Map of Wi-Fi router names makes a political statement
Developers at a mobile app company decided they would map the political allegiance of people who declare those opinions using their Wi-Fi names. The resulting maps don’t represent the world’s opinion on U.S. President Barack Obama, as the sampling is too biased, but they’re a funny, human glimpse into people’s thoughts.
The Top 8 Ways To Be ‘Traditionally Married’ According To The Bible
BREAKING: Obama embraces marriage equality:
OBAMA: I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.
In keeping with our coverage of the GOP’s astounding cluelessness about women’s bodies (see here and here), we’ve taken a moment to compile the seven worst things Republican lawmakers have said about abortion in the past couple years.
The 7 Dumbest Things GOP Politicians Have Said About Abortion Recently
Naming your new baby can be a daunting task. You want to pick a name that honors who they are and the life they will have. Or, you could choose a name that honors your favorite firearm instead. That’s the option that Levi Johnston (former fiancé of Bristol Palin and father to their 3-year-old son, Tripp) and his current fiancée, Sunny Oglesby, chose. The couple revealed that they would name their baby-on-board, Breeze Beretta (Beretta like the Italian handgun and Breeze like, I don’t know, his favorite stripper back in Alaska, perhaps).
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The Tea Party Is Not Happy With Chicago’s Sarah Palin Sculpture
You’d think that folks who love both red meat and Sarah Palin would rally behind a sculpture devoted to both. But for some reason, the Tea Party is not happy with this BBQ smoker in the shape of the conservative firebrand’s freedom-filled noggin.
News organizations have been rooting and snuffling around the immense Palin head, titled “We’re Having a Tea Parody” (not “Pear-ody,” as reported elsewhere), ever since mixed-media artist J. Taylor Wallace debuted it in 2011 at a Memphis public-art show. The anthropomorphic cooker hit the news again last week, when Wallace fashioned a meal with it to celebrate the opening of a new sculpture garden in Chicago.
Read more at The Atlantic Wire. [Image: J. Taylor Wallace]
Dave Granlund, “North Korea Missle Dud.”
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Legal experts said [Angela] Corey chose a tough route with the murder charge, which could send Zimmerman to prison for life if he’s convicted, over manslaughter, which usually carries 15-year prison terms and covers reckless or negligent killings.
The prosecutors must prove Zimmerman’s shooting of Martin was rooted in hatred or ill will and counter his claims that he shot Martin to protect himself while patrolling his gated community in the Orlando suburb of Sanford. Zimmerman’s lawyers would only have to prove by a preponderance of evidence – a relatively low legal standard – that he acted in self-defense at a pretrial hearing to prevent the case from going to trial.
There’s a “high likelihood it could be dismissed by the judge even before the jury gets to hear the case,” Florida defense attorney Richard Hornsby said.
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– Prosecutors face hurdles in Trayvon Martin case (via ryking)
The Creepiness Factor: How Obama and Romney Are Getting to Know You
Inside microtargeting offices in Washington and across the nation, individual voters are today coming through in HDTV clarity — every single digitally-active American consumer, which is 91 percent of us, according to Pew Internet research. Political strategists buy consumer information from data brokers, mash it up with voter records and online behavior, then run the seemingly-mundane minutiae of modern life — most-visited websites, which soda’s in the fridge — through complicated algorithms and: pow! They know with “amazing” accuracy not only if, but why, someone supports Barack Obama or Romney, says Willie Desmond of Strategic Telemetry, which works for the Obama reelection campaign.
Entertaining and baffling discoveries abound. For example: Soda seems to count a great deal. Diet Dr. Pepper evidently indicates a Republican who votes, while apathetic Democrats drink 7up, according to National Media Research Planning & Placement. Beer, too, matters. Relatively uninterested Republicans go for Busch Light. Additional findings reveal that the most politically-motivated Republicans visit foxnews.com (no surprise there) while Democrats who couldn’t care less attend mtv.com or scour dating websites (OK: no surprise there, too).
All of these online movements contribute to what pollster Alex Gage calls “data exhaust.” Email, Amazon orders, resume uploads, tweets — especially tweets — cough out fumes that microtargeters or data brokers suck up to mold hyper-specific messaging. We’ve been hurled into an era of “Big Data,” Gage said. In the last eight years the amount of information slopped up by firms like his, which sell information to politicians, has tripled, from 300 distinct bits on each voter in 2004 to more than 900 today. We have the rise of social media and mobile technology to thank for this.
Dowd put microtargeting’s evolution this way: “It’s scary.” Even scarier? Most Americans don’t know how the profiling works. And when they’re informed, as many as 86 percent of Americans want it to stop, calling it an invasion of privacy, according to a 2009 survey, “Americans Reject Tailored Advertising,” by a scholarly consortium. Pew released a report last month corroborating the findings: Nearly three-fourths of Americans say they don’t want their online presence followed, even if it does lead to more personalized ads.
Read more. [Image: National Media Research Planning & Placement]
Who knew that Democrats love Extreme Makeover: Home Edition?
