quackquack

A bizarre internet phenomenon in China, via the NYTimes:

The Chinese term for human-flesh search engine has been around since 2001, when it was used to describe a search that was human-powered rather than computer-driven. The kitten-killer case and subsequent hunts changed all that… the Chinese public’s primary understanding of the term is no longer so benign. The popular meaning is now not just a search by humans but also a search for humans, initially performed online but intended to cause real-world consequences.

Nice review of a new civil rights museum in Greensboro NC:

In the museum’s 30,000 square feet of exhibition space, the mundane luncheonette reminds us that a cataclysmic social transformation took place over the right to be ordinary. For that was what was at stake — not subtle and arcane matters of law or obscure practices that challenged eccentric codes of behavior, but the basic acts of daily life: eating, drinking, sleeping, working, playing.

Well, duh! Fought doctors on this one. It’s amazing how much of child birth medical knowledge is based on poorly conducted and outdated studies. From the Times:

Maternity wards have long forbidden women in labor to eat or drink. Even when labor goes on and on, the bill of fare is usually limited to ice chips. Now a systematic review of existing studies has found no evidence that the restrictions have any benefit for most healthy women and their babies.

From the NYTimes:

In the tumult that surrounded NBC’s late-night shake-up last week, one thing was certain: If even a small fraction of the additional younger viewers who flocked to Mr. O’Brien’s show last week had turned up regularly in his earlier ratings results, he would almost surely still be hosting “The Tonight Show.”

I think last week was the first time I’ve watched Conan in forever. What struck me was the sheer drudgery of watching innumerable car commercials from Your Quality Plus Ford Dealer and the boredom of half the show. Ben Stiller? Not funny. Barry Manilow? Oh come on. Robin Williams tore the place apart (of course) and the expensive comedic bits were funny as could be. But the whole premise of late night shows is b-rate actors you’ve never heard of reading scripted “jokes.” The reason I’ve mostly watched these things in ten-minute clips is because there’s only ten minutes of comedy in them. I’d much rather watch Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert’s bits and the interesting guests they often manage to get. I hope Conan’s next gig cuts the slavish Hollywood worship. Let doofus Leno interview the doofus starlets.

An interesting scenario from the NYTimes blog:

Mr. O’Brien argued last week “Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet, a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the ‘Tonight Show,’ I believe nothing could matter more.” I’m sure nothing could matter more on spreadsheets and in traditional advertising meetings. But with the 18- to 34-year-old crowd, who have shown undaunted support for Mr. O’Brien, a time slot is as relevant as which brand of frying pan your favorite restaurants use to cook your meal — maybe it makes a difference in the kitchen, but 99 percent of the patrons just want good food.

I’ve mostly ignored Brit Hume’s comment this week but this is an interesting take:

In practice, the admirable principle that nobody should be persecuted for their beliefs often blurs into the more illiberal idea that nobody should ever publicly criticize another religion. Or champion one’s own faith as an alternative. Or say anything whatsoever about religion, outside the privacy of church, synagogue or home.

If you treat your faith like a hothouse flower, too vulnerable to survive in the crass world of public disputation, then you ensure that nobody will take it seriously. The idea that religion is too mysterious, too complicated or too personal to be debated on cable television just ensures that it never gets debated at all.

This doesn’t mean that we need to welcome real bigotry into our public discourse. But what Hume said wasn’t bigoted: Indeed, his claim about the difference between Buddhism and Christianity was perfectly defensible. Christians believe in a personal God who forgives sins. Buddhists, as a rule, do not. And it’s at least plausible that Tiger Woods might welcome the possibility that there’s Someone out there capable of forgiving him, even if Elin Nordegren and his corporate sponsors never do.

Or maybe not. For many people — Woods perhaps included — the fact that Buddhism promotes an ethical life without recourse to Christian concepts like the Fall of Man, divine judgment and damnation is precisely what makes it so appealing. The knee-jerk outrage that greeted Hume’s remarks buried intelligent responses from Buddhists, who made arguments along these lines — explaining their faith, contrasting it with Christianity, and describing how a lost soul like Woods might use Buddhist concepts to climb from darkness into light.

Wow, what a story.

Mr. Yamaguchi, as a 29-year-old engineer for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, was on a business trip in Hiroshima when the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945. He was getting off a streetcar when the “Little Boy” device detonated above Hiroshima.

Mr. Yamaguchi said he was less than 2 miles away from ground zero. His eardrums were ruptured and his upper torso was burned by the blast, which destroyed most of the city’s buildings and killed 80,000 people.

Mr. Yamaguchi spent the night in a Hiroshima bomb shelter and returned to his hometown of Nagasaki the following day, according to interviews he gave over the years. The second bomb, known as “Fat Man,” was dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, killing 70,000 people there.

Mr. Yamaguchi was in his Nagasaki office, telling his boss about the Hiroshima blast, when “suddenly the same white light filled the room,” he said in an interview last March with The Independent newspaper.

“I thought the mushroom cloud had followed me from Hiroshima,” he said.

From the NYTimes:

For more than a decade, media companies have hoped for a day when they could either control access to their products online or at least put a price on them that a mass market would bear. But that day has never come. What has changed is the level of threat they face, given the worst advertising downturn in memory.

Count me as one of skeptical ones when it comes to large-scale charging of readers.

Changes at PBS’s News Hour:

Until recently, the employees who worked on the Web site of “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” on PBS were based in a building a brisk five-minute walk through city traffic from their on-air colleagues. The Web and television staffs interacted only at Mr. Lehrer’s annual holiday party. “They were all the recognizably young ones,” said Linda Winslow, the show’s executive producer. But in early November, the staffs were merged into a single 20-person bullpen…

Martin commentary: The writing is so on the wall. You’re web team cannot be separate from your TV or print team. If you do not have a transition plan for a web-centric future then your program or publication will die. It appears that a severe budget shortfall and the ill-health of its anchor is causing this reassessment at NewsHour but maybe desperation is the mother of reinvention.

What’s powering your home appliances? For about 10 percent of electricity in the United States, it’s fuel from dismantled nuclear bombs, including Russian ones.