<![CDATA[Gawker: answers]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/gawker.com.png <![CDATA[Gawker: answers]]> http://gawker.com/tag/answers http://gawker.com/tag/answers <![CDATA[Mike Myers: International Man of Not-So-Much Mystery]]> This morning's Daily News blind item—on a divorced comic star exploring a "groovy" new persona as an openly gay man—was as obvious as they get. Some of you commenters told us that the guy we were all guessing, Mike Myers, star of the "groovy baby" catchphrase-apalooza Austin Powers films and the current dud The Love Guru, has been out 'n proud in Toronto for years. Fair enough. We're not sure why it is that the Daily News would bother featuring this as a "blind item" only to use such dead giveaway clues, other than that they it would be too gauche to "out" Myers, um, outright. Seems like a bit of nasty piling-on to Myer's already miserable Love Guru bomb of a weekend.

Most of you guessed Tom Cruise or Will Smith for the other geigh on the list, #2. We could sort of see that happening, but don't really think that Cruise or Smith can really just go to bars and talk to people. Most people seemed befuddled by #3 and #4 (as were we), except for commenter gomezparkinson, who seemed pretty sure about some of the people in #4, our old Hollywood blind item:

As a casual student of Old Hollywood sleezy gossip, I can state with the certainty of someone who wasn't there that #1 and #2 of the fourth item were nerd-hot charactor actor Keenan Wynn and ginger boy-toy of the '40s, Van Johnson. The woman was a minor actress named Eve Abbott who famously divorced Keenan one day and married Van the next. Apparently, this was all concocted by MGM, the home studio of both actors, to make it all seem steamily hetero and hot-blooded, when in fact the two guys were hotter for each other than Evie. Evie was very much in love with Van Johnson, but later stated she wouldn't have married him if she'd known he was "homosexual." Who the famous fourth is, I have no idea. Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power are the obvious guesses, but a bit too A-list for this menage, though Errol's career was flagging at this point. Were you allowed to fuck outside of your studio's contract player A-list? I don't know.

Mr Johnson is in his 90s and lives quietly in Manhattan. We should just ask him who the other guy was. Does he post here?

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<![CDATA[Find Where Facebook Ranks Your Friends]]> facebook.jpegThis morning we posted the "Nefarious O Value" theory of the mystery Facebook Stalker feature. Now, a second tech-savvy tipster writes in with step-by-step instructions for how to find Facebook's unexplained "O" ranking for every single one of your friends on the site. In other words—from what we can gather, at least—there's a file on your computer that tells you exactly how the site's algorithms rank each and every person in your social circle. The instructions are after the jump. Please write in and let us know what your results are. The code may soon be cracked!

To whom it may concern:

If you used Facebook's search bar feature yesterday and were able to see your "top 5" friends, then there will be a PHP file containing the "o" ranking of every single one of your Facebook friends stored somewhere on your computer.

Please note: this tip applies to anyone whose computer saves temporary internet files.

(1) Open your "Temporary Internet Files" folder. (For example, from Internet Explorer, go to Tools > Internet Options > Settings > View Files.)

(2) Within the folder, look for files last accessed on May 13 around the time you first tested out the Facebook search bar function.

(3) You should be able to find a PHP file called "typeahead_search."

(4) Save this file to another folder and open it with a text editor like Notepad (or the Mac equivalent). You will see that the file contains script for every single one of your friends. (See the script here for an example.). If you search within the file for the name of any of your Facebook friends, you will find their ranking after the letter "o." The five people with the lowest "o" rankings will be the same as your "Facebook 5."

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<![CDATA[Gawker Answers: Did You Have To Go There?]]> Rarely, Gawker gets correspondence from readers, and even more rarely, some of this correspondence is not all positive. Even more rarely still, and more often randomly, we attempt to answer questions or concerns raised in such letters. For example, here's a criticism about a post regarding "wise old man with all his buttons" Daniel Schorr, the famed NPR newsman and broadcaster. Writes the reader:

I've been a Gawker reader since the Spiers days but this is my first unhappy email. As an NPR listener I have no doubt that I am not part of the Gawker targeted fan base (and I'm over 40!) but Daniel Schorr? Did you have to go there? Yes you did. So here I am in your inbox. For the nothing that it's worth, I think that was badly done.
Was it badly done? After the jump, let us reason together.

Certainly we were brought up to respect our elders, which is why we made only the lightest fun of Mr. Schorr's blog comment. Moreover, Schorr gets the last laugh anyway, since our aside about the lack of editorial oversight on blogs itself contained a (since corrected) typo. Even so, the reader above is too hard on himself/herself — everyone is potentially part of our "targeted fan base," even nonagenarian broadcasters. Of course, everyone is also open to potentially getting the business in these pages. What little institutional reverence we still possess wouldn't halt coverage of a minor-key newsworthy quote, especially when the treatment of same is comparatively mild. Trust us, for every mean thing you see posted, a half-dozen much nastier remarks were held back by our shriveled but nevertheless functional sense of decency.

Anyway, we're pretty sure Schorr has the intestinal fortitude to withstand ribbing from the likes of us. Maybe his fans could follow his lead, and lighten up.

Earlier: Human Journalism Institution Expresses Institutional Belief

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