politics

Tuesday various

Tuesday various

Wednesday various

  • What It’s Like to Work for Donald Rumsfeld. You really do expect him to close with, “And has everybody signed Debbie’s birthday card? Invade Iraq and then ice cream cake in the break room at three!”
  • Why Nielsen Ratings Are Inaccurate, and Why They’ll Stay That Way. Frankly, it’s amazing any television of quality gets made, ever. [via]
  • Tyranny of the Alphabet. All these years, my last name beginning with C, and I was apparently the unknowing beneficiary of reverse-alphabetism. This is sort of similar to something Malcolm Gladwell has suggested, namely that being born after the first three months of the year significantly limits your success in life. Gosh, three letters into the alphabet, only three months into the year — I should be President by now!

    Though seriously, those of you with last names further along down the chain of letters than me: did it affect you in school, or your current psychological outlook? [via]

  • Speaking of Malcolm Gladwell, the Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator. (Also, this xkcd comic. The rollover text is particularly amusing.) [via]
  • And finally, When Should I Visit? It’s the reverse-Foursquare, finding the least busy times to visit museums, galleries, theaters, etc. By the site’s own admission, it’s only somewhat accurate, pulling data only from Foursquare users, and exclusive to London. But I am amused by the idea of “use[ing] Foursquare to learn how to avoid Foursquare users.” [

Tuesday various

  • On WNYC, the Leonard Lopate Show has recently started posting picks and suggestions from any given week’s guests, asking them questions about what books they’re reading, what music they’re listening to, etc. They also ask, “What’s one thing you’re a fan of that people might not expect?” Teller, the silent half of Penn and Teller, answered, “Novel forms of pancakes and waffles.” I love that I have almost no idea what he means.
  • All this time, I had been avoiding the Huffington Post mostly just because it’s a time-sink. Like io9, Metafilter, or Boing Boing, I was only visiting occasionally, and even then only when another blog redirected me there. But, it turns out, there’s a whole bevy of other reasons to avoid it, namely that, although it earns millions of dollars — and even more in its recent merger with AOL — it still doesn’t pay its writers, nor did it even pay for the blogging platform that runs it. Plus, it seems less like an interesting time-sink and more one that just re-purposes what other news blogs have written, with occasional liberal celebrity cameos, for the purpose of aggrandizing the Huffington Post. Maybe that’s unfair. As I said, I don’t spend much time with it, except when others occasionally direct it there. But it would be nice if some of that AOL money went to the people who day by day create the product AOL bought.
  • A teenage burglar killed three goldfish because he didn’t want to leave any witnesses behind. In his defense, he may just have been reading The Cat in the Hat one too many times. Then again, reading might not be too high on this brainiac’s agenda. [via]
  • I don’t think it will surprise anyone that Donald Rumsfeld is full of shit. This is what I think he himself would call “a known known.”
  • And finally, Wolverine or two Bat Men? [via]

Thursday various

  • Oregon allowing spell-check on written school exams? I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this, and I didn’t have the kind of knee-jerk reaction I might be expected to as an English major, writer, and editor. I think spelling is important, but not always critically so, especially on exams where spelling is secondary to whatever is being tested. I think spelling is less important, for instance, than reading comprehension and overall communication skills. Many great writers have been notoriously bad spellers; and outside of a spelling bee, crossword puzzles, and certain game shows, success in life rarely hinges on knowing when it’s “i before e” or the opposite.

    At the same time, spelling is important. An over-reliance on spell-check can lead to laziness, and not knowing how to spell can impede communication. Spell-check is far from perfect — their, there, or they’re, anyone? — and a poor substitute for really understanding why words are spelled a certain way. Further, many of the standardized tests these students will later encounter — like, for instance, the SAT — will not allow them use of a spell-check.

    I think, if the Oregon Department of Education really wants to help its students, it won’t just allow them to ignore spelling altogether. It will allow its teachers to grade spelling more effectively, more fairly; it will design standardized tests that weigh other, perhaps more important, factors, and look at spelling in a broader context. [via]

  • First they came for the ignorant news pundits and I stayed silent… Glenn Beck is quite fond of quoting Martin Niemöller’s famous poem about the rise of fascism in Germany. (As well as of crazy-as-all-bugfuck conspiracy theories.) It’s quite telling which parts of the poem he always leaves out. [via]
  • Dubai’s archipelago of luxury islands, already something of a financial disaster, is sinking into the sea. [via]
  • Robotic ghost knifefish is born. Somebody should totally start a band with that name. [via]
  • And finally, Zack Handlen remembers Indecent Proposal:

    Yeah, the movie where Robert Redford turned Woody Harrelson into a pimp and Demi Moore into a, ahem, lady of the evening. It was a ridiculous movie, all slick visuals with no real soul or character, but the concept was so intriguing that it didn’t need to be good to be successful. Everyone was just so fascinated by the moral question at the heart of the story that everything else was just gravy. Stupid, stupid gravy.

    It’s all in the context of a Star Trek: The Next Generation review, naturally.