All Wet.
Jeff Jarvis, on his brilliant BuzzMachine blog:
But mostly, shouldn’t reporters report? Standing in the water repeating what we already know over and over is not reporting. Reporting would be finding out what government is not doing — see Katrina. But in truth, with all this information flying by, we don’t need a lot of reporting unless and until government messes up. That’s what is making journalism more efficient and sustainable.
Just a bunch of idiots getting wet.
American innovation. You're welcome.
Yes. There are umbrellas taped to lawn chairs. American innovation. You’re welcome.
You're Secure
So, here’s a fun video that Jaime Walters just posted over on the Google+ of me getting locked in a Murphy Bed while she films and Erica has a cocktail.
I love those girls.
Should Children Be Allowed To Attend R Rated Movies?
More to the point, should children be allowed to attend R rated movies where consenting adults are masturbating?
Should Adults Be Allowed To Bring Kids To R-Rated Movies Where We Masturbate?
If you’re not reading The Onion, you should be. (ignore the unnecessary Flash header). If you’re not following Baratunde Thurston on Twitter, you should be. If you’re not masturbating in movie theaters, well, that’s up to you.
If You're A Geek, You'll Love This.
Leonard Nimoy, The Big Lebowski, and being lazy. What more could a neck-beard ask for?
Of Cell Phones, Coffee, and Pickled Vegetables
Cell phones have been put in the Class 2B by the World Health Organization. This means there’s a possible cancer risk.
Also in the 2B Class of 2011 are these winners:
- Bracken Fern
- Caffeine
- Carpentry and Joinery (well, shit.)
- Chloroform
- Chlorine (laundry and pool)
- Red Dye 9 (eat your M&M's!!)
- Red Dye 2 (mmmmmm, fruit punch.)
- Blue Dye 15 (again with the M&M's.)
- Cobalt
- Coffee
- Marine Diesel Fuel
- Dry Cleaning
- Engine exhaust from gasoline engines
- Being a firefighter
- HIV
- Human papaloma virus
- Lead
- Low frequency magnetic fields
- Nickel
- Pickled vegetables
- Ceramic fibers
- And a bunch of stuff I can't pronounce.
The moral of the story is this: ANYTHING YOU DO WILL GIVE YOU CANCER.
Have a great weekend.
Google Drops Support For h.264
From Mike Jazayeri, Product Manager on the Chromium Blog:
Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.
Google is dropping support for h.264 video in the popular Chrome browser in favor of Vorbis and WebM video. To “enable open innovation.” Yet Chrome ships with an embedded Adobe Flash player. Weird. h.264 is a licensed standard. You pay a license fee to play h.264 content in your software. Adobe Flash is a proprietary single-source (and 15-year-old) streaming technology. Completely closed, like Microsoft’s Word or Apple’s Final Cut.
Did you know Google also owns YouTube? Currently YouTube streams in h.246 for iOS and Android devices, and Flash video for everyone else. Is YouTube going to re-encode hundreds of millions of videos into the new format that has little or no installed base in Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, WebOS or Windows Phone?
Boneheads.
Really, Microsoft?
There’s a little thing in the browser called a User Agent String. It tells the website and its advertisers what type of browser and operating system you are using. They use it to target ads, and some of the smarter websites use it to feed different pages to different browsers. This is how you get a mobile site on your iPhone or Android phone, among other things.
Microsoft is obviously ignoring the User Agent. Trying to feed me IE 9 on a Mac running Chrome is wasted ad money. Even if I could download Internet Explorer 9, I wouldn’t. But I can’t. They don’t make it for Mac.
Idiots in charge
Can't We Talk About It?
After a rambling, but accurate and interesting, list of quotes by Beck, O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Levin, and more, David Frum says:
This talk did not cause this crime. But this crime should summon us to some reflection on this talk.
I have to agree. As I said yesterday, there is no known connection between the Tucson shooter and the Palin poster, but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about the Palin poster, or the hate speech that may incite this type of violence. As of late, it has been mostly from the extreme right wing. Roger Ebert tweeted:
These “incidents” aren’t “isolated.” They’re “clustered” around the American Right Wing.
He’s right. Historically, though, inciteful language has been used by the extremes on both sides of the political spectrum. Even Barack Obama, in a campaign speech, said
If they bring a knife to the fight, I’ll bring a gun.
Bottom line, there is no excuse for violent imagery or language in political discourse. The new House of Representatives just read the Constitution when opening for business this year. Politicians don’t speak like this anymore. I know times have changed, and Americans don’t speak like that anymore either. But here’s the thing: I want my politicians to be better than me. I don’t want “regular folks” running this country. It’s far too complicated a machine. I expect my political leaders to be more educated, better trained, and more selective in their language.
While I’m on a little rant, let’s not forget the cable news media machine that all fed off of each other’s misinformation. NPR “confirmed” that Giffords had died. Then Fox News “confirmed” it, then MSNBC and CNN followed. What exactly did they use to “confirm” it? That Sprint Store employee who happened to be working across the parking lot? He was on every news channel, admitting that he didn’t even see anything, he just heard it. I’m sure they didn’t get confirmation from a law enforcement or hospital official. Is this the fact-checking we’re settling for as an audience? What’s next? Speeding tickets based on information from the pizza guy?
Political Ads Gone Bad, or Coincidence?
If you haven’t heard, Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot this morning at a political event. It is not yet known if she will survive the surgery. This poster from the Sara Palin political action committee puts Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in the crosshairs. I’m not at all implying that it is a direct result, but some people tend to take things literally.
Sometimes hyperbole becomes reality. Images matter. Words matter.
Palin removed the poster from her site hours after the shooting.
Interesting Take From A Broadway Flop
Jennifer George, in a New York Times Op-Ed
Step back and look at what you have. Put the play’s human moments front and center. There’s still time.
Yep. But not much.
Snowpocalypse Snow Job
There is a huge thing going on in cable news right now. And it’s pissing me off.
First, let’s all agree that 20" of snow is not the end of humanity. Quit calling it “Snowpocalypse.” What are we going to call it when we get 22" of snow? Let’s save the apocalypse references for when the shit really hits the fan.
People on Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN are all praising Newark, NJ mayor Cory Booker for taking care of business during the blizzard over the weekend, and decrying New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg as a “plutocrat” who doesn’t care about the little people.
Bloomberg has a history of fighting labor unions, lobbying for less control and lower taxes for the Wall Street elite, and even changing the rules of term limits so he can remain mayor. I’m not here to defend him on any of those shenanigans, but let’s look at the plain old numbers about this storm.
According to NOAA, New York and Newark both got about 20" of snow. That’s a lot of snow. Especially on overcrowded urban streets where buildings and cars line every block. There’s just nowhere to push the snow. Then there are the facts. I got all these numbers from a Wolfram-Alpha comparison.
| New York | Newark | |
| Area | 303 sq. mi. | 23 sq. mi. |
| Population | 8,300,000 | 279,000 |
| Population Density | 27k ppl/mi^2 | 11.7k ppl/mi^2 |
| Counties | 5 | 1 |
Now, I’d like just one cable news talking-head to explain to me how Bloomberg is supposed to deal with the situation the way Cory Booker did when Bloomberg has 14 times the area, 32 times the population, and 5 counties separated by dozens of bridges and tunnels? Add on top of that the nation’s busiest city bus system, the country’s largest subway system, two major airports, and the fact that we’re on an island.
Again, I’m not defending Bloomberg, or trying to say that Mayor Booker is not doing well. I happen to think Cory Booker is one of the best mayors in the country right now. I’m just trying to figure out how people who consider themselves “the news” can be so irresponsible with the ACTUAL facts. It’s easy to go out on the streets and get 10 seconds of video of Booker pushing a car out of the snow, and 10 seconds of video of a pissed-off New Yorker. Try going out there and actually doing a story. You know, with facts and stuff.
Turn Off The Turn Off The Dark Trainwreck?
As many of you know, I have my TV life and my Broadway life. My Broadway life has always been as a stagehand, and the last few years, I have done nothing in that realm but fly people. When I say “fly people,” sure I mean actual flying, like Peter Pan. But a lot of what I do is simple safety. Tethers, fall arrests, safety belts, wrist loops, and the like. It’s not glamorous, but it keeps actors, stagehands, and audience members safe.
The Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark” has had it’s share of problems. I’m not going to rehash all the stories here, but there have been concussions, broken ankles and wrists, and bruised ribs.
Actor Adam Pascal, known for “Rent” and “Aida”, has posted (then retracted) on his Facebook page saying director Julie Taymor should be arrested for assault. Other actors have spoken about the problems on conditions of anonymity. Which is smart. You don’t want to piss off the biggest director on Broadway if you’re a working actor.
As a working flyguy, I can appreciate what they are trying to do. Pushing the envelope of what people expect on stage is what we do. Spider-Man is doing the right thing by having several stunt doubles behind the mask for more intricate stunts. I have worked with Fisher Automation before. They are the company that built all the flying rigs for the show. They have a good reputation. It seems that Spider-Man is doing everything right.
So why all the injuries? I can only guess, because I am not in any way involved in the production. I know two actors have been injured on the move where Spidey springs from the rear of the stage to the front. One guy broke an ankle, and the other fell and broke both wrists. On Peter Pan, we do this move two times every show, and have never had a problem. Is it because their system is automated and ours is human powered? Maybe. I don’t know. But such a simple move should not injure an actor, especially a stunt man. On the other hand, many of the injuries are human error. The latest victim, Chris Tierney, fell from a platform over the stage into the orchestra pit because his tether was not properly clipped in. Again, I don’t have any first-hand knowledge of the accident, but there is one thing I know: Tethers don’t break, as reported in a few articles. These things have 10,000 pound and higher ratings, a 180 pound guy is not going to snap it. He just wasn’t clipped in.
Some people are saying pull the plug, eat the loss and close the show. Even if the show opens, it has to sell out every seat in every show for a decade before it breaks even. That’s not going to happen, I don’t care how good the show is. Even the NY Department of Labor and OSHA have threatened to shut it down.
I say keep at it. To paraphrase Peter Parker’s uncle, with great budgets come great responsibilities. Broadway shows are almost always a money losing proposition. Maybe not a $65 million money pit of delays and injuries, but still not a profitable thing. If a move is not working, change it or cut it. Don’t just keep doing it, hoping for the best. That’s how people get hurt. Or worse. If you can’t keep enough stunts in the show to make the story interesting, then it’s time to consider shutting it down. Until then, just cut the moves that are sending people to the hospital and make the show happen. Every week you postpone is another million you will never get back.
Oh, the whole reason I started this little rant is so I could post this video of Taiwan’s Apple News giving Spider-Man the animated news treatment.