] NASA engineers are now almost certain that the space
] shuttle Columbia was destroyed when super-hot ionised air
] leaked through a puncture somewhere in the craft.

New Scientist

] Remember that wonderful day when Bugs Bunny hugged you at
] Disneyland? A new study shows just how easy it can be to
] induce false memories in the minds of some people.

I've read about these studies before. The human memory is extremely unreliable, and this has significant implications in court cases. We use statute limitations for this, but there may be more to it then time...

Yahoo! News - Study: False Memories Easily Implanted

quoted:
====
Stella Liebeck of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was in the passenger seat of her grandson's car when she was severely burned by McDonald's coffee in February 1992. Liebeck ordered coffee that was served in a Styrofoam cup at the drive-through window of a local McDonald's.

After receiving the order, the grandson pulled his car forward and stopped momentarily so that Liebeck
could add cream and sugar to her coffee. (Critics of civil justice, who have pounced on this case, often charge that Liebeck was driving the car or that the vehicle was in motion when she spilled the coffee; neither is true.) Liebeck placed the cup between her knees and attempted to remove the plastic lid from the cup. As she removed the lid, the entire contents of the cup spilled into her lap.

The sweatpants Liebeck was wearing absorbed the coffee and held it next to her skin. A vascular surgeon determined that Liebeck suffered full thickness burns (or third-degree burns) over 6 percent of her body, including her inner thighs, perineum, buttocks, and genital and groin areas. She was hospitalized for eight days, during which time she underwent skin grafting. Liebeck, who also underwent debridement treatments, sought to settle her claim for $20,000, but McDonald's refused.

During discovery, McDonald's produced documents showing more than 700 claims by people burned by its coffee between 1982 and 1992. Some claims involved third-degree burns substantially similar to Liebeck's. This history documented McDonald's knowledge about the extent and nature of this hazard.

FACT SHEET: MCDONALD'S SCALDING COFFEE CASE

] Millions took to the streets of Europe to protest against
] a rush to war with Iraq in huge demonstrations later
] repeated in the United States.

This is the big story today. Millions oppose war in the streets. The largest protests in decades. CNN has lots of coverage including some nice pictures. The first protests a few months ago attracted a few thousand. We're now well into the millions by anyone's count. If the growth rate of these rallys continues you'll see hundreds of millions in two or three rounds.

I want to reinterate that it is worth while listening the recording of Tony Blair getting cross-examined by the BBC that I posted here a few days ago. No one rereced it. It does not provide a compelling case for war. It does, however, put things in perspective. You can find it by searching my MemeStream for "Blair examined"

CNN.com - Huge Europe protests move to U.S. - Feb. 15, 2003

] These weapons are made to cause panic, terror, and to
] demoralize. If we don't run around like sheep they won't
] use this stuff after they find out it's no fun. The
] government is going nuts over this stuff because they
] have to protect every inch of America. You've only gotta
] protect yourself, and by doing that, you help the
] country.

This could be done better, but its interesting nonetheless. Its very matter of fact. People don't fear what they understand.

What to do if you are attacked with Chemical, Biological and Nuke weapons.

I hate posting /. stuff to here, because I don't want memestreams to become just another slash, but this was a link from there that I found interesting. One funny thing...

Japanese Manga consumers purchase thick, black and white, cheap digests to read on a long train commute and dispose of them when they're done. American comic consumers purchase expensive, thin, full-color pamphlets to read on the toilet and then save them in boxes forever.

Ok, so who's been spying on me?

Anyway, I think the most important thing to note here is that the US comics industry was in the position that the current Japanese Manga industry is in today - but for the US it was 50 years ago. In 1954, Dr. Fredric Wertham published a book and went before Congress to talk about the ill effects of comics on America's youth. At that point, single issues of some comics exceeded the million copies per month mark. That's more than the New York Times has ever had its circulation. Then Congress threatened the industry - either regulate yourself, or we'll regulate you. Half the publishers closed their doors on the comic book industry. Even though this happened, though, the 50s changed America's culture to one of sitting on our asses in front of the tv, so while one could say the decrease would have happened, anyway - just as the Japanese are facing a decline due to video games - it did have a heyday of its own.

The article/interview also makes a good point in that Manga is a disposable media while here in the states comics are mainly a collectible media. Many of us consumers have been discussing the fact that comics are falling further and further into the niche of collectors only and that there is rarely a mainstream product that comes along to attract new consumers. I don't think the answer is in creating disposable media, but in exposing others to the great stories available in comics. The article agrees and mentions the need to lower prices and achieving an economy of scale, but doesn't point out the geographic advantage that Japan has - it's much smaller. Distribution adds an incredible amount to the price of comics here in the US, especially since the industry has switched to common carriers (UPS, FedEx). Until a few years ago, Diamond Distributors ran trucks across the US, but it's just so friggin' huge that it cost too much - even more than having 100 lbs. of comic books shipped via UPS to you each week.

Anyway, I could go on about this forever. Many of you who know me IRL can attest to my total comic book geekiness.

Post Script: OK, I'm going to post this information as a followup since at dinner I got some looks of "your numbers are beer induced hypotheticals." In reality, my numbers really are way off... they're low.

From The Comic Book In America, by Mike Benton, published by Taylor Press, First Printing.

p. 41: By 1946, comic-book reading was an established habit - some might say an addicti... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Why does Manga succeed where US comics fail?

hehehehe

pilots_01

I read Fromm after reading your signature on SE2600 years ago. Fromm is the bomb. This book is required reading if you want to understand the transformation of relatively "sane society's" into fascist states. Speaking of which, if you enjoy "Escape From Freedon", you will also like "The Sane Society", also by Fromm. It outlines what a healthy society looks like.

Amazon.com: Books: Escape from Freedom

The links kicked my ass. The Air force lab projects, like the geo-whatever... oh fuck I'm tired. Go look though. Pretty SOM visualization, and things of that nature.

Perspective: The first 'e-war'

Please read and rerecommend. I want this to get as much coverage on the site as possible, and I want feedback.

Currently the privacy policy says that your reputation tables are private. This reflects the fact that I think what you read ought to be your own business.

However, what you recommend is not exactly the same as what you read, and this is reflected in the reputation data. When you recommend something you are telling the site that you like it. Telling the site implies that you don't mind the site knowing. In fact, you want the site to know. If I do a little digging I can see who you got an article from, directly. This is a bit of an oversite. Something that can be "matured" out of the code. Thats one direction to go in from here. Keep the reputation data as private as possible.

However, if I monitor the site, and I see a certain person recommend an article, and then you rerecommend it, I'll know where you got it from. I do this often enough, in an automated fashion, for long enough, and I'll get a pretty good understanding of who you are reading. The site can't protect you from this. By recommending articles you are making them public. By making them public, you are giving up some of your privacy.

The only way to truely protect the fact that you are reading someone's recommendations is to never recommend their recommendations. They will still show up in the agent, but this information, I think, is private and ought to stay that way.

However, and as I've hopefully illustrated, the recommendations are public in a very real way. What I want to ask the site is if the recommendation DATA ought to be public too.

The reason I want to ask you this is because Rattle has assembled another visualization. This visualization is interactive. You can see a graph of the people who are highly connected to you, click on their names, and see a graph of the people who are highly connected to them, and so on.

Right now this data is amusing but not all that rich. There are about 15 people who regularily post to the site, and they hold all the reputation capital. Everyone's graphs look pretty similar, because we are all really recommending content from the same 15 people, even those of us who don't often recommend content and who aren't often read.

This is going to change.

As this site scales, clusters are going to form. I think the one that currently exists will always exist, but there will be others. People will begin to have different perspectives on the data, based on their interests. Thats what this site is designed to do.

And as those different communities of interest begin to form, the maps of the reputation data rattle is developing will become richer, and you will be able to surf through MemeStreams via the reputation system, hopping from person to person in search of interesting ideas.

I think this is a very compelling feature set, and I want to enable it. But, I've promised to keep your reputation data private. All of it. This promise may not have been very well thought out, but I did make it. So I can only break it with your permission, and that is what I am asking for.

I want to publish your recommendation related reputation data. Your clickthrough related reputation data will stay private. What is published is the number of times you have rerecommended articles from another person on the site, in the form of a graph.

Its similar to the graph on the "Visualizing Memestreams" page, but it is labelled, and interactive.

An important privacy question