A satellite image looked like two people looking over a bloody scene, and the Internet was all over it.
Speaking of the poor efficacy of crowdsourcing, The Atlantic covers the anatomy of a misinformation disaster from last week’s hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers, while the Washington Post has in-depth coverage of exactly how expert analysis is carried out.
The always-reasonable Bruce Schneier’s piece following the Boston Marathon Bombing is well-worth a read.
Don’t glorify the terrorists and their actions by calling this part of a “war on terror”. Wars involve two legitimate sides. There’s only one legitimate side here; those on the other are criminals. They should be found, arrested, and punished. But we need to be vigilant not to weaken the very freedoms and liberties that make this country great, meanwhile, just because we’re scared.
Empathize, but refuse to be terrorized. Instead, be indomitable — and support leaders who are as well. That’s how to defeat terrorists.
Keep calm and carry on.
The Atlantic is a generally well-respected news magazine, with a popular website to which this very site often links. On Monday, however, TheAtlantic.com published “sponsor content” which very clearly ran afoul of journalistic ethics. Specifically, the website featured a post extolling the many great accomplishments of Scientology in 2012, a screenshot of which can be seen below1:
How fake does that background look?
Readers around the world were taken aback by this page, in no small part due to Scientology’s extremely checkered history, particularly when it comes to the Internet. The content of the “post” was little more then a press release for Scientology wrapped up in the guise of an Atlantic article, and the indication of “Sponsor Content” was far from large. Far worse than the text of the post itself, however, was the comments section. Though they had an identical appearance to the comments seen on all other (non-sponsor) pages on TheAtlantic.com, these comments were heavily moderated, with only pro-Scientology comments being allowed. Simply put, the entire thing was an affront to everything for which journalism stands.
One can only hope that this does not represent a new trend in otherwise-quality sources of journalism. Thankfully, writer and editor Erin Kissane has done yeoman’s work in spelling out just why this whole thing is so deeply troubling. Her entire post is well worth reading, but here she is on the aforementioned comments:
But this all pales in comparison to the simple betrayal of the reader’s trust. When you fail to explicitly state that you’re blocking and deleting comments critical of your subject and your publication, you imply that you aren’t—especially when every other comments section on your website allows negative comments. You are presenting a tiny selection of comments by supporters of your client as the entire conversation. You are telling a lie
Of course, with a simple spoof, The Onion has nailed it as usual.
Footnotes:
The full content of that post is archived here, via the excellent Poynter.org. Unfortunately, it seems the comments were not captured. ↩
Back in July, The Atlantic ran a profile on New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, focusing on his unrequited love for Bruce Springsteen. Yesterday, in the spirit of bipartisanship, President Obama got Christie and Springsteen in touch. And all it took was a hurricane to make it happen.
I’m off to vote, but on this election day, I’m still hoping for an answer to this question from two years ago.
The Olympics have ended, which means we’ll all have to find something other than NBC’s atrocious coverage to gripe about. Before we move on to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi though, there are a few things from 2012 worth noting, particular with regards to the medals.
First up, the Olympic gold medals aren’t really gold. In fact, this year’s “golds” are 92.5% silver, 6.16% copper, and just 1.34% gold, and they’re worth around $650 or so. The silver medals can fairly be called silver, with the same 92.5% silver composition, along with 7.5% copper creating a value of around $375. The bronze medals, however, are perhaps the saddest of all. They’re 97% copper and the rest tin and zinc, which means they’re worth less than $5.
Small wonder, then, that the IOC was willing to replace Brazilian Judo competitor Felipe Kitadai’s bronze, after his country claimed he dented it in truly implausible fashion.
He wore the medal into the shower as a joke and then bit it because he didn’t want to get water on it and then the strap broke? Why not just say his dog ate it?
Of course, the prizes at the Olympics have a value well beyond their component metals. For instance, you can find a 1956 bronze medal for soccer for $12,000 on eBay. If that is indeed what the medal is for (its provenance does not seem well established), some Bulgarian will be 19090 Lev richer after the sale.
According to this post, medals have also been sold for charity.
Anthony Ervin sold his gold medal from the 2000 Olympics for $17,100, saying that it was just a symbol. He then donated the money to tsunami relief. Ukrainian boxing legend Wladimir Klitschko auctioned off his 1996 gold medal for $1 million for charity, but [it] was then returned to him by the winning bidder.
It’s rather amusing that Wladimir Klitschko is noted for his generosity here, yet the name of the even-more-generous benefactor who bought the medal and then returned it, is unknown.
Not all champions are quite so charitable, however. Some have blown all sorts of money on ridiculous things, like swimmer Ryan Lochte, seen here wearing his absurd $25,000 American flag grill.
As Lochte explained in an MTV article, “[f]or those who don’t know what a grill is, it’s basically a retainer filled with diamonds”. Grill designer1 Paul Wall was also quoted as saying “For mainstream America, grills went out of style, but for the hood, grills have always been in style. So grills have come around full circle, they back in style now.“
I don’t know if Wall has ever been to any part of what might reasonably be considered “mainstream America”, but grills were never in style, period. Of course, the same article indicated the grill cost “cost approximately $1,000 per tooth”, which leaves me wondering just how goddamned many upper teeth Ryan Lochte has.2
If you think there’s some chance you could ever win an Olympic medal, just know this: the speed of sound is too slow for Olympic athletes.
The electronic “pistol” of this summer’s Games was designed to overcome an astonishing problem: The speed of sound is too slow for Olympic athletes. That is to say, athletes far away from the starting pistol were delayed by the time it took for the sound to travel to them, and differences so tiny can matter in races in which the margins are so small.
You can read read the full story at The Atlantic.
Finally, here’s something only tangentially Olympics-related to close things out: a double-decker bus doing pushups.
Footnotes:
I cannot believe that’s a real job. ↩
Given Lochte’s swimming prowess, I suppose it’s possible he’s part-shark, and has multiple rows of teeth. Alternately, his grill could be for both the top and the bottom, and he may actually have an absurdly low number of teeth. Perhaps most likely, however, is that some or all of those involved just can’t do math. ↩
The Atlantic has an interesting piece on the blurred lines between reality and creation, as it pertains to televising the Olympic games. While placing microphones in unusual places is interesting, faking sounds entirely seems beyond the pale.
This article could perhaps be more accurately titled “Eleven of the Ways Consumers Are Hopeless at Math“. The Atlantic details the many ways consumers are manipulated.
This week marks the 75th anniversary of the Hindenburg disaster, a wreck perhaps best known for introducing the phrase “Oh, the humanity” to our lexicon. While chatting with my pal Marco a while back, I realized I knew very little of the real story. Having cured my own ignorance, I now seek to pass on some interesting notes.
Let’s start with the iconic image from the disaster. While many photos were taken as the Hindenburg burned, a picture believed to have been taken by Sam Shere1 has become the iconic shot:
The Most Famous Image of the Hindenburg Disaster
What you may well not know about this photo is what it conceals, specifically on the airship’s stern. Here’s what the Hindenburg looked like when it wasn’t on fire.
Ick.2
Suddenly the whole thing isn’t quite so sympathetic, is it? Granted, in 1937 when the Hindenburg was flying, the swastika was simply part of the then-new flag of Germany. In the time since then, however, that symbol has of course taken on much darker meaning. It’s difficult to imagine Shere’s photo being so widely known if the tail, and the swastika it contained, weren’t so perfectly obliterated.
Radio reporter Herbert Morrison was on the scene for WLS, along with his engineer Charlie Nehlsen. They were already recording when the disaster occurred, and Morrison’s vivid, emotional exposition is a classic of reporting. Here’s a partial quote3:
Oh, it’s flashing, it’s flashing terribly. It’s bursting into flames and falling on the mooring mast. Oh, this is one of the worst catastrophes – the flames are leaping 400, 500 feet into the sky. It’s a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen, the smoke and the flames. And now it’s crashing to the ground, not quite at the mooring mast. Oh, the humanity!
Morrison’s response is perhaps most striking in that it contains a great deal more decorum than we’d get nowadays. However, his response may also have been a bit excessive given the scope of the disaster. The Hindenburg had only 97 souls aboard, 36 passengers and 61 crew. Further, only 35 of those people onboard perished, along with one member of the ground crew. While no doubt a tragedy, just 36 lives were lost, and the majority of those onboard the airship survived.
To this day, the exact cause of the disaster is unknown. Shere’s photograph of the Zeppelin on fire always led me to believe the Hindenburg had collided with the mooring tower seen in the foreground, causing it to burst into flame. That’s not the case, however, as the airship caught fire while in the air and then crashed to the ground. The source of the fire is the subject of much debate, with many theories, and no definitive answers.
That’s all for today, but remember, the more you knowledge is powerfully half the battle. And if you’re interested to learn more about the Hindenburg, consult your local Wikipedia.
Footnotes:
Bill Jay has a well-researched history of the photograph and Shere on his site. ↩
The Atlantic recently collected a large number of Hindenburg photos, including this one. ↩
I’ve archived a longer recording for easy listening4. ↩
As if the many theories on the Hindenburg itself weren’t enough, there’s even speculation that the famous recording is sped up, and that Morrison’s voice was much deeper than is heard in that recording. ↩
If you take down your Christmas decorations and decide to recycle a broken set of lights, they might just wind up back in your life, as slipper soles under your feet. This article in The Atlantic tells the strange story of Shijiao, China, a city which recycles over 20 million tons of Christmas lights each year.
The Atlantic has a great piece on the riffs Chinese bloggers have made from a terribly doctored propaganda photo. It’s fascinating to see what may be the beginnings of a fight against an authoritarian government.
A subtle, but inspired, edit.
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