February 6, 2008

It's Nothing Special Wednesday!

Well, we've survived Super-Duper Tuesday, and it's now Nothing Special Wednesday. Looking at the latest delegates count, the GOP race seems to be widening, and the Dems are still too close for anyone to call.

In his latest pop-ed (it's an op-ed on pop culture) for Entertainment Weekly, Stephen King notes:

One possibly good sign: Hip TV watchers have grown increasingly foxy about the polling process. The age of innocence is over; voters once willing to come clean and say they voted for Mike Huckabee because [Ted] Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever" loincloth is still the high point of their rock lives are harder and harder to find.

Can I be blunt? I think a lot of voters right now lie right through their teeth when talking to pollsters. And that might be the most optimistic trend in an election year where the coverage has never been dumber or more dubious.

King sees this as a good sign, that voters are starting to think for themselves when they vote rather than listening to the incessant din of worthless blather force-fed them by the media. I'm not so sure.

I firmly believe that athletes are to be seen and never heard. (This isn't a digression, really.) When they open their mouths, if anything intelligible comes out, it's always the same pablum. "Well, we just have to play this game like it's any other game. We really need to come together as a team. We need to give it all we've got." Blah blah blah blah freaking blah. They do this because they know that if they said what they were really thinking, they'd become the next John Rocker and lose their lucrative endorsement deals. So they say what they're expected to say. It's easier, and it keeps everyone happy.

I see the same thing happening in exit-polling interviews. Voters say what they're expected to say, regardless of what they think, and especially regardless of what they did.

So, if you wanted to vote for Obama but you just can't get over that whole race thing, why not strike a blow for color-blindness and tell the nice pollster that you did? When you're walking out of the polling place with your church-going neighbor, what's wrong with telling the pollster that you voted for Mike Huckabee, even though you actually pulled the lever for Mitt Romney because... well, he is kinda handsome? After all, no one will ever know.

And it's not like the government hasn't been lying to us for years about much more important things...

(For more about Cthulhu, click on the image.)

Posted by reparent at 9:08 AM | Comments (0)

January 16, 2008

Scary, Funny, and Wimpy

A few things, briefly noted.

~ < * > ~ * ~ < * > ~

This makes me feel so very validated. Penny Curtis, a researcher at the University of Sheffield provides the money quote: "We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable." Damn right they're universally disliked! Shudder.

~ < * > ~ * ~ < * > ~

BoingBoing tells us that Joel Hodgson is back with a new MST3K-like series: Cinematic Titanic. You can order the DVD of the first movie on their web site.

(Note to The Spouse: We ordered the DVD of the first movie on their web site.)

~ < * > ~ * ~ < * > ~

SciFi blog Io9 complains that the new Terminator TV series "wimpifies" Sarah Connor, famously played in the movies by Linda Hamilton. WRONG! The TV show, perhaps, portrays the mother of the savior of mankind (yes, John Connor is the Jesus Christ of the post-AI world) as a little less of a Rambo-figure than the disappointing Terminator 2 did. Yet that movie wasted all that was good and interesting about the first Terminator movie (one of my all-time faves) in a desperate attempt to shore up a weak premise with explosions and special effects. The first movie didn't need "mimetic poly-alloy" liquid metal.

What made Terminator interesting (and enjoyably re-watchable) was that it took an average woman and put her in an untenable, terrifying situation. We then got to watch her react, adapt, and ultimately triumph. But it wasn't easy, it wasn't natural for her, and it was never a sure bet that she'd live to see the end of the flick.

Terminator 2 gives us an ultra-buff, weaponized, super-soldier, where in the first movie (even at its end) we had come to love a scared, sad, and uncertain waitress. The only good thing to come of T2 was that it tried to show the corrosive effect of her descent into super-hero-dom on her child -- a sullen, withdrawn, emotionally distant and distrustful pre-teen Jesus John Connor.

And so we get, in the new TV series, a sensitive Jesus (dangit) John Connor, who is so into his feelings and his sense of "can't we all just be friends?" that he turns to Mary... er, Sarah, and whines something along the lines of "I can't do this. You save the world!" And our steely-eyed slayer-of-cyborgs tells him, "Okay. I will."

And you know what? With the Bimbotron 6900 at her side, our gun-toting, fast-driving, pain-ignoring super-soldier from a Bob's Big Boy probably can do just that.

And that's just wrong.

Posted by reparent at 2:02 PM | Comments (2)

December 3, 2007

The Truth Is Out There

Gentle readers, as you probably know, this blog is dedicated to the search for truth, silly web quizzes, and LOLcats, with an occasional foray into the wild world of robots. But primarily, I see this blog as a place to ask questions, to point out potential connections among phenomena most of us consider unrelated. That's how we learn. Asking questions is the beginning of wisdom.

A good friend of ours has been involved with the 9/11 Truth movement for a while now, and has been sending us frequent e-mails with more and more information, argument, polemic, and exhortation.

I've resisted posting about any of this for a long time, because it doesn't have anything to do with digital literacy, web memes, or LOLcats. It does, however, have everything to do with the fearless pursuit of the truth. And for that, I respect these people.

Today, our friend e-mailed his usual suspects with a letter written by Frank Legge (note: the letter is a pdf file). The letter was written to a "Die-Hard Supporter of the Official Explanation," and it very neatly summarizes the problems that I, myself, have when considering the strange case of World Trade Center Building 7, which collapsed at free-fall speed after being damaged not by a jumbo-jet collision, but rather by the debris falling from the Twin Towers.

Here's a lengthy excerpt from Legge's letter:

If you think about the nature of the collapse, supposedly due to fire weakening the steel, you will agree that it would only be necessary to follow the early stages of the collapse to determine its character. If heat is the cause, the steel will weaken gradually and will start to sag in the region where the fire is most intense. At that moment the steel will have almost enough strength to hold up the weight of the building, but not quite. So we have the force of gravity acting downwards, trying to produce an acceleration of 32 feet per second per second, and the force of the hot steel pushing upwards, a force a bit less than that of gravity. Let us say we are looking at it at the moment when the strength has declined to the point where the steel is capable of pushing upwards with 90% of the force required to hold the building up against gravity. There would thus be a net downward force of 10% of gravity. Now acceleration is proportional to force and we have a net force of 10% of gravity so we would see an acceleration downwards of 3.2 feet per second per second.

When you graph the data you find that the fall did not start with a motion which could be ascribed to a small net force of that order. The downward acceleration of the roof was very close to free fall right from the start, 30 feet per second per second, and continued at that rate until out of sight. There is no hint of a slow start. This tells us that the steel supports went from adequate strength to virtually no strength in an instant. For reasons stated above this is absolutely impossible if the loss of strength is due to the application of heat.

The observed acceleration, if maintained, would bring the roof to the ground in 6.2 seconds. A brick dropped from the roof would take 6.0 seconds. These numbers are so close together that only something which destroys the supports in an instant can account for it.

Now, I don't know what happened on 9/11. I was in the Loire River Valley in France at an academic conference at the time, scared out of my mind, and stuck watching French-langauge-only news broadcasts. But when I saw the Twin Towers fall exactly into their own footprints, and then when I saw WTC 7 fall into its own footprint without even the pretense of a "jet fuel" fire to melt its steel supports... I smell a rat. The physics doesn't add up. And physics doesn't play politics. Physics doesn't care who's in the White House, and it doesn't care who you are or who you voted for. It just is.

There's a whole lot of information that has been collected by the 9/11 Truth movement. You can get a crash course here. Some of it seems a little nutty. Really. But the big pieces of the official story just don't add up. And that bothers me. And it should bother everyone. We don't live in an age of miracles anymore. Maggots don't spontaneously generate on meat. And skyscrapers don't spontaneously liquify their steel internal supports instantaneously and uniformly.

There is an explanation. And it doesn't ignore the pesky facts, the way the "official story" does. The truth is out there.

Posted by reparent at 6:32 PM | Comments (1)

November 23, 2007

Simulations Greetings, This Holiday Season

I'm a little thankfulness-ed out. So, let's take a break and look at what's going on in the world.

I like simulations, I like alien invasions, and I like thought-experiments. I also like thinking and talking about teaching and about pedagogy.

Which would make one think that I'd really, really dig Robert Farley's "Independence Day" infrastructure simulation project.

(When the movie came out, The Spouse and I were living in Washington D.C. Every time the preview hit this moment, the audience cheered. Every single time.)

Please click the link and read Farley's post. It's a fascinating idea.

So, to sum up (for those of you who refuse, even when I ask nicely, to click through and read the post), Farley is asking his students in the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky to think through the logistical and political problems of rebuilding a functioning democratic state after a catastrophic event. In this case, he's using the alien invasion from the movie Independence Day as his template for the "catastrophic event." I'm okay with that.

But the premises that Farley and his class have worked out appear highly suspect to me. And to many of his commenters, it seems. As Farley explains, he and his students developed the premises for their simulation through "repeated viewings of Independence Day." From their premises list:

• "The actual targets of destruction would probably take into account commercial and military importance in addition to raw population."
• "We assumed that the attack took place on July 2, 2007, in order to ease various narrative problems. Of course, this means that the United States is deeply involved in Iraq during the attack; Baghdad almost certainly would have been destroyed by an alien ship."
• "The attack resulted in the destruction of the 30 largest American urban centers, assuming that a ship can destroy a city every three hours, that the aliens allocated 3 ships to North America, and that only three targets each in Mexico and Canada were destroyed."

Now, basing your thought experiment on a movie premise sounds rational and interesting to me.

Basing it on the movie's plot points is, at best, a missed opportunity.

Shouldn't a group of academics (and graduate students are, at the very least, academics in training) be able to come up with a "better" attack plan than the special-effects folks at ILM? Shouldn't that be part of the exercise? If students are to really think through the issues and problems surrounding infrastructure, shouldn't they be charged with developing a really smart attack plan that does as much tactical damage to that infrastructure as possible, and then to think through the problems of rebuilding from that?

After all, as we have learned from Iraq, shock and awe does not equal instant and complete victory. It may, however, equal a big box office take.

I understand this this is not the "big" simulation project for the students, which happens in the spring. However, the premise seems to have enough potential to warrant an expansion of the project to really take advantage of all of the opportunities here. It may, even, lead to competition. I could imagine dividing the class into two groups: aliens and humans. The aliens' task is to develop an attack plan from which the humans would be unable to recoup (given reasonable constraints: aliens have x ships with y destructive capability which they can use for z time; humans have n time to rebuild to a functioning national, or possibly first world global democratic baseline). The constraints could come from the film or not. Either way, that's a project that's not only sexy, it's also maximally educational. And fun.

Posted by reparent at 6:50 PM | Comments (0)

November 9, 2007

Is That Really Gay?

Tonight's should-be-out-partying-but-instead-I'm-blogging-so-you-don't-have-to blog post is about two recent big gay events: this week's South Park episode, and J.K. Rowling's announcement that Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore was actually a big sissy all along.

Let's start with South Park. It's been a while since Trey Parker and Matt Stone really had anything worthwhile to say with their little animated show. Yes, I know "Make Love Not Warcraft" won an Emmy. But the show was middling at best, and the day a subversive, satirical show accepts an Emmy Award is the day it officially announces that it is over.

Woody Hearn's GU Comics does a great job of pointing out the jumped-the-sharkness of yet another South Park episode attempting to skewer a popular video game:

And so we watched this week's episode: "Guitar Queer-o," an oh-so-clever rhyming slam on the popular guitar-simulator game Guitar Hero (and its sequels, Guitar Hero 2 and Guitar Hero 3 -- original, no?). The plot is simple: Stan and Kyle become really good at the game, fame drives them apart, and eventually they reunite to grasp the Holy Grail (allegedly) of Guitar Hero accomplishment: scoring 1,000,000 points in Expert Mode. Which they do in the thrilling conclusion. The game responds not with it's usual "YOU'RE A ROCK STAR!" but with this message:

"CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE FAGS!"

I'm going to be generous here and try to interpret what I think Parker and Stone meant by this. The kids today say things are "so gay!" when they mean that things are "so bad!" Therefore, we could translate the end-game message into something along the lines of: "CONGRATULATIONS! SCORING THIS MANY POINTS PROVES YOU HAVE NO LIVES! WINNING SHOWS THAT YOU'RE COMPLETE LOSERS!" Ha-ha. We've never heard that before. And we didn't see the exact same point with the "Warcraft" episode... oh wait. We did.

But please. "You are fags"?

Obviously Parker and Stone are just phoning it in these days. But the rest of the (straight) world sees no problem with this. See here and here and here and here and jeez... it just goes on and on.

This makes me so angry I want to blast someone with a killing curse.

Which reminds me, J.K. Rowling now tells us that Dumbledore was a Friend of Dorothy, as they say. I'd drop a link, but it's Friday, and you've already heard this a billion times.

I've been having interesting discussions with a good friend who is incensed that Rowling would do this. Not because she has a problem with gay literary (or real) characters/people, but because once a book is written, it shouldn't change, she says.

The Promiscuous Reader points our attention to an article in The Dallas Morning News:

Is Dumbledore gay? He is for you, apparently. But unless you said it in the actual books, must he be so for me? Your saying so now makes it harder for me to imagine anything different. Do you really want to limit your fictional world that way? …

For all of those years, until your books were published, the characters and settings were yours to command and control. But then you let them go.

And speaking for all of your happy readers I need to tell you: Now they are ours.

Which leads Promiscuous Reader to conclude that:

“Ours” evidently means “heterosexuals” here – it doesn’t occur to the writer that many of Rowlings’s happy readers are also gay, with opinions of their own on this subject. On Jeffrey Weiss’s planet, a gay character is somehow “limited” – can you imagine him making the same complaint about a heterosexual character?

Now, given my recent conversations with my friend, I'm a little more willing to cut Jeffrey Weiss a little slack. Of course, I grew up in Dallas reading the DMN, and the particularly tone-deaf writings in it are all too familiar to me. Maybe Weiss didn't mean that "we" are the straight majority who now own Rowling's imaginary characters, but it sure as hell sounds that way.

But hey, that's not the worst part. The ever-readable Gay Prof puts the fine point on what's going on here in Rowling-land, and it really doesn't have anything to do with the homophobic reactions of her readers. It has to do with what Rowling did and didn't do:

Now I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but a gay Dumbledore is not much of an improvement on the same old queer images that we have seen elsewhere in the popular media. Rowling’s outing of Dumbledore hardly destroyed the closet around the fictional character. On the contrary, she only pointed out how tightly those closet doors were sealed.

And that's the real point here. It doesn't matter what Rowling says now. Authors frequently re-visit their creations, sometimes in print (every sequel ever written), sometimes on the stage (Falstaff was dead until audience demand forced Shakespeare to bring him back to life in The Merry Wives of Windsor), and sometimes in conversation, as with Dame Rowling.

Because the real problem here is that the only explicitly (now) gay character in the entire Potterverse was so deeply closeted (and arguably asexual) that only his author could detect it. That's not good for gays. That's not good for understanding.

If I were a different person, I'd call it so gay, but I'm not that person.

It's so straight. And I'm sick and fucking tired of it all.

Posted by reparent at 7:08 PM | Comments (1)

November 7, 2007

Sometimes the Ambiguous... Isn't

I was planning to do a "shout outs" post today, because there are lots of people to shout out. But then I scanned through the Viral Video Chart, as I do, and I came across the latest "Special Comment" from Keith Olbermann.

I was talking with The Spouse about Olbermann the other day, and I noticed that I hadn't seen any of his topical rants in a while. There was a period, a little while ago, when you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting someone posting an Olbermann video on his or her blog. (And where the hell does that expression come from, anyway? What sort of sickness has to become endemic to make "dead cat swinging" cliche?) Anyway, the Viral Video Chart has a new Olbermann video out... a Guy Fawkes Night video from Keith.

As always, here's my standard "this isn't a political blog" disclaimer. So, before you watch the video, and you should watch the video because Olbermann is very good and completely correct, here are a few things to ponder.

I'm an English professor. I read books and web pages and other things like that, and I try to figure out what's going on in individual works, and what the accumulation of traits, features, themes, character types, linguistic patterns, and what-have-you means culturally and historically. That is, I look for facts that I can state about literary works and/or reading and/or composition. But then I have to go beyond the mere statement of observable fact to form an interpretation of that fact. No one who is rational and who is well-versed with the text under discussion would argue the fact, but interpretations are eminently debatable. Interpretations are also more interesting, and more valuable than statements of fact, because they look for ambiguities in the text, and attempt to craft a plausible, sometimes provocative, reconciliation of the ambiguities.

Here's an example. In the director's cut of the film Blade Runner, Harrison Ford's character, Deckard, daydreams about unicorns. That's a fact. It's also a fact that one of the android-killing police officers creates origami figures which he leaves wherever he's been. That's also a fact. A third fact is that as Deckard returns to his apartment, there's a silver paper unicorn on the ground outside his door. Trying to connect these facts into an interpretation might lead us to conclude that the police officer knows what Deckard daydreams. As we know what artificial memories have been implanted in the androids, we could hypothesize that Deckard is an android, and that the other police officer is letting Deckard know that he knows. Rational, intelligent people can disagree as to the likelihood of this interpretation. And they used to, until the final cut version of the film was released this year. This version makes that interpretation explicit. It makes it a fact.

I'm going the long way here because the Bush Administration is still trying to convince us that something that is a fact is actually an interpretation, and is thus open to disagreement by intelligent, well-intentioned people. They say that the United States engages in waterboarding as part of our enhanced interrogation techniques. Waterboarding simulates drowning. They also say that the United States does not torture people. Therefore, they would have us believe, U.S. waterboarding is a fact, simulated drowning at the hands of Americans is a fact, but the conclusion that simulated drowning is torture is an interpretation of that fact.

This is not interpretation. It is the simple, horrible meaning of words. The question of whether viruses are alive is a serious question, and any answer to that must be qualified, and must also rely at least in part on an interpretation of conflicting data and definitions. Whether strapping a prisoner to a board and pouring water over them until they nearly drown, repeatedly, is torture or not is not a serious question. If we understand the meaning of those words, then we have no choice but to realize that there is no question of interpretation here. There is no controversy caused by conflicting observations and definitions here.

There is only the sad, terrifying fact that the U.S. does torture people. That the President has ordered and continues to order Americans to torture people. That the President's "Justice Department" (paging Mr. Orwell) has worked for years to craft byzantine justifications for the government-approved torture of its prisoners.

No matter how many times they may try to tell you that this is just an "interpretation" (and they will tell you this, and that it is an interpretation motivated not by reason but by partisan political hatred), it is not. It is a fact. It is not interesting. It is not provocative. It is not debatable.

Anyway, here's Keith. He's more eloquent than I am. And he has a platform that allows him to reach many, many more people than I can. I hope he does.

UPDATE: The Spouse adds this fuel to the fire. As if we needed more. :-(

Posted by reparent at 2:28 PM | Comments (1)

July 24, 2007

The Healing Power of Potter (Spoiler Free!)

As you might know, this blog has a strict NO SPOILERS policy. This means that you won't be subjected to the (possibly) untimely revelation of crucial plot points of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. You won't even learn who, what or where the "Deathly Hallows" is or are, if it or they even exist. So there!

But this no spoilers policy grows out of my own experiences having many, many books, movies, and TV shows spoiled for me. I've learned that I cannot read book reviews anymore, and I can only read the first (and sometimes the last) paragraph of movie reviews in Entertainment Weekly (which does surprisingly reputable movie reviews), because even good reviewers today mistakenly and horribly believe they have a sacred duty to summarize every surprising element in the plot of these stories before you even have a chance to pick up the book or get to the movie theater.

Grrrrrr!!!

On Saturday, my elite, super-special, boxed, color-illustrated, and much-more-expensive-than-the-rest edition of Deathly Hallows arrived in the mail. The Spouse and I had spent the day geocaching with a huge group of friends, and on the way home had dropped by the movie theater to grab tickets for the evening show of Harry Potter and the Order of the University of Phoenix. There was no time to read between showering and heading back out to the movie. And when we got home, we were both exhausted and a little sunburned from hiking and navigating and GPSing all over Essex and Colchester Pond. No time or energy to read.

On Sunday, I woke up with a headache. A bad one at the base of the back of my skull. But I had no time for pain, because we had already committed to going to brunch with friends. And we needed something brunch-foody to take with us. This meant that I was up and baking cinnamon crumb cake before showering and then heading to brunch. With a headache. A bad one.

On the plus side, once the cake was in the oven, I could start reading. And read I did. This was a good and bad thing. I became so entranced in the book that I forgot to take the massive doses of analgesic I needed to banish my headache. And then we were late for brunch and running out the door. And then the brunch was really loud, which didn't help.

By the time we made it home, my headache was starting to move from the back of my skull to the front, and I was sick to my stomach (from the pain, not the brunchy food, which was very good). I've had worse headaches (I used to get migraines), but this was one of the worst non-migraine headaches I've had in years. So I dosed myself liberally with Ibuprofen and gently crashed on the couch with Potter.

I understand a lot better now why doctors use virtual reality when treating patients with serious pain. By keeping myself immersed in Rowling's story, I was able to give myself the time (quite a lot of time, it turned out) to get rid of the headache and to start to feel like a human again.

It also gave me the time to finish the book, which I did later that night. The Spouse (a very light sleeper) was amazingly selfless and let me continue reading in bed while he tried to sleep. I finished the book before midnight and went to sleep, tired and feeling lots of complex feelings. (More on that tomorrow.)

Now I can read blogs, watch TV, talk to colleagues and students, and otherwise engage in the real world without fear of having the plot spoiled for me.

But there's a difference between inadvertently letting something slip in your enthusiasm, and intentionally setting out to ruin something for as many people as possible. That's why "Mays" is the recipient of Digital Digressions' First Annual (or as needed) Out the Airlock Award.

Mays is a DJ on local Burlington-area radio station 99.9 The Buzz. Yesterday, as I was driving downtown to a meeting with a colleague, Mays announced, apropos of nothing, that he was going to save us all months of reading and then revealed the end of the book. Twice.

AAAAARRRRGGGHHH!!!!!

That's just horrible and cruel and senseless. And so...

HAL still have the utmost confidence in the mission. And you should read the last book before someone spoils it for you. Really, you should.

Posted by reparent at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)

July 16, 2007

Dog Is My Co-Pilot, Not My Antenna

You may have noticed that I like cats, but did you know that I'm also crazy about dogs? Like Dr. Cornelius Gibson, the Shiba Inu puppy:

(You can get your daily puppy pix fix at The Daily Puppy.)

So it was particularly upsetting to learn that Republican presidential wannabe Mit Romney treated his luggage better than his dog:

The white Chevy station wagon with the wood paneling was overstuffed with suitcases, supplies, and sons when Mitt Romney climbed behind the wheel to begin the annual 12-hour family trek from Boston to Ontario.

[. . . .]

Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family's hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon's roof rack. He'd built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.

Then Romney put his boys on notice: He would be making predetermined stops for gas, and that was it.

As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ''Dad!'' he yelled. ''Gross!'' A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who'd been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.

TBogg expresses himself in his usual succinct, direct and spot-on way, responding to Mitt's defenders:

It was just like the kennel he curled up in at home...only it was hurtling down the freeway at seventy-plus miles per hour strapped to the top of a Ford Ranch Wagon. And besides Mitt delivered puppies all night one time so SUCK ON THAT!!! BILL FRIST, YOU CAT MURDERING FREAK!

Sorry.

[. . . .]

Nothing quite knocks a wacky whimsical family anecdote off the rails like a "whoopsie" moment when the dogs kennel flies off the roof, takes a high speed tumble on the freeway only to be mercifully stopped and crushed by an eighteen wheeler hauling Alpo.

God is nothing if not ironic.

Which is why I'm happy to see the dogs of this country fighting back against their oppressors and the enabling media that wags obediently as they revel in their reign of terror.

I present to you: Dogs Against Romney!

Led by the courageous (and photogenic) Rusty, Dogs Against Romney promises to bring you the opinions and experiences of America's dogs as they unite against this luggage-fetishizing fiend and work to keep him from becoming the Dog-Abuser-in-Chief.

Keep fighting the good fight, Rusty. Good dog!

All joking aside, this is a serious issue.

Strapping a dog to the roof of your station wagon for a 12-hour drive while your luggage and supplies stay inside the wagon should be considered criminal. People like this shouldn't have dogs. And they certainly shouldn't be made President.

Posted by reparent at 11:06 AM | Comments (1)

November 7, 2006

It's Election Day...

So, today people head to the polls to elect ...

Wait.

First off, the number of citizens who actually vote in this country is embarassingly small.

Second, the structure of our electoral system now practically guarantees that the incumbent will be reelected. Which discourages people who are dissatisfied with the current political system from voting. Which practically guarantees that incumbents will be reelected. Which discourages...

Vermont has an interesting spin on the encumbency effect this year, as our longstanding Representative, Bernie Sanders will be running for the Senate seat vacated by Jim Jeffords. Sanders' leading opponent is Republican multi-millionaire Rich Tarrant.

If the voters of Vermont who bother to vote do vote for Sanders, as the polls predict they overwhelmingly will, then Vermont will have made Sanders a kind of incumbent-at-large.

Anyway, on this (theoretically) important day, I've got two amusing political anecdotes to share.

Anecdote 1: The Spouse, our friend Frank, and I went to see a production of William Mastrosimone's play Cat's Paw at nearby St. Michael's College. The play was free (and quite good, as it turned out), but required telephone or e-mail reservations. I don't like the "contact us, we'll call you back if there's a problem" reservation system. It makes me nervous when I haven't spoken with a live human who can tell me definitively that I actually do have seats waiting for me. So I called, hoping to get a person. I got a machine. Dispirited but resolute, I left a message, and heard nothing back.

When we arrived at the theater, we learned that there was no reservation for Richard Parent. There was, however, a reservation for Rich Tarrant.

When I explained to the St. Mike's student at the reservations table what had happened, she was ... chagrined ... to say the least. Everyone at St. Mike's thought that Senate candidate and mega-bucks university philanthropist Rich Tarrant would be watching their play. Some students had come to protest, others had prepared mock-adulatory songs. It was quite the kerfuffle.

The Spouse calmly announced: "The part of Richard Tarrant in tonight's performance will be played by Richard Parent. Thank you."

The stage crew had set aside special seats in the front row and everything. We thoroughly enjoyed them. I've never felt so special. Too bad it wasn't really me.

Anecdote 2: I don't usually post dreams to this blog, because they're never as interesting to other people as they are to the dreamer. But this one is special. Last night I had my first-ever political dream.

I dreamed I was at a colonial inn (refurbished) where a symposium was about to begin. I was to present a workshop on reading the Constitution, focusing on the text, the document's structure, the rhetorical impact of word choice, how we engage with it now as a material object, the effect of the various handwritings, etc. It was going to be a great workshop.

In the audience was George W. Bush. As I walked around handing out copies of the Constitution, the President didn't seem interested in taking one. I finally got him to take one, but he refused to even look at it. Instead, he looked around, fiddled his thumbs, fidgeted.

I snapped. I started screaming. "Read the *&^(**(& Constutution, you *(&@*(*&W^! It's the founding document of our &^&*^&^%$&^ country and you %$^%$^ swore to uphold it! And if it's too (**&^(*&^$$@# long for you and your &^%&%^%# attention span, just focus on those first ten amendments, you lazy *&^*&^%*&^%, since you seem to *$%^@#$ hate them so much. Even you should be able to do that!"

Then I turned and walked out of the room. I stopped in the hallway and turned around and walked back into the room. Calmly, I announced, "I'm sorry. That was completely uncharacteristic of me, and inappropriate. I'll take my leave of you now."

As I walked back out of the room, I thought to myself: "Well, guess who's about to be added to the no-fly list?"

I wonder what it could mean?

UPDATE: Clarified that we really did sit in the special, reserved "Rich Tarrant" seats. I still have the reserved sign!

Posted by reparent at 10:38 AM | Comments (2)

October 4, 2006

The Blogger SAT Challenge -- The Results!!!

A little while ago I mentioned "The Blogger SAT Challenge" -- a not-so-scientific experiment in comparing the writing of bloggers with the writing of high school students on their SATs.

First, the good news. My entry scored thusly (out of 6):

And for all of you wondering what the super-secret topic was, here it is:

The essay gives you an opportunity to show how effectively you can develop and express ideas. You should, therefore, take care to develop your point of view, present your ideas logically and clearly, and use language precisely.

Important Reminders:

• Since this is an online version of the test, you will get 20 minutes instead of the usual 25
• An off-topic essay will receive a score of zero.

Directions: Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.

"I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed." -- Booker T. Washington

Assignment: What is your opinion on the idea that struggle is a more important measure of success than accomplishment? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

If you'd like to read the entries, click here.

Second, the even better news. My entry was scored by the "expert grader" thusly (also out of 6):

The first score is from other bloggers. The second is by one (I'm guessing each grader only read one entry, but it may have been two) of the following: David Bruggeman, Suzi, Elisa Davis, Natalie Hudson, Battlepanda and Lisa. I don't know any of these people, but I agree with the score.

I'm a horrible (now) high-school writer. When I was a student in high school, I was a whiz at the Linda Richmond-esque mode of extemporaneous "The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire; discuss" mode of motiveless oration. And it does have its uses. For one thing, it really does demand a close attention to structure and organization.

On the other hand, it's also deadly dull.

And, possibly worst of all, it reinforces dichotomous thinking. Writing prompts of the type included on the SAT and in the Blogger Challenge almost always present two options and ask the writer to make a persuasive case for one of them. In the real world, we know that "You are either with us or against us" is a logical fallacy. Demanding that developing writers conform to this sort of on-off cognitive world-view is demeaning to them and a waste of a grader's time.

Chad Orzell -- a physicist, and one of the architects of the Blogger Challenge -- reflects:

I think these results do support my original point, way back when this whole thing started: it's a lot harder to write a good short essay on demand than you might think when you have the chance to look at the question at leisure. Even bloggers, who spend a lot of time writing short essays of their own free will, don't do all that well with a set topic and a tight time limit.

Orzell's right: writing good, short essays is hard. But I wouldn't call what the SAT calls for "a good essay."

I was especially intrigued by the comments by the "expert graders":

I was struck by the number of writers who felt that musing about some aspect of the question, or one of the words in it, or one of the stories it reminded them of, was a reasonable way to respond to the directions.

Goodness! How... willful of them.

Often writers tried to be clever with roundabout ways of coming at the question, but it only made my job as a grader more difficult, and grumpy graders don't give fives and sixes.

If anything, the bloggers were *worse* than high school students in getting to the point and staying on topic. They also tended to equivocate more, to argue the merits of both sides, which, though it might mark you as a reasonable person in normal discussion (in real or online life), actually hurts your SAT score.

Heaven forfend that "expert graders" should be forced to contend with complex approaches to the topic at hand! Don't they know that issuing anything other than a "Sir, yes sir!" or a "Sir, no sir!" over and over again (the New York Times article that started the Challenge informs us that "longer essays were more likely to get a high score than shorter ones") dishonors the spirit of open inquiry and skillful expression that these writing exercises enshrine?

But my favorite has to be this gem:

I was struck by the number of people who wrote essays without apparently thinking the directions applied to them. They made assumptions about the assignment, or decided that they were better judges of what the assignment should be, and then wrote what they wanted to write rather than produced what they were asked to write.

I smiled, but I wondered why do they think a scorer (and after all, pleasing the scorer is what matters much more than self-respect when taking a test) cares about their opinions?

"[W]hy do they think a scorer ... cares about their opinions" indeed? After all, the prompt only asks "What is your opinion on the idea that struggle is a more important measure of success than accomplishment?"

I'm giving the scorers grief, but it's not their fault that they're being forced to behave this way. It's the nature of the beast.

The New York Times article gives a brief list of tips for writing a high-scoring SAT essay. Here are a few more that, mysteriously enough, didn't make the final edition:

• Reduce your complex set of ideas, opinions, and experiences into easy-to-spew talking points. Talking points are the new essays.
• Begin your writing with a clear statement of your position. That way, the grader (or anyone else) won't be burdened with having to read any more of your essay.
• Repeat, repeat, repeat! Your grader/reader may forget what your position is if you don't restate it in each paragraph.
• Never, ever question the false dichotomy presented to you as the wisdom of the ages! Resist the infernal urge to comment on its hackneyed topic! And foreswear the temptation to question the question being put to you! Like the Pope, We are infallible. And we are not amused by your so-called "free thinking."
• Regardless of what you write (you are in control of your writing, aren't you?), or what you realize while you're writing (this isn't the time for thinking, it's a timed writing exercise!), or the weight of the evidence on the other side (you did pick the more obviously correct position, didn't you?), don't ever change your mind as you write. And for goodness sake don't ever concede that the other side might have some virtue. That's a quick trip to a low score!

Orzel concludes that bloggers are "dumber than high-school kids." I disagree. We're just not as obedient when it comes to reductive, intellectually demeaning busy-work.

And thank the gods for that!

Posted by reparent at 2:45 PM

October 3, 2006

Is This Where SkyNet Got The Idea?

Hey, as if you and I don't have enough to be upset about, what about voting fraud next month aided and abetted by electronic voting machines?

Watch this video from Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy :

Key moments in the voiceover:

Every record kept by the voting machine shows the same fraudulent result.

[. . . .]

No evidence remains that the machine was ever hijacked. No evidence remains that any votes were stolen. As far as anyone can tell, the election was conducted fairly. But the result is fraudulent.

[. . . .]

These problems, taken together, pose a very serious threat to the security of the elections conducted on Diebold Accuvote TS voting machines.

Gee? Ya think?

- * - * - * - * -

The New York Times reports on the Princeton study and the shocking number of voting problems caused by Diebold machines last month during the midterm primaries. (The link may require registration or "Times Select," so I'll mention my favorite moments below.)

"...widespread problems with the new technology were reported this year in primaries in Ohio, Arkansas, Illinois, Maryland and elsewhere."

But...

"Deborah L. Markowitz, the Vermont secretary of state and the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said that while there might be some problems in November, she expected them to be limited and isolated."

I feel so much better!

Mr. Radke [director of marketing for Diebold Election Systems] dismissed the concerns about hackers and bugs as most often based on unrealistic scenarios.

“We don’t leave these machines sitting on a street corner,” he said. “But in one of these cases, they gave the hackers complete and unfettered access to the machines.”

Warren Stewart, legislative director for VoteTrustUSA, an advocacy group that has criticized electronic voting, said that after poll workers are trained to use the machines in the days before an election, many counties send the machines home with the workers. “That seems like pretty unfettered access to me,” Mr. Stewart said.

- * - * - * - * -

There is no reason why electronic voting machines should not have a constantly-updated paper trail for every vote cast.

And there is no reason why voting machine software shouldn't be an open-source, transparent project to generate the best possible (i.e., simplest and most tamper-proof) program.

No reason except that you want your machines to be hackable.

Posted by reparent at 8:46 AM

June 28, 2006

A Silly Web Quiz with Real World Implications!

The Spouse directed my attention to this post from Kevin Drum, which sent my attention to a (yes, yet another) silly web quiz. However, this silly web quiz actually purports to diagnose your personal and political orientation (because the personal is the political).

And it's Canadian.

So, what are you waiting for? Go take the quiz.

Here are my results:

Now, I find it fascinating that the quiz lumped me in with the Gen-Xers. By the quiz's own admission, Gen-Xers are 34 or younger. Since your humble blogger is 35, according to the quiz, he should be a Baby Boomer. But clearly I am not a boomer. I'm in the middle (or toward the end) of the illustrious Generation X. Which the quiz, somehow, magically, knew. Except that its metric doesn't know. And not that anyone else really knows, either. (For more on the problems of defining the birth years that qualify one for membership in Gen X, check out Ted Rall's insightful and amusing article.)

Also, I'm fascinated that the quiz, despite plonking my big red circle smack dab in the middle of "The New Aquarians," classified me as a "Social Hedonist." I'm trying not to take it personally.

If you look at the grid, you'll notice that the categories are devided by generation. The Boomers get four major descriptors (solidly, dependably, depressingly square), the Pre-Boomers get three (back in my day we only had one category... and we were grateful to have that!), and Gen X gets a whopping six (I'd insert something snarky here, but I'm paralyzed by my plethora of options).

As for the descriptions of the various "tribes" themselves, I suppose I see myself more as a Social Hedonist than as a New Aquarian (following their terminology and given their descriptions -- I don't think I would ever use any of these terms to self-identify on my own), although some of the bits about New Aquarianism do ring true. But we're left, really, with the problem of differentiating these snapshots of political/personal identity from horoscopes. Write a horoscope broadly enough and include enough flattery, and it could appeal to anyone. Or everyone.

So what we really need here are more data points. Take the quiz. (There are some genuinely interesting sub-questions that I did not expect, but found immensely entertaining.) Report back. What do you think: is this a valid diagnostic, or just more silly web quizzery?

Posted by reparent at 7:02 PM | Comments (3)

September 9, 2005

Oh, Brave New World...

...that has such people in it!

Today's link roundup of Katrina-related catastrophe features 3 absolutely fascinating (morbidly so) reports from the front lines.

If you haven't seen this, you need to read it. Bitch, Ph.D. points to a first-hand report from two Emergency Medical Technicians who were trapped in New Orleans after arriving for a convention.

The second story comes from Boing Boing, and describes the unimaginable conditions in one of the Oklahoma relocation camps.

Last, there's a terrifying entry in the Wikipedia on Rex 84, a program developed by our own government.

- * - * - * - * -

In related news, there's been lots and lots of talk of the blogosphere replacing the major media news sources. Much of that talk has been complete crap.

But now we have an intriguing situation at the AmericaBlog -- the blog's readers have contributed money to fund a "roving reporter," Kyle Shank, as he travels amid the devastation and reports on what he sees, hears, and smells.

Check out Kyle's posts here, here, here, here, and here.

What makes this especially interesting for me is the subversion of authority implicit in this move. The traditional nature of Kyle's reportage makes him more or less interchangeable with any other news talking head, but the fact that Kyle isn't an officially-sanctioned and vetted reporter actually gives him and his reports a different kind and amount of authority with AmericaBlog readers.

I may not trust Brian Williams of NBC, for instance, as far as I could throw his bland, over-processed, aggressively non-offensive self, precisely because he's the talking head of a multi-national mega-corporate entity (though his blogging has been pretty darn good lately). But I like Kyle, and trust what he has to say. I know he isn't bought and paid for by money from the thousands of companies owned by General Electric, Viacom, or Disney. That means that he also isn't certified by the supposedly rigorous standards and policies of network news, however, and could be anything from a raging psychopath to a tinfoil-hat-wearing nutjob.

Do I care?

Not really. Kyles's photos could be doctored, his posts could be completely fabricated, and he could be sitting at home right now in his mother's basement in Weehawken.

I suppose my best assurance of accuracy and reality is, strangely enough, the rabidly partisan divide in online discourse today. If Kyle is, in fact, a Jerseyite celler-dweller crowned with Reynolds Wrap, I have no doubt that the right wing of the blogosphere will jump into action, denounce him viciously, and declare that because of this, the disaster relief has been a complete success (see, for instance, Rathergate).

- * - * - * - * -

But for now, enough with the Katrina-fest. I'm going to my happy place. I hope to see you there.

Posted by reparent at 11:02 AM | Comments (7)

September 3, 2005

Horrible

This isn't a political blog. I worked very hard to make its previous incarnation a politics-free zone, because sometimes you just need that moment of respite from the shitstorm raging around you.

But this is just too much to stand.

One of the "benefits" of digital technology and the Internet is the ability to achieve what Marshall McLuhan called "the global village." Just like in any small group of people, when something happens, everyone knows about it.

The devastation unleashed by hurricane Katrina is terrible, awful, and unrelenting in its ability to continue dishing out pain, suffering, and death. Nature can be like that. There's nothing we can do to prevent terrible storms, but there is a great deal that we can and should do to ameliorate their effects.

You need to read this news article on the cost in human life we're facing.

If you care about animals, you need to read this news article on the costs in companions' lives the survivors are facing.

You need to read these articles because it has become very, very clear in the past few days that this storm may not have been the worst catastrophe ever to strike the US, but the despicable, horrible response by our federal government to it is.

Here's a post listing the Administration's chorus of "I didn't knows."

The rest of us remember the storm warnings that flooded the airwaves days in advance of the storm. But then again, most of us weren't on a month-long vacation at the time.

Here's one listing the Administration's chorus of lies and understatements about the atrocities on the ground. But then again, most of us have forced ourselves to read news reports and watch video footage of the aftermath. Granted, we don't have state-of-the-art information and communication systems and networks, like the Administration, so I guess that's to be expected.

Here's an article from Editor and Publisher explaining how the money for flood control for New Orleans was diverted to Iraq. But I guess you protect your homeland with the missing troops and equipment that you've got instead of the ones you want.

Here's a post about how the Red Cross isn't being allowed into New Orleans because their presence "would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city." We wouldn't want aid workers to send the wrong signal, now would we?

Here's a post about how President Bush's photo-op at the under-repair flood levee was staged, and the levee is not actually being repaired. If that isn't egregious enough, here's one about how the "handing-out-the-food-to-the-starving-refugees" photo-op was also staged -- and how the President's handlers disassembled the food distribution center as soon as the President left. Forget about actually fixing the flooding or feeding the starving... if it looks good, that's good enough, right?

And here's another about how the President's very important visit kept food and relief supplies from being delivered. Because once you let aid helicopters fly over the heavily guarded President, you're on the slippery slope to anarchy. Oh wait, New Orleans is already there.

Let's look at a few pictures, taken at approximately the same time on Tuesday, August 30th:

caption: President Bush plays a guitar presented to him by Country Singer Mark Wills, right, backstage following his visit to Naval Base Coronado, Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. Bush visited the base to deliver remarks on V-J Commemoration Day. (AP Photo/ABC News, Martha Raddatz).

Meanwhile, during those same hours, in Mississippi: Volunteers rescue a family from the roof of their Suburban, which became trapped in floodwaters on US 90 in Bay St. Louis, Miss. (Ben Sklar / AP) August 30, 2005.

This isn't about hating the President. It's about letting thousands of people suffer and die because of a storm we knew was coming, heading toward eroded and decayed flood-prevention levees we knew were in trouble, in a city and a region disproportionately filled with poor and African American citizens, many of whom lack the health, mobility, and disposible income necessary to leave their homes for what may be a protracted time.

It boils down to this:

Either:
1) the President was truthfully unaware of Katrina's potential for devastation, in which case he was criminally negligent in his duties as president to protect this country;
2) the President wanted to help but was unable to do so (for whatever reasons), in which case he was incompetent;
or
3) the President was neither negligent nor incompetent, but deliberately waited to send in aid and troops, in which case he is a monster.

I am sick of watching Americans dying from dehydration, sickness, and lawlesness. I am sick of watching Americans forced to cope with having their lives destroyed. I am sick of watching one of the great cities of America rendered not merely uninhabitable for at least the next 6 months, but turned into a watery grave with rotting corpses floating down what used to be streets.

You can't prevent every death during a major disaster.

But the Administration didn't even try.

And that is too horrible to think about anymore.

Posted by reparent at 7:41 PM | Comments (5)