“EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! BLACK KIDS BEAT UP WHITE KID ON SCHOOL BUS!”

How the fuck does this pass for journalism?  Currently on the front page of Drudge; here’s the article.

My response…. So fucking what!? You’d think these “journalists” would try to be more subtle in their attempt to throw gas on the old fire of race relations in America. I want to know who made the fucking decision to turn this into a national headline story! Matt Drudge? Rupert Murdoch?

I can’t decide what disgusts me more…the petty, disgusting individuals that are running the story, or the people who will play right into their hand. There were probably 10,000 fist fights on buses and in playgrounds this morning. This is not fucking news, it’s fucking propaganda.

PROP-A-GAN-DA [prop-uh-gan-duh]

1.) information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.

2.) communications to the public that are carefully selected for political effect, and designed to influence opinion

The Science News Cycle, via Mark Liberman.  Followup here.

Better than southern fried chicken?  At the Atlantic’s food channel.  Recipe included, but I’ll only believe it if I ever get to try it in Bangkok.  Hat tip Craig Newmark.

Markets in Everything: Rent-a-punks.  Read the comment too.

I think it was Trent Reznor who said iTunes is like the Sam Goody of online music.  (snowcloned!)  If thats the case, then Mark Underground’s blog Down Underground is one of the best local independent record “stores” on the web.  Check him out.

My co-blogger Eric has been blaming the media for a lot of things in the comments lately, and it got me thinking about power and information flows and how they end up with the formation of public opinion.  Its kind of a chicken-or-the-egg question.  Who’s opinion dominates, where does it start, who ends up submissive to the rest?  Simplifying a lot, I can think of a few scenarios: Continue reading this post…

Whenever I hear politicians and talking heads defend the stimulus, there are some talking points that really bother me.  Continue reading this post…

Su told me about photosynth a while ago, and it sounded cool but I never really saw a good demonstration.  Well CNN’s photosynth of the moment of President Obama’s inauguration is a great demonstration.  If you don’t have silverlight, install it.  It takes 10 seconds and its pretty cool.

Click here to see the photosynth.

All of these supposed “live” streams of the inauguration are grinding to a halt, and its not even 11am yet. Nobody in any office anywhere seems to be working right now. Get back to work, america!

The most surprising thing is that as of 10:27am, twitter is still up.

Update:  live tweet thingers following #inaug09.  I find these things to be kind of useless for an event this big.  Too much chatter.

Update II: CNN has a broadcast team dedicated to their online CNN.com video outlet.  It is the only stream I have found so far that is buffering smoothly, and it is accompanied by a live facebook feed.

Update III:  Ustream.tv is streaming CNN’s television feed and its pretty smooth.  It also has chat alongside it.  This is my first time blogging from my iPod via Wordpress for iPhone.  Cool.

All that which Al Gore invented, Obama shall destroy.