ShortFormBlogMay 14, 2011

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A French presidential candidate. A leader of a powerful financial organization. A suspect in the sexual assault of a maid. Dominique Strauss-Kahn has a lot to lose with the just-breaking scandal, which involved his arrest at the airport before making a trip to France. According to reports, Strauss-Kahn attempted to assault the maid in a hotel room, she ran away, and he immediately booked it to the airport. Ironically, the Socialist party in France just accused Nicolas Sarkozy’s party of a smear campaign against the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, whom the New York Daily News refers to as “the great seducer.” Now they have bigger problems. (photo via the World Economic Forum’s Flickr page) source

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14 May 2011 12:23

Today in newspaper front pages that remind you of the importance of tabloid journalism sometimes. The New York Daily News had a similar idea but with worse execution. (On a side note, Newseum, where we grabbed this page from, finally took the watermarks off their front pages — hopefully for good. We hope our campaign helped change their minds. We’d still like to see newspapers consider releasing their front pages under a Creative Commons license.) source

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It’s oats. Green young oat greens are thought to be an aphrodisiac. No evidence supports its use (although libido is the most placebo-responsive condition there is). Anything claimed to boost libido, even if it’s a placebo, will work in some people.
Georgetown Professor and (herbal remedy expert) Andriane J. Fugh-Berman • Dispelling the notion that the Avena Sativa, the “natural Viagra” syrup that Osama bin Laden had on his property (with the porn), is an aphrodisiac. To put it simply, “avena sativa” is the scientific name for the common oat. Now whether Osama knew this … we’ll never know. Let’s joke some more about how much he likes porn, OK? source

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Where in the world is Muammar Gaddafi? Well … according to an audio clip played on state television, he’s in a place where you can’t get him — he lives in the hearts of millions. Whatever that means. The leader, who hasn’t shown his face in public for a few weeks (after members of his family were killed in an airstrike), is rumored to have been wounded in a NATO airstrike earlier this week. For its part, NATO says it’s not going after him. source

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In the future, a blowback in the realm of cybersecurity might be known as the Sony Effect.
Bloomberg’s Michael Riley and Ashlee Vance • In a piece called “The Company that Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.” Oh God, let’s hope it’s called “The Sony Effect,” because maybe it’ll remind other companies why not to actively antagonize their hacking-focused users. In Sony’s case, they were a combination of litigious (going after two well-known hobbyist hackers and threatening many others) and incompetent (they apparently ignore security researchers who find flaws and left their network wide open to an attack). The end result is that a company that needed to learn a lesson about getting hackers on their side learned a very expensive one — one that’s shut down their PlayStation Network for nearly a month now. source

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