What the world is reading

When a reader from Ohio,James Sunshine,wrote in to The New York Times Public Editor and asked what a blog was,the Times decided to answer the question. Sunshine wrote: I spent 45 years at The Providence Journal,and I still do not understand them (blogs). Nor do I like them. Is a blog merely the private thoughts of the blogger,who has been given the privilege of saying what he happens to think at the moment without a qualified editor passing judgement on it for accuracy,taste,appropriateness and so on? Or is a blog a short news story published online? To which Jill Branson,Managing Editor,replied in earnest: Blogs are an important part of our news report. On big,running news stories,like the oil spill,the earthquake in Haiti,the elections and so forth,they offer readers the most important,up-to-the-minute developments.

space.com

The Great Storm: Solar Tempest of 1859 Revealed

After NASA said last week that the sun is waking up from a deep slumber and power grids,GPS navigation,air travel,financial services and emergency radio communications can all be knocked out by an intense solar storm,causing twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina,an old article in Space.com is being referred to in the blogosphere. Senior science writer Rob Roy Britt had written on October 27,2003 about the perfect solar storm of 1859,explaining that the sun will again conspire and send earthlings a truly destructive bout of space weather. In early September in 1859,telegraph wires suddenly shorted out in the United States and Europe,igniting widespread fires and creating colourful aurora as are usually seen only in polar regions. Now,scientists have predicted that in May 2013,the suns solar cycle will peak just as it did in 1859.

Gawker.com

Was Barack Obama in a 1993 Music Video?

The Gawker team has picked up a harmless little conspiracy story from hip hop message boards about Barack Obama being an extra in the 1993 music video for Tag Teams single Whoomp (There It Is). Gawker writes,We had to admit that the guy (in the video) at 1:01 wearing shades and a Compton hat really does resemble Barack Obama,talking on a cell phone! And it goes on to cite arguments,forObama has a well-documented fondness for hip hop. He likes Kanye West and Ludacris. As one commenter noted: The man in the video is playing dominoes with his left hand. BARACK OBAMA IS ALSO LEFT HANDED!and againstBut,actually,by 1993,Obama was deeply involved in community activism in Chicago. Also: earrings? Obama is cool,but not that cool.

slashfilm.com

The Reoccurring Prop Newspaper

Peter Sciretta writes that he noticed that if you watched enough television,you could see the same props being used over and over. Someone on Reddit recently put together a compilation of photos from various television shows,commercials and movies,showing how one newspaper prop gets around and is reused. I dont know the story behind this prop newspaper,but I assume it was created as a royalty free prop for television shows. Somewhere along the line,the prop became a reoccurring gag between propmasters. Something like how sound designers reuse the Wilhem Scream in every movie, Sciretta writes. The newspaper,with a womans photo on the last page,has been spotted in films like No Country for Old Men and TV series like Scrubs.