Hello World

Short summary: the NY Times has implemented a new function where double-clicking on any word on the site (i.e., not links, just regular text) makes a new window pop up with a helpful definition of the word. This includes such words as "the," "green," and "Spanish." For those of us who semi-compulsively mess around with the text we read, this is a disruptive disaster. Thus the campaign to bring back free clicking. Please consider passing this along to your many friends and encouraging them to do the same, until we bring the paper of record to its east-coast liberal knees.

Cross-posted from my other blog.

Foot Found at Dump Not Bigfoot.
Foot Also Not:

• The Tooth Fairy


• Chupacabra


• Galactus, Destroyer of Worlds


• John Gotti


• Lock Ness Monster


• The Holy Grail

Foot is:

• A skinned bear foot. SPOOKY!!!!

I guess anytime you find something strange in a -sylvania you have to assume the worst. I'm just relieved our long national nightmare is finally over.

Cross-posted from my other blog.

I did not expect Anna Nicole Smith's death would lead to anything interesting or insightful, but Philip Kennicott has a fascinating essay in the Washington Post today:

The courtesan was rich but not on her own terms, an object of scorn but not completely disreputable, a living reminder of an economy of sexual exchange that we like to pretend doesn't exist. When Anna Nicole Smith, a voluptuous 26-year-old Playboy Playmate, married an octogenarian oil-rich billionaire, she crossed a line, assuming too high a place in our supposedly mobile society. After her elderly husband died a little over a year later, she stood to inherit $474 million (still in legal dispute), and her name became shorthand for marital opportunism. Her husband went down in the books as the most ridiculous of old goats -- but he was dead and beyond the reach of our scorn. Anna had her second and third acts, on television and shilling for diet pills, but none of these chapters ever did much for her dignity.

I wanted to just paste the whole thing. Go read it.

Cross-posted from my other blog.

Owens says he was misquoted in autobiography

This really sums up Terrell Owens--the guy claims unfair treatment in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

Courtesy of the Boston Herald:

Dunkin’ mints ’86 Mets coins but Sox fans get chump change

The 1986 World Series is a bad memory for die-hard Red Sox fans. But Massachusetts-based Dunkin’ Donuts is literally minting money off of it in New York.

The company, which has its headquarters in Canton, started selling commemorative coins celebrating the 20th anniversary of the New York Mets World Series win over the Sox at Dunkin’ Donuts stores in New York, New Jersey and parts of Connecticut two weeks ago.

The 1986 World Championship, while a sweet success for the Mets, was a bitter experience for Sox fans, who watched the series title start to roll away as the ball went between Bill Buckner’s legs.

The Mets promotion, which is still running, had some members of Red Sox Nation wondering yesterday if Dunkin’ Donuts would create a David Ortiz dime or even a Manny Ramirez nickel.

“When are they going to make 2004 ones,” asked Billy Neader, 51, of Florida, a Sox fan.

Gee, Billy, I don't know. 2024????

It appears that the Washington Post did a little redesign of the bottom half of their front page. Basically, what they did was uglify things and strew some ads around willy-nilly ("some ads" is really doing the situation a disservice, though--the ads are multitudinous and garish in the extreme). Also, at least on my computer, it seems like it's getting stuck on loading right after the "Markets" section, so a bunch of content just isn't showing up for a literal minute or two; this is, obviously, an internet eternity. Overall, the "designers" managed to obfuscate, deface, and disfigure what had been a fairly homely but functional website. Great job guys, cigars all around.

They also changed the font, I think. That part looks fine.

DC students sabotage their chances at ever touching a woman again.

Jentz points to Moniello. "He's been an author."

Moniello grins. "I've written a few books."

Books, plural? At age 22?

"Hey, you only have a couple of minutes to make an impression," Moniello continues. "So if you have to save a baby seal from an oil spill in Alaska, you have to save a baby seal."

...

If the wingman is the least bit interested in the sidekick girl, he'll signal that to his partner-in-crime and include himself in the lie.

"You can't assume that every girl with a wingman is ugly," Moniello says. "She may be very attractive. If she is, then me and Jay own all the Ben & Jerry's in the Northeast."

Etc. An insipid story in the Post's informal series of vacuous puff pieces aimed at portraying young people as soulless sex fiends, it's incredibly sad that it was featured with a photo at the top of the Post's website rather than buried in the armpit of the style section, where it belongs.

Great moments in journalism:

Man's shirt erupts in flames after he is shot with Taser
DAYTONA BEACH -- Dennis Crouch had already slashed himself. And when he refused to drop his knife, Daytona Beach police Officer Betsy Cassidy decided she had no choice.

"Taser! Taser!" Cassidy shouted as she sent a two-pronged wire, packing 50,000 volts, at Crouch's chest. What happened next stunned everyone.

To read the rest of this post, click here.

George Will wonders why conservatives are happier than liberals and predictably comes up with reasons that conservatism causes happiness.

Well, George, you've got to understand the correlative fallacy here. Maybe it's not that being conservative makes one happy but rather that being happy (read: complacent) makes one interested in preserving the status quo and keeping one's own circumstances as wonderful as possible (at the expense of the people whose own circumstances may not make them so happy).

I'm not saying that's true, I'm just saying that, you know, let's not jump to self-congragulatory conclusions just yet.

My favorite part is definitely this impressive bit of compressed contradiction:

Such puzzles show why social science is not for amateurs. Still, one cannot -- yet -- be prosecuted for committing theory without a license, so consider a few explanations of the happiness gap.

Also, going hunting is not for amateurs. Still, one cannot -- yet -- be prosecuted for hunting without a license. Apparently.

Almost all from The Washington Post:

Boehner in the House. No comment!

Puppies cut open and filled with heroin. Awful.

To read the rest of this post, click here.

Slate tells me why I should have laid off that degenerate jerk who wrote that anti-feminist editorial last week.

I'll think about it.

For a perfect example of hyperbole turning a valid and fairly important argument into a straw man, check out Courtland Milloy's column on the Washington Redskins' offensive team name. An absurd highlight:

In this classic matchup, the Whiteys have a quarterback who thinks fast on his feet and is very smart when it comes to analyzing the gestalt of the game. Or so the TV commentators say. The Darkies, to their credit, have a quarterback who is strong and, boy, he runs faster than a water bug on crack.

And here come the mascots. For the Whiteys: a giant saltine cracker. For the Darkies: a watermelon rolling on 20-inch rims.

Offensive? Not as long as such newspaper headlines as "Redskins Get Skinned Alive" are upsetting only because the team lost.

Note that the editor responsible for a headline like the one Milloy puts forward as plausible would find himself fired and vilified before the first papers were off the presses. Note also that Milloy, were his argument not stated in such a ridiculous, unfair, and anecdotal way, would be one hundred percent right--the team's name is an anachronistic slur that demeans a culture by celebrating its denigration, and the name should be changed¹. But as ought to be obvious after the last ten years of partisan bickering, inaccurately exaggerating one's opponent's position when you're right is the worst thing you can do. Make your point clearly and fairly and let reasonable people draw reasonable conclusions².

For more information on this rhetorical error, see Michael Moore's documentaries, the Green Party, and Bill O'Reilly's entire career³.


¹ As I've already suggested. Go Silverbacks!
² Well, it might work. You never know.
³ I'm just asserting for the sake of argument that Bill O'Reilly has ever had a relevant and valid thought. It's possible.

The first published response to yesterday's idiotic editorial column has appeared. This opening salvo is pretty satisfying, but I hope at least a few of you have written responses as well. Even something as simple as "the columnist responsible is a paternalistic asshole and should be taken off the masthead" would go a long way toward making this guy regret ever opening his mouth.

I'm just going to let this one speak for itself:

Federline's Hip-Hop Revealed
Kevin Federline boasts about his life with wife Britney Spears and demands to be called "Daddy" in a track from his forthcoming hip-hop debut. The 27-year-old's LP has yet to be released, but a track called "Y'All Ain't Ready" has appeared on the internet. Federline celebrates the lifestyle he shares with Spears and their baby son Sean Preston, but makes an embarrassing slip - confusing the word paparazzi with the surname of opera singer Luciano Pavarotti. He raps, "Back then they called me K-Fed/But you can call me Daddy instead/Go ahead and say whatcha wanna/I'm gonna sell about 2 mil, oh, then I'm a goner/I know you all wish you was in my position/Cause I keep getting' in situations that you wish you was in, cousin/Steppin' in this game and y'all ain't got a clue/Getting anxious? Go take a peep/I'm starrin' in your magazines now every day and week/But maybe baby you can wait and see/Until then all these Pavarottis followin' me."

Thanks, K-Fed, for your words of wisdom. May your days be filled with menthol cigarettes and your nights populated by dozens of future baby mamas.

Only the Good Buy Young

The Washington area's booming housing market and a strong economy have created a new breed of home buyer.

Ugh.

The article is pretty interesting, though; do you own your home?

Harriet Miers Backed Abortion Ban in 1989
In documents disclosed to Senate today, Miers's 1989 stance on issue is revealed.

Cheney Office Is Focus in Probe
Prosecutor has assembled evidence that shows vice president's feud with the CIA contributed to the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame.

Security Threat Closes Baltimore Tunnel
Maryland Transportation Authority shuts down the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel due to threat.

Sept. Wholesale Prices Soar
Inflation at the wholesale level jumped by 1.9 percent last month, the largest surge in 15 years.


Oh, shit.

This article about the new iPod is generally worthless--it's filled with analysts' quotes and PR--but the last few paragraphs are priceless:

Computer and iPod sales often lag in the days leading up to an announcement from Apple. But New Bern, N.C., resident Mike Afflerbach bought an iPod on Friday and said he didn't feel buyer's remorse.

Afflerbach said he didn't need video playback on the device and worried that the new feature would tend to eat up the gadget's battery life.

He also doesn't need the gadget to get any tinier, he said. "I don't really want it to get any smaller," he said. "It's not like I need to have it performing endoscopic surgeries or anything."

Added Afflerbach, as he climbed into his Studebaker, "and what's going on with these new-fangled blogs, anyway? What's wrong with an old-fashioned paper diary?" I mean, would it have killed them to add, "it appeared that Afflerbach had actually convinced himself that he hadn't just gotten himself totally screwed"?

Get ready for an influx of stories that amout to "hey, grandma--the whippersnappers have a new fad. They call it 'Blogging'!" To be fair, this one is actually pretty good. The Post manages to avoid mentioning LiveJournal or "the online journal that gave the only hints to the girl's mysterious disappearance," which is nice, and they look beyond the mere existence of blogs and go on to consider both the purpose (at a level more complex than "it's like a diary, but it's on the internet!") and the value of it:

Although it may feel good to blog, psychologists warn that going public with private musings may have ramifications, and that little research has been done on the consequences of the Internet confessional.

"I certainly don't advise anyone to do it. They're taking a big risk," said Patricia Wallace, a psychologist and researcher at Johns Hopkins University and author of "The Psychology of the Internet." People open themselves up to cruel comments, and worse: identity theft, for instance, or even losing a job for kvetching about a boss.

I don't mind cruel comments, but if one of you guys steals my identity or fires me I'm gonna be pretty annoyed.

The article does make an interesting point: why do some people consider posting something on the internet to be the equivalent of writing it in a private diary? In addition to the obvious failure of the metaphor, why should the same thoughts/feelings motivate the two acts? If I post something here, it's not because I wouldn't feel comfortable with anyone else reading it (quite the opposite, really). I guess the appearance of anonymity can be pretty persuasive--"I can spill my guts and say what I really think about everything, and nobody will know it was me"--but I would hope that at this point anybody with access to the internet realizes that internet anonymity is at best shaky and at worst utterly illusory.

At any rate, it's pretty lame that the Post didn't leave the URLs for the blogs they looked at in the piece. What's the point of talking about your blog if you can't whore it out? (You're looking at Hello World, in case you forgot.)

An obituary for Sprint's "Trench Coat Guy". Apparently Trench Coat Guy isn't suitably professional for the business market Sprint acquired when it bought Nextel last year, so they're dropping him. The Post goes on and on about this guy in what I suppose is meant to be a cute, funny way, but considering that the only cell service spokesperson anyone remembers is Verizon's TRULY iconic "Can you hear me now?" guy, I just don't see the topicality of this story. I mean, I didn't notice that he wasn't in Sprint's ads anymore. Did you? Well, as fascinating as this post about what I've determined is a pretty boring subject is, I think I'm going to stop writing now.

If you're one of the four or five people who cares about my ongoing series of posts* related to the inevitable (in my opinion) demise of the Newspaper as we know it, this is a can't-miss opportunity to see what people on the inside of the industry have to say about it:

Apparently the Washington Post assigns a different staffer each day to write an internal memo critiquing that day's edition. Not too long ago, Hank Steuver, who writes for the Style section, had his turn. He basically lays into everyone whose instincts are to simplify, shorten, and dumb down the Post's stories, and it's pretty awesome. He even uses a curse word!

^* groundbreaking journalism, making up social problems, how to make money off of online content, newspapers are losing money, Rupert Murdoch has some ideas, Hank Steuver wrote something stupid, too!