You can't say that in America!

• June 24, 2005 |

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I usually don't bother linking to the pettier dust-ups from the crowd, but there's such a mess of them that I can't ignore the theme. It's blasphemy to say this, but there may be a drawback to many of the victories that put bloggers on the map. Going all the way back to Trent Lott, a key blog-activism strategy is to rally outraged supporters to force a political opponent to act (resign, apologize, retract, etc.). But by now bloggers have the system down so well, everyone is trying to use it to their advantage.

And so today, in the wake of the fuss over Senator Durbin, Democrats and resignation from Karl Rove and Republicans are and a day can't go by without another . I know that part of free speech is the freedom to criticize others' speech and stand up for what you believe is right, and I don't advocate compromising those freedoms in any way, but this game of partisan outrage of the day is getting really ridiculous. What's worse is that it plays right into the hands of the America hurters. By definition, they want Americans to hate each other. It makes for good partisan politics just as it makes for good shout TV. Unfortunately it makes for lousy public discourse and worse national morale.

Speaking of being critical of discourse, has some gripes about conduct among his fellow progressives in the blogosphere.

The story that's really rocking the blogosphere, particularly given its active libertarian population is on eminent domain. As my list of what I clicked grew I was relieved to see doing a massive round-up of reaction -most of which is really angry.

-- This is wicked cool. Naturally I started playing with it without reading the instructions first, so I was especially pleased to realize that clicking on a star zooms in to that star's solar system and clicking on that shows you the planets. Very neat.

-- It's like talking to your plants, only different.

Now this is a fun trend: (Safe for work, but if you're a guy you may not want co-workers seeing you look at photos of colorful Japanese schoolgirls.)

-- We've seen lock-picking pages before and I don't recall if this is a repeat, but in case there are new Clicked readers with an everybody's-got-one dead Masterlock in the bottom of your junk drawer, here ya go.

Speaking of locks: A time lapse photo montage of a , so to speak. It's funny to see the seasons pass.

. One of the most liberating things I ever did was stop carrying a bag to work. Every day I would take a shoulder strap messenger bag back and forth. I would put the Times in it and not much else, it had pens. I never actually opened it, I just carried it back and forth to work. I see all my colleagues doing the same thing and I'm pretty sure they don't open theirs either. Now I leave work with my hands in my pockets and I feel like I'm actually leaving. (Until I come home and turn the computer on.)

Do you feel like the news repeats the same stories over and over so that you could probably recite them? is the game for you. They play you a news story and you guess the missing words.

-- Basically a drum machine.

There's some debate over whether this is really a picture of .

I would love to know what kind of mail get. (I found it while checking the source of a car chase video.)

Video of the Day: If School House Rock went all the way up to . UPDATE: I'm not sure how much traffic the is ready for so I found as well.

-- What's new about digital bullying is the use of the Internet to publicly humiliate others. It's one thing to get pantsed in gym class, it's another for a video of you getting pantsed in gym class to be spread across the globe and laughed at by morning TV show hosts.

(actually )

-- It starts here and goes up to predictions made before 1700. Use the nav at the top for more recent predictions.

is the new hope of impoverished Appalachia. By coincidence, my grandfather left behind a banjo and just last weekend I put new strings on it and started learning. I was interesting to learn that has a small but active bluegrass community, and there are a lot of online.

-- Obviously this guy needs this, and I hope everyone who is missing a limb can have a useful prosthesis. But, without belittling the tragedy of the infirm, I do think it would be cool to just have extra artificial parts.

-- Makes a mockery of the proposed amendment by playing with the definition of the American flag.

It's the oldest trick in the book to tell someone you'll give them 100 Grand and then hand them a candy bar by that name. Good thing didn't quit her job or buy a car before picking up her winnings.

has the story of a new law designed to censor online porn -- or at least force it to be outsourced beyond U.S. borders. I'm surprised this didn't get picked up by the TV news folks. What a great excuse to show hoochie-coochie girls while discussing issues.

-- and some ideas people are working on to improve reading.

The story of the guy having his by airport security reminds me of the Steven Wright joke about putting his car key in his apartment door because other than walking around starting things, what could he do with it?

()

. A sarcastic FAQ.

-- This is written by the reporter who broke the story. He argues that the real news is that the Iraq war started before the Iraq war started. Something you don't hear in American media very often is the accusation that the U.S. and Britain tried to draw Saddam into war before resorting to jumping through the UN hoops.

-- These lessons from a soldier in Iraq cover a lot more than just IEDs. Interesting insight.

-- Frontline reports on the private contractors in Iraq.

Mailbag! Mailbag!

Gotta say hi and love your "Clicked." One item today has caused my blood pressure to rise just a little bit...the item about men's birth control.

"The researchers plan to test about a half-million chemical compounds to find a pill that does not involve hormones that men could take weekly or monthly. They also hope to find something that is close to 100 percent effective and has no risky side effects."

Be nice if they could do the same for women's birth control. No hormones or risky side effects....yeah, that'd be nice.

-Shauna

Dear Shauna,
When I hear about girls being encouraged to pursue careers in scientific fields, I seldom hear the reasoning that it would better the lives of women, but that seems like an area that could use some more (native) brain power.
Cheers,
Will

Will,
You stated in your June 23 post about male birth control that you might be "a little concerned that if men could have unprotected sex without fear of impregnating a woman... well, things could get a little out of hand."

Perhaps you've never heard of vasectomies? I know lots of guys in their 20's who are done having children and the first thing they do is go get "fixed" (just find a good veterinarian...). If they subsequently become single, well, you've got a bunch of guys with no fear of impregnating women. That doesn't mean they don't worry and take precautions against disease.
Dave

Dear Dave,
I did think of vasectomies when I read the article, although I don't know any guys in their 20s who've had it done. I've even heard of them being reversible. I don't mean to disparage guys with vasectomies as unaccountable sex fiends. My thinking was that we already have a lot of having-of-the-sex and STDs so removing one of the biggest risk factors would only increase that activity. Of course, it might be flawed to assume that it's risk and not lack of opportunity that's preventing men from having more sex. Are men with vasectomies more alluring to women for the lack of pregnancy risk they pose?
Regards,
Will

• |

Note: A glitch in publishing last night prevented this from being public until 9:45 a.m. ET. Since I wrote it last night and the publishing did work in the archive, I didn't change the time stamp.

While responsible news reports on the fate of try to avoid speculation on what could have happened to her, we all know that in our own heads we're imagining the horrible possibilities. And so it is that in some corners of the blogosphere the issue of rape and the risks women face is being debated. Cousin Vito does a nice job .

-- I saw a few angry letters to the editor over this one.

I understand the equality issues behind inventing , but part of me is a little concerned that if men could have unprotected sex without fear of impregnating a woman... well, things could get a little out of hand.

Today I clicked on three different sites describing themselves as being for guys who like stuff. It's getting a little annoying. Unfortunately, I actually am a guy who likes stuff, so check out this cool .

Video of the Day: There's something inherently pleasurable about watching someone do something they're genuinely good at. drums so hard the camera goes out of focus. And once again I find a community I didn't even know existed. Check the media section of the host site and scroll a little for other drum competition winners.

It's time again to feel the thrill of clicking on something I can't actually read. The site is called , and when I click the one thing I can read (the enter button) it opens a live Flash timeline to which, it appears, people have uploaded their own photos of candles. I'm not sure if it's a vigil for something or just a cool group project. UPDATE: Behold! It's about . (2008 candidates, are you paying attention?)

Tiny nation aims to be 1st `cyber-island'...

...Oh! But they're too late based on of a tiny island in New Jersey for sale. (Is it just me or does that seem like a really cool deal for less than a million dollars?)

talks about the scuttlebutt on Google Wallet. He makes the point that since people already make and spend money through Google, it makes sense to be able to set up some kind of PayPal-esque account with them.

Dave Winer has a .

-- Vintage photos of old shopping malls of the '60s and '70s. The newest post is about bird cages in malls. The lobby of the hotel I stayed in in Ft. Worth had two parrots in a cage next to a koi pond with a bunch of turtles in it. Neat, if a little smelly for a hotel lobby.

"So it's looking more and more certain that ." It sucks when you start a blog to track a and the whole thing falls apart.

A new role of the military wife, to update the blog when the MilBlogger's . Best wishes on a successful recovery to Capt. Ziegenfuss.

record album covers -- .

Durbin wrap up from .

You've probably seen some parts of this done before, but it's still fun to watch.

You too can get a when you solicit the services of a prostitute in Chicago.

If you take an oath to tell the truth in court by swearing on a Koran instead of a Bible, does it count? .

-- rounds up local media reports.

. Is there no bottom to the Google Maps toybox?

"It's a baffling phenomenon that in today's society an individual, who might in other circumstances be considered smart and wise, can sit down in front of a computer screen and instantly he ever possessed."

"I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a ." (It's a sarcastic letter to the Kansas school board.)

"With you send photos and text messages from the street to your personal map and tag it, share it, blog it and more..." A little limited right now, but new cities are coming. Naturally, as a New Yorker I always go to the New York maps to play, but thinking back on my recent trip to Ft. Worth, if I could have gone to something like this and found photos and other notes from people there, it would have been real handy.

-- I'm going to call this one a weekend click. It's an applet that lets you play with waves and then offers a whole lot of explanation of wave properties. Playing with the applet is pretty, but really I have no idea what I'm looking at so I'll need to come back and read the lesson.

I saw reports earlier today from northern Alaska where they are experiencing the longest day of the year. Folks in the blogosphere are also paying attention to the other end of the earth where reports on "Midwinter's Day."

I didn't know there was such a thing as the . The top fifteen richest fake people. It's an old link, but still funny. **For some reason, all Forbes links are talking out loud as soon as you click them today. It's just a lame ad, nothing unsafe, but still annoying.

-- With some cool audio and video.

From :

1. everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
2. anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
3. anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

I was just remarking to someone the other day on how many "how-to" links we see here at Clicked. Even if I can't actually do the "to" I think it's neat to see how things work. Now the folks at Pew have to put some numbers to that impression.

"[O]n the basis of a new study, a team of political scientists is arguing that people's gut-level reaction to issues like the death penalty, taxes and abortion is strongly ." (I don't buy it.)

One of the interns here was looking for a way to measure her typing speed. In looking around I found this .

sees infighting among insurgents in Iraq as a sign that the foreign jihadis fighting there are losing their favor.

-- We've seen camera reviews before, but this goes into greater depth talking about how they're put together. NOTE: There is one artsy fartsy black and white nude on this page. You have to click the thumbnail to really see what it is so the page itself is relatively safe, but just so you know, it's there.

-- And just wait until all the browsers have integrated aggregators.

-- The thing that bothers me the most about paying taxes is the sinking feeling that if I were smarter I wouldn't be paying as much.

"The following is a list of , compiled by the National Archives and Records Administration, and drawn primarily from its nationwide holdings. The documents chronicle United States history from 1776 to 1965."

.

Don't you hate when your ?

Kevin Drum suggests as a means of preventing I.D. theft. There is good commentary in the comments section. It would be cool if we had some kind of system of government that represented the people, then they could pass a law to protect people from identity theft.

complains about too much fluff on TV news and proposes a boycott. Most bloggers (and indeed non-bloggers) have already moved on, so she may be preaching to the choir, but she does make one point that I don't hear very often. A very small percentage of Americans actually watch TV news -especially cable TV news. Why do they all fight over the same tiny piece of the pie?

Mailbag! Mailbag!

Perhaps what you're recalling is a link you posted to a web site with eerie photos of an abandoned amusement park in Japan? They had some similarities, especially with the children's camp in Moscow on the Abandoned web site.
Cindy

Will,
I followed your abandoned link and it made me think of . This is a woman who takes motorcycle trips through Chernobyl.
Peter

Dear Cindy and Peter,
Actually, both of those sites came to mind when I read this New York Times article on .

Incidentally, regarding the motorcycle woman, there have been some suggestions that the site is somehow a hoax. After poking around, appears to be that she drove in a car and brought the bike along. Regardless, the photos are still real.
Cheers,
Will

I read an article where you were quoted:

"Definitely more. The mother's maiden name you can see right here," says Femia as he shows us one Web site. "Also the PIN number that you would enter in an ATM machine, expiration dates, date of birth, the credit card number itself."

Do you know that PIN stands for Personal Identification Number so you don't need the word number after it? And ATM stands for Automatic Teller Machine so you don't need the work machine after it?

Just thought you'd like to know!

DeeDee

Dear DeeDee,
Yes, I guess you're right. I'd like to say I won't make the mistake again, but the article you read was actually a transcript of something I said on TV. I may be able to catch myself when I write those words, but when speaking I'll probably always say PIN number and ATM machine.
Regards,
Will

• June 22, |

-- I've seen zero political leadership on this issue, and zero corporate leadership on this issue, and yet every other day I seem to be clicking a story about alternative fuels.

The latest leftie blog sport appears to be "," goading war supporters into .

-- Yes, you have to know this for the coolness test.

-- Pictures of desolate buildings and landscapes. I feel like I read about this somewhere recently but I can't recall where. Is this one of the guys mentioned in the recent NYTimes Chernobyl tourism story?

has a list of examples the White House doctoring reports to suit its agenda. Seems like that shouldn't be allowed, but I can't think of who would be in charge of enforcing any rule against it.

of his readers for 2008 Democratic candidates and Clark wins. It's interesting that a letter today from a reader who supports Clark. Where did this come from?

Speaking of straw polls, "Right Wing News emailed more than 200 right-of-center bloggers and asked them to send us a list of whom they believed was .'" Probably the most interesting name on the list, as the blogger later , is John McCain. It'll be interesting to see how indicative conservative bloggers are of American Republicans.

The L.A. Times has already killed its . A lot of people are wanting to give credit to the Times for even trying, but I've seen enough empty gestures toward the latest Internet buzzword that the charm has worn off. Deeper insights and discussion .

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the ...

your kids are going to want to play because you aren't going to want them to play it.

-- I was on NBC Nightly News for about three seconds to talk about this issue. It's pretty outrageous that companies are allowed to buy and sell your personal information and aren't responsible for keeping it secure. And then you're the one who gets screwed when your identity is stolen.
UPDATE: By the way, my colleague Bob Sullivan, who writes about I.D. theft for us, has a handy guide to . If it happens to you, you're bound to be in freak-out mode and wishing you'd at least familiarized yourself with the steps.

. (Isn't that what killed Hunter S. Thompson too?) What's interesting is that I saw links to this obit from both sides of the political spectrum.

says Durbin did nothing wrong.

.

So that should be the end of Nazi comparisons, right? D'oh!: -- That link is a little old but has apparently been resurrected by at the Volokh conspiracy which is more specifically pointed at the question of what is fascism.

.
CORRECTION: Thanks to reader Brian Hesterley for pointing out that I have this totally wrong. As the Wikipedia entry clearly explains, Xenu is the name of a galactic ruler. The volcano fits in the story of Xenu, but I don't know how I got into my head that the name of the volcano is also Xenu. It's not.

The latest , war down, Gitmo up

For all the fuss about the Downing Street Memo showing that Iraq war was in the works before it was presented to the public, points out examples from Bob Woodward's book to make the point that these insights aren't really new. Looks like the is going to do the same thing tomorrow.

(mostly nerdy)

- In defense of drinking expensively. I can't bring myself to spend more than 20 bucks on a bottle of wine, and that's only if there's a good reason.

-- The idea is to help host one that's been banned.

"We're now well past the point where with all the blogs worth reading from the people worth keeping up with." Tell me about it!

-- also very good way to get yourself hurt. The source for this video , where there are some other fun things, like the Rollator, in the projects gallery.

Video of the Day: .

A pretty engaging . I didn't see the origin of this game, only that it's hosted on a lot of video sites.

"Each month, I ask one of my favorite DJ's to contribute they're feeling at the time."

is a travel gadget blog

with Google Maps.

Speaking of Google maps: "Today Google its map service to add high-resolution aerial photography for much more of the globe than the previous limited coverage of North America." You can actually do quite a bit of global map dragging at this point. Lots of fun.

And speaking of Google, folks who Google in sad desperation find of their peers.

are over pending legislation regarding a . As I understand it, a broadcast flag is a signal embedded in a broadcast that only allows authorized recording of that broadcast. It may have to do with more than just recording, but the main point is that it introduces the need for everything to be "authorized."

Speaking of BoingBoing and copyright, they also have an interesting debate about whether it's ridiculous or reasonable for a cake maker to be worried about legal problems from putting .

-- I know from personal experience that it's foolish to think you can control a plastic container full of flammable material. This clip is mostly engaging for the anxiety it produces while you wait for the kid to blow his arms off. (He doesn't.) (The host site looks safe for work, but I clicked at least one link that took me to another site unexpectedly, so be careful.)

• June 21, |

Though not an example of blog reporting, the Downing Street Memo(s) story certainly does represent yet another side to the blog revolution. In a , Jay Rosen looks at how blogs serve as a means of second guessing the traditional keepers of the public's attention, mainstream news editors. Who decides what's news? These days, more people than ever. Usually these are Commuter Clicks, but I ended up reading the whole thing off the screen. If you're late to the "DSM" party this is a good place to start.

Speaking of reasons pundit bloggers find to hate each other, there was a flare up last week that bears mentioning in case it emerges from the partisan press into the mainstream. Readers for whom talking about torture is torturous should skip down a few paragraphs. Senator Dick Durbin remarked after reading a FBI description of prisoner treatment at Guantanamo that the conditions are better suited to Nazis or Soviet gulags. He further said that history would look upon Abu Ghraib in the same way it looks upon the internment of Japanese Americans. , it sounded like he was calling the U.S. military Nazis. , not so much.

In a further example of drawing different conclusions from the same thing, on the discovery of the torture of Iraqis by insurgents was seen on the left as evidence that Bush had failed even at his non-WMD reasons for going to war. And on the right it was a perfect example of what looks like, as opposed to what's happening at Gitmo.

Other interesting threads in the discussion:

• Will the attention given to Guantanamo inmates lead to greater attention on regular ?
• If comparing Guantanamo to Nazis is out of bounds, as is the use of "gulag" and references to Pol Pot, , "What is the right historical analogy?"

-- While I know that some countries try to heavily censor the Internet their citizens use, is that really possible? Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems like the Internet is a Pandora's Box. Once a society moves into the Internet age, there's no half-stepping.

Reporters without Frontiers has announced . "[B]logs that, each in their own way, defend freedom of expression."

MoveOn.org has a petition to sign for . I'm generally skeptical about online petitions, but 500,000+ "signatures" about the Downing Street Memo made it into news reports, so I guess there's something to the practice. (But still, does anyone read all those names?)

"Computer scientists in the US are developing a system which would a solid 3D recreation of themselves over the internet." This is not really about teleporting anything, I don't know why they keep using that word in the article, but the idea is pretty revolutionary. Imagine a solid broadcast. Not light on a screen, not 3-D holograms, but actual hard objects.

"American George Weller was the first foreign reporter to enter Nagasaki following the U.S. atomic attack on the city on Aug. 9, 1945. Weller wrote a series of stories about what he saw in the city, but censors at the Occupation's General Headquarters refused to allow the material to be printed. Weller's stories, written in September 1945, can be found..." .

.

I'm not familiar with the people in this interview, but it's neat that the questions and answers are . It reminds me of the Star Trek episode when they meet the guy who can only speak in stories.

According to , Flickr will add a service for printing digital photos in a bound book. Would you buy a coffee table book with your own photos in it? I know a lot of people who would. I haven't seen any other mention of this, but I have seen the new . I wonder if there's a connection.

I'm not able to read Dutch, but I feel pretty good about my guess that this is a gallery of .

"Chances are you’re in an office at the moment working away, but did you know at this very moment , waiting for you to go on that business trip or on holiday." (brief slide show of office pranks) Not listed is to dump from the ceiling.

-- This is one of those links that are a mystery. I don't know why it's come up in discussion on blogs, and what's stranger is that it's on a site that seems to be about proving the existence of aliens -- but the article itself explains that these pyramids are NOT the product of aliens.

Here is a booklist of a different kind. Recommended graphic novels . Interestingly, elsewhere I came upon for comic book writing by one of the artists on the list.

-- His is a cool idea too.

is a trendspotter blog. I don't see any perma links, so it's hard to refer to individual items. Motorcycle fans should scroll to the June 1 entry though.

Speaking of motorcycles:

: I've seen this in a few places. Make sure you watch all the way to the end. It starts off like one of those Candid Camera shows and then goes horribly wrong. Is it doctored or was that the original joke?

The fact that and are coming up as popular links makes me think a lot of bloggers went to see the this weekend. I saw it on Sunday night. Thoughts in brief:

• Don't bring your little kids, it's dark, scary, a lot of talking, and no Ewoks.
• The amazing cast did an amazing job (Kate Holmes was the weak link, but even she was passable) and I can't help but wonder if the directors of the past Batman movies are wishing they could go back and try again.
• Why was there so much talk about Star Wars and "the times we live in" and so little talk about this movie in that regard? This is chock full of themes for our times: Justice vs. revenge, fixing a failed system vs. destroying it, compassion vs. malevolence, fear as a weapon, fear as a tool, and yes, even a little "with us or against us."

just passed. "Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States."

"The lowest-hanging full moon in 18 years this week." Make a note to look up on Wednesday night.

If you never got around to reading that Steve Jobs commencement speech last week, you can just .

-- No "Puke Skywalker" jokes.

-- I don't think Al Roker has anything to worry about.

What is a ? Here's a , "a reference to them not seeing the public light" because they're on corporate intranets.

-- I'm going blind trying to visualize the as flat and I can't do it.

-- It's a cell phone that behaves like an old rotary. I think the coolest part is that you can put it down anywhere in cell range and it works.

. Yes, there's a photo. Step right up.

" is a free lexicon of English idioms, words, and catch phrases from around the world. This is also a 'user built' site - in addition to searching for a definition, you can add your own."

Commuter Click: ": Innovation was once the work of an individual. Now - from weblogs to mountain bikes - we are inventing the things we want to use, writes Charles Leadbeater"

", covered by one man using dozens of instruments. Roughly in game order, faithful to the originals, with some bizarre artistic license thrown around. A private hobby made public."

-- Looks like I'll be stocking my fallout shelter with extra jars of unopened Maraschino cherries.

-- One person's system for defeating procrastination. I just need to figure out how to get to bed before 2.

-- This site is a little complicated, but the overall point seems to be to demonstrate navigation without "click here" buttons everywhere. It's amazing to realize how automatically I click on everything.

-- What'd he say?

All day long we've seen a long shot of Tom Cruise telling some British guy how rude he is. This looks like that was shot of the prank. I don't know if it actually made it to British TV or if this is a bootleg of some kind. We'll probably see better descriptions of it tomorrow.

(part 2)

--How did they think it was a good idea to start a company with a logo that had a topless mermaid holding her fins apart??

video mash-up. (Mostly silly, not particularly gay)

Continuing with that rock-out-Monday vibe, the new-to-me .

is a very strange little essay about people dehumanizing people outside of their relatively small range of familiarity. It's full of curses and wanders a little, but in the end you get the point.