Category: Musings

In the wake of Colbert’s stunning roast of the President and the US Press on Saturday I came across this Google video called ‘911 Loose Change‘. This simple but effective documentary lists out the well documented discrepancies around 9/11.

For those of you who didn’t pick up on Stephen Colbert’s amazing roast at the White House Press association dinner on Saturday you can watch it at Google video, officially approved by C-span – here you go.

What’s even more astounding about this is the almost complete absence of commentary in the traditional media. Most of the newspapers only mentioned that Bush came out and mocked his own pronunciation of ‘nuclear’ with a Bush impersonator “and then Steven Colbert did a nice little thing.” The web media have not been so un-impressed though, or should that be un-censored? And if you hurry along you can see Colbert’s own report on himself on Monday’s show at Comedy Central. Although given their earlier censoring of Mohammed from South Park it’s kind of surprising they haven’t just pulled the show for fear of reprisals… good job Comedy Central on showing some backbone. Finally. And Mr Colbert, we salute you!

Apparently the huge fire that started this morning in Greenpoint is still raging on. Luckily noone seems to have been hurt in a set of buildings that apparently only contained “lumps of rope and tied up bales of clothing”. The owner, who was proposing converting the disused warehouses to a park and shopping center, must be very happy – except that he had suggested using a lot of the existing infra-structure for the new construction.

Arson investigations are, as usual, underway as the fire blazes.

Diving High

The enRoute issue with my diving photos has just gone live online (and in air) – go check them out.

Pressing the Issue

Stephen Colbert of the amazing Colbert Report was one of the speaker’s at the Whitehouse Press Association dinner – you can watch his speech here, and at the same time give him top ups for doing that all in front of the President. Of course he may not of realised Colbert was joking…

On a darker note though: you have to wonder if, in some way, all this humour around serious issues makes us treat it all as noise rather than something to raise a ruckus about. On the one hand humour makes these issues more accessible, and Colbert’s representation of himself as a republican supporter, who draws attention to the failings of the government through apparent pro-government reports, must definately raise the sensitivity of the average viewer to double meanings. On the other if you end up finding the people who caused thousands of people to die laughable then do they seem less dangerous? In my childhood we used to have Spitting Image in the UK which, at its best, was highly cutting and satirical (and at it’s worst just a bunch of distorted latex with hamster jokes) – I’m not sure what effect that had on popular opinion, but they definately liked Thatcher and Reagan for all the material they provided.

Impeachy Keen

In my usual oblivious state I wandered onto the fair isle of Manhattan today to take advantage of tax free shopping day, and walked straight off the (for once working) L right into the April 29th March for Peace, Justice and Democracy at Union Square.

Luckily I had my camera with me, hopefully capturing some of the spirit of positive marching for peace that was going on from so many people. Kind of reminded me of halloween night parade except possibly less political.

Another book in the vein of the Tipping Point – converting academic economic knowledge into easily digestible (and readable) tidbits. However where Tipping Point had an overall goal, explaining how things become popular and then not, Freakonomics has no such unifying goal – something the authors happily point out at the start. What you get instead is a series of interesting economic analyses of how what is perceived as common sense is often just not true, and how seemingly unrelated events affect each other. For example the authors assert that by allowing abortions legally in the 80s the crime trend of the 90s was reversed from its expected huge upward trend, based on the simple logic that a potential mother who would normally get an abortion would do so because they believed they could not bring up the child properly. All the observations are interesting and give a good sense of how to understand and not mis-interpret statistics, but overall I was left with the feeling I’d eaten a beautiful but unsatisfying meal and was now gagging for a McDonalds. Read it to have handy observations for parties but don’t expect your world to change.

Draw your own house

Another genius aquisition from the kids at Gooogle – Sketchup is a 3D modelling tool that lets you quickly and easily draw 3D models. Duh. But what makes this really cool is that it integrates with Google Earth! I guess Google is hoping that people will start uploading accurate models of their own houses and save them the bother of paying people to do it. Genius.

though they died they live on

Just came across myDeathSpace, a site that collects the mySpace profiles of people who’ve died. There’s something morbidly fascinating about this, and very sad as well, as mySpace’s demographic is very young so for there to be so much death is a reminder that you never know what happens next.

I’ve also discovered the route to rapid web popularity – see Axl Rose in a club and take a really bad picture of him. Go figure!

Welcome to the Disco

At last night’s hot and sweaty MisShapes we were wandering around trying to find somewhere to stuff our soaking jackets when I walked right into the brick wall arm of a bouncer. Yep. For some reason MisShapes had aquired a velvet rope area replete with ‘killing’ looks bouncer types. What gives I thought to myself?

Shortly afterwards down at the coat check the reason is revealed: none other than Axl Rose and entourage was behind the rope. Huh? Yep, Axl Rose. So wandering back upstairs I shot some really bad long distance photos to find the truth – apparently that is Axl Rose, looking slightly less emaciated than he used to. Who’d have thunked it.