Hurray for a real journalist! (she refuses to cover Paris Hilton)

I give a lot of credit to this woman, Mika Brzezinski*. Her producer and her cohosts expect her to kick off the newscast with a Paris Hilton clip. She refuses, on camera, and (unsuccessfully) tries to light the story on fire. Eventually, she feeds the sheet of paper into a paper shredder. You go girl!

Finally, a journalist with some inner strength!

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* Mika is the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to Carter. He's widely known for his reasoned foreign policy insights, and also for giving hope to all of us awkwardly-named citizens.

I came across INSURGENCY , a soon-to-be-released computer game that lets you fight insurgents in the middle east. The visuals look GREAT. That being said, do we really need this? Far too many kids (some of them now soldiers) have already fallen in love with warfare and the terrorism narrative thanks to Counterstrike.

What's YOUR "News IQ" ?

http://pewresearch.org/newsiq/

It's a quick quiz about current events. At the end, you get to make demographic comparisons: How'd I do compared to other men? People age 18-35? High school grads? Kinda cool.

Pew research has more statistics than a person would ever want to know. For stats whores like me, it's great! ;)

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On an unrelated note, I found this iPhone video review from the new york times. I didn't know the ny times were doing much video, but this was a high-quality, entertaining clip, well-suited for the web. The print-era dinosaur! New York Times! Making web videos! I must say, I'm surprised and impressed.

Ron Paul: an interesting legal/moral issue

Watch this debate featuring Ron Paul (GOP Presidential candidate) and FOX News anchor Neil Cavuto. It has to do with the IRS and income tax, which Paul wants to eventually abolish from government (we didn't have it before 1913).



This is such an interesting debate. On the one hand, Cavuto makes a plausible point... What if everyone stopped paying taxes? The country would come to a standstill. I wouldn't have known how to answer that question. But Paul's answer is the answer that I didn't see: If everyone stopped paying, then politicians would start paying attention and change things.

I wonder how the government did get on without income tax back before 1913...

This guy is me! except better!

This guy is from a Latvian A cappella boyband called Cosmos. This is all stuff that I do, except way better. I was so relieved to find my clone out there in the performing world.

Google listening in via your PC microphone? No, thanks.

This scared me.

Google developing eavesdropping software

Google is developing a way to use your PC microphone to find out what TV show is on air in your room. The company's reason for doing this? If you're watching a basketball game on TV, Google can serve you better by identifying this viewing habit and then providing basketball-related advertisements in your browser.

When Google's suite of online applications and services first emerged, I was incredibly excited. How convenient! How revolutionary! But I'm starting to worry about what can happen if all this data gets into the wrong hands. Companies like Google forge ahead with new services so quickly that I wonder whether they have worked out all the security issues.

I'm having similar second thoughts about Facebook.

Rereading 1984 this summer.