Beer, and the crying therein

I was listening to an On the Media report of a US Senate hearing on newspapers. David Simon said, "The day I run into a Huffington Post reporter at a Baltimore zoning board hearing is the day that I will be confident that we've actually reached some sort of equilibrium."

My first reaction was, Hang out at a lot of zoning board meetings, do you, David? Why do I find that unlikely for a guy who hasn't had a newspaper job in 14 years?

But the other problem is bigger (and I'll bet you saw this coming): There isn't a "Baltimore zoning board." There's the "Board of Municipal & Zoning Appeals," but their web site uses "the Appeals Board," as their short name.

This is one of the prime problems in journalism. Once upon a time, a reporter could make a Gross Factual Error like that and be secure that no one would check him on it. And even if they did, it's not like anyone else would find out about it, other than their buddies at the water cooler. Today... Well, things have changed a lot in the last 14 years, David.

hatchlings - visual pun

hatchlings
Originally uploaded by halobrien

OK, why I think this is humorous:

The name of this Facebook game is "Hatchlings." They use color to separate "hatch" from "lings".

Meanwhile, we see the year: 2009. But instead of zeroes, we see broken eggshells, from which the hatchlings have presumably emerged.

When you say the year 2009 in Mandarin, you say the numbers individually: 2-0-0-9.

Or, in pinyin, èr-líng-líng-jiŭ.

See those "lings"? Yup, "líng" means "zero."

Hatch-lings, you see.

Like I said before, that I can even see this is proof of... something. Not sure what.

Stand By Me

By way of zandperl (whose LJ I was looking over after she made a comment to rosefox) comes this video of "Stand By Me". Jaw dropping for the collaboration (gizmodo has good coverage on that).

Props to the late Roger Ridley, who laid down the track the musicians world-wide got to riff on.

*^*^*

Playing For Change | Song Around The World "Stand By Me" from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.