Clearing the Cache: Geography Lesson
BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, July 28 2010
- With 92,000 new documents and pressure in the online space for folks to offer near instantaneous commentary, it's not surprising to see the read on the Wikileaks data dump -- It changes everything, It's nothing we didn't know -- fluctuate pretty rapidly, too. The Guardian, one of the three "media partners" selected by Wikileaks to vet, analyze, and promote the documents, has come up with one interesting new perspective on the raw material. They've plucked out 300 incident reports they judge to be most compelling and plotted them on an interactive Google Map.
- In a bid to bind the Republican Party to Tea Party interests before the midterm elections in November, the DNC has launched a new site and web video describing the "Republican Tea Party's Contract on America." What the GOP-TEA would do, warns Democrats, is push for the repeal of the health care reform package, privatize or eliminate Social Security, end Medicare, and more.
- As part of New York City's push to boil down restaurant health inspection results to a single letter grade, they've revamped the relevant city website to read more like a report card. Useful stuff, unless, that is, you were hoping to ever again have an appetite to eat in New York City. My favorite local eatery, it turns out, has other frequent visitors, but of the four-legged variety.
- Four Lebanese men face prison time for slamming their country's president on Facebook. President Michel Suleiman's Facebook page, naturally, pushes back on objections to the prosecution of the men: "The president is a keen champion of freedom of expression, but even so you must punish those whose offensive language goes beyond all norms of reality."
- Twitter loses its oldest recorded user.
- And ProPublica is asking Gulf coasters to report in on how they're doing in getting their "legitimate" claims paid out by BP.
(With Nick Judd)