DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Here’s a neat technique for creating custom photo edges in Photoshop. (In a nutshell: select the image area, invert, enter quick mask mode, and apply Distortion filters to the mask.) Read more on the topic here and especially here (pdf with illustrations).

John McManus, former journalist and journalism professor, runs Grade the News:

Grade the News is a media research project focusing on the quality of the news media in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are affiliated with and based at Stanford University’s Graduate Program in Journalism.

We aim to provide timely critiques and in-depth, systematic analyses that allow the public to compare newspapers and local television news broadcasts on equal footing. Think of us as a kind of Consumer Reports for news.

Our signature service is a periodic survey of thousands of local print and broadcast stories. For each story, we determine the newsworthiness, number and expertise of sources, thematic approach, number of people affected, fairness and other traits. The end product is a letter grade for the newsroom — anywhere from A to F.

In a brief Q-and-A in the Chronicle Magazine, McManus revealed something shocking, in his answer to the second question below:

So what’s the report card?
The most recent grades are The Chronicle, the Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times all got A’s. For television evening news, they all got C’s. Newsworthiness is probably the biggest difference…
What can the consumer deduce from this?
If anyone thinks they can cancel their subscription to the newspaper and just get their news from television, they’re dreaming.

Me: “Did you know that Wal-Mart is the nation’s biggest grocery chain?”

Spouse: “I buy paint at Wal-Mart.”

Pictured is a particular modest starfish, groin area tactfully covered by a small shred of seaweed.

Meanwhile, the rest of this lonely specimen’s family was enjoying an orgy across the reef.

My buddy Chuck forwarded a link to this amazing whole-body alien tattoo. I’m not sure how he found it; I wonder if maybe he was looking for something a bit more exciting than napkin rings to add to his wedding gift registry.

Also check out the animated view of the alien head tattoo. Crazy!