Headlines gone wrong

Crashblossoms: headlines gone wrong (ex.: "Jessica Hahn Pooped After Long Day Testifying")

This day in history: Lunar Lunacy

"On August 28, 1835, one of newspaper history's most notorious hoaxes was perpetrated by the New York Sun. An article in a week-long series about the telescopic 'discoveries' of esteemed British astronomer Sir John Herschel -- an alleged reprint from the nonexistent Edinburgh Journal of Science -- described his detection of winged, humanlike beings on the moon. Sir John was quoted as saying, 'We counted three parties of these creatures walking erect in a small wood... They averaged about four feet in height, were covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane without hair, lying snugly upon their backs, from the top of their shoulders to the calves of the legs. The face, a yellowish flesh color, was a slight improvement upon that of the large orangutan.' The ruse temporarily catapulted the Sun ahead  of its rivals and went on to badly embarrass those who copied the story without authenticating it. The New York Daily Advertiser, for example, wrote that Herschel 'added a stock of knowledge to the present age that will immortalize his name.'" (via my Dictionary of Forgotten English desk calendar)

More on the Sun's moon hoax here.

Video appears in paper magazines

The first-ever video advertisement will be published in a traditional paper magazine in September.

Wednesday coffee break: probably bad news

An easy mistake to make. Lots more at probablybadnews.com

Arizona senator: the Earth's been here 6,000 years, and we haven't messed it up yet, so...

Yikes.

Texas lawmaker: Asians should change their names to make them ‘easier for Americans to deal with.’

Friday coffee break: Recent scenes from Afghanistan

Another set of amazing shots from Boston.com's Big Picture series

Scenes from a recession

A few recent glimpses into some of the places and lives affected by what some are calling the "Great Recession." (boston.com)

Science marches on

University of California researchers, on a Pentagon contract, announced in January success at rigging a live flower beetle with electrodes and a radio receiver to enable scientists to control the insect's flight remotely. Pulses sent to the bug's muscles or optic lobes can command it to take off, turn left or right, or hover, according to a report in MIT Technology Review, and the insect's "large" size (up to a whopping four inches in length) would enable it to also carry a camera, giving the beetle military uses such as surveillance or search and rescue. The researchers admired the native flight-control ability of the beetle so much that they abandoned developing robot beetles (which required trying to mimic nature). [MIT Technology Review, 1-29-09, via newsoftheweird.com]

and:

Doctoral student Daniel Bennett filed a lawsuit against Britain's Leeds University in February because custodians had mistakenly thrown out research that he had been working with for the last seven years. Bennett is studying the rare Butaan lizard of the Philippines and over the years, to examine its diet, had painstakingly sifted through jungle dirt to gather over 70 pounds of its feces, which Bennett believes is worth far more than the ($720) Leeds has offered him. [Daily Telegraph, 2-5-09, via newsoftheweird.com]

and:

"Reproduction is no fun if you're a squid," said a biologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, referring especially to the deep-sea squid. Finding a mate a mile down in pitch-darkness is hard enough, but the combination of males that are smaller and fearful of being overpowered and females whose reception of sperm involves being stabbed makes the insemination process especially traumatic. Sperm deposits can be extensive and burdensome to the female and are delivered by the reckless slashing of the skin by the male. In fact, according to a December report in Germany's Der Spiegel, in the darkness the male sometimes misses the female altogether and inseminates himself. [Spiegel Online, 12-23-08, via newsoftheweird.com]

and:

Princeton University scientists, reporting in January on research in Peru, said they observed aggressive, carnivorous behavior for the first time among dung beetles, which decapitated and ate millipedes. Dung beetles were not known previously to be fussy eaters (except for a 2006 study in which they seemed to prefer horse dung to camel dung or sheep dung). [Daily Telegraph (London), 1-21-09, via newsoftheweird.com]

Tuesday coffee break: Digital Dark Age

Will today's digital documents be accessible in the future? Jackie Esposito predicts that "30 to 40 percent of this information will be available" in the future. (ResearchPennState)

How to Save Your Newspaper

It's now or never for America's dailies. A former TIME managing editor offers a way to return journalism to prosperity: charge for it, a nickel at a time: "I am hoping that this year will see the dawn of a bold, old idea that will provide yet another option that some news organizations might choose: getting paid by users for the services they provide and the journalism they produce." Walter Isaacson, Time magazine

The Year in Pictures, Part 3

The third and final in boston.com's series

The Year in Pictures, Part 2

From boston.com's Big Picture series

The Year in Pictures, Part 1

From boston.com's Big Picture series

The Big Picture: riots in Greece

"On the night of Saturday, December 6th, two Special Guards of the Greek police clashed with a small group of young men... This incident sparked an immediate and widespread response in the form of angry demonstrations and riots..." (boston.com)

A vanishing breed?

The soon-to-be-lost art of science reporting: "While all eyes have been focused on the potential disintegration of the auto industry, a surprisingly silent and astonishingly broad purging has been taking place throughout some of America’s major news media. And while some may immediately react with, “It serves them right,” the truth is that the scientific and medical communities may suffer the most from this loss." (Earle Holland, Ohio State Univ.)

Link roundup

• Senate Begins Largely Symbolic Climate-Change Debate: "The era of climate-change legislation is finally upon us -- sort of." (wired)


• Key to All Optical Illusions Discovered: "Humans can see into the future, says a cognitive scientist. It's nothing like the alleged predictive powers of Nostradamus, but we do get a glimpse of events one-tenth of a second before they occur. And the mechanism behind that can also explain why we are tricked by optical illusions." (livescience)


• NASA Scientists Make Magnetic Fields Visible, Beautiful: "Magnetic fields are invisible, at least usually. But Scientists from NASA's Space Sciences Laboratory have made them visible as "animated photographs," using sound-controlled CGI and 3D compositing. It makes the fields, as explained by the scientists, dance in an absolutely gorgeous movie called Magnetic Movie." (gizmodo)


• Gun T-shirt 'was a security risk':
  "A man wearing a T-shirt depicting a cartoon character holding a gun was stopped from boarding a flight by the security at Heathrow's Terminal 5." (BBC)