Today is Star Wars Day. The original movie was released on May 25, 1977, but fans enjoy the pun. “May the Force be with you” achieved cult status, ahem, a long time ago in a gala… Well. You know. The official Star Wars site has featured a countdown clock with a promise that “All will be revealed” at 9 a.m. eastern. It’s 9:20, and maythe4th.starwars.com redirects to Fox Movies. There I’m not seeing what the big reveal is. The consensus guess seems to be...

Computerworld: The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation warned computer users Tuesday that messages claiming to include photos and videos of Osama bin Laden’s death actually contain a virus that could steal personal information. The warning comes as security companies said that they’ve spotted the first samples of malicious software disguised as photos of the dead Al Qaeda leader.[...] Scammers have also used a technique called search engine poisoning to try to trick search engines into...

Not exactly a surprise, but telling nonetheless: Google says that between 7:30 and 8:30 pm PST (which was right around the time the news broke over Twitter), Google saw an one million percent increase in searches for the term ‘bin laden.’ For basis of comparison, you can see a chart below comparing searches for the Royal Wedding on Google Trends. The Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton also drew massive amounts of web traffic from around the world, but clearly the search...

CBS News reports that correspondent Lara Logan will break her silence on the horrific Cairo assault she endured last February: Ms. Logan, a CBS News correspondent, was in the square preparing a report for “60 Minutes” on Feb. 11 when the celebratory mood suddenly turned threatening. She was ripped away from her producer and bodyguard by a group of men who tore at her clothes and groped and beat her body. “For an extended period of time, they raped me with their hands,” Ms. Logan said in...

With the royals gobbling up the morning news hole what’s a disinterested blogger to do? Relate! Obama Foodorama: May 4th in Washington, DC will be a big day for The Future of Food–the title of a day-long conference at Georgetown University, which will bring together some of the world’s leading figures in the sustainability movement to discuss food production. It will also be the first time Senior Policy Advisor for Healthy Food Initiatives Sam Kass shares a stage with His Royal...

Yikes! Navigation device maker TomTom has apologized for supplying driving data collected from customers to police to use in catching speeding motorists. The data, including historical speed, has been sold to local and regional governments in the Netherlands to help police set speed traps, Dutch newspaper AD reported here, with a Google translation here. As more smartphones offer GPS navigation service, TomTom has been forced to compensate for declining profit by increasing sales in other areas,...

Why we hesr so little about Japan these days, from On The Media: BROOKE GLADSTONE: Steve Coll covered his fair share of natural disaster and war in his decades as foreign correspondent at The Washington Post, and he found that there is a template for many stories, no matter how harrowing. In his experience, earthquake and disaster coverage, in general, follow a 12-day editorial cycle. He witnessed it while covering an earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people in Iran. The first few days...

Jack Shafer tweets this doozy from the NYTimes Week In Review section:

Pardon me for posting this again, but the heroic story of out lesbian rural Georgia Baptist preacher, Genie Hargrove, really ought to be a viral video hit this Easter. The video is a companion piece to a StoryCorps interview that ran on GPB radio last month. At 10 minutes, it’s long for Internet time. The one minute promo for the video got 500 times the views on the first day! Please help me get Genie’s story heard. Background.

Seth Godin says perhaps we have to rethink economies of scale: If your goal is to make a profit, it’s entirely possible that less overhead and a more focused product line will increase it. If your goal is to make more art, it’s entirely possible the ridding yourself of obligations and scale will help you do that. If your goal is to have more fun, it’s certainly likely that avoiding the high stakes of more debt, more financing and more stuff will help with that. [...] Don’t...

Two news items today continue to reinforce my belief that what we are getting from the Obama administration is responsive, effective government. The ridiculous color-coded terror alert system will be scrapped today and replaced by just two warning levels: elevated and imminent. The new system will be in place in two weeks. And a new set of passenger protections will be announced today that mandate refunds for lost luggage and require airlines to clearly disclose fees in advertisements and on their...

Wired’s Danger Room: Buried within a seemingly innocuous list of recent Air Force contract awards to small businesses are details of plans for robot planes that not only think, but anticipate the moves of human pilots. And you thought it was just the Navy that was bringing us to the brink of the drone apocalypse. [...] Enter Soar Technologies, a Michigan company that proposes to create something it calls “Explanation, Schemas, and Prediction for Recognition of Intent in the Terminal Area...

Have you ever wondered how it is that if your hard drive or mine fails, there’s no hope of ever recovering a thing from it. But if the police get the same hard drive they explain that there’s no way to completely delete anything on it? Remember the sad case of Julie Amero. Hers is not the only one of its kind. In a related vein, Bruce Schneier today on software as evidence, “We in the security field know the risks associated with trusting digital data, but this evidence is routinely...

Today Google Map Maker becomes available in the U.S. With Map Maker, any Google user can add details to maps of university campuses, biking and walking trails or any other points of interest beyond roads. Along with the ability to see and edit all points of interest, new features allow Street View to be used from within the editor and an advanced search engine includes options such as displaying all railroad tracks. User submissions are put through a moderation process and some will only appear...

GoozNews on the dangerous but beguiling econometric logic behind the Republican plan to undo Medicare: It’s an idea that could catch on if the general public became convinced that there is nothing we can do acting together as a society to lower the cost of care. Only the market can do it, the Republicans claim. Force seniors (or the poor or anyone, for that matter) to have more skin in the game, and they’ll use their clout as consumers to separate the wheat from chaff in modern medicine. Expensive,...

My friend, Genie Hargrove, believes God put her on this earth, at this time, to be minister of a small country Baptist church. The place, Devereux, GA, is in the heart of the poorest county in Georgia. The church, at the end of a winding dirt road, was founded in 1791. Genie, the pastor, is an out lesbian. When she first told me the story of her ordination council I knew I wanted to make a video. It was the height of the culture wars, we were in rural Georgia and the state was considering a constitutional...

You may have noticed that I have been posting less lately; and saying less when I do post. That’s because I am deep in the production of a short video profile of the openly lesbian Baptist preacher who officiated at the Renewing Our Commitment ceremony held when my partner and I celebrated our 10th anniversary in 2009. The pastor, Genie Hargrove, is a beautiful person with a fascinating story. The video is built around an hour long interview we recorded for NPR’s StoryCorps in Macon,...

So says Ezra Klein: A few weeks ago, Andy Kroll caught Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour saying he’d “dug out of a $720 million budget hole in two years without raising anybody’s taxes.” The problem? Barbour had raised a couple of taxes. But give him his credit: He hadn’t raised income taxes. Rather, he’d raised cigarette taxes and taxes on facilities for the mentally disabled — taxes, in other words, that fall fairly regressively. Turns out he’s working...

That’s the question the students greeted me with when I came into work this morning. They were gathered around a computer looking at today’s Google Doodle… The doodle celebrates the inventor of the Bunsen burner, Robert Bunsen, on what would have been his 200th birthday. The link goes to Bunsen’s Wikipedia page, where it says his birthday was yesterday. The Mail online reports the birthday is today. Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz sides with Wikipedia. Whatever. Clickthrough...

“Joe McCarthy. True American Hero. Right All Along.” - From a truck-mounted sign on the road into Dublin, GA What on earth does that mean?

His innocence plea was rejected by The Supreme Court on Monday. Once President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI, Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former Georgia Congressman and 2008 Libertarian Party nominee for president Bob Barr, and former FBI Director and judge William S. Sessions spoke out for Davis. Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Leonard Pitts argued that sympathy for the family does not by itself lead to justice. But today I’m finding far too little written about his case. SCOTUSblog: The...

So why am I surprised? Under the tutelage of Representative Nancy Pelosi during the years when Democrats ran the House, her party moved to “green” the Capitol with several initiatives, including obligating the food vendor for the three main House cafeterias to provide compostable cups and utensils. But the newly empowered House Republicans have ended the program, and plastic forks and foam cups have returned. The short-sightedness I’m referring to is not about the environment. It’s...

It’s not so easy to evaluate teachers as you might think. Case on point.

From a very good On The Media piece on labor’s image problem, UC Santa Barbara History Professor Nelson Lichtenstein, when asked if he’s objective on the issue of unions: I would say that I’m an historian who has seen and understood that the development of democracy in any nation, in any part of the world is almost always, is always joined at the hip with the rise of institutions that represent the working class in some organized fashion.

And going to Tina Brown’s Newsbeast in April. Writes Andrew: For me, it’s a strange mixture of excitement and sadness. Sadness because the Atlantic has been a very special home for me and all the interns and staffers who have worked at the Dish. The more than four years that I’ve worked here have been the most rewarding, exhilarating and challenging of my career. I cherish my colleagues, their support and debate, and will miss them deeply. But be assured, I’ll continue to...