The Flaming Meteorite story from Latvia – or “Splatvia” as some wags called it – has been officially denounced as a hoax. (See Firegeezer’s posting on the event yesterday HERE.) Suspicions were raised immediately because of several factors, one of them being that meteors have burned out before they reach the ground. The fact that all the grass around the “crater” was still green and unburnt, coupled with the lack of any debris field, exposed the fabrication. At first, suspicion was focused on the three college students who “just happened” to be in the area with their video camera and recorded the burning pit.
After first denying any involvement, they later ‘fessed up that they had staged the stunt. But shortly after, a telephone company, Tele2, came forward and admitted that it was the creator of the hoax and publicly took full responsibility for the incident. Tele2 said that they wanted to take the public’s focus off of the continual bad news about the economy and help people believe that Latvians “can be all that they want to be.” They also said that they would reimburse the government for all costs (estimated at $26,000) created by the stunt. There’s some great corporate thinking going on in that boardroom.
Russia Today has this follow-up report along with Tele2′s public statement:
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Apparently envious of Facebook’s unpopular buzz created by their decision to confuse everybody with a new home page default, Twitter wants to get the spotlight back onto their site. Charlotte Observer reporter Jeff Elder is warning us that Twitter is about to tinker with their Retweet feature. He tells us that Twitter will be adding a Retweet button just like the Reply button that you can press to instantly send an RT out. It looks simple, but it prevents you from adding a comment to your retweet. If you want to, you can still retweet in the “old” way if you want to add a comment. Read Elder’s commentary HERE.
We’ve got a lot of things happening this morning to tell you about, so let’s get this equipment checked out. I’ll go start the coffee and then we’ll get together in the day room to see what’s going on.
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