Another Wikipedia Caution

Over the past year or so nHumanities has posted several entries on Wikipedia, the rapidly growing and extremely popular online web encyclopedia. (See Wikipedia and Wikiality.) We use Wikipedia on occasion ourselves, so we appreciate that it is often useful. However, we've always cautioned that the key distinguishing feature of wiki software--that is that the material can be posted and edited by users--makes it a dangerous tool for serious research.

Now another type of hazard of using Wikipedia has surfaced. In the German version of Wikipedia, hackers edited the entry on the computer virus W32.Blaster worm. They added a link to a web site where a fix could be downloaded to take care of the virus. In fact, downloading the "fix" actually installed the worm.

Heise online has an article on the incident, and iTWire also has a column about it. The offending pages were immediately pulled from the web site, but the incident sounds yet another cautionary note.

The price of internet usage is eternal vigilance.

Tag Cloud of Presidential Speeches: 1776 - 2006

Boing Boing points us to a wonderful tag cloud of US presidents' speeches from 1776-2006. The result is a time line of buzz words.

A tag cloud is a cluster of words (tags) which visually depicts frequency of usage. More commonly used words are displayed with a larger font, stronger emphasis, or different color. Created by Chirag Mehta, the US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud looks at 360 presidential speeches downloaded from Encyclopedia Britannica and ThisNation.com. A little slider tool above the tag cloud allows you to select the tag cloud of particular speeches. Clicking on the name of speech takes you to the full text of the speech itself.

In the above example--George W. Bush's State of the Union Address (31Jan2006)--it's clear that terrorist is the most popular word in the speech. Compare that to Richard M. Nixon's First Inaugural Address (20Jan1969), where the key word is commitment, a word that is also popular in most of John F. Kennedy's speeches. In Abraham Lincoln's speeches, the emphasis changes over time from constitution to emancipation.

Google's Finger in the Linguistic Dike

In Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates (1865), we learned the story of the little Dutch boy who, by promptly putting his finger in a hole in a leaking dike, averts a disastrous flood.

Google is attempting something similar with the English language.

According to the Official Google Blog, the word "Google" is slowly slipping from trademarked status into common usage. Google's lawyers say this is "Bad. Very, very bad." Here's what Google insists upon:

Good -- Using Google as a noun to refer to Google.

Well, if you must -- Using google as a verb to refer to using the Google search engine.

BAD! -- Using google as a generic verb for searching on the internet, such as, "I googled that information on Ask.com."

Culture | I'll Sleep When I'm Dead . . . NOT

Forbes.com announces that the 13 top-earning dead celebrities for 2005 "collectively earned $247 million in the last 12 months. Their estates continue to make money by inking deals involving both their work and the rights to use their name and likenesses on merchandise and marketing campaigns."

Here are the dead folk whose work ethic surpasses belief:

1. Kurt Cobain
2. Elvis Presley
3. Charles M. Schulz
4. John Lennon
5. Albert Einstein
6. Andy Warhol
7. Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel)
8. Ray Charles
9. Marilyn Monroe
10. Johnny Cash
11. J.R.R. Tolkien
12. George Harrison
13. Bob Marle
    

Masters of American Comics

The Hammer Museum and The Museum of Contemporary Art jointly present Masters of American Comics, an online exhibit to accompany their large-scale exhibition of work by "15 artists who shaped the development of the American comic strip and comic book during the past century."

Although the museum exhibits are now closed, the online exhibit provides a sampling of the featured artists, including Winsor McCay (Little Nemo), George Herriman (Krazy Kat), Chester Gould (Dick Tracy), Will Eisner, Charles M. Schulz, R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware. The aim of the exhibition is to provide "understanding and insight into the medium of comics as an art form. . . . [Endeavoring] to establish a canon of fifteen of the most influential artists working in the medium throughout the 20th century."

Searching Shakespeare | Shakespeare Searching

The good folks at Clusty.com's search engine labs have created Shakespeare Searched, which "is a search engine designed to provide quick access to passages from Shakespeare's plays and sonnets." The search results are clustered by topic, work, and character, making it easy to find related material among Shakespeare's thousands of words.

Here's an example of what one item in the results list looks like, from a search for the word blood in Macbeth. By clicking on "surrounding text," you can see the context of the quotation; clicking on "citation" will give you a cut 'n' paste way to acknowledge the quote.

So you if you want to identify the speaker of a famous quotation or if you're looking for a thread of thematic elements, Shakespeare Searched is an easy place to start.

Beautiful & Clever

No, we're not touting televisions on nHumanities, but "if eyes were made for seeing / Then Beauty is its own excuse for being" ("The Rhodora," Emerson).

This Sony Bravia ad has beauty and cleverness galore. According to Cool Hunting, the piece took ten days and 250 people to film and five days and 60 people to clean up: "Paint" (slow loading, but worth the wait).