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Lunar Eclipse

On Saturday and Sunday we, the human population, had an opportunity to see the moon completed blotted out by Earth’s shadow in one of those rare events known as a Lunar eclipse. Personally I’ve always thought solar eclipses to be the more interesting variety and so I never even bothered looking for the moon over the weekend.

However, thanks to the power of modern computing, here is an animated version of the entire phenomena, for those like myself that want all the reward without any of the effort.

animated eclipse

I have to admit, the orange glow that appears on the moon during the middle of the action is kind of cool.

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Ira Glass on Storytelling

Ira Glass bequeaths the tricks of the trade in four YouTube videos that are extremely interesting, whether or not your are in the publishing/podcasting/video making business.

… It is your job to be kind of ruthless and to understand that either you don’t have a sequence of actions — you don’t have the story part that works or you don’t have a moment of reflection that works and you’re going to need both, and in a good story you’re gonna flip back and forth between the two like to be a little bit of action and someone will say something about it and then a little more action and someone will say something and it and that’s really like a lot of the trick of the whole thing you know is to have the perseverance that if you’ve got an interesting anecdote that you also uh… can end up with an interesting moment of reflection that will support it and then the two together interwoven into three minutes or six minutes or however long your story is will make something that’s larger than the sum of its parts.

(Via Kottke)

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Jason Scott on Wikipedia Editor Essjay

Jason Scott has written a great article on Wikipedia’s latest controversy.

A popular editor of Wikipedia was hired by the Wikia company and in doing so revealed that he wasn’t a guy with some college degrees but in fact was a 24-year old kid from Kentucky. This made a lot of people unhappy, and in the ensuing discussions, Jimbo Wales and strongly alleganced Wikipedians have tried to downplay it, mostly because that position’s always worked before. It’s not working as well this time.

As an aside, I should mention that Jason’s site, ascii.textfiles.com has become a favorite of mine lately and I enjoy pretty much everything about it.

Update: Jimbo Wales has asked Essjay to step down. Jason Scott has a great follow-up.

Link rot. Here is the post from the Wayback Machine.

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Richard Dawkins’ Nice Guys Finish First

When I was enrolled in University, one of the classes I wanted to take was Philosophy of Game Theory. Unfortunately, disillusioned by my lack of interest after taking the introductory class (a prerequisite) I decided that Philosophy wasn’t for me after all.

Game Theory (Wikipedia) however, is still a very fascinating topic. Couple that with an interest in biology, sociology, and economics and the short documentary, “Nice Guys Finish First“, by Richard Dawkins becomes a tremendously interesting look at how selfish and altruistic behavior can be the greatest benefit or harm to the individual—and consequently also to the group.

Hit Play or Watch at Google Video.

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Oscar Moments On YouTube

For those of you that missed the Oscars, you can catch some of the great moments on YouTube (at least for the time-being). Here is one that I liked, Will Ferrel, Jack Black, and John C. Reilly singing about the pros and cons of being a comedian in an industry focused on drama.

Hit play or Watch at YouTube.

Well, the embedded video is gone, but you can still find clips for the time being at Oscar.com. Apparently, even those clips will be removed soon—talk about a backward marketing strategy.

I guess they don’t realize, the Oscars want to be free.