Terrific site that collects found photos (via Boingboing)

[Tags: photos found_photos ]

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I haven’t seen any of the Olympics because, well, I guess I don’t care enough. But I was taken by the version of this photo that ran in the Boston Globe today:

Do we really look this blood thirsty, or was this just some good-natured exuberance? Is it typical of American victory yells? Is it typical of other countries? Is it as scary as it looks?

[Tags: olympics phelps sportsmanship victory spahtaaaaaah ]

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On Thursday, we saw Shakespeare & Company’s Othello, in Lenox, Ma. We go frequently to see that company’s productions, but this one was special. In fact, I didn’t want it to have an intermission. The play is too relentless. You know where it’s going (especially if, ahem, you re-read it the day before) and you just want it to get there, to be over, to let you go. It is a play with no distractions and no subplots. (This production wisely dropped the Clown who has a couple of scenes of witty-but-now-incomprehensible Elizabethan badinage.) The plot ticks, but its engine is Othello’s prodigious will. As soon as Iago suggests that Othello shouldn’t suspect Desdemona without proof, you know that “proof” will be forthcoming, and Othello will be unstoppable. Only an intermission stands in his way.

The first half of the play is Iago’s. Iago knows everyone better than they know themselves. Including the audience. Iago is the one who addresses us directly. We may not be on his side, but we are in his world. The second half is Othello’s. But at the end, the play belongs to the women. Desdemona sees clearly. And her maiden (Iago’s wife), Emilia, is a fierce teller of truths and the bravest person on the stage. For all the talk of heroism and military feats, the only truly heroic act Shakespeare shows us is Emilia’s.

I thought the acting surpassed Shakespeare & Co.’s usual high standard. Michael Hammond was a believable Iago. He took Iago’s hatred as a given. Hammond instead convinced us that his power was based on his ability to see into those he used. John Douglas Thompson’s Othello I found harder to appreciate because of the extremes to which his character is pushed: He’s a hard-won general and a charming teller of tales who rapidly is reduced to writhing on the floor. But the depth of his feeling for the woman he kills was apparent. Merritt Janson was a perfect Desdemona. Kristin Wold was a fearsome, riveting Emilia. LeRoy McClain added immeasurably to the play by giving us a sympathetic, rounded Cassio. This was a hell of a production.

And, boy, could that Shakespeare guy write!

Michael Hammond blogs about Iago, painting him as the consummate actor. He adds:

I am also inclined to suspect that by presenting a character so ingenious in his ability to inspire and manipulate others, Shakespeare was offering those who mistrusted or even hated the theatre their worst nightmare.

Given Iago’s understanding of how the world looks to each character, perhaps he’s also the consummate playwright.

Here’s the NY Times’ review. He liked JThompson’s performance a bit more than I did — although he makes a good case and is probably right — and he failed to glow enough over Hammond’s Iago. And here’s the WSJ’s review. [Tags: shakespeare othello ]

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Especially given how much I love Elizabeth Edwards, I was very unhappy to hear that John Edwards is an adulterer. And that perforce makes him a liar, a vow-breaker, and, well, the rest depends on details and psychologies I don’t even want to know about. So, when he and Elizabeth decided to continue the campaign despite the resurgence of her illness, I simply don’t know if they were reconciled and mutually aware, or whether he was cynically and quite horribly using her.

I had been hoping that Edwards would still be able to serve his cause and country. If this were a “simple” adultery, then I’d say it shouldn’t keep us from benefiting from his potential public service, and I’d say the same if it were either Bush, either Clinton or the one and only George Washington. But, there’s the potential that this was a far more treacherous betrayal. (Disclosure: I was a volunteer adviser to the Edwards campaign on Net policy.) [Tags: politics john_edwards ]

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NBC tried to keep us Americans from seeing the Olympics in real time. So, how’s that working out for NBC? From the NYT:

NBC, which owns the exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympics in the United States, spent most of Friday trying to keep it that way.

NBC’s decision to delay broadcasting the opening ceremonies by 12 hours sent people across the country to their computers to poke holes in NBC’s technological wall — by finding newsfeeds on foreign broadcasters’ Web sites and by watching clips of the ceremonies on YouTube and other sites.

In response, NBC sent frantic requests to Web sites, asking them to take down the illicit clips and restrict authorized video to host countries. As the four-hour ceremony progressed, a game of digital whack-a-mole took place. Network executives tried to regulate leaks on the Web and shut down unauthorized video, while viewers deftly traded new links on blogs and on the Twitter site, redirecting one another to coverage from, say, Germany, or a site with a grainy Spanish-language video stream.

Temporal slapstick. It brings me odd joy. (Thanks to Jonathan Distler for the link.)

[Tags: olympics fort_business cluetrain ]

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Slow motion lightning

This explanation comes from Lenski the comments section of the Huffington Post where I found the video:

The search for a path proceeds through the treelike process that shows early in the video, finding the thin trails that are of somewhat lower resistance than clear air. Basically, a slightly higher density dust particles or raindrops allows enough current to flow to keep looking for more path. These tendrils of ionization last a little while, long enough to present a temptingly lower resistance for the main strike. It’s a race to see which one completes the circuit first.

Once a path between the sky and ground has been found, that’s when the action really kicks in: A surge of current flows through the slightly lower resistance pathway, blasting the outer electrons from the atoms of atmosphere in its path forming a plasma arc. The dramatically lower resistance causes it to continue passing the surge current. The electrons stripped from the atoms of the atmosphere are “free electrons” that carry the current until the lightning strike dissipates the electrical charge that started the whole process in the first place.

Here’s something that was only discovered recently: Lightning strikes are such high energy events that they produce x-rays! (It makes sense, once we think about it… The process of stripping electrons away from the atoms of the atmosphere and subsequent recovery of the electron shells as the event ends would produce electromagnetic radiation, at energy levels all the way into x-rays.)

[Tags: lightning ]

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The Media Research Hub has announced the availability of small-ish grants for advocacy groups working on media reform:

Small grants of up to $7,500 are available for research that supports public-interest efforts to change the media / telecommunications infrastructure, practices, policies or content. The grants are intended for short-term, advocacy-centered research, completable and usable by advocacy partners within the next 4-12 months. Recent small grants recipients were announced November 16, 2007. To be considered for the next round of small grants, please submit your proposal online by September 8, 2008.

Applicant Criteria

Proposals must be:

* Submitted by a US-based nonprofit advocacy, organizing or community group working on media and/or telecommunications issues. Groups with nonprofit fiscal sponsorship are also eligible. (A limited number of international non-profit organizations will be solicited by invitation only.)

* Structured as a partnership with an academic researcher based at a university, college or other research institution. This can include advanced graduate students.

There are no citizenship requirements for participants in these projects.

If you win, don’t forget my finder’s fee! :)

[Tags: grants media ]

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I got this from FlyClear.com, a quick-pass, iris-scan lane system at some airports. I don’t recall ever applying for membership. For one thing, there’s no FlyClear lane at my local airport. So, this big hunka hunka of steamin’ disclosure is disquieting:

Dear David Weinberger,

We take the protection of your privacy extremely seriously at Clear. That’s why we announced on Tuesday that a laptop from our office at the San Francisco Airport containing a small part of some applicants’ pre-enrollment information (but not Social Security numbers or credit card information) recently went missing. None of your information was in any way implicated. However, we were prepared to send those applicants and members who were affected the appropriate notice on Tuesday detailing that situation.

Before we could send out that notice, the laptop was recovered. And, we have determined from a preliminary investigation that no one logged into the computer from the time it went missing in the office until the time it was found. Therefore, no unauthorized person has obtained any personal information.

Again, none of your personal information was on the computer in any form, but we nonetheless wanted to give you details of the incident that could have affected others applying for Clear memberships because the incident involves Clear’s privacy and security practices and policies.

We are sorry that this theft of a computer containing a limited amount of applicant information occurred, and we apologize for the concern that the publicity surrounding our public announcement might have caused. But in an abundance of caution, both we and the Transportation Security Administration treated this unaccounted-for laptop as a serious potential breach. We have learned from this incident, and we have suspended enrollment processes temporarily until all pre-enrollment information is encrypted for further protection. The personal information on the enrollment system was protected by two separate passwords, but Clear is in the process of completing a software fix – and other security enhancements – to encrypt the data, which is what we should have done all along, just the way we encrypt all of the other data submitted by applicants. Clear now expects that the fix will be in place within days. Meantime, all airport Clear lane operations continue as normal.

As you may know, our Privacy Policy states that we will notify you of any compromise of your personal information regardless of whether any state statute requires it. This letter is a good example of our policy: no law requires that we notify you of this incident because our investigation of the recovered laptop revealed no breach and because in any event none of your own information was affected. But we think it’s good practice to err on the side of good communication with all Clear members, especially when, in this case, we did make a mistake by not making sure that limited portion of information was encrypted.

Please call us toll-free with any questions at (866) 848-2415. Again, we apologize for the confusion.

Sincerely,
Steven Brill
Clear CEO

P.S. A reminder: One of Clears unique privacy features is that all members and applicants are given an identity theft protection warranty which provides that, in the unlikely event you become a victim of identity theft as a result of any unauthorized dissemination of your private information by – or theft from – Clear or its subcontractors, we will reimburse you for any otherwise unreimbursable monetary costs directly resulting from the identity theft. In addition, Clear will, at its own expense, offer you assistance in restoring the integrity of your financial or other accounts. So had there been any actual compromise of your personal information, you would have been additionally protected.

If this is intended to counteract the bad publicity the breech has engendered, well, Google News only has one hit reporting the breech in the first place. If it’s not – if FlyClear’s policy is to broadcast every near miss – then, well, I guess it’s admirable for its candor.

It’s also pretty scary example of putting all your irises in one basket. [Tags: flyclear security disclosure pr ]

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Jose Antonio Vargas at the Washington Post wonders how we could make the upcoming presidential debates interactive, given that the teaming with MySpace is disappointing.

If given a choice between having more YouTube snowmen asking questions or hearing McCain and Obama talk with one another for an hour with no moderator and no questions, I would completely go for the YouTubeless version.

But, since that’s not going to happen except in “West Wing” reruns, I think the best we can hope for is a two-parter that makes everything around the debates interactive.

In part one, we the people have an official forum by which we can raise and debate questions beforehand. Maybe the moderators will be moved to ask something that actually matters to us. (The Berkman Question Tool is great for people in an audience to use during a session. It’s been open-sourced. Maybe it could be beefed up for national or regional use. Or maybe, if the debates really had a representative audience, it could be used during the debate. Sigh. Just daydreaming.)

In part two, we the people carry on a simultaneous debate and discussion as the debate proceeds. And before it. And after it. This already happens, of course, albeit these days frequently through Twitter, which is not well designed for this. But we ought to be able to debate along with the debate. And we will, one way or another. [Tags: politics debates question_tool jose_antonio_vargas ]

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In two separate reports of the eleven deaths in the K2 disaster, I’ve seen a version of this sentence:

The reported toll from the avalanche was the highest from a single incident on K2 since at least 1995, when seven climbers perished after being caught in a fierce storm.

If eleven is still more than seven, then that sentence is incoherent. (It comes from an AP report by Stephen Graham.)

And, yes, I do understand that grammatical errors are less important than mountaineering deaths. And, yes, I do seem to having a crotchety day :(

[Tags: k2._grammar ]

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