I’d heard the rumour floating around, but I didn’t believe it—this Reuters article, France to probe bin Laden death report leak, makes me wonder.

From the article:

France’s Defence Ministry said on Saturday a secret service report saying al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had died could not be confirmed but said it would launch an inquiry into the leak of secret documents.

The Defence Ministry issued the statement after a French regional newspaper, L’Est Republicain, published a report quoting a French secret service report as saying Saudi Arabia is convinced al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden died of typhoid in Pakistan last month.

Last week I went on a tour of Le Soleil newspaper headquarters here in Québec city. At the end of the tour, our guide asked us to write a little bit about what we are doing in Québec and to send a photo for their online version of the paper. I sent the following (I hope people can understand it because some of it I had help with and some I did not!):

Je m’appelle Jeff Milner. Je viens de Lethbridge, Alberta. Je viens juste de terminer mon bac à l’Université de Lethbridge en Nouvelle Media en avril.

Je suis venu ici pour apprendre le français, parce que je trouve la culture et histoire québecoise intéressante. J’ai reçu une bourse du gouvernement du Canada. Je suis en le cours Français “Elémentaire A”.

J’aime Québec beaucoup. Mes lieux preferés à Québec sont Vieux-Québec et les Plaines d’Abraham.

J’ai hate de revenir.

The photo was taken at the Plains of Abraham after a demonstration of historic battle formations and musket firing.

Update: Les photos publiées! (Click on the smaller photos to the right to see our individual photos and paragraphs).

From the best of my feeds:

Malcolm Gladwell calls the New York Times on their misleading story about the costs of prescription drugs.

Jason Kottke explains how brands that are so recognized actually run the risk of losing their trademarks due to people’s everyday usage of the words (did you know Escalator was a brand?)

Brad Bird’s classic The Family Dog on YouTube. Brad Bird directed Pixar’s “The Incredibles”. I remember watching the Family Dog as a kid on Stephen Spielberg’s Amazing Stories.

25 years in the making The Thief and the Cobbler (youtube playlist) is a collection an unofficial clips from a fan restoration of the world’s most ambitious animation project. Directed by Richard Williams (of Roger Rabbit fame), play all for an enchanting peek at what might have been.

Update: Cartoon Brew just posted a great interview with Garrett Gilchrist the person responsible for The Thief and the Cobbler Recobbled.

The Other Beating - Los Angeles Times story about the fate of George Holliday. Fifteen years after his video of Rodney King was broadcast to the world, he looks back on how that night has affected his life.

George Holliday was the Rodney King videographer. Awakened by sirens just after midnight on March 3, 1991—15 years ago next month—he grabbed his Sony Handycam, stepped out onto the balcony of his Lake View Terrace apartment and captured King’s beating by four LAPD officers. The video triggered a media sensation and, after the acquittal of the officers, helped ignite the riots that led to 54 deaths, 2,383 injuries, hundreds of destroyed buildings and more than 12,000 arrests.

Back then, George was married and a manager at a big plumbing and rooting company. Now he’s twice divorced, self-employed and scraping by. He might have been better off had he stayed in bed that night.

Check out a BBC commercial for digital television that has generated 1,300 complaints. Some even described it as “horrific” and “disturbingly psychotic”. Personally I thought it was pretty cool looking.

I’m pretty excited because today I was contacted by a reporter from a really big newspaper; The Wall Street Journal! She would like to do an interview with me for a story about the re-emergence of backmasking.

I did an interview for the Salt Lake Tribune back in April, and while that paper is pretty big, this paper is freaking huge! Wow, I’ve hit the big time and I’m totally thrilled. More details to come after I actually do the interview.

The New York Times is running a story on the departure of Disney CEO Michael Eisner from the company. His last day will be on Saturday.

It is a low-key way to end a 21-year career that was both brilliant and controversial and during which Mr. Eisner, 63, became the face of Disney for the generation whose parents grew up with the founder, Walt Disney.

New research correlating video game experience with proficiency in the operating room indicates that those who have played video games in the past were significantly faster and, more importantly, created fewer errors than people who had no previous video game experience. And my Dad always told me video games were a waste of time. (Of course I’m not a doctor but maybe I would be if I hadn’t spent so much time playing video games…)

Researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology have created a credit card-size battery that runs on urine as a disposable power source for medical test kits. Urine is rich in ions and ions are what makes electricity electric—or something like that.

Now if we could only hook it up to our cars…

Here is a list of interesting links I’ve stumbled upon lately (in no particular order):

• UBUWEB::365 Days Project (an MP3 for every day of the year)
• Tetris Final in Japan (video)
• Goggle Maps Globetrotting (photos)
• Sheep Dash! (reflex game)
• Watermelon Carvings (photos)
• BBC’s Step-by-Step Guide to Charisma (article)
• Chaos Theory (game)
• Good Experience Games (list of games)
• Crazy Ebay Mom (personal story w/ photos)
• Steve Jobs 2005 Commencement Address
• Will Ferrell: Class Day Speech
• Jon Stewart’s Commencement Address

I hope you enjoy some of these links.

The Globe and Mail has an article about what a hotbed Vancouver is for the Video Game industry. I’m interested in working with a company mentioned in this article, hopefully I’ll be able to secure an internship there this summer.

Using Buzztracker, you can see the geospacial relationship between Google News and the world.

The Gauntlet is the student newspaper at the University of Calgary. It just happens to be the same paper that my brother worked as the Photo Editor while he went to school there (2001-2004). Controversy is nothing new to student newspapers, but today I read about some misdirected anger.

Two editors are being suspended without pay because they allowed an article to be published which was accompanied a photo of a nude woman. The woman had paraded through the U of C food court completely naked except for a chain mail bikini as part of a student union sponsored sexual health awareness event.

In a response published in the Gauntlet by News Editor Dale Miller, one of the suspended, he defends his actions by explaining that the outcry should be directed towards the ones creating the event, not the ones reporting it.

“The performers were hired by the SU to put on the show, they chose their own outfits and performed in a public environment, in front of both media and the University population,” said Miller.

“I didn’t try and shock you by allowing these women to walk around naked, the SU did. I merely reported it, and brought the controversy to the larger student population.”

To top it all off the student portrayed in the picture has demanded that the Gauntlet be shut down. She feels the picture violates her rights in some way - never mind the fact that she was the one willingly prancing around naked in public and that the Students’ Union allowed participants to chose their own outfits. Seems like she may just want to jump on the controversy band-wagon. Maybe she’s trying to run up publicity for her night job as an exotic dancer; all I can say is “talk about someone giving mixed messages”.

Yay! Today The Salt Lake Tribune published the article about backmasking that I was interviewed for.

Enter “backmasking” into the Google search engine and nearly 9,000 sites pop up. One of them is “Stairway to Heaven: Backwards” (http://jeffmilner.com/backmasking.htm), a site established by Jeff Milner, a 25-year-old student, part-time lifeguard and bed salesman.

“As a kid, a cousin of mine told me he took his ‘Stairway to Heaven’ record and played it backwards hearing some kind of satanic message,” Milner says. “I never had a chance to hear it myself. . . . Then when the technology came along to do it on the computer, I jumped at the chance.”

He copied the song from the 1971 Led Zeppelin album onto his hard drive, then used the Windows Sound Recorder application to reverse it. He found what sounded like lines about the devil.

Update: I’ve posted the complete contents of the article in the comments.

The other day I received an email asking for an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune. The reporter wanted to know more about my backmasking site and what I thought about it. I sent in my answers via email but I haven’t heard if this ever went to print yet. If you read this article and came to this site as a result please leave a comment—I’m interested to know what the article said.