Hi. I'm Newley Purnell. I cover technology and business for The Wall Street Journal, based in Hong Kong. I use this site to share my stories and often blog about the books I'm reading, tech trends, sports, travel, and our dog Ginger. For updates, get my weekly email newsletter.
BBC:
Online encyclopaedia Wikipedia has tightened its submission rules following a complaint.
Prominent journalist John Seigenthaler described as “false and malicious” an entry on Wikipedia implicating him in the Kennedy assassinations.
When he phoned Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, he was told there was no way of finding out who wrote the entry.
Wikipedia has since removed the entry and now requires users to register before they can create articles.
I saw this poster in my Metro car on the way to work this morning:
It’s from Friends of the Earth, an environmental group that “champions a healthy and just world.”
FOE’s claim — that global warming is responsible for the devastating storms of the past season — is a massive oversimplification of what we know about climate change and hurricanes. The actual working climate scientists say that it just ain’t that simple:
Due to this semi-random nature of weather, it is wrong to blame any one event such as Katrina specifically on global warming – and of course it is just as indefensible to blame Katrina on a long-term natural cycle in the climate.
In fairness, they go on to note that:
…In the same manner, while we cannot draw firm conclusions about one single hurricane, we can draw some conclusions about hurricanes more generally. In particular, the available scientific evidence indicates that it is likely that global warming will make – and possibly already is making – those hurricanes that form more destructive than they otherwise would have been.
So it may well be that global warming is exacerbating hurricanes, and it does, indeed, appear that sea surface temperatures, which fuel hurricanes, are on the rise. But in the aftermath of Katrina, it’s in poor taste for FOE to claim, as a matter of fact, that “warmer seas mean more killer storms.”
Global climate change is happening. We need to burn fewer fossil fuels. We need to do a better job of conserving energy. And we need to do whatever it takes to make New Orleans safe from future storms (including implementing a real, workable evacuation plan). But the situation is exponentially more nuanced, from a scientific perspective, than FOE makes it out to be.
UPDATE: Don’t miss my friend Ben Preston’s response to my post. Ben’s a climate scientist himself (now with CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research in Australia, formerly at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change) and he points out some mixed messages FOE’s sending with this oversimplified poster.
Wow:
I have enclosed below a series of pictures to show how the US government starting around 1994 went back in time with remote sensing and holographic radiation longitudinal emf and sound wave holographic energy beams as shown in the movie time tunnel to place different computer generated holographic archetypes of different Nordic, Celtic, and Aryan faces and other attributes around my body as if I were a microcosm of the center of the universe…
(Via memepool.)
“Expats” is a soon-to-be-released movie about Western foreigners living in Pusuan, South Korea. The film will star Chris Klein (pictured). Here’s the plot summary.
(Via Ni Howdy.)
BBC:
A Taiwanese geologist has said the huge weight of the world’s tallest building, Taipei 101, could be responsible for triggering a rise in seismic activity.
For my most recent Gridskipper dispatch, I covered last night’s launch party for a new DC guidebook.
Reader Katie C. sends along a link to this “shalom dog costume” available at (oddly enough) SantaSuits.com, which features a line of costumes for pooches.
The site contains lots of weird stuff, including an extensive selection of biblical character costumes. Perhaps my favorite is the deluxe Jesus costume (scroll down).
But the tackiness doesn’t stop there! Check out the absolute worst angel costume ever created (second one down).
The WSJ‘s Jeffrey Trachtenberg tells us that book publishers are now building buzz long before new titles are published, just as Hollywood studios aim to generate pre-release excitement so their movies “open big.”
There’s another parallel here that Trachtenberg neglects. Namely, that when it comes down to it, publishers — just like Hollywood studio honchos — never truly know which of their offerings will become runaway hits.
As William Goldman* explains in his fantastically entertaining film industry expose, “Adventures in the Screen Trade,” it’s all essentially a crap shoot. Seemingly sure-thing, can’t miss, big-budget, star-laden pictures sometimes bomb, and sleeper indie films are occasionally and inexplicably big hits — there is no universal recipe for mass success.
The book business works a lot like that, too. So I’m not surprised to see the New York publishing mandarins co-opting the techniques of their entertainment industry counterparts on the left coast.
*Goldman, incidentally, is one of my favorite writers ever. If you haven’t read him, get thee to a book merchant and make a purchase STAT.
Rob at Cockeyed.com presents: “The Price of a Gallon” of 47 liquids. It’s no surprise that gasoline’s way cheaper than stuff like milk, coffee mate, Evian water, Budweiser beer, etc. — of course, when was the last time you bought 15 or 20 gallons of that stuff?
If you ask me, though, a gallon of Kikkoman soy sauce for $15.33 is a bargain at twice the price. I love that stuff. Perhaps the most overpriced item on Rob’s list, though, is patchouli oil, which goes for $806.40 a gallon. C’mon.
If I had $38,858,507.46 laying around, however, you better believe I’d be picking up a gallon of scorpion venom. That would be awesome. If anyone ever gave me any lip, I’d totally be like, yo, you better shut the hell up or I’m gonna go get my gallon of scorpion venum and dump it all over you! They would shut up fast, I bet.
Beer for dogs. What more is there to say?