Take two doses of constitutionally-protected free speech and call me in a decade

China Daily: Study shows journalism bad for health

Checks of 1,182 reporters in Beijing conducted by the Chinese Physician's Association on Sunday showed that only 28, or 2.4% of them, were healthy.

Stomach problems were the most common ailments of the tested journalists, all of whom were under 60 years old.

Results of the checks point the finger for the reporters' poor health at occupational stress. Among the people examined, 84.2% said they sufferd from chronic exhaustion, 72.1% complained of high work pressure, 62% said they did not get regular sleep, half had bad eyesight and nearly the same number were in chronic pain.

Perhaps the "occupational stress" is worse when reporting the wrong things can get you arrested.

(Via SiliconValleyWatcher.)

Technorati Tags: censorship, stress, china

«» (0) comments

Europe considers banning The Producers

Well, not exactly, but almost.

AP via SFGate: EU considers banning Nazi symbols in 25 nations after Prince Harry's costume blunder

Technorati Tags: censorship, europe, nazis, comedy

«» (0) comments

Edit This World: Wikia

Is there any information domain where the open, world-writable wiki model can't be beneficially applied?

We're sure to find out, as wikis and wiki-variants appear everywhere.

When frustrated with DMOZ, I've often wished for a more radically open web directory, with submissions and categorizations from anyone, at any time, like a wiki. Community moderation would curb the worst abuses.

Those wishes have been answered: the latest from the folks behind Wikipedia is Wikia, which applies the wiki philosophy to a search index of web sites.

It's very nascent. It appears to be more of a site directory -- like the early Yahoo and then DMOZ -- for now. But as it grows, it could take on more comprehensive search-and-ranking functions.

Why not let any contributor instantly add sites -- even individual pages within sites -- and reorder the results of any search based on users' perception of sites' appropriateness to the query? Well, spammers and system-abusers and ranking-wars, I guess. But could open feedback systems be devised that keep those problems suitably in check? It's worth a try!

After entering a couple sites into Wikia, I think it could take some ease-of-keyword-tagging lessons from del.icio.us.

Also notable: Wikia is not a project of the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, but the software and database are available under open source/open content licenses, and "[a] percentage of profits of Wikia are intended to be donated to the Wikimedia Foundation."

«» (1) comments

Paging Dr. Strangelove: Air Force considered 'sex bomb'

New Scientist: Pentagon reveals rejected chemical weapons

Most bizarre among the plans was one for the development of an 'aphrodisiac' chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among troops would cause a 'distasteful but completely non-lethal' blow to morale, the proposal says.

«» (0) comments