Short and sweet for Christmas Eve: Follow Santa’s path as tracked by NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command).
The Huffington Post tells us the tracker has gotten an update recently, as NORAD has partnered with Google to let you track Santa on Google Earth. NORAD uses four high-tech systems to track Santa – radar, satellites, Santa Cams and fighter jets.

I never knew how it started, but this cute idea started as a sweet response to a mistake:

The tradition began in 1955 after a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement for children to call Santa misprinted the telephone number. Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD [NORAD's predecessor] Commander-in-Chief’s operations “hotline.” The Director of Operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, had his staff check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location, and a tradition was born.

This continues to be VERY interesting:  “A study put out by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unwanted Pregnancy has found evidence that the majority of teens at risk of unwanted pregnancy are not from low income and/or single parent families.”

• More great arguments against over-medication.
• It doesn’t come as much of a surprise to me that Americans no very little about diabetes.  With the rise in type B diabetes … it’s probably important know know quite a bit more.
• Lighter side dishes for the holidays.
• I want these postcards!  I love these big eyed works.
• Rather than trying to find a solution for storing radioactive and nuclear waste, why don’t we avoid producing it?
• Here’s the interactive New York times assessment of what the President has done so far.
• Agreed, and taken well with Glenn Greenwald’s take on the same thing: “I’m willing to cut Obama some slack. I think his approach is substantive where those of some of his immediate predecessors were variously incremental, empty or dangerous.”
• “They (soldiers) want a president and Congress who can clearly define a mission — any mission – and then give them the troops, tools and moral certitude needed to complete that mission. What they don’t want, and fear is happening across the board, is to have politicians back home make battlefield decisions based on the 2010 and 2012 elections.”
• This map reminds me of the sex offender maps.  Also, these laws usually are created on a state or local level so …
• Cat food vs. Dog food. H/T Neatorama.
• I’m not really a watch person, but this is a pretty cool looking watch.
  

• Animals that are better than you.  H/T Neatorama

MyLifeBits is a Microsoft Research project led by the legendary Gordon Bell, designed to put “all of his atom- and electron-based bits in his local Cyberspace….MyLifeBits includes everything he has accumulated, written, photographed, presented, and owns (e.g. CDs).” 

SenseCam - Click to enlarge

Among other technical means, Bell uses the SenseCam, a remarkable prototype from Microsoft Research.  It’s a nifty little wearable device that combines high-capacity memory, a fisheye lens passively capturing 3,000 images a day, along with an infrared sensor, temperature sensor, light sensor, accelerometer, and USB interface. My group has played with SenseCam a bit, and shared it with quite a few interested government parties and partners. More info on SenseCam here, and more on its parent Sensors and Devices Group in MSR.  

The MyLifeBits project has enormous potential, I think, befitting something which aims to incorporate and outstrip Vannevar Bush’s extraordinary original vision of Memex.  The project has now been captured in a great new book I’ve been reading: Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything, written by Bell and colleague Jim Gemmell. Their Total Recall motto is, “The e-memory revolution is changing everything.” 

In the FAQ section of their website, Bell and Gemmell write: 

“Total Recall works best when capture is completely automatic. For example, we automatically make a copy of every web page we visit, with a note of the URL and the time visited. If this was manual, very few web pages would be saved. Similarly, we get pictures from wearing the SenseCam without having to stop enjoying the moment to become the photographer. Today, at the start of the Total Recall revolution, too much is manual. Part of what will change in the next ten years as Total Recall comes to full fruition will be more and more automatic capture.” 

Here’s a quick video look at it: 

The companion Total Recall project blog also catalogs other interesting projects in the same spirit, for example The Quantified Self (about which Bell writes, “The QS implies capturing and recording everything, but it goes beyond what Gemmell and I describe, by using the data for conducting experiments and for control.”

I find that notion in synch with several thoughts around the idea of “Government as a Platform” and Data.gov, so let’s explore the government potential a bit.

No Leader’s Life Unexamined

Lately it seems that the world – or at least the digerati’s virtual continent –  is divided into two groups of people: those who knew Dr. Mark Drapeau by that name, first and in real life … and those who got to know “@cheeky_geeky,” his ubiquitous online persona, from his widely read Twitter feed, his Posterous blogs, or his prolific online writing at Huffington Post, Washington Life, and so on. Drapeau lives up to the line from Socrates, that the unexamined life is not worth living. His fully examined life quite evidently is. 

I barely fall into the first group, as I met Mark at a National Defense University conference before the Twitter phenomenon really got rocking, but I’ve watched as this talented writer opened up more and more of his private and professional life to the universe of digital eyeballs. The conferences, the dinners, the speeches, the parties – we’re all watching a life examined, reflected through his eyes and refracted through thousands of others. Mark Drapeau’s life is as transparent as they come. To illustrate, he’s even had to introduce a new acronym to his torrential stream; “TPTT” for too private to tweet. 

In the last year, Mark has become an acknowledged thought-leader in the Government 2.0 space as well; he co-chaired 2009’s inaugural Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase in Washington DC (disclosure: I chaired a panel there), and is co-chairing the full 2010 Gov 2.0 Expo (disclosure: I’m on the Senior Advisory Committee for that as well). 

Now Mark is bringing those two parts of his life together, in a musing of the future of government transparency taken to its extreme. Yesterday he posted a provocative piece on Posterous, “What Would an Always-On-the-Record Government Look Like?” in which he proposes something like a Gawker site for government: 

Imagine if someone … wanted to document a day in the life of Senator Ben Nelson. It’s not hard. You check the general schedules of his committees and such beforehand, go through security at the Capitol, find his office, camp out, maybe ask the person at the front desk some questions, find some press in the hallways and ask some questions, stalk the cafeteria and listen for people saying “Nelson,” go back to his office and see him leaving to walk down the hall to a committee hearing, go to the committee hearing and tape it from a Flip in your coat pocket, upload it to YouTube while you follow him to his next meeting, and so forth. 

I’ve a mixed mind on whether this is progress in the life of the public square (I posted some thoughts in a comment there), but I’m a realist. The technology is definitely already here to enable the type of “amateur journalism” Mark writes about, and this past decade has seen an explosion in what is more typically called “Citizen Journalism.” 

There’s a high-minded aspect to this, beyond the Gawker mentality. As early as 2005 Steve Outing at Poynter Online wrote that Citizen Journalism was “one of the hottest buzzwords in the news business these days,” and proceeded to offer a thoughtful compendium of examples.   The next year, PBS put online ”Your Guide to Citizen Journalism,” saying that “The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others.”  Wikipedia has a good background entry on citizen journalism; and the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism among others now has a program in the subject. 

That’s all outside-in, the citizenry watching their public servants. There’s also another, less explored aspect: the inside aiming out, or having public servants open up the fullness of their lives, transparently for all to see – and judge. 

I’m not certain how quickly we will advance along that front. So far, Twitter adoption and blogging among elected officials in the U.S. and Europe (primarily) have been somewhat faddish, used mostly as another channel for self-promotion. That’s not always a bad thing, as many elected officials self-promote the actual good things they do. Most simply self-promote.  Mark Drapeau is after something more fundamental. 

Perhaps we will indeed find public servants willing to use new social-media technologies to live up to that old saw, “My life is an open book.” In doing so, we would undoubtedly uncover a few Gary Harts along the way – he famously told journalist E.J. Dionne, “Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’ll be very bored.” They did, they caught him with Donna Rice, and his electoral career was finished. 

The consequences might in fact be negative. We’ve been suffering for the past twenty years since celebrity journalism included politics in its swath. Jack Kennedy would never run for office today; he enjoyed his girlfriends too much to give that up, and he’d never get away with them in a MyLifeBits scenario. Abe Lincoln would surely think twice about running, as he was already highly protective of his wife’s reputation and mental well-being… if there’d been some 24×7 spotlight on her and her Confederate relatives, as there is on Michelle Obama, Abe would’ve been toast. 

No Hollywood face looks great in HD television close-up …. and there’s a chance leadership in public service will never look the same under this glare. 

But science demands experimentation… so in the interests of science we must persuade some politician to step up to the challenge and do some real life-casting. Let’s strap a SenseCam around Sen. Ben Nelson’s neck – or better yet, fit it to a string of pearls for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi!

Talk about open government

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I thought this piece was pretty darned informative and insightful.

Perhaps we’re born with a limited amount of discipline. We know where Tiger used most of his up, that’s for sure.

He should go with a whole new image program: Instead of the ever-polite, passionless polished public persona he’s cultivated since he was a kid (with an awful lot of help, obviously), he should just reintroduce himself to the world and announce that he’s going to say whatever is on his mind, tell us how he really feels, and people can take it or leave it. He’ll never please lots of ex-fans again, anyway. Plus it will save him a lot of dough firing all those “handlers.” And it’s just plain easier to live life out of the closet.

It would entertain me a lot, for sure. And what else is he to me?

Woke up with a happy face this morning, got some necessary stuff done, and have a Christmas party to attend tonight. The cats are fighting for keyboard space, and life is all right.

Since HuffPo decided not to publish my comment (and deleted a few others that were posted), I decided to post it here.

Hey HuffPo!  Where’s the diversity?  Why so many whites and so few minorities?  I guess your job is just to point out the lack of diversity in other organizations.

White House Emails Case Nearing Settlement

Transparency advocates are poised to win a major victory in the two-year legal battle over millions of missing Bush-era emails.

By Nick Baumann Dec. 11, 2009 motherjones.com

The years-long legal battle over millions of missing White House emails from George W. Bush’s presidency may finally be drawing to a close. “We are very close to a final settlement,” Anne Weismann, chief counsel for the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), tells Mother Jones. “We have been in negotiations with [the White House] for months, and I think they really want out from under all this.”

CREW and another nonprofit, the National Security Archive, first sued the Bush administration in September of 2007, hoping to force the White House to recover missing emails and implement an effective archiving system that would prevent important presidential records from being lost or misplaced in the future. But the litigation has been on hold since March 2009, when the Obama administration and the plaintiffs jointly agreed to pursue a settlement.

Details of the agreement are still being finalized, but Weismann says CREW expects to prevail in the three areas that are most important to her organization: “restoration of missing emails, assurances going forward that the White House has an appropriate and effective electronic record-keeping system, and information about what happened.” ….. http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/exclusive-white-house-emails-case-nearing-settlement

Update:  Mon Dec. 14, 2009

The Huffington Post has started offering marketers the ability to place paid tweets; http://j.mp/5orXsk

Somehow I missed it but Gender Across Borders points out that recently Publishers Weekly put out it’s list of the top ten books for 2009 which does not include a single woman author. Not.One.

According to HuffPo, “PW admits that they’re not “the most politically correct” choices — the list doesn’t include any female authors — but, to the editors, they were the best among the top 100 that they had chosen.”

BTW – only 29 women made it into their top 100. In my view, the point is not being “politically correct” but just being plain old balanced. This hardly seems balanced.

Poet Amy King looked into the content of the top ten and concluded, “Simple to observe that the content that “stood out from the rest,” according to PW, is all about mostly male protagonists and their realities: war, adventure, science, boyhood adventures, taming the wilderness, the male writer’s life, etc. In other words, the novels that deal with women’s realities simply “don’t stand out”. Her comments on each book are biting while being deliciously amusing.

Women in Letters and Literary Arts has started The WILLA List wiki specifically to document great books by women that PW, ummmm, missed? Yeah, that’s it – all the great books they missed. Anyone can create an entry to add their favorites. The list closes at the end of the month.

Long known as a bastion of pseudoscience, the HuffPo outdoes itself with the latest misapprehensions of Quantum Mechanics issuing from the keyboard of Deepak Chopra, where he manages to mangle, maim, warp, fold, bend, spindle and mutilate the science he clearly doesn’t understand, I suspect willfully, to suit his purposes, as noted by Steven Novella in this post on NeuroLogica Blog, which deals with the real science behind QM in more detail, and where Chopra gets it grossly wrong.

To my skeptically biased but noob eye, Chopra’s article looks more like New Age word salad than anything else, though Dr. Novella has been at this for a while, and seems more adept than my Troythuluness at critically picking apart nonsense to note exactly how and where it goes wrong (logical fallacy # 1…logical fallacy # 2…etc.). Bravo Steve.

There’s the old myth among purveyors of woo that science is coming ever closer to a vision of the universe closer in line with the mysticism of the East, probably starting with Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics, and latched onto by New Age woo-meisters ever since.

I’ve noticed it a lot on blogs authored by paranormalists, particularly those proponents of psi-research. The funny thing about that whole ‘convergence of science and mysticism’ thingy is that those who make these claims apparently haven’t talked to many Eastern mystics of all the different traditions of Asia, or even just South Asia, since the metaphysics of Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism are all different, depending on what branch of which, each contradicting the others on points of ontology. Curiouser and curiouser…

For some reason, probably because it’s weird, Quantum Mechanics is one of the most well-worn excuses for defenders of woo to say, ‘This proves that whatever I want to believe is true, because as a quantum observer, I create my own reality. So there.’

It’s telling that the very ones who most often use QM for this purpose are the ones who understand it the least, and are the most prone, like Chopra, and like some blogs by self-professed ‘psychics,’ to butcher the science, cherry-picking what they like (quantum entanglement, non-locality, etc…), and ignoring or dismissing what they don’t, like decoherence, which is itself a feature of quantum entanglement–particles like to entangle with everything they come in contact with, overpowering earlier entanglement. They also don’t like those experiments that reliably show that entanglement can’t be used to transfer information faster than light…obviously biased research performed by blathering know-nothing scientists…

Add to this the fact that some just don’t get the fact that quantum effects are so difficult to notice in objects with excessively high quantum numbers (such as anything bigger than a large molecule…), that for quantum effects to noticeably take place on the macroscopic level, you would have to wait longer than the lifespan of the universe to see them.

The Moon does not exist until you look at it? Please, pull the other tentacle…

Pseudoscientists are skilled at using the seeming of cutting-edge science to conceal the fact that their ideas are nonsense, since most people aren’t likely to know much about it, and therefore be equipped with the knowledge to refute their arguments. I would like to close this post with a question: Mister Chopra…could you show me the evidence behind all of this wonderful quantum magic and faerie dust, some shred of proof that it actually works? Maybe do a little demonstration under controlled conditions and win a million bucks? …and credibility for woo-believers everywhere? Oh, wait, I see–you don’t do tests for us closed-minded skeptics–sigh…

(Last Updated 18:28, 12/22/2009, Name Correction)

This one goes out to all of us stuck in an office on this beautiful fall day. Hope this cheers you up.

Courtesy of HuffPo.

And, if Stephen Fry and Bill Bailey don’t cheer you up, I’m pretty sure you’re a lost cause.

***UPDATED*** So, Arianna Huffington, founder of the influential Web site Huffington Post, and Mathias Döpfner, chairman of Germany’s leading newspaper publisher Axel Springer Verlag, were debating the future of journalism. Naturally, they clashed over hot button issues such as paid content. Go figure! Still, it’s a very pleasurable debate between two gifted orators with interesting accents and even more interesting metaphors and hence worth watching — and if you haven’t done so yet, here it is:

If you don’t have the time to watch the whole thing, or if you can’t stand the moderator, here’s the first part of my very rough minute-to-minute protocol. I’ll highlight some quotes that I thought were remarkable and add some little-qualified comments of my own:

00:00 – General confusion. That’s a good starting point for the debate, because, well, that’s how it is in the publishing industry these days.

06:10 — Asked whether the Huffington Post only aggregates or actually produces news, Arianna Huffington answers that they do both. That’s nothing new if you followed the case of Mayhill Fowler last year.

08:00 — Mathias Döpfer argues that printed media, too, tends to aggregate rather than to produce news (that is, newspapers, too, refer to other media sources and wire services, rather than getting all their news exclusively through investigative reporting). He also mentions the “reader-reporters”, or citizen journalists, that Bild, his bestselling tabloid, is employing:

The only difference between HuffPost and Axel Springer is: We are paying them.

12:56 — “Not paying people” is a theme that will be discussed in more detail later on. As for now, Arianna Huffington highlights the importance of using citizen journalists and filtering sources such as Twitter and Facebook, especially when it comes to reporting from foreign countries with oppressive regimes (e.g. Iran, China), because

you can spin traditional journalists much more easily than you can spin thousands upon thousands of Twitter feeds and Facebook entries. (…) We shouldn’t just say that journalism will survive — it can actually improve and get better because of what is available right now!

14:45 — Arianna Huffington takes aim at Mathias Döpfner’s idea of bringing paid content back to the debate:

Unless you’re offering porn, and especially weird porn, or very specialized financial information, you are not going to succeed by putting your content behind (pay) walls. (…) You may be able to sustain this model of asking subscribers to pay for content for a little while, but in the long run it’s a model of the past.

This, of course, is brilliantly put, and a blurb that’s going to pop up in blog posts etc. all over the place, but I wonder if Arianna Huffington is correct. Aren’t there other cases of paid content that work? Isn’t there content worth paying for besides weird porn (no examples needed) and “very specialized financial information” (e.g. the Wall Street Journal’s business and finance news)? What about the archive of the New York Times, where general interest pieces are free, but articles of specific historic relevance (say, Norman Podhoretz’s op-ed piece lashing out against Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy in 1982) are only available if you pay a price that’s slightly higher than that of a Venti Latte? I mean, in the end it’s all going to be about whether your content is interesting, exclusive and not easy to emulate, right?

16:00 — Mathias Döpfner argues that people only care about six things anyways:

1) sports 2) games 3) regional environment 5) money/power 6) sex 7) crime.

Bold claims about human nature were not neccessarily what I expected but they’re very welcome nonetheless. However: Why does Mr. Döpfner not mention “beauty” (as in: “Arts & Style” or the “Feuilleton”-Section of his papers)? After all, insufficiantly verified sources claim that he studied literature and theatre and got his Ph.D. in musicology. Also, this seems to be a rather arbitrary list. What’s the difference between “sports” and “games”? Does “regional environment” mean local news? How does celebrity gossip (a beat some of Mr. Döpfner’s papers are famous for) fit in? Is celebrity gossip a mixture of money, power, sex, crime and regional environment? How does politics fit in? Are politics a mixture of money, power, games, crime and regional environment? BTW, if we’re now seriously discussing “porn”, why not “music”? I’m certainly paying for it and I know a lot of people that do, too. What about “literature”? People are paying the price of books for physically almost non-existent downloads on their e-readers. And wasn’t this debate supposed to be about news? I’m confused.

17:33 — Mathias Döpfner’s rhetorical comeback:

It’s simply wrong to think that in the web world everything has to be offered for free. (…) I have to admit that’s one of the most absurd theories I have heard. It’s a very late ideological outcome of web Communists, where you say: Only if everything is for free, it’s democratic. How absurd! Is it more democratic to go to a supermarket and get a can of beer for free? Yes, I would prefer it I have admit…

At this point the moderator interrupts. I hope somebody is scolding her for that on the Twitter wall. Mr. Döpfner keeps going:

…pay for beer or getting it for free? I think free is better. But whether it is a fundament for democracy? I would radically disagree.

Ms. Huffington looks amused. However, I can’t help but agree with Mr. Döpfner when he climaxes in the all-too-obvious question:

What is the business model for the future? (…) In the same year (2005) when you have launched the HuffPost, we have launched a newspaper in Poland. It was breaking even after two years and its profits are higher than your (alleged, b/c the HuffPost is not releasing any numbers) sales figures. (…) You have 2000 contributors, 2000 bloggers that are working for you for free. You don’t pay them. I mean, if we do that with our company the margin goes up to 80%. (…) I love it, it’s a great business model, but I don’t think that it’s sustainable. (…) For high quality content people are and will be willing to pay for. That’s my hope and my conviction.

20:58 — Arianna Huffington argues that there’s no way to present hard news in a way that is sufficiently exclusive to get people to pay for it. Rather, she’s argueing in favor of the “link economy”, hence, making your content embeddable and widely distributable and increasing your ad revenue by increasing traffic and reach:

Ubiquity, an advertising genius said, is the new exclusivity. If you want to get paid for your content, make sure it’s on as many sites as possible, all over the web. (…) Promiscuity may not be good in relationships, but it’s very good online and it pays.

22:30 – Mr. Döpfner doesn’t buy it. He starts saying… something. Ms. Huffington is pouring herself a drink. It sounds like that one scene in “Naked Gun”, when detective Frank Drebin does not switch off his mic before going to the bathroom. Is that a strategy of distracting listeners from Mr. Döpfner’s explanations? She’s so brilliant. But Mr. Döpfner can’t be outfoxed. Implying he might just have called Ms. Huffington a thief ensures getting her attention back to the debate:

Oh no, no, no, no, no! (…) The Huffington Post is absolutely meticulous about following copyright rules!

But is it really? And is Gawker, another successful news aggregating Web site? Arianna Huffington:

There hasn’t been a single, traditional newspaper provider who has come to us and said: This is something you shouldn’t have taken. (…) On the contrary! Every day we get hundreds of requests from traditional content providers to link to them, because we provide massive traffic to the stories that we link to.

25:50 – Next topic: Is opinion journalism going to replace straight-forward, unbiased reporting of facts? Mr. Döpfner launches into a rather philosophical excursion again:

The net is a neutral technological platform.

This claim is supposed to give proof to Mr. Döpfner’s optimism concerning the future of (unbiased) reporting, yet it sounds a little vague, too. Can technology be neutral? Doesn’t each platform favor certain forms of presentation? Earlier, I was challenging the notion that there are no long and slow narratives on the web, because I think it’s not helpful to talk in absolutes when we discuss such matters, and because I’m convinced there are examples for all kinds of narratives and ways of presenting content online. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t, in fact, narratives or modes of presentation that work better on certain technological platforms than others. Cheap example: If there are no pictures to a story, you won’t see it on television. So can TV be neutral? Can any technology? Anyway, I assume that’s not really the point here. The point is rather: paid content. So after argueing that the web increases and gives new channels of distribution to both, intelligence and stupidity, opinions and facts, Mathias Döpfner returns to the issue of paid content, argueing that paid content has been the rule rather than the exception for hundreds of years and that giving stuff away for free online is the “one big structural mistake that we’re going to correct”.

32:20 — Arianna Huffington is making a case for consumer engagement. Rather than thinking that consumers exclusively go for low-brow content, publishers should give them a chance to become involved and “relate to news”, even to hard news:

How does Wikipedia do it? There’s clearly something that makes people want to participate, want to be engaged, and we can not ignore that.

Attempting to change people’s habits, e.g. trying to get them to consume more high-brow stuff, is hubristic and not realistic, Arianna Huffington argues. It’s not about forcing people, Mathias Döpfner replies, it’s about raising incentives. Also, you can’t just give people what they want (i.e.: no politics, because only about 50% of HuffPo readers and, according to Mr. Döpfner, less than 25% of Bild readers are interested in that), because

We believe that if you only do what the majority of your readers wants, you will not serve your consumer, because your consumer also wants to be surprised. That’s the function of journalism: that you are achieving that someone who is reading your product, or watching your product, is developing an interest in an area which he has never been interested in before. (…) Not because we are idealists and we want to change the world into a politically more interested place we are doing that (e.g. having reporters on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq, even though that’s very expensive and of little concern to the majority of readers), we are doing it out of a very opportunistic business assumption. We can afford to do it, because we have a sustainable business model.

37:30 — Arianna Huffington replies:

Nobody is saying that we are against investigative journalism or reporting online that comes from paid reporters. We are doing it through the investigative fund and we are doing it through our own paid reporters. Should we be expanding it? Absolutely. We are going to. We are 4 1/2 years old, we have a long way to go.

39:00 — Mathias Döpfner:

If you have to pay your people to go into other countries to do investigative research your business model is dead immediately.

41:02 – Talking about the media crisis, Mathias Döpfner agrees with Arianna Huffington that it’s not about channels of distribution, but about the quality of content. They found someone new to blame: journalists!

I think that the crisis of media — the crisis particularly of traditional journalism — is a crisis of journalism. It’s not a crisis of new distribution channels, it’s a crisis because the brain people, the journalists, are not doing well enough, they’re not good enough.

OK, IMHO this threatens to become a little fishy. I’m wondering what the consequences of this observation are. Journalists suck, kick their lazy asses? Well, then we’ll just trade careers and become lawyers. Very bad lawyers, probably. And that’s not going to help anybody.

42:10 — Arianna Huffington specifies:

Many of them (i.e. “journalists”) are unfortunately selling their independence for access. And we saw that in the coverage of the financial meltdown in America. It was absolutely stunning how many highly paid business journalists missed the meltdown. They did not warn us, they continued to cheerlead. (…) So that’s really the kind of model that can be dramatically transformed online. Because even though you said — rightly — there are errors online, constantly, but they’re corrected much faster. Basically, transparency is the new credibility.

45:30 – Mathias Döpfner, back on the issue of paid content:

I (…) don’t think that in the web world we will ever have a paid-only model. I think we will have mixed offerings where parts of the content are for free and other parts are to be paid for and I think that is a process of ten years. We have new opportunities with the mobile devices, because on the mobile devices, people are used to paying — for a telephone call, nobody is saying: “Well, it’s a new, sexy device, I want to make my telephone calls for free.” (…) And then it’s the decision of everybody whether he wants to have a very attractive game or a push service for exclusive news or whether he wants to have special interest content.

And here the argumentation goes full circle. Because, yes, Mathias Döpfner’s argument of habitual media consumption is convincing: People are used to be not paying for anything on the web, while people are used to be paying on their mobile phones. However, Arianna Huffington reminds us that there is probably no way of presenting content people would want to read on their cell phone (news, sports results) in a fashion exclusive enough to convince them not to use the services of multiple competitors who do not charge for the same kind of content.

47:24 — Mathias Döpfner, still on the issue of paid content, and back on the beer:

If we stick with the example of the beer can in the supermarket: (…) If it’s your business decision to offer the beer cans for free, fine, but my only request would be: Please brew your beer yourself and don’t take our beer and offer it for free.

49:25 – Arianna Huffington doesn’t like the beer metaphor. Her final statement to Mathias Döpfner:

I predict that in a couple of years a) you’re going to have a blog and b) you’re going to recognize that the future is free.

And with that, they’re off to the bar. Or wherever it is, that people are going to after heated debates these days. Their offices, maybe, continuing to fight all kinds of crises. It’s been an inspiring debate, and as these things go, they leave you craving for more once they end.

Here are the ten things I’m going to memorize:

1. The future is going to be digital. Digital is not bad per se.
2. Digital is pretty good, actually. As of now, it just doesn’t pay, compared to newspaper revenues.
3. Content matters, but quality content is expensive.
4. HuffPo & Axel Springer both are dedicated to (increasing) quality content.
5. Don’t trade independence for access!
6. “Ubiquity is the new exclusivity” and “transparency is the new credibility”. (Or maybe that just sounds cool.)
7. Human nature and consumer habits are probably more complex than one would think.
8. If all media is going to become hyper-personalized, nobody is going to be surprised any more.
9. Mobile phones may open up new business models, if only for habitual reasons.
10. One should use more beer metaphors and allude to “weird porn” more liberally.

…Obama is playing this one right.

History moves slow, and he knows it. Progress is made on incremental gains.

I know how he feels about it. It’s just that there are too many Republican Democrats to do anything else, or take any other position. Sad, but true.

The interesting and illuminating question is whether and how he can use this in the ‘10 or ‘12 elections.

How any woman could concede her uterus to a controlling authority is simply beyond me, no matter what she wants to do with it.

HuffPo blogger Jason Linkins was very critical of Saw VI for its foray into the pubic discourse on healthcare reform. Specifically in the scene below, the Jiggler shows a protagonist 6 victims bound to a carousel and tells the protagonist:

Before you are 6 of your most valuable associates. Their findings result in over two-thirds of applications denied or prematurely terminated. Healthcare decisions should be made by doctors and their patients, not by insurance companies. 6 ride the carousel but only 2 can get off. The decision of which 2 survive falls upon you. To offer the 2 reprieves, you will offer a sacrifice of your own. 2 can live. 4 will die.

In response to this, Jason Linkins writes:

I imagine that the filmmakers would say something like, “This should give people something to think about,” perhaps assuming that white-knuckle shock and scenes of antic terror pave the way for the cathartic purging of pity and fear that makes rational thought possible. I think that maybe they should re-read their Aristotle, because they are doing it precisely wrong. I offer this clip solely as proof of my claim.

First of all, it should be said that no villain is more despicable than the moralizing type.

Second of all, I’m not sure what Linkins is objecting to. He says that he has a claim, but I can’t find it (unless it is about Aristotle). Is Linkins unopposed to torture porn, per se, or is he rather opposed to political talking points being inserted into horror films?

Thirdly, it seems to me that the term “torture porn” is a little misleading. I do believe that good horror films leave a person with a sense of catharsis, but it is the very nature of horror sequels to be pornographic (with the exception of highly revisionist sequels and remakes). Sequeled horror franchises offer horror-geek fanboys predicable plot twists and “kills,” so it seems that some horror films are edifying while other horror films are designed to help a particularly marketable audience get off.

So much for the discourse of horror films. What about the discourse on healthcare reform? Well, I have already blogged about how a great portion of the healthcare reform debate resembles a torture porn franchise. Cable news, in general, is a predictable means of fear mongering. Another way of illustrating my point is to observe that much of the discourse on the “healthcare debate” is meant to horrify weak minded tea baggers into a mobilized force against healthcare reform. These people live on fear, so it goes without saying that they get off on fear. Watch the following Media Matters clip, and tell me that the mainstream media does not profit from their own variety of torture porn:

I admit that the music in the Media Matters clip is campy, but it is uncannily so: it resembles the campy music in the Saw 6 trailer! Personally, I would prefer watching any of the Saw sequels over thirty minutes of Fox News any day (Jason Linkins’ moralizing notwithstanding)!

An amendment that would prevent the gov. from working with contractors who denied victims of assault the right to bring their case to court is in danger of being watered down or stripped entirely from a larger defense appropriations bill.

Multiple sources have told the HuffPo that Sen. Inouye, D=HI, is is considering removing or altering the prov..

Source:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/22/frankens-anti-rape-amendm_n_329896.html

Listen up, the Mission district!  We need to rally together for a very special cause!

Local hot farmer David Stockhausen has been entered in The Huffington Post’s Hot Farmer contest!  Dave (no idea if he goes by Dave btw) was at #1 just this morning but has somehow slipped to #2.  We need to bump that shit back up!

Peep Farmer Dave here.  And here’s a li’l blurb about the gent:

David Stockhausen is the founder of Amyitis Gardens, a community-based farming project in San Francisco. The Amyitis mission is to educate and empower the Mission District community through food and farming. Amyitis links neighbors with neighborhood restaurants by cultivating backyard food gardens and exchanging the local produce for discounts on food and drinks. Amyitis provides local residents with the tools to farm their own yards, and restaurants with the most local produce possible- grown as close as a few blocks away.

My buddy Katie from Amyitis tells me produce grown in Mission backyards is then sold to places like The Corner and Weird Fish.  Yum.

The Mission positively framed in the national news, people!  Get on board already!  All you have to do is click a 10 on HuffPo here and we’re golden.

Good luck, David!

[Photo from Grub Street]

Jai Singh, Managing Editor of The Huffington Post, with NYU MS in Publishing Students

On a cold and wet Thursday, a small group of publishing students packed into the SoHo office of The Huffington Post to learn about one of the most heavily trafficked websites on the internet. Personally, I was excited to visit the office as the site has achieved what I think is the “holy grail” of websites: it not only survives, but thrives primarily through advertising revenue.After being treated to pizza and sodas, we were introduced to Jai Singh, managing editor of The Huffington Post. He first gave us some background on the site: it was founded in 2005, and its co-founder and Editor-In-Chief is Arianna Huffington. The site receives roughly 30 million unique visitors per month, and last month they surpassed WashingtonPost.com in uniques ; The Huffington Post also had 2 million comments posted. Their main office in SoHo has roughly 35 people in their editorial department, with about 75 people total on staff. Elsewhere, they have a D.C. branch staffed with ten people who report on various parts of the government; a California branch has five staffers.

The Huffington Post’s focus, Singh told us, is on “journalism done differently:” while original news reporting is part of their content, opinion, curated material and smart aggregation are the major components. The HuffPo, as it is called, also provides a platform for bloggers of all kinds, including politicians, celebrities, and authors. The editors operate under the concept of “P.A.C.T.”, which stands for professionals, amateurs, community (or crowdsourcing), and technology— all of which are essential components of the site.

When asked how front page headlines are chosen, Singh told us the editors serve up different versions to see which receive the most clicks. They also change headlines three to five times during the day. We learned that many comments are moderated at the discretion of editors, and that blog posts are moderated by the Blog section editors. While all bloggers are invited to submit posts, the editors choose what will be posted. Clearly, high profile bloggers may be granted more freedom and access to The Huffington Post’s content uploader.

Recently, The Huffington Post launched a nonprofit initiative, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, to finance investigative reporting that will look into important untold stories often ignored as other newsrooms contract or close. The goal: instead of what Singh calls the “autopsy” reports done after a major story has broken, The HuffPo hopes to conduct “biopsies” that will call out stories before they become major issues that  negatively affect  the public. The Investigative Fund is an open source project, and all news outlets will be given access to the reports at the same time as The Huffington Post.

Another exciting initiative is a new book section focused on giving authors a platform they can use to interact with The Huffington Post community. The site will not be reviewing books, but will partner with The New York Review of Books to provide reviews and will also link out to other review sites.

Inevitably, the question of free vs. paid content came up, and Singh said that The Huffington Post was not going behind a pay wall any time soon.  Their growth and expansion plans include the launching of local city sites, with Chicago and New York among the first.  We were also told a Sports section would be launched soon.

Section Editors (l-r): David Flumenbaum (Managing Blog Editor), Hannah Ingber Win (World Editor), Ryan McCarthy (Associate Business Editor), David Weiner (New York Editor), Katherine Goldstein (Green Editor), Danny Shea (Media Editor), Alex Leo (Comedy Editor), Katy Hall (Associate Entertainment Editor)

Following our discussion with Singh, we were introduced to a number of the section editors, many of whom had come to the Huffington Post with journalism degrees. For the most part, there is one editor per section, though entertainment has two. I left the offices of The Huffington Post feeling positively, as I had seen firsthand how the future of how publishing may look.

Amanda Ng

HuffPo pulls fake Limbaugh quotes. Not sure if anyone has picked this up yet, but the editors at the Huffington Post have pulled the fake Limbaugh “slavery” quotes from a 2006 Jack Huberman article. Huberman’s book was one of the original sources for the fake quotes, apparently picking them up from the wikipedia entry where they first appeared.
A note at the beginning of the article now states:
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this post contained quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh, which Limbaugh has since denied making. As is our policy when a fact in a blog post is called into question, we gave its author 24 hours to substantiate the quote. Since he has not been able to do so, the quotes have been deleted from the post.
So Huberman wasn’t able to back it up, they pulled the quotes. That’s fair enough, I guess. I wonder if the rest of the “fact-check” media will be honest enough to follow their online lead. Don’t hold your breath.

• the psychology of denial of most people on Climate Change…

• why British libel laws are really bad news for science…

• What I Believe–Science & the Power of Humanity…

• the probable advent of police-employed energy weapons…

• the family tree of Confucius just got three times as many branches…

• Science Bloggers Pigpile on the HuffPo…

• the first known species of vegetarian spider–NOT for arachnophobes…

• the implication of a little known retrovirus in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome…

• It’s the Mayans who are telling US that the world won’t end in 2012!…

• Beck & Limbaugh casting in their lots with the Anti-Vax Crowd…

• about Rumsfeld’s cynical manipulation of W. using Bible quotes…

• the Astronomy Picture of the Day for October 15, 2009…

I agree with 95% of his points, but this anti-swine flu vaccine nonsense is really souring me on my opinion of him. It started on Friday with his interview with Bill Frist (whom I have a small modicum of respect for now) where he made so many stupid claims about vaccines. Now I read his twitter page and he said, “If you get the swine flu vaccine ur an idiot,” now if this is true and these are his words then I really have to give up on even thinking he knows what he’s talking about. That and his PeTA membership.

I mean, sure, a bit of apprehension is understandable with any sort of vaccine or medical decision. That’s natural and to be expected, but going out and calling people idiots for wanting to protect themselves against a potentially fatal disease is just wrong. He’s beginning to sound just as bad as the religious people that he rails against. What’s the difference between saying, “You’re an idiot if you don’t believe in God,” and, “You’re an idiot if you get the swine flu vaccine?” They’re both on the same level of taking a leap of faith.

Granted you could say that about the vaccine, but in that case the vaccine is based on years of research and science. Maher’s statement and God? Not so much. So, he’s essentially using his own faith to make a definitive statement he barely has cursory knowledge about. This also brings up what I don’t like about left-wing politics. We, and I say ‘we’ because I am left-wing and very liberal, hold ourselves up as paragons of knowledge and mocking these stupid fucks in the south for being stupid fucks. But then statements like Maher’s and HuffPo’s come out that are very anti-intellectual and they still act smug.

Dumb fucks. You have to believe that medical scientists know what they’re talking about. Or at least trust that they know what they’re doing most of the time, because that’s the fundamental basis of medicine. You have to trust that your doctor knows what they’re doing. And if you don’t then switch doctors (if you can).  If you think there may be a problem then ask questions. Be as thorough as you like. And don’t criticize people for doing something you personally disagree with. Or at least until they get in your face about it.

Many months back, I made a post concerning the anti-scientific quackery being dished out over at the Huffington Post website. At the time, it seems that the HuffPo was receiving a storm of criticism from bloggers for their irresponsible promotion of various forms of alt-med woo & quackery, ranging from touchy-feely “energy healing” nonsense to outright dangerous anti-vaccination rants.

And, for a brief period of time, it seemed as if the folks over at HuffPo were backing away from the rabbit hole.  Sadly, the turn towards sanity& rationality didn’t last long, as outlined in a variety of blogs recently…

Science-Based Medicine: The Huffington Post is at it again

As many of our readers know, there are plenty of websites devoted entirely to fake medicine. Sites such as whale.to and NatrualNews are repositories of paranoid, unscientific thinking and promotion of dangerous health practices. Thankfully, they are rather fringe (but not fringe enough). More mainstream outlets print some pretty bad stuff, but it’s usually just lazy reporting and not a concerted, organized effort to promote implausible medical claims. As many of us have written, both hear and at our other blogs, the Huffington Post is the exception. It actively and in an organized way promotes dangerous, implausible pseudo-medicine.

NeuroLogica Blog: Science Bloggers Pigpile on HuffPo

And with good reason.

I am a bit late to the latest round of this party, but as I have previously pointed out, The Huffington Post has been since its inception a bastion of pseudoscience, especially in the medical field. Like distressingly many news outlets, it has decided to abandon all pretense of being “fair and balanced” in its actual content when it comes to its ideological stance.

Arianna Huffington clearly is enamored of anti-scientific pseudomedical nonsense. Earlier in her career she wrote for and frequently appeared on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher – another quack-friendly media personality.

The Bad Astronomy Blog: HuffPo still pushing antivax nonsense

I used to write for the Huffington Post, an online news and blog collective. It was started by Arianna Huffington during the Bush Era as a response to all the far-right online media. I didn’t agree with a lot of what was on there — I am more centrist — but at the time I thought it was necessary.

Then they started to promote far-left New Age nonsense, and when it came to vaccinations, HuffPo started posting all kinds of opinions that amounted to nothing more than out-and-out health threats. While they do sometimes post a counter-argument, it’s still almost all alt-med, all the time.

Here’s the latest: a doctor named Frank Lipman is telling people not to get vaccinated against Swine Flu. Instead he says you should wash your hands a lot, eat well, and take homeopathic medicine.

It indeed seems that the misguided & ideologically-driven folks over at HuffPo have tumbled uncontrollably down the rabbit hole, as attested to these scathing reviews.  But perhaps the most interesting, direct, and pithy post I’ve seen on this most recent expression of anti-science from HuffPo is from blogger PZ Myers…

Pharyngula: Die, HuffPo, DIE!

Thankfully, even the Huffpo is waking up to the dangers of piggy flu vaccine and alerting readers to how to combat the virus homeopathically.  Don’t forget to view previous posts here regarding treatment for vaccine toxicity in “Swine Pan(ic)demic?”  I’ve listed several articles at the end for your own research and knowledge base.  For those who have eyes to see…

Swine Flu: What To Do?
by Dr. Frank Lipman

[...]

Top 10 recommendations:

1) Optimize your vit D level

Adequate levels of Vitamin D are essential for our immune systems to function optimally. Unfortunately there are no significant dietary sources of Vitamin D, most of our intake comes from exposure to sunlight. If you live far from the equator, you simply don’t get enough sun through Fall and Winter to make all the vitamin D you need. So unless you supplement during this period, your innate immunity will be compromised. Vitamin D plays such a crucial role in so many aspects of your body’s functioning, that supplementing with it makes sense whether you decide to get the flu shot or not.

We know that influenza always gets worse during the winter months. Now there is good evidence to suggest that this is because as sunlight hours lessen during the winter, the people living in the northern hemisphere become vitamin D deficient and are susceptible to influenza infections of all kinds. Here’s a great article available at NIH pertaining to this topic.

There is also some evidence that supplementation with a sufficient amount of vitamin D can help to prevent the onset of a flu or cold.

The current recommendations from the Food and Nutrition Board of the U.S. Institute of Medicine: from 200 to 600 IU/day depending on one’s age, are way too low. These values were originally chosen because they were found to prevent osteomalacia (bone softening) and rickets. It is now recognized that vitamin D has many additional physiological functions, for which these levels are totally inadequate. A number of scientists are therefore calling for the Food and Nutrition Board in the U.S. and its counterparts abroad to reassess their current recommendations.

To optimize your vit D levels, you will need to

• Take at least 2,000 IU of a Vitamin D3 supplement daily.
• Get your 25 hydroxy Vitamin D level checked by your doctor (if that is not an option, you can self test your level with ZRT labs)

Although the current normal range is between 20 and 50ng/ml, this is much too low for optimal health. You want your level to be between 50 and 70ng/ml. This is the most important step you can take to prevent the flu!! It may require a number of months taking 5,000 to 10,000 IU of Vit D3 daily (especially during winter) under a doctor’s supervision, to optimize your blood level. Monitor your 25 hydroxy vitamin D status every 3 months until you are in the optimal range, then cut back to a maintenance dose of at least 2,000 IU a day.

2) Get adequate sleep, this is an indispensable requirement for a strong immune system.

3) Get adequate exercise, this keeps you robust.

4) Take actions to lower your stress levels

Do breathing exercises, meditate, practice yoga, spend time doing something that makes you happy. Feeling spent, overwhelmed, and/or mentally run down has a causal relationship to your physical health.

5) Wash your hands frequently but not excessively

It decreases your likelihood of spreading a virus to your nose, mouth or other people. Be sure you don’t use antibacterial soap because of the risk of creating resistant bacteria. Rather use a simple chemical-free soap.

6) Avoid sugar and processed foods as they decrease your immune function dramatically.

7) Eat phytonutrient rich meals (lots of colorful salads and dark greens)

Eat lots of garlic, it works as a broad spectrum antibiotic.

9) Take a probiotic daily (look for one with 10-20 billion organisms).

A strong immune system relies heavily on having a strong foundation in the gut.

10) Keep a supply of antiviral herbal supplements on hand.

As opposed to antiviral drugs, antiviral herbs do not cause resistant strains because they are multifaceted and contain literally thousands of different medicinal compounds. Thus they are able to attack viruses with a full spectrum of synergistic substances. Andrographis, Olive leaf extract, Grapefruit seed extract and Elderberry extract, all have antiviral properties. Use one or a combination of some of them as a prophylactic measure, for ex.whenever you travel (airports) or enter a potentially compromised environment such as a large office, auditorium, stadium, theater etc.

And if you really want to go all out, here are 4 more tips:

11) Take 1-2 grams of fish oils daily, its beneficial for immune function.

12) Take 2 grams of Vitamin C daily, yes it does help.

13) Stock your home pharmacy with an immune building formula.

Look for one that contains Cordyceps and Astragulus. Take it throughout the flu season.

14) Keep homeopathic Oscillococcinum on hand

Take it at the earliest sign of a cold or flu. Early intervention is essential. If you are exposed to someone with the flu directly, you can take one dose twice a day for two days. You can also take one vial once a week throughout the winter, and two or three times a week during flu season, as a preventative measure.
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-frank-lipman/swine-flu-what-to-do_b_286245.html?show_comment_id=31937435#comment_31937435

 
More articles of interest:

Makers Of Vaccination Refuse To Take H1N1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4SmFxyust0

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/epidemic-of-fever-phobia_b_305615.html

The most massive scientific frauds in medical history:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=408#more-408

“Doctor says drug firms ghost write medical articles”
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/15/1097784050288.html

Merck Wrote Drug Studies for Doctors
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/business/16vioxx.html?ref=business

“Doctors signed Merck’s Vioxx studies”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25311725-5013871,00.html

Eli Lilly & Co. officials wrote medical journal studies about the antipsychotic Zyprexa and then asked doctors to put their names on the articles, a practice called “ghostwriting,” according to unsealed company files.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a5OeWzHgCtFo

Mass-murder-attempt charges filed against UN and WHO re A/H1N1 virus
http://thebovine.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/mass-murder-attempt-charges-filed-against-un-and-who-re-ah1n1-virus/

Justice Department Announces Largest Health Care Fraud Settlement in Its History:
http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/September/09-aag-900.html

Surgeon accused of lying quits WU:
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/education/story/C307570B4DF7501986257618000A23DD?

“Renowned scientific publisher Elsevier produced Merck-sponsored publications designed to look like independent scientific journals, with names such as “The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine,” has led to some of the most far-reaching professional fallout from the trial. Elsevier disclosed six other phony “Australasian Journals” last week.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Drugs/story?id=7577646&page=1

The most massive scientific frauds in medical history: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=408#more-408

Another most informative site no one should miss.

http://www.theflucase.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/NoblenessDee#play/all

Please pass them on to everyone you can.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4SmFxyust0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXSB2oca7f8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfDf5bytf8U

SWINE FLU PROPAGANDA PART 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk1ECvdgmmg&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PelTWCUmTsU

Homeopathy has been used in Europe since developed in the 1700’s in Germany. It is available in chemists and drugstores throughout Europe, England and other countries, and is as well accepted abroad as herbal medicine. Like acupuncture, homeopathy works on a micro-energy basis that cannot be measured in terms of western medicine. But anyone who thinks that western science has all the answers to health, healing, or any other aspect of science has never studied the history and development of scientific theories–and the accompanying hubris of their adherents.

Used correctly, homeopathy can achieve astonishing results rapidly. Used incorrectly, there is no risk–not even to your pocket-book, as it is very inexpensive. Sounds like a perfect medicine.

good information including the history of vaccinations:

Loads of information:

http://www.vaccinationnews.com/vaccine_videos_and_tv_clips.htm

“The polio death rate was decreasing on its own before the vaccine was introduced, and there is no credible scientific evidence that the vaccine caused polio to disappear. Cases of polio increased after mass inoculations”
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/polio.html

“The Polio Vaccine Causing Polio in Nigeria Children”
http://www.squidoo.com/Poliovaccineconnection

Donald Rumsfeld and Tamiflu:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/tamiflu.asp

Wake up! Scientists & doctors, past & present, have been trying to tell us the truth but you’re not listening.

That proof is plastered all over this thread & in many others so why keep up the charade?

“W.H.O.s in Charge”

Not for long;

http://getdclu.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/w-h-o-s-in-charge/

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-frank-lipman/swine-flu-what-to-do_b_286245.html?show_comment_id=31937435#comment_31937435

 http://wp.me/pzfHB-dK