Teen-Friendly Flash: Smoke Kills

Funny flash movie from Russia about how one thing leads to another. Lots of fun with tons of cultural allusions (it's not-so-factually-accurate, but it's fun, so who cares); rated PG-13.

New Orleans Atrocities May Not Have Occured

Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan said authorities had confirmed only four murders in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina - making it a typical week in a city that anticipated more than 200 homicides this year. Jordan expressed outrage at reports from many national media outlets that suffering flood victims had turned into mobs of unchecked savages.

Four weeks after the storm, few of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence. The piles of bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue personnel on the front lines say that although anarchy reigned at times and people suffered unimaginable indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened

(from The Times-Picayune).

The Register Google Maps Contest - spot the black helicopter, win t-shirt

Our recent spate of Google Earth and Google Maps probes - highlighting how the firm's tasty satellite imagery is threatening all decent Christian, democratic values with its hi-res imagery of military hardware - has provoked a mini-airburst of reader activity.

In fact, so great have been the number of recommendations for Israeli nuclear installations, Russian trailer-launched nukes and US stealth aircraft that we have decided to run a small competition to find the best that Google has to offer

(from The Register).

tags: google maps, contest, military

Video: FedEx Castaway

Funny in a I'm-Happy-That-Didn't-Happen-to-Me kind of way; rated R (because of the ads next to the video and the site it's on, the video itself is PG). [offline http://www.danerd.com/Show.php?vid=747]

Video: Target ad - Darth Vadar and Heidi Klum

Juxtaposition is your friend; rated R (because of the ads next to the video and the site it's on, the video itself is PG). [offline http://www.danerd.com/Show.php?vid=193 ]

"Pay" what?

Seth Godin brings up interesting points about what businesses pay, but I'd say this is even more true of individuals who, since they are singular, have less attention to spend. As the books The Attention Economy and The Experience Economy suggest with their theses, economics may be moving more toward what the consumer experiences and pays attention to in any situation. This may not be a utopia of consumer-centic life, but it makes things less about stuff and money, and more about action.

Google Map Plot of Rita (2005) Google Maps Hurricane Track Overlay

Excellent use of technolgoy to track the storm.