This time they are rolling out a challenger to Wikipedia.  It’s called Knol.  It’s slightly different from the anything-goes Wikipedia in that the authors are identified by their real names (and verified), and that they can share in ad revenue if they choose to. The service initially features a lot of medical articles, which is coincidental because Medipedia also launched today. This medical wiki is backed by Harvard’s and Stanford’s medical schools.  Wired has an in-depth look at Google’s latest plan to dominate the commodity of information.

I was more of a Betty White kind of kid, but Estelle Getty and the feisty character of Sophia always made me laugh. Of course she made Stop or My Mom Will Shoot um, well, not even she couldn’t make that movie bearable. Still, though, she’ll be missed. Thank goodness for reruns. And though I can’t quite eulogize everyone’s television grandma the guy below I think captured what we’re all feeling.

“I’ve played mothers to heroes and mothers to zeroes. I’ve played Irish mothers, Jewish mothers, Italian mothers, Southern mothers, mothers in plays by Neil Simon and Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. I’ve played mother to everyone but Attila the Hun,” she said famously about her career. It was the role of Bea Arthur’s mother that made us fall in love with.

I might be able to think of a reason or two why you’re crying buddy. And it doesn’t have anything to do with Brittany Spears playing as background music. Dude, man up. I know we’re all gonna miss Estelle Getty, but seriously. He’s probably crying because we’re about seven days too late with this lame obituary.

Newspapers are littered with random articles about Beijing, all made relevant by the 2008 Olympics.  Reporters poke fun at sloppy English translations, filth in the streets and the general fuck-all attitude of city dwellers.  But The New York Times takes the cake this morning with by far the most prejudiced and badass article on Beijing I’ve ever read.

The article is about smoking, and how even after laws were passed and anti-smoking signs hung, Beijing remains a city of smokers. One in four people smoke. Doctors smoke in hospitals. “… a 2004 government survey of 3,600 doctors found that 30 percent did not know that smoking could lead to heart disease and circulation problems.”

Holy shit, right?  Still: coolest city ever, as evidenced by this headlining pic:

Look at that guy.  Leaning back, puffing on a cancer stick with no less than eight empty beer bottles in front of him.  Who knew Beijing was the Party Capital of the World?  I do, now.

The Times article also shows a mother smoking in front of her two-year-old, telling the reporter it’ll “make [him] stronger,” and people laughing in the face of a year-old ban on smoking in taxis, even after the taxi driver politely says something, even if the taxi driver is, himself, a non-smoker.

Okay, so a lot of the article is disgusting, and paints residents in a ghastly light.  But for all the stories you’ve heard about cancer, death, disfigurement, miscarriages and other light family fare, the mythos of badassery still surrounds smoking.  And because Beijing flaunts its hard-drinking, chain-smoking cowboy ways, you’ve gotta give respect where it’s due.

One of the biggest failures of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind act is its heavy reliance on standardized tests.  Studies have shown that while standardized testing may be a step forward in regularizing education, it oftentimes shoves lower-performing students—and entire school systems—further into despair.

In an eye-opening report from eSchool News, grades K - 12 still haven’t grasped the crucial nature of personalized technology assessment programs to individually foster a child’s education.  Without these technologies, children may find themselves struggling to keep up with classmates and overwhelmed and unprepared for postsecondary education.

Tailored and adaptive educational technology can pinpoint deficiencies in a student’s learning and work to strengthen weak areas.  If struggling students must rely on standardized tests, they risk the possibility of failure, devastation of the self-esteem, a lowering of the school’s NCLB scores—and, ultimately, the amount of funding President Bush’s program wants to dish out to difficult schools.

The good news is that huge strides have been made in the arena of wide-reaching Internet access and security tools to protect student data, applications and documents.

In the meantime, educational publishers are working hard to create these materials to distribute to schools.  The marketplace is booming with technology.  Publishers are less reliant on traditional manufacturing plants, all in an effort to broaden the eBook phenomenon.  Facebook, Amazon’s Kindle, the iPhone and various other personal technologies all make their way into corporate consideration.  But if public schools cannot afford these tools, or are not made aware of them, the nightmare that which is NCLB may continue unabated.

You know, regardless of credentials and experience and direction of the country and all the nonsense we get caught up with when voting, in this information age shouldn’t using the internet be important?  Shouldn’t using a computer and understanding how they fit into contemporary life be important.  Shouldn’t things like net neutrality, etc. be important for our next president?

It’s understandable that John McCain wouldn’t use a computer, but when he admitted he didn’t know how to use one, well, shit.  That’s just confounding.  My grandma uses a computer regularly to check email, surf the internet, play scrabble, etc.

She’s not alone:

How unusual is it for a 71-year-old American to be unplugged?

That depends how you look at the statistics. Only 35 percent of Americans over age 65 are online, according to data from April and May compiled by the Pew Internet Project at the Pew Research Center.

But when you account for factors like race, wealth and education, the picture changes dramatically. “About three-quarters of white, college-educated men age over 65 use the Internet,” says Susannah Fox, director of the project.

“John McCain is an outlier when you compare him to his peers,” Fox says. “On one hand, a U.S. senator has access to information sources and staff assistance that most people do not. On the other, the Internet has become such a go-to resource that it’s a curiosity to hear that someone doesn’t rely on it the way most Americans do.”

But the best part, and I’m not making this up, comes a bit further down in the article.  “”He’s fully capable of browsing the Internet and checking Web sites,” Brooke Buchanan, McCain’s spokewoman said. “He has a Mac and uses it several times a week. He’s working on becoming more familiar with the Internet.”

Ah, let’s get him a cookie and some milk and pat him on the head before putting him down for a nap.  You’re so cute, yes you are.  Yes you are.  You can check websites!

Actually, that’s about all I use the internet for.  Well, that and porn and stealing music so you know.  We have that in common.

Buzz is we’re headed toward another economic stimulus check, perhaps as early as September 2008.  This is the work of Democrats, and, if I’m 100% right 100% of the time, will happen.

See, it’s election season, and we teeter of the precipice of a hardcore recession.  If the Democrats slide this through the cogs and Republicans reject it, guess who looks like insensitive dicks.

Republicans, of course, are wary of this tactic.  They’re also seemingly onboard with the proposal.

We friggin’ need it, folks.  The last stimulus check did nothing—nothing! I paid off a bit of a credit card and that’s it.  What I really wanted was an iPhone, or something awesome I could flash around and say, “Guess what George W. Bush bought me?  This!”

So if this next stimulus check goes through, I promise to invigorate the economy with it.  But for those with cars, is this even possible?  Won’t this additional $600 goes to paying off the credit cards you bogged down with gasoline debt?

No matter how these dice are rolled, no one worth a damn would ever reject “free” money.

Newsweek has an interesting article (7.19) written by Fareed Zakaria, in which the author claims that Obama is the conservative foreign-policy candidate in this election and John McCain is the idealist.  It’s an interesting take on the usual assumptions about the two. “In the end, the difference between Obama and McCain might come down to something beyond ideology—temperament. McCain is a pessimist about the world, seeing it as a dark, dangerous place where, without the constant and vigorous application of American force, evil will triumph. Obama sees a world that is in many ways going our way. As nations develop, they become more modern and enmeshed in the international economic and political system. To him, countries like Iran and North Korea are holdouts against the tide of history. America’s job is to push these progressive forces forward, using soft power more than hard, and to try to get the world’s major powers to solve the world’s major problems.”

NY Times reporter Steve Heller asked various designers to rethink Sen. Barack Obama’s flag lapel pin, since he’s now wearing one after he realized that idiot hicks really do think a lapel pin is tied into a person’s patriotism.

It isn’t of course.  But politics is as much about symbolism and knee-jerk reactions and being slippery enough to not get caught and ultimately to convince other people that you represent their hopes and dreams and the safety of their children and Obama does all of this better than most.  In many ways, Obama has become a symbol himself, ceasing to be an actual person.

Much of that is his own doing, but a lot of that is the doing of his passionate supporters and that Shep Fairey “Obama Hope” poster that is itself like propaganda.

So if people think a politician’s patriotism is inversely proportionate to the pin they wear, then what would be an appropriate pin for Obama?

Heller got a slurry of opinions, some good, some bad, some comically outlandish. The one we liked best came from Tamara Shopshin, who created an Abe Lincoln pin seen above.

“The flag pin has for the time lost its meaning because it has become part of a politician’s uniform,” she says. For her, Lincoln represents America at its best.

Other ideas suggested included wearing many pins, a la Jennifer Aniston in Office Space so Obama could show his “flare” for America; ripping off the lapels of his jacket so he doesn’t have to wear a pin; creating a series of Obama pins that would become the new American Flag pin; and, one even suggested created a scary Bald Eagle necklace so it would look like the bird was flying out of Obama’s chest. [via]

It’s tough to eat locally grown produce when you live in the city.  Sure there are farmers markets to stroll through or fancy produce places, but to really eat fresh fruit or veggies - those succulent vine ripened tomatoes, crisp green beans, mouth-watering strawberries - you’ll have to drive or pay a hefty price.

It’s unfortunate.  Because once you’ve grown your own (highly recommended I’ve got peppers, lettuce, green beans, tomatoes, various herbs and raspberries in my backyard) there is truly no going back.  One technique for urban dwellers is to grow vertically instead of laterally.

Years from now, urban dwellers might laugh at the notion of not being able to buy locally grown produce, especially if Dr. Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, has his way.  He envisions a “vertical farm,” which is essentially a skyscraper with a farm in it, rather than an office.

Despommier estimates that it would cost $20 million to $30 million to make a prototype of a vertical farm, but hundreds of millions to build one of the 30-story towers that he suggests could feed 50,000 people. “I’m viewed as kind of an outlier because it’s kind of a crazy idea,” Despommier, 68, said with a chuckle. “You’d think these are mythological creatures.”

Despommier, whose name in French means “of the apple trees,” has been spreading the seeds of his radical idea in lectures and through his Web site. He says his ideas are supported by hydroponic vegetable research done by NASA and are made more feasible by the potential to use sun, wind and wastewater as energy sources. Several observers have said Despommier’s sky-high dreams need to be brought down to earth.

Sure, there will always be critics, but isn’t this the type of thinking we need in this country? America has always been about ingenuity.  Possibly, the mythical American Dream has always been, not the white picket fence and two car garage, but rather the nebulous idea that America will create solutions to problems that don’t exist yet, that we’ll dream bigger than anyone and achieve the impossible.

This is that type of dream.  Imagine if every major city had four of five of these vertical farms and transportation cost were negligible and tasty, healthy food was available to all urban citizens at a reasonable price?  Isn’t that something that America should aspire too?

If this does become a reality, then I’m requesting that instead of garden gnomes we should use garden zombies.

Omar Khadr was arrested in 2002 for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan.  He was then shipped to Guantanamo Bay where he underwent interrogation by a Canadian Security Intelligence Services agent.

In this achey-breaky climate of political strife, anything having to do with the secretive nature of the U.S. no-holds-barred prison in Cuba immediately makes it to the front page of the paper.  And though the 10 minute video surely offers a glimpse into the inner workings of an evil place, this 10 minute video doesn’t show anything.

The most sensational news regarding Khadr’s video is that he was crying and pulling his hair.  He removes his orange prison shirt to show the interrogating officer the wounds he sustained during the grenade blast that nearly killed him and complains he did not receive proper medical care.

Obviously this is a serious matter, and if true, shows the underbelly of Guantanamo … but an underbelly we already knew to exist.

Otherwise nothing relevatory—no matter what news outlet you scour—is revealed.  The interrogation, according to the text I read, seems pretty standard.  He doesn’t cooperate.  He cries and wants to go home to Canada (natch).  He’s sent to solitary confinement.

Is he guilty of terrorism?  Maybe, maybe not.  If convincted, he faces life in prison—an apt judgment if the charges are correct.

This video was obtained and released by Khadr’s lawyers, Nathan Whitling and Dennis Edney.  Of the video’s content, Whitling says,

We hope that the Canadian government will finally come to recognize that the so-called legal process that has been put in place to deal with Omar Khadr’s situation is grossly unfair and abusive.  It’s not appropriate to simply allow this process to run its course.

In theory, I agree.  Guantanamo represents a gross misuse of government power and secrecy.  However, I find it hard to fathom Khadr’s video will open eyes any wider.