MSNBC’s Super Tuesday Hype Inferno
This past Tuesday was “Super Tuesday” in the United States. Both the Republican and Democratic political parties held primary elections in 22 states to help decide which candidate would represent their parties in the upcoming November U.S. Presidential election.
On Tuesday’s episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Jon jokingly wondered “What’s bigger than Super Tuesday?” These are what the American cable news networks came up with and Jon Stewart’s reactions.
- Chris Matthews: “Super Duper Tuesday”
Jon Stewart: “That’s kind of retarded… infantile.” - CNN: “Super Fat Tuesday”
Jon Stewart: “Well that’s certainly…. dope.” - Fox News: “Tsunami Tuesday”
Jon Stewart: “Yes I believe the plethora of state primaries is reminiscent of the sudden and horrific deaths of a quarter million people living on the Indian Ocean.” - MSNBC: “Monster Super Tuesday”
Jon Stewart: [Jon needs a fire extinguisher to hold off MSNBC’s hype inferno. Just watch the clip. It’s great.]
Dateline To Catch A Predator - Taser Accident
Call me crazy, but when a group of Police officers approach me holding guns and start yelling “Get down on the ground,” I’m gonna listen. This guy… not so much.
Watch this clip first from the popular American TV series “Dateline: To Catch A Predator” (dateline.msnbc.com), then read my explanation. I’ve analyzed this YouTube clip frame by frame and watched it like 50 times. I think I’ve got it all figured out.
If the embedded video below doesn’t load, you can watch the clip here.
The perp unknowingly shows up at a “Dateline: To Catch A Predator” sting house looking for a sexual encounter with an underage teen he met in a chat room. After Chris Hansen pops out and basically tells him that he’s on national TV, the guy tries to put on his shoes and walk out the front door to freedom. But the cops are outside.
Wall Street Journal Hearts Digg
This morning The Wall Street Journal announced a new program that will enable its users to submit WSJ.com articles to Digg.com. This will also allow Digg users to view content previously only available to WSJ.com subscribers. Coincidentally, this news comes around the same time Rupert Murdoch suggested that he might take down the Wall Street Journal’s online subscription pay wall.
“The Wall Street Journal Online provides in-depth reporting, commentary and analysis on the most important economic and political issues of the day, and Digg users are enthusiastic consumers of news and information,” said Daniel Bernard, general manager of The Wall Street Journal Online. “We’re excited to partner with Digg to offer our users a way to share Journal articles directly from our site, as well as expose new audiences to our content on Digg.”
So what does this mean? Every article on The Wall Street Journal Online will now include a “Digg This” icon that enables users to Digg the article. Once someone Diggs a WSJ.com article, it will then be accessible to Digg.com users.
With approximately 25 million visitors a month, Digg has become the leading destination for people to discover and share the best content on the Web. From the largest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best content as voted on by the community.
Perhaps you’ll want to Digg this?
BeSocial: digg story | methodshop
How Do You Get to Antarctica?
Looking for an extreme vacation? How about Antarctica? In addition to being one of the coldest, driest and windiest places on earth (average temp is -56º F), it’s also one of the most difficult to get to.
The first step is to reach Christchurch, New Zealand. Christchurch is one of the the closest airstrips and only a 5 hour flight to McMurdo Station in Antarctica. But just because you’ve booked a flight to Antarctica, it doesn’t actually mean your plane will actually land. Due to the extreme weather conditions, it takes several attempts before pulling off a successful landing. That means, if your pilot doesn’t feel comfortable with the weather conditions, you have to fly back to Christchurch and try again another day. 10-12 hours down the drain. They call this the “Antarctica Boomerang.”
I was watching the Today Show the other day and they are trying to send Ann Curry to Antarctica for a segment called The Ends of the Earth. She’s currently at Christchurch in queue for the “Boomerang.” The Ends of the Earth airs on the Today Show Nov. 5th and 6th, but who knows if Ann will actually make it to Antarctica in time for the broadcast. And if she does make it, Ann doesn’t know when she can leave.
Ann nervously put it, “The record number of boomerangs is 7 for a single flight… we don’t know when we’re gonna get there and we’re not actually sure when we’re gonna be able to broadcast live, and we’re not sure when we’re gonna get back.”
The most practical way for the average person to see Antarctica is by taking an Antarctic icebreaker cruise around the ice-free coastal areas. Some of these icebreakers are large enough to have their own helipads and have helicopters that can transport passengers to research stations on the mainland.
But once you successfully reach Antarctica, you can hangout with 1000+ scientists and support personnel, and even do some eco sightseeing. Several cold-adapted plants and animals call the South Pole home including fur seals, penguins, whales, mosses, lichen, and many types of algae. Plus the Antarctic Treaty protects the continent’s natural ecozone and prohibits military activities and mining. And believe it or not, there are also 31 volcanoes in Antarctica. But don’t get too excited. Only 4 of them have erupted in the last 25 years including Mount Erebus in 2007.
Personally, I may never make it to Antarctica, but it will be interesting to watch Ann Curry try. You can track her progress online here: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/21487444
Brrrr voyage Ann!
Ahoy! CaptClicker.com!
Locked Door Derails NBC Studio Tour on Live TV
NBC News anchor Brian Williams tried to give a tour of his new TV studio live on the air but oops…. the studio DOOR WAS LOCKED!!!
I wonder how many people got fired for that? You can see the clip here on YouTube.com.
BeSocial: methodshop
Alcoholic Dog Gets Statue in San Diego
San Diego, California may be full of bums these days, but there is one bum long overdue for high honors – Bum, the 19th-century town dog.
Owned by no one, Bum used to hang out at downtown San Diego restaurants and bars, where he became an alcoholic, addicted to beer and whiskey. A Chinese resident, Ah Wo Sue, nursed him back to health, and, eventually, his likeness appeared on dog tags and licenses.
The county Board of Supervisors sent Bum to County Hospital when he was crippled with rheumatism, and at his death in 1898, he received a public funeral paid for by pennies of the children of San Diego. He was beloved by children, who liked to ride on his back.
Now, over 100-years later, The Gaslamp Quarter Historical Foundation and San Diego-Edinburgh Sister City Society are building a bronze statue of the St. Bernard-spaniel mix that will be displayed in the Gaslamp Quarter section of downtown San Diego.
KNSD, the NBC station in San Diego, did a news report on Bum and his new statue. You can watch a video of the report here [Source: KNSD Widget]
BeSocial: digg story | methodshop
Insect Robot Spies Spotted at Political Rallies
The next time you are talking trash about American President George Bush or planning a political protest in the US, you might want to check the room for bugs… seriously.
According to an article in the Washington Post, insect like robotic drones have been spotted at political events in Washington and New York.
Bernard Crane, a Washington lawyer, saw one of the drones in person. “I’d never seen anything like it in my life… they were large for dragonflies. I thought, ‘Is that mechanical, or is that alive?’ ”
Who made these robotic insects? Are they being used as high-tech surveillance tools? So far, no American agency in the US government admits to having made or deployed insect spies. A defiant Gary Anderson, from the Defense Department’s Rapid Reaction Technology Office had this to say, “If you find something, let me know.”
But even if the US government didn’t make the bugs, you can bet they are at least trying. There are even rumors that the Department of Homeland Security is growing live insects with computer chips in them. In theory, the robotic insects could follow terrorists, listen in on conversations, guide missiles to targets or navigate wreckage to find earthquake survivors.
Is it even possible to have a robot fly like an insect? I’ve never seen any military or commercial aircraft flutter around like an insect. But Pete Valentine, a miniature airplane hobbyist, combined 2 robotic bird kits and made a dragonfly-like hybrid [watch video]. And just last month, researchers at Cornell University published a physics paper clarifying how dragonflies adjust the relative motions of their front and rear wings to save energy while hovering.
So should we all get really paranoid and starting killing every insect in sight? Even if the the government does have insect spies, you probably have a bigger chance of getting recorded on someones cellphone camera.
BeSocial: methodshop
Merry Miller TV Disaster
Merry Miller is the Senior Programming Director for The Learning Annex in New York, USA. She was named as one of the 40 “rising stars” in 2007 by Crain’s magazine and is a former Miss Dallas. But that’s where this “rising star” starts to fade.
In late July of 2007, Merry conducted a poorly done interview with Holly Hunter on ABC News Now’s segment “What’s The Buzz.” Since its broadcast, the disastrous interview has been heavily viewed on YouTube [link] and other online video sites.
Not only were the interview questions awful, but for some reason Merry decides to phonetically read off the teleprompter - like a child. She also gives the wrong month for Holly Hunter’s show premiere (June instead of July) and accidentally encourages viewers to go to nbcnews.com not ABC News.com.
Merry Miller, welcome to the TV Disaster Hall of Fame! I’m sure NBC loved the plug.
BeSocial: digg story | flickr | methodshop
MSNBC Reporter Kills Paris Hilton Story - Becomes Internet Sensation
A lighter and paper shredder helped make Mika Brzezinski the “symbol of television journalism’s guilt trip” about Paris Hilton. Brzezinski used both to destroy a script calling for her to read about Hilton’s release from jail on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program recently. Part serious, part an act, it has become an Internet sensation. More than 2 million people have watched a clip of the incident on YouTube, around 10 times the number who watched it live on TV. Apparently, she’s not the only one sick of the socialite.
“Among journalists it touched a nerve because I think we’re tired of pretending this is important,” she said. “We also know that, deep down inside, our viewers know that we don’t believe this is news. They can’t. They can’t think we’re that dumb.”
Brzezinski, who left CBS News last year, has been working as a news- reader and on-air foil for Joe Scarborough on the show MSNBC is trying out to replace Don Imus in the morning.
Hours after Hilton’s June 26 catwalk to freedom, Joe Scarborough (widget) and Brzezinski discussed one of the day’s other big stories at their show’s opening: influential Republican Sen. Richard Lugar’s declaration that President Bush’s Iraq strategy wasn’t working.
It was then Brzezinski’s turn to sum up the day’s news. She looked down at her script and Hilton was the top story. She froze.
“I could not get through the first three words without crumbling,” she said. “My skin was crawling. This was our lead? On a day like this? To me, it was just the ultimate Paris Hilton out-of-control moment. We’ve gone too far and we’ve got to stop. That was all real. There was nothing planned about that, and I believe we got a little snappy.”
BeSocial: breitbart | digg story | methodshop
Psychedelic News Promo
Between the psychedelic animation, goofy photo-flipbook effect, saccharine-sweet music, and the all-around goofy news team, this local news promo is everything the movie “Anchorman” should have been.
I guess in the 1970s, even the local news teams were on drugs.
BeSocial: digg story | youtube | methodshop