Watercooler Sensation

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Charity 2.0

• Say hello to Charity 2.0. [Washington Post]
• What MySpace and Facebook did to friendship and YouTube did to TV, a group of social entrepreneurs are trying to do to philanthropy.
• Their goal: “apply the tools of the digital age — such as social networking and peer-to-peer and viral marketing — to an industry long criticized for its slow-moving ways.”
• Some examples:
• Razoo: an online “community united around making a positive difference in the world.” [Razoo]
• Project Agape: responsible for an add-on to facebook called “Causes” that allows members to invite their friends to give to various philanthropic organizations. [TechCrunch]
• Google.org: the philanthropic arm of Google that calls itself an “experiment in active philanthropy” which offers grants, “information technologies and other resources to address three major growing global problems: climate change, global public health, and economic development and poverty.” [Google.org]
• The benefits of these types of philanthropy?
• “...People will be more likely to give money or support to a certain cause if their friends do, and the Internet also holds the promise of cutting down on bureaucracy and the high administrative and marketing costs associated with raising money.” [Washington Post]

Changing the world, one poke at a time.

Coming Soon To A TV Near You: Conan And Leno!

• News with the writers’ strike yesterday, as NBC officially announced that its two late-night hosts, Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, would be back on the air starting January 2. [NY Times] [USAT] [LA Times]
• As we reported yesterday, David Letterman is also in talks to return, though his case is a little different, as it isn’t owned by the network.
• It may not be the show you’re used to seeing, though.
• Neither host is allowed to have writers. The hosts also are not allowed to write the bits that normally would have been written by the writers.
• What that means: Short, short monologues. Lots of ad libbing. Many guests.
• Well, we think it means many guests: Many Hollywood actors have so far been in solidarity with the writers and there is some question as to who will break the lines to appear on the shows. (This being Hollywood, however, we doubt they’ll have to look too far to find someone who wants to be on TV.)
• Leno: “I remained positive during the talks and while they were still at the table discussing a solution. “The Tonight Show” remained dark in support of our writing staff. Now that the talks have broken down and there are no further negotiations scheduled, I feel it’s my responsibility to get my 100 non-writing staff, which were laid off, back to work. We fully support our writers and I think they understand my decision.”
• The night-time shows have been dark for 2 months now. In the previous writers’ strike of 1988, Johnny Carson also went dark for 2 months before heading back on the air.

Sigh. Just when we were getting used to going to bed early...

Holiday Travel: It Could Be Worse

• Not looking forward to long security lines and busy airport parking lots this holiday season? Think of it this way: It could be worse. And in fact, during other times of the year, it often is. [USA Today]
• A new study done by USA Today shows that our perceptions about holiday travel aren’t exactly accurate. While we think that Thanksgiving and Christmas are the most hectic, data provided by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) and the Federal Aviation Administration show that flight volumes are lower during the holidays than peak days in summer, and delays are usually less severe.
• Not only are there more flights during the summer, but several airlines reported the number of passengers per plane is higher then as well.
• Last year, the Thursday and Friday before Christmas — Dec. 21 and 22 — ranked as the 23rd and 24th busiest air travel days of the year with 20,761 and 20,760 flights, respectively, according to the BTS.
• Ready for another shocker? Nov. 22, 2006, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving — considered the busiest day of the year — ranked as the 36th busiest, according to the BTS. Its 20,686 flights were 201 fewer than the busiest day of the year, Friday, Aug. 4, 2006.
• When are the busiest travel days? Try any Thursday or Friday during the summer. Seats are just as packed, there are more flights, and there is a greater likelihood of being delayed, due primarily to thunderstorms and volume.
• But that doesn’t mean we suggest waltzing into the airport 10 minutes before your flight. Airlines are predicting 2.5 million people will take flights on the four peak days this holiday season: Wednesday, Jan. 2; Friday, Dec. 21; Thursday, Dec. 27; and Wednesday, Dec. 26.

Still, we’re suggesting you bring a book...

Playing God Is Getting Easier, And Cooler

• Sometime in 2008, scientists are likely to “boot up” a new life form made entirely from synthetic materials and assembled in a laboratory. What a brave new world it’s become. [Washington Post]
• And it’s about to get wilder
• Scientists compare the current state of “synthetic biolog” to the early days of the computer revolution, but instead of writing code, enterprising geeks are assembling the building blocks of life.
• “We’re heading into an era where people will be writing DNA programs like the early days of computer programming, but who will own these programs?” asked Drew Endy, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• Another MIT scientist, Tom Knight, and a group of colleagues have “started a collection of hundreds of interchangeable genetic components they call BioBricks, which students and others are already popping into cells like Lego pieces.”
• The tasks of the first synthetic life?
• Create fuel: Scientists at Synthetic Genomics wants to create cells that produce “ethanol, hydrogen and other exotic fuels for vehicles, to fill a market that has been estimated to be worth $1 trillion.”
• Assemble pharmaceuticals: “Synthetic DNA is allowing bacteria and yeast to produce the malaria drug artemisinin far more efficiently than it is made in plants, its natural source.”
• But many fear these cells could be used for nefarious purposes:
• “The fact is, you can build viruses, and soon bacteria, from downloaded instructions on the Internet,” says Jim Thomas of the ETC Group attempting to freeze bioengineering until regulations are in place, “Where’s the governance and oversight?”
• In any case, a new age is dawning and the full moral and political implications have yet to surface.
• Says Andrew Light, an environmental ethicist at the University of Washington in Seattle, “It could be that synthetic biology is going to be like cellphones: so overwhelming and ubiquitous that no one notices it anymore. Or it could be like abortion — the kind of deep disagreement that will not go away.”

We’re secretly totally, totally psyched.

You’re So Vain, You Probably Think This Post Is About You

• Forget sports scores, Britney or porn. The number one thing more and more Americans like to search for on the Internet is…themselves. [PC World] [Study PDF]
• In a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, almost half of all Americans (47%, if you want to be precise about it) say they’ve Googled themselves.
• That’s more than twice the 22% who copped to checking themselves out online in 2002.
• Who’s most likely to type their own names into a search engine? Try people with more education and more income, the vain things.
• We’re also into spying on our friends, neighbors, co-workers and past-or-future loves! Over half (53%) of Americans say they’ve Googled someone else’s name.
• 36% say they’re curious about old friends.
• 31% have searched for another person’s public records, like bankruptcies or divorce proceedings.
• 19% say they’ve checked out a co-worker
• And 9% say they like to run the name of someone they’re dating through a quick search. (More women than men confess to this.)

Whew — we feel so better about cyber-stalking all of those exes now!

By the Numbers

In the mood for something *really* good to watch over your holiday break? Never fear, the AFI is here! The American Film Institute this week released its annual list of the top 10 movies and TV shows of the year. Here are the lists – in no particular order. [Hollywood Today]

Top 10 Movies Of The Year

• Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead
• The Diving Bell and The Butterfly
• Into The Wild
• Juno
• Knocked Up
• Michael Clayton
• No Country For OldMen
• Ratatouille
• The Savages
• There Will Be Blood

Top 10 Television Shows Of The Year

• Dexter
• Everybody Hates Chris
• Friday Night Lights
• Longford
• Mad Men
• Pushing Daisies
• The Sopranos
• Tell Me You Love Me
• 30 Rock
• Ugly Betty

Celebrities: Unfiltered

“It sounds exciting, but actually it was just a typical Midwestern factory job. Everything just went by in a constant flow of magazine pages. I did not look at the pictures, not even one. It could just as easily have been National Geographic and Popular Mechanics. There was nothing erotic to it at all.”

— Actor Willem Dafoe, on his first job as a binder of porno mags. [Page Six]

Speed Round

SWEENEY TOT

Director Tim Burton and partner Helena Bonham Carter welcomed a baby girl, their second child together, into the world this weekend. [TMZ]

ALERT YOUR TIVO

On January 31, “Lost” is moving to a new time slot, Thursdays at 9PM, where it will go up against “Celebrity Apprentice.” [Hollywood Reporter]

BEWARE THE ROUS!

Scientists exploring a “lost world” in the jungles of Indonesia have discovered two entirely new species of animals, a GIANT rat and an itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny marsupial. [MSNBC]

YAWN

Can’t sleep? Blame grandma! It turns out insomnia may be a genetic condition. [USA Today]

HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES

French President Nicholas Sarkozy wraps an arm around supermodel/singer Carla Bruni...two months after his divorce. [AFP]

GOD HATES RUPERT MURDOCH

What other explanation is there for a hazardous chemical spill at News Corps.’s NYC headquarters? [Gawker]

THE HOLIDAYS ARE RUINED

George Dickel Whisky No. 8 says that it’s short on production of its sipping booze this year, meaning that we might actually have to deal with relatives (gulp) sober. [WSMV]

PAGING CAPTAIN OBVIOUS

“Computer-free students find life hard without them” [USA Today]

DUMB IDEAS

Foiled by the mortgage slump here at home? Why not shoot for the moon with your next real estate endeavors? Literally. The moon. [Reuters]

WE’RE SMILING INSIDE

Publishers aren’t offering Karl Rove as much as he thought he could get to write his memoirs. [Crain’s Business]

EMANCIPATION

The Long Island couple who kept two Indonesian domestic workers against their will are convicted on “12 counts, including involuntary servitude, conspiracy, harboring aliens and forced labor.” They face up to 40 years in prison. [NY Times]

BEDTIME STORIES

The tradition of reading to kids before they go to sleep is declining across the country. Sad, and bad: “Researchers and child-development specialists say reduced rates of shared reading time can hurt family cohesion, stymie creative development in younger children and drag down academic achievement.” [Kansas City Star]

ONLY HALF?

“Almost half of U.S. Internet users ‘Google’ themselves” [Computer World]

FAN ‘TIL THE END

Kathleen Desrosiers sprinkled her dead hubby’s ashes at a place he always dreamed to go: Heinz Field during a Steelers game. [AP]