Today my Howard Dean Google Alert notified me about not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven, not eight, but nine sites that recycled the AP story about Joan Jett running in New York as a Howard Dean delegate. Nine sites?! Come on!! Why this story? Excellent question: we'll get to it. But a better question is, what effect does this type of regurgitation have on the press?
I believe it makes the press lazy, and a lazy press is problematic to itself. "The Washington Post reports..."; "The controversy surrounding the story about..."; "Two experts square off in our studios...." No sentence that reflects actual reporting starts like this. 24-hour news networks are products of the trend. They have to report everything first: otherwise, they lose their relevance. So untrue things are reported, and retracted as the facts come out. They have to be entertaining: otherwise, people won't watch (and if you think that's garbage, more people watch Fox News than CNN, and more people watch either of those than PBS). They have to flog stories that are long past their prime, and spend increasing amounts of time reporting on the new technological innovations (available at your local Radio Shack!) in consumer products.
Amazingly, despite all this wasted airtime, a lot of important, relevant, underreported stories are ignored. Why is so little attention being paid to the congressional investigation of the government's role in 9/11? Why is so much attention being paid to the Laci Petersen case? Better yet, why the coverage of the Michael Jackson case? That's not news! We already knew he was a child molester! Imagine the headlines tomorrow: "Ted Kennedy drinks a glass of bourbon!"
At work, I have over 30 American newspapers lined up. Some are specialty papers, like Roll Call, Muslim Journal, and New York Amsterdam News. But the rest all cover the same damn stuff, in the same damn way. Picking up one is just as good as picking up another.
Hey USA Today: why would I want to read your crappy paper when I could just go to the AP site? I'll spend my time reading blogs instead, thanks. Even the bloggers I disagree with are more interesting than you!
Everyone complains about bias in the media. Is there liberal bias? (Yes) Is there conservative bias? (Yes.) But the biggest problem might well be either the lazy bias, or the celebrity obsession. And if you want to combat the public discontent with the media (which abated during the coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks only to return to previous levels less than a year after), I'd say these two foibles are good places to start.
Memo to all readers, frequent and occasional, interested and otherwise:
Today, DJC saw fit to post the following comment on my previous entry "Uninspired:"
this blog never gets updated anymore. I want my money back. ;-D
You can have it, plus interest.
Anyhow, if this sort of thing is going to go on, we should have an organized way to deal with it. With that in mind, I've added a Complaints Department. Effective immediately, please direct all complaints there.
Thank you,
Brother Root Beer
Well, I've been a little unmotivated lately. For those of you who listen to too much Rush Limbaugh, click here for a definition of "unmotivated."
But I found two quotes today, from just after the Presidential election of 1892, that seemed apropos of the 2000 election, so I thought I'd post them in the hopes of creating the illusion that I'm well-read and studious, which illusion I ruin--before any possibility of creation--by describing my intentions in an unnecessarily-long (and yet not technically run-on) sentence that displays sundry punctuation marks; should there be any question, I could have rewritten this sentence to eliminate the punctuation hoop-leaping it requires, and yet, had I done so, I could not have relayed this piece of information: the interrobang, an exclamation point (!) laid over a question mark (?) to form a single, new punctuation character, was invented by Martin Speckter in 1962, but never caught on to join its relatives in the respected "standard punctuation" canon. Sad.
Quote One:
"While we find in our triumph a result of popular intelligence which we have aroused, and a consequence of popular vigilance which we have stimulated, let us not for a moment forget that our accession to power will find neither this intelligence nor this vigilance dead or slumbering. We are thus brought face to face with the reflection that if we are not to be tormented by the spirits which we have ourselves called up, we must hear, above victorious shouts, the call of our fellow countrymen to public duty, and must put on a garb befitting public servants."--Election Winner Grover Cleveland (Democrat), 11/8/1892
Quote Two:
"Our party has not made its advent too soon. Its mission is to restore to our government its original and only legitimate function, which has been well nigh lost by non-use, that of assuring to all its citizens--the weak as well as the mighty--the unmolested enjoyment of their inalienable rights."--Third-Party Candidate James V. Weaver (Populist), 11/16/1892
Make of them what you will. If you make word salad, I like blue cheese dressing.
Subtext.
Excellent! The dullest blog in the world is back!
And for some laughs, check out "Neo-Whig Candidate Challenges Howard Dean to 'Step Outside'." Since you can never be sure these days, I should point out that this is a satirical, and not factual, story. But it features a link to the Neo-Whig party page. Neo-Whig touts itself as "The Smart Party, For Smart People...and you," which I find refreshingly honest.
Yes, on the same day that Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn into office as da governator of California, Rush Limbaugh returned to the airwaves to prove that words don't mean things after all.
Since details of his drug addiction have become public, he's been called hypocritical for harshly denouncing drug addicts and calling for tough punishments, while he himself was addicted to drugs. His response, per WaPo:
"there's no hypocrisy . . . just because I was doing something that appeared to be contradictory. . . . My behavior doesn't change right and wrong."
Click here for a definition of "hypocrisy."
Also from the WaPo article:
"Despite his drug use, Limbaugh told his audience of 20 million, 'I was honest with you the whole time.'""He disputed critics who said he had been unduly harsh on drug abusers -- saying, for example, that they should be 'convicted' and sent 'up the river' -- insisting yesterday that such comments were taken out of context. 'I avoided the subject of drugs for the precise reason that I was keeping a secret,' he said. But Limbaugh admitted that when callers would talk about painkillers such as OxyContin, he would pretend not to know what it was."
"Had his staff known his secret, he said, 'they couldn't have stopped me. I would have found a way around it. I would have manipulated, lied, whatever it took -- I was an addict.' "
Thanks for clearing that up, Rush: you were honest the whole time, but you pretended you didn't know what OxyContin was, despite being addicted to it. And you didn't lie, but you would have if you had reason to. It all makes sense now! Thanks for being such a beacon of morality! And I'll send you a dictionary for Christmas so you don't accidentally say things like "there's no hypocrisy" anymore.
Rush Limbaugh can suck my nuts! And I'm not gonna wash 'em first!
[Those of you with good memories will recall I did a post on the evils of ellipses, and yet here I use a twice-ellipsed quote; isn't that hypocritical, you might ask? Well, no! I just said one thing and did another. What's hypocritical about that? My behavior doesn't change right and wrong.]
Yes, I saw moe. in concert, who wants to touch me? I said who wants to fucking touch me?!
The show was amazing. They played a killer "Captain America," and they covered Radiohead's "Karma Police," which was really great. The jams were long and flowing, and amazingly intense. And thanks to the magic of Instant Live, I walked out of the auditorium with a three-CD set of the show I had just seen, so I can listen to it again and again. Joy!
And the light show! Normally, I couldn't give a rat's ass about the lights. But these were incredible, the perfect visual accompaniment to the music, like Christopher Walken dancing to "Weapon of Choice," or Britney Spears with the sound muted. If the music were a physical thing, swirling and spinning, it would have looked exactly like the lights...and over the night it just kept getting better and better. Wild!
Jamie Masefield, of Jazz Mandolin Project fame, came out and joined the band for a phenomenal "Moth," and stayed out for a 40-minute jam that was so entrancing that the entire crowd forgot to smoke pot for at least half of it.
"Yodelittle," "She Sends Me," and "Not Coming Down" were also particularly good. And I got some free bass lessons from a true master, Rob Derhak.
They didn't play "Opium," but somehow I smelled it all night anyway.
I don't have a lot of time today, because I'm heading up to see moe. in concert after work. But I thought I'd call to your attention a pretty funny WaPo article about the Republicans' anti-filibuster filibuster. One excerpt I particularly enjoyed:
12:45: Up in the press gallery, somebody has put a six-pack of beer on ice, creating a quandary for those reporters who are still awake: If they drink a beer, they could doze off and miss some of this scintillating debate. If they don't drink a beer, they have to watch the debate stone-cold sober.
WaPo requires registration, which I admit is both bogus and sad. But in this case, I think it's worth it. Party on.
Most workdays after lunch I go and take a refreshing dump. And this time of year, when the leaves have fallen and the cold air bites the skin, I find it's desirable to switch to a nice heated bathroom. I use one in the science building.
This bathroom has many appealing features. There's a nice, sturdy coat hook in each stall. The handicap stall is gigantic, big enough for a La-Z-Boy and an entertainment center. Next to the throne is a warm heater, so your legs don't get chilly. It's very clean, well lit, and rarely used. And the tile floor is trippy. And because it's in the science building, it's assumed that the bathroom patrons have a certain basic grasp of physics.
How do I know this? Because the bathrooms in the Arts & Sciences library don't make the same assumption. They assume you are bewildered and terrified of physics; but they assume you can read. These bathrooms have a peculiarity I've never noticed before. They have instructions on the toilet paper dispensers:
Pull gently. Tear here.
Honestly, is this REALLY necessary? Are there people out there who see the toilet paper, grab hold, assume a stable crouch, and yank with all their might? When they've unraveled the entire roll, do they panic, wide-eyed, with the realization that they lack the capacity to decide, on their own, the best place to tear? Are these instructions a contingency plan to ward off potential lawsuits? And most important of all: who knows how to read, but can't understand the physics of toilet paper?! When as a society did we reach the point where people need toilet paper instructions? In ten years, will our halls have walking instructions?
Lift one foot. Lean forward. Put your foot down. No, not that one, the one in the air. Good. Now repeat with your other foot. That's it: you're doing great! Have confidence. Have faith.
It'd be nice if more public bathrooms had music. It's nice to hear a soothing melody instead of hunkered-down straining. Automatic flushing toilets are far too common, while automatic faucets are far too rare. Stall doors could come a little lower, couldn't they? And don't get me started on trough urinals...that's just wrong.
Yesterday was Veterans' Day, and I found myself thinking about someone I try not to think about. See, when I was in Nam, I had this Spoon buddy. Now we had different religious beliefs, and we wouldn't have been friends in another situation, but in Nam, the guys you were stationed with came to mean the world to you.
We were stationed in Danang. There was a lot of action, and a lot of good men died. We got word in January of '73 that the war was finally gonna end, that Nixon was getting us the hell out, finally. I told my Spoon buddy that when I got home I was gonna go to college, and maybe teach high school. My Spoon Buddy told me he was gonna open up a restaurant and serve 50 varieties of rice, and everyone would eat it with spoons. I said I didn't like to eat rice with spoons, and actually tended to use a fork for borderline utensil situations. He gave me this funny look--hurt, confused, and angry--and said he was gonna take a walk.
That was the last time I saw my Spoon buddy alive. He stepped on a mine a couple klicks outside the camp, and it cracked his stem right up the middle. It was tough to see him that way, and tough to know that he died thinking I was mad at him. I mean, I never got to say goodbye. It still hurts, you know?
Anyway, I eat rice with a fork.
So I was pretty sick when I left for work today, and it just got worse. When I got there, I put on the headphones, cued up some Seastar NT on repeat, and settled in with a mindless, repetitive project that would take me most of the day. It was all about speed, and slamming through the task at hand, and not forcing my brain, slow from illness, to do anything at all.
Some days I think it would be really cool to have a little script that counted every keystroke, so at the end of the day I could know exactly how many taps my fingers had made. How much money do I earn per keystroke? On a day like today, though, the answer would probably kill me.
But the day turned out pretty well. I had 45 minutes at the end of work, so I plucked away at a little PHP script I've been toying with and managed to increase its functionality, which felt good. And then I came home and my lady bought me some cough drops, which helped. And I finally solved a major strategy problem I was having with Age of Mythology, so I can stopped getting assfucked like a kid at the Neverland Ranch. But even that wasn't the highlight of my day: this was. Remember this woman's example, if you ever find yourself in a police car.
The Good:
Aussies Do It Right: E-Voting
The Bad:
Drugs in the car, and no one owns up. Is everyone liable?
The Hysterical:
Confused Howard Dean Campaigns for Enola Gay Rights
I will hereby admit two things:
I am bad at math;
I don't know (or care to know) much about the science of economics, largely because I think it's still in the state that astronomy was when we thought the world was flat.
That admitted, in the interest of broadening my knowledge or thought on the topic, I'd like to open a discussion that I had with my good buddy Adam about the role of the President in economic matters.
One thing that seems self-evident is that Presidents and their parties like to take credit when the economy is good, and shun blame when it is bad. For example: by most measuring sticks, the economy was good under Clinton. In the 2000 campaign, W attributed the economic good times to the "ingenuity and hard work and entrepreneurship" of the American people. This was a pretty smart move: what was Gore to do? Take credit for his administration's economic stimulus, and snub the American people by saying all their ingenuity and hard work didn't matter? (Typically, Gore tried to do both, which made him sound weak on the administration's role, and condescending to the role of the people, but that's a side note.)
Does the Office of the President have enough control over the economy to justify campaigning on the issue? George W. Bush made his economic platform a heavy component of his campaign (and boldly, given Clinton's record): some good stuff on Issues 2000. One of my favorite quotes:
Q: Let's suppose that the projected surpluses in your tax plan fail to materialize in full or in part. What part of your tax package gets dropped first?A: I refuse to accept the premise that surpluses are going to decline if I'm the president. I think they're going to increase, because my plan will increase productivity by cutting marginal rates.
(In case you didn't know, the United States government is currently engaged in heavy deficit spending. Somehow, that surplus failed to materialize, despite increasing government spending while simultaneously cutting government income. Isn't that weird? This guy has a business degree. A Masters. From Harvard.)
Don't let my cynicism about Bush skew the question, though: Gore made his economic proposals a heavy component of his campaign platform as well. The question is this: does the President have enough control over the economy--via appointments, tax plans, budgetary decisions, other legislation, psychology, whatever you can come up with--that he should be held accountable and responsible for economic developments, be they good or bad? Can we reasonably credit the President when the economy is up? Can we reasonably blame him when it's down? And most important (remember, I'm largely ignorant on the topic): why?
Well, the Bruins are tied heading into the third, and I'm tired and aggravated by today's PHP trials. Also, I'm a little weary of being pissed off about the media and government. So instead of commenting on something useful, I'll leave you with this:
I can't believe I don't already own forty of these...
Last week, the House of "Representatives" removed from the $87,500,000,000 Iraq aid package certain provisions--approved unanimously in the Senate--that would "penalize war profiteers who defraud American taxpayers." This was two days after two Democratic "Representatives" accused Halliburton of vastly overcharging for gasoline imports into Iraq.
But don't worry! Doooon't worry! I'm not going to make any crazy connections here, like "maybe the House voted this down because they didn't want to pass a law that would work against Halliburton," or anything like that. I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons the House would vote against a popular provision that protects the American taxpayers from fraud. I can think of...zero. How many can you think of?
Linda Tripp is getting $595,000 of YOUR tax dollars because the government apparently violated her privacy. Yes, you read that right.
Actually, Eric Alterman argues that the government didn't actually do anything wrong, and that the whole thing came out as a result of diligent, fair reporting. Ordinarily, I'd research it a little bit more. But I'm just so pissed about the whole thing.
Says Tripp: "The government should never be permitted to use Privacy Act-protected information to discredit political opponents." Honestly, is Linda Tripp really the person to be talking about the dangers of using private information to discredit others? The Smoking Gun points out that Maryland has some wiretap laws that apparently didn't seem of such a high social importance to Tripp at the time.
That's it: I'm subtracting ($595,000 / My percentage of all US taxation) next year! Screw you, Linda Tripp! You're only getting $594,999.9999997*!
*: (rounded up)
As you may recall, one of the questions on the Political Compass test was "Abstract art that doesn't represent anything shouldn't be considered art at all." To get Clintonian, my reaction depends on the definition of "anything."
If "anything" in this case literally means "anything," I'm inclined to agree with the premise that it's not art. But I thought it appropriate to read the question as "anything visible," instead of "anything at all." This is an important distinction to me, because the thing that draws me to any given piece of art is not the content, but the emotion. I love Kandinsky and Dali because I feel something of their personality and passion when I look at their works.
The little lady happens to be quite knowledgable on the visual arts, while I am quite ignorant, and we playfully disagree on these matters. I'm into Jackson Pollock: she just sees splatter. She's into Rothko: I just see squares. Which leads me, of course, to the bass guitar.
Playing a fretted bass, each bassline is exactly what you make of it: it's C#, F, G, B, with a reggae feel and a triplet on three. Or it's straight eighth note chord-following. Or a slap-pluck groove in A minor. Or whatever. The possibilities are almost endless.
Playing a fretless, the possibilities actually are endless. Notes are not played: they're sculpted. The bassline is now a physical entity, each note a symphony in itself. Emotion pours through you and into the strings, which become like living, magical things. Think of knights or rabbits, water or death; feel angry or afraid, melancholy or boastful; say "oiseau" with your fingers; tremble, glide, slip, stumble: every nuance, every mistake, every lightest touch shines through. You can hide nothing, and you can express the deepest, most heartfelt sounds imaginable, more emotion than music.
Or you can sound like a big douchebag. That happens too. But it's worth it, in the end.
My Turn-Ons include:
Renewable energy,
RSS feeds for online comics,
and Fox threatening to sue itself
And My Turn-Offs:
Uncle Sam's Wacky War on Drugs,
Electronic voting,
and Identity cards
The funniest thing about the Fox story: according to the article, Fox News has prohibited The Simpsons from creating "fake news crawls on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the viewers into thinking it's real news." That's actually a quote. It's funny whether it's true or not, but if it's true, it's absolutely hysterical. What kind of news network fears its audience will turn on The Simpsons and confuse it with the news? They're two-dimensional, animated, yellow people! Can you imagine turning on The Simpsons, and honestly confusing it with the news? There is no drug on earth that impairs your judgment that much: only innate, finely-honed stupidity can do that.
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