech?
blog it

Posted in Ethics, Human Interest | Leave a Comment »

Jellyfish Invasions

Posted by Ted Hopton on August 3, 2008

I remember being terrified of jellyfish when I was a small child, but I don’t think I ever actually was stung by one. This NYT article about the dramatic increase in jellyfish along shorelines around the world is worrisome not just from a tourism standpoint. When nature sends us a message as loud as this one, we’d better listen. There’s no simple answer, of course — there never is to big problems.

Let’s just add it to the long list of daunting challenges we are facing these days…

clipped from www.nytimes.com
“These jellyfish near shore are a message the sea is sending us saying, ‘Look how badly you are treating me,’” said Dr. Josep-Mara Gili, a leading jellyfish expert, who has studied them at the Institute of Marine Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona for more than 20 years.
The explosion of jellyfish populations, scientists say, reflects a combination of severe overfishing of natural predators, like tuna, sharks and swordfish; rising sea temperatures caused in part by global warming; and pollution that has depleted oxygen levels in coastal shallows.
blog it

Posted in Animals, Environment, Outdoors, Science, Travel, Trends | Leave a Comment »

 
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