Someone done hacked newtgingrich.com, which, as of this writing, redirects to (a phony?) freddiemac.com.
You know who would know how to do this? A historian.
As it happens, the site was not hacked. Gingrich didn’t own NewtGingrich.com—it belonged to Democratic Super PAC American Bridge. Which brings us to today’s Rule to Live By: If you’re running for president, you should probably consider buying your own URL. Or this will happen.
I think it’s auto-redirecting to a number of cheeky sites. When I clicked, I got:
* a Greek travelogue
* Tiffanys.com
* The Atlantic Wire
Heh.
Jessica Stillman, Do You Secretly Fear Creativity? (via incmagazine)
Creativity and out-of-the-box experiments (which can be risky) tend to go over best after someone else has been brave enough to forge ahead first.
According to a report by the Knight-Batten Award-winning nonprofit MAPLight, the 32 sponsors of the bill received just under $2 million in campaign contributions from the movie, music, and TV entertainment industries.
To put that in perspective, this weekend’s box office take for Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (you can’t make this stuff up) took in $23 million in just one weekend. So, for less than a tenth of the take from Alvin and the Chipmunks, our congress-critters have let themselves be influenced by a historically and unendingly regressive group of trade organizations.
By the way, if you calculate up the contributions the tech industry has made to these same 32 “lawmakers,” you’ll find the total to be $524,977 — one fourth the amount contributed by the entertainment industry.
Despite all the cries from tech experts throughout the United States, Congress is still doing its best to pass SOPA. Is there a correlation? Are our elected representatives paying four times more attention to the entertainment industry compared to us in technology? You be the judge.
tl;dr: A handful of congress-critters (Lamar Smith, Joe Baca, Howard Berman, Marsha Blackburn, Mary Bono Mack, John Carter, Steven Chabot, John Conyers, Jim Cooper, Elton Gallegly, Robert Goodlatte, Tim Holden, Peter King, John Larson, Adam Schiff, Brad Sherman, Lee Terry, Melvin Watt, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, John Barrow, Steve Scalise, Ben Luján, Judy Chu, William Owens, Karen Bass, Ted Deutch, Ben Quayle, Tim Griffin, Dennis Ross, Alan Nunnelee, Thomas Marino, and Mark Amodei.) took an average of $524,977 each from lobbyists to sponsor SOPA. Even though the people they represent overwhelmingly oppose SOPA and don’t want it to become law, they’re still doing everything they can to pass it, against the wishes of their constituents — who they supposedly represent — because it’s what they were paid off to do.
This is yet another reason we need a revolution in America. We need to burn it to the ground and start over, eliminating corporate money and lobbyists from the political process entirely.
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Q:
Is Banksy just a big brand these days? Do you even paint your own pictures?
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A:
It’s not supposed to be a brand, which is why people in advertising think it’s such a good one.
Via Josh Sternberg.
Money quotes:
“At Tumblr, there’s a recognition that Tumblr is better when you get better stuff on it,” said Mark Coatney, Tumblr’s media evangelist. “And whether that’s making young kids happy and engaged and doing meet ups or whether that means bringing in The Economist, in any of those things, the more good stuff that goes on Tumblr, the better it is for everyone on Tumblr.”
In India, the “missed call” as a means of communication and interaction has developed into a cultural and business norm.
Also:
Missed calls are being incorporated into mobile apps and services as a standard type of messaging like a text or an answered call itself. For example, an Indian cloud telephony service provider startup called KooKoo has been working with a Bangalore-based company to create an information market based around missed calls. If you want to know the latest weather, the latest Groupon-style deal, or the real-time bus schedule, you can send a missed call to the designated number and get an automated or manual voice call back with the answers you need.
(Via GigaOm)
Interesting.
Joshua Kopstein:
The fact that there was any debate over whether to call in experts on such a matter should tell you something about the integrity of Congress. It’d be one thing if legitimate technical questions directed at the bill’s supporters weren’t met with either silence or veiled accusations that the other side was sympathetic to piracy. Yet here we are with a group of elected officials openly supporting a bill they can’t explain, and having the temerity to suggest there’s no need to “bring in the nerds” to suss out what’s actually on it.
[…]
The chilling takeaway of this whole debacle was the irrefutable air of anti-intellectualism; that inescapable absurdity that we have members of Congress voting on a technical bill who do not posses any technical knowledge on the subject and do not find it imperative to recognize those who do.
This used to be funny, but now it’s really just terrifying. We’re dealing with legislation that will completely change the face of the internet and free speech for years to come. Yet here we are, still at the mercy of underachieving Congressional know-nothings that have more in common with the slacker students sitting in the back of math class than elected representatives. The fact that some of the people charged with representing us must be dragged kicking and screaming out of their complacency on such matters is no longer endearing — it’s just pathetic and sad.
![thedailywhat:
One More Thing To Worry About of the Day: Two men in Louisiana are believed to have died as a result of a brain-eating parasite they contracted after using a neti pot full of warm water to cleanse their sinuses.
While the cause of death is still under investigation, officials in the state have issued a warning to residents who use neti pots to boil their water in order to kill the parasite, Naegleria fowleri.
“If you are irrigating, flushing or rinsing your sinuses, for example, by using a Neti pot, use distilled, sterile or previously boiled water to make up the irrigation solution,” said Dr. Raoult Ratard, a Louisiana-based epidemiologist, who added that drinking tap water is perfectly safe as the amoeba does no harm when consumed orally.
“Naegleria fowleri infects people by entering the body through the nose,” says the Centers for Disease Control.
This typically occurs when people go swimming or diving in warm freshwater places, like lakes and rivers. In very rare instances, Naegleria infections may also occur when contaminated water from other sources (such as inadequately chlorinated swimming pool water or heated tap water <47°C) enters the nose. Once the ameba enters the brain, it causes a usually fatal infection called primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM).
[livescience / rawstory.]
Tealdeer for this PSA: boil your neti pot water before sluicing it through your sinus cavity. *shudder*](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwd10h5azu1qzpwi0o1_500.jpg)
One More Thing To Worry About of the Day: Two men in Louisiana are believed to have died as a result of a brain-eating parasite they contracted after using a neti pot full of warm water to cleanse their sinuses.
While the cause of death is still under investigation, officials in the state have issued a warning to residents who use neti pots to boil their water in order to kill the parasite, Naegleria fowleri.
“If you are irrigating, flushing or rinsing your sinuses, for example, by using a Neti pot, use distilled, sterile or previously boiled water to make up the irrigation solution,” said Dr. Raoult Ratard, a Louisiana-based epidemiologist, who added that drinking tap water is perfectly safe as the amoeba does no harm when consumed orally.
“Naegleria fowleri infects people by entering the body through the nose,” says the Centers for Disease Control.
This typically occurs when people go swimming or diving in warm freshwater places, like lakes and rivers. In very rare instances, Naegleria infections may also occur when contaminated water from other sources (such as inadequately chlorinated swimming pool water or heated tap water <47°C) enters the nose. Once the ameba enters the brain, it causes a usually fatal infection called primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM).
[livescience / rawstory.]
Tealdeer for this PSA: boil your neti pot water before sluicing it through your sinus cavity. *shudder*
