In the home of the Pope, I’m a locus of prayer;
With a touch of divinity, high in the air;
That’s a strain on your neck if you linger to stare;
And I’m named for a Fourth, though I sound like its square.
Who am I?
UPDATE: Riddle solved by Lee. See comments for answer.
Real life or parody? Sometimes, I can’t tell the difference anymore. That’s when it’s time for the Headline Game.
Below are two headlines from CNN.com and two headlines from The Onion. Can you spot which are the real headlines and which are the fakes?
1. Apple hard at work making iPhone obsolete
2. Group wants bus drivers to hang up their phones
3. Sharks kill four people in “dull” year
4. Westminster Dog Show finalists form elite Iditarod team
Note: CNN headlines taken from front page of CNN.com; headline of actual story may differ. Capitalization on the Onion headlines changed to match CNN.
Answers: Story 1, Story 2, Story 3, Story 4
How did you do?
Conundrum won’t always be a picnic (what is?), but I’m having fun, so lets do one more.
This week, I’m having a picnic for characters from Shakespeare. But only certain characters can be invited, based on a particular rule:
Have you figured out the rule? If so, please don’t post it. Just post one addition to the guest list to show us you got it, and to give an extra hint to later solvers. This time, it is not necessary to include the name of a character who is not invited, but you may do so if you choose.
UPDATE: The solution is now posted in the comments.
Blinking electronic signs advertising Aqua Teen Hunger Force recently triggered a terrorism scare in Boston.
Fortunately, the staff of the National Lampoon reacted quickly and professionally, and put together this 24/ATHF mash-up parody before any damage was done:
We live in strange times. The Dixie Chicks won five Grammys last night. Remember when they were untouchables because they dared to express doubt about the war, and the president who was bringing us to it? But now that the war is going badly, the Dixie Chicks are okay again.
Were last night’s awards all about the music? Or were the awards as much for their anti-war stance? Natalie Maines herself said “I think people are using their freedom of speech with all these awards. We get the message.”
If it was for their anti-war stance, does this mark a turning point in the nation’s conception of anti-war protesters? Or are the people who initially shunned them a different demographic than those who award the Grammys?
If this is a shift, in line with the Democratic takeover of Congress in November, what could this mean for the candidates for Democratic nominee for president in 2008? Republican? For the general election?
And where did the shift begin? I think the war going badly is certainly the main factor, but in my opinion the catalyst was Hurricane Katrina. That was botched so badly, and with such dire consequences, that even the expert spinmasters were powerless. Seasoned journalists who pride themselves on dispassionate analysis were screaming into the cameras. And that was when the people realized that the emperor had no clothes.
So where does that leave us now? With the Question of the Week:
What changes do you see in the collective national mood over the past two years and how might it affect the political landscape over the next two years.
Another plug for today’s Slings & Arrows marathon at 3pm on Sundance.
Again, this is Must See TV for Shakespeare fans and theatre folk, and well worth the watching for everyone else. It’s hysterically funny, true to life, and really gets at the heart of what it means to be passionate about Shakespeare.
The actors are all top-notch. They’re Canadian, so you might not recognize them, but that just adds to their believability. Fans of Kids in the Hall or Saturday Night Live will be familiar with Mark McKinney. And if you only know Rachel McAdams as The Hot Chick or one of the Mean Girls, then Season One will show you a whole new Rachel McAdams.
Sundance is showing all six episodes of Season One of Slings & Arrows today, Sunday, from 3pm to 8pm. This is the Hamlet season. Just start watching at 3pm, and if you’re not hooked by the end of the theme song, there’s no need to watch any further.
All six episodes of Season Two are availble on Time Warner Cable’s On Demand (under “Free Movies on Demand”), if you have it. This is the Macbeth season.
Season Three starts February 18 at 8pm. This will be the King Lear season. I’m giddy with anticipation in that very special Shakespeare Teacher way.
You can use the comments section of this post to discuss Season One. If there actually turns out to be any interest, I can start putting up a weekly post so we can discuss Season Three.
I found this really compelling, both in form and content:
I gave my take on the long-term ramifications of this in earlier posts Beggar’s Canyon and Optimism. What really struck me about this video was the idea that HTML tags define the form, while XML tags define the content. So when text from an XML document is exported, it can be classified and formatted by any number of disparate machines. That’s why I can have a blog, because I can just fill in fields in a form, rather than having to understand what a MySQL database is, or how to create one.
I also enjoyed the idea of the users of the Internet teaching the Internet about ideas that only humans can have. What is a hyperlink if not one person’s definition of the relationship between two realms of information? And with machines powerful enough to process those definitions in the aggregate, the Internet becomes an über-democratic negotiation about the nature of meaning. It’s a step beyond Wikipedia, where anyone can visit to add or revise content. It’s Google News, which proactively aggregates news stories from thousands of sources worldwide.
What about pictures? How can we really search for images, when computers can only see them in pixels? Some people tag their photos, but that’s just a start. Enter schemes like The ESP Game in which players log in and are randomly assigned an anonymous partner. The pair is then shown images and they have to come up with words to describe each image. Once they agree on a word, they may move on to the next image. They win if they can label a certain number of images in the pre-determined time. It’s packaged as a game, but what it’s really doing is finding humans to complete a task that computers can’t do, which is label a large quantity of images, so that they can join this network of information.
Some might be troubled by the thought of the “average” person defining the nature of information. Don’t we have specialists and experts who constitute a small minority of the population, but who can give us a much richer understanding of their field of study? Yes, and as their influence grows, we will be able to identify and access them much more easily through the shared mind of the Web. And they, in turn, will have greater access and ability to share their ideas with a wider audience. It will be a pure meritocracy.
There’s a website, FaceResearch.org, that allows you to digitally create the average of a number of different faces that you select or upload to their site. They discuss the hypothesis that the more average a face looks, the more attractive it is perceived to be. This may be partially because average faces tend to be more symmetrical and have smoother skin. But it’s a wonderfully egalitarian idea, if you think about it. The most attractive among us may not be any one of us, but may just be the average of all of us.
Web 2.0, then, may ultimately be a way of taking the average of all of our conceptions of the world and finding the most attractive face, the essential truths of human understanding, heretofore locked only within our collective unconscious. And then we may say, along with John Keats:
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’
First, read the rules of the game.
This week’s challenge will be Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning.
I was able to link Peyton Manning to Sir Francis Bacon in six degrees, though that shouldn’t stop you from posting a longer response, or looking for a shorter one. Entries will be accepted until midnight on Thursday, February 15.
Good luck!
And congratulations once again to Lee for winning last week’s challenge by linking Punxsutawney Phil to Sir Francis Bacon in six degrees:
Punxsutawney Phil > Bam Margera > Jessica Simpson > Tom Hanks > Henrik Ibsen > William Shakespeare > Sir Francis Bacon
Punxsutawney Phil was given a special tribute by professional skateboarder Bam Margera, who was romantically linked to Jessica Simpson, who became flustered while performing in front of Tom Hanks, who in college enjoyed attending the plays of Henrik Ibsen, who is the most frequently performed classical dramatist in the world after William Shakespeare, who is believed by some to be Sir Francis Bacon.
Ladies and gentlemen, set your TiVos. Sundance is showing all six episodes of Season One of Slings & Arrows this Sunday, February 11, from 3pm to 8pm.
This is absolutely Must See TV for Shakespeare fans or theatre folk, and actually some pretty good viewing for everyone else, too. It’s a 50-minute comedy/drama that follows the various personalities in a fictional Canadian Shakespeare Festival as they put together a production of a play over the course of a six-episode season: Hamlet in Season One, and Macbeth in Season Two. Season Three starts February 18 at 8pm. It looks like they’re going to be doing King Lear.
The show isn’t about the Shakespeare per se, but I have to say that they get the Shakespeare part right. And when Shakespeare is done right…
So check out that marathon on Sunday. You’ll be glad you did.
I’m a nymph who once loved from afar, from afar;
I’m a Soviet sub, or a car, or a car;
Where Tom Petty is heard on guitar, on guitar;
And I notify bats where you are, where you are.
Who am I?
UPDATE: Riddle solved by Lee. See comments for answer.