news

Stilgherrian’s links for 23 September 2008 through 25 September 2008, scrubbed up with a wire brush:

• Australia: Twitter statistics | Laurel Papworth: Twitter usage is up 518.12% in Australia, if you believe (1) that website traffic is the relevant metric, and (2) you can possibly measure this stuff to 5 significant figures.
• Wotnews Australian News Search: Wotnews used to be called Plugger, but they’re now associated with Wotif in some way. Wotnews harvests news from over 3500 different sources including mainstream publishers, niche blogs, direct from companies and government bodies as well as from the relentless stream of company announcements coming out of the Australian Stock Exchange.
• Tax Plans (that’s one for you, nineteen for me) | chartjunk: Viveka Weiley’s re-drawing of charts comparing John McCain and Barack Obama’s tax plans. The difference is pretty obvious.
• Text Messages Seen as Dangerously Distracting | NYTimes.com: “The act of texting automatically removes 10 I.Q. points” and many other scare-quotes.

Stilgherrian’s links for 21 July 2008 through 25 July 2008, gathered by a small, well-trained pig, washed by hand and exposed to cool, dry air:

• The Changing Newsroom | Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ): A detailed analysis of the American daily newspaper of 2008, incuding the role of citizen journalist and a look to the future.
• Google Maps (Part I of "The Googling") | YouTube: The first of 5 short films about a Google-run world gone scary.
• How to Think | Ed Boyden's blog:: "I composed 10 rules, which I sometimes share with students. I've listed them here, followed by some practical advice on implementation."
• 2055: Voyage to Mars | YouTube: 9 minutes of animation by David Ross, with no CGI whatsoever. A fine tribute to an almost-lost craft.
• Font Conference | CollegeHumor video: It's not often I can tag a video both "typography" and "humour", but here it is…
• Manned spaceship design unveiled | BBC News: The first official image of a Russian-European manned spacecraft has been released. It is designed to replace the Soyuz vehicle currently in use by Russia.
• Afghanistan. 1986-1987. It is photographed by the pilot of the helicopter. | Military Photos: My crusty Cold War correspondent writes: "Militaryphotos.net is frequented by Walter Mittyish paintball types, but they occasionally post material of real interest." Like a Soviet helicopter pilot's personal photos from his 1986-87 tour of Afghanistan.
• Privacy | Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: After Mark Pesce's offhand remark that privacy was a construct of the Enlightenment, I decided to do some reading. This is where I started.

Stilgherrian’s links for 04 June 2008 through 11 June 2008, collected semi-automatically:

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Here are the web links I’ve found for 07 May 2008, posted automatically.

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I’ve decided to have another go at publishing the links I find online. So, thanks to del.icio.us and some mild semi-automation, here’s today’s batch.

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When I posted about the astronaut attempted kidnapping story the other day, I hadn’t realised it had already become a major global story. Now Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner asks: Why?

I realize the story represents a sort of perfect storm of media stickiness — a female perp and a female victim, lust, revenge, NASA, pepper spray, and of course the diaper — but I have to confess that I am overwhelmed that this has become such a round-the-clock story. Who cares, and why? They were even talking about the story on the two ESPN shows I saw pieces of last night (SportsCenter and Pardon the Interruption); in each case, the anchors sheepishly acknowledged that the story had zero to do with sports but… they simply couldn’t resist.

With 63 comments so far, there’s plenty of interesting ideas. Well worth the read. The highlights for me…

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