christian ross

When political correctness backfires…

Posted by Christian - 03/07/08 at 10:07:03 pm

I don’t have any idea who the American Family Association is nor have I ever heard of their website OneNewsNow.com but by the looks of it, they are a very far right, Christian conservative group. In fact upon a current visit to their site, the lead story is a call from their founder about boycotting McDonald’s over their ‘refusal to be neutral in the cultural war over homosexuality.’ I am guessing this is a pretty common style of story for this site.

Side note for a moment: I appreciate good moral stances. But I also feel that there are some who take things a little too far. Keep following…

After a little reading today, I have learned that the OneNewsNow is a news aggregator of AP stories and other news sources. Great. Congrats. Another news site. Except for the fact that OneNewsNow has been caught on more than one occasion blocking stories and even modifying them in some instances.

One of the ways that they modify stories is to set up filters/rules to do search & replaces in the articles that come through. In some instances I can see where this could be a benefit; Editorial or op-ed pieces that might come through with inappropriate language or subject matter might be toned down for the OneNewsNow audience. I would be concerned on their part for some copyright issues but I don’t work for them nor read their material so it isn’t worth my time or effort to research it any more.

What is worth my time, was what came across my desk today.

In the AFA/OneNewsNow’s attempt to either keep it clean or politically correct, they got it wrong. Good thing is, wrong in this situation is funny-haha, not funny-gonna-end-up-in-court. Hopefully.

The Olympic trials are currently going on in several sports. Swimming, Bass Fishing, Bowling, Track & Field and many others. ONN (tired of typing here) seems to be covering the trials and the results pretty well. And of course filtering every story that comes through. Including replacing any location of the word GAY with the synonym HOMOSEXUAL.

I don’t guess there’s too much wrong with the aforementioned auto-replacement on articles… until Tim Gay, a United States Olympic hopeful, runs a 9.85 second time to win the 100 meter race. I think you get the idea…

 

In fact a quick search brought up several stories about Tim over the span of a couple days:

 

Even worse, this isn’t the first time it has happened to ONN. The NBA draft saw the Memphis Grizzlies picking early on a couple of weeks ago looking for a star player to play right along side their young stud, Rudy Gay.

 

At the time of this posting, ONN had resolved the issues above. Probably by hand. Maybe they should spend a little time looking into their methods or their algorithms, the current ones seem to have a few flaws. Either way, high comedy all around.

Nerd humor

Posted by Christian - 03/07/08 at 09:07:47 pm

The guys at Gizmodo posted a pretty humorous idea for you geeks out there. Instead of going with the standard naming on your WiFi router at home like Linksys or 2wire3401, set it to something that your neighbors will always see when they are looking for a connection. Plenty of suggestions abound (plenty of ideas are NSFW), but here are a few of my favs:

• ThosePeopleIn1583LookLikeTerrorists
• IReadYourMail
• IPoisonedYourDog
• GetYourOwnDSLCheapskate

And a couple of my own for good measure:

• YouReallyShouldn’tBeLookingAtThat
• IPouredSugarInYourPrius’Tank
• NiceAcidWashedJeans
• I’llShareMyInternetIfYou’llShareYourCable
• DoYouSwimInMyPoolWithoutMeKnowingToo?

There’s a good chance I will be starting a rotation of great WiFi names in the near future. Any suggestions?

The ICON could possibly be affecting my goal planning for the next 3 years.

Posted by Christian - 15/06/08 at 04:06:01 pm

ICON Aircraft

I would also entertain the idea of a partnership with 1-3 others in an attempt to speed up the timeline for ordering.

Some highlights:

• Need only Sport Pilot License to fly (lower cost, less hours than full pilot’s license)
• Lands on both land and water with only about 750 feet needed.
• Max speed 120 knots (138 MPH)
• Parachute for extreme emergency situations to help land entire plan safely
• Folds down for easy travel and storage. I could see landing on the lake near my house and storing in my own garage.

Drawbacks:

• No night flying
• Two passenger only

Any takers? Of course living in the general area of my house would be preferred.

Dean Kamen is smarter than you (and me)

Posted by Christian - 30/05/08 at 09:05:37 am

Dean Kamen, the Segway inventor, is at it again. This time creating robotic prosthetics, there’s not a person on the planet that doesn’t see benefit to this kind of technology. Not one. Surely, not a single one.

zipcode | ben fry

Posted by Christian - 02/05/08 at 03:05:25 pm

http://benfry.com/zipdecode/

type in a zip code to see where it is on the map. it’s the little things that entertain me…

EDIT:

http://benfry.com/allstreets/

Also pretty interesting. All the streets in the contiguous 48. All 26 million of them.

fin

Posted by Christian - 18/04/08 at 09:04:06 am

So I signed up for Muxtape about 3 hours after it launched but I hadn’t ever had a chance/taken time to get mine in order. No more. With over 100,000 created in the first week, I decided to catch up.

No need for explanation other than to say that it took time for me to put mine together. I put thought into it. And I picked songs that were a step out for me. No Jack. Nobody from Brushfire Records. No Coldplay. I crossed genres, artists (only duped one) and genders. Autumn: A Feist song even almost made the cut, maybe on the next round. Edit: Updated due to the logic of one Tai Autumn.

I still have two slots open, one of which I know what I want to fill it with. Any suggestions for the last spot?

When I share music with somebody, it’s usually something I think is worth listening to and ask them to put it to the 3 (or 5) listen test. There’s not much music that can catch you with one listen. I’ve only seen it on rare occasion. 3 listens is all I ask if you are serious about getting some new music. I know it won’t be worth it for everyone, but there are a select few that will get it.

http://christianross.muxtape.com/

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