It started as sleet and freezing rain and later changed to snow and we woke up to find 12-14 inches on the ground. Ripley and Lucy are frustrated, unable to find their favorite places to take care of business.
I hiked down the hill to take some photos but it is damned cold so I only got about 50 yards. I’ll take another run at it later today. For now, here’s a shot of the deck, road to house, our back yard, another of the back yard, the front of our house and our neighbor’s bench.
I stumbled across this on one of the Wired blogs (Epicenter). Have you heard of Topix? It’s a news aggregator that uses a geolocating algorithm they’ve developed to get all the news relevant to any zip code or city from all of its 50,000 news sources. Punch in the coordinates for Jefferson City and you get all the stories out of all the local papers, without repeats, in one place.
You can also use Topix to search 5,500 public company and industry verticals, 48,000 celebrities and musicians, 1,500 sports teams and personalities. You used to have to pay big money to do a Lexis-Nexis search to get info like this or pay a clipping service like Burrelles. Now anyone can do it for free.
According to Epicenter (a Wired blog), Topix is backed by Tribune, Gannett and McClatchy. This is one of those things that’s hard to describe but kind of cool in practice. Check it out.
Clear Channel Radio’s online division has announced that it will add news and video content from Reuters to its News on Demand service on CC Web sites.
“Clear Channel Radio’s News on Demand product combines on-demand video and text feeds from Reuters with CCR’s 24/7 coverage of breaking news, business/financial stories, entertainment news and human-interest features. The product also allows CCR stations to upload their own local news to their sites, giving both local and national news coverage from station sites on demand.”
I’d love to see exactly what “on demand” means but I can’t argue with the strategy. I hope more of our affiliates will get their online act together and inlcude our our state news and sports content on their sites. And I wonder where AP was/is in this mix. Too pricey perhaps? I’d love to hear more about this. SteveMays at Gmail dot com [Radio and Records]
They held a little celebration in Metropolis, Illinois, to mark the release of the “Superman Returns” DVD. UPI photographer Bill Greenblatt shares this photo of one Superman “look-a-like” adjusting the cape of another Man of Steel dead-ringer.
I have to wonder if Bill was being ironic when he captioned this image with “A wooden cut-out of Superman hangs on a building as hundreds lineup for a free DVD on the release date of “Superman Returns” in Metropolis, Illinois on November 28, 2006. Metropolis is the adopted home of Superman.”
The hopeless boredom on the faces of the people in line… the “Man of Plywood” missing an arm… thank you, Bill… thank you.
In May of 2004 I posted: “If you experienced the worst day of your life… something truly horrible…and there was a drug that made you forget the previous 24 hours, would you take it? If not, why?”
Last Sunday on 60 Minutes, Lesley Stahl did a segment titled “A Pill to Forget?” From the 60 Minutes website:
“If there were something you could take after experiencing a painful or traumatic event that would permanently weaken your memory of what had just happened, would you take it?”
Turns out there is such a pill. Sort of. It’s called propranolol, a medication commonly used for high blood pressure … and unofficially for stage fright.
It turns out our memories are sort of like Jello – they take time to solidify in our brains. And while they’re setting, it’s possible to make them stronger or weaker. It all depends on the stress hormone adrenaline. Propranolol seems to make the memories less intense.
The people in the 60 Minutes story had no trouble answering the question I posed back in 2004: Hell yes!