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• Brown Twitter Bird: a reaction to "How Black People Use Twitter"
• Net Neutrality Showbiz Showdown: Hollywood unites against Google/Verizon proposal
• It's Slothurday!
• And now ... A jet-powered school bus
• New research delves into shark smarts
• Where do record-breaking heat waves come from?

Brown Twitter Bird: a reaction to "How Black People Use Twitter" Posted: 14 Aug 2010 09:40 AM PDT Some who were the subject of a recent Slate piece titled "How Black People Use Twitter" were annoyed at being referred to as a monolithic, homogeneous group. From this, #browntwitterbird sprang forth. Innyvinny.com's original post, and search the hashtag—sorry! the blacktag here. (via Farai Chideya)

Net Neutrality Showbiz Showdown: Hollywood unites against Google/Verizon proposal Posted: 13 Aug 2010 09:00 PM PDT [PHOTO: "One Wilshire," a CC-licensed image by Xeni Jardin] If you have been following the recent Google/Verizon moves regarding net neutrality, there's even more wonktastic action this week as an interesting Hollywood showdown is developing. This past Thursday, four major creative guilds and the MPAA submitted a joint reply comment to the Federal Communications Commission. This show of solidarity is rare as everyone in Hollywood tries to figure out how to deal with massive revenue losses in the face of copyright infringement. The WGAw then issued their own competing statement taking the opposite position. In the words of Double Rainbow Guy, what does this meeeeeaaann? The fun started in 2007 when it was learned that Comcast had been quietly blocking/throttling BitTorrent traffic on their network. This led to a long legal fight, and ultimately, the proposed changes put together by the FCC. In a nutshell, MPAA, AFTRA, SAG, DGA and IATSE essentially advocate the telco position that reclassifying broadband as a communications service is a bad idea. They believe the telcos will be under less obligation to help in the trade groups' fights against online copyright infringement. The WGAw asserts that loss of net neutrality will potentially reduce the choices consumers have for enjoying the creative output of their guild, ergo, fewer long-term revenue opportunities. A lot of studio execs and producers in town, as well as some members of other unions, are still pretty upset with the WGAw for their striking activities over the past few years, but I'm surprised this has broken down along these lines. Both comments acknowledge the need to deal with infringement, but the WGAw seems to be taking a more balanced stance. The whole issue brings several absolutist positions into conflict. MPAA: Joint Filing to FCC Regarding Internet Theft WGAw: Protecting an Open Internet and Intellectual Property Disclosure: my production company is a SAG signatory, though I agree more with the WGAw position in this matter.

It's Slothurday! Posted: 13 Aug 2010 07:01 PM PDT Lucy Cooke has just premiered an episode of the aptly named The Cute Show on a Costa Rican sloth sanctuary. The Cute Show: Sloths! [ VBS.tv] Adorable baby sloths in sloth orphanage are adorable Four fun facts about sloths It's slothurday

And now ... A jet-powered school bus Posted: 14 Aug 2010 06:27 AM PDT The maker's motivations: It's cool, and it'll keep kids off drugs. I'm not sure about the mechanism on that last part, but whatever. Jet-powered school bus! (Via Tyghe Trimble)

New research delves into shark smarts Posted: 14 Aug 2010 06:02 AM PDT Sharks are not the big, dumb, bullies of the sea that you might suspect. Over the last 20 years, research into shark behavior has gotten more sophisticated and it's turned up some surprising findings about what's going on in the brains of these "mindless death fish from hell". To wit: "There's a clear line between the higher and lower vertebrates in terms of brain-to-body weight," Gruber [Samuel Gruber from the University of Miami] explains. "Birds and mammals have a higher ratio; fish, amphibians and reptiles are lower. But sharks land above the line associated with these lower vertebrates. They've been independently evolving for half a billion years, and they have brains that are comparable to [those of] mammals in some ways." His research showed that lemon sharks were able to remember a visual discrimination task for at least a year without retraining, and Gruber says they also showed spatial preferences akin to "handedness" in mammals. That's pretty cool, especially given the fact that I just spent the past two weeks delving into the cognition and complex behavior of another underestimated class of sea creatures—cephalopods. It's enough to make me wish that Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus had been more heavily grounded in science. Instead of jumping up and biting a 747 in half, Mega Shark could have challenged Giant Octopus to a run through a Ginormous Maze in the laboratory of a Massive Psychology Researcher. I don't know about you, but I'd have watched that. Scientific American: Today's Sharks: Smart, Tagged and In Short Supply (Via John Pavlus, who, I just realized, is also the author of this piece. Good work, John!) Image:Some rights reserved by StormyDog

Where do record-breaking heat waves come from? Posted: 14 Aug 2010 05:43 AM PDT What do the three worst heat waves on record—and the recent Pakistani floods—have in common? All four are the handiwork of a rare "kink" in the jet stream that likely has its origins in wonky sea surface temperatures. Weather Underground blogger Jeff Masters explains how this phenomenon works, and why it can simultaneously lead to intense flooding in Pakistan and a massive heat wave in Russia. (Via Karl Hakkarainen)

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