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August 18, 2005
Julian Bond wonders how many people are flying in airplanes at any one time. You win if you guess the answer within one order of magnitude. Julian’s guess is one million. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer… [Tag: OrderOfMagnitudeQuiz]
August 17, 2005
Mortimer Adler’s cranky book, A GuideBook to Learning (1986), that rails against the evils of alphabetization has no index. What a pain. [Tags: EverythingIsMiscellaneous taxonomy]
I just heard about a telephone scam I would have fallen for, so I thought I’d pass it along.
In essence, the caller says they’re with the credit card company’s security department. They read you your card number and tell you some malarkey about refunding you money. They ask for the security code on the back of your card to confirm that you’re in possession of the card.
As soon as they ask you for that code, you know they’re scammers. That’s all they want from you. Give it to them and you’ll find a hefty charge added to your account. Apparently the credit card companies never ask you for that security code.
Of course, the warning I received and am passing on to you might itself be a scam. In fact, maybe I’m hoaxing you right now. Bwahahaha…eh.
BBC Radio 4 has released a free online version of the 1984 Infocom adventure game based on the Douglas Adams’ book. Adams worked on the game. The BBC version has illustrations. And a second BBC version has illustrations done by the winner of a competition.
So, if you have read the book, heard the radio version, seen the TV series, gone to the movie and rented the DVD, now you can re-enact it by typing in phrases such as “Take towel. Look at towel.”
AKMA chimes in on Jeneane’s recent unpleasantness with Holiday Inn. Still arguably better – for what it’s worth – than this, the top result if you google “horrible hotel photos.” Then there’s this person who is so pissed at the Hotel de l’Orchidee in Paris that s/he set up a page just so it would rise high in “Orchidee” search results. Didn’t work. It’s #2 :)
I’m still planning on joining the local vigil in support of Cindy Sheehan’s quest. We’ll be at Beacon and Washington St. in Brookline, 7:30-8:00. If you’d like to find a vigil in your town, check with MoveOn.org.
Of course, this isn’t really about Cindy’s quest. Her quest is symbolic. If she meets with President Bush, nothing will change. Frankly, I hope Bush keeps responding callously because it serves my political purpose of highlighting his administration’s disconnection from reality: Politicized evidence of the existence of WMDs to get us into the war, low-ball estimates of the required number of troops, embedded journalists, no photos of coffins, Rumsfeld using an automatic pen to “sign” condolence letters to parents. That’s how Bush keeps a “balanced life.”
Saddam was an evil man who caused unfathomable suffering. Had the world been told from the beginning that that’s why we were invading, maybe Bush could have put together a genuine global coalition. Maybe some non-Neocons could have assessed the reality of the situation so we’d be prepared for the chaos afterwards. (Wolfowitz’s first idea, according to Woodward’s book: American troops would occupy the oil fields while the Iraqis spontaneously rise up against Saddam.) Maybe we would have a realistic plan for how to help Iraqis build a country that from the start was a forced fit. Maybe, with some reality there could also have been some honesty, instead of hidden torture and massive corruption. Maybe I would feel safer from terrorism instead of more at risk.
I don’t want to deny for a minute the good that comes from overthrowing a tyrant like Saddam. It is important to keep that in mind. And I don’t think we can simply leave. We need a plan that will help the Iraqis build the best lives they can for themselves and help them avoid the civil war that’s brewing. I’m no expert, but I guess that such a plan would include increased involvement by the rest of the world, talking with all Iraqi parties, perhaps the long-term availability of UN peacekeepers. If that’s the wrong plan, then let’s come up with another. But it’s sure a shame we didn’t have a plan before we invaded.
So, if tonight someone asks me why I’m standing quietly for thirty minutes holding a candle, I’m not going to have a simple answer. It has something to do with remembrance, and remembrance has to do with committing to reality. I’m not so much against the war — I still think I was right to be against it before it began — as I am in favor of pausing for thought. [Tags: iraq CindySheehan politics]
My wife and I saw The Aristocrats the other night, the documentary about the dirtiest, most disgusting joke ever. Unfortunately, it’s not the funniest joke ever — The joke Martin Mull tells, unrelated except that it uses the phrase “The Aristocrats,” I thought was funnier — but that’s not really what the movie’s about. Dozens and dozens of comedians — some of whom I was sure were dead — tell snippets of the joke and talk about the art and craft of filling in the disgusting middle section.
The movie’s funny. Not hysterical. But it’s very interesting. I don’t know if it’s worth $9.50 to see it in a theater, but it will be a great DVD rental.
Random notes:
1. I liked Comedian, the documentary about Seinfeld re-building his act, more.
2. You can submit your own performance of The Aristocrats joke and maybe it’ll be put on the DVD. (Why are they only putting one winner on DVD? There’s plenty of room. Or at least post them on The Aristocrats site.)
3. Some of the comedians I thought were particularly funny, interesting or enjoyable in the movie: George Carlin, Martin Mull, Sarah Silverman, Paul Reiser, Paul Krassner, David Steinberg’s teeth. Stand-out dirty: Howie Mandel, Gilbert Gottfried, Bob Saget. Disappointing: Steven Wright, Smothers Brothers, Eric Idle, Eddie Izzard, Emo Philips. Most annoying: Bob Saget. (Note: There are lots and lots of comedians in this movie, many of whom I never heard of and don’t remember.)
4. Plan on staying through the credits.
5. Slight SPOILER ahead: The movie builds up Gilbert Gottfried’s performance of the joke at a Hugh Hefner roast. It ends with the tape. But they cut into it several times to tell us why this was such a funny performance. They have to because the performance doesn’t come across as particularly funny. At least to me. Gottfried is funnier in the other segments they taped.
[Tags: aristocrats comedy humor]
August 16, 2005
According to the AP:
Infants have been stopped from boarding planes at airports throughout the United States because their names are the same as, or similar to, those of possible terrorists on the government’s ”no-fly list.”…
You know, I think I’m ok about age-ist profiling that says our security forces should focus on terrorists whose age has reached the single digits.
August 15, 2005
Jay Rosen, writing with his usual brilliance about a panel on “Things I used to teach that I no longer believe,” says:
I used to teach that the ethics of journalism, American-style, could be found in the codes, practices and rule-governed behavior that our press lived by. Now I think you have to start further back, with beliefs way more fundamental than: “avoid conflicts of interest in reporting the news.” If you teach journalism ethics too near the surface of the practice, you end up with superficial journalists. The ethics of journalism begin with propositions like: the world is basically intelligible if we have accurate reports about it; public opinion exists and ought to be listened to; through the observation of events we can grasp patterns and causes underneath them; the circle of people who know how things work should be enlarged; there is something called “the public record” and news adds itself meaningfully to it; more information is good for it leads to greater awareness, which is also good; stories about strangers have morals and we need to hear them, and so on. These are the ethics I would teach first.
First, I love: “If you teach journalism ethics too near the surface of the practice, you end up with superficial journalists.” Brilliant. But I want to head off what I think is an unwarranted conclusion based on Jay’s statement that if you put together enough accurate reports, the world is intelligible. The wrong conclusion (not Jay’s) would be that we all come to the same intelligible world. Nope. The PoMos are right: Narratives don’t get built out of facts. Narratives tell us which facts matter. Within a narrative, it’s important that journalistic reports be accurate. But accuracy is not enough to bring about intelligibility or to tear down an existing intelligibility. (If, by the Law of Irony, I have in fact inaccurately characterized Jay’s point about accuracy, I preemptively apologize.)
I think Jay agrees with this, roughly, although I may be reading my own beliefs into his. So, why his emphasis on accuracy? The final item in his list perhaps explains it:
I never taught this explicitly, I said, but I am certain I believed it: reality always bites back, and there are limits to how fungible the facts are. This is one reason the press cannot be overrriden. I couldn’t say that today. The scary thing is, I don’t necessarily know what to teach instead.
Wow. The link is to a piece Jay wrote about a month ago that concludes that the White House is actively attempting to “roll back the press as a player within the executive branch.” He characterizes this, in Ron Suskind‘s words, as a “retreat from empiricism.” There is a despair in Jay’s voice that I wish I didn’t share. (It’s related to the despair you hear in mine when I talk about copyright and digital rights.) The baseline of accuracy is being ripped up by this adminstration.
In such a case, facts and accuracy taken on a new urgency. It’s not simply a matter of establishing the facts but of re-establishing that facts matter. That is an heroic job for journalists of every sort.
Is there something we can meaningfully refer to as “the public record,” as Jay says?
The Public Record (caps, singular and definite article) has become A Record Filtered by the Incumbents. We now also have a public space that is self-documenting. Now that there are also public records — plural, lower case and indefinite — The Public Record has become less authoritative, and, we hope, less authoritarian. [Tags: JayRosen media]
Andrew Rasiej, who is running for NYC Public Advocate, is blogging at the Talking Points Memo Cafe. His first post is about using the Net in civic life and why the Dems are trailing the Reps in this.
Also, this Wednesday there’s a conference call for political bloggers, with Andrew and some surprise guests on the line. If you’re interested, send an email to info
raisej.com [Tag: AndrewRasiej]
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