Secret no more

Am I the only one who feels ... slightly disappointed that we now know who Deep Throat was?

Inspired by the end of 'My'

Based what Todd Bishop's hearing from readers, Microsoft's decision to banish "my" from the desktop may prove to be one of the least unpopular changes it's ever made to Windows.

It's also encouraging no small amount of witty commentary online:

• Airbag: "This is the sound of a million support calls about to happen. They are building a new campus in India just to handle all the traffic."
• Nathan Weinberg: "This means no more 'My Computer', 'My Documents', 'My Pictures', 'My Chicken', or 'My Severe Arthritic Thrombosis'. Microsoft started the whole 'My' trend with Windows 95, and has decided, ten years later, that 'My' is sooo played, with widespread use in websites such as My Yahoo, My eBay, MySwitzerland, and My Invasive and Embarrassing Surgery."
• Captain's Blog: "Yes, brilliant minds at Microsoft have decided to drop the 'My' prefix to certain desktop icons and folders, finally assuming that users are clever enough to realise that these things DO belong to them after all."
• appoulsen.dk: "But then, who’s [sic] is it? Microsoft’s? Everybody’s? Does this mean we can share? So many questions…"
• For more -- and more concise -- wisecracks, see the comments following this Neowin item.

A lot of the comments hint at more sinister motives, however:

• TechSmec: "What difference will this make? None whatsoever, unless it's the first part of a sneaky plan by Microsoft to take ownership of your files. Perhaps future versions of Windows will have folders called 'Bill's documents that he's loaning to you'?"
• HTMLfixIT: "The new folder naming conventions will indicate their new ownership, and 'My Computer' will become 'This Computer' and can be taken to mean Microsoft’s computer. Likewise 'Documents' can be taken to mean 'Microsoft Documents' due to their proprietary formats, in the case of Music and Videos, they can be taken to mean ownership by RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and Hollywood respectively. This bring things in line with Microsoft’s thought that ownership won’t be as important as usage in the future. 'Too many people apparently got the mistaken idea that they owned the stuff stored in those folders simply because of the folder names. We had to do something to change that misconception without making too much of a public fuss about it.' said a possibly existing Microsoft employee."
• The Inquirer: "Of course there could be something more sinister to it. Pressure from the music business means that you can’t call those MP3 files ‘my music’, the various search engines seem a little too interested in storing your documents, and few people can say this is my computer these days. Maybe Vole [aka Microsoft] is simply reflecting the ephemeral nature of materiality. Or perhaps not."

One way to limit comments

Quality control (or, if you prefer, troll control) is an ongoing problem for online publishers who invite comments from the audience. Maybe we should take a lesson from this confessional site that Sarah Boxer reviewed for The New York Times:

Online confessors are like flashers. They exhibit themselves anonymously and publicly, with little consideration for you, the audience. Browse some of the confessionals on the Web: grouphug.us (a simple log), notproud.com (organized by deadly sin) or dailyconfession.com (where you can barely find the confessions for all the promotional stuff). You can see for yourself.

One online confessional, though, breaks the mold. At PostSecret, found at postsecret.blogspot.com, the confessions are consistently engaging, original and well told. How come? The Web site gives people simple instructions. Mail your secret anonymously on one side of a 4-by-6-inch postcard that you make yourself. That one constraint is a great sieve. It strains out lazy, impulsive confessors.

Continuity cops

Todd Seavey wrote a very interesting commentary for Metaphilm on "fictional universes and the fans who rationalize them":

For you see, any story must have a certain amount of internal coherence if we are to achieve suspension of disbelief. And we must achieve suspension of disbelief. For most people, that just means that a given fictional universe must hold together for the space of two hours: if the main character in a conventional romantic comedy, possibly some movie for girls featuring Meg Ryan or someone like that, says at the beginning that she is an only child, she should not have a sister present at her wedding at the end of the movie. Stories like that—about boring, conventional people with their petty love affairs and their tawdry sex antics, people whom one could not trust when the chips were down and an Imperial Battle Droid were attacking your spaceship!—are relatively easy to keep consistent. It is only the grandeur and majesty of a fictional universe the size and complexity of one like the Star Wars universe, the Star Trek universe, the DC Comics universe, or the Marvel Comics universe (and perhaps soap operas) that is truly difficult to maintain.

Yet sometimes the editors and writers responsible for such series barely care about maintaining continuity, so busy are they with more mundane tasks such as writing entertaining dialogue and coming up with interesting new characters. That is why such universes desperately need the obsessive, crank-like fan, the fan willing to concoct rationalizations that make sense of the apparent continuity errors. Indeed, without such fans, I question whether the continuity of these universes could be maintained at all. The fate of entire fictional worlds, the very cohesion of the space-time continuum, hinges on the selfless efforts of fans like myself to keep track of what the hell is going on and explain the slip-ups by the so-called “professionals”!

(Via Boing Boing.)

The new ageism

In her latest "Popping Off" column, pop culture writer D. Parvaz tackles the trendy notion that 40 is the new 30:

The thing that gets me about this is that we make it seem as if we're finally recognizing that women over 40 can be cool and attractive and trendy.

Sadly, this celebration of "older" women is nothing but a crock and a sham. Before you start cheering for what Teri Hatcher has done for fortysomething women, realize that all that's being said here is that women who are over 40 but can still look like they're 30 are cool. The rest need to get some Botox and get with the program.

How's that for a kick in the pants?

So let's just say it like it is: They can parade all these over-40 celebrities as examples of how cool it is to be 40, but, ultimately, it's only the ones who look a certain way really will be celebrated.

Camera phone backlash

Will every cell phone come with a built-in camera before every place bans them? The race is on, reports the San Francisco Chronicle:

In recent years, camera phones have been banned in a number of places. Gyms have banned their use in locker rooms, hoping to prevent unsavory members from taking photos of their nude colleagues. Courts have banned them to keep the public from documenting private proceedings. And, as Apple did last month, corporations have banned them at events for a variety of privacy reasons.

Fear of the tiny, inconspicuous device that can quickly take a photo and send it around the globe also has expanded to schools, swimming pools, concerts and military sites.

With sales of camera phones soaring, these restrictions could become a bigger problem.

The end of 'My'

As Todd Bishop reports, Microsoft has banished "My" from the default names of objects on the Windows desktop -- e.g., "My Computer" -- effective with the next major version of its operating system.

As I've noted to Todd, mostly in jest, this may well be the most trivial story he's reported that will directly affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world.

I suspect that says some scary things about Microsoft's monopoly.

No more jokes?

The joke is dead. Seriously:

It's a matter of faith among professional comics that jokes - the kind that involve a narrative setup, some ridiculous details and a punch line - have been displaced by observational humor and one-liners. Lisa Lampanelli, who describes herself as the world's only female insult comic, said that in the business, straight jokes were considered "the kiss of death."

"You don't tell joke jokes onstage ever," she said. "Because then you're a big hack."

But out in the real world, the joke hung on for a while, lurking in backwaters of male camaraderie like bachelor parties and trading floors and in monthly installments of Playboy's "Party Jokes" page. Then jokes practically vanished. To tell a joke at the office or a party these days is to pronounce oneself a cornball, an attention hog, and of course to risk offending someone, a high social crime. "I can't remember the last time I was sitting around and heard someone tell a good joke," Ms. Lampanelli said.

While many in the world of humor and comedy agree that the joke is dead, there is little consensus on who or what killed it or exactly when it croaked. Theories abound: the atomic bomb, A.D.D., the Internet, even the feminization of American culture, have all been cited as possible causes. In the academic world scholars have been engaged in a lengthy postmortem of the joke for some time, but still no grand unifying theory has emerged.

Greatest TV themes

retroCRUSH has compiled a list of the 100 greatest TV theme songs based on "over 2 years of reader feedback, and expert research."

The descriptions are filled with interesting trivia, random bits of analysis and lots of links to fan Web sites whose existence you probably never suspected.

Scrolling through the list -- which is broken up into four pages listing 25 songs each -- I can't see anything that's obviously missing. However, I do think it's a bit of a cheat to award a second-place tie to both "The Brady Bunch" and "Gilligan's Island."

Working on the world clock

P-I business reporter Malini Goyal looks at how, in today's networked global economy, your workday could be keyed to a very different time zone from the one in which you nominally live.

Reality of 'The Apprentice'

If you're a critic of Donald Trump's "The Apprentice," you should check out Maureen Moriarty's interview today with recent-season reject Alex Thomason.

I always loved the former King County prosecutor's jaw-droppingly candid assessments of the goings-on and his fellow contestants. He doesn't disappoint as he tells Maureen what he thinks about the show's so-called "reality," why he thinks the Donald is a bad boss and who he thinks deserved to win.

He'll confirm a lot that you've always suspected.

A phishy mess

Robert X. Cringely examines just why phishing scams are so hard to shut down. One of the more attention-getting reasons that he cites:

... a large group of phishing victims -- banks and credit card companies -- don't want to publicize their losses, which might lead to a loss of business as customers start to worry about being victimized. But it goes even further, because the financial institutions are only on the hook for reported thefts. So by not making a big deal of it, maybe you won't notice that extra $30 charge and won't demand that your credit card company cover the loss. Being upfront about phishing could easily double corporate losses because of it by forcing these outfits to actually assume the risk that they say they'll assume.

So nobody talks about it, and the costs of phishing are generally hidden in the average eight percent that credit card companies figure they'll lose through theft, bankruptcies, etc. In a business with interest charges often going above 20 percent, phishing is tolerable.

He also looks at some possible solutions, including PayPal co-founder Max Levchin's idea of offering bounties to people who help spot new scams and track down the culprits.

Housing boom to bust

There's always a dark cloud around the silver lining, it seems. As The Washington Post reports, the nationwide push toward homeownership is now sparking a nationwide rise in foreclosures:

For some American homeowners, the greatest housing boom in U.S. history has delivered riches. They repeatedly tap their homes for equity and use the cash to purchase granite countertops, a BMW, even a trip to the Super Bowl. But there's a dark side -- a sharp rise in foreclosures that is destroying the single greatest generator of personal wealth for most Americans. Foreclosure rates rose in 47 states in March, according to Foreclosure.com, an online foreclosure listing service. ...

State and federal regulators place much of the blame for the foreclosure problem at the feet of mortgage brokers and bankers, who have crafted ever-riskier ways for Americans with poor credit to buy homes. Interest-only and adjustable-rate mortgages account for 63 percent of new mortgages.

But many policymakers say the rise in foreclosures leads to a larger question: Is the push to boost homeownership — successive presidential administrations have strongly promoted it — backfiring? As home prices and personal debt rise to record levels, they note, homeownership has become an albatross for millions of Americans, destroying rather than creating wealth.

Unknown but not forgotten

For Memorial Day today, P-I military affairs reporter Mike Barber recounts the story of Seattle's own unknown sailor, a victim of an Army freighter shipwreck in 1947.

Legacy data

Speaking of endings, have you thought about who will inherit your digital data? John Boudreau of the San Jose Mercury News examines a growing issue of today's world:

When we die, we leave many things behind. These days, that includes a digital life.

There are private online journals, e-mail missives to long-ago loves and important financial documents -- not to mention records of instant-message chats and Web surfing habits.

``People need to be aware of the fact they are leaving a digital trail,'' said Roy Litherland, a San Jose attorney who specializes in estate planning and living trusts. Indeed, new software programs like Google Desktop Search literally record every move people make online or on their computers.

Who is entitled to that material when you die is a question now being grappled with in the legal world, by Internet service providers as well as by family members. There are no laws that specifically address digital property.

But in the digital era, people must think about their online assets.

Personalized to the end

Surely, you didn't think that the tombstone industry was immune from high technology and the push for personalized everything? As reporter M.L. Lyke writes:

Diamonds and lasers, computers and sandblasters.

The ancient business of honoring the dead in stone has transformed. And so have its customers. Increasingly, in the face of the Great Equalizer, they're looking for personalization, even the smallest detail, something to help them celebrate a life when death lies six feet under.

How personal do grave markers get? David Quiring, president of Seattle's Quiring Monuments, gives one example of a deceased teen whose family wanted his tombstone to duplicate a snapshot in which the boy gave a three-fingered salute, displaying his youthful defiance to onlookers for all eternity.

An amusing sidebar cites further examples of, if you'll pardon the expression, grave humor.

Crackdown on errant carts

Local cities are cracking down on runaway shopping carts that end up abandoned far from their stores, the P-I's John Iwasaki reports.

Turns out it's a bigger problem than you might have imagined:

The city estimates that 800 to 1,000 carts per year are pushed home full of groceries and merchandise, then abandoned, sometimes miles away at bus stops, outside apartments, on sidewalks and in ditches. Some end up in new roles, bearing the possessions of the homeless.

Shopping cart theft is a misdemeanor in Washington. But it's illegal only if the cart has a sign that identifies the retailer, warns that removal of the cart from the premises is unlawful and lists contact information to return the cart, among other provisions.

"At an average cost of $250, that's a quarter of a million dollars of shopping carts," said Ron Harris-White, special projects manager for Seattle Public Utilities, the agency responsible for removing hazards from city streets. Harris-White heads up the city's Shopping Cart Reclamation Action Project, or SCRAP. ("Shopping" was added to the original name to avoid an unpleasant acronym.)

And Seattle's figures might be low, if other cities' estimates are any gauge. Renton picked up more than 300 carts in a seven-week period last summer. A single apartment complex in Bellevue once held about 150 carts.

No more free parking

One of the nicer amenities about shopping downtown will go away next Wednesday when the Pike Place Market stops offering free one-hour parking.

Unplugging the free Wi-Fi

Free Wi-Fi has become more or less a standard amenity for independent coffeehouses around Seattle. It's good for business.

Usually.

As Glenn Fleishman reports at Wi-Fi Networking News, free Wi-Fi can cause quite a bit of grief if it becomes too popular. Victrola Coffee & Art on Seattle's Capitol Hill, a neighborhood cafes I frequent, now unplugs its free Wi-Fi on weekends. Why? Its tables had become a sea of laptops, and too many people were spending too many hours sitting there tapping away:

It initially brought in more people, [co-owner Jen Strongin] said, but over the past year "we noticed a significant change in the environment of the cafe." Before Wi-Fi, "People talked to each other, strangers met each other," she said. Solitary activities might involve reading and writing, but it was part of the milieu. "Those people co-existed with people having conversations," said Strongin.

But "over the past year it seems that nobody talks to each other any more," she said. On the weekends, 80 to 90 percent of tables and chairs are taken up by people using computers. ...

Worse than just the sheer number of laptop users, Strongin noted, is that many of these patrons will camp six to eight hours--and not buy anything. This seemed astounding to me, but she said that it was typical, not unusual.

The story has definitely struck a nerve: readers are posting voluminous -- and very interesting -- comments both on Glenn's site and on a related Slashdot thread. Emerging themes suggest that the "corrosion" of cafe culture they've seen at Victrola is pretty widespread, and that wide-open free Wi-Fi may become a thing of the past.

Update: Victrola's chief roaster and Net guru gives the employees' perspective about all this on his own blog ("free wi-fi is electronic cocaine").

Counting blogs

How many blogs are there? Carl Bialik, WSJ.com's Numbers Guy, looks at why that deceptively simple question is so tough to answer, and why it's important to have an answer anyway:

The numbers of the blogosphere range widely. Are there 10 million blogs, or 32 million? Do a quarter of online Americans really read blogs, as one oft-cited survey found? And why do rankings of the most popular blogs vary so much?

Adding to the confusion: disagreement over exactly what a blog is. In our young era of blogging, there's still no consensus. "Blog" derives from "Web log," and everyone agrees that a blog should be regularly updated, with new entries in reverse chronological order -- and that the entries can be about anything. But millions of people establish blogging accounts with free software providers like Google Inc.'s Blogger, Microsoft Corp.'s MSN or Six Apart Ltd.'s LiveJournal -- it takes mere minutes -- and then never post to their blogs. Others password-protect their blogs and use them to share photos and data with a small group of family members, friends or colleagues. Whether or not you count all those represents a big chunk of the swing from 10 million (cited recently in the New York Times and USA Today) to 31.6 million blogs (Ottawa Citizen and the Ann Arbor News). Both are world-wide estimates. ...

Tech, the great enabler

In Stop Them Before They Invent Again! Newsweek's Gersh Kuntzman rails against "new technologically advanced gadgets may be innovating us into helplessness."

The state of podcasting

Eight weeks into SeattlePI.com's first experiments with podcasting, I can say this much: It's still a little too complicated -- both for the audience and the podcaster.

Let's start with the audience. Despite the explosive growth in podcasting, growing use of RSS feeds and booming iPod sales, we've found that knitting all three together can confound even those who consider themselves technically savvy, let alone "average" Net users.

BusinessWeek sums up the situation quite nicely in its special report on podcasting:

It's the paradox of podcasting. The new technology, designed to let average Joes and Janes create and distribute homemade radio programs over the Internet, is too difficult for the average person to use. Despite hundreds of "how-to" files floating around the Web, even listening to podcasts is still a several-step process, requiring links to special "podcatching" software, checking the feeds, and then listening to the files with a separate MP3 player or on your computer.

Since food editor Hsiao-Ching Chou started her weekly On Food podcast, we've received numerous queries from people about how to listen to it and what the heck they're supposed to do with that XML file we keep pointing at. As a result, we've revised our instructions and explanatory language several times to try and make everything clearer.

We've always offered "listen now" links that let people download the MP3 files directly in their browsers without jumping through any extra hoops. Not surprisingly, about twice as many listeners get Hsiao-Ching's show via those links as download it via the RSS feed.

I'm hoping that things will get easier when Apple releases the next version of iTunes, which promises built-in support for subscribing to podcasts. It's due out within the next two months and will undoubtedly be critical in speeding up mainstream acceptance of podcasts. As Dan Gillmor put it, "The market is about to grow in a serious way."

Producing a podcast is still far from a one-click operation. It's really not that hard, however, if you have the right tools. Things do get a little more complicated if you're recording shows out "in the field" rather than at your computer. Even so, all you need is a decent recorder (we prefer Sony MiniDiscs for sound quality), multitrack editing software, an MP3 encoder and a way to generate the RSS feed. If your background is in communicating with words and still images, whether in ink or pixels, there's a definite learning curve involved, however.

We didn't have to buy any new gear or software to start podcasting, although it would probably cost at least $400 to $500 to reproduce what's in our toolbox. But you may not need a $200 microphone (although as far as we're concerned, it's worth the money).

If you're interested, here's the colophon for our podcasts:

Hsiao-Ching records her show on a Sony MiniDisc recorder using a Shure Beta 58A unidirectional microphone with a custom-made cable that connects its XLR output jack to the recorder's 3.5mm input. There's no easy way to retrieve the digital recordings from the Sony NetMD recorder we've been using so Hsiao-Ching plays them back through a Dell PC's line-in port and converts them to WAV files using High Criteria's Total Recorder Standard Edition. Hsiao-Ching just bought a Sony Hi-MD MZ-R910 that should allow digital recordings to be uploaded straight to the computer, eliminating that step.

I use Sony's Sound Forge Audio Studio software to edit, clean up and assemble the sound clips for the final program and to encode it in MP3 format.

The RSS feed is generated by custom-written software on our end. Initially, I hacked it together using a JavaScript-powered HTML form but we're switching to a database application running on Microsoft SQL Server.

Torture (n.)

What, exactly, is torture? Slate explains.

Ripped from his headlines

TV crime procedurals like NBC's "Law & Order" franchise routinely use plots that are "ripped from the headlines." Logically, more than a few working journalists have likely recognized that their stories and research formed the basis for an hour of dramatic television.

However, I don't think many write up "DVD-style" commentaries on the shows after they air. But Salon national correspondent Mark Benjamin wrote a very chilling, compelling "recap" of "Law & Order: SVU's" season finale, which he explains was based on reporting he once did on the psychological side-effects of an anti-malaria drug used by the U.S. military.

Top online ad spenders

Ever wonder who the top Internet advertisers are? You might be surprised by who's on the list, now being published as a monthly feature by ClickZ Stats.

(Via Lost Remote.)

Addicted to e-mail

E-mail addiction -- another sign of our times, News.com reports:

Be it on vacation, at the wheels or straight out of bed, an American e-mail user finds it difficult to resist its lure for long, according to a study released Thursday by America Online.

The survey revealed that, on average, people check their mail about five times a day, and a quarter of them cannot go without it for more than three days at a stretch. More than 4,000 people across 20 U.S. cities participated in the survey, carried out by AOL in partnership with Opinion Research.

As many as 77 percent of respondents to the survey said they have more than one e-mail account. For 41 percent, morning coffee can wait, but not e-mail; accessing e-mail is the first thing they do in the morning.

The write-up notes some other interesting trends in e-mail usage, including the fact that one-fourth of those surveyed share their addresses with family, friends or roommates.

Boost your brain

New Scientist assembled an interesting guide on 11 steps to a better brain. Well, I guess someone had to.

Passwords as 'open' secrets

Who says Microsoft is out of touch with reality where computer security is concerned? Witness this interesting ZDNet.com report:

Companies should not ban employees from writing down their passwords because such bans force people to use the same weak term on many systems, according to a Microsoft security guru.

Speaking on the opening day of a conference hosted by Australia's national Computer Emergency Response Team, or AusCERT, Microsoft's Jesper Johansson said that the security industry has been giving out the wrong advice to users by telling them not to write down their passwords. Johansson is senior program manager for security policy at Microsoft.

"How many have (a) password policy that says under penalty of death you shall not write down your password?" asked Johansson, to which the majority of attendees raised their hands in agreement. "I claim that is absolutely wrong. I claim that password policy should say you should write down your password. I have 68 different passwords. If I am not allowed to write any of them down, guess what I am going to do? I am going to use the same password on every one of them."

Guerilla artist dies

Guerilla performance artist Jason Sprinkle, who gained notoriety in Seattle during the 1990s, died May 16 after being hit by a freight train.

Sprinkle was part of the merry band that memorably tied a giant ball and chain around the ankle of Hammering Man in 1993, much to the public's amusement.

The public -- and the authorities -- wasn't amused, however, by his last big public splash: a stunt that inadvertently triggered a terrorist bomb scare in downtown Seattle three years later. (Registered SeattlePI.com users can read all about it in our archives.)

P-I art critic Regina Hackett recounts the highlights of his career and the difficult years afterward in an obituary today:

In the 1990s, Sprinkle was Seattle's most famous guerrilla performance artist, and some of that fame he didn't want. Although his first foray was almost universally celebrated, his last caused a public panic and landed him in jail on terrorism-related charges.

After he got out (charges reduced to a shadow of themselves and the sentence a year's probation plus the 30 days served), he was a changed man ...

Founding fathers

The Americas were originally colonized by "a band of just 70 hardy explorers and their families," according to a new genetic study, as reported on Nature.com:

This intrepid group is thought to have made the arduous journey across a long-lost land bridge between Siberia and Alaska about 14,000 years ago. The research suggests that this entire group might have numbered just 200 people, since experts generally expect populations to be about three times the size of the group that ultimately pass on their genes.

"The number of founders might be a surprise to some, although we knew that there was a bottleneck of some magnitude," says Jody Hey of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, who carried out the study. The fact that the most plausible way on to the American continent involved a trek through the frozen north probably meant that few attempted the journey.

That's not to say all Native Americans are descended from that original group. As Hey acknowledges, there are several possible scenarios that his study doesn't cover, including subsequent migrations from Asia, or continued contact and intermarriage between populations of the continents.

The case of the missing women

Why do men outnumber women by statistically significant margins in some parts of the world? It might have a lot to do with the lack of hepatitis B vaccinations, according to the research of one economist, as Freakonomics authors Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt recount in a fascinating article for slate.

Got goat milk?

Good news for the lactose-intolerant: LaLoo's Goat Milk Ice Cream is coming to Seattle. Hsiao-Ching Chou gets the interesting story behind this interesting product from LaLoo herself -- aka Laura Howard, a former film producer who left Hollywood to run a goat farm -- in this week's "On Food" podcast (XML feed here).

Death to zombies

In the age of spam and viruses, it's tempting to think that people who can't keep their computers safe from being hacked for malicious purposes shouldn't be allowed on the Internet.

Apparently, the Federal Trade Commission agrees. Reuters reports that the FTC is calling for ISPs to disconnect customers whose computers have been hijacked and turned into spam-spewing zombies.

Don't try this at home

Two British "Star Wars" fans were critically injured after apparently trying to stage a mock lightsaber duel using fluorescent light tubes filled with burning gasoline.

Living with lies

Scientific American Mind has a fascinating article on why we lie:

Deceit is fundamental to the human condition. ...

We lie by omission and through the subtleties of spin. We engage in myriad forms of nonverbal deception, too: we use makeup, hairpieces, cosmetic surgery, clothing and other forms of adornment to disguise our true appearance, and we apply artificial fragrances to misrepresent our body odors. We cry crocodile tears, fake orgasms and flash phony "have a nice day" smiles. Out-and-out verbal lies are just a small part of the vast tapestry of human deceit.

The obvious question raised by all of this accounting is: Why do we lie so readily? The answer: because it works. The Homo sapiens who are best able to lie have an edge over their counterparts in a relentless struggle for the reproductive success that drives the engine of evolution. As humans, we must fit into a close-knit social system to succeed, yet our primary aim is still to look out for ourselves above all others. Lying helps. And lying to ourselves--a talent built into our brains--helps us accept our fraudulent behavior.

Saving old media

From network TV to book publishers to, yes, newspapers, old media face major challenges to survive in the 21st century. The Wall Street Journal talked to a number of experts to get advice on how to adapt.

They come up with some interesting ideas -- like Webcasting TV soap operas for viewers who have broadband at work -- and a few memorable quotes, such as this one from Larry Ellin, an associate professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University:

People aren't going to the Internet because it looks like a newspaper. It's because they're getting something exotic and fresh and new and unfiltered. It's like eating French cheese. It hasn't been pasteurized. And it's good.

Holding data hostage

Here's an interesting -- and perhaps inevitable -- new cybercrime: a hacker encrypted files on a compromised computer and demanded that the owner pay a ransom in order to obtain the decryption key.

"Ransom-ware" isn't yet a widespread problem, according to security experts but has the potential to cause real headaches. Of course, it has a fundamental drawback, too: it involves financial transactions which can be easily traced.

Why Holmes endures

An interesting New York Times story from the other day looks into Sherlock Holmes' enduring appeal. Sample insights:

Holmes is a bohemian of sorts, but he is also a defender of the Victorian system. The stories all begin with a threat to the social order, to the rational scheme of things, and they all end with Holmes having restored that world to the kind of clockwork precision of which he is a symbol.

Who does the housework

Just as you may have suspected: men do more housework than women admit, according to a new study.

The science of sarcasm

No, not everybody grasps the nuances of sarcasm. Turns out that, in neurological terms, it's actually a very complicated operation, according to new research.

Top clicks, top picks

Local lifestyle issues, reality TV and stands on principle were the forces driving the most popular stories on SeattlePI.com during the week of May 16-22, 2005:

Top clicks (most read articles):

1. Banned pregnant graduate walks anyway
2. 'Star Wars' goes out with a bang
3. Nintendo unveils Revolution
4. Contrary to belief, local linguists say Northwest has distinctive dialect
5. Hard work, hard times: A home -- and a dream -- lost
6. Apprentice 101: Street-smart Tana apparently never learned people skills
7. Britney puts 'Chaotic' spin on reality TV
8. Garfield volunteers for military recruiting battle
9. Mariners Notebook: Catcher move is brewing
10. Sonics season ends in heartbreak

Top picks (most e-mailed articles):

1. Contrary to belief, local linguists say Northwest has distinctive dialect
2. Hard work, hard times: A home -- and a dream -- lost
3. Garfield volunteers for military recruiting battle
4. Banned pregnant graduate walks anyway
5. Britney puts 'Chaotic' spin on reality TV
6. Seattle launches test of free Wi-Fi service
7. Catholics, Anglicans reach accord on Mary
8. Millions in taxes owed by wealthy art collectors goes unpaid
9. $7 billion plan would preserve 1.3 million acres in 4 counties
10. Living Well: Don't be in the dark on sunscreens and skin cancer

Awards

I'd like to extend congratulations to my colleague Todd Bishop, whose Microsoft blog was named the best weblog on a specialized topic in the Society of Professional Journalists regional Excellence in Journalism awards this year (PDF).

And I'm pleased to note that SeattlePI.com was named best overall Web site affiliated with an offline media entity.

We also took first place for an online A&E or lifestyle feature adapted from another medium for A Time to Live, one of the most astonishing special reports I've worked on during my years at SeattlePI.com. Our 2004 election night coverage won first place for spot news (not adapted from another medium).

Our Photos of the Year 2004 package received second place for "creative use of the medium (adapted)."

Honorable mentions went to SeattleNoise for original A&E and lifestyle content; and to Inside Seattle's New Library for special report/enterprise (adapted).

The newspaper side of our operation also racked up quite a few awards in this year's competition, as this story details. Between the print and online categories, the P-I took home 39 awards, including 12 first prizes.

The judges also named Buzzworthy best general news and commentary weblog. I guess I must be doing something right. Thank you all for reading and for offering your comments and feedback.

'Star Wars' fantasy science

Sure, you can read a whole book about the plausibility of the science in "Star Wars" but if you don't have the time, Forbes.com interviewed some scientists for a quickie, slideshow version.

Art tax followup

Following up on yesterday's stories about uncollected taxes on high-priced works of art, the P-I reports today that state officials now say they're looking into the matter.

Bias in Google News

Is Google News ideologically biased? Yes, Eric Ulken concludes based on a study he did for his master's thesis -- but it's because the search engine indexes many non-traditional news sources that are ideologically biased.

Claims about carrots

No, the notion that eating carrots can boost your eyesight isn't an old wives' tale: it's government propaganda from World War II. The British military concocted the story to explain why its pilots were suddenly shooting down more German bombers, which was actually due to secret advancements in radar technology, according to Snopes.com.

How big's the Web?

11.5 billion -- that's about how many pages on the Web are visible to (i.e., indexable by) search engines, according to a new study.

(Via beSpacific.)

A very brief ad

Short attention span? You'll love this: the one-second TV commercial.

(Via Lost Remote.)

How we talk up here

Is there really such a thing as a Pacific Northwest regional dialect? Some local linguists say the answer is yes. Listen to the sample sound clips in Tom Paulson's story and decide for yourself.

Uncollected taxes

Wealthy art collectors owe the state millions of dollars in use taxes but the Department of Revenue is reluctant to crack down on them to collect it, P-I art critic Regina Hackett reports today.

Who needs content?

Looking for a quick laugh? Check out the Google Content Blocker site:

Google's mission is to organize the world's advertising for maximum exposure to Web users. Unfortunately, annoying Web content often overwhelms the page, causing many users to become distracted and overlook the ads.

That's where Google Content Blocker comes in. It effectively blocks all Web site content, leaving only the advertisements. ...

Great bit of satire.

The linked Content Blocker Help page is also a hoot, especially if you've ever written FAQs.

Data Brokering 101

How much information can a group of college students gather about you with a budget of $50? Quite a bit apparently, according to The New York Times.

'Chaotic's' reality reviewed

In case you missed the debut of Britney Spears' new reality show Tuesday night, our own D. Parvaz offers her inimitable assessment:

Missed the show? Let me summarize: It's horrible. Watching Britney act like a sweet little dingbat isn't as funny as it is painful.

But blaming the singer for being stupid is like crediting a puppy for being cute. And there's an equal amount of self-awareness going on in each case.

D. elaborates and, as usual, her acerbic commentary is priceless.

A DVD just for you

So, would you buy a DVD that was keyed to your fingerprint or other biometric identifier?

Didn't think so. Still, someone's working on the technology, according to Wired News.

VoIP 911 FAQ

News.com has posted a great FAQ on why supporting 911 calls is proving to be such a headache for the nascent VoIP industry. I was familiar with the basics, but still learned a lot about exactly what happens when you try to dial 911 from your Netphone.

A great riddle, this is

The Wall Street Journal tries to answer one of the most puzzling questions of our time:

Why do the Star Wars faithful continue to invest themselves in the franchise, even though many die-hards pretty thoroughly dislike what they have seen on screen since creator George Lucas brought the series out of mothballs in the late 1990s?

I mean, let's face it: Do you know anybody who actually thought "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace" was a good movie? And yet, it still took in $431 million at the domestic box office. (The all-time top 20 films, measured by domestic grosses, are mainly ones that most people consider to be pretty good.)

By the way, if you've seen the new film, we invite you to post your thoughts and/or review.

Smart shoes limit TV time

Couch potatoes, beware: Someone has invented shoes that limit your TV-viewing time based on how much exercise you're getting, New Scientist reports:

The shoes - dubbed Square Eyes - contain an electronic pressure sensor and a tiny computer chip to record how many steps the wearer has taken in a day. A wireless transmitter passes the information to a receiver connected to a television, and this decides how much evening viewing time the wearer deserves, based on the day's exertions.

The design was inspired by a desire to combat the rapidly ballooning waistlines among British teenagers, says Gillian Swan, who developed Square Eyes as a final year design project at Brunel University in London, UK. "We looked at current issues and childhood obesity really stood out," she told New Scientist. "And I wanted to tackle that with my design."

Once a child has used up their daily allowance gained through exercise, the television automatically switches off. And further time in front of the TV can only be earned through more steps.

Cyberscams du jour

The Wall Street Journal offers a good overview of two up-and-coming forms of cyberfraud: "evil twin" networks and pharming.

Unwired Seattle

Seattle has jumped on the municipal Wi-Fi bandwagon with a pilot project that unwires two neighborhood business districts -- Columbia City (PDF map) and "the Ave" in the University District (PDF map).

According to a press release from the mayor's office, within the next month free Internet will also be available in four downtown parks popular with office workers: Occidental, Freeway, Westlake and Victor Steinbrueck.

Update: For more background, here's the P-I's story on the rollout.

Remembering May 18, 1980

Where were you the morning that Mount St. Helens erupted 25 years ago today? What were you doing when you heard the news -- or witnessed it yourself?

We're inviting readers to post their memories and we're getting some very interesting, very detailed stories. Please take a look -- and add your own.

Terror in the news

In answering the question, Should Terrorism be Reported in the News? Bruce Schneier makes some excellent points about the complex interplay between press freedom and the politics of terror:

Consider this thought experiment. If the press did not report the 9/11 attacks, if most people in the U.S. didn't know about them, then the attacks wouldn't have been such a defining moment in our national politics. If we lived 100 years ago, and people only read newspaper articles and saw still photographs of the attacks, then people wouldn't have had such an emotional reaction. If we lived 200 years ago and all we had to go on was the written word and oral accounts, the emotional reaction would be even less. Modern news coverage amplifies the terrorists' actions by endlessly replaying them, with real video and sound, burning them into the psyche of every viewer.

Just as the media's attention to 9/11 scared people into accepting government overreactions like the PATRIOT Act, the media's attention to the suicide bombings in Iraq are convincing people that Iraq is more dangerous than it is.

Schneier, however, believes the answer to the question is an emphatic "yes" because "hiding pieces of reality from the public" allows the government to get away with secrecy and dishonesty. However, he acknowledges the (in his view, lesser) danger of alarming the public.

Perhaps his best bit of advice:

One of the things I routinely tell people is that if it's in the news, don't worry about it. By definition, "news" means that it hardly ever happens. If a risk is in the news, then it's probably not worth worrying about. When something is no longer reported -- automobile deaths, domestic violence -- when it's so common that it's not news, then you should start worrying.

(Via Rebecca Blood.)

High cost of living

How's this for a disturbing factoid: In Seattle, if you're earning the minimum wage, you have to work 90 hours a week to afford to rent an average two-bedroom unit, let alone buy one.

That's one of many unsettling truths about the high cost of living in the Emerald City explored in a package of stories by P-I reporter Carol Smith. This is a city where the American Dream remains out of reach for many, and where it can easily slip away even from those who once had it firmly in hand.

Remote petting

I'm going to include a rather extensive excerpt from this Wired News story about a system that enables remote "tele-petting" of chickens because so much would be lost otherwise:

You walk into your office, where a hollow, chicken-shaped doll sits on a mechanical positioning table close to your computer.

The doll whirs to life as soon as you switch on the system, duplicating the motion of a real chicken in the backyard whose movements are being captured by a webcam.

Fondling the doll translates into touching the real fowl.

Touch sensors attached to the doll convey tactile information to a nearby PC through radio signals. The data is sent over the internet to a remote computer near the chicken; the remote computer triggers tiny vibration motors in a lightweight haptic jacket worn by the fowl.

The chicken feels your touch in the exact same place where the replica was stroked.

"This is the first human-poultry interaction system ever developed," said [National University of Singapore] professor Adrian David Cheok, the leader of the team, who has been developing the technology for nearly two years.

"We understand the perceived eccentricity of developing a system for humans to interact with poultry remotely, but this work has a much wider significance," he added.

Promoting the welfare of un-caressed chickens is not the only goal here.

Remote haptic interaction could allow people who are allergic to dogs and cats to caress their pets remotely. Used in zoos, it may allow visitors to pat a lion or scratch a bear. A security officer could remotely and silently signal a dog wearing a haptic suit, giving the animal instructions by simply touching it, which could be useful in rescue work or homeland security applications. ...

Don't worry, there's a lot more great stuff left if you click through to read the full story.

(Incidentally, if you're not familiar with the term, haptic means "relating to the sense of touch." Haptics is the science of applying touch-based interactions to computing.)

About class

The New York Times begins a new series with a marvelous examination of the enduring class system in America, and how the reality of social mobility is far from the popular myth:

Today, the country has gone a long way toward an appearance of classlessness. Americans of all sorts are awash in luxuries that would have dazzled their grandparents. Social diversity has erased many of the old markers. It has become harder to read people's status in the clothes they wear, the cars they drive, the votes they cast, the god they worship, the color of their skin. The contours of class have blurred; some say they have disappeared.

But class is still a powerful force in American life. Over the past three decades, it has come to play a greater, not lesser, role in important ways. At a time when education matters more than ever, success in school remains linked tightly to class. At a time when the country is increasingly integrated racially, the rich are isolating themselves more and more. At a time of extraordinary advances in medicine, class differences in health and lifespan are wide and appear to be widening.

And new research on mobility, the movement of families up and down the economic ladder, shows there is far less of it than economists once thought and less than most people believe. In fact, mobility, which once buoyed the working lives of Americans as it rose in the decades after World War II, has lately flattened out or possibly even declined, many researchers say. ...

One of the "sidebar" features is an interactive tool that can identify where you fall in society's pecking order based on occupation, income, education and net worth.

Top clicks, top picks

As usual, here are the most popular stories on SeattlePI.com for the past week, May 8-15, 2005:

Top clicks (most read articles):

1. Pregnant woman 'Tasered' by police is convicted
2. U.S. pays for care of illegal aliens
3. It's not a Dumpster -- it's a lifeline
4. Woman awarded $45,000 in cat death
5. Military base closures may be less than feared, but they'll sting
6. Seahawks Notebook: This time Ruskell runs into Bucs wall
7. Xbox 360: Hard core, but aiming for more
8. The boom is coming back at Boeing
9. Getting There: Tailgater pushes driver to seek solution to scary practice
10. Sonics endure lopsided beating, losses of Allen and Radmanovic
11. Manhunt ends in 70-year-old suspect's suicide

Top picks (most e-mailed articles):

1. U.S. pays for care of illegal aliens
2. Pregnant woman 'Tasered' by police is convicted
3. Woman awarded $45,000 in cat death
4. Detained Kenyan insists she had abortion
5. Whole Foods expanding to Interbay
6. In The Northwest: In B.C., ruling party's 'gold' looks a lot like poop
7. The boom is coming back at Boeing
8. Go 2 Guy: 'The big ugly secret' of WSU's stadium
9. It's not a Dumpster -- it's a lifeline
10. 'Homeshoring' means that call center might be in someone's bedroom

As blogs mature

This weekend I came across a couple of items that suggest how the blog is maturing as a form of communication, for better or worse:

• Frank Catalano is ending his blog (I know, you've heard that before), explaining that he can no longer spare the time for such an "all-consuming hobby." He signs off by sharing several insights/tips about why blogs are hot, including this little cannonball:

  Blogs are rapidly becoming MSM. There. I've said it. Those blogs whose creators have audiences larger than newsletters, specialty magazines and even small-market radio and TV stations are no longer underdog players. They are mainstream media outlets, in a medium -- the Web -- which itself has become mainstream.

• After a week of guest-blogging at DanielDrezner.com, historian David Greenberg concludes that "blogging is no longer for amateurs or the faint of heart. Blogging - if it's done well - has evolved into an all-consuming art":

  The best bloggers develop hobbyhorses, shticks and catchphrases that they put into wider circulation. Creating your own idiosyncratic set of villains to skewer and theories to promote - while keeping readers interested - requires as much talent as sculpting a magazine feature or a taut op-ed piece.

Self-heating cans

Self-heating canned lattes? Sure, why not?

As the New York Times notes, "In a mobile society with a technology fascination and a taste for culinary innovation, food that cooks itself might just be the next big thing."

More on podcasting papers

The Wall Street Journal reports on all the print publishers who've been jumping on the podcasting bandwagon. Our own Hsiao-Ching Chou, whose "On Food" show is available online midweek, is among those interviewed.

Re-editing history

There's an interesting AP story today about Spam Arrest's efforts to get Web sites to delete references to it's having sent out spam in the past -- a practice the Mercer Island company insists has long since stopped.

It's hardly the first company to try, as one critic put it, "retroactively editing reality."

Here at SeattlePI.com, we have received requests from other businesses asking us to remove outdated -- and, yes, arguably negative -- stories about them from our site. Here's our standard reply, in the words of our general manager, Lee Rozen:

If you have a specific error in the story that you would like corrected, please let us know. As you know, we have tens of thousands of stories available on our site that could be classified as outdated and irrelevant today, but that nonetheless constitute snapshots of how events unfolded in the Seattle area in the past few years.

As a general rule, we don't delete such stories.

(No, we haven't heard from Spam Arrest. But then, the only old story we still have online about it is hardly negative.)

REAL ID pitfalls

The controversial REAL ID Act, which sets new, nationwide standards for driver's licenses, is a done deal ... maybe. As the Associated Press and UPI report, the states are balking at the new requirements and may even challenge the law in court.

Here are some of the more interesting analyses I've seen on the law's impact and pitfalls:

News.com's Declan McCullough wrote a practical FAQ that explains just how the law will affect people: "Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service."

Meanwhile, security expert Bruce Schneier lists the many reasons why the REAL ID Act is a bad idea, starting with the observation that it creates a de facto n