Core Users and Threshold Paywalls

There has never been a mass market for good journalism in this country. What there used to be was a mass market for print ads, coupled with a mass market for a physical bundle of entertainment, opinion, and information; these were tied to an institutional agreement to subsidize a modicum of real journalism. In that mass market, the opinions of the politically engaged readers didn’t matter much, outnumbered as they were by people checking their horoscopes. This suited advertisers fine; they have always preferred a centrist and distanced political outlook, the better not to alienate potential customers. When the politically engaged readers are also the only paying readers, however, their opinion will come to matter more, and in ways that will sometimes contradict the advertisers’ desires for anodyne coverage

(from Clay Shirky).

Why the News is Scary

Our interconnected-ness can distort the world.

Now let's get a handle on what it really means to have a 1-in-6,500 or a 1-in-13,000 chance of dying. It's as if you lived on an island in the South Pacific with a population of 650. You make your living by swimming around in the azure waters around your idyllic paradise and spearing fish for dinner. Yum, yum. About once every ten years, a stray shark happens by and eats a swimmer. That's a 1-in-6,500 chance of any one person being eaten by a shark, just the same as the odds of dying in an automobile accident in the U.S. in 1992.

Also, about once every 20 years, two men get into an overheated argument over a fish or a woman and one of them kills the other with his spear. That's a 1-in-13,000 chance of being killed in an argument, just the same as the odds of being killed by someone else with a gun in the U.S. in 1992.

These are very sad events, and probably dinner-table conversation for quite a few days, but not the be-all and end-all of life. Fortunately, since you live on an isolated island, these events come and go, and life goes on.

But now imagine there are 392,000 of these islands all linked by television and INN (Island News Network). This brings the total population to about 254 million, less than the U.S. today. Every night, INN reports on the goriest of the 107 shark attacks and 54 spear deaths that day. Suddenly people's picture of the world is quite different. From a peaceful existence disrupted only by a tragedy every few years, you go to a fear-ridden hell filled with crime and terror.

Isn't this interesting? Nothing has changed except the addition of television. Yet now it feels like you're living in a dangerous world, not an idyllic paradise. Same number of shark attacks, same number of spear deaths. What happened?

(from about page 247 of Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme by Richard Brodie).

Huge Waves Slam Cruise Ship

Amateur video taken aboard a cruise ship shows a massive wave smashing windows and flooding parts of the vessel (rated R).

How To Report The News

Charlie Brooker explains how to report the news (rated PG).

Haiti Quake Devastates Port-au-Prince

Warning Graphic: Thousands are feared dead after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that buried some residents and toppled buildings (rated R).

Bicycle Throw Stops Thieves

A man throwing bicycle at thieves to stop them (rated PG-13).

Parazynski Descends Everest (flash/news)

Astronaut Scott Parazynski and other IMG climbers descend down the summit ridge on Mt. Everest; especially spectacular starting at 1 minute 10 seconds (rated PG).

President's Plane Scares NYC (news, flash)

The President's plane (Air Force One when he is on board) flew over New York City for a photo shoot, costing taxpayers $300,000 and frightening the nation's largest city (watch AP video or citizen video of the flyover below).

Canadian Meteor (flash)

Police dash cam of Meteor over Edmonton, Canada (rated PG).

Pet Hippo (flash)

A South African family has a hippo living in their house as a pet (rated PG).

Disney Blu-Ray Has 120 Pages of Legalese (news)

Sleeping Beauty is Disney's first classic animated film to make its way to Blu-ray, and it's loaded with legitimately compelling BD-Live extra features. Format War Central tried to check these out, but got smacked with a 57 page EULA followed by a 63 page Privacy Policy before they could view any of them

(from Gizmodo).

Android is Google's Cellphone

First cell phone running Google's mobile software looks something like Apple's iPhone and has a large touch screen, but it also has a trackball and a slide-out keyboard (rated PG).

China Reacts to Olympic Protests (news)

Chinese police removed protestors near the Olympics last week (rated PG).

Toronto Propane Explosion (flash)

Feels like Cloverfield and has multiple angles (rated PG).

China Limits Web Access During Olympics (news)

Since the Olympic Village press center opened Friday, reporters have been unable to access scores of Web pages - among them those that discuss Tibetan issues, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown on the protests in Tiananmen Square and the Web sites of Amnesty International, the BBC's Chinese-language news, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers known for their freewheeling political discourse.

The restrictions, which closely resemble the blocks that China places on the Internet for its citizens, undermine sweeping claims by Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee president, that China had agreed to provide full Web access for foreign news media during the Games. Mr. Rogge has long argued that one of the main benefits of awarding the Games to Beijing was that the event would make China more open

(from The New York Times).

$1.50 Cheesecake Factory Cheesecake Today (news)

The Cheesecake Factory is offering slices of cheesecake for $1.50 today to celebrate their 30th anniversary; it's for real.

LA quake catches Twitter user in ladyparts exam (news)

A 5.4 earthquake hit Tuesday while Verdell Wilson was having an exam in her gynecologist's Los Angeles office.

Given it was her first earthquake experience, Wilson did what comes naturally - she twittered it.

As soon as I got dressed, I twittered my experience from my cell phone, Wilson said. I usually twitter to 80 friends, but I now have 274 messages from people commenting on it.

(from CNET News, via valleywag.com).

FBI Turns 100 Tomorrow (news)

On July 26, 2008, the FBI will celebrate its 100th anniversary as a national security agency

(from fbi.gov). The have put materials online for use in publicizing FBI history and no permissions are needed; please just credit the FBI.

Nasa Poked Mars

The Mars lander poked Mars with a fork. You can see it for yourself (from JPL).

Hubble Detects Organic Molecule on an Extrasolar Planet

The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the first organic molecule on a planet that's not in our solar system. According to NASA, this breakthrough could be a major step toward discovering life on other planets. Scientists believe that the organic compound detected, methane, can be an integral part in the chemical reactions considered necessary to form life as we know it

(from News.com). Methane is the simplest organic molecule known, and finding it on a planet other than Earth, and outside our solar system, is likely a step closer to being able to find life on a planet very far away, if there is any.