« September 2007 | Main | November 2007 »
The world of tabloid journalism is filled with pictures stories and headlines designed to capture readers' attention with cockeyed humor, poker-faced fatalism and sheer silliness. BostonDirtDogs, a site dedicated to boys from Beantown and, as it pointedly says "not produced by The Boston Globe Sports Dept." follows nicely in that tradition.
The Boston Red Sox's Wicked Awsome World Series sweep is topic number one over there so the DirtDogs are today's HotSpot. Enjoy.
Sometimes enough's enough and you've just got to haul out your soap box, find a street corner, and launch a rant.
Food blogger KitchenMage ran out of patience with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and their hypocritical ad campaigns.
She asks: "What is it with the soft porny commercials and naked women? Are you truly so blinded by your desire to save furry critters with faces that you forget women are critters with faces too? Those women were even somewhat furry too, before you made them get all waxed and shaved so they could get nekkid for your tacky ad campaigns...."
There's always something both odd and compelling about the Edge Foundation's annual world question and this year is no exception.
This year, the site asks: "What is your formula? Your equation? Your algorithm?"
Interpret and answer as you see fit.
Answers - from various big thinkers (warning, it's heavy on physicists) - are posted on the site to help you get started. A big questions and some high-minded answers; it's today's HotSpot.
Generally Spot-on doesn't support what we call "blogging for bucks" but the Sunlight Foundation has some money to give away so we're gonna break our rule.
If you're a political blogger who's covering Congress - your local folks in action in Washington - or thinking about doing so, you might wanna check out Sunlight's grants. They're $1,000 to $5,000.
You've got until Jan. 1 to apply. So read the application here (it's on the bottom of the page - scroll down) and see if you're up for it.
It's the work of a bunch of great guys including former CNET CEO Shelby Bonnie and Mike Tatum, so we're happy to point you to a cool new political website that, among other things, gets at a subject close to Spot-on's heart: political campaign funding.
PoliticalBase.com, has however, one serious shortcoming: It's another site for White Guys to talk politics on the Internet. But many of you deeply believe C-Span doesn't offer enough channels and that Tim Russert's re-runs aren't shown often enough. For you, PoliticalBase is today's HotSpot.
Become a verb, change the language and, sooner or later, someone will think you're important.
They might even commission works of art in your name. Which explains the New Museum of Contemporary Art's Rhizome.org show of all-thing-Google.
"Google Art or How to Hack Google" is a compilation of on- and off-line art - and some works that are both - collected (they say "curated" in the art world) and showcased at Rhizome's site. It's pretty entertaining. And it's here.
When Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York - before 9/11 when he was dubbed "America's Mayor" - he was considered a little uh, out there. The mayor had a habit of being rather direct in delivering his opinions. And that was by New Yorkers.
Don't believe us? Check out audio of the mayor's radio show. It's here, courtesy of the New York Times.
Listen. Laugh. Cringe. Today's HotSpot: Rudy on the radio, greatest hits version.
The U.S. Navy's elite flying squad, the Blue Angels are circling San Francisco this weekend, setting off car alarms, scaring the Parrots of Telegraph Hill, rattling windows and setting teeth on edge.
It can be pretty dramatic stuff to look at. But if you've ever wondered why the U.S. is feared, loved and loathed overseas, an afternoon on the ground while the angels are in town is as good a demonstration as you're likely to get.
In a burst of cranky contrary-ism, today's HotSpot is a book that should be a lot more popular than it is: Seymour Melman's The Permanent War Economy which tries to explain why the U.S. loves its fighting power.