Links for July 22nd from 08:52 to 15:24

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Sometime between 08:52 and 15:24, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know: "These are just ten ways that you can protect your privacy on Facebook. While there are a few other small things to keep in mind, these ten settings are most important. While you may not want to configure all of the privacy settings outlined, simply knowing how to do so is a great step in the right direction. By following the 10 settings listed above you are well on your way to an embarrassment free future on Facebook!"
  • CitySounds.fm – the Music of Cities: "CitySounds.fm lets you listen to the latest music from cities around the world. The most active cities and the list is constantly changing as new music is being created. Tracks and city information is fetched from the SoundCloud API – updated in real time as new tracks roll into SoundCloud. Additionally, images for each city are fetched from Flickr. Really nice! Go and explore!!"
  • 100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About: "There are some things in this world that will never be forgotten, this week's 40th anniversary of the moon landing for one. But Moore's Law and our ever-increasing quest for simpler, smaller, faster and better widgets and thingamabobs will always ensure that some of the technology we grew up with will not be passed down the line to the next generation of geeks."
  • The 10 Best Animated Movies for (Traumatizing) Kids: #9: The Incredibles: "Now, we're not for the dumbing down of American entertainment, but when your film' funniest moment is a montage of death scenes (where Edna demonstrates the danger of capes) you might want to reconsider marketing your film to children."
  • 88 Lines About 44 Women (Official Video): "In the 30 years since 88 LINES ABOUT 44 WOMEN was first recorded there has never been a video version authorized by THE NAILS. Of the dozens of videos on youtube that pay homage to the song, this is the only version created by a member of the band, me. So, here's the world premier of 88 LINES the video. Hope you enjoy it. I had fun making it." NSFW in, as Boing Boing put it, a "1950s National Geographic sort of way." (Or just go straight to the video on YouTube.)

Your Cellphone Can Kill

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I’ve had a guideline in my head for some time that I haven’t always followed as closely as I should. From here on out, I’m going to be making a much more determined effort to follow through.

If I can tell that you are talking to me on a cell phone while driving, I will hang up after asking you to call me back later.

I don’t care if you’re friend, family, job recruiter, Trent Reznor, or Barack Obama. Do not call me while driving. It’s stupid and dangerous to yourself and anyone around you.

There really shouldn’t need to be much explanation on this one, but just in case, here’s excerpts from two recent articles from the New York Times that essentially confirm what should be blatantly obvious to everyone.

Driven to Distraction: Drivers and Legislators Dismiss Cellphone Risks

Extensive research shows the dangers of distracted driving. Studies say that drivers using phones are four times as likely to cause a crash as other drivers, and the likelihood that they will crash is equal to that of someone with a .08 percent blood alcohol level, the point at which drivers are generally considered intoxicated. Research also shows that hands-free devices do not eliminate the risks, and may worsen them by suggesting that the behavior is safe.

Five states and the District of Columbia require drivers who talk on cellphones to use hands-free devices, but research shows that using headsets can be as dangerous as holding a phone because the conversation distracts drivers from focusing on the road. [Not to mention all the people in Washington who blatantly ignore the law and don’t even use hands-free headsets, because we wussed out and passed a watered-down, ineffectual law that is practically pointless. -mh]

[Simulation-based] research, showing that multitasking drivers are four times as likely to crash as people who are focused on driving, matches the findings of two studies, in Canada and in Australia, of drivers on actual roads.

The highway safety administration estimates that drivers using a hand-held device are at 1.3 times greater risk of a crash or near crash, and at three times the risk when dialing, compared with others who are simply driving.

Research also shows that drivers conversing with fellow passengers do not present the same danger, because adult riders help keep drivers alert and point out dangerous conditions and tend to talk less in heavy traffic or hazardous weather.

“There is zero doubt that one’s driving ability is impaired when one is trying to have a cellphone conversation — whether hands-free or hand-held, it doesn’t matter,” said David E. Meyer, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

In fact, some scientists argue that hands-free laws make driving riskier by effectively condoning the practice.

U.S. Withheld Data on Risks of Distracted Driving

[The] National Highway Traffic Safety Administration…decided not to make public hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers — in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress.

The former head of the highway safety agency said he was urged to withhold the research to avoid antagonizing members of Congress who had warned the agency to stick to its mission of gathering safety data but not to lobby states.

Critics say that rationale and the failure of the Transportation Department, which oversees the highway agency, to more vigorously pursue distracted driving has cost lives and allowed to blossom a culture of behind-the-wheel multitasking.

“We’re looking at a problem that could be as bad as drunk driving, and the government has covered it up,” said Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety.

Mr. Ditlow said that putting fears of the House panel ahead of public safety was an abdication of the agency’s responsibility.

“No public health and safety agency should allow its research to be suppressed for political reasons,” he said. Doing so “will cause deaths and injuries on the highways.”

Links for July 20th from 08:37 to 16:27

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Sometime between 08:37 and 16:27, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Palin’s Resignation: The Edited Version: "If you watched Sarah Palin's resignation speech, you know one thing: her high-priced speechwriters moved back to the Beltway long ago. Just how poorly constructed was the governor's holiday-weekend address? We asked V.F.'s red-pencil-wielding executive literary editor, Wayne Lawson, together with representatives from the research and copy departments, to whip it into publishable shape. Here is the colorful result."
  • Woodstock Concert’s Undercover Lovers, Nick and Bobbi Ercoline, 40 Years After Summer of Love: The blanket-wrapped couple seen on the cover of the original Woodstock soundtrack album is still together. "They discovered it while at a friend's house listening to the album and passing around the gatefold jacket. First, Nick recognized the famous yellow butterfly staff in the left corner. 'It belonged to this guy Herbie,' Nick says. 'We latched on to him that day because he was having a very bad experience. He was tripping pretty heavily and he had lost his friends. After I saw that staff I said, 'Hey that's our blanket.' Then I said, 'Hey, that's us.''"
  • Best Correction Ever?: July 17, 1969, The New York Times: "Further investigation and experimentation have confirmed the findings of Issac Newton in the 17th Century and it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error."
  • Let’s Do the Time Warp Again! Offsite Time Machine Backups: "There's a new kid on the block with a different approach to offsite backup — Time Warp. This US$25 Mac application (free during the beta period) takes your Time Machine backups, compresses and encrypts them with 256-bit AES encryption, and then uploads them to your personal Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) account. "
  • We All Shine on in New Proof of Bioluminescence: "Next time that someone says that you're glowing, check that they don't mean it literally. Researchers in Japan have finally managed to prove the existence of the human body's bioluminescence with these first-ever pictures of the body's natural shine."

Links for July 16th through July 18th

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Sometime between July 16th and July 18th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • ‘The Case of the Disappearing Orwell’ Is Not as the Blogosphere Would Have You Believe: "The idea that's spread through the Internet like wildfire is that this was an action at the behest of this publisher, who decided on a whim that they didn't want to publish it through Amazon any longer, and that Amazon caved and did what they asked. That's just not what happened, and it's rather unfair to Amazon for people to continue to spread the misinformation that says it is."
  • Seattle Gay News: Vogue Night at Neighbours Underground: "'A hidden gem on Capitol Hill.' That's the way a patron dressed in black describes Vogue Night, an '80s, new wave, goth, and industrial night of dance at Neighbours Underground. The party is authentic, fashionable, and very sexy"
  • Michael Jackson in 2000 in 1985: "What Ebony, in 1985, Thought Michael Jackson Would Look Like in 2000" Apparently, like Billy Dee Williams in Empire Strikes Back.
  • NASA Releases Preview Partially Restored Apollo 11 Video: "To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, NASA released partially restored video of a series of 15 memorable moments from the July 20 moonwalk. The source material for the restoration project is the best of the available broadcast-format video. Lowry Digital, Burbank, Calif., is significantly enhancing the video using the company's proprietary software technology and other restoration techniques. The video is part of a larger restoration project that will be completed in September and provide a newly restored high definition video of the entire Apollo 11 moonwalk. The completed restoration will provide the public with the highest quality video of this historic event."
  • Unidentified Biological "Goo," 15 Miles Long, Creeps Down Alaskan Coast: "A gigantic smear of gooey, black biological material is making its way through the Chukchi Sea between Wainwright and Barrow in Northern Alaska. Eyewitnesses say it's definitely a living entity, though unlike anything they've seen before. The blob was first spotted last week, floating in Arctic waters. Big chunks of it – some as much as '12 miles long,' according to the Anchorage Daily News, are drifting through the sea. A helicopter tracked the spread of the goop for 15 miles and saw no end to it."
  • Literary Mashups Meet Tentacles. Has All of Western Literature Been Leading Up to This?: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters: "As our story opens, the Dashwood sisters are evicted from their childhood home and sent to live on a mysterious island full of savage creatures and dark secrets. While sensible Elinor falls in love with Edward Ferrars, her romantic sister Marianne is courted by both the handsome Willoughby and the hideous man-monster Colonel Brandon. Can the Dashwood sisters triumph over meddlesome matriarchs and unscrupulous rogues to find true love? Or will they fall prey to the tentacles that are forever snapping at their heels?"

Amazon Kills Pocketpedia

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For a while now, I’ve been using Bookpedia to catalog Prairie’s and my book collections, and DVDPedia for our movie collection. One of the handiest things about the system was the ability to sync our libraries to my iPod through Pocketpedia and have them available at my fingertips whenever we were out and about. No more trying to remember whether or not we’d picked up a particular book from a particular author or series, just check the iPod. It was one of my most-used iPhone apps.

Unfortunately, that’s not an option anymore: Amazon recently changed their API Terms of Service, and included the following clause in section 4(e):

You will not, without our express prior written approval requested via this link , use any Product Advertising Content on or in connection with any site or application designed or intended for use with a mobile phone or other handheld device.

Since the update to the TOS, Amazon has been aggressively enforcing that clause. I saw the writing on the wall a couple weeks ago when Delicious had their iPhone app pulled, and now Pocketpedia has been killed as well.

This morning we received an email from Amazon requesting the immediate removal of Pocketpedia from the App Store since the program is in violation of their license agreement. (A clause we’re pretty sure didn’t exist when Pocketpedia launched with the App Store in June last year but TOSBack only tracks Kindle and MP3 music service terms of use.)

We’ve logged a request with Amazon that Pocketpedia be exempt from the mobile clause (this is stated as a possibility in the license agreement) but it seems others have tried this before and were shot down so we’re not holding our breath for a favourable response. Hopefully the future will bring a positive change in their policy and we can all go on competing in the App Store.

Pocketpedia Not Available

Unsurprisingly, I — and a number of other previously-happy customers — are none too thrilled with Amazon about this. I’m hoping that some workaround can be found, and that Pocketpedia can continue on (even if that means gutting it to remove all data ever retrieved from Amazon). All I can do now (aside from dropping Amazon a quick complaint e-mail, which I’ve already done) is wait and see what happens next.

Update: Hooray! As of today, Nov. 10th, 2009, Pocketpedia is back! You can download the new, Amazon-free version right here.

A Goodbye

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A few years ago, I posted one of my fondest memories from my days in the Alaska Children’s Choir. At the time of the performance mentioned there, the choir was under the direction of founder Renda Horn.

The founder and director for many of the years I was in the choir was Renda Horn, a wonderful, energetic woman with more life bottled up inside her than most other people I’ve ever known. She had a great love of both music and children, and was able to use these to corral a bunch of children into an internationally award winning children’s choir — and those of us in the choir were as fond of her as she was of us.

[…]

We sang a short selection of the pieces in our repertoire and, as had become standard, ended with “The Rhythm of Life”. We were all arranged on the steps in front of the altar, and as the song progressed, the clouds that had been obscuring the sky that morning parted, sending warm golden light through the windows of the church. The church building itself seemed to be acoustically perfect, taking our voices and wrapping them around us and the congregation and on up into the rafters and beyond. Renda’s smile grew wider as she watched “her kids” give the performance of a lifetime that day. Her eyes started to glisten, and soon started to overflow with tears of pure joy in the moment — and by the end of the song, most of the choir had joined her (and I’m not at all ashamed to admit that nearly twenty years later, I’m getting a bit misty eyed reliving the memory as I write this down).

We got a standing ovation that day — no small feat, given the stereotypical British reserve combined with our performing in the midst of a C of E service — and while the choir has received many standing ovations over the years, in my mind that has always been, and always will be, the standing ovation.

Some time after I posted that, Janet Stotts (who was co-director at the time, and later took over when Renda retired) saw the post and left some kind comments, and a little later, Renda did the same, which was a joy to see.

Just a few minutes ago, I received a note from Janet letting me know that Renda died on Monday in a small float plane crash in Canada. Her husband Steve, who was piloting the plane, survived.

Renda brought a lot of joy into this world, both through her many years of music and work with the choir and just by the simple virtue of being herself. My heartfelt condolences go out to her family, many friends, and the many, many kids and parents whose lives she touched. She’ll be missed.

Back To the ’80s!

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Chances are you’re either going to love me or hate me for posting this. Personally, I think this is great — my tolerance for cheezy pop is really high — but there will be no hard feelings if you blame me for wanting to brillo pad your brain clean after watching this. :)

Links for July 14th through July 15th

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Sometime between July 14th and July 15th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • Why America Is Flunking Science: "The experience of CERN is, more broadly, the experience of science in our culture today. It is simultaneously admired and yet viewed as dangerously powerful and slightly malevolent — an uneasiness that comes across repeatedly in Hollywood depictions. As science-fiction film director James Cameron has observed, the movies tend to depict scientists 'as idiosyncratic nerds or actively the villains.' That's not only unfair to scientists: It's unhealthy for the place of science in our culture…. To begin to counter this problem, though, we need to wake up to a new recognition: Fixing the problem of science education in our schools, although very important, is not the sole solution. We also have to do something about the cultural standing of science — heavily influenced by politics and mass media — and that's a very different matter."
  • Psychotic Letters From Men: Customer Disservice: "Every woman who's ever held any type of service or sales job knows about one of the major inherent hazards associated with their chosen profession. Namely, the unavoidable encounters with creepy fucking dudes." Oh, my lord. As if the posted stories aren't bad enough, there's all the stories in the comments. So, so, so many disturbing guys out there.
  • How to Scan a Cat and Other Subjects: "MetaFilter became that rarest of online creatures: a booming online community that's mostly intelligent, mostly civil, and mostly functional. It's not just a good read, and it's not just popular and lively, but it actually makes one feel slightly better about being human. It might be the best site on the Internet. The trick is trying to explain why it happened." Happy 10 year anniversary, MetaFilter!
  • Pinboard – Antisocial Bookmarking: Interesting looking Delicious competitor just getting started.
  • Spectacular Dream Yachts to Set Sail: "So often we're teased with amazing renderings of things that could be but never will because they lack a bridge between blue sky and real world. The latest virtual tease, a pair of futuristic yachts rapidly rising in virtual visibility, breaks that convention. Designer Kevin Schöpfer plans to set sail in three years." If I were a mad James Bond villian, I would totally have the Infinitas as my base of operations. That's a gorgeous yacht.

Links for July 10th through July 14th

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Sometime between July 10th and July 14th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • The 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads of All Time: "What do murder, pedophilia, suicide and a baby tiger have in common? They have all been used to sell stuff in these amazingly disturbing vintage ads! These are real, untouched advertisements from the good old days. It doesn't matter if it's lovely ladies or adorable clowns, somehow these old-time ad wizards found ways to traumatize us while pedaling everyday products."
  • Top 10 Myths about Mythbusters:: "There's a rumor going around that Jamie is a human being. This is plain wrong. The show admits this one itself. Several episodes refer to the fact that Jamie is a robot — I mean, how else can he keep his shirts so well-cleaned and his moustache so well-trimmed? But believe it or not, there are people out there who are convinced that Jamie is in fact a human — Homo sapiens, just like you and me. This one is surely busted."
  • Watchdog Group: Dozens of Active-Duty Troops Found on Neo-Nazi Site: "It is Facebook for the fascist set, and the typical online profiles of its members reveal expected tastes. Favorite book: 'Mein Kampf.' Favorite movie: the Nazi propaganda film 'Triumph of the Will.' Interests: 'white women.' Dislikes: 'anyone who opposes the master race.' But there's one other thing that dozens of members of newsaxon.org, a white supremacist social networking website, have in common: They proudly identify themselves as active-duty members of the U.S. armed forces."
  • The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin: A Round-Up: "After you have read these, ask yourself: what wouldn't Sarah Palin lie about if she felt she had to?"
  • DateLine: "DateLine is a small, simple app which displays a linear calendar on your desktop in a transparent window. It provides easy access to iCal by double clicking on a day. The background and text colors are customizable with support for transparency."