A British journalist threatened with deportation from the U.S.

A british journalist threatened with deportation from the U.S.

Gun law debate has been revived in the US, in the wake of the Newtown shooting on December 14, in which 26 people were killed… Last Tuesday, British CNN host Piers Morgan interviewed Larry Pratt, the director of a gun owner’s organization, and when the gun advocate suggested America needed more guns, not less, to prevent similar shootings, the journalist called his guest “stupid” and “dangerous”.

His remarks have angered gun rights activists, who have taken to Twitter to voice their outrage. And Gun Owners of America has posted an article on its website condemning the journalist’s behaviour.

One web user and journalist has created a petition on the White House e-petition website demanding the Brit be “deported immediately” accusing him of engaging in a “hostile attack against the US Constitution”. The text has already gathered around 70 000 signatures, and Piers Morgan, not without a hint of irony, has been encouraging his supporters to sign it so the case will be brought to Barack Obama’s attention.

And certain British Twitter users have been poking fun at this petition, calling for Piers Morgan, who does have quite a following, not to be deported … a counter petition has even been started demanding no action be taken against him.

But Piers Morgan seems unfazed about his future in America, and has posted a message to his Twitter page paying tribute to the two firefighters shot dead on Christmas Eve.

« Yarn Bombing » or the art of dressing up street furniture

When Magda Sayeg covered the door handle of her boutique with a custom made knitted cozy, little did she know she had just started a veritable artistic movement: yarn bombing. It consists of covering street furniture, anything from stairways, tree trunks, buses, statues, with colourful knit and crochet work …

Magda was soon inundated with orders for much larger projects and when she started posting photos of them on her website she inspired other knitters to get out their yarn and needles.

She started a Twitter account to promote the new trend, it now has around 1 500 followers, she also started a Facebook page on which yarn bombers can post photos of their own knitted creations…

And yarn bombing is becoming increasingly popular across the globe … Diverse and unusual works are popping up on equally diverse and unusual objects; London telephone boxes for example, and then one German artist covered up this tree with multicolored stripes…

Unsolicited yarn bombing in public places is however illegal, but this doesn’t seem to put off these graffiti knitters who coordinate undercover operations online … the “Yarncore” collective for example bombards Seattle with its cozy creations… In London it’s the “Knit the City” group rallying knitters across the kingdom …
And to immortalize their pieces, which start to fray after a few weeks, Yarn bombers from all over the world post photos and videos of their pieces to blogs, social networks and websites.

When the New York Times tells a story through multimedia…

Here’s something that will help even the most reluctant readers get totally immersed in a story…Last Friday the New York Times posted a multimedia narrative to its website. The author John Branch blended words, videos, infographics and photos to tell the story of a group of skiers caught up in an avalanche. The story has been warmly received with many taking to Twitter to praise it. Some are even calling for the creation of a Pulitzer Prize for books in multimedia format.

What if Google had existed in the 60’s ?

A typewriter for a keyboard, with results displayed very slowly in the form of a paper print out …an Austrian web user wondered what Google would have looked like if it had existed in the 1960s: and this is what he came up with; search terms are entered into a graphical punch card data is stored on magnetic tapes, and you to be very, very patient.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

The end of the year is almost upon us … a year rich in music. And in this video DJ Earworm has taken the pop and rock hits of the past twelve months and mixed them up in another of his annual mashups…