Bad reporting

Maybe it wasn't in the press materials, but anyone with access to the Internet and the ability to cut-and-paste the phrase "Iron Man" into the search bar on Google would have found, in seconds, any and all references to the Marvel character Tony Stark and alcoholism.

Obviously Gina Piccalo, a contributor with The Daily Beast who allegedly "spent a decade at the Los Angeles Times covering Hollywood," just didn't have this technology.

Why else would she write such an empty-headed faux-analysis of Robert Downey, Jr.'s real-life alcohol struggles with those of the fictional Tony Stark, more than three years after the first movie went into production?

What is the point of this article? Normally I'm a huge fan of The Daily Beast, but this just seems gratuitous and intellectually lazy, not only on the part of the writer, but the editors who actually thought it was a good idea and gave it a green light.

Tina Brown was always a huge fan of "generating buzz" and I guess if she thinks people complaining about a poorly conceived, dear I say it, tired subject, like Downey's alcoholism is the kind of buzz she's looking for, she's obviously lost her mojo.

參考來源： Iron Man 2's Hidden Plot - The Daily Beast (在「Google 網頁註解」中檢視)

Yes, that's a snail

Next to my credit card-sized work ID. We were walking through Hong Kong Park and it caught my eye.

Posted via email from jackknifedjuggernaut's posterous

IFC1 and IFC2

View from the Escalator, Mid-Levels at Mosque Street, Hong Kong.

Posted via email from jackknifedjuggernaut's posterous

Reality versus Perception

Over at Yahoo's Mobile Blog Thursday they did an analysis of just who exactly is using an iPad. It's no surprise, a majority of the users are male and "94% more likely to be affluent consumers with solid wealth and strong incomes than typical U.S. Yahoo! users."

Still, the numbers are interesting because as "mobile" becomes the reality of our daily digital lifestyle, it's not the iPhone that take the lead. Yahoo's analysis follows on the heels of comScore's press release touting the number 1 mobile phone company (and hence most popular mobile operating system) in the U.S. is made by ... Samsung?!?!?

Samsung mobile phones use both the Bada open source operating system as well as the stalwart Symbian, which is also used by Nokia and Motorola (number 2 on the list, BTW) in some of their products.

The way the digital media fawns over the Apples, the Amazons and the Microsofts, you often lose sight of the fact that outside such media-centric areas like San Francisco and New York, the rules are a lot different.

參考來源： Apple iPad User Analysis | Y! Mobile Blog (在「Google 網頁註解」中檢視)

Capturing the world as it was

Via Gizmodo and the BBC, there's a new collection of rare color photographs from the early 1900s taken by a French banker named Albert Kahn.

Check this out. Incredibly beautiful stuff, From Gizmodo: "In 1909, wealthy French banker Albert Kahn set out to create "a photographic inventory of human life on Earth." His teams took 72,000 autochrome photographs in over 50 countries, comprising the largest collection of early color photography in existence."

參考來源： The Wonderful World of Albert Kahn (在「Google 網頁註解」中檢視)

Do as I say, not as I do ...

The news of George Alan Rekers troubles has to be my favorite political scandal of the moment. It's got all the usual tropes of the GOP/Conservative scandal: a gay-baiting minister. Check. A national anti-gay/pro-family lobbying group. Check. Sad emails. Check. Male prostitute. Check.

From the Miami edition of the New Times we learned that the co-founder of the Family Research Council "hired" a "travel assistant" from Rentboy.com, a site where you go to find male "escorts".

Maybe the Rev. Rekers took the name of the site a little too seriously? Maybe it was a cry for help? Maybe the de-gay-ification process wore off?

Still, coming out should never be this ugly.

參考來源： Christian right leader George Rekers takes vacation with "rent boy" - Page 1 - News - Miami - Miami New Times (在「Google 網頁註解」中檢視)

Paul Theroux almost makes a point

Living in Hong Kong now I have to keep my identification card on me all the time, just as I always kept my U.S. or Irish passport handy when I traveled through Europe. It's because as Paul Theroux writes in this piece on The Daily Beast: "The request for papers is not just a line in Casablanca. I have been hearing the question my whole traveling life."

What Theroux, whose writing often has a whiff of the colonialist to it, either fails to see, or chooses not to, is the history of racism in the United States, of often government-sponsored intimidation of non-whites that ran rampant through the South in the wake of the Reconstruction all the way up to, well, today.

I'm sure in the past 24-hours somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line, a non-white was stopped by police "with just cause" because that's just how the United States is, whether we like it or not.

參考來源： Show Your Papers? So What - Page 1 - The Daily Beast (在「Google 網頁註解」中檢視)

The truth hurts

From The Daily Beast: "therein lies the insidious genius of the rumpled dictator from Iran. More often than not, the things he says—from his criticism of U.S. foreign policy to his denunciations of the United Nations (an opinion Ahmadinejad shares with the leaders of Israel)—are not only popular…they are correct."

Iran is a problem and its government dangerous, but Americans always lose sight of the fact that several hundred years of colonialism and neo-colonialism played a large role in getting to this fraught stage in history.

參考來源： What Iran's Dictator Got Right - Page 1 - The Daily Beast (在「Google 網頁註解」中檢視)

More of the Usual Suspects

From the LA Times: "Investigators delving into the possible cause of the massive gulf oil spill are focusing on the role of Houston-based Halliburton Co., the giant energy services company, which was responsible for cementing the drill into place below the water."

Let's see how this impacts Dick Cheney's bottom line.

參考來源： Gulf oil spill: The Halliburton connection | Greenspace | Los Angeles Times (在「Google 網頁註解」中檢視)

Presidential Powers

Funny, when the Bush Administration was running roughshod over the separation of powers -- remember when the Vice Presidency WASN'T a part of the Presidency, let alone the Constitution? -- you never heard a peep from the GOP. Now that the Obama Administration is picking up where Bush/Cheney left off, it's not so great, is it?

Now, this article is, of course, about the latest Fox News preconceived narrative which the network routinely uses -- death panels on healthcare, Obama's birth certificate, etc. -- but what makes it that much more interesting is that it attempts to promote fictional tyrannical powers over the very real questionable powers the Bush Administration rested from Congress in the previous eight years.

Sad, really ...

參考來源： The GOP vs. 'King Obama' - Page 1 - The Daily Beast (在「Google 網頁註解」中檢視)