From an article about a collection of businesses located near Riker's Island, this tidbit: the inmates refer to the prison-issued orange sneakers as Air Giulianis. Also:

The food truck man, Mr. Samolis, said he often gives free food to inmates who are released from Rikers with no money.

"They get released at 6 in the morning with nothing but a $2 MetroCard the jail gives them," he said. "So I'll give them a coffee and an egg sandwich, on credit. I know they're never going to pay it back, but I feel bad for them."

(thx, jake)

(link)

Author: SwEetMeAt21 Keywords: Video 2 Added: December 2, 2008

The carmaker set out plans for a family of hybrid petrol-electric and fully electric vehicles as part of a blueprint to accelerate the restructuring of its loss-making North American car and truck business

Police are searching for two gunman who fatally shot an armored truck guard at a suburban Miami mall.

Every Piece of Information Is a Latent Community
December 2, 2008

Clay Shirky’s keynote talk to open the 2008 Online Information Conference

“group action just got easier” = 5-word summary of his book Here Comes Everybody

the ways the media environment is being transformed now that consumers are first-class participants
the overlap of all of the patterns in one environment is the big transition we’re all living through and trying to figure out

showed a picture of a truck in a parking lot at sunset on Flickr - HDR photography (technique, not just software)
don’t need to see what’s going on in the comments to understand what’s going on there
people start inserting photographs into the comments, which turn to a technical discussion
a user group is assembled on the fly
used to be gather then share - used to have to identify the people who would be interested first and then organize/share
Flickr reversed the pattern - share and then gather
they didn’t identify themselves before they saw this page
Flickr had the infrastructure to let these people create a community on the fly
once the users created this, it wasn’t evanescent anymore - it was permanent now

shows that every URL is a latent community - potential value that people looking at it might find value in it
not all will see community grow, but the potential is there
can have many more communities of practice at much lower cost because the old distinction between conversation and publication is no longer true
why pick? Flickr gets more value out of not having to decide in advance what a piece of information might be used for
even on the Flickr picture, other conversations can take place in parallel

Flickr gives users the tools to add value

there are large patterns we see (not every service on the internet has these, but some large ones do)
- share
- collaboration
- collective action
in this order, because how much does the individual have to give up to get value?
takes more effort the higher you go on the ladder

showed Bronze Beta - the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan club site
back when WB sold the rights to Buffy to UPN, UPN didn’t want the community group online, so they shut down the server (UPN: we don’t want it because we’re in the television business)
the users, however, wanted the community to continue, so they raised money and commissioned a new service to move to
they explicitly decided they didn’t want any “features” - no ratings, rankings, etc.
they just wanted to type in text, and now it’s just a giant scroll of conversation
the community is still going

these new social technologies are the first time where later generations of technology have fewer features than older versions
the simplicity in the tools has to do with a mindshift of the computer as a box to a door
for individually-oriented software, a long list of features is good (Photoshop, Word, etc.)
but when we want to collaborate, fewer features is better; we need the same mental model of what’s going on
the complexity is in the user, not the software
in Bronze Beta, the complexity is in the very long list of rules created by the users (”no colored fonts”)

showed the Wikipedia entry for Doctor Who - it’s been edited almost 9,000 times by more than 3,000 people
the breadth and depth of participation is quite extraordinary

“hive mind” - people that use this term almost always don’t understand what’s happening
these folks aren’t part of a community in any sense because most have only edited it once or twice
someone, though, has edited it thousands of times; every article he’s touched on Wikipedia is about Doctor Who
there is no coherent average behavior, although the commonest behavior is one edit, one user
we’re used to counting noses - how many people watched my TV show, read my book, etc.
but here, there is no one common user behavior; instead, there’s this tiny group of fantastically engaged users
imagine going to your boss and trying to convince them to plan this
it’s not everybody pitching in like a barn-raising; it’s not collaboration
it’s like a small, self-appointed editorial board

collaboration involves real synchronization
it’s not just you share and I share
collective action is the most difficult pattern to get going because the whole group has to commit to it and either stand or fall together

two examples - HSBC

they recruited college students with penalty-free checking accounts
proved to be popular, but then they changed their minds and added a penalty
gave users 30 days to get their money out
thought they had the information and coordination advantage
in the summer, the students should have been outclassed by HSBC’s tools
but they didn’t count on Facebook
a user starts a page, which goes viral
for the first time, college students are dispersed but active
they started sharing documentation - good banks to move to and how
once one person solved the problem, the information was available to everyone
goodbye to HSBC’s information advantage
then they organized a real-world protest, but it never happened because by then HSBC had caved in
HSBC backed down because the students were upset AND coordinated

“thinking is for doing”
there is an analagous transformation that publishing for acting
the newspaper could only report HSBC had changed the deal, while Facebook could actually encourage users to do something
publishing and action is no longer a choice - can do both
now have a response without managerial control

example two - flash mobs
they were promoted in “emails by bill”
wanted to prove that hipsters would do anything you told them to
hits belarus - eating ice cream in Minsk Square
the police showed up - the group became a problem (not the group eating ice cream)
it had been made illegal to act in concert - to be a group
when they entered the square, they weren’t a group
the livejournal page led to action - it’s a full cycle; they didn’t just bring their ice cream - they also brought their cameras because they wanted to document the state’s response

in less than 3 years, flash mobs went from being something to mock a certain class to political protest
we tend to underestimate the potential of these tools because they tend to look frivolous
we don’t understand their potential
anything that allows group formation is political
so much of the meaning of the tool is in what the user does with it once it becomes social

what is all of this doing to the media landscape as a whole?
we’re living in the middle of the largest increase in the social expression of the human race

1 - printing press/movable type
2 - point-to-point communications (telegraph, telephone)
3 - capturing sound and video
4 - broadcasting spectrum (radio, television)

curious asymmetry to them - the ones that are good at creating conversations are not good at creating groups and vice versa
there was no medium for creating two-way conversation among groups (many-to-many) until now
there is no longer a distinction between consumer and producer
giving someone the ability to receive email means they can send email
the audience grows and becomes varied
the 5GB generated this year will be at the edges

the internet is also the mode of carriage for all previous media as it’s digitized
it’s also adding social dimensions to all existing media

to produce something for a lot of people to watch, read, etc., I have to take on a big burden for production costs
if I’m wrong, I lose a lot of money
in an era of gutenberg economics, I decide which books are good and I publish them
all following media have had the same economics problem
filter and then publish becomes the model - see what’s good and then publish it

now, anyone can publish to anyone with a marginal cost of zero
it’s the first medium we’ve had that works with post-gutenberg economics
anyone can say anything to anybody and they frequently do
it’s too much content to filter in advance, and there’s no economic reason to do so

the question for a 15-year old today is not “why publish” but “why not publish?”
many of the huge businesses built on the back of the internet have at the core of their business model a post-publication filter
get to the good stuff after the fact, not before

the users are now well and truly engaged in the publishing environment

the user as publisher model:
1- Gnarly Kitty
a fashion-obsessed Thai student who posted about a fishing game
why would anyone publish that?
because she’s not talking to us - she’s talking to her friends
we’re not used to seeing things that are public but not in the public
then a coup happens in Thailand, and the government tells the media not to report about it
but Gnarly Kitty publishes the first picture of tanks in front of the parliament house and she is now the go-to source
people are now flooding in and she becomes a global resource
then she posts about a phone she’d like to own
the users get upset and want more about the coup
she responds with a post that it’s *her* blog and it’s about her life

zuckerman: journalism has gone from being a profession to being an activity
she committed acts of journalism; she just did it while she was a concerned citizen
not connected to self-definition
this model is new
she doesn’t need the money to be a global publisher
she gets thousands of new readers and she tells them if you don’t like her content, then leave

2 - Howard Forums
early blog about cell phones
can”t answer people’s questions about their phones, so he says hey, you all talk to each other and he puts up a forum
is up to a billion pages this year because the expert users are solving problems for the new users
tech support reps from phone companies will refer callers to the Forums
they have access to “reality,” which the engineers don’t
the kinds of questions that can only be answered when A has part of the answer and B has the other part and they collaborate
users creating detailed technical documentation
it’s not all tech all the time, because users have gotten to know one another and they hang out here together (they post pictures of their pets)
as a publisher, it’s easy to see that you’d get rid of the pictures of cats
but that misunderstands what is going on here
that both of these things are coming from the same web
they’re not doing one in spite of the other, but rather because of it
it’s the fact that the users care about each other is what gets them to do all of this
communities have to be for the members
the satisfaction comes from membership and recognition from the communnity
hosting that isn’t amenable to crowdsourcing solutions
communities need to get to know each other and share all kinds of things in order to do the technical documentation

3- showed a still shot from Joss Whedon’s new show, Dollhouse
fan experience is that his shows get canceled, so they’ve already created a site to save it from cancellation before it even airs
in the past, they’ve organized protests
they don’t trust the marketing department to explain to people why they should watch it, so they do this themselves
there is no aspect of the information industry that users aren’t crawling into, including the marketing department
users don’t always do this well
the pattern is usually extract the signal after the fact
they do always do it differently, though
grappling with that difference is the big question we have to deal with now

one of the big changes is that anybody in any part of the information business is now part of the entire information business
no longer i work in television and you work movies - it doesn’t matter anymore
no longer that we produce the content and then the users go off and talk about it somewhere else
creating community and arranging action are now part of production
not every organization should get into every part of the business, but publishers can now be conveners of community
can allow amateurs in to extract value - that’s what we’re grappling with
it’s not a move from A to B but from one to many
the landscape itself is expanding

when the printing press came out, it wasn’t that people looked at it and said, oh now we need a printing industry and this is what it will look like
little things turn out to be big deals
making books smaller meant more people could carry them (creation of octavo size)
if it’s hard for a thief to get a book out the door, that’s a feature
that little intuition sparked a revolution

everybody is everywhere and all the walls have fallen
everybody can see each part of the business; it’s all horizen and no barriers
what’s the next good thing to do?
the answer is most certainly to explore
experimenting our way into the future is what will show us what works
there is no roadmap for the period we are entering

q: what is the role of the professional librarian
a: liz lawley says libraries are “happiness engines;” the whole of the world that deals with traditional publishing is now dealing with the split between lovers of the page and lovers of the book; it’s easy to see the role of librarians as hosts of books, but if you see sociable libraries as happiness engines, then the question becomes what set of things done in libraries now would increase the happiness; one of the obvious answers is “collaborative filtering” - helping the user find the next thing to read, watch, etc.; libraries have typically serviced users one-to-one, but there are groups of people coming together and talking with each other in the library; ideas make people happy, so what resources do we have to extend that; one of the big resources we have is that we have “convening power” - it’s unmatched in civil society; the cross-section that goes into a library is quite extraordinary; it doesn’t have to be one-to-one, and there is a great deal of potential in experimenting with many-to-many; even in the corporate world, libraries can join up people who should be talking with each other; IBM example - “DogEar” plus a one-way mirror; allowed researchers to tag URLs, although they’re not sharing the tags back to the world; two geographically-dispersed research groups there discovered each other because they were tagging the same resources, clearly with the same ideas; they actually called each other and then pooled their efforts; this would never have happened from the top-down; “research is a famously upside-down problem” so there’s no way one person at the top could have said these two groups in two different countries will work together; when the users can see what each other think (don’t apply the ontology in advance), people with similar world-views can be connected; connecting users because they’re looking at the same information

q: if we spent our lives organizing information as a community, how do we tackle all of the new information being created?
a: you can’t; you only have 2 chances to actively organize things - moment of creation and moment of use; at creation, can try to add metadata, but at use stage, you can involve the user and have them modify or verify the metadata; the problem becomes a little bit of effort gives you a high degree of leverage, so have to find the right point where this happens; there’s no way to apply the metaphor of the shelf to cyberspace; they have to do with automatic extraction, inviting users to upgrade metadata at the point of use

q: what does this tell us about human nature that we might apply to things we do?
a: that is THE question, in part because it’s the one we need to answer but can’t; used to think that the world was changing because technology was changing, but now thinks we’re just not used to explaining human behavior without being paid or other extrinsic motivation; we used to think the market was the public sphere and the household was the private one, but that’s changing; Wikipedia makes no sense at all; what critics have missed is that human nature contains an enormous amount of Gnarly Kitty motivation;public and private sphere are existing side by side, can’t be explained purely by the market

q: the idea of expertise as opposed to popularity
a: if your skull is going to be cut open, you want it to be done by a trained professional; the reverse is that you don’t need to buy music only in the presence of a record store professional;
the closer things to come to life and death and one-off decisions with no reversability, the more we want expertise; the places where there is an obvious right answer that is independent from the social view; changes here are coming about in the end of the spectrum where what people believe changes what is true; are SUVs a truck or a car? that decision was socialized, which got us to a better answer than letting Washington decide; there’s no general “get ouf jail free” card for experts; very often, the really interesting hybrids are where professionals and amateurs come together; in most but not all cases in the information industry, it’s headed to hybridization because it’s not the critical one-off decision; how many different strategies can we apply to see where the cost versus value curve is

q: should we be worried about efficiency? should we be worried about experts? one of the problems of community is that there are maturity issues that affect newbies (keep learning or does everyone become an “expert”)
a: the social origin of good ideas; putting experts and amateurs together improves both groups because when the expert has to teach, he learns; it’s the conversation between the two turns out to be more powerful than pure amateur aggregation or pure expert knowledge; these systems work not because they’re efficient because they’re effective after many fruitless tries at low cost; resources don’t get tied up in the failures because it’s easier to identify them; we’ve all been in that meeting where we realize we’ve expended more energy talking about the idea than we would have if we’d just implemented it; most Flickr pictures don’t have comments but it doesn’t cost Flickr anything; that’s why these new systems look so strange to us

clay shirky, community, media, online2008, onlineinfo2008, user generated content

p Plink. Plink. Tink. One billion dollars of up-front investment and it all comes down to this: a slow but steady trickle of milky white pebbles dropping from a funnel into an acrylic jar. The jar is locked inside a glass case that's inside a vault that's inside the high-security Red Area of a prefab aluminum building on the Canadian tundra. Every 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year, miners for the South African company De Beers blast 3,150 tons of rock mdash; enough to fill 80 trucks mdash; from under the earth near this aluminum building and feed it into crushers, scrubbers, sifters, and x-ray machines. It's a lot of effort for a little, but the little is a lot: the equivalent of two coffee mugs a day full of rough diamonds. /p p Running a diamond mine in the Arctic is a mind-boggling undertaking. "This is a camp in the middle of nowhere," says Peter Mooney, manager of the processing plant at Snap Lake, "and a bloody horrible winter's day in Africa is the nicest summer day here. The real problem with diamonds isn't even their scarcity," he says. "It's that getting them takes a lot of science and engineering and lots and lots of money." /p !-- start article photo -- div id="embed"div id="pic" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_air_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_air_f.jpg" alt="" //a div class="zoom" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_air_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/zoom.gif" //a /div div id="caption" An aerial view shows the Snap Lake facility. br /emPhoto: Courtesy DeBeers/em /div/div/div !-- close pic -- p Fipke doesn't work for De Beers mdash; they're competitors mdash; but the Snap Lake project, just like the ones at Ekati and Diavik, is part of the new era that Fipke created. The only way in is by air on company charter flights, except for six to 10 weeks in winter when ice road truckers mdash; just like on the History Channel show mdash; cart in fuel, mining machines and haul trucks, dormitories and parts for generators, conveyor belts, explosives. /p p On a 4,000-foot gravel runway, commuter planes and 737s trade approaches and takeoffs with C-130 Hercules flights full of cargo. After my ATR threads its way to the ground, a yellow school bus picks me up and drops me at a snaking series of linked prefab trailers containing sleeping quarters, offices, and a cafeteria. I fill out forms. I agree to be searched at any time. I agree not pick up any rocks from the ground, even the smallest pebble. Hundreds of closed-circuit cameras watch my every move. /p p Snap Lake is unusual mdash; instead of blowing straight up to the surface, the magma followed a crooked path through fissures in the surrounding granite. Snap Lake's kimberlite is a 9-foot-thick, 2.5-by-1.6-mile seam angling slightly downward. It's also about 200 feet under a lake that's frozen most of the year. So all of Snap Lake's mining is underground mdash; a cold, wet, black world of rising and falling tunnels constantly leaking water from the lake above. /p !-- start article photo -- div id="embed"div id="pic" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_miners_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_miners_f.jpg" alt="" //a div class="zoom" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_miners_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/zoom.gif" //a /div div id="caption"Snap Lake miners work under the lake. br /emPhoto: Andrew Hetherington/em/div/div/div !-- close pic -- p The operation consumes 25,000 gallons of fuel a day mdash; and the work never stops. Miners drill holes in rock faces, insert explosives, and blow out over 1,500 tons of gray kimberlite per blast, twice a day. Trucks carry the ore to a large bin where it's stored. Then it's sent to a crusher that feeds the rock onto a mile-long conveyor belt that carries it to the surface, to the Blue Area, specifically a 5-story building of more crushers and sifters and shakers and screens and heavy liquid cyclone separators that pick out all the heavy ore. It's a roaring maze of steel grates and 60-foot staircases. /p p Eventually the conveyors pass into a more secure building-within-the-building, the Red Area. It's accessible only via a room the size of a closet; when the door behind me locks, cameras confirm that I'm alone. A green light tells me to proceed through zigzagging rooms that would be difficult to, say, kick a diamond through. /p p The ore passes down through another tower of sorters mdash; x-rays illuminate diamonds. A secondary (and secret) process uses lasers to further refine the stream. At the end of the line, past an 8-inch-thick steel door and a set of steel bars, is the vault itself, a small room with half a dozen cameras and a big, rectangular glass box shot with glove-lined holes, like an incubator for premature infants. Stones mdash; some the size of pin heads, others the size of gum balls mdash; drop into a jar. Sometimes five minutes pass with nary a gem, and then two or three tumble out at once. Over the course of a year, there will be 1.2 million carats. Some are opaque; some are as clear as glass. Of the 430 men and women working here, no more than 60 will ever see this vault mdash; or any diamonds. Ever. I slip my hands through the holes and into gloves, and pick up the biggest rock I see, a perfect 5-carat octahedral crystal three times older than the human species, formed during the age of the mastodons. A chunk of pure carbon, beautiful and banal. I ask how much it's worth. "Not allowed to say," Mooney says. "Put it this way: That's a hell of a lot of diamonds." /p !-- start article photo -- div id="embed"div id="pic" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_trucks_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_trucks_f.jpg" alt="" //a div class="zoom" a href="#" onclick="launchWindow('/imageviewer/?imagePath=/images/article/magazine/1612/ff_diamonds_sb_trucks_f.jpgimageCaption=imageCredit=','1092','827')" title=""img src="http://www.wired.com/images/zoom.gif" //a /div div id="caption" Dumptrucks loaded with ore exit Snap Lake mine. br /emPhoto: Andrew Hetherington/em /div/div/div !-- close pic -- p Diamond jewelry has never moved me. But suddenly, holding this stone, I can't help it. I want one. The gears in my mind whir. And it's as if Mooney can hear them. "People get very clever," he says, "and very determined. We haven't had any theft here yet, but we check the gloves for holes every day." I gently place the stone back in the pile. /p p Exiting requires an additional turn into a room with an x-ray machine and a glass wall. Under the gaze of a man who says, "Don't worry, I've seen it all," I strip to my underpants, place my clothes and shoes and socks through the x-ray machine. Open my mouth. Show behind my ears. Sit in a chair and show the bottoms of my feet. Stand and run my fingers under the band of my underpants. There's only one hiding place left, which happily they don't check. I'm cleared and allowed to dress. /pbr style="clear: both;"/ a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:d011f686205262c6951fc33685b9bb46:a8pvoY0DF4w6AiLCDaPAxt4vcEJtvr5wJESgvBmhZizGdIwUswHdfQNGT0WMrv4ojgA5yCeDKy7W3Q%3D%3D'img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:1735cba2b691243040d240890798faea:5NRFEhJtG%2F%2F8WaCMCuPS%2F4RjNqb89d3oWFzueVglFjn1wsAbytlpHHl8XzVTjtNg41BQd3NxQV9w'img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:dc8729a9cfdd0557ca41dce4be2e075c:2CxMVa%2F06wsEm0VSsYE%2FCE1SkSz%2BXA1VhsMeuyIIPLpXdjBq3K9BXbQVcJ4ZOEwec2vUcRvFaVES'img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:70ffb3fccb1fa0cdf92173d47ab87d7e:2M67At%2B4WlXawKkc8v5qSMyJqs1W%2BmVDtVF1w7XerfxYF1r%2Fc7E49pH6Pz6uWaHwwDnYF5Rlqbzi'img border='0' title='Add to Google' alt='Add to Google' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/google.png'//a br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=6a832ad5392e6b0ea888adebe9845e82p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=6a832ad5392e6b0ea888adebe9845e82p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=6a832ad5392e6b0ea888adebe9845e82" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/ pa href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?a=1DnDqv"img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?i=1DnDqv" border="0"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~4/472101284" height="1" width="1"/

Amping up for this year's "* Films to Die For", After Dark Films has started a full-fledged marketing attack unloading tons of materials for all eight films. Last week we gave you a truck load of information, with posters and stills, now a new batch has hit the web. Over at the festival's official website, you'll find a dozen stills from Adam Gierasch's Autopsy, while the dudes over at Dread Central scored three pics from the Aussie thriller Dying Breed, which stars SAW co-creator Leigh Whannell. You can click any title above for more information, or check out our official After Dark Horrorfest III page for details on all eight films. The festivals kicks off January 9, 2009.

Or will it get too cold?

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/29653?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Israel+blocks+aid+ship+bound+for+Gazach=World+newsc3=The+Guardianc4=Israel+and+the+Palestinian+territories+%28News%29%2CLibya+%28News%29%2CWorld+newsc5=Not+commercially+usefulc6=Rory+McCarthyc7=2008_12_02c8=1127125c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Israel+and+the+Palestinian+territoriesc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FIsrael+and+the+Palestinian+territories" width="1" height="1" //divpThe Israeli navy yesterday prevented a Libyan ship carrying 3,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid for Palestinians from docking in Gaza./ppThe voyage of the Marwa, which carried food, blankets and powdered milk, was intended to challenge Israel's economic blockade on the Gaza Strip, which has tightened in recent weeks. But as the ship approached Gazan waters at dawn an Israeli naval ship ordered it to turn back. The Marwa reportedly docked at al-Arish, an Egyptian port in the northern Sinai just south of Gaza./ppAn Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Andy David, said: "This is a policy we have had for a long time: if somebody wants to bring in humanitarian aid they can do it through the border with Egypt or the Israeli passages into Gaza."/ppHowever, since the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas won parliamentary elections nearly three years ago Israel has imposed ever-tighter restrictions on Gaza. Since last summer, when Hamas took full control of Gaza, those restrictions have become an economic blockade, while Egypt has also kept its one crossing into Gaza at Rafah largely closed. As a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militant groups in Gaza has unravelled in the past month, so the blockade has again been tightened. Deliveries of food, aid and fuel have been prevented on most days and journalists have been barred from entering./ppPalestinians had gathered at the Gaza City harbour to meet the ship. Five trucks waited to offload the aid. "The civilian boat carrying only humanitarian supplies and food was turned away by an Israeli warship," said Jamal Khoudary, a Palestinian MP and head of Gaza's Popular Committee against the Siege./ppSome reports suggested the aid might be unloaded in Egypt and delivered by road, although until now Egypt has been reluctant to turn the Rafah crossing with Gaza into a regular route for deliveries to the impoverished territory./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/israelandthepalestinians"Israel and the Palestinian territories/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/libya"Libya/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/27jJgSu6m48U-0SsWiTrlGIRXyQ/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/27jJgSu6m48U-0SsWiTrlGIRXyQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- A man who rammed his truck into a woman's vehicle on a highway early Friday told authorities he crashed into her while going more than 100 mph because God told him "she needed to be taken off the road."...

Monster trucks look even cooler when they are miniaturized via tilt-shift videography. Metal Heart by Keith Loutit (Via Telstar Logistics) Previously: Keith Loutit's time-lapse, tilt-shift films - Boing Boing Flip camera tilt-shift visual experiments - Boing Boing Fake tilt shift photography tutorial - Boing Boing Cranford Rose Garden tilt-shift timelapse - Boing Boing Fake tilt-shift model airplane aerial photography - Boing Boing Tinselman uses fake tilt shift to make micro-Disneyland photos ... Photographer takes photos of real scenes that look like miniature ... Fake tilt shift movie - Boing Boing...br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=a191e2a1781c9b424dec14d042285f4fp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=a191e2a1781c9b424dec14d042285f4fp=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=a191e2a1781c9b424dec14d042285f4f" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

a href="http://adage.com/mediaworks/article.php?article_id=132913"img src="http://adage.com/images/bin/image/rightrail/120108-DoMedia.jpg?1228162827" width="255" height="191" alt="" /br //aBATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) -- The long tail of alternative media has been dogged by a big problem: The market for such things as skywriters, street teams or health-club TV is so fragmented that assembling a media plan by them is daunting. Now, DoMedia is looking to solve the problem by creating a single online marketplace that pulls together offerings that include mobile, truck ads, building projections, truck and car wraps, digital out-of-home and pizza-box ads into a single searchable website, DoMedia.com. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/VKXQo-My7LGdnBow2wjXKwlcjFQ/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/VKXQo-My7LGdnBow2wjXKwlcjFQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/adage/complete/~4/sSCZepfVoRI" height="1" width="1"/

Monster trucks look even cooler when they are miniaturized via tilt-shift videography. Metal Heart by Keith Loutit (Via Telstar Logistics) Previously: Keith Loutit's time-lapse, tilt-shift films - Boing Boing Flip camera tilt-shift visual experiments - Boing Boing Fake tilt shift photography tutorial - Boing Boing Cranford Rose Garden tilt-shift timelapse - Boing Boing Fake tilt-shift model airplane aerial photography - Boing Boing Tinselman uses fake tilt shift to make micro-Disneyland photos ... Photographer takes photos of real scenes that look like miniature ... Fake tilt shift movie - Boing Boing...br style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=a191e2a1781c9b424dec14d042285f4fp=1img alt= style=border: 0; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=a191e2a1781c9b424dec14d042285f4fp=1//a img src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=a191e2a1781c9b424dec14d042285f4f style=display: none; border=0 height=1 width=1 alt=/

With the launch of multiple DSLRs including today's Nikon D3X, camera manufacturers are ready and waiting for you to buy their wares. But should you? DSLRs are perceived by beginners as the pick-up trucks of the camera world. Why buy something with high wheels and a tailgate when you are perfectly happy with a comfortable minivan or sedan? But DSLRs aren't quite they heavy duty machines we make them out to be. Point-and-shoots, while small and comfortable, are severely limited in terms of shooting ability. Manufacturers stuff all sorts of image improving features into these things including red-eye reduction, night mode, and even child mode for fast-moving rugrats. But these are crutches designed to reduce the effect of slow image sensors and wonky lenses that have to fold in on themselves to stay compact.

In recent days, The Washington Times and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review have published op-eds by members of the Heritage Foundation containing the false claim that union autoworkers earn $75 an hour in wages and benefits. In a November 28 Washington Times op-ed, Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner claimed that "UAW [United Auto Workers] employees earn three times as much as an average blue collar worker makes -- $75 per hour on average in wages and benefits." Similarly, in a November 25 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review op-ed, Heritage fellow James Sherk claimed that "UAW workers are among the world's most affluent. They take home an eye-popping $75 an hour in wages and benefits -- triple what the average private-sector worker earns." In fact, autoworkers do not take home an average of $75 per hour. According to General Motors, these claims are based not only on current workers' hourly wages and benefits, such as health care and retirement, but also retirement and health-care benefits that U.S. automakers are providing for current retirees, as Media Matters for America has repeatedly noted.

Heritage senior research fellow James Gattuso also recently asserted without challenge on MSNBC's Hardball that "there's no reason that a UAW worker should get total compensation of $70 an hour when the average American only makes about $25 an hour in total compensation." Numerous media figures have also advanced the false claim that autoworkers earn $70 or more per hour in wages and benefits, some using it to blame auto workers for the domestic auto industry's financial straits.

From Feulner's November 28 op-ed in The Washington Times:

For starters, the Big Three need an affordable labor deal. Across the decades, Detroit's powerful United Auto Workers union has negotiated unsustainable pay packages for its members. UAW employees earn three times as much as an average blue collar worker makes -- $75 per hour on average in wages and benefits. That's also about $25 per hour more than American employees of Japanese automakers earn.

Health care for retirees and current workers costs the company $4.6 billion in 2007. That, in turn, adds $1,200 to the cost of each new GM vehicle produced in the United States.

A bailout would mean taxpayers -- many of whom make far less than the average autoworker -- would be stuck paying for these unaffordable pay packages. Under bankruptcy protection, though, automakers could hammer out better deals, allowing them to close unnecessary plants, trim their work forces and reduce pay and benefit packages to bring them in line with those offered by other heavy manufacturing.

To succeed in the long haul, the automakers must also be able to shut down makes and models that don't sell very well, and also close underperforming car dealerships.

From Sherk's November 25 op-ed in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Many factors have combined to bring the Big Three down, including poor management, too many brands, poor product design and too many costly dealerships. But the main reason they're on the verge of bankruptcy can be summed up in three letters: UAW.

UAW workers are among the world's most affluent. They take home an eye-popping $75 an hour in wages and benefits -- triple what the average private-sector worker earns. They get seven weeks' paid vacation and holidays.

UAW workers retire after 30 years on a generous pension. If they don't qualify for Social Security benefits because they're in their 50s, they get special bonus payments until they do.

[...]

Management also made its share of mistakes. Focusing on gas-guzzling SUVs was foolish in hindsight. But even that was brought on by the UAW. At $75 an hour the Big Three couldn't compete in the small and midsize car market. So they concentrated on making the trucks and SUVs on which they could still make a profit. Until oil hit $140 a barrel.

This is pretty cool... For a primer on tilt-shift photography (or specifically tilt-shift miniature faking), go here.

"This is one of the most amazing pieces of eye candy I've found in a long time: A demolition derby—full of monster trucks, scrap cars, and even a giant Godzilla—filmed with tilt-shift photography, then put together in a time-lapse video. The final effect is extraordinary."

If you can make it to the 1:45 mark, when the demolition derby cars are actually in play, without laughing out loud, you have no soul. Remember - this is actually stop-motion footage of real cars and people; they're not toys or models.

Link

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