Wired News also reported that there are now ways to block them flash ads.

"The most-read webloggers aren't necessarily the ones with the most original ideas, say researchers at Hewlett-Packard Labs. Using newly developed techniques for graphing the flow of information between blogs, the researchers have discovered that authors of popular blog sites regularly borrow topics from lesser-known bloggers -- and they often do so without attribution."
Wired News on infections and epidemics in the blogworld and this study. Do read the FAQs, especially if you want to know why bloggers kill kittens.

"The talks almost always take place in the dark. During the first 10 minutes, the scientist-presenter fumbles with a bulky laptop computer in an effort to get the PowerPoint program to work. During the nonext 30 minutes, the scientist, who has never been trained in the art of public speaking, explains, often through a very thick Chinese, German, French or Italian accent, why the mass of pinkish cells on the right is the surprising and highly significant result of the procedure performed on the almost identical mass of pinkish cells on the left. Line graphs are shown.
"The final five minutes is taken up by a question period. Colleagues stand at a microphone in the middle of the aisle and, using the polite code phrases of science, ask the presenter if he has considered the possibility that his head has unaccountably become entangled in his ass."
An extract from Brian Alexander's Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion as quoted in this Wired News article, which also asks, "Do most Americans lack the attention span to follow science news more complicated than the latest antidepressant or flu shot?" (The article is about CSN: Cable Science Network, which in an ideal world, we'd be seeing instead of The God Channel or whatever that bunkum is called.)

Over in the USA, fans of Hongkong martial arts films have a quibble with Disney.

The Blue (Wind)Screen of Death

System crashes and Fatal Errors will take on a whole new meaning. Or to put it another way, Objects in the Rear-view Mirror better be running the Mac OS. Somebody stop us. Or better still, you got any more?

Dean Kamen's Segway may have competition.

Re: our post on product placement, our pal R. of Words in a waltz writes in to say:

Whoa! Now here's something WE can speak volumes about. The allusion to product placement in books leads bang on to new-fangled trends in covert advertising that have come under critical surveillance in recent times. In the US, it began when writers of sitcoms started churning out plotlines devoted to selling jewelry or perfume, for instance. A few years ago, an entire evening of sitcoms featured Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds perfume.
And now to Fay Weldon's book - one of the first scenes in this British writer's novel takes place amid "the peaches and cream décor" of the Bulgari jewelry store on Sloane Street in London. There, attended to by “charming girls, and men too,” the real estate mogul Barley Salt pays £18,000 to buy his scheming second wife, Doris Dubois, “a sleek modern piece, a necklace, stripes of white and yellow gold, but encasing three ancient coins, the mount following the irregular contours of the thin worn bronze.”
Initially, readers probably didn’t know that Bulgari, the Italian jewelry company, paid Ms.Weldon an undisclosed sum for a prominent place in the book, fittingly entitled “The Bulgari Connection.”
The bottom line on this, is simply that marketers believe implied credibility of a presumably unbiased endorsement is the most effective kind of advertising.

BTW, what's the "H" in Jesus H Christ stand for?

At Slate, Katie Roiphe on The Maiden Name Debate.
Which got us wondering about bureaucracy in this country. About a week ago, we had occasion to file a report in our local police station, and had long (and in the end, fruitless) debate with the constable who wrote out our complaint in Marathi (a rant for another time: we were not allowed to write it ourselves in the only language we can write competently in) about the difference between one's father's name and middle name. Tried to explain that, being born Christian, we have a middle name, and that's how we feature in any legal paperwork, but the man was having nothing of it. And that got us thinking about women in this country who have to fill in forms that only accept their existence as a adjunct to a man with the compulsory "Father's/Husband's name." Tell, me, does this piss you off? And does this happen only in Maharashtra? What about the North-Eastern states with matrilineal systems?

We, in the course of 10+ years writing ads, have churned out the equivalent of several volumes of paid-for words. But it seems we missed the real opportunities. John Darkin, in New Zealand News, on product placement in books. (Aside: wasn't there a book sometime last year that had a jewellery company's name in the title?) Via Kitabkhana.

Reading Two Books at Once? Combine Them. Some of our favourites:
The Dog of Small Things. Top of the dyslexic reading list.
The Secret Diary of Anne Frank, aged 13 3/4 Anne hides in a loft from the Nazis, while sneaking a crafty look at Big and Bouncy.
Mister God this is Anna Karenina. A wealthy army officer falls in love with this girl. The trouble is, she already has this *special* friendship with God.
Alice in Wonderland Avenue Teen girl follows Lizard King through doors of perception, finds bags labeled Inject Me and Snort Me.
To Sir with Love in the Time of Cholera Two people finally get it on after years of fannying around. Soundtrack features Lulu.
Five Go Mad In A Slaughterhouse Timmy gets what's coming to him, little canine fucker.
Green eggs and Hamlet breakfast's off in the state of Denmark.
(Via Bookslut.)