Results tagged “actualterrorism”

Following up on Indian Mango Alert Level: Orangish-Green and A Matter of National Security, some data points:

• The national flag of India has stripes of orange and green on a white background, The orange ("deep saffron") represents renunciation, and the green represents fertility.
• The U.S. Homeland Security Advisory System defines green on its scale as the color for a low threat level, with low risk of terrorist attack. Airports and New York City, where I live, are currently at threat level orange, which designates a high risk of terrorist attack.

Interestingly, as I was going to mention and John Dowdell pointed out, part of the ostensible reason for the reluctance to import Indian mangoes in the past was the risk of fruitfly larvae tagging along for the ride. The solution? A new irradiation process that kills the mango seed weevil. Kind of a nuclear security program for fruit.

If only that irradiation were powered by the nuclear fuel that India had gotten as part of its trade agreement with the U.S., we'd have a nice little circle of nuclear-mango life.

Here are the things to look at on the Internet today.

• India's President, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, asks Yahoo Answers, "What should we do to free our planet from terrorism?" The answers cover the gamut you'd expect, but this is the most surprising stunt question I've seen on Y!Answers yet. They can get traction among world leaders, and then Matt can beat them.

• Doxory, life by committee. This site lets you ask the community which one of two options you should choose, to help outsource your critical decision making to strangers. It was only after ruminating on the idea for a while that I realized the name meant "Do X or Y?" (Bonus: You can sign in with OpenID.)

• PB picks up the story in six words meme. I've already written mine here, and have been thinking about this since the Wired story a little while back. PB asks Jason to write one, but his community has already got it covered.

Another follow-up to blood diamonds: The New York Times offers Hollywood’s Multifaceted Cause du Jour, Marc Santora's look at Hollywood's engagement in the marketing or unmarketing of diamonds.

Diamonds are love. Diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Diamonds are forever.

Diamonds, obviously, are much more than that. They are big business. They are hardly rare. And they have been used to finance some of the most brutal warfare of the last two decades.

Worth revisiting is the BBC story outlining Al Qaeda's use of diamonds to help launder their funds, and Cory Doctorow's comment on my earlier post, outlining allegations against Warner Bros, the studio that produced the Blood Diamond film. I'd caution that the original gossip source of the most damning quote is unsourced.

Whitney Houston, insane former pop star and provider of bail for Bobby Brown, is a remarkable woman. No, not because her most successful song was spun out from a movie where she had to feign affection for Kevin Costner, but because she inspires such a wide variety of men to love her.

Like who? Like Osama Bin Freaking Laden! Let's see what Page Six says:

Osama bin Laden has more on his mind than just the destruction of the United States - the world's most wanted terrorist is obsessed with Whitney Houston, so much so that he's even mulled a hit on her hubby, Bobby Brown.

Oh, snap! You don't want to mess with Bobby Brown. But that's not the worst foe that Osama would face while wooing Whitney. There's also the threat of the undead Serge Gainsbourg to deal with. The dirty old man of French pop had dibs!

So, I'm thinking reality TV show. Zombie Serge vs. Osama Bin Laden in a stiff competition for Whitney Houston's crack-addled heart. We could call it Beating Bobby Brown. As long as they don't look at any recent pictures, it should turn out fine.

I enjoy links myself, so I thought you might want some too. Here, then:

• Graphs as art: Werner Vogels picks up the site graph meme with some nice visualizations of Amazon and A9.

• Knowing enough to be dangerous: Bad advice about Windows tweaking, debunked by Dr. Jason, who's never happier than when he's correcting misinformation.

• Flickr tag count comparison, where Nelson finds out what doesn't influence interestingness. Highly recommended if you enjoyed infographics about Flickr massages.

• The response to the Mumbai bombings has been rather hushed. Both the attacks and the lack of discussion have been on my mind, Sepia Mutiny covers the topic well.

• Bomani Jones on Prince's best work. I find myself in violent disagreement with the some of the assertions, despite being in complete agreement over the conclusions.

• Tim O'Reilly with four big ideas about open source. Especially compelling to me because, improbably, I'm keynoting (is that a verb?) the O'Reilly Open Source Conference in Portland next week.

• And then, finally, Concerning the platinum bitch. I've been meaning to write a post about Khia for about two years; Stephen beat me to it and now I don't have to.