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Internet
October 14, 2005
The Origin of the Noodles
Our Noodly Prophet has touched us again! As reported last month in Gelf, the modern-day prophet Bobby Henderson preaches the good word of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. But this religious craze—with its humble beginnings as a letter mailed to the Kansas State School Board—has more grounding than you might expect. As the BBC reported last week, noodles dating back 4,000 years have been unearthed in Lajia, China. When contacted regarding this discovery, Henderson tells Gelf his take on the unearthed evidence:
Internet
October 11, 2005
Googling Campaign Donations
When relatively unknown figures make big news, journalists rush to find out more about them, usually by trying to arrange interviews with them and their close associates. Reporters can also try to dig up paperwork on those individuals, using the Freedom of Information Act (Wikipedia) for federal documents, and similar open records requests at the state level. For example, the New York Times ran an article about Harriet Miers after reporters uncovered fawning letters from Miers to then-governor Bush in which she repeatedly calls him "cool." But what can those of us not blessed with the resources to comb through piles of government documents do?
Science
October 7, 2005
Of Redheads and Anesthesia
A lot of the medical studies that get published—even in respected journals—have faulty conclusions that are later proved to be misinformed or flat-out wrong. John Ioannidis, an associate professor at a Greek medical school, wrote a compelling paper about this phenomenon a couple of months ago in the Journal of the Public Library of Science. (As an example, Gelf found faults with a study that blames Hollywood for normalizing poor public health behaviors.) Gelf emailed anesthesiologist Joe Stirt about a recent posting on the subject he wrote for a section of his blog he calls "Behind the Medspeak."
Internet
October 6, 2005
Hiding from the Crawlers
As far as Gelf can tell, the word 'unGoogleable' first entered our lexicon in late November of 2002, when technology writer Clive Thomson asked readers of his blog to nominate a term for people whose names do not appear on the world's most popular search engine. Of the terms proposed, 'unGoogleable' seems to have taken off, but as a recent article in Wired News shows, the meaning has changed. Instead of simply referring to people whose names do not appear in Google (which could include most of the world's population), the term now seems to be reserved for those people who actively try to stay off of the search engine grid. Gelf emailed the writer, Ann Harrison, to ask some follow-up questions about the piece.
Internet
August 2, 2005
The Truth about the Transsexual Shaving Gel
Last week, the folks over at BoingBoing linked to a fascinating photo set that seemed reveal the true nature of a travel-sized can of Gillette Series shaving gel. The can's label started to peel and revealed an underlying sticker for Gillette for Women Satin Care gel. (Here are the before and after shots.) Had Gillette simply repackaged a poorly-selling female product for the men's market?
Internet
July 27, 2005
The Cowbell Meme
I don't really like the word "meme." It has so many definitions now that Richard Dawkins himself is probably confused. But I do like to see funny stuff on the internet, like this video of a martial-arts exhibition gone awry. (It's the third one down.) As it turns out, appreciating funny-stuff-on-the-internet is a meme, or at least individual funny stuffs are memes. (Like I said, it's hard to go wrong with that word.) At any rate, now that the World Wide Web is in its second decade of existence, it's cool to see which memes have caught on. One that took a particularly interesting route is the phrase "More Cowbell," which I wrote about in this month's issue of Wired Magazine.
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