Another valuable resource courtesy of my Uncle Jay – Grolier’s “The American Presidency” page, a one-stop reference source for everything presidential, from elections to scandals.

The American Presidency

Fantastic!

From Reason’s Hit & Run we get this link to a German virtual museum featuring Donald Duck in art throughout the ages. Click on the “raums” at the bottom of the screen to see all the exhibits.

Die DUCKOMENTA – eine Ausstellung

My Uncle Jay sent me the link to this. It’s pretty friggin’ cool and you should watch it. Here’s the background:

Incredible, and worth your time (2 minutes) to watch….but READ first:

(note: Flash6 [free download] is required)

This is the New Honda Commercial in the U.K.Go to this website and watch this commercial….you won’t believe it! There are no computer graphics or digital tricks in the film. Everything you see really happened in real time exactly as you see it.

The film took 606 takes. On the first 605 takes, something, usually very minor, didn’t work. They would then have to set the whole thing up again. The crew spent weeks shooting night and day.

The film cost six million dollars and took three months to complete, including a full engineering the sequence. In addition, it’s two minutes long, so every time Honda airs the film on British television, they’re shelling out enough dough to keep any one of us in clover for a lifetime.

However, it is fast becoming the most down-loaded advertisement in Internet history. Honda executives figure the ad will soon pay for itself simply in “free” viewings (Honda isn’t paying a dime to have you watch this commercial!).

When the ad was pitched to senior executives, they signed off on it immediately without any hesitation-including the costs. There are six and only six handmade Accords in the world. To the horror of Honda engineers, the filmmakers disassembled two of them to make the film.

Everything you see in the film (aside from the walls, floor, ramp, and complete Honda Accord) are parts from those two cars. When the ad was shown to Honda executives, they liked it and commented on how amazing computer graphics have gotten. They fell off their chairs when they found out it was for real.

Oh! And about those funky windshield wipers. On the new Accords, the windshield wipers have water sensors and are designed to start doing their thing automatically as soon as they become wet. It looks a bit weird in the commercial.

Just one-second of computer generation is used to link the two halves when an exhaust pipe rolls across the floor. At one point, three tires roll uphill because inside they have been weighted with bolts and screws.

Enjoy!

www.daboyz.org/honda/

From the Federal Bureau of Investigation Home Page, the public is invited to hunt for terrorists.

Okay, I could be mistaken, but I think the one on the lower right is Condi Rice.

No, of course not. What really caught my attention was the word “BOLO.” The site informs us that BOLO is “BuSpeak for ‘Be On the Look Out.’” No indication what BuSpeak is, but it can’t be good.

The most excellent Adam Felber hits the highlights of the President’s speech for anyone who might have missed it or had trouble following it. My favorite part:

Part 3: Challenges in Iraq – Sure, some of our guys have died. Are you saying they died in vain!? Are you, punk? – Resistance: Small minority, not representative of Iraqi people. – Prisoner abuse: Small minority, not representative of American people. – Outrage at abuse: Small minority, not representative of Arabs/Europeans/etc. – That old sarin shell: Tip of the iceberg. Representative of vast weapons cache.

Fanatical Apathy: FA Exclusive: President Bush’s Notes for Tonight’s Speech

Crispin Sartwell on the five-paragraph essay.

What he said.

The Lobotomized Weasel School of Writing

A comment I left at Rhetorica: Press-Politics Journal: Story time…

I don’t have much to base this on other than a couple of things that have crossed my field of view lately – and perhaps you’ve already talked about this elsewhere – but it seems to me that, in addition to making up a narrative about particular events, members of the media also create a meta-narrative which defines the role they play individually as newsmakers.

I have contemplated this lately because of two things: First is this post by Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly. Drum takes Jonathan Alter to task for writing gentle critiques, laced with optimism, of the Bush administration, while outside of the confines of his Newsweek column, Alter is willing to espouse a much more vitriolic and pessimistic view of Bush, as he apparently did on Air America Radio.

The other item that struck me was a story related by Ariana Huffington during a speech in Seattle last month. Huffington described being on a talk show and describing Bush as a “dry drunk.” When she explained what she meant, her fellow panelists all gave non-committal looks, yet as soon as the show went to commercial they all piped up firmly in agreement.

We all make up a face for the public, one that allows us to get along in the world, yet if these anecdotes point to common behavior among journalists I find it a bit worrying. I don’t see how we can properly push discussion of critical issues forward if the media are unwilling to say what they really think. Of course reporting should be tempered with judgment and respect for all points of view, but if you’re writing only to fit a narrative, how does that contribute to informed discourse?

Perhaps this relates to your “Glory Bias.” The media are aware of the characters they play on the stage of world politics and, like good actors, will play those parts to the hilt, regardless of their personal views. The media are not writing from what is known, they are writing a script that fits an idealized world view. The effect is that no matter what the policies or who the policy makers, the public gets the same bland, recycled narrative. That is a dangerous state of affairs.

When I first read this headline, I thought, “They’re armed!?” Does it really get that dangerous in the stacks? I swear, I’ll never be late with a book again.

Then I took a second look. I gotta stop reading the news before coffee.

BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Liberians riot over disarmament

Well, ya learn something new every day. Printing to a non-network-capable printer cross-platform over a home network is possible after all, and you don’t need an expensive print server to do it. As long as I’m stuck with my Windows box, I may as well make it bend to my every whim. The following page explains how to use built-in but little-known features of Mac OS X and Win XP to make the printing happen.

How to Use a Printer Attached to a Windows XP Computer in Mac OS X

And, can I just say how much I love that just about anything and everything I need to know how to do, someone somewhere has written a tutorial and posted it on the net. God Bless the Internet.

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