Will is distracted by that giant LED thing that got turned on this week at the new 'GBH building by the turnpike:

What is WGBH thinking?? A massive screen hanging over the highway?? ... I drove by this a week ago as they were testing it and it was distracting enough. ...

Corie Lok reports on the filming of a Nova pilot in which passersby were invited to pose tough science questions to a trio of grad students sitting outside Grendel's Den:

... For about four hours, the graduate students—two from MIT and one affiliated with both MIT and Harvard—fielded dozens of questions, from the straightforward ("How do you measure a decibel?") to the practical ("How can we tell if there’s lead in the crystal glasses we drink from?") and the esoteric ("Which is faster: the speed of light or the speed of thought?"). ...

Michael Pahre relays the news that WGBH tomorrow begins testing a 30x45-foot outdoor TV screen - visible from the turnpike up to two miles away:

... Scheduled to become operational in mid-September - when WGBH formally dedicates its new studios - the 30-foot by 45-foot screen will display slowly changing images that evoke WGBH's award-winning science, history, public affairs, lifestyle, drama and children’s programming. ...

Ed. idle questions: If they pointed it upwards would it be visible from space? And how would it look on a big-ass table?

Garrett Wollman photographs the demolition of the old pedestrian bridge that connected two WGBH buildings over Western Avenue before the station moved to new digs in Brighton.

Wollman notes Boston Redevelopment Authority regulations forced the station to demolish the bridge - the city doesn't allow a property owner to have more than one pedestrian bridge in the entire city, and the new Brighton facility also spans a road. Question: Why is there a need for this regulation? Was there an epidemic of developers putting up sun-blotting, eye-hurting pedestrian bridges?

Brian cannot believe that WGBH had to shut down its entire Web site when it moved from its old offices in Allston to new digs in Brighton this week:

Ouch! So GBH is this world-famous media company (a non-profit, but a seriously successful one) and they have these wonderful new studios in Brighton… and they have to shut down their entire site to move the servers? Really?

Obviously, 'GBH doesn't have a redundant data center from HP, which has taken to blowing up entire data centers to show how well their systems work (actually, no real point to that link except for us 12-year-olds who like watching guys in white lab coats blow big things blow up).

Adam Reilly has the scoop.

Currently, civil rights are a Massachusetts hot button, with gay marriage and Jimmy Kelly penatrating the headlines and blog fodder.

Today being Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day of reflection on civil rights, I present two brief snapshots from Boston's voluminous civil rights history:

First, many people don't know that Dr. King first met Coretta Scott, a New England Conservatory student, during his time pursing a doctorate at BU. While here, he rented a room at 397 Mass Ave, where a small plaque still stands to commemorate his time in the Hub.

Dr. King was assassinated April 4, 1968; eight years and one day later, Boston was drenched in busing-induced racial turmoil, and from a rally at city hall was born an iconic, Pulitzer Prize winning photo: Joseph Rakes, a white student spearing black attorney Ted Landsmark with an American flag.

State Senator William Owens (D-Boston) stated on the WGBH 10 O'Clock News, April 6, 1976:

"People of color are not safe to come here to Boston and we are asking people across the country, of color, to stay away'.

WGBH has archival news casts from that day:

Click here to watch the original report on the vicious Landsmark assault and Senator Owens statements.
Also: Ted Landsmark's press conference.
[Quicktime]

[Note: The WGBH archive contains a treasure trove of old news clips from 1976-1991. I know there are a few people here that will, like myself, get lost for hours there.]

Borderline and family watch a lot of 'GBH, so he wishes they would can the new-age "RealAge" informercials and do something about the music programs they run during fund drives:

... [C]an someone at WGBH please take all of the tapes of that crazy Teutonic violinist Andrew Rieu and launch them into the heart of the sun? ...

They'll need it for all the hate e-mail zinging its way to John Carroll now that the national Democratic blogs have picked up the story of how he and his Beat the Press-ters blew the whole blog-accountability issue the other day (see here, here and here):

... Yeah, John Carroll, intrepid investigative reporter and professor of journalism at Boston University (where standards are obviously slipping) reported that Bowers, Stoller, and Shields were all Jerome Armstrong. The source? This blatantly satiric post by Shields. Then, for good measure, the producers took a quote from Blue Mass Group blogger David Blue out of context to make it seem he was attacking Jerome. Then, the panel of know-nothings sat around lamenting the lack of accountability in the blog world, clearly feeling the heat of their impending irrelevance. ...

The show posted a correction today, but the Kossistas are not satisfied - the post is followed by 70 replies (as I type), many accusing not just Carroll but Emily Rooney of being, at best, idiots.

At the Dig, Joe Keohane suggests bloggers and their minions get a grip:

... Look, people are right to be annoyed. Lecturing someone on having no standards and then getting the facts wrong is sloppy and embarrassing as hell. But Carroll was right to raise the point of blogger ethics, because the more widely read and influential blogs are, the more important it becomes to figure out where information is coming from. He did it poorly, ate shit and issued a correction. It's over. So let's call off the e-jihad (e-had?). By the tone of these things, we're just one unflattering caricature of Kos away from rioting in the streets. ...

The Outraged Liberal agrees:

... I still believe we need to develop thicker skins if we want to dish it. out.

On Blue Mass. Group, David reports learning two things from a "Beat the Press" show on political bloggers: John Carroll has a broken sarcasm meter (unable to figure out a joke even when it's explained to him) and Joe Sciacca of the Herald is under the impression that the Patrick campaign was disappointed when Blue Mass. Group endorsed Patrick.