The complexities of confetti

Yes, throwing confetti off a rooftop is an art form. So self-proclaimed "Confetti King" Treb Heining tells the Wall Street Journal. After all, he's the man who oversees the New Year's confetti drop in New York's Times Square:

"Confetti is an art," he says, "right down to how it's fluffed."

Dropping 3,000 pounds of confetti on cue isn't easy. Heat rising off the partying bodies below can create a strong upward draft. There's snow and rain to consider. The friends, and friends of friends, who fly in from around the country to help Mr. Heining, need special New York Police Department security credentials. ("We usually discourage people from lobbing items from rooftops," an NYPD spokesman says.) Even the preparation of the confetti is demanding. Mr. Heining, 50 years old, combines products from two different manufacturers and has to mix his recipe on site before the drop.

What brands does he use? "I'm sorry," the exceedingly polite confetti maven says, "but I don't like talking about that. It's kind of a trade secret."

Lest you think he's being paranoid, the Journal indicates that confetti dispersal (and affiliated balloon dropping) is actually a cut-throat business with deeply rooted philosophical disputes and sometimes unscrupulous competition.

Also, on a mildly related note, the New York Post lists 100 things you didn't know about the festivities in Times Square.

Seeking sentient service

Never mind SETI; plenty of people are focused on the search for sentient life right here on earth.

They're trying to contact real live humans in the customer service department.

The New York Times' Katie Hafner wrote a great piece on this unfortunate ritual of life in the Internet age. Amid the tales of woe, she also lists some helpful resources for tracking down e-tailers' customer-service numbers.

One of her sources shares this useful tip for circumventing labyrinthine voice-menu systems: if pressing "0" doesn't transfer you to a live operator, press it again ... and again ... and maybe again. Some systems ignore the first "0" but most will eventually let you through.

About the tsunami

A few questions keep popping up in the ongoing coverage about the aftermath of the South Asian tsunami. Here's an attempt to clear them up:

• How reliable are the death toll estimates? It depends. As the New York Times explains, accurate death tolls are impossible for many reasons: census counts in rural and slum areas are often unreliable, existing records may have been destroyed, and some devastated areas lack functioning governments. Also, counting the dead may not a priority for responders on the ground, such as rescuers and relief workers.

  Plus, procedures for tallying the dead vary considerably across the region, the Associated Press notes. Indian bureaucrats meticulously photograph and catalog each body while Indonesian officials make guesstimates based on how many corpses fit into the average mass grave. Which brings us to the next question ...

• Do all those dead bodies really pose a health risk? No, the experts say. Poynter Online's Al Tomkins wrote a great overview on the topic. Slate addressed the issue, with decidedly more gruesome detail, back in 1999.

• Were there no measures in place to mitigate the tidal waves? There's been a lot of press about the need for a high-tech tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean but, as AP notes, some areas were spared because of very low-tech defenses set up against ocean-borne disasters.

• Was the devastation as total as it sounds? Apparently not everywhere, as this jarring photo of a busy nightclub on Phuket suggests.
  

Commentary cups

Cafes and conversation go together, Starbucks reasons. So, it's going to try to turn its paper cups into talking points by printing quotations on them.

Well, maybe that'll work out better than the short-lived Joe magazine. To be fair, that did get people talking, in my experience ... although the conversations mainly involved how no one could believe that Starbucks expected them to pay $3 for it.

Truth via fiction

Sometimes, fiction does a better job of conveying the truth than mere reality. Such is the case, it seems, with a blog called Anonymous Lawyer. The angsty online journal of "a petty, cynical, sexist, miserable, overpaid corporate creep" is fictional yet the New York Times reports that it has struck a chord with many real lawyers who identify either with him or the co-workers whom he despises:

It is not surprising that a group of highly verbal computer-bound professionals who are paid to complain would gravitate toward the blogosphere. ... Anonymous Lawyer is a chance to admit, anonymously, an uncomfortable truth: The money and status may not be worth all the sacrifices.

The Times unmasks "A.L." as Jeremy Blachman, a third-year Harvard law student who offers what could be considered a ringing indictment of the legal profession:

"I was just writing satire. ... The stories I'm telling, to me, feel so outlandish. In a way I've been disappointed that I've been able to pull it off. I've painted a picture based on a few months of observation and the worst things I saw, heard about or could imagine about law firms, and experienced lawyers are chiming in, saying, 'This is exactly what it feels like.' "

Blachman, incidentally, makes it clear that he really wants to be a writer; the law degree's just employment insurance.

Remote viewing

Virtual tours are quite popular with U.S. Internet users. On a typical day, more than 2 million people are taking them online, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Seeing red? Maybe not

PaidContent.org's Rafat Ali points out that Google serves up some interesting ads when you search for "red cross."

Sickening spam stats

No surprise that the CAN-SPAM Act is deemed a failure by critics, but an IDG News Service status report does provide some eye-opening numbers about how much worse the spam problem has gotten since the law went into effect at the start of 2004:

Postini Inc., an e-mail security service provider, said the percentage of legitimate non-spam e-mail it sees dropped from 22 percent of all e-mail at the beginning of 2004 to just 12 percent by December. The company processes 2.4 billion e-mail messages a week.

MX Logic Inc., another antispam vendor, found 67 percent of all e-mail to be spam in February. By November, 75 percent of all e-mail was spam, according to MX Logic.

Salon on 2004 in tech

"When technology became cool again", Salon.com's roundup of 2004's most important technology stories, also provides some cool-headed analysis for some of the headline hype.

For example, in summarizing the impact that blogging had on the national elections, Farhad Manjoo points out that Howard Dean and other candidates who relied heavily on blog financing lost despite all the talk of revolutionizing politics: "Was the entire online political effort something of an illusion -- a mere echo chamber of blue-state optimism, all sound and fury, signifying nothing? Alas, it sure seems that way now. "

Other topics covered include the coming of age of the wireless Internet, the Kyoto Protocol, e-voting security, Firefox reigniting the browser wars, the ongoing campaign against file sharing, California's decision to fund stem-cell research, outsourcing, a reality check for hydrogen-fueled cars, and the growing Big Brother potential of Google.

Of the latter, Andrew Leonard writes:

When any individual or company becomes that omnipresent and all-knowing, there's usually justification for wariness. At Salon we've been pulling for Google since the very earliest days, because we have consistently found the company's offerings incredibly useful and because we believe that the executives of Google are sincere when they say they want to do the right thing. But if a different crew were running the Google ship, and economic circumstances began to force their hand, it's chilling to think of just how much information Google knows about us. It knows what we search for, whom we e-mail, who our friends are, and soon, what books we like to read. That's quite a dossier, and it's scary.

Welcome back -- to e-mail

It's one of the dilemmas of modern business life: either check your e-mail during vacation -- or return to face an inbox filled with hundreds of new messages to wade through, many of them probably spam.

Top clicks of 2004

Looking at the list of the 20 most read SeattlePI.com articles and commentaries of the past year, it appears that the many cultural issues surrounding the presidential race and Janet Jackson were of interest to many. So was the perennial cultural war between Microsoft and Apple aficionados.

1. Veteran gets rude welcome on Bainbridge
2. Agency initiates steps for selective draft
3. Nuclear missile allegedly damaged
4. Gore gets speeding ticket while traveling in Oregon
5. The Mac lovers of Microsoft
6. Kerry deals away his ace in the hole
7. Missile incident rattles Canada
8. The S factor explains Bush's popularity
9. Microsoft Notebook: Microsoft has plans to take on ... Apple?
10. Wireless net to cover downtown Seattle
11. Sonics, Allen enter uncertain future over extension
12. Interpol makes Seattle deal
13. Nintendo to launch a new hand-held device
14. Late-model car codes frustrate mechanics
15. New sports bra offers support and style
16. Seattle is closer to France than to Texas
17. What Janet Jackson really exposed: plausible deniability often doesn't work
18. Mary K. Letourneau is a free woman tomorrow
19. The fall of AT&T Wireless
20. Jackson's 'flop' wasn't the only one on this night

Knuckleheads dishonored

Speaking of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, both are recipients of our 2004 Knucklehead Awards -- given, as D. Parvaz explains, "to celebrities who either do or say moronic things."

Our priorities, per Google

Google has released its 2004 Year-End Zeitgeist, as always a revealing view of what the human race -- or, at least, those members connected to the Internet -- wanted to know more about this year.

As CNet News.com's Matt Hines put it: "If the term 'zeitgeist' is applied as it is defined--an era's intellectual, moral and cultural climate--then it is clear from Google's annual report bearing the same name that the Web is a society dominated by suggestively gyrating blondes."

The four most popular Google queries of 2004: Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Christina Aguilera and Pamela Anderson.

The rest of the top 10 queries were also entertainment-related: chat, games, Carmen Electra, Orlando Bloom, Harry Potter and mp3.

Space station sightings

In theory, Seattleites will be able to see the International Space Station with the naked eye every morning through Thursday, Dec. 30. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the weather's going to be very cooperative: the forecast calls for mostly cloudy conditions or rain. But patchy fog Monday and Tuesday mornings might hold out some hope.

I'd be interested in hearing if anyone spots it overhead.

What's not made in China?

If it seems like just about every consumer product is made in China nowadays, that may not be far from the truth. With U.S. imports from China expected to reach $190 billion, woe unto those who -- as a matter of principle -- try to boycott all Chinese-made goods this gift-giving season.

Ode to Bubble Wrap

It's gift-giving season and that means -- Bubble Wrap for everyone!

Seriously, this surprisingly interesting Cox News Service story delves into Bubble Wrap's history -- yes, the name is trademarked -- and lasting appeal.

Speaking of which ... all together now:

O Bubble Wrap! O Bubble Wrap!
How we prize thee, Bubble Wrap;

Thy popping is the sound of joy,
Beloved by ev'ry girl and boy!

O Bubble Wrap! O Bubble Wrap!
How we love thee, Bubble Wrap ...

Gullibility not an asset

What would you do if you started receiving e-mail from, apparently, the CEO of your company asking you to spy on your boss and fire people for being fat?

Hopefully, you'd handle it better than this.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Reasonable reduction

As Todd Bishop notes today, Microsoft isn't known for snazzy product names. But it may have scored a cheeky coup with the name chosen for the Media Player-free version of its OS that it's been ordered to offer in Europe: Windows XP Reduced Media Edition.

"It's unusual, to say the least, for a product name to call attention so explicitly to something that the company itself considers a shortcoming," Todd writes. But one expert he consulted, DNA Brand Mechanics principal Dan Gross, says it "may be one of the most creative things that they've done."

"If you're interested in a low-carb or a low-fat diet, 'reduced' is a good thing," Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox noted. "But that's not the case with technology, where the connotation is more negative."

Of course, as the International Herald Tribune pointed out, it's unlikely anyone in Europe would actually want a slimmed-down version of Windows anyway. Personally, I'd rather save my Euros waiting for Windows XP Reduced Crash Edition ...

Better batteries

Over at TheFeature, David Pescovitz reports that there is hope for gadget-lovers weary of ever-shortening battery life:

While people clamor for cell phones and laptops that only need to be recharged every year or so, most users would settle for a handset that doesn't die mid-day if you've forgotten to plug it in the night before. Fortunately, researchers are developing new batteries that could keep tomorrow's mobile gadgets alive for the long haul. Some use microfabrication methods borrowed from the computer chip industry. Others exploit atomic physics in the form of nuclear microbatteries. The aim of them all is to put all the power you'll need right in your pocket.

Annoy your co-workers

Cecelia Goodnow's interview today with human sound-effects machine Fred Newman includes five audio how-tos on how to imitate a popping champagne cork, cow, fly, whip and robot voice; plus written instructions on how to make party noises like an Hawaiian nose hum.

Nicky's second coming

A fiery ethical debate has erupted over news that a Dallas woman paid $50,000 to a company called Genetic Savings and Clone for a clone of her late pet cat, Nicky.

		AP
	Julie holds her 9-week-old clone, "Little Nicky," yesterday in Texas.

She's clearly happy about the outcome, but others aren't.

David Magnus, the director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University's school of medicine, called the cat-cloning enterprise "absurd," "unethical" and "unhealthy." "It's trying to pretend that death doesn't exist, which speaks to a larger symptom in our culture of not dealing with death," he told the Chronicle. "It's better to just move on. There is no good reason why anybody would do this."

Lou Hawthorne, CEO of Savings and Clone, defended the existence of Little Nicky: "The argument that there is something you could do with $50,000 that is better than buying a cat is an argument that takes on all of capitalism. Are breeders immoral because they are breeding instead of directing people to shelters?"

What I find most interesting is the fact that Julie is only sketchily identified in most press accounts because, as the AP explains, "she fears being targeted by groups opposed to cloning." She agreed to pose for photos with Little Nicky, however.

What I want to know is: Is Texas really so large that Julie can hope to keep any shred of anonymity after her photo, first name, hometown -- and, in some accounts, approximate age and occupation -- have been publicized all over the world?

Who's our governor?

The interminable saga of the 2004 governor's race continues with no real end in sight, but with a likely legacy of future election reform.

Seattle Weekly's Rick Anderson likely voiced the thoughts of many when he wrote:

The thin margin separating mansion hopefuls Christine Gregoire and Dino Rossi has exposed us to the sausage-making reality of vote inexactitude, layered with the hypocrisy of both candidates (every vote counts unless it was cast for the other candidate) and the rhetoric of state party officials .... As it is, voters will forever wonder who really was elected. Maybe we're better off with the position vacant. No one has earned it, and we could use the savings to pay for election reform that puts deserving candidates in office. Can that be retroactive?

On a related note, this interesting chart from today's P-I plots the ups and downs of the recount tallies. (A related table details the totals, gains and losses in each of Washington's 39 counties.)

Hooray for Festivus

Life imitates art yet again: Festivus, the fictional holiday (or maybe anti-holiday) featured on a memorable 1997 "Seinfeld" episode, is catching on in the real world, according to the New York Times.

For the uninitiated, on the show, Festivus was created by George Costanza's father as a reaction against Christmas excess. Its "decorative" centerpiece is an undecorated aluminum pole. Standard rituals include an airing of grievances and wrestling matches between family members. "Seinfeld" writer Daniel O'Keefe based it on an actual family tradition his father invented in 1966, which he describes as being "entirely more peculiar than on the show."

So, why are other people adopting it? The Times speculates:

To postulate grandly, the rise of Festivus, a bare-bones affair in which even tinsel is forbidden, may mean that Americans are fed up with the commercialism of the December holidays and are yearning for something simpler. Or it could be that Festivus is the perfect secular theme for an all-inclusive December gathering (even better than Chrismukkah, popularized by the television show "The O.C."). Or maybe, postulating smally, it's just irresistibly silly. ...

No delaying death

You can't will yourself to live longer, a new study concludes, further pooh-poohing the idea that the terminally ill can postpone death until after a holiday or other milestone event.

The free Web lives

Today's free feature at WSJ.com looks at how free Web content is still abundant despite all the predictions a couple years back that it was doomed by changing business models:

An impressive array of services and tools are available for free online. Internet users can, without charge, read books; get recipes; meet new friends; find any U.S. business (and many around the world) and a map to it; share digital photos; check the cast of nearly any movie ever made; access medical information; and a lot more. ...

Perhaps it's not surprising that any one of those features, by themselves, is available free. But collectively, the range of free Web offerings confounds a flurry of media and analyst reports from a few years ago asking if the collapse of dot-com stock prices meant the days of free online tools were numbered.

(Via PaidContent.)

2004 in blogging

Time magazine's 10 Things We Learned About Blogs is a great capsule overview of 2004's highlights in the growth of blogging and its impact in the offline world.

Diagnosing Gollum

Is Gollum insane? Or is his aberrant behavior caused by a physical illness? Six medical students and their instructor undertake a serious consideration of those questions in a tongue-in-cheek article for the British Medical Journal:

A space occupying lesion such as a brain tumour is unlikely as his symptoms are long standing. Gollum's diet is extremely limited, consisting only of raw fish. Vitamin B-12 deficiency may cause irritability, delusions, and paranoia. His reduced appetite and loss of hair and weight may be associated with iron deficiency anaemia. He is hypervigilant and does not seem to need much sleep. This, accompanied by his bulging eyes and weight loss, suggests hyperthyroidism. Gollum's dislike of sunlight may be due to the photosensitivity of porphyria. Attacks may be induced by starvation and accompanied by paranoid psychosis.

... On initial consideration schizophrenia seems a reasonable diagnosis. However, in the context of the culture at the time it is unlikely. Delusions are false, unshakeable beliefs, not in keeping with the patient's culture. In Middle Earth, the power of the ring is a reality. The passivity phenomena Gollum experiences are caused by the ring, and these symptoms occur in all ring bearers. Gollum does not fulfil the ICD-10 criteria for the diagnosis of schizophrenia.

The presence of two personalities, Gollum and Sméagol, raises the possibility of multiple personality disorder. ...

(Via Boing Boing.)

iProposal

This was inevitable: someone has proposed marriage using an iPod.

Science that intrigues

Science News Online has posted lists of its most read articles of 2004. These are outside the site's registration wall so they may offer a decent snapshot at the kind of science topics that catch general Net users' interest.

The most popular articles -- which aren't listed in any real ranking order, it seems -- include:

• Toss Out the Toss-Up: Bias in heads-or-tails
• Reinventing the Yo-Yo: A simple toy gets seriously techno
• Breeds Apart: Purebred dogs defined by DNA differences
• Pythagoras Plays Ball, a surprisingly interesting analysis of the odd dimensions of baseball's home plate.
• Evolutionary Shrinkage: Stone Age Homo find offers small surprise
• Deception Detection: Psychologists try to learn how to spot a liar
• Martian Methane: Carbon compound hints at life
• Mr. Universe Jr.: Child's gene mutation confirms protein's role in human-muscle growth

Pundits on iPod impact

With iPods selling out across the United States and Canada, and excitement building about an expected flash-based "iPod micro," the technopundits are wrestling with a familiar question: Will this latest hit make Apple a serious player in the future, or is it just another passing fad?

• WSJ.com Real Time columnists Tim Hanrahan and Jason Fry opine that Apple is "on the verge of a renaissance," powered by the iPod's central role in the digital music scene. Yes, it has many aspiring rivals but none has yet managed to match its coolness factor. They also believe that "the drumbeat of viruses, spyware and other maladies that plague Windows and are practically nonexistent in the Apple world," coupled with the iPod's oft-cited "halo effect," will drive PC-to-Mac migrations, helping secure that platform's future.

• The Philadelphia Inquirer's Wendy Tanaka sounds a cautionary note, pointing out that although Apple is famous for introducing innovative technologies that later become ubiquitous, "it is equally famous for failing to maintain momentum."

• Jupiter Research's Joe Wilcox argues that it's the iPod itself that will be the foundation of Apple's future because " is quickly moving beyond the role of just being a music player into that of an emerging platform. How much of a platform depends upon Apple's vision."
  

The sleep experts

When all else fails, "legions of sleep-deprived parents at wits' end are fueling a cottage industry of consultants, whose job is to help get children to nod off and stay that way through the night," the Wall Street Journal reports. It's just one sign, apparently, of a growing interest in pediatric sleep as a medical specialty.

Disaster yields windfall

In the Silver Lining Department, the oil spill caused by a wrecked freighter off the Aleutians has proven a financial windfall for businesses around Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

The bloggers are watching

We usually talk about blogging's impact in very "blue sky" terms -- how it's reshaping the political process, shifting the balance of power between the mass media and the audience, and so on. But, law professor Jeffrey Rosen reminds us in a New York Times Magazine piece, more and more people (not to mention organizations) will become unwitting, sometimes unwilling, participants in the blogosphere:

As Web logs proliferate -- Technorati, which tracks 5 million blogs, estimates that 15,000 are added each day -- the boundaries between public and private are being transformed. Unconstrained by journalistic conventions, bloggers are blurring the lines between public events and ordinary social interactions and changing the way we date, work, teach and live. And as blogs continue to proliferate, citizens will have to develop new understandings about what parts of our lives are on and off the record. ... In the age of blogs, all citizens, no matter how obscure, will have to adjust their behavior to the possibility that someone may be writing about them.

So much for analog

Seven years ago I was visiting the online operation at the Augusta Chronicle and needed to call for a cab. I turned to my hosts and asked, "Does anyone around here have a phone book?" They all looked at me like I was an idiot. After the moment of stunned silence had passed, someone politely suggested I turn back to my computer and look up cab companies in their city guide.

That particular old habit went to its grave right then and there.

It's a habit that many people will never develop, judging by what Cory Bergman says over at Lost Remote:

I live in a wired Seattle apartment with a youngish crowd, and the annual update of the city's phone books appeared on our doorsteps last week. Three days later, only a quarter or so of the residents had picked them up. Then the phone books gradually started disappearing as most us threw them in the recycle bin. What a waste. At least in the 18-34 demo, phone books are so yesterday.

On the mortality of media

Reflecting on humanity's eternal quest to learn everything, author Alberto Manguel shares some pertinent observations about the wonders and limitations of today's digital archives:

... new technologies need not be exclusionary. The invention of photography did not eliminate painting, it renewed it, and no doubt the screen and the codex can feed off each other and coexist amicably on the same reader's desk. All we need to do is remember the corollaries to the arguments in favor of a virtual library: that reading, in order to allow reflection, requires slowness, depth and context; that leafing through a material book or roaming through material shelves is an intimate part of the craft; that the omnipresent electronic technology is still fragile and that, as it changes, we keep losing the possibility of retrieving that which was once stored in now superseded containers. We can still read the words on papyrus ashes saved from the charred ruins of Pompeii; we don't know for how long it will be possible to read a text inscribed in a 2004 CD. This is not a complaint, just a reminder.

Quest for wild horses

The federal government says there are no wild horses left in Washington state. But Larry Lee Palmer, our horse-racing writer, had heard differently from his grandfather. So he set out to find them -- and find them he did, in a remote part of the Yakama reservation:

Horses of all types, shapes and descriptions appear on the ridgelines and in distant clearings. I watch spellbound as a ribbon of horses -- roan and dun mares, sorrels and bays, finally a strapping silver-gray stud -- plunges down the side of a ravine, then back up the other side ...

The dea(r)th of clear writing

In the age of e-mail, writing skills are all-important for clear communication.

Alas, as the New York Times points out in a story bearing the amusing headline What Corporate America Can't Build: A Sentence, such skills are not nearly as commonplace as we might like:

Millions of inscrutable e-mail messages are clogging corporate computers by setting off requests for clarification, and many of the requests, in turn, are also chaotically written, resulting in whole cycles of confusion.

Or, as Craig Hogan, head of an online school for business writing, puts it: "E-mail has just erupted like a weed, and instead of considering what to say when they write, people now just let thoughts drool out onto the screen."

Fighting ID theft

Wall Street Journal columnist Terri Cullen shares some details on new rules meant to combat identity theft.

Will Google proof goofs?

Over at InfoWorld Tech Watch, Ephraim Schwartz raises an obvious question about Google's plan to digitize and make searchable thousands of books from major libraries:

Who's going to do the proofreading?

I realize there are high speed scanners available but I wonder how accurate they are?

If the average printed page has 550 words on it and a scanner is 99 percent accurate that means there would be 5.5 errors or misreads of letters and or words per page. That's a lot of errors to find. ...

I know from first hand experience scanning can be somewhat problematic. lower case h's and n's can look awfully similar to a non-human scanner.

Imagine a first time online reader of Hamlet puzzling over the line, "to be or hot to be"?

Elsewhere, the Detroit Free Press points out some potential real-world limitations in the service's utility.

iPod visions

If you can measure demand for a new product by how many fantastic mock-ups passionate fans design, then there's huge interest in a really tiny, flash memory-based iPod. iPodLounge presents a gallery of 64 snazzy, speculative designs showing what people wish an "iPod micro" would be. They include "flip-phone" iPods, retracting iPods, pendant iPods, wristwatch iPods and iPods that are little more than a clickwheel with an LCD. Some even dispense with the trademark clickwheel entirely.

They're fun to look at -- although, as pragmatists like John Gruber are quick to point out, many would be impossible to build and/or impractical to use.

And it's not too hard to imagine that consumers would snap up a flash iPod if it existed. As the Wall Street Journal notes today, the venerable, hard-drive models are selling out all over the country this holiday season.

(Via TidBITS, Cult of Mac, Gizmodo and probably someone else I've forgotten.)

The future of sports

You can make a good argument that sports fans are the ultimate information junkies. Now, technologies ranging from satellite radio to video-ready cell phones to pay-per-view game highlights are giving more information about teams and players than ever before -- sliced and diced just about any way fans want.

The Christian Science Monitor asks whether this will be good or bad in the long run. For example, will the instant gratification provided by edited highlights erode loyalty to real teams and lower ratings for live gamecasts? The experts have few answers yet, but the long list of questions raised by the Monitor is pretty thought-provoking.

The A-list bloggers

Newsweek's Steven Levy looks at the alpha bloggers, those who by "dint of reputation, novelty and charm, ... have built large and influential audiences." It's a pretty concise look at the de facto hierarchy of the blogosphere that offers some tips on how to work your way into the elite circles, at least for a little while ...

The lesson is that there's a new force—spearheaded by people who work for no bosses and whose prose never sees an editor's pencil—that provides the water-cooler fodder for the larger high-tech community. Its power extends not only to high-tech cool-hunting but also to what's politically correct, geek style. (Open source... gooood. Onerous copy protection... eeeevil.) And the significance of this phenomenon has some important implications for the way opinions will be formed in the decentralized world of Internet media.

Sesame Street as U.N.

Don't underestimate the power of "Sesame Street." According to research by Andrea Emberly, a Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology at the University of Washington, the popular PBS show's many international versions have helped create a universal children's culture.

Emberly tells writer Travis Hay that "this program can somehow go across borders and go into different communities and cultures and be applicable based on the premise that children need to be entertained and educated."

Games on the brain

P-I science reporter Tom Paulson's story today on thought-controlled computers takes a fantastic concept and reduces it to the amusingly mundane:

Tristan Lundemo, a 19-year-old man from Seabeck with severe epilepsy, is one of the world's leading players in the highly specialized sport of brainwave Pong.

Scientists working in this field tend to use technical terms like "brain-computer interface" or "closed-loop electrocorticography," but for Lundemo it's mostly just an enjoyable way to pass the time -- using his mind alone to move a cursor that chases targets on a computer screen.

Lundemo controls the cursor through a web of electrodes attached to the surface of his brain originally intended to record epileptic seizures in progress. He learned to play Pong with his brain within minutes and mastered the game in two days.

Hating 'Halo'

"Halo" widows vent to the New York Observer. After all, football widows are so 20th century.

(Update: The link above now points to a persistent, archival URL.)

How we blog

More women blog than men, and men are more likely to abandon the blogs they do start. Those are among the interesting findings in a study by Perseus Development Corp. that surveyed eight of the most popular blog-hosting services.

According to Perseus, most blogs are updated much less frequently than is generally thought: the average is once every 14 days. The majority are written for what Perseus labels nanoaudiences of known associates. The "typical blog is written by a teenage girl who uses it twice a month to update her friends and classmates on happenings in her life." (She also tends to type everything in lowercase, using capitals FOR EMPHASIS ONLY.)

The study also found evidence that blogging is not for everyone after all:

The most dramatic finding was that 66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months, representing 2.72 million blogs that have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned. Apparently the blog-hosting services have made it so easy to create a blog that many tire-kickers feel no commitment to continuing the blog they initiate. In fact, 1.09 million blogs were one-day wonders, with no postings on subsequent days. The average duration of the remaining 1.63 million abandoned blogs was 126 days (almost four months). A surprising 132,000 blogs were abandoned after being maintained a year or more (the oldest abandoned blog surveyed had been maintained for 923 days).

Males were more likely than females to abandon blogs, with 46.4% of abandoned blogs created by males, as compared to 40.7% of active blogs being created by males. Abandonment rates did not vary based on age. Those who abandoned blogs tended to write posts that were only 58% as long as the posts of those who still maintained blogs, which simply indicates that those who enjoy writing stick with blogs longer.

The research isn't exactly new: Many of the numbers and conclusions were originally noted in an Oct. 4, 2003, press release. But a number of bloggers are commenting on it today. Steve Shu, for one, frames Perseus' conclusions in the context of how the blogging scene has evolved in 2004.

Hold the laws of physics

A Florida man drove his car off the fifth story of a parking garage at 60 mph, sailing through the air before smashing through the wall of a neighboring building. Miraculously, he survived, was conscious afterward and suffered only minor injuries, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

It was undoubtedly a suicide attempt, South Miami Assistant City Manager Charles Blazek told the newspaper:

"He was saying things that made it obvious he wanted to kill himself. Something about his wife leaving him," said Blazek. "You don't race across the parking lot like that unless you want to kill yourself. That, or he is the worst parallel parker in the world."

High-tech toilets a hit

Make of this what you will, but Seattleites apparently love the city's new, self-cleaning, automated public toilets, using the first five units an average of more than 600 times a day. That's about 10 times higher than what's considered normal in Europe, according to a new report.

Of course, that might just be because they have a lot more of the things across the Atlantic ...

Beer pumps can kill you

Partiers in Perth, Australia, invented a new drinking game using a home-made machine that used an electric motor to pump beer down their throats. One man nearly died after the force-fed alcohol tore a hole in his stomach, the West Australian reports.

The paper added that health experts have helpfully "warned people not to build gadgets that allowed the rapid consumption of large amounts of alcohol."

(Via Boing Boing.)

TV boss a real doll

Fast Company Now explains just what you get for buying the new Donald Trump talking doll. Its 17 programmed phrases include some that are much more entertaining than the hopelessly tired "You're fired!" Personally, I rather like "Have an ego. There's nothing wrong with ego."

Hm, the standard write-up describing the doll notes that RealScan laser technology was used to produce an "amazing likeness" of Trump. This implies that a perfect digital representation of His Donaldness can now be included among the artifacts that our civilization will leave for posterity. Am I the only one who finds that thought mildly disconcerting?

How the rich show off

The richer are getting richer -- and they're feeling more pressure to show it off, the Wall Street Journal notes:

With the population of millionaires soaring to more than two million in the U.S., the rich are finding it harder to set themselves apart. Many are turning to supersized luxury consumer products to rise above the pack. Today's super-wealthy, and the companies that serve them, are creating a whole new category of high-end products that are priced beyond the reach of mere millionaires.

"High-end products" as in vast estates, watches and cars with six- or seven-figure price tags and luxury yachts like Paul Allen's new Octopus, which reportedly "extends over 400 feet and has a basketball court, music studio and personal submarine."

In fact, the Journal notes, the inflation rate for luxury items hit 7 percent last year -- twice the overall U.S. inflation rate. This trend isn't necessarily new, however, if you look at it in a broad historical context:

Edward N. Wolff, a professor of economics at New York University who studies wealth, likens modern-day big spenders to nobles at the court of France's Louis XIV, who reigned from 1643 to 1715. To ensure the nobles' loyalty, Louis continually raised the "entry price" of being in his court, requiring them to wear increasingly expensive clothes and keep larger and larger homes. The nobles' need for greater wealth made them even more dependent on the king's good graces, and left them less money to spend on arms.

Today, Mr. Wolff says, it's the wealthy themselves who are bidding up the price of being on top. "For the wealthy to keep their status, they have to compete in terms of luxury consumption," Mr. Wolff says. "The mere fact that this group can pay these prices becomes an indicator of social standing."

The Libertarian factor

P-I political reporter Neil Modie takes a look at the complicated role the Libertarian party now plays in state politics. For example, Republicans and Democrats alike think that Libertarian candidate Ruth Bennett played the spoiler in the still-contested governor's race -- but, confounding conventional political wisdom, by siphoning left-wing votes away from Democrat Christine Gregoire.

Phoning it in

The New York Times looks at a peculiarly American phenomenon: our tendency to use cell phones mainly for talking to one another rather than for accessing data services. In fact, analysts think that high-speed networks will still be used mainly for routing voice calls.

Most popular last week

The odd, the unusual and the surprising were what caught SeattlePI.com readers' fancy during the week of Dec. 6-12, 2004:

Top clicks (most read articles):

1. 'Dimebag' legacy in thrash metal secure
2. Powerball winner's granddaughter missing
3. Hollywood would like to yell 'Cut!' to 'BitTorrent' users
4. Police dog bites nude man in the genitals
5. Microsoft Notebook: Tool connects 'Halo 2' with ... Excel?
6. Laptops may be hurting men's fertility
7. GOP likes '96 Gregoire advice on rejected ballots
8. Humvee makers dispute Rumsfeld remarks
9. Nintendo is shipping more DS game units
10. Tice: UW job could lure him from NFL

Top picks (most e-mailed articles):

1. Police dog bites nude man in the genitals
2. Laptops may be hurting men's fertility
3. Linguist deciphers uses of word 'dude'
4. Viaduct is out; tunnel is in
5. Yesterday's draft dodgers help today's war resisters
6. Researchers take on imaginary playmates -- for real
7. Target's bell-ringer ban stirs customer revolt
8. Microsoft Notebook: Tool connects 'Halo 2' with ... Excel?
9. In the Northwest: Anti-Israeli slant harms Jewish-Christian dealings
10. Green Lake's changing face causes some jitters

Flu shot, anyone? Anyone?

Now that the severe shortage of flu vaccine is easing -- at least in some parts of the country -- medical practitioners face a new problem: not that many people seem to want it anymore, the Associated Press reports:

"It's one of those things like Beanie Babies or something," said Doug McBride, spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services. "If you can't get something, you've got more people wanting them."

Best ways to learn

What's the best way to help children learn? Darned if we know, writes Wall Street Journal science columnist Sharon Begley:

The U.S. spends some $400 billion a year on K-12 education. Yet unlike other big-ticket items such as defense and health care, "education does not rest on a strong research base," as a report from the National Research Council put it with polite understatement. "In no other field are personal experience and ideology so frequently relied on to make policy choices, and in no other field is the research base so inadequate and little used."

In-touch tech for troops

Wired News has a great story that shows, yet again, how technology makes the world a much smaller place. It's a case study of how one family uses a private intranet site to stay in touch with Dad, who's serving in Iraq. Great for morale on both ends, but apparently it can also provide stateside relatives with an unnervingly intimate understanding of grim conditions abroad.

Ronald Black, of the Army's Chief Technology Office, offers some insight into current military attitudes toward soldiers' use of modern communications technology:

The Army used to censor heavily but has come to understand that soldiers aren't idiots, they aren't going to post something online that could get them or their buddies killed. ... I believe there is some oversight of blog content; how much is often dependent on a particular commanding officer.

Why change passwords?

Why do so many companies require employees to change their computer passwords every few months? The short answer, according to the Wall Street Journal, is that it's "in the name of preventing financial fraud under the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate-reform act."

But the whole story is a little more complicated:

The Sarbanes-Oxley law doesn't mandate periodic password changes. Nor do the Securities and Exchange Commission rules implementing the law. Nor does the "guidance" issued by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the nonprofit corporation that Sarbanes-Oxley created to regulate audit firms. Nonetheless, password changes have become a standard feature of management strategies to demonstrate compliance with the law.

One impetus appears to be the IT Governance Institute, a Rolling Meadows, Ill., nonprofit that brings together tech executives from big companies with representatives of major audit firms. The institute's "control objectives" for Sarbanes-Oxley list regular password changes as an "illustrative control" to prevent tampering with corporate financial systems.

Major audit firms then took up the cause. Deloitte & Touche USA LLP, for example, recommends that companies require employees to change passwords at least once every three months, and more often if the process can be automated. Ted DeZabala, national leader of Deloitte's security-services group, says the company has long urged periodic password changes, and used the Sarbanes-Oxley law to drive home the point.

By now, with the first Sarbanes-Oxley reports due to be filed in March, the practice is approaching ubiquity.

Good intentions aside, the Journal also cites plenty of anecdotal evidence suggesting that frequent password changes actually imperil security because of all the workarounds employees use to avoid having to learn all those new passwords. But you probably already knew that.

Annoying in the air

The New York Times takes a fun look at the social implications of allowing airplane passengers to use cell phones while in flight:

"For some people, the idea of being able to pick up their phone is going to be liberating; for some it's going to drive them crazy," said Addison Schonland, a travel industry consultant at the Innovation Analysis Group in La Jolla, Calif. "Can you imagine 200 people having a conversation at once? There's going to be a big market for noise-canceling headphones."

The always-on-the-road business travelers may become the worst offenders, predicted Roger Entner, a telecommunications analyst with the Yankee Group and a frequent flier. "Businessmen will now compete with toddlers for the title of 'most annoying in the airplane,' " Mr. Entner said.

Persuasive stories

Over on Stanford's Captology Notebook, BJ Fogg shares some provocative thoughts about the persuasive power of stories -- for better or worse:

I believe we humans are hardwired to absorb narratives, because through narrative we learn about causal relationships; we learn how things work in the world. This has adaptive value. But it can also cause problems. We absorb narratives so readily, it's difficult to counteract a false narrative, a story that shows a false causal relationship. For example, if I tell a story about how eating organic blueberries caused me to grow to 6'3", that idea is going to stick in your head. It will be hard for you to erase the relationship in your mind between organic blueberries and growth. That's why, I believe, so many cultures developed strict rules about telling falsehoods--or bearing false witness, if you will. Once told, these falsehoods cannot be completely erased; at the very least they leave a residue that clogs our thinking.

Signs of the times

Road Rage Cards are, as the name suggests, 8-by-11-inch cards you can display in your window to let fellow motorists know what you think of them. Forty-three different messages come bound in a topically organized flipbook; some offer both obscenity-laden and obscenity-free versions. Each has a reversed image on the back that can be read in rear-view mirrors.

They sound potentially cathartic although I doubt they'll do much to arrest the decline of civility on the road.

Autoblog lauds them but also points out a couple of possible shortcomings: "This may very well be the best $19.99 you can spend. That is if they don’t get you shot. Of course, the person cutting you off is probably so oblivious to what is going on, they won’t even notice your message to them."

(Via Boing Boing.)

Behind the headlines

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was taken aback during a visit to Kuwait when a U.S. soldier cornered him with what ABC News described as "an unusually blunt question" about the lack of armored vehicles in Iraq.

Army Spc. Thomas Wilson, of Nashville, drew applause with his televised, show-stopping query: "Now why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?"

Wilson's outspokenness didn't surprise those who knew him -- but, apparently, he didn't come up with the question himself.

Chattanooga Times Free Press military reporter Lee Pitts, who's embedded with Wilson's unit, wrote in e-mail to colleagues (it's archived at Romenesko) that he primed the soldiers escorting him to ask tough questions. Pitts said he also arranged with the sergeant in charge of the microphone during Rumsfeld's Q&A session (transcript) to pick them out of the crowd.

Not that Wilson seemed to mind. "The solider who asked the question said he felt good b/c he took his complaints to the top," Pitts wrote. "When he got back to his unit most of the guys patted him on the back but a few of the officers were upset b/c they thought it would make them look bad."

Readers take to e-books

E-books are finally taking off, the New York Times notes. They actually make up the fastest-growing segment in the publishing world, with first-quarter sales in 2004 up 46 percent from the year before.

Driving the increase is the explosion of cell phones, PDAs and other pocket-sized devices with screens capable of displaying reasonable amounts of text -- "a phenomenon the pioneers in the electronic publishing industry didn't foresee." As you might recall, many thought they'd have to get people to buy special e-book reading devices. But it turns out that many people don't mind reading long works on small screens after all.

E-books are also expanding libraries' reach by letting patrons check out books without ever setting foot inside a branch or dealing with those messy paper things.

(Via beSpacific.)

Dude!

Our headline pretty much says it all: Like, whoa, dude, you've been deconstructed.

OK, in case it doesn't: a University of Pittsburgh linguist reveals more than you ever thought you needed to know about the use of "dude."

Unfortunate numbers

Just how bad are U.S. teenagers at math? Very, according to a new study comparing 15-year-olds in the 29 nations that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. American students came in 24th, the Wall Street Journal reports:

The study suggests that there aren't nearly as many bright kids in U.S. schools as there are in other countries -- which could undermine U.S. dominance in technology-related fields. On average, about 4% of kids who took the test scored at the top of a six-point scale; in the U.S., only 2% scored at the top.

The study also indicated that huge numbers of U.S. students can barely do math, meaning the U.S. lacks the advantage of a generally well-educated population, which also can spur growth. One-quarter of the U.S. 15-year-olds scored at either the bottom rung or, worse, scored so low that they didn't even make that level. White and Asian youngsters in the U.S. scored above the international average, but Hispanics [scored below it.]

As a whole, U.S. students also ranked close to the bottom in problem-solving skills.

Web design 2005

The folks at Phoenix design firm Forty Media have posted a list of predictions for how Web design will evolve in the coming year.

Among the highlights: minimalism will make way for detail; brown will be in; the retro and "standards-compliant" looks will be out; designers will abandon the ubiquitous Verdana font; the chronological blog format will fade; and table-based design will finally head into a well-deserved grave.

The full list is much longer and somewhat thought-provoking if you're interested in the topic, although it strikes me as a hybrid of astute trend-watching and wishful thinking.

(Via Poynter E-Media Tidbits.)

Concussions = longevity

We all know that comic book and comic strip characters usually don't age much, if at all. Some have even debated the hows and whys.

But a Canadian medical researcher has offered one of the more interesting, and bizarre, rationales I've yet heard. He posits that Tintin, the popular (well, overseas, anyway) character created by Belgian cartoonist Herge, stayed young through his 47 years' worth of published adventures because repeated blows to the head triggered a growth hormone deficiency.

His study appears in the Canadian Medical Association Journal -- which, Reuters notes, previously published papers surmising that Squirrel Nutkin is autistic and Winnie the Pooh suffer