At the Shutter-Speed of Light

Anyone who appreciates great photography will understand why the Visions of Science Photography Awards link from the BBC is the eighth most-shared link among bloggers today. Scroll through to see the wonders of panspermia or perhaps the best-ever visual representation of surface tension. "Downright frightening" is how Joe's Dartblog describes the photo of a sinister-looking cancer cell on the move.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 10:41 AM | Permalink

Category: Creative Endeavors

Those Crazy Engineers

OK, so maybe engineers and engineering students don't have reputations as party-animal kinds of folks who liven every social get-together (this from someone whose 81-year-old father still wears a pocket protector that carries an Eversharp pencil). But maybe there won't be as many engineers in our future as we originally thought. Today's 19th most-shared URL among bloggers is Douglas Kern at Tech Central Station offering his "Confessions of an Engineering Washout," an essay about why the U.S. will soon fall behind the rest of the world in engineering, too. Bloggers respond. Is the brain drain the result of bad teaching or just a bad fit for the profession? Or laziness? Jeff the Baptist offers a guide to engineering education that's, well, at least well-engineered.

Posted by Sue MacDonald at 12:03 PM | Permalink

Category:

They'll Love Him In D.C. — He Blew Up Baltimore in "Sum of All Fears"

You have to wonder what it must've been like back in the day when famous people with no qualifications didn't commonly hold political office. In 1935, when Missouri Democratic political boss Tom Pendergast needed somebody to run for the U.S. Senate, did he hope a movie star would move into his state to give him a candidate? No, he asked a Jackson County commissioner by the name of Harry S Truman to run for the seat, and we strongly recommend you take the time to look up what happened after that. Now fast foward to the year 2006 and the coming Senate race in The Old Dominion — Democrats can't count on their party's NASCAR-loving secret weapon, Gov. Mark Warner, to oppose the Republican Sen. George Allen, who's running for reelection. So they need somebody. Who should they pick? Well, gosh, Ben Affleck might buy a home near Charlottesville. How about him? Yeah, picture it: Sen Gigli. All this comes from the WaPo, by the way, which has debuted a new gossip feature that definitely has bloggers talking. What they're saying about the Affleck item, though, is predictably varied. PunditGuy sneers: "Teeth! Sparkly eyes! Box office draw! Yeah baby, that's what I'm talkin' 'bout. And Matt Damon can be First Lady! Wow, what a winning ticket!" Naked Villainy would remind everyone that Affleck campaigned for Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, whoever that is, and speculates that the political bug might've bitten Affleck. For her part, Wonkette just welcomes the WaPo to the gossip game, which, as we all know, can never have enough participants.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:01 AM | Permalink

Category: Celebs

And Loving It

We look back with fondness on our youthful years spent watching "Get Smart," and marvel at how, whereas we envied Don Adams' Agent 86, Maxwell Smart, for the phone he had in his shoe, we now have an even smaller phone, with a camera, that gets the Internet, in our pocket! That was the least cool of Smart's gadgets, though, as we can recall a telescoping pole-vault pole that hilariously telescoped when he was trying to vault over a wall; a gun that had a phone in it; the Cone of Silence, and Smart's other shoe, which had a hollow heel that contained a suicide pill, The Chief explained, that, in case Smart was captured, would "cause painless death in less than 30 seconds." "Just one question, Chief," 86 asked. "How do I get them to take it?" Adams died this weekend and he's our burstiest person today, the subject of many bloggers' encomuims. "I’ve never laughed so much at a joke I did not even get," says this Whig. This blogger's lament is sadder: "Earth just got a little duller, but Heaven is sure gonna be a funnier place."

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:47 AM | Permalink

Category: Celebs

Read A Banned Book. Do It Now.

Before writers had to come up with controversies all day, every day, there were writers who did it only every couple of years, but boy, they dreamed up some doozies! They were called "authors" and they made paper-and-glue things called "books," which are longer than a paragraph and, unfortunately, don't have any hyperlinks. Nonetheless, we strongly encourage picking one up as often as you can escape from the blogosphere, and if you're lucky, you can read one that an ignorant, small-minded, fearful bureaucrat has decided will give you unacceptable ideas. This week is Banned Books Week, as denoted by our no. 5 top link, and if there's one thing bloggers can't stand — your humble correspondent included — it's pointlessly restricted expression and information, be it governmental or artistic. Some sarcasm from this blogger makes the point: "Don't skip the hardcore pornography, either. I would think that it's in 302, "Social interaction," or in the 700s, the art section." Elise at After School Snack has her recommendation for which banned book to pick up first, while this one soberly implores: "Don't let the narrow-minded, of whatever stripe, determine what we can and cannot think about, and read." We couldn't have said it better ourself.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:18 AM | Permalink

Category: The Dead-Tree Scene

Demi Kutcher? Ashton Moore? Heavens to Murgatroyd!

We dismiss out of hand the cynical predictions that Saturday's marriage of Demi Moore and Ashton "Dude, Where's My Pre-Nuptial Agreement?" Kutcher will last less than a year. After all, Ashton has been in tons of movies about this sort of thing, learning, with Brittany Murphy, that relationships take a lot of work, that if your father-in-law will be Bernie Mac, not to piss him off, and that, if worst comes to worse, you can travel backwards in time and change the future to rescue your fiance. (Maybe he should use his Butterfly Powers to go back and save Demi from making " Charlie's Angels: Full Throtle" Ohh, zing! Yess!) Ah, but the professional gossipers are all over this story — Defamer's recap is here — and Splendora got out of bed Sunday morning to do a post, which culminates with this quip: "Though details about the ceremony have yet to be released, it is not unlikely that Kutcher yelped out 'SWEET!' promptly after exchanging 'I Do's.'" Man, when you're a celebrity blogger and these two get hitched, the bons practically mot themselves.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:03 PM | Permalink

Category: Celebs

America Meets the Corpses

Maybe it was for the best that Jodie Foster didn't marry a dead man in Touchstone Pictures' "Flightplan," released this past weekend, because with a $24.6 million optning take, it did marginally better than " The Corpse Bride," which made about $4 million less. (Full numbers here.) The IMDB page for "Corpse Bride" however, is our no. 5 top link today, and "Flightplan" appears nowhere. This could be because The Sultan of Schadenfreude, Tim Burton, helmed the stop-motion gothic-lite flick, and he tends to command loyalty among moviegoers who appreciate his rococo visual excess. (Today more people are talking about him than President Bush.) Or it could be, like this girl, that they just liked it. Then again, for this blogger, not so much.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:19 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

Family-Friendly Necrophilia

Could anybody else but Hollywood's Gorgon of Goulishness, Tim Burton, plausibly pitch a movie such as "Corpse Bride?" "Ok, get this, ok, this is great," he says to the studio exec through his ridiculous sunglasses, "it's about a guy who accidentally marries a dead woman. He puts a wedding ring on a skeleton's finger and her ghost is totally is all, like, whoa, ok, married now." (A premise which, despite its themes of ghosts and whatnot, is kind of legalistic, when you think about it... like a man who mistakenly files IRS form IZ-382 instead of IZ-328 and he's haunted by the ghost of former president Rutherford B Hayes.) It comes out this week and replicates the long-loved stop-motion animation that moviegoers will remember from his "Nightmare Before Christmas" — meaning early buzz for it is strong. From everyone except this guy, anyway. The hated msm is lavishing the flick with praise, and a nation eager for a respite from its hurricane-drenched woes seems like it could use a good stop-motion motion picture. This blogger certainly could.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:51 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

The Jobs Report

The Internet and the blog world pay the same sort of attention to Steve Jobs as you see paid in the msm to Alan Greenspan. Will he be at the next Apple Computer event? What under-the-table deals has he been making? So for His Steveness to actually sit down with reporters and take questions has created something of a shock of information. Jobs said that music labels who want to charge more than 99 cents for songs on iTunes are "greedy," which impressed this blogger — "I like him more and more" — and that he didn't believe the hype about the future of computers being in a convergence with home entertainment. "It does explain why Apple's product line follows the 'Do one thing and do it well' strategy," this blogger writes. "For the most part, I can agree with his statement. Somewhat." That's all well and good, but what concerns us are Jobs' remarks about the elusive Video iPod: "Jobs said that the market isn’t yet right for personal video devices. 'You can already download movies on the iTunes Music Store, and some albums offer video as an incentive to buy the music,' said Jobs. 'We also offer video podcasts, but will people buy a video device just to watch this video? So far they haven’t. No one has been successful with that yet.'" So the days of carrying Stewie Griffin in our pocket still seem far off...

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:18 AM | Permalink

Category: The Gadget Scene

Don't Be Stupid, Be A Smarty, Come And Join The Blogging Party

Only in the 21st century could Mel Brooks make a movie about two Broadway lowlifes based on a Broadway play about two Broadway lowlifes based on another movie about two Broadway lowlifes. Yes, the trailer for the new movie version of " The Producers" — as opposed to the old movie version, y'see — is our no. 38 top link today. (Oohh, man, Uma Thurman is in it!) From all appearances, Brooks' new version of his old story will be a toe-tapping, goose-stepping good time, as the advert blurbs might say. The flick doesn't drop until December, but the feeling around the Prognostication Department is to expect a run at the box office comparable to the one the play had. Blogcitement is high, as evidenced by this poster, who is so pumped she can't even form traditional sentences: "I = quite excited." More traditional syntax and construction from this blogger, who writes, "I can now officially die, ladies and gentlemen, for life has just been made wonderful." But that ability to form words seems only localized; if you want to see some emphatic non-words, see this cat.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:44 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

Dad-blamed, con-sarned, blankety-blank FCC!

Americans can only hope the taxpayer-financed churls at the Federal Communications Commission — or The Bureau of Being Totally Weak, as we sometimes risibly call it (BBTW) — saw the Times story in our top links today about how profanity is inseperable from culture. "Cursing," writes reporter Natalie Angier, "is a human universal." Which means efforts by the U.S. Senate and the BBTW to try to levy heavier fines on TV shows that involve cursing are total bullplop. Bullplop. Bloggers, as you might expect, have taken easily to this concept. (Readers are cautioned that many bloggers, in protesting the BBTW's stance on profanity, have been even more profane than usual.) For example, posters here are explicit in their reaction against the proposal. Slightly less blue is this thoughtful post at the Irregular Times, which sums up its thesis of historical swearing nicely: "In every single one of those cultures, people go on saying the naughty words in spite of the taboos. And, surprise surprise, none of those cultures fall apart as a consequence." This blogger took from the story a few medical benefits attributed to bad words: "So, I guess, feel free to swear. You’ll feel better!" Done and done. You listening, Mister Chairman?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:03 AM | Permalink

Category: On The Telly

Mr. Kiss-Kiss Bang-Bang

We must confess at the outset here that we're a huge fan of MI6 agent 007 and the cinematic adaptations of his exploits. Who can forget the time that James Bond was winging away in a stolen fighter jet from a burning terrorist arms bazaar that he'd single-handedly destroyed, and discovered a terrorist was in the seat behind him? (Also, another jet was chasing him.) Long story short, Bond ejects his unfortunate passenger so that the guy's seat goes right into the other plane, causing it to explode for some reason. Bond looks at the camera and says: "Backseat driver." Doesn't sound like the new Bond flick, "Casino Royale," will have any such scenes in it, but that doesn't mean anything either — as our no. 40 news story today says, penning the screenplay is the Oscar-winning writer Paul Haggis, who was behind "Million-Dollar Baby" and "Crash," two improbably fantastic recent Hollywood offerings. His script includes a "reinvention" of the Bond character and doesn't include the beloved gadgetsmith Q, two things that initially put us on our guard about the movie. (The Engadget guys went way off their beat and did a post about just that.) Like a Spensarian sonnet, Bond movies conform to a very strict formula whose repetition makes them so much fun, and injecting any new things should always be done very carefully; reaction on this Metafilter feed has been very mixed. Still, after "Crash," which we encourage all BlogPulsers to see, Haggis clearly knows how to write a movie. And it's not as if the Bond franchise hasn't taken a wrong turn before.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:14 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

Sadly Not The Final Countdown

No word as to why this thing is making its blog rounds now, considering it's inspired by a TV show we could've swore we saw in the summerof 2004, but our no. 23 link today is VH1's 50 most-worstest songs ever — of all time. (Though this isn't the first time annotated lists have had business before this honorable court.) Predictably, blogerati are reacting to the list, but before we get to them, click on the VH1 link and then come back here. We'll wait. Did you take a quick look? Ok. Now explain why Bob Seger's " Kathmandu" isn't on there. Relatedly, why isn't " I'm Real" by J-lo and Ja Rule on there? Those are unquestionably the two worst songs ever recorded, though, admittedly, "Achy-breaky heart" is awfully awful. Dustbury also is griping at the list's incompleteness, complaining that it doesn't reach back far enough. (The reason, of course, is VH1 only wants songs it can pair with video). Sir William has his own list of the 20 worst artists, which naturally includes some overlap with the VH1 list — "To qualify the artist had to have written music that was not only annoying, but technically well executed, catchy, and popular" — and his list does contain some surprises. Most incisive, perhaps, is this dissection by Churn of what VH1 has become: A sort of postmodern media hyper-oroborus, creating "cool" and then destroying it, as the mythical snake perpetually grows and simultaneously consumes its own tail. (Churn calls it "a bizzare mish-mash of reality shows and what I call MST3K-vision.") There you have it. Sometime when we finish our current master's degree, we're totally doing one about VH1.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:00 AM | Permalink

Category: The Soundscape

The Power of Potter

Only the most extraordinary events can keep our old foil Harold Potter from being the most blogged-about person on the Internet — Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath would seem to qualify. But Potter is nonetheless the second most blogged-about person, and as opposed to the usual chatter, today's there's actually a reason: Fans are excited about the new trailer for his movie that came out yesterday. (The link actually appears twice in our top links today.) Reactions? Here's a blogger who prefaced this passage with the phrase "OMG" and indicated she had died: "It looks...so good. And I shouldn't get my hopes up, because the last one looked good as well — but I hate hate hated it compared to the first two." That's three hates, if you're keeping score at home. Other thoughts? This blog geeks itself into a stupor dissecting each shot of that trailer; perhaps it misses the irony when it writes "...and can I just say, "CREEPY!" Oh yes. More nitpickery here, this time with respect to the (mis)pronounciation of a made-up thing, and this blog probably represents the typical response across the web. Somewhere a guy dressed up like Comdr. Riker started to feel just like The Fonz.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 01:38 PM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

It's What He Gets For Breathing So Hard Into The Microphone

Garrison Keillor, with his NPR shows, syndicated newspaper columns, book deals, etc., is a peculiar but nonetheless influential sort of media potentate — a lucrative brand composed of himself, some musical guests and breathing very heavily into microphones. He has been breathing heavily on the radio for 31 years, which you might think would make him a little more confident of his brand than he's being now: Our no. 19 link is to a Twin Cities community blog that Garrison is suing because it produced a hilarious parody T-shirt that says "A Prarie Ho Companion." Now, c'mon. That's pretty funny. We'd wear one, and we listen to The Writer's Almanac every morning, even though we think its piano theme is awfully precious. But there's more than his paradoxical humorlessness here: He's a big, stinkin' lib, which means righties are ticked that he uses his partially taxpayer-financed NPR pulpit to criticize conservatives: to wit, Powerline is calling him "a royal noodge." Similarly, Shot in the Dark is "expressing solidarity" with T-shirt creator, after all these years of Garrison using NPR for politicking. So that's the news from Lake Frivolous Litigation, where all the women are lawyers, the men are good-looking lawyers and the children are above-average lawyers.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:20 PM | Permalink

Category: The vast electric lunchroom

Oh Baby Baby, How Were We Supposed To Know?

So we were taking our routine swing through BlogPulse this morning, sipping the overpriced, overcaffinated, oversweetened "coffee" we bloggers all drink (aka blog juice) when we noticed this name in our Key People database: Preston Michael Spears Federline. Intrigued, we clicked on it and almost shot blog juice through our nose. So it has finally arrived — the legal child of one Britney X. Spears and her shady, goop-covered backup dancer husband. Or, as Gawker calls it: "the Federletus." They're disappointed Brit & Kev aren't naming the boy that, but think they understand the logic: "Because names like Preston help to gloss over the hard reality of a baby born wearing a wifebeater." Not to be outdone by its East Coast cousin, Defamer laments the FederSpearses didn't try to option the kid's naming rights: "Too bad, Johnnie Walker Black presents Baby Boy Spears Federline would’ve been too precious!" Quite. But lost in all this catty sniping is a more basic question about the once-ubiquitous blonde entertainer: Does this finally make her a woman?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:36 AM | Permalink

Category: Celebs

Crickey! A New iPod!

We — and everybody else with an Internet connection, it seems — were checking out Apple's new iPod nano online today while listening to our existing model, a dumpy old 20GB fourth-generation model, and we asked it, "Why can't you be thinner than a pencil and have a color display and fit in our jeans watch pocket?" As a response, it faithfully continued playing the song we were listening to, and so we felt bad and said "Awww, little iPod, we were just kidding, we love you just the way you are." But in our heart was a burning lust for the new nano. And, again, we're not the only one: "Must. Not. Buy. One. Have. To. Save. Up." It replaces the iPod Mini, which is fine with this blogger: "Just when you thought the iPod mini couldn’t get any cuter…" And if you thought it was creepy or inappropriate the way we talked to our iPod, check out this post, which includes references an existing iPod Photo named "Sophie". Sample passage: "Sophie was like a flirt teasing me to own her. The nano, on the other hand, left my jaw dropping and mouth agape." Oh yes.

Students of blogs and the web should note that iLounge, the web's preeminent iPod blog/site, has apparently been so deluged with people seeking its take on the new device that the site has basically melted down... browsers pointed there have spun fruitlessly since this morning. Now that's buzz.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 03:55 PM | Permalink

Category: The Gadget Scene

Goodbye, Little Buddy

It's a blogrony (that's what we call irony on the blogosphere) that on the rare day when BlogPulse's most blogged-about person is real, for a change — President Bush instead of one Mr. H. Potter, D.D.S. — the burstiest person is a TV character. Maynard G. Krebs, to be precise, the goateed arch-beatnik who showed Americans that members of their counterculture were lazy bums who screamed whenever anybody said the word "work" in their presence. Bob Denver, the gangly actor who portrayed Krebs, and perhaps more famously, the goofy mate Gilligan of the SS Minnow, is not named in our Key People today, perhaps tellingly: Americans knew him through his hilarious TV shows, but little about him personally. He died last Friday, and bloggers, just like everybody else, are morose. Or worse: "GILLIGAN, NOOO!!" mourned Lord Xorus, chairman of the House Select Subcommitte on Evil . The wags at metafilter are running the gamut of tv references in their memorials, including this one: "He finally got off the island." And American Digest signs off a post with this eulogy for the beatnik Krebs: "May the Bongos of God serenade you to your sleep."

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:37 AM | Permalink

Category: On The Telly

Transported To The Top

Heistant as we are to suggest such a pop-psychology explanation, we can only submit that Katrina weariness on the part of America's movegoers this weekend is responsible for its little spurt at the box office. "The Transporter 2" was this weekend's top movie, which was one of our Friday possibilities, and together, the top 5 movies' opening take accounted for about $64 million. (The weekend before, when "Brothers Grimm" couldn't even beat "The 40 Year-Old Virgin," which had already been out a week, the top 5 movies taken together made about $10 million less). Studio heads also are certainly paying attention to "Virgin," which has made about $72 million in its first three weeks, having made the second-most of this past weekend's releases and again beating a movie on its opening weekend. (That would be the superb "Constant Gardener," which has been getting a lot of accolades around the BlogPulse Simulated Water-Cooling Discussion Station.) Who knew a movie about Steve Carrell getting lucky for the first time would have such... ah... staying power?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:49 AM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

What Kind Of Harvest Will "Gardener" Have?

Director Fernando Meirelles' debut " City of God" was a masterpiece, a frenetic, vibrant underworld epic — and this weekend he's back with " The Constant Gardener," which is shaping up to be just as good. But in a world where gas costs $3.00 a gallon and the Gulf Coast lies in ruins, how well can a movie, even a well-made spy movie, do at the box office? The boys in our Prognostication Department aren't even touching this one, but consider these factors: 1. Neither the movie nor its actors are in BlogPulse's top links or key people today. 2. Msm reviews are strong. 3. It's up against a more conventional Hollywood flick, "The Transporter 2" — a sequel to boot — which in its first incarnation made about $9 million on its opening weekend in 2002. So who knows? We guessed " Brothers Grimm" would flop, but this one's a complete toss-up. Check us out next week for our standard postmortem — thanks to our contract with the United Brotherhood of Bloggers Local 136 we've got Monday and Tuesday off, so we'll see you Wednesday. Enjoy Labor Day, but with one request: use money you would've spent on beer to help out our friends down South.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:46 PM | Permalink

Category: Moving Pictures

Condi Likes To Push The Pram A Lot

Well. This sort of thing typically isn't our beat, so to speak — our eminent senior partner usually handles the affairs of state — but what celeb other than Catty Condi Rice made headlines this week? The gold-standard gossip blog Gawker reports in BlogPulse's no. 31 link today that the skelecatary of state was in the Big Apple shoppin' for shoes and takin' in a show while, down in the bayou, thousands of refugees grappled with floodwaters and utter devastation. We're certainly not in the business of visiting moralistic rage on our elected officials' penchant for leisure, but gosh, this is the blogosphere, after all: "I'm not sure if the word "insensitive" quite covers it, huh folks?" the Blog of 8 asks mordantly. "I swear, she's going to start screaming "Let them eat cake" in the streets of Manhattan at any moment," quips The Middle Earther. Sure, it was something of a P.R. gaffe for the Bush Administration, but how honored do you think these goofy rulers were that a real-life one showed up to watch their show?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:59 AM | Permalink

Category: Celebs

Hurricane Upsetness Relief Kit

Not since the subway bombings in London has the web been such a dour, depressing place — today BlogPulse is almost completely full of wrenching stories and photos about the bayou crisis. To be sure, they're important, as are frequent, generous visits to our no. 1 link today, but if you've been following the stories as closely as we have, you may be feeling a bit drained. So consider taking a mental respite from disaster and checking out The Onion, which has a newly redesigned site and newly opened archives, meaning now everybody can access stories as hysterical as this one. (America's Finest News Source also is represented a few times in our top news stories today.) We're reminded that even in trying times important social research continues, and that people still enjoy movies, and that few things can be more reliable and more understanding than an adorable pet. So, yes, things do look pretty rough, but in following the recovery efforts, try not to loose sight of all that's delicious in the world.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:23 AM | Permalink

Category: The vast electric lunchroom