Links

Stuff I find around the web that interests or amuses me.

Blogging from Afghanistan

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Ben Hammersley, who’s generally a good read anyway, is currently working his way through Afghanistan. He’s been there for roughly a week now, and he’s been posting some really good stuff. Definitely worth adding to your list of reads. It’s a very, very different world from anything that I’m used to, that’s for sure. For instance…

Yesterday I moved from my hotel into the spare room of the house of the correspondent here for Radio France. Sebastian is trying to start a little side business by renting out rooms, drivers and LandCruiser he is about to buy, to visiting journos and documentary crews. His driver, Babrack, although probably not spelt that way, is an ex-Mujahadeen who credits Stallone’s performance in Rambo 3 for teaching him the correct technique for firing a rocket launcher and looking good at the same time.

Washington Post cribbing research from blogs?

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RonK at the Daily Kos points out today that it appears the Washington Post’s Dana Millbank is doing a lot of research by reading weblogs.

Of late, our Dear Leader seems to have become Fair Game in the Big Media. And WaPo’s Dana Milbank seems to have been reading the blogs.

What’s the earlier blog reference you can find for each of the observations in Milbank’s 2003-08-26 column?

I can date two of the referenced items in the article (and did in Kos’ comment thread):

Flag desecration: July 25^th^, 2003 — I mentioned it here, via John via Kos via Wyeth.

Compassion: Aug. 20^th^, 2003 — I mentioned it here, via Atrios and Len via Kos via ‘K.Y.’.

I don’t mind at all if Millbank is discovering news items worth commenting on through the blog network — I certainly do it all the time — though I do wish that the sources for the individual items were sourced and given credit. I do my best to do that with each post that I pick up from someone else, it seems only fair for a real journalist to do the same.

Disney goes Goth (also: 'Bus Life' fan comments)

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One of these days, this would be a blast to do:

For the fifth year in a row, Disneyland will be creeping with mobs of black-clad death-rocker types for what organizers officially bill as Bats Day in the Fun Park, but what most people just call Goth Day.

So why would a tribe of people largely typecast as gloomy, depressed, trench coat-wearing, Bauhaus-worshipping creatures of the night want to spend a day at the Happiest Place on Earth? The sheer irony of it all, for one thing. Plus the always welcome chance to make the eyes of non-Goths bug out: one year, Korda managed to get eight boats on the It’s a Small World ride and an entire Davy Crockett Explorer Canoe filled with Goths.

(via Wil)

Also: Thanks to the randomness of the ‘net and the first few comments that this post got, the comment thread has turned into a fun little conversation between the fans (and a few cast members, particularly Daniel Bickerdike and Ashley Jones) of a 2004 Disney (England) series of shorts called Bus Life. I found one episode of Bus Life on YouTube:

Time for that operation

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The Gender Genie is a potentially cute little application that examines a block of text, and uses an algorithm to attempt to determine the sex of the author. According to the authors of the algorithm, it’s supposed to be correct roughly 80% of the time.

To give it a test, I copied the text of my ‘Oh, go ahead and point, it’s okay‘ post, hit ‘submit’…

…and discovered that I’m female.

Hrm.

I never knew.

(via 601am, via Anil)

A little bit of magic

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Got a question that only an elf could answer? If you’re in Minneapolis, stop by and ask Mr. Little Guy.

Four-year-old Shira Rabkin wanted to ask just the right questions, so she thought long and hard.

“Dear Mr. Little Guy,” she finally scrawled in big letters across a sheet of paper. “Do you like mints?” After some more pondering, she added, “and going to Camp Snoopy? Love, Shira.”

Mr. Little Guy was nowhere in sight this early August evening, so Shira stuffed her letter behind his door at the base of a hollowed out ash tree. It’s always open, and always full – of letters, pens, flowers and coins.

The elusive elf has enchanted Twin Citians ever since the 6-inch wooden door appeared eight years ago, just off a walking path around popular Lake Harriet. Double takes led to messages, and messages to answers – and somehow Mr. Little Guy keeps up, responding to the queries in typed notes half the size of business cards.

(via Prairie)

'I like New York'

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A couple things I’ve noticed about the recent power failure on the East Coast. First off, CNN reports have stated that after the power went down, there were a grand total of four reported burglaries, and the perpetrators were caught in all four. That report has later been amended to say that while there have been 850 arrests in the past 24 hours, and 350 of them were for burglary and/or looting, that is actually a drop in crime from a normal summer night.

That’s cool.

Then I found this comment in the MeFi thread about the outage, and wanted to share it.

So when it happened I was in Rockaway Beach, Queens — which for those of you who don’t know NYC, is about the furthest away from midtown Manhattan you can be and still be in New York City. On a good day it’s still more than an hour’s subway ride from there to my home in Long Island City, Queens (across the East River from the U.N.). So I knew I’d have an adventure getting home without the subway. But some great things happened along the way:

  • At the time I was eating in a restaurant in Rockaway, and since I couldn’t pay for it with my credit card or go to an ATM, I used the last of my cash in my wallet — \$10 — to pay for my meal. When a waitress found out I had to get home with only my Metrocard (which works on buses as well as the subway) but no cash, she gave me \$10 of her own just in case I needed it, and her address so I could repay her “whenever.”

  • With my Metrocard I began taking any combination of random buses that would get me away from Rockaway, and ended up riding through various Brooklyn neighborhoods that I’d never seen from above ground. People were just hanging out on the sidewalks, having barbecues and playing cards, while the people driving cars became amazingly polite and turned every intersection with useless streetlights into a four-way stop. Never heard a damn horn, which is pretty amazing.

  • I ended up in South Williamsburg, on a street where I knew I could catch one final bus, the B61, back to my own neighborhood. But I stood there for more than an hour, and the few buses that passed were packed sardine-like and wouldn’t stop. Finally a guy in a big car slowed down and offered me and the six people I was standing with a ride to Greenpoint, which was much closer to where we needed to be. So we all piled in his car as he talked about the blackouts of ’77 and ’68. I gave him the \$10 bill the waitress had given me, and some of the other strangers gave me dollar bills.

  • From where he dropped us off, it was only about a 20-minute walk back to my place. By this point the sun had set and it was completely dark, but people had put candles on the sidewalks to help pedestrians navigate. One guy passed us carrying a torch.

  • As I approached home, I was pretty dehydrated from my three-hour journey; all the 24-hour delis and various places where one could get water were shut down. And I’d called my husband and learned that our building didn’t have running water, as the pump was electric. On my otherwise empty street, though, there was a Vitamin Water truck, with a guy behind the wheel who was starting it up. I asked if he was selling any Vitamin Water — I had \$4 in my pocket — and he said, no, he’d just been giving away promotional bottles, but he was out of the promo packs. When I mentioned that my building had no water, he looked alarmed and said, “Well, we might have a few bottles in back.” He fished out five for me and my neighbors, and refused to take any cash.

  • And I made it home. I like New York.

    Every so often, you run across something that makes you think that there might be hope for this world after all.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…

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That's a whale of a fart...

I guess blaming it on the dog just isn’t an option when you’re in the middle of the Antarctic ocean, huh?

It’s one of the unfortunate consequences of being a mammal – flatulence.

And, more unfortunately for a group of whale researchers, nature took its course right under their noses – literally.

The researchers claim this is the first photograph of a minke whale letting one go in the icy waters of Antarctica. It was taken from the bow of a research vessel.

“We got away from the bow of the ship very quickly … it does stink,” said Nick Gales, a research scientist from the Australian Antarctic Division.

Hey, even I can succumb to the occasional giggle at juvenile fart humor every so often.

(via Boing Boing)

Who turned out the lights?

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Okay — so who forgot to pay the electric bill? Just bizarre, to know that that much of the eastern seaboard lost power today. There doesn’t seem to be any real news to the news, but John Hoke has been keeping up with the news as best he can over at his Asylum.

I remember a time probably around 15 years or so when most of Alaska went dark. If I’m remembering it correctly, a raven had flown into some power lines, completeing the circut and bringing down one powerstation (along with killing itself in the process). When that station went down, the next in the series tried to cover for the loss, and couldn’t do it, so it went down. The next station then tried to cover for two downed stations…and it went down. And so on, and so forth, until Alaska was blacked out from the Kenai Peninsula up to about halfway to Fairbanks, I think. Took a good few days to get that mess straightened out.

Hopefully everything kicks back into service soon for all you New Yorkers, though. Good luck!