Digital Brainwaves

Sad news from the wildfire-fighting front:

YREKA, Calif. — A helicopter delivering water to firefighters battling a blaze in the Klamath National Forest crashed Monday, killing the pilot, authorities said.

Investigators were trying to determine what caused the chopper to go down in “extremely rugged” mountain territory about 12 miles southeast of Happy Camp in Siskiyou County, said Duane Lyon, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman.

Call your representatives and senators now, and demand nothing less than a full withdrawal from California.

*waits patiently for the start of a “bushes fried, people died” chant*

Ouch:

For a mail carrier looking to escape dog bites, New York City is the place to go, and California is the place to avoid.

The New York metropolitan area recorded no dog bites of letter carriers last year.

At the other end of the scale, the Santa Ana, Calif., area led the nation with 96 bitten carriers, and three of the top five spots for carriers to get bitten were in the Golden State.

Based on the model of the gun control lobby, the logical response will therefore be to have the California legislature introduce a bill aimed at banning dogs in the state.

If you’re not familiar with it, Ask Yahoo! is a component of the Yahoo! web site that takes user-submitted questions, researches the answers, and posts one answer a day.

Today’s article seemed pretty straightforward: what’s the best-selling album ever?

Before we began our research, we thought Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” held the title. But, as we quickly learned, that’s not the case.

The high-flying Eagles are the real champs of the charts. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, “Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975″ by the Eagles is the best-selling album ever with 29 million copies sold. Jacko’s “Thriller” is second, followed by “Led Zeppelin IV,” Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” and AC/DC’s “Back in Black.”

I might not have even read the article, though if it weren’t for the text in the article’s RSS feed. As I’m looking through Google Reader, I come across this little gem:

Before we began researching, we thought Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” held the title. But, as we quickly learned, that’s not the case. Believe it or not, the best-selling album of all-time actually belongs to rap star and Mensa member Kevin Federline…

Waitwaitwait– WHAT???

Mensa… K-Fed… *brain explodes*

I have no idea how long this was live on the site; Google’s RSS reads are cached for a while, and the live feed has already removed the third sentence from the site:

Before we began researching, we thought Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” held the title. But, as we quickly learned, that’s not the case…

I wonder if anyone’s getting reprimanded, if not fired, for this one.

I would applaud this if it were true.

The day after an unidentified man killed 32 people, and wounded many others at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recanted years of support for gun control laws and called on Congress to initiate a national weapons training program at schools that receive federal funding.

“Since it’s clearly impossible to keep guns out of the hands of criminals,” Rep. Pelosi said, “the only way to hamper the evil plans of the deranged and wicked is to assure that their potential victims are not helpless.”

Usually, spam gets through to you because it’s written to obscure its intent from the prying eyes of anti-spam filters. Chris Pirillo was recently surprised to discover a comment left on his blog that didn’t hold back:

Please visit my site, click my ads and buy my crap

I’d like to make another annoucement…

Continue reading ‘Announcement #2’ »

Throughout everything that’s been happening in our country, it’s nice when one can still display a sense of humor — especially when one is the President of the United States.

The video continues in parts two, three and four, featuring sound effects by Brian Williams, a rapping Karl Rove, and David Gregory the backup dancer.

Now, don’t get me wrong, breast cancer is no laughing matter.

But the poor woman in the NBC Video picture in this article about cancer screening was caught in a rather undignified position to be photographed and published on the Internet for all to see…

Elton John cooks up some music on the spot — pun intended.

(Hat tip: Don)

It’s rarely a good idea to hotlink to images on other web sites you don’t control.

For one, the site could go dark, or close up shop, in which case the image you’re using is gone and you’re left with an empty space.

But, in some cases, that may not be the worst case. Maybe, instead, someone on the other end decides to have a little fun at your expense, and replace the image you were linking to with something else.

al Jazeera got zapped on it about two months ago, and now it’s happened again to John McCain.