Roger Federer: news | photos | quotes
Novak Djokovic: news | photos | quotes
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga: news | photos | quotes
Rafael Nadal: news | photos | quotes
Australian Open: news | photos | quotes
Archive for January, 2008
Djokovic defeats Federer; Tsonga defeats Nadal
Friday, January 25th, 2008Parkour (the art of moving) Photos
Thursday, January 24th, 2008And here I thought it was just freestyle walking. For more information and photos, try the Daylife search Parkour, “the art of moving.” I’m clearly out of the loop, as these photos show:
You can click each of these photos to see the larger version.
Spaceship Two
Thursday, January 24th, 2008Richard Branson and Burt Rutan recently showcased the latest designs stemming from the Virgin Galactic – Scaled Composites partnership, including “spaceship two” shown below.
From Getty Images:
“Sir Richard Branson (L), founder of Virgin Galactic, and Burt Rutan (R), CEO of Scaled Composites, unveiled the design of the Spaceship Two (C, under wing) and White Knight Two carrier aircraft 23 January 2008 at the America Museum of Natural History in New York. Virgin Galactic will attempt to launch paying customers into sub-orbital space flights with the Spaceship Two.”
That new man on Mars photo
Thursday, January 24th, 2008First it was canals on Mars (1877). Then a face on Mars (1976). Today, with the Rover Spirit beaming high resolution photos to us, the exciting new alien-life brouhaha involves a full-on figure of a “creature” “sitting” on a rock.
The latest photo comes from NASA, an agency that always brings us heaps of compelling photos.
As for the current Mars creature feature, I’d like to point people to a TED Talk by Michael Shermer, founder of the Skeptic Society, where he asks (among other things):
“What’s the more likely explanation?”
We’ve previously blogged about a recipe for life on Mars.
1000 Words: Global Economy
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
From Reuters:
“An Indian broker reacts while trading at a stock brokerage firm in Mumbai, January 22, 2008. Shares from Sydney to London sank for a second day on Tuesday, dragging commodity prices with them and promising similar falls for Wall Street as investors abandoned assets exposed to the risk of a global economic slowdown.”
(Not) Press Freedom: Afghan journalist sentenced to death
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008From an AP report in the Globe and Mail:
“Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh, 23, was sentenced to death Tuesday by a three-judge panel in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif for distributing a report he printed off the Internet to fellow journalism students at Balkh University. The judges said the article humiliated Islam, and members of a clerics council had pushed for Mr. Kaambakhsh to be punished. The case now goes to the first of two appeals courts.”
This is Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh:
And this is Moulvi Shamas-ul-Rehman Moomand, head of the Primary Provincial Appeals Court:
Analysis: a study on alcohol consumption
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008This is interesting. Here’s one study and several different ways of looking at it:
- “The more successful you are, the more you drink, research finds” (The Independent)
- “Millions of women are drinking more than they realise because of larger wine glasses” (This is London)
- “One in three men drink at ‘hazardous levels’” (Telegraph)
- “Wealthy are biggest drinkers but Scots consume less than English” (Scotsman)
- “High earners drink most” (Manchester Evening News)
However, it is important to note:
– Petrina MacNaughton, Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems
The study was conducted by the Office for National Statistics (UK), and you can draw your own conclusions here.
Birds with cholera, how do you get your local news?
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008
I ask in earnest: how do you get your local news? I ask because I live 15 miles from the Great Salt Lake. That’s not very far, especially by the standards of the American west, yet I learned about choleric birds living, flying, and dying around the lake in the New York Times by way of Daylife. At first I was shocked more by the fact that I didn’t know about this local story than I was by the fact that “[s]ome of the birds flew upside down or threw their heads back between their wings. Some fell out of the sky.” (Times).
So I quickly shot an email to a few of my Salt Lake-based friends, wondering if I was too involved in the global arena and missed the news most proximate to me. The responses I got ranged from the news being vaguely familiar to “Crikey. That’s some scary stuff,” to “I did not know, but I haven’t been watching the news” (my emphasis added).
So when it comes to local news, what’s your primary source: television, newspaper, online, or other?
[Late edit: An astute Daylife reader found a related article in the Salt Lake Tribune dated January 3, 2008.]
Search your way into Daylife
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008Over the last month or so, we’ve had a lot of traffic centered around various Benazir Bhutto search queries, as well as a hefty dose of movie or celebrity specific searches. For example, many people found us looking for:
- “Benazir Bhutto photos”
- “Juno quotes”
- “Dewey Hughes”
- “Frank Lucas” (perhaps better known as Frank Lucas as portrayed by Denzel Washington)
- “Lil Wayne”
- “Lindsey Paulat” (of Pittsburgh Steelers standoff infamy).
Daylife has thousands of news sources and often non-celebrity, non-musician, non-sports, non-political figures are sought and well-supported with Daylife’s cache of the world’s news. A few recent traffic-generating terms have been:
- “Natasha Collins”
- “Adnan Ghalib” (turning up mostly for his connections (or not?) to Britney Spears)
- “Corri Fetman” (we’ve recently blogged about Fetman)
With regard to the Daylife blog specifically, we’ve been surprised with the variations on “professor antonio vazquez alba” that both find their way into search engines and find their way to this post, likewise with “Eric Volz” and this post.
The return of Francis Ford Coppola
Monday, January 21st, 2008
— Francis Ford CoppolaWith his first film in 10 years, “Youth Without Youth,” Coppola’s astonishing list of connections is ever growing and far reaching.
Some weird amphibians
Monday, January 21st, 2008“They have tentacles coming out of their heads, live underground for months on end, do not need to feed for up to 10 years, and survived whatever killed the dinosaurs. The Zoological Society of London in the UK has launched the top 100 list of the world’s weirdest, most wonderful and rarest amphibians.”
“ZSL EDGE programme is today launching the EDGE Amphibians conservation and fundraising initiative, which highlights some of the world’s most extraordinary creatures currently threatened with extinction. This year ZSL scientists have assessed all amphibian species according to how Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) they are.”
— Zoological Society of London
Try searching Daylife for amphibians, “weird creatures,” “Zoological Society,” and “globally endangered” to get a comprehensive look at how this is cycling through the news. The amphibians search is currently yielding some striking images of the weird amphibians.
Chumming up to Reagan
Monday, January 21st, 2008Ronald Reagan has staged something of a comeback in the last few weeks. You can see a chart of the recent activity on our trends page.
Why does it matter? As Paul Krugman puts it:
…how we talk about the Reagan era still matters immensely for American politics.
Its an interesting trip, going through the news of the last few weeks, and seeing who’s saying what about Reagan. We have a quotes page to help you do this. Some of the more interesting ones:
The full quote from Obama that kicked this off:
Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10 to 15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom
Everybody knows how I was part of the Reagan Revolution where we had tax cuts when, frankly, Mayor Giuliani was supporting a Democrat for governor for the state of New York.
Mitt Romney in one of the debates:
I take my inspiration from Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush
Although Romney wasn’t behind him at the time:
I’m not a Reagan-Bush Republican
John Edwards, taking a different side:
The breadth of change Ronald Reagan brought was crippling for millions of Americans with the two worst recessions since the Depression, a complete disregard for the rights of American labor, and tax cuts that lined the pockets of the richest Americans at the expense of fiscal sanity and the well-being of the most vulnerable in our society
The Reagan references aren’t even limited to the economy. Giuliani invoked his legacy several months ago in reference to the war on terror terrorist’s war on us:
Our goal in the overall terrorists war on us is the same goal that Ronald Reagan had for the Cold War
Decipher the Tom Cruise Scientology Video Interview Thing
Sunday, January 20th, 2008Video and background here:
The Cruise Indoctrination Video Scientology Tried To Suppress (Gawker with help from Youtube)
Decoder ring here:
Tom Cruise Scientology-Video Glossary: What Is He Talking About? (Jennifer Vineyard/MTV)
Tom Cruise topic page here.
Interesting Daylife search: “Sundance Film Festival”
Sunday, January 20th, 2008“Sundance Film Festival” (photos | news | topics | quotes)
Clicking each photo will bring up the larger version.