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World Google Images view of Tiananmen

Chinese Google Images view of Tiananmen.

There’s really something going on there, but I just can’t work out what it is! I must say though, the Chinese version looks a lot happier than my version; all those tanks and angry people don’t do anything for the vibe.

txfx.net: Google Cn Searches

Popularity: 2% [?]

If an airplane is on a large conveyor belt and is trying to take off by exerting the thrust needed to move it forward at 100 knots, and the conveyor belt starts moving backwards at 100 knots, will the plane be able to take off, or will it just sit stationary relative to the ground, with the backwards speed of the conveyor belt counteracting the forward thrust of the plane?

There is debate. I don’t know what the answer is, but it’s kind of cool.

Tempus Fugit: Airplane on a Conveyor Belt

Popularity: 2% [?]

via Industrial Waste

Popularity: 4% [?]

The woman who designed the original Macintosh computer icons, the Windows 3.0 solitare cards and numerous other icons for computer operating systems and websites. Susan Kare’s skill in making icons comes from portraying a complex idea with an incredibly simple image that may only be a couple of dozen dots.

You love her work, you know the original ‘sad mac and happy mac‘ icons, now you can wear the merchandise!

Paint Icon on CafePress.com

Popularity: unranked [?]

Adam just said to me:

Popularity: 6% [?]

Highschool basketball players from Lincoln Nebraska have been suspended from their team over photos on the MySpace.com website that show them apparently drinking alcohol with accompanying references to getting ‘hammered’. Though the events took place off school property and out of school time, administrators believe they are justified because the underage athletes are to be held to a higher standard (of puritanism?).

A spokewoman for Lincoln Public Schools said:

“If we get information that there’s some things there that we may want to know about, certainly, we would go in and look, but we don’t intend to have someone monitoring it on a regular basis,”

This is thought to be the first instance of school punishment over acts found or information provided solely online. MySpace.com is hugely popular with the teenage crowd who use it to host blogs, chat to ‘friends’ with similar claimed interests and to post photos of ‘themselves’. The danger in MySpace is the ease of pinpointing the location and activities of users, the mistaken trust in others online and the opportunity for misuse of information. Limits to user-access of personal information is unusual.
In other news:

After news of the players’ suspensions got out at the school, a lot of students edited their Web pages or deleted them altogether.

KETV.com: 7 Lincoln Athletes Suspended Over Internet Photos

Popularity: 4% [?]

Elmo faraónico

Originally uploaded by El mapache azul.

I love this photo! It’s so silly that it’s immediately become one of my favorite shots for a long time. I don’t know why I’m instantly grabbed by it but I feel like it should be on postcards and billboards. How cute!

Popularity: unranked [?]

Q: How does an Essex Girl turn off the light after sex?
A: …Throws a brick at the lamppost!

I’m sorry!

Popularity: 2% [?]

The hoi-polloi are out in Switzerland this week with Bono launching a ‘Red’ credit card to benefit aids, Gates announcing he’s tripling his TB-fund and logistics firms declaring that they’re going to mightily piss of aid charities by pitching in ‘for free’ when a major disaster strikes (implying that Oxfam doesn’t know how to deliver its own aid but DHL does). Davos sucks. It seems like the kind of place where nobody with a real grasp of the outside world could penetrate. It seems so truely undemocratic in the way that it’s the rich and powerful only. Why not ‘the top world executives’ and ‘the world’s top academics’. What’s to stop a bit of critical input? Why is it that only those advisors on the payroll of the rich and famous are given the opportunity to speak to anyone who can make a difference?
At the same time, women don’t yet really have much of a position at the forum, more often than not being mistaken for somebody’s secretary or assistant. Women, it seems, just can’t get out of the shadow of those big strong men!

“When I put my card (down) saying I’m going to speak, before they saw my card they said, `Where’s your minister?’ I said, `I am the minister,’” Al Qasimi said. In social circles, even with her colleagues and employees, “there’s always this assumption that I’m somebody’s wife.”

Washington Post: The World Economic Forum is still an elite club

Popularity: 4% [?]