November 2012

There were 45 posts published in November 2012 (this is page 4 of 5).

Airdevil plans Atlantic crossing using 365 balloons

Raleigh resident and part-time daredevil balloonist Jonathan Trappe will be headed for the skies again next summer, this time on a trip across the Atlantic Ocean!

The big balls in the sky won’t just be the cluster balloons!

AN adventurer who became the first person to fly the English Channel dangling under helium-balloons is now planning to cross the entire Atlantic Ocean.

Intrepid Jonathan Trappe, 38, plans to navigate an incredible 2,500 miles next summer in a seven-foot lifeboat suspended by 365 huge UV-resistant balloons.

His outlandish aircraft will have an open roof with a canopy to protect him from high-altitude winds and frost bite.

Floating at between 18,000ft and 25,000ft – beating his previous record of 21,600ft – Jonathan will have to fly ten times further than his previous record of 230 miles to succeed.

via Airdevil plans Atlantic crossing using 365 balloons | The Sun |News.

Not Enough ‘Angry White Guys’

Here’s why I’m not at all worried about the future of the Democratic Party: demographics. The “angry white guys” that have lately been the target constituency of the GOP are fast becoming a minority. Couple with the fact that many of those angry white guys are also older means that this demographic isn’t a long-term way to build a party.

The Tea Party may disagree, but the racism that once kept Jessie Helms in office and Michael Dukakis out of office is a dead-end political strategy. The party that values inclusiveness (and more closely aligns with the changing demographics) will be the one that succeeds in the long term.

Republican senator Lindsey Graham’s remark that there weren’t enough “angry white guys” to bring Republicans to power seemed prophetic in the light of President Barack Obama’s victory. A decline in the number of white voters and a surge in voters from ethnic minorities and women helped Obama on election night. Ohio, one of the key battleground states, was captured in part through a rise in turnout among African-Americans, who voted overwhelmingly for Obama.

via Secret to Romney’s Defeat: Not Enough ‘Angry White Guys’? – U.S. Election 2012 – CNBC.

The Daylight Saving Time Fog

I was on the agenda for yesterday’s City Council meeting. Lately I’ve been done with these in about an hour. This session had a few more detailed items for discussion, however, and I waited in the audience long enough that I began to lose focus.

It seemed like I wasn’t the only one with this affliction. Maybe I was seeing things through sleepy eyes but to me the whole room seemed remarkably devoid of energy.

An amusing parade then began at the Council table. City Attorney Tom McCormick, a man who usually stays glued to his seat lest the Councilors get themselves into legal hot water while unsupervised, quietly stepped away from the table and out of the room, returning after a few minutes. I’m not sure why Tom stepped away, obviously, but I do know that it’s very rare for him to do so.
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How to tell when that Facebook friend isn’t real

I got a notification earlier this week when a Facebook user asked to join the now-dormant Bring Google Fiber to Raleigh Facebook group that I administer. I’ve been very suspicious of the recent requests to join this page since nothing is going on with the group at the moment. Thus, I decided to check out the profile of this supposed Facebook user.

The picture on the account was an unremarkable one of a white female in her 20s. The account had only a handful of likes and friends, which made me suspicious.

Then I saw the ASCII art in a post of a big heart or somesuch. By now my alarm bells are going off. I’ve seen that posted on more than one fake account.

The real kicker was seeing this at the bottom of the user’s timeline:

This woman just joined Facebook 13 hours ago? Riiiiiiiiiiight.

I quickly marked the account as a fake and it was promptly removed from Facebook.

Me and My Censor – by Eveline Chao | Foreign Policy

I found this Foreign Affairs article on Chinese censorship to be fascinating.

My first day of work in Beijing, my boss asked if I knew the “Three Ts.”

I did not. It was February 2007, and I was a wide-eyed 26 year-old fresh off the plane from New York, struggling to absorb the deluge of strange information that had hit me since arriving.

The Three Ts, he informed me, were the three most taboo topics to avoid in Chinese media — Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen. My boss was Taiwanese himself, and delivered this information with a wry tone of bemusement. He had been doing business here for nearly 30 years, he had said, since China first began opening its economy to the outside world, and had witnessed a lot.

“You’ll hear more about it from our censor,” he said, and then, having inserted that tantalizing fragment into my head, sent me off to begin my new job.

via Me and My Censor – by Eveline Chao | Foreign Policy.

Can we let go of the anger now?

Yesterday was Election Day and, like many other elections, I found some time to volunteer for a campaign. My friend Sig Hutchinson was running for state senate, so I stood outside the Lacy Elementary polling place as a poll greeter for Sig from before sunrise to 9 AM.

As I arrived, I was pleasantly surprised to see the poll greeter across from me was also supporting Democratic party candidates. For the first hour we were alone, wondering where the Republican poll greeters were. Soon after, we were joined by others, one supporting Dr. Jim Fulghrum, one supporting Dan Forest, and one supporting Caroline Sullivan. Aside from the signs and campaign material, though, you never would’ve known that we all weren’t simply good friends, though. We were having such a fun and friendly conversation that I felt compelled to snap a picture of us all, lest I wake up this morning and think it was all just a dream.
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NBC News picks up on the Hacked by Mitt Romney story


NBC News’s Red Tape Chronicles blog mentioned the Hacked by Mitt Romney Facebook page in its story this afternoon on political social media fakery.

There have even been claims by hundreds of Obama supporters that they were somehow tricked or hacked into “liking” Mitt Romney on Facebook, as evidenced by the “Hacked by Mitt Romney” page. Facebook says there’s a much simpler explanation than hacking; it’s fairly easy to accidentally like a page on Facebook, making that the likely culprit.

What’s ironic is that this issue is gaining legitimacy largely due to the growing numbers of Facebook fans that the Hacked by Mitt Romney page is attracting.

via On social media, fakery muddies political discussion – Red Tape.

Miami journalist Hacked by Mitt Romney

I found this interesting Tweet from Hannah Sampson, business writer for the Miami Herald:

Hannah Sampson ?@hannahbsampson

@mkramer I like no candidate on Facebook (per my newspaper’s policy) but someone decided I liked Mitt Romney and hacked my page to say so.

Journalists are often prohibited by their media employers from publicly displaying their political beliefs in order to maintain nonpartiality (or the illusion of it, anyway). That Sampson would have made herself a fan of Mitt Romney’s Facebook page is quite unlikely indeed.

Tech guru Fred Langa gets Hacked by Mitt Romney


Veteran tech journalist and Windows expert Fred Langa found himself Hacked by Mitt Romney:

It happened to me about a week ago, when Facebook told me — and all my contacts — that I’d “liked” Romney.

I’d done no such thing.

Fess up, Facebook. You think he made a mistake with Facebook Mobile, don’t you?

via Fred Langa: "What comes next?": It's spreading: Facebook name-harvesting for fake Romney 'likes'.

Tightening the belt

I took my watch to the mall’s watch store Friday to get the battery changed. As I was walking away, I thought to ask if the watch person could remove a link from my watch band. Now my watch band is more snug than its ever been, and that’s because I’ve lost weight.

I’ve also returned to wearing slacks I haven’t warn in more than ten years. All but one of my belts are secured at their skinniest notches.
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