Because my back was turned, I only heard the thwack; my wife, Julie, actually saw the impact: Two sparrows the size of feathered eggs had slammed face first into our sliders not three feet from where I was sitting then and typing now, an hour later.
One flew off, apparently unscathed, but not before first checking on its companion, according to Julie.
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I had recently sent my list -- "10 reasons you shouldn't believe in UFOs" -- to Bad Astronomy blogger Phil Plait, because he had raised a valid objection to the way many in the mainstream media treat reports of unexplained sightings. Plait was gracious enough to post my list to his blog yesterday. He also added another great reason to be skeptical by noting that those who spend more time than perhaps any other group looking up into the sky rarely if ever report seeing UFOs.
(Update: You Diggers who find this stuff interesting might want to lend your support here.)
That's the headline on a story this morning about a shooting in a Boston neighborhood that unfortunately sees more than its share.
Maybe it's just me -- I've been writing headlines professionally for 30 years -- but I am struck by the fact that the Boston Globe headline writer could find nothing but the time of the crime to join "man shot" and "in Roxbury" as facts worthy of highlighting in the headline.
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A priceless story and photo on Flickr by Jeremy Brooks:
This guy was on the corner of Stockton and Columbus in San Francisco yelling at a homeless man. Anger, conflict, drama - sounds like a great shot to me. I crossed the street but was unable to get anything interesting, since I only had my 50mm lens on the camera and I was just too far away.
However, Mr. Angry Overreaction Man decided that he now had a problem with me. He confronted me, demanding my camera. Of course, I refused. He got in my face and started threatening me, telling me that I cannot take his photo without his permission. I told him that yes, in fact, I can. He then walked up and bumped into me, trying to act tough.
He threatened to call his lawyer if the photographer put his photo on the Internet.
Not only is the photo on the Internet, but it and the story behind it have been featured on the front pages of Reddit and Digg.
Makes me wish I had a photo of the guy who called my non-existent teenage daughters slutty.
Never mind polishing the resume. Work on the handshake. That's the conclusion of this research conducted by the University of Iowa's Department of the Blindingly Obvious.
"We've always heard that interviewers make up their mind about a person in the first two or three minutes of an interview, no matter how long the interview lasts," said study leader Greg Stewart, associate professor of management and organizations. "We found that the first impression begins with a handshake that sets the tone for the rest of the interview."
Other tips for job seekers gleaned from the study include:
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Early-to-mid afternoon, never on Monday: So says one blogger/programmer, whose statistical analysis we'll get to in a moment, even though I'm not entirely on board with its conclusions.
The mere act of writing is enough for some bloggers; if anyone should read and appreciate the work, all the better. For others, attention matters, as it can put food on the table (as with yours truly) or simply nourish the ego.
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The Consumerist this morning has an item about an outfit called TheCellShop.net apparently trying to buy itself a top-notch reputation on resellerratings.com.
The practice is not exactly uncommon, but isn't usually this bald-faced in that TheCellShop wasn't just asking for good grades but 100% perfect ones:
Dear Valued Customer,
If you have purchased from us before and feel we did a good job, please use the link below and rate us 10/10 and we will give you $5.00 in credit to use for anything on our website.
The pitch was even thoughtful enough to walk a customer through the process of fudging an invoice number needed to submit the review if they no longer had theirs handy.
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This is so wrong on so many different levels that it's difficult to keep count, although AdWeek gives it a shot in this report headlined "The True Story of a Bogus Blog."
It seems that Hunter College students were duped into believing that one of their own, a Heidi Cee, had been fleeced for $500 in reward money she posted by someone who pawned off a fake Coach handbag as the one holding great sentimental value that she had lost.
There is no Heidi Cee, no lost Coach bag, no sob story, no reward, no counterfeit. It was all an elaborate ruse that included phony MySpace and Facebook profiles, as well as a YouTube video.
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My 6-year-old son, Max, just scooped his journalist Dad: "The LEGO Star Wars videos are broken," he called from the office as I peck away here at the kitchen table.
Sure enough, YouTube appears to be down.
There are reports of the same nature coming from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and here in Massachusetts. Been going on for at least an hour, it would seem, maybe longer. Some people are having a hard time coping ... others are starting to freak.
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It was just like the Bermuda Triangle only instead of ships and planes lost at sea we're talking about cars and trucks unable to start in a department store parking lot. And, unlike the tall tales associated with the waters off Florida, this Sunshine State mystery has apparently been solved by ... of all would-be sleuths, a television news team.
Driver after driver would report being unable to open their keyless locks or start their cars once entering a parking lot in Clearwater. Tow truck operators were having a field day.
From the report on FOX 13 in Tampa Bay:
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Verizon this morning sent a press release offering "cell phone wildfire preparedness tips" to mark today's beginning of "brush clearance inspections" in Los Angeles. The advice struck me as rather obvious -- like TV meteorologists here in Massachusetts urging us not to drive during blizzards -- and I was gearing up to write something snarky when two thoughts dawned: I know nothing about wildfires ... and, I do know someone who is an expert on both wildfires and gadgets.
So I fired off an e-mail to Jim Forbes, a retired tech editor with ties to Network World who lives in Escondido, Calif., near San Diego. That area saw horrific wildfires last year that drove Forbes from his home and into a shelter from where he filed a number of enlightening "fireblogging" reports about how technology and networks fared during the crisis.
The bottom line of Jim's reply to me: "Verizon is on the right track here, Paul."
(Snark gun goes back in the holster.)
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The crime itself is horrific -- beyond comprehension in its cruelty -- so there's some hesitancy to complain about semantics. But this is a technology blog and the underlying issue -- society's tendency to blame modern-day bad deeds on technology instead of the bad-deed doers -- is an important one.
From this morning's New York Times:
The phone call begins with the cries of an anguished child calling for a parent: "Mama! Papa!" The youngster's sobs are quickly replaced by a husky male voice that means business.
"We've got your child," he says in rapid-fire Spanish, usually adding an expletive for effect and then rattling off a list of demands that might include cash or jewels dropped off at a certain street corner or a sizable deposit made to a local bank.
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A reportedly massive distributed denial of service attack has rendered dark a number of Web sites run by U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Fingers are being pointed at the government of Belarus.
While the organization's main site is available from here at the moment, this statement from Radio Free Europe says that its Web operations in Belarus remain affected.
From Associated Press:
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Yes, I know gas prices are worse in other parts of the United States and much worse in other parts of the globe, but I don't drive in those places.
A report out this morning shows that in Massachusetts the average price of a gallon has jumped 35 cents in just the past two weeks, topping off at a record $3.54 for self-serve (a price at which maybe this silly tank-filling robot does start to make sense).
On Sunday, prior to hauling the wife and kids up to New Hampshire for a family gathering, I pulled into my local filling station with the minivan showing just under a quarter of a tank.
Now, I like to consider myself relatively stoical when it comes to gas prices, having gone so far as to publicly ridicule the TV news types for their standup hysterics on the topic.
But $60 for three-quarters of a tank?
Let's just say I was gripping the wheel a little tighter than normal for a few miles.
On Sunday the Boston Globe had a little item discussing the practice of writing the words "Ask for ID" on the back of your credit card, essentially dismissing the practice as meaningless or worse. Over at the Consumerist, a number of voices beg to differ. Me? Not going to bother.
It was one of those impossibly cute moments as a parent when you've got to do your best not to chuckle because the child's question is so earnest ... and, in a way, perfectly understandable.
My son, Grant, is playing Little League baseball for the first time this spring and his team, the Mariners, has been practicing diligently for weeks now in preparation for their May 3 season opener. "I can't wait to play in a real game," he's said over and over and over again.
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"Everybody thinks of it as retro, as nostalgia. But it's not. These are sophisticated games. Pinball is timeless." Yet only one company still makes the machines. This morning the New York Times takes a look inside Stern Pinball.
EMI tried to argue that MP3tunes, an online service for storing and backing up digital music, should turn over to it everything its customers had stored. A judge told EMI to go pound sand. The CEO of MP3tunes explains it all here on his blog. Discussions at Slashdot and The Consumerist.
The critics have an obvious self-interest, of course: They didn't get the contract. But they also appear to have a point.
In February, Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) landed a $28 million IT-administration contract from the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC), a non-profit organization that runs e-Rate, a controversial $2.25-billion a year program that subsidizes school and library networks. The e-Rate program is funded by consumers of telecommunications services through fees paid by carriers to the perpetually debated Universal Service Fund: In other words, we all pay for this, which is why it matters.
According to a terrific story on the brouhaha in eSchoolNews, those complaining about the contract are miffed that SAIC was awarded the internal USAC administration contract despite also being a provider of outside e-Rate services, most prominently a $51 million pact with the Los Angeles school system. Access to the entire story requires free registration, so I've pulled a few of the choicer passages here. From the article:
Critics note that, as the information systems administrator for the program, SAIC will have unfettered access to electronic information about all E-rate applicants and other service providers -- inside information that could help the company land even more E-rate business with schools.
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Microsoft and Novell announced yesterday that they are intensifying their joint effort to persuade Chinese IT executives to pay for their software, specifically through the much maligned marketing relationship that finds Redmond beating its deafening drum for the SUSE Linux Enterprise distribution controlled by its onetime bitter, now compliant rival.
The press release issued by the two companies focuses of a trio of Chinese companies -- People's Insurance, The Dairy Farm Company and Dawning Information Industry -- that have agreed to pony up for SUSE support through Microsoft.
"It's very encouraging to see that our business and technical collaboration continues to resonate with customers around the globe," said Ron Hovsepian, president and CEO of Novell. "Both Novell and Microsoft are committed to furthering this alliance, and we couldn't be happier with the results to date. PICC, Dairy Farm and Dawning exemplify the benefits our strengthened alliance provides for the international IT community."
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