Miscellaneous Musings, Thursday Wednesday Edition

This is interesting: “See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign.” The title is self-explanatory, but the methodology used to ID “anonymous” Wikipedia editors— all of ‘em — is pretty danged creative. Gotta love those graduate students…

Note: I wrote this last evening right after I found and read the linked article. And this morning the whole freakin’ ‘sphere is trying to play “Gotcha” with the Wiki…so much so that the search tool’s author has disabled the “search by wikipedia page” function (“Specify by Wikipedia page -- Disabled until the onsalught of traffic wanes.”). This is one of the hazards of trying to “get ahead of the game” when blogging…the ‘sphere just moves too fast. And not sometimes, either. ALL the time.

So, I’m watching The WX Channel (once again: last evening), and I’m noticing it’s really hard for them to contain their excitement over Hurricane Flossie. Hell, they’ve even flown Jim Cantore to the Big Island, even though the hurricane is only supposed to graze the island and is diminishing in strength with each passing hour. But, Hell. We all have our boondoggles and I like Cantore, besides. He deserves an assignment that isn’t Mississippi or Florida, just for a change.

Suspicion confirmed… On the same subject: Hurricane Flossie? What kind of name is that? I’ve never heard of anyone named Flossie, let alone known anyone by that name. The first thing that came to my mind was some sort of animated cartoon my dentist might show to kids (he’s big on that sort of stuff…good on him). And I was right:

Flossie's pages contain smile, dental and Tooth Fairy related graphics, clip art, pictures, animations, art & drawings that you may use in your school reports, non-commercial web pages, etc. I hope you brush & floss your teeth at least twice every day. A pretty smile always lends a hand in making friends.

“Flossie” is also a 1974-vintage movie. And not a particularly good one if you believe IMDB’s user ratings. Other than that? Not a lot…aside from a British knitting blogger (Becky).

One final thought on hurricanes (for the moment): I’d LOVE to see a Hurricane Cruella. Just sayin’.

Ron Rosenbaum, writing in Slate, takes it to The Academy, in the form of one professor Stanley Fish:

It was Aug. 5, and professor Stanley Fish, the famous postmodernist and "guest columnist" for the New York Times, had some breaking news to expound upon in an op-ed piece. He had discovered a new development in American culture that deserved the kind of exegesis only he could deliver: the appearance of a new kind of coffee place.

Have you heard about these new coffee places? Professor Fish's column made it seem as though they had never been noticed or discussed before.

"Getting Coffee Is Hard To Do" was the title of his essay, which in its self-satisfied cluelessness may just qualify as the worst op-ed ever written.

“New kind of coffee place?” Now that’s right up my alley! Oh, wait…Starbucks. Starbucks? WTF?

Today’s Pic: OK…it’s NOT a photo. But it is kinda cute. SN3 demonstrating American Idol potential, of a sort.

Somewhere in Colorado. February, 2000. (He was almost three.)