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Tempus clickit

My name is Will.  This is what I clicked.

March 18, 2005 | 1:0

Got a problem with something on that timeline? 

Speaking of time lines, here is the of everything Bart Simpson has written on the chalkboard in the opening of the show.

In other, more seasonal timeline news, The Onion's

Speaking of Irish, (This is only Irish because of the product, otherwise it's just a joke, and that'll all I'll say so I don't ruin it.)

  -or more accurately, for opponents of drilling the Arctic refuge.

I'm not sure if there's anything in particular that has , but it's a nice photo.

A new-to-me gadget blog,

Malcolm Gladwell on   (It's a half hour of audio.)

All week I've been running into German links.  I think this is due in part to a major tech convention just wrapping up in Hannover called .  Plus, on the German Who Wants To Be A Millionaire show was a big deal.  (In case you're curious, it was a big deal when there was a blog question as well, -and an even bigger deal when there was .)

But the German link of the day would have to be to this .  Actually, by the time I got there, heavy traffic had already crashed the link, so they were redirecting folks to to watch it.  Look for a movie called Delivery.  I found it in the center of the page with the heading "now playing."  Incidentally, I found this News Today site to be good for some interesting clicks, and their message board (PVN on the right) has a post from the folks who made yesterday's "rent a German."

  ...coming soon to an empty theater near you.

": create 50 to 100 games in 1 semester.  New games every week."

Speaking of video games, ", you must find your way out of the house, but you do not understand why."

  -Billmon often posts these kinds of quotation round-ups.  Say what you will, this guy puts in the research.

Commuter Click:  transcribes an address by Justice Scalia.  As you see by his opening acknowledgements, there are a lot of bloggers out there recommending this link, so I'll take that as a good reason to print it up and read it on the way home.

I don't know if you've gone back to the site to see if the video links work yet, but I clicked and was able to watch it.  Now that I have, I'm still in favor of non-Lucas filmmakers producing cool spin-off movies (someday someone will do a great "Han Solo Chronicles"), but I'm now more acutely aware of how challenging that will be.

(and why)

-in case you have some free time and want to solve some of life's great mysteries.

Video Classic of the Day: 

Speaking of links to Congressional dealings, this link to popped up in a few places today.  It appears to be more in the trend of name naming in Congressional accountability, but I've also seen some bloggers looking to see what this means for a Bush's Social Security plan.  The 50/50 split means that some Republicans are not sold on the idea of deep benefit cuts or a massive increase in debt to change Social Security.

Did you ever see the Daily Show when Jon Stewart sees something he can't believe and makes that funny "Whuuhh??" noise and rubs his eyes and shakes his head?  That's kind of what I did when I saw this blog headline about the Papa Corp: 

March 16, 2005 | 8

It has not escaped the notice of many bloggers that the public presentation of anti-Syrian Lebanese protestors is as, to borrow a term, babes.  Some are entertaining the idea that "the movements that are bound to succeed are the ones ."  Others are finding insight into opposing political movements by of those movements.

To look at another example of how "the babe theory" might be applied, we could look at Venezuela's Hugo Chavez building his political persona as .  To measure the likelihood of the political success of this tactic we apply "the babe theory" and conclude... .

UPDATE: More on the subject and a considerable amount of thought put into it .  (Also and here .)

Speaking of men-are-pigs, post listing her top ten reasons why men wonder why there are "no" women bloggers is still making the rounds.

-They need to send some of these to Iraq just for the sheer scary-factor.

Blogger:  "."

on, among other things, the oxymoron "organized looting."

There's a new Googlebomb initiative taking place on the Web.  In case you're not familiar, Googlebombing takes advantage of the way Google indexes search results.  By linking to a site with a word, you increase Google's association of that word with that site.  Past prominent Googlebombs have included "" and, as you may have noticed yesterday, "."

The new Googlebomb is an effort to undermine and generally online gambling spammers by linking the words "online poker" to the wikipedia entry so spammers won't hold the coveted top spot.  It should be noted that this tactic is .

It turns out Pi Day is also .

Speaking of "Day"s, is an unofficial Goth gathering at Disneyland in California.  My favorite line from the site's FAQ list is the answer to whether there's a dress code:

You can dress to impress, but keep in mind that it may be very hot that day.  From our previous trips we found out that Disney will not allow capes or fishnet stocking, on guys, to be worn into the park. You can try to wear them in, but keep in mind that you may be asked to take them off and place them back in you car.

Atrios coins "."

-[Metallica's Lars] Ulrich says he believes that cover bands, mash-ups, and the right to re-interpret art on the internet are things worth fighting for.

.  (It makes sense if you click it.)

Seems like lately we've been seeing a lot of .

Speaking of percussion, today's Video of the Day is .

.  I wish there was a Web cam built into these so we could watch the sleepy people curse and stagger around looking for where the heck the clock rolled to.

That's not Michael Jackson.  It is the after all.

?  I can't tell if this is terribly offensive or a clever marketing scheme for a temp agency... or both.

is, as near as I can tell, a round up of Canadian bloggers.  I trust I'll hear about it if I got that wrong.

-You tell them the materials you want to stick to each other, they tell you what the best recommended glue medium is.

I won't go so far as to say that Flickr's is the next best thing to being there, but since a lot of folks are linking to it, I will point out what a great example it is of tagging and group photo coverage of an event.  Everyone maintains their own photos, but labels them with a SXSW tag, which puts them into this database.

Speaking of SXSW, we turn now to the mailbag...

Will - If you haven't read about it already, you should check out Tim Jones' new podcasting format: spotcasts.  . Tim and I worked together on the Dean campaign last year, and Tim now works for , an organization that was started by Nicco Mele, the Dean campaign's superstar web guy who was later named one of Esquire magazine's best and brightest of 2003. So, yeah, they're doing some really innovative stuff that I think your readers would be excited about. The interesting thing about the whole 60-second format is that we can almost pretend it's a voice mail from a friend rather than a radio show. Even though it's not really more interactive, it seems like it is. Stefanie

Dear Stefanie,

Thanks for the tip.  What surprises me about the spotcasts is how much longer they are than I thought they'd be --by which I mean, even in 60 seconds he manages to get a pretty good amount of information.
Cheers,
Will

March 15, 2005 | 11

Today's focused on Tom DeLay.  Two popular news links today focused on and .  I'm starting to think there may be some online interest in .

Lebanon protests:

  • ""
  • ""

Continuing an assessment theme we've seen this week: (chock full of Commuter Click potential) brought to  you by the fine folks at where you can find even more media self examination.

Speaking of the state of journalism... .

Carrying on in that vein: as a longer way of saying the cover-up is worse than the crime.

gives Democrats a talking to.  He also introduces the term "neoliberal" and promises to explain that term in a future post.

I got to today's Commuter Click in a round-about way.  Beginning at the new , I clicked a link to of a Blogpulse report about linking patterns among political blogs.  Never satisfied with a summary when I can have the source material, it's (16 pages) that I printed out to read on my commute... and later on my couch because my commute isn't that long.

One clever way to get Congress to take privacy and personal credit card debt seriously is to .

.

is a weekly business blog round-up.  What caught my eye this week is that it's hosted by an RFID Weblog.  RFID is the of the future.

Speaking of Mrs. Robinson...  "Since last December, . Most are teachers, many are married, more than a few have children, and they all have been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with boys. Links are to individual posts with all the prurient and salacious details."

Bill Maher has a segment on this subject (with an emphasis on teachers) in the show that's repeating on HBO .  There were two points made on the show that aren't highlighted on his site but I thought were interesting.  One was the suggestion that new TV shows like Desperate Housewives celebrate/glamorize/encourage older women to pursue their libidinous inclinations with young studs.  I don't generally buy into "TV made me do it" but it seems a worthwhile point that these kinds of flings aren't anomalous in our culture.  The second point, made by Camille Paglia, was that schools used to be a sort of ghetto for women because they couldn't work in any other fields.  Now that women can be successful in whatever field they choose, the overall quality of teachers has declined.  Again, agree or not, interesting to consider.

  My general policy about blog awards is they're best looked at as a list of recommendations and the winners don't particularly matter.  That said, there are some interesting recommendations on this list that I wasn't already familiar with.

I understand you're busy so you didn't get me anything for .  Try to do better next year.

The Babelfish translation says:  Scandal with "who becomes millionaire?" - .

A pretty clear explanation of the cyber-villainous activity known as "."

Speaking of new hacks to be aware of, be careful to look at the URL of the you click.

Following up on yesterday's story, against criticism of its privacy policy.

And also there's word that yesterday's "" story has reached a conclusion.

takes a look at same sex marriage legislation and points to some quotes from when the ERA was being debated and critics were accused of using predictions of homosexual marriage as a scare tactic.  Will the future similarly vindicate ?

Speaking of the California ruling on same sex marriage, many folks preferred to read versus having it explained to them by the news.

Would have been Video of the Day:  :

There is a new episode coming out soon -- but I'm not talking about Revenge of the Sith. On April 16th, 2005 the world will be blessed with a brand new episode, Star Wars Revelations. This is an independent film, completely put together by volunteers and organized by Panic Struck Productions, but don't let that fool you into thinking it is sub-par.

Unfortunately the links to the site are crashed (or they got sued), so I'll have to remember to come back to this one when traffic dies down.

Speaking of coming back to a link, last week I was considering adding a daily recommended mp3 feature to this blog so I checked out a list of popular audio downloads.  was at the top of the list so I tried on of his mashups.  He was having some traffic issues, so it took a while to get the whole file, but it was worth it.  I waited for the weekend and downloaded his BitTorrent collection.  I recommend it.  (I don't think I have the time for a daily mp3 hunt though.)

-What a neat idea.  Something we haven't really seen is tech items in traditional luxury materials.  I know that part of the point of a laptop is that it be light, but seriously, do you think there isn't a class of people out there who wouldn't pay $30 grand for a rare hardwood laptop with marble keyboard and gold trim?

  -Fun, but just one sentence, so if you take it repeatedly you get better.  My scores on the laptop: 88, 93, 102, 113 -which I'm proud to point out because when I first got out of college and went to a temp placement place I scored a 25 and the lady laughed be out of the office.

is a fantasy prediction market for high-tech products, concepts, and trends.

.

3M offers a on how to make a wallet out of tape.  I wonder how often they'll update it.  I've seen wallet instructions before but I bet there's other cool stuff that can be made.

What to do when your choir has good time but lousy pitch.

:  German (I think) fork lift safety video.  Kinda gross, but funny.  Start it at around the 2 minute mark, the first part is just Klaus getting the job.

March 14, 2005 | 11

Harvard president got everyone talking about the differences between men and women.  stoked the flames with her complaints about a lack of women's voices on Op-ed pages.  blew the hot sparks of the debate into the blogosphere.  (In my own mental list I include from last week even though it's more about the A-list than it is about gender.)  And in case you missed out on any of that, is under everyone's mouse pointer today , who was on the air with the Connected folks earlier today, has some interesting thoughts to add.

I think one of the reasons this story has such legs in the blogosphere is that for the most part, bloggers have only been concerned with political diversity (and maybe technological diversity).  It used to be that Lefty + Rightie = Fair & Balanced.  Race, gender, geography and more have not been part of that equation.

Without a subscription I can only read the headline and first paragraph , but that's enough to get the point. 

One survey we don't need a subscription to look at BlogAds' .

And as long as we're assessing the blogosphere, Technorati's Dave Sifry's offers his report.

Another big story seeing a lot of clicks today is that AOL has changed the for its instant messenger, AIM.  Your instant messenger conversations belong to you and are between you and the person you're talking to, right?  Click and .

is in full swing and blog reports and notes and liveblogging and moblogging and photos and podcasts and webcasts are all coming in.  Two links I clicked today are this list of , and , who began with a review of a conference by the founder of BitTorrent and ends up with an almost Seinfeldian quandary.

Speaking of sites against things.  The latest development in the battle of blogs as campaign tools is , which doubles as an mega political blogroll.

Podcasting company presents .  It looks like a more refined version of indexes like or .

What short cylindrical object is the latest to be covered with a proverbial fig leaf?  Don't answer that, .

Non-media-navel-gazing commuter click: a profile of .

on ending military occupations.

is a brand new blog, and as far as anyone can tell, the first blog out of Afghanistan.  The blogger, Waheed, describes himself as "a 20 year old male from Afghanistan and I have been working with the US Army in Kabul, Afghanistan as an interpreter for the last 2 years."

It's not too much of a mystery why recipes are suddenly as popular.

The I know would have quit while the quitting was good.

Is life really so dull that people need ?  So... where can I get a ticket?

  -A new cognitive psychology article nearly every day.  (The first couple right now happen to be about computer games, but if you click around the subject matter is pretty diverse.  Good Commuter Click material.

That loud noise you heard yesterday was the sound of a good portion of the blogosphere tsking its tongue over story about government fake news programs.  Not surprisingly, someone has started a .

The other loud noise you heard yesterday was the collective scoffing snort of a good number of members of the online community upon seeing this headline:

I didn't know you had to be a computer scientist to .  (Of course you don't, but this is a funny look at overthinking.)

  As you may have noticed, I like "how to" items.  Even though I can't actually build most of them, I usually at least get an understanding of how they work.  But just so we're clear, this link is not about building a people-killing sniper rifle (or anything else-killing for that matter).  You may recall back when Paris Hilton got hacked there was a group of guys who stood by the red carpet at one of the award shows and used a special antenna to detect the security of celebrity phones.  This is that antenna.

gives the new Star Wars trailer a begrudgingly good review. In addition to the links he gives, you can also watch it on the . In related matters, colleague gages public sentiment about the new Start Wars trailer.

: Washington Post editor talks to China's People's Daily Online.

You don't support America! No, YOU don't support America!  Noooo!  YOU don't support America!  I think American neo-patriotism is .

Words (or whatever)

showed up as a popular link today for no reason I can easily discern.  On a whim I did some clicking and came upon .  I chose the heavier download, which took a little while, but was worth it.  It reminds me of something Dr. Seuss would have done had he lived long enough for computer animation.  Of today's video selections, I think this is the Video of the Day.

Speaking of animation, is a class project from an animation school.  Again, the download takes a little while because this is a pretty long movie, but fun to watch -and apparently legolically accurate.

Madness, but if you're into that sort of thing, is being billed as "the First Annual NCAA Tournament Bloggers Bracket. Registered users will be able submit their picks and compete against other members of the blogosphere, with results updated in real-time."

We interrupt this entry for a brief note of clarification about the item above:

Will:Thanks for the kind link in this morning's post.A quick note: My site has nothing to do with betting on college basketball (though the Bloggers Bracket, while free, guarantees small cash prizes). You may have received this impression from the BlogAds -- several of whic are for sports betting sites -- but the blog's content has nothing to do with betting.Thanks!

Dear Yoni,
Sorry about that, the only times I see brackets are when someone is walking around the office asking if I "want in" so I made an unjustified leap.
Cheers,
Will

  It involves using his special program, so it's not exactly a trick you can impress your friends with at parties, but it's still cool.

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