Akamai has a Real-time Web Monitor tracking “global Internet conditions around the clock.” Areas w/ highest traffic are brightest. You can also color the map by areas with the slowest connections (latency) or the most recent “network attacks.”

“Pumpkins and all that bullshit…”

Check David Greenberger’s Duplex Planet blog-post “Why Do We Celebrate Halloween?.” Here’s some excepted answers from his conversations with residents of the Duplex Nursing Home, Jamaica Plain, MA, 1980:

WALTER KIERAN: Christ! Nobody knows that! I don’t even know myself! I bet you can’t tell me where Halloween originated. It started up in Salem, with the witches. The kids go around and knock on the doors and they have to give ‘em something to get rid of ‘em.

GEORGE MacWILLIAMS: Damn if I know. I’m not interested in that stuff. It’s a kids holiday, they enjoy it.

WILLIAM “FERGIE” FERGUSON: On account of the clowns.

KEN EGLIN: I don’t know, honest-to-god. You can ask me all about Halloween and I don’t know, I swear to God I don’t know. It has something to do with Salem. What do you call ‘em — witches, spooks? I guess we celebrate it for the spirits, witches, scarin’ people. I used to put a sheet on and cover my head and stand behind a big tree. Now this is gonna sound silly to you, but I’m serious. I used to scare the shit out of all the girls. I didn’t have anything on them, they were smarter than I was. I used to ask them things, and I couldn’t stand them. I’d scare them and they’d run home screamin’ to their mothers! Pumpkins and all that bullshit.

“The Duplex Planet is an ongoing work designed to portray a wide variety of real characters who are old or in decline.” Much more “Why Hallowen?” at the DP Blog.

TV criticisms by rabbits; Buns and Chou Chou, Rabbitbites:

PRX Announces Winners of Public Radio Talent Quest. Rebecca, Al, and (my fave) Glynn got selected as the hosts with the mosts (20K+ voters, 1.4K+ entrants). I attended the announcement this Wed. nite, and all three proved pretty damn Hosty in front of tough crowd of top pubradio execs.

Now, they each make a series pilot. We’ll see.

CPB conceived & funded this talent search. I was skeptical of this top-down institutional instigation of aesthetics engineering, but you can’t argue w/ the results: 3 (actually 6) people w/ plenty of pubradio potential.

Sidenote: CPB head Pat Harrison was there. This is second time I’ve heard her talk about the role of public broadcasting as a community builder, and the second time I’ve been impressed with her visions and comm skills.

Hey, travelers, if you’re doin’ time at Chicago O’Hare, there’s a bunch of free AC power plugs, plus USB power, in comfortable seats down a very quiet, little-used hallway. It’s in Terminal 2 and runs between the E and F gates (around E4, F4). I’m bloggin from there now. Just video-Skyped the wife and collected the dozens of emails that’ve piled up since last connectivity. Maybe most of ya think I’m easily amused and this ain’t nada to rave about, but a little peace, power solitude, and sanctuary in an otherwise congested noisy airport, well, I’m diggin’ it. To the right is a photo-booth snap of these AC/USB-ed seats I and a few others are enjoying. Oh yeh, one more vital piece of info: current security advisory threat level: Orange. I believe that’s just below Pineapple.

Photos by Scott Carrier, music by Burmese band Iron Cross:

Two apps that record radio for later listening, progammable by station and time: Rogue Amoeba - Radioshift (Mac $32) and RadioTime.com (Win $29). Both capture the station’s online audio stream then save it as an mp3 soundfile. Haven’t used either but I frequently resort to Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack Pro, and can vouch for that co. heartily.

If you’r near Twin Cities this weekend, crash the party at the Public Radio Programming Conference. Sue SchardtMEDIA has invited me on her Thurs morn panel “Setting the Program Makers’ Table: The Sound of a New Generation,” along with Torey Malatia, (GM Chicago Public Radio), Sean Cole (American Public Media producer), and Chana Joffe‐Walt (Seattle indie).