:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 1.21.2009 ::
:: Hope? :::: 1.02.2009 ::
Like never before, inauguration experienced online
Associated Press
By JAKE COYLE – 4 hours ago
NEW YORK (AP) — In an inauguration defined by a sense of change, the experience of watching Barack Obama take office was fittingly revolutionary.
Like never before, Americans watched the inauguration of an incoming president online through live video streaming across their computers. And wholly wrapped up in following Inauguration Day 2009 on the Web was reacting to them — blogging, vlogging and tweeting.
Essentially every major news outlet offered live feeds on their respective Web sites in what was potentially the most Web-driven coverage of a significant news event yet. It was partly out of necessity, since many viewers were at work in front of their computers — and away from TV sets — for the midday swearing in.
It was also a notable benchmark in the fast evolution of online video. At the time of the last inauguration, YouTube didn't even exist.
The major news portals — Yahoo.com, CNN.com, MSNBC.com, AOL News, The New York Times, ABC.com, CBS.com, Fox.com, WashingtonPost.com — all streamed the festivities, some with video embedded right on their home page for the first time.
Akamai Technologies Inc., which delivers Internet video for many Web sites, said the inauguration was a record for them, with 7.7 million people watching video streams at the same time.
Read more here.
A L S O
A day at the Mall
Two million came to D.C. to brave the crowds and the cold -- and to see their country change
By Rebecca Traister
Salon.com
Jan. 21, 2009 | WASHINGTON -- Tuesday, Jan. 20, began, for more than a million people here, in inky early hours that gradually faded to a pale blue morning. The weather was absolutely bone-chilling, but the energy was bright as bundled figures of every shape and age and persuasion poured out of metro stations and cabs and buses and over bridges and into the heart of the capital.
"Happy Inauguration Day!" they said as they passed, greeting each other with a level of joyful familiarity typical of days on which Voldemort has been defeated. This was the day that Barack Obama was to become president and George Bush was to stop being president. It was the day that, for many Americans, this country became their own for the very first time. On Monday, Faye Walker, an African-American dancer and teacher in Washington, told me that she had been thrown out of schools for refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance, because, for her, the words had never felt true. Tuesday, she said, would be the day she'd finally be able to put her hand over her heart.
And for the 2 million people who decided to honor this day by driving, flying, busing, training or walking to D.C. to pay their respects to the new president, the journey began very, very, very early. As one of them, I wish I could report that the ground warmed beneath our feet and the paths to the Mall were open and paved with hot beverage vendors. Alas, this was not the case.
Read more here.
A N D
Day of memorable moments created history
San Francisco Chronicle
Transcript: Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address
NYTimes
Excerpt:
We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality...
(APPLAUSE)
... and lower its costs.
posted by me
:: 1:51:00 AM [+] ::
...
:: More Evidence For a Clovis-Killer Comet ::
from /.
fortapocalypse sends word that a new paper was published today in the journal Science on the hypothesis that a comet impact wiped out the Clovis people 12,900 years ago. (We discussed this hypothesis last year when it was put forth.) The new evidence is a layer of nanodiamonds at locations all across North America, at a depth corresponding to 12,900 years ago, none earlier or later. The researchers hypothesize that the comet that initiated the Younger Dryas, reversing the warming from the previous ice age, fragmented and exploded in a continent-wide conflagration that produced a layer of diamond from carbon on the surface. While disputing the current hypothesis, NASA's David Morrison allows, "They may have discovered something absolutely marvelous and unexplained."
Read more here.
ALSO ON SLASHDOT
Your Rights Online: UK Government To Outsource Data Snooping and Storage
Your Rights Online: Security Checkpoints Predict What You Will Do
posted by me
:: 1:30:00 PM [+] ::
...
