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Daily Blah for... Saturday, July 31, 2004
The Hemmingway Patch
From: empocledes@yahoo.com
Date: July 31, 2004 2:46:17 PM PDT
To: cdt@well.com
I read your article; The Yolks on us. It was in the Canadian Edition April10,2000. Can you tell me. Why my writen material. On Microsoft Word. Got destroyed. I was about continue writing. And all of a sudden, The letters got scrambled. It's not even letters. It's just cubes and lines. Then this thing pops up. Telling me that I need to install something. And when I tried. It would even let me. Explain this to me.
Dear Empocledes (nice name!)
It's quite simple. Microsoft Word contains a state-of-the-art 64-bit VPP (verb-per-period) matrix. This means if you put too many periods too close together in your prose -- especially if you're missing a verb or too -- the program is likely to "go visual" and convert each sentence into an appropriate geometric alternative. Hence your short verb-free sentences became cubes and the periods transmogrified into lines. The thing it needed you to install is called a Hemmingway Patch, which will add some muscle to your short sentences by sprinkling them with random verbs. I recommend it. Have fun.
How to explain why Word would "even let you" install it? Ah, that is a mystery to me too. I guess sometimes Microsoft products actually work the way they're supposed to.
Best,
Chris
Daily Blah for... Friday, July 30, 2004
Election Day Terror
Here, from the Village Voice, is a disquieting doomsday scenario: how a nonexistent terrorist threat might be used to manipulate the election. What is most disturbing about this is that it comes not from the fevered dream of some extreme left-winger, but from an NSA guy. A Reaganite NSA guy.
Wayne Madsen, who worked at the National Security Agency (NSA) during the Reagan administration and currently is a journalist, sketches a more plausible scenario than the recent trial balloon floated by the administration-controlled Election Assistance Commission about possibly postponing the vote if there is a terrorist attack. Here's Madsen's scenario, step by creepy step:
- If, on November 2, Kerry is ahead in key battleground states, then Bush will announce an imminent terrorist threat in California and maybe Washington state.
-By 5 p.m. EST (2 p.m. on the Pacific Coast), Bush HQ will know whether Kentucky and Indiana --key states -- are lost. If it looks like they are going down the drain, then the White House will flash the go-ahead, and the U.S. Northern Command (which has military jurisdiction over the U.S.) will, along with the Homeland Security Department and California authorities, declare an imminent terrorist threat.
- Polls will remain open, but everyone will be trying to get out of urban centers as fast as they can. Traffic jams will cause panic and make people change their plans to vote after work. "A number of working-class voters in urban centers," Madsen theorizes, "will either be caught up in California's infamous freeway traffic and be too late to get to their polling places or be
more concerned about their families and avoid voting altogether."
-The people mostly likely thrown off balance who will decide not to vote will be middle- and low-income Californians -- the Democratic base. Well-to-do voters (Republicans, more often than not) will likely have cast their ballots early.
-By reducing the turnout among urban Democrats, Bush HQ will thus be manipulating the state's 54 votes into the Republican column. If things get worse for Bush as the Eastern vote comes in, the "terrorist alert" can be expanded to Washington state, where panicky rush-hour traffic jams in cities like Seattle can reduce the Democratic vote there, too.
Variations on Thumb-Pointing
What's the deal with that thumb-pointing thing Kerry does? Why do I see every politician running for office doing the exact same thumb-pointing thing? You know, where they clench their hands into a very rigid thumbs-up, then emphasize the points of their speech with them like they were pressing the button on an old-fashioned wire clicker. Next slide, please. It never seems to vary. Bob Dole had a nifty little pen to spruce it up, but I don't think that was entirely for show.
Here's what I think: get someone else to do the thumb-pointing thing. They could stand in a spotlight at the side of the stage, like the sign language interpreter. He'd be a kind of physical underlining for the script. Better yet, he could turn it into a sort of interpretive dance thing, exploring variations on a thumb-pointing theme.
Daily Blah for... Thursday, July 29, 2004
Less is More
I'm alternately enjoying and being put to sleep by Kerry's acceptance speech.
There's a lot of great stuff in it. Opening with a salute and "reporting for duty" was a masterstroke. It reminded us of his service, alluded to Bush's AWOL months without actually going negative on it, and provided a perfect visual for the morning papers. All in two seconds of television.
But that's about as good as Kerry does in the brevity stakes. True, the speech only lasted 46 minutes when it could have gone an hour, but that's because he kept talking through his applause. For a man trying not to appear overly verbose, he had a lot of words to run through. It's as if Bob Shrum said to himself, I'm not sure which line is going to connect with the audience -- let's try them all.
Funny, I was just watching a documentary on TV news writing, reminding me of my own training in that area. Love TV news or hate it, you've got to admit it gets its message across. It does this with a couple of simple rules. One thought per sentence, and less is more.
On that score, Kerry could have done with a little red pencil action.
Free the Speech
While we were in Munich, P and I visited Dachau. She couldn't help but see a number of parallels in the exhibit on the rise of the Third Reich (particularly the provision for endless detention) with the paranoid atmosphere of today's America. I try to remain skeptical of such comparisons, but real life isn't making it very easy for me. Take the "free speech zone" built by the city of Boston, better known as The Cage. The first time I saw pictures of The Cage -- here on Wired News -- there was a sickening wrenching feeling in my gut. I'd seen this before. The barbed wire, the vast metal fence, the guards ... it's Dachau with security cameras.
Call me a naive foreigner, but I find it stunning that the First Amendment's guaranteed right to free assembly could be so brazenly flouted. Free speech zones started cropping up after September 11, almost unnoticed amid the roar of the terrorized. The Secret Service, it seems, suddenly decided that protecting the President included preventing anyone from criticizing him within a mile radius. Protestors were fenced in, miles away from the motorcade route. (The poor lad musn't get his feelings hurt).
The first time I saw this disturbing Newspeak term -- does that make the rest of America a non-free speech zone? -- I believed it would soon take its place next to ethnic cleansing on the shelf of unloved euphemisms. It seemed such a profoundly un-American concept, to fence in free speech, I was sure some federal court or other would tear down the Zones before long. Three arduous years later, and I'm still waiting.
Web Log Woe
My friend Dan, a freelancer, just had his first piece published in the New York Times. It's a comprehensive roundup of hoax blogs, like the Clinton book tour blog I was taken in. Dan is happy to have made it into the Times, but more than a little concerned that the blogosphere will get on his case about the first sentence, which begins -- as published -- "everyone seems to be writing a Web log these days." He would like it to be known that yes, he is well aware that "weblog" is actually one word. But the NYT, in its infinite cluelessness, officially styles it two words. Knowing the blogosphere as well as he does, he anticipates a deluge of carping over this copydesk quibble. I have some advice for the blogosphere: get a clue, get a day job, and get a life.
Daily Blah for... Monday, July 26, 2004
More Convention Thoughts
Now that's more like it. The last two speakers were: a wife and mother of 9/11 victims, and a shipmate of John Kerry's who took fire under his command. That's some bloody reality. That's some bloody emotion. These people don't need to act.
What's with the cheesy musak introducing Hillary? Is this a soap opera?
Yes, we're back with another episode of All Kerry's Children. Hillary's a better actress than most, for sure, but actress she is. I think her heart's in the right place, but there's something way too didactic in her voice for her own good. The script isn't exactly mind-blowing either. I vote her person we'd most like to see talking without a script.
At last, here comes Bubba. Love him or hate him, you've got to vote him President most able to talk without a script.
And talk. And talk.
Let's See Some Reality
Just once, I think while watching some droning speaker from Wisconsin at the Democratic National Convention, just once I'd like to see a political convention where scripts were banned.
Imagine it! They'd have to talk off the top of their heads. They'd have to be real people. Not like this vapid smiling robot.
Yes, the line between politics and acting is blurring. And yes, some actors make good politicians (though not all: I just watched Glenn Close commit the ultimate lingustic irony: mispronounce the word "spontaneously", then read it in exactly the same way again). But rare is the politician that makes a good actor.
So, goddammit, what does modern society do with people who are interesting, but don't read scripts well? Two words: reality TV. We put them in truly tight corners and watch with pleasure at their genuine, emotional and sometimes anguished -- but always real -- reactions.
Daily Blah for... Thursday, July 22, 2004
Propeller Head
This post comes to you from the wonderfully weird Propeller Island hotel in Berlin. In fact, it comes to you live from a rotating bed, surrounded by empty metallic picture frames. Chaotic abstracts hang on the walls. Sounds intended to replicate the feeling of being in a starship on a distant planet are piped in over hidden speakers. There are three metal chairs, one of which you have to climb a ladder to get to, and the bathroom -- in which the sink is made out of half a beer barrel -- is bathed entirely in soothing blue light. Every object in here is a creation of the artist-owner, and each of the thirty rooms are equally ideosynchratic. We could, if we wished, hang the "show me yours and I'll show you mine" sign on our door, which is Propeller Island's way of letting you see the rooms of any other guests who wish to play. But at the moment, no one is playing. For all I know, no one else is booked in. And so we're left with tantalising name tags in front of the other doors: Chicken Curry. Electric Wallpapers. Space Cube. Coffins. The upside-down room.
Monkey Magic
Evolution in action, folks. Natasha, a five-year-old monkey, starts walking exclusively on hind legs after a severe illness leaves her with possible brain damage. Well, maybe it was exactly that kind of "brain damage" that stopped us from dragging our knuckles all those thousand millennia ago.
Creationists, start your back-pedaling.
Daily Blah for... Monday, July 19, 2004
What's Cooler than Cool?
I'm writing this blog from a pub in south London. They have Wifi. In pubs. The base station is literally inside the quiz machine. Service costs four pounds fifty for an hour, just enough to be worth it when I haven't downloaded email in a week (total messages: 750). The barman says they got Wifi here just a few weeks ago and I'm the first to use it. I feel the cold hard stares of local punters, hoping that in a couple of years' time bringing a laptop into the pub will be as normal as unwrapping a newspaper.
Yes, I know, London was not one of the locations I listed in my last entry. I'm spending one measly day here -- not even that, a half-day, stuck between Liverpool and Frankfurt. Not enough time to see everyone I would dearly love to see. Just enough for a few pints of Extra Cold Guinness with my friend Rich. "What's different about Extra Cold?" I asked him, naively enough. "Well," he said, "It's colder." Never underestimate the ability of modern-day marketing to resell ice to Eskimos.
Daily Blah for... Sunday, July 11, 2004
Vacation Time
Speaking of romantic wanderings through European cities, P and I have a handful planned over this next couple of weeks: Brussells, Lisbon, Liverpool, Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt. I may post a blog or two from each, but don't sue me if I forget.
Daily Blah for... Friday, July 09, 2004
Best. Romantic-philosophical movie. Ever.
Enough with the web-slinging. The sequel I was most lusting after this summer: Richard Linklater's Before Sunset. If you haven't seen the 1994 original, Before Sunrise, rent it now; your soul will thank you later. I won't provide any spoilers here, but let's just say that an 80-minute conversation unfolding in real-time in the streets of Paris might well have been a disastrous idea for a movie. In Linklater's hands, it turns into something rarer: heartachingly fragile, refreshingly honest. Oscar ought to sit up and take notice, but I'll be happy as long as you do, dear reader.
Daily Blah for... Thursday, July 08, 2004
Best. Superhero movie. Ever.
Am I the only moviegoer in the world who doesn't think Spider Man 2 was all that hot? Sure, it had a nice collection of laughs, mature moral quandaries and CGI sequences, and I won't be demanding my $9 back any time soon. But that hardly makes it "the most effective superhero movie ever", as even Wired News -- normally reliably cynical when it comes to mass entertainment -- has dubbed it.
Perhaps I would have felt differently if I hadn't already read all the reviews I could get my hands on. I can't help myself; pre-movie, I'm a review-o-holic. P is the exact opposite: whisper the tiniest detail of a movie in advance and she starts drowning you out with very loud singing. If you're the same way and haven't seen the movie yet, it's probably best that you skip the rest of this entry. Either that, or begin chanting "la la la" ... now.
Anyway, the Spidey review that most intrigued me came from A O Scott in the NYT. This is because Scott took his eight-year-old son along for some objective analysis. Most of it was cool, said the lad, but the one bit he really, really didn't like was where Peter Parker tossed his costume in the trash. "He can't do that," he insisted. "He can't give up being Spider Man."
I knew exactly what he was talking about. My mind went back to when I was his age and held equally rigid views on superhero job security. It was when I saw Superman 2, which as we all now know was the Empire Strikes Back of the Christopher Reeves quartet. And without seeming like an old fogey, I wanted to say to the Scott kid: you think Spidey bagging his web-wear is tough to stomach? Try watching Supes turn in his cape at the Fortress of Solitude and electing to become human (and for what? For Lois Lane! For a girl!).
There followed a sequence in which the Man of Steel is stripped down to his very skeleton and rebuilt as a vulnerable mortal. Later he is assaulted in a bar, and bleeds. The sight was so hideous to my young eyes that not even his later (somewhat implausible) reaquisition of his powers could make up for it. I left the theater utterly inconsolable, my father no doubt wishing he could get his two pounds back. Had he been a movie reviewer, I don't think he would have gotten any coherent analysis out of me that day.
So naturally, I found the Parker-gives-up scene (what, he just puts his costume in a trash can? That's all?) terribly tame by comparison. And as good an actor as Alfred Molina is, there's no way his Doc Ock can touch Terence Stamp as General Zod, resplendently evil in the world's most casual black PVC outfit. Tell the truth, I don't get the Ock character -- why did he have to attach those arms to his back in the first place? Wouldn't robot arms operated by remote joystick have had the same effect? Sorry, Spider fans: even at the movies, Supes still rules.
Daily Blah for... Wednesday, July 07, 2004
Kerry-Edwards vs. Bill Gates
Another reason to love JE: According to Macintouch.com, he's the only one of the Democratic primary candidates to favor Macs (what, even Kucinich is a PC guy? For shame!). This coming hot on the heels of the NYT story about the Kerry campaign website running on open source software and the Bush site using Microsoft -- well, let's just say it's pretty clear who's on the dark side of the Force here.
Just a Thought
JFK -- And Bobby too? On the same ticket?
Can't wait to hear Dick Cheney try to use the line: "I knew Bobby Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy was a friend of mine. You, sir ..."
Daily Blah for... Tuesday, July 06, 2004
You've Got JE Mail
Two years and two weeks ago, I told you John Edwards would be sworn into office on Inauguration Day 2005. I stand by that statement. I was just one off on the office, that's all. (Kerry-Edwards, Edwards-Kerry, what's the difference in the age of Cheney?)
Edwards -- Mr. Sunshine, Mr. Popular, Mr. South -- has been the obvious choice for this moribund campaign for so long that I feared Kerry would pick someone else in a fit of pique, perhaps to prove his independence from the Democratic machine. In the end he did the smart thing -- proved his independence by the means of the declaration, not the content. Announcing by email was a stroke of genius, even if it does look a little like he's trying to be Howard "Al Gore invented the Internet but I politicized it" Dean.
I was not one of the 150,000 who signed up for Kerry mail, but I got the news by email anyway. This tends to happen with big news that breaks before the West Coast wakes up; feeding my email addiction is the very first item in my morning routine. It was an email to my journalism school class list about the New York Post's horrific mistake in calling the decision for Gephardt. (who was their secret source -- someone in the Kerry campaign with a mischievous sense of humor who couldn't miss an opportunity to needle Murdoch?) The Post had got it wrong, and that suggested there was a right to be had. I fired up Google News, and there was my favorite Senator and his good ol' boy smile.
For a while I couldn't say anything. I felt my shoulders drop as months of tension melted away. He made the right choice. He's no Dukakis, no McGovern. This has to be the dream ticket. The sunshine seemed brighter, the fog lighter. On NPR a pollster talked about record levels of Democratic mobilization in the wake of Fahrenheit 9/11. Democrats, he pointed out, simply have more registered voters on their side; if they all turn out, they win. This afternoon P put on The War Room, a lovely reminder of the last time Democrats mobilized to oust a Bush. If a day ever felt like a turning point, it was this one.
Daily Blah for... Friday, July 02, 2004
Bye Bye, iMac
Can you believe this? Apple is running out of iMacs. That's right, the wonderful flat-panel sunflower/daisy design, the one we touted on the cover of Time three years ago, the best reasonably-priced personal computer out there by far -- and now you can't get one, because Apple thought they'd have their next-generation iMacs ready by now, but they won't be out until the fall. So they've effectively deep-sixed their best computer, and here they are without a consumer desktop for the entire summer. I love Apple, and whenever I meet a PC person I try to convert them. But they're not making it very easy for me here.
Daily Blah for... Thursday, July 01, 2004
Machine Politics
 I've long been vaguely uneasy about electronic voting, but it took today's Boondocks cartoon to turn my concern from a background buzz to a full-throated chorus. No doubt we all know the basics: Diebold sells touch-screen voting systems, on which roughly a third of all America's votes will be cast come November. Diebold's CEO is a big-time Bush fundraiser and pledged to do everything he can to deliver his home state of Ohio to the GOP. Diebold says the software that runs the voting machines -- a trumped up version of Windows -- is proprietary, so there's no independent oversight. There's also no paper trail; you have nothing, no receipt, to prove who you voted for. Academics who got hold of the Diebold code described it as a "trivial" thing to hack into. Unexplained software patches were installed on Diebold machines just before the 2002 election. They were used heavily in Georgia and Florida, both of which showed strong last-minute Republican swings (Jeb Bush was not nearly as safe in the polls as his victory would indicate). All in all, not a list of circumstances likely to generate confidence.
Well, the more I look into it, the queasier I get. The Boondocks is correct: Election Systems and Software of Nebraska, another company filled with Bush fundraisers, sells even more voting machines than Diebold. Its software too is proprietary. Is there anything that would stop a couple of corporate software engineers patching these machines days before the election -- telling them, perhaps, to invalidate one in every 100 Kerry votes? I really, really hoped so, because there's nothing worse than having something like this -- something so vomit-inducingly huge as a stolen election -- on one's "To Worry About" list. So I went and scoured the Diebold and ES&S websites. I wanted to be told not to fret. I wanted to be mollified. I wanted them to protest their innocence of such a charge (here's why it wouldn't work ...). But nothing. Just pictures of well-groomed models using the Tru-Vote, and a handful of Op-Ed pieces from friends in the electronic voting industry; articles that slam the old punch-card machines without adequately explaining why a touch-screen replacement is that much better. Come on guys, humor me: what is to stop a canny Diebold maintenance guy from effectively invalidating the will of the people? How would we ever know?
Billboozled!
Until two nights ago, I was proud to say, I'd never fallen for an online prank. I tend to browse with one eyebrow raised. But the Bill Clinton book tour blog got me, and got me good. It's not satirical; that would be too obvious. Instead, the imitator has just the amount of waffle, platitudes and man-of-the-people prose you'd expect from an ex-President hawking his autobiography. Each entry starts with the location of Clinton's latest signing, talks about how pleasant it was to meet the people of yada yada yada, drops some celebrity FOB names. Then, just when you're getting bored, drops in an eye-popping personal detail or two. Like the ongoing feud with Chelsea's boyfriend, described only as "Curly." Like the account of how he and Robin Williams surprised their wives by miming Maria Carey songs. It's not beyond the bounds of belief that our fun-loving, celeb-worshipping, touchy-feely Mr. C would be persuaded to do such a thing and have no qualms writing about it -- especially when he's just written his 957-page confessional. He's on a roll, I thought. Besides, he's trying to sell books. Why would he hold back?
Each entry pushes the envelope a little further. Thus I remained credulous even when I got to the entry where he describes his favorite sex act with Hillary (and practically screamed at the screen -- no! Too much information!) Had I started with the poorly-written first entry ("I got up, scratched my lazy ass and went downstairs"), it would have been obvious. But the anonymous imitator improved over time, and the advantage of the blog format is you're always as good as your last entry. There. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
If anybody has a bridge they want to sell me, now would be the time.
Mini-monopoly
This is ridiculous. Setanta, the company behind those unreliable and pricey Euro 2004 broadcasts on DirecTV, won't even let American bars show the games for free. According to the Chronicle, Setanta makes the bar owners charge any patron entering during the game $20. They even send their own heavies to collect the money at the door, and pocket more than 85% of the take. To any ex-pats like me who are used to being able to walk into any pub and watch the match for free, this really stings.
I wonder what the conservative, capitalism-is-god response would be to this situation. Wait until the market corrects things? If you don't like it, start your own satellite feed company? Both are impossible: Setanta has the exclusive rights to broadcast Euro 2004 live in the US. They're a monopoly, even if the US courts would never pay attention to them. After all, it's only soccer. I have to wonder how many of these anti-fair trade mini-monopolies fly under the national radar.
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