The Wall Street Journal calls this “the neatest thing you’ll see all day,” and since the Saints game is still an hour away, the WSJ may be right. Director Chris Milk teamed up with Google and Arcade Fire to produce a music video that personalizes itself for each watcher:

“The Wilderness Downtown,” which Google calls a “musical experience made specifically for the browser,” is set to Arcade Fire’s “We Used to Wait” and takes the viewer on a journey focused on a location from childhood — provided that the user enters the address and Google Street View covers it.

Close out all your other programs (this thing will take all your computer’s processing power), go to the site, enter the address of the house where you grew up — and watch the windows start to sprout. Play with the mouse and watch the birds fly over your old backyard, or just sit back and experience the slightly eerie feeling of seeing your street injected (almost) seamlessly in videos that emerge and shrink on your computer screen.

Seems like every day now we hear about the Second Coming of bedbugs. DDT wiped ‘em out after World War II, but the new breed, like something out of a horror movie, has mutated and is taking over hotel and motel rooms one bite at a time. If they’re not infesting an AMC theater in Times Square (oh God), they’re invading file cabinets in offices (oh God oh God) or luxury car dealerships. And on last night’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart featured this absolutely horrifying, David Lynch-meets-children’s-television PSA about bedbugs (starring Isabella Rossellini!):

The first I’d heard of it was a friend from New Orleans who had moved to Cincinnati with his wife; they’ve found bedbugs in their house twice now and are on the verge of a mutual nervous bedbug-breakdown. So it wasn’t surprising when the list of “America’s Top 10 Bedbug-Infested Cities” came out today and Cincinnati was #1. Just try to read this paragraph without itching:

David Ralph Hoffman, owner of Merlin’s Pest Control, says if you don’t know someone who has had a bedbug problem, you don’t live in Cincinnati. At Merlin’s they rate their horror stories on a scale of 1 to 10. The worst was an apartment occupied by someone who bragged about the last time he’d had a bath (not recently). The apartment was also occupied by about 100,000 bedbugs, Hoffman says, kept in checked only by an equal number of German cockroaches. “The one we had that we call our 9.5, the gentleman was a World War II vet and pale, sick, dying, grumpy as hell—and we found over 50 bedbugs in the hat he was wearing.”

The good news: For once, New Orleans isn’t at the top of one of these horrible lists that no one wants to top — it doesn’t appear in the Top 10. The good/bad news: If you’re traveling, you can check the site Bedbug Registry to see if anyone’s reported blood-sucking creatures between the sheets of your luxury hotel or flophouse (bedbugs respect no class or income level).

Have you had any experience or warning about bedbugs when you traveled this summer? Just in case you don’t know what they look like …

This Saturday, Aug. 28 brings the 5th annual Rising Tide, the lively day-long discussion put together after the storm by New Orleans bloggers at home and away …

After the flood that followed Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, the internet became a vital connection among dispersed New Orleanians, former New Orleanians, friends of the city and of the Gulf Coast region. A surge of new blogs erupted and, combined with those that were already online, a community of bloggers with a shared interest in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast developed. In the summer of 2006, after the success of the first Geek Dinner, and to mark the anniversary of the flood, the newly formed NOLA Bloggers organized the first Rising Tide Conference, taking their shared interest in technology, the internet and social media and turning advocacy for the city into action.

This year’s event (held at the Howlin’ Wolf) has a great lineup of speakers, starting with the keynoter: Mac McClelland of Mother Jones, who has been doing a spectacular, skeptical kickass job reporting on the oil disaster. Other panelists include NOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas; Gambit’s Clancy DuBos (if you want your chance to hear Clancy use his full vocabulary, this is it); The Times-Picayune’s excellent columnist Stephanie Grace and equally excellent TV Ranger Dave Walker; Tulane criminologist Peter Scharf; and many more. Topics include public safety, politics, the environment, HBO’s Treme and “Why Can’t We Get Some Dam Safety in New Orleans?”.

Gambit is pleased to sponsor the event. Tickets are only $25 and can be purchased in advance here.

At NOPD headquarters this morning, Superintendent Ronal Serpas introduced a 65-point plan to reform the troubled department and allow citizens to track its progress. You can download your own copy of the report here, but here are a few items of interest.

An outreach program to the growing number of Spanish-speaking residents who settled in New Orleans after the storm:

39. The NOPD in the First Quarter of 2011 will establish an El Protector Program to engage its Hispanic/Latino community. The El Protector Program originated in the California Highway Patrol and was initiated in the Washington State Patrol in 2002, and the Nashville Police Department in 2005. Nashville’s El Protector Program, in February 2009, received national recognition from the Vera Institute of Justice as a “best practice” in reaching across the language divide. El Protector-type programs will enhance the NOPD’s ability to serve the ever changing diversity of our community. The NOPD will also analyze the need for this or a similar program in our Vietnamese community, as well as others that may have language differences.

More cops on bikes, in all districts:

41. The NOPD in 2011 will field Bicycle Units and an expanded Mounted Officer program in the eight Districts. It is well established in Community Policing literature that programs such as these serve to put officers closer to the communities they assist, thus creating better relationships, communication and information sharing.

And — as Serpas told his officers at the meeting this morning — “If you lie, you die”:

44. The NOPD on September 1, 2010 will implement a revised Honesty and Truthfulness policy that will call for presumptive termination, without progressive discipline, for any employee who makes a materially false statement with the intent to deceive. IN PLACE

45. The NOPD on September 1, 2010 will implement a revised False or Inaccurate Reports policy that will call for presumptive termination, without progressive discipline, when an employee knowingly makes, allows or causes to be made, a false or inaccurate oral or written report of an official nature. IN PLACE

There’s more (including a prohibition on cops accepting cash payments for paid details). Get your copy here — and chime in with what you think about it below.

I particularly love the cover this week — conceived and executed by art director Dora Sison.

Inside:

Interviews with filmmakers Harry Shearer and Spike Lee, whose documentaries The Big Uneasy and If God is Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise both make their debuts this week — plus a review of The Big Uneasy.

A look at the state of medicine in New Orleans, five years later.

Clancy DuBos examines the reforms made after Katrina. Chris Rose asks the unanswerable: What if it never happened?

Noah Bonaparte Pais remembers big-box music stores and reflects on how music retailing has changed since the storm. Lauren LaBorde surveys local booksellers and gets their picks for the best post-Katrina literature.

Dalt Wonk on post-K theater; D. Eric Bookhardt on post-K art; Ian McNulty on the restaurants that vanished in 2005 and never came back.

It’s a good issue. Pick it up around town starting Sunday afternoon, or check back Monday for the online edition. And next week: the annual Best of New Orleans.