Read a little. Learn a lot. • Tightly-written news, views and stuff • Follow us on Twitter • Be a Facebook Fan • Tumble us!

23 Oct 2009 14:23

tags

Tech: Twitter users pontificate on Facebook’s just-launched redesign

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 Oct 2009 11:22

tags

Culture: A perfect example of Twitter activism: Jan Moir’s Boyzone article

The Daily Mail columnist claimed that Boyzone’s Stephen Gately, who died of natural causes, didn’t die of natural causes. It caused a major uproar. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

15 Oct 2009 22:48

tags

Culture: Has Maurice Sendak been tilling at critical windmills?

  • Instead of warring with Bettelheim — or the bluenoses who have savaged ‘In the Night Kitchen’ — Sendak should curb the grouching and concede that he owes them a minor debt. There is no cheaper way to market your book than to have it banned or pilloried by the right people.
  • Slate Columnist Jack Shafer • Discussing “Where the Wild Things Are” author Maurice Sendak’s propencity to brink up critics who have slighted the book in the past. Specifically, Sendak has an ax to grind with child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, who said this about the book: “What’s wrong with the book is that the author was obviously captivated by an adult psychological understanding of how to deal with destructive fantasies in the child.” Shafer says that while he might have a stronger claim for the often-banned “In the Night Kitchen,” he thinks he needs to get off his high horse. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

14 Oct 2009 10:38

tags

Tech: Digg vs. the human hand: Why the world needs an editor

Digg as a newspaper

This image, while funny, nails what (to us) is wrong with Digg. It's not that there isn't a place for funny/bizarre content or the chance to be goofy, but when it's all you've got, it seems a little threadbare. And it's not even their fault. It's how democracy works sometimes.
  • Editors vs thumbs In a lot of ways, sites like Digg can replace rooms full of journalists and editors with a single yes/no thumb system. It works on the idea of visceral impact, much like TV news does. But when visceral impact is all you got, it stops becoming what you need to know and turns into what you want to know.
  • Editors vs thumbs In a lot of ways, sites like Digg can replace rooms full of journalists and editors with a single yes/no thumb system. It works on the idea of visceral impact, much like TV news does. But when visceral impact is all you got, it stops becoming what you need to know and turns into what you want to know.
  • Eating veggies Sometimes, the stories that aren’t very sexy are the most important. Newspapers spend hours debating these stories daily. But those stories can get overlooked in the hunt for a sexy headline. Editors have struggled with this very issue for years. Does it even come up for people clicking on thumbs?
  • Editors vs thumbs In a lot of ways, sites like Digg can replace rooms full of journalists and editors with a single yes/no thumb system. It works on the idea of visceral impact, much like TV news does. But when visceral impact is all you got, it stops becoming what you need to know and turns into what you want to know.
  • Eating veggies Sometimes, the stories that aren’t very sexy are the most important. Newspapers spend hours debating these stories daily. But those stories can get overlooked in the hunt for a sexy headline. Editors have struggled with this very issue for years. Does it even come up for people clicking on thumbs?
  • It’s not all bad We don’t want to disparage link journalism, because it can work. We’re big fans of Y! Combinator’s Hacker News, for example, because it has this strong mix of audience, community and focus. The Windy Citizen does a great job applying it to a local market. We want to see more of this.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

30 Sep 2009 20:00

tags

Biz: Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis sure regrets that Merrill Lynch merger

Lewis will be retiring at the end of the year, the victim of months of heavy scrutiny – by regulators and investors – of the failed merger. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Sep 2009 21:09

tags

World: What the heck happened in Honduras? Things are declining fast

  • Protests are heavy and seem to be getting worse thanks to outed president Manuel Zelaya’s presence. Zelaya’s getting criticized because he got back in, destabilizing everything. The interim government took out major media outlets to limit criticism and the free flow of information. And there was talk of taking away people’s civil liberties. To put it simply, the country’s completely gone down the tubes in three months. How did this happen?source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Sep 2009 01:25

tags

Politics: Maybe the pollsters, not the Oklahoma students, are the idiots

  • The methodology’s getting questioned on a recent poll we ran. A week or two ago, we covered this poll about stupid Oklahoma students by Strategic Media, mostly for purposes of making a silly joke. Now we feel we must follow up. Really entertaining poll-obsessed blog FiveThirtyEight has a takedown of both the poll and Strategic Media in general which raises a lot of questions. Thank God Oklahoma students may not be so stupid. We’ll keep an eye on this. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

26 Sep 2009 11:44

tags

Politics: The photo ethics of Dick Cheney cutting a piece of meat

The crop of this photo in Newsweek is getting a lot of controversy. So to add to it, we cropped it a third way which throws ethics out the window. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

26 Sep 2009 11:16

tags

Music: Brilliant! UK tunesmith Dan Bull takes Lily Allen to task

  • Lilly Allen recently threatened to give up music on an anti-piracy blog she created. Then she took the blog down. As Allen made her name on file-sharing, that statement sounded hypocritical to some. Now Dan Bull, a UK musician with a similar style to that of Allen, has a video for a song which criticizes the star for just that.source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 5 Comments • Permalink

25 Sep 2009 10:41

tags

U.S., World: Key point to take out of the “Iran secret nuclear plant” story

  • Iran has a right to peaceful nuclear power that meets the energy needs of its people. But the size and the configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program. Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow.
  • President Barack Obama • Speaking at the G20 Conference in Pittsburgh on Iran’s nuclear program. In other words, the administration is OK with them having nuclear power, but they seem to be all geared up for nuclear weapons, and that’s not cool. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
<< newer 
top tags
older >>