Notgruntled

This year in journalism clichés

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:00:12 GMT

Politics: It was a year of "he said, she said" partisan bickering on Capitol Hill, with both sides of the aisle scoring political points, but there were no game changers, and it's too soon to pick winners and losers in the upcoming 2012 campaign. A parade of flavor-of-the-month Republican front-runners enjoyed a spike in the polls, but lacked staying power and struggled to reboot their lagging campaigns in time for the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses.

International: In cities around the world, long-suffering people took to the streets in peaceful protests against ruthless dictators. Facing brutal government crackdowns and media blackouts, they fought back with trending tweets and viral videos. In war-torn Afghanistan, most-wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden was slain in a midnight raid on his clandestine compound in the military stronghold of Abbottabad.

Business: It was a roller coaster ride on Wall Street, with profit-taking and sell-offs on mixed signals from leading indicators. Long-term joblessness due to the Great Recession dragged on, while in the Eurozone, diplomatic wrangling stalled talks over the beleaguered Greek economy. AT&T announced a blockbuster merger with T-Mobile USA, but regulatory hurdles left the fourth-largest carrier alone at the altar.

Celebrity: It was a year of fairy-tale weddings for some stars, heartbreak for others. Troubled celebrities Lindsey Lohan and Charlie Sheen had brushes with the law and faced the court of public opinion, while other household names turned their fame to worthwhile causes, speaking out and raising consciousness.

(Ed. Note: The toughest challenge in compiling this was using the mother of all clichés, "roller coaster ride," only once.)

Everything that is wrong with homeowner's associations in one sentence

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:04:32 GMT

"I just read that registered sex offenders can hurt your property value by 9%."

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPad.

Steve Jobs: So long, and thanks for all the bicycles

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 02:55:37 GMT

"Bicycles for the mind" was a phrase Steve Jobs used often in the early days of the Macintosh. The human body is not a very efficient machine. Horses, dogs, even giraffes use energy much more effectively to move around, leaving people somewhere down near the three-toed sloth. But put a human on a bicycle, and he shoots to the top of the list.

That was how he saw technology. Those of us who are old enough will remember all the buzz about "home computers" in the early '80s; the usual question was, "what would I do with one?" and the usual answer, "manage accounts and organize recipes." Even the folks who were most enthusiastic about computers still saw them merely as machines to calculate and collate.

Jobs was the first person to look at computers as a means to do things that we already wanted to do and things that we didn't know we wanted to do, and bring that to fruition. A bicycle for the mind. Twenty years ago, who looked at a computer and saw a video editing rig? A recording studio? A movie theater? A movie studio?

The remarkable thing about Steve Jobs, unique among technology pioneers of the time, wasn't just that he had a clear and compelling vision; it was remarkable that he had one at all. His rival, Bill Gates, made his goal "a computer on every desk," but didn't seem to know why.

In the products he brought to market, at Apple, NeXT and Pixar, Steve Jobs saw the engineer's pursuit of efficiency and the artist's passion for elegance as essentially the same thing. Under his leadership, the goal of Apple's products was in itself elegantly efficient: "It just works."

This is not to paint him in beatific terms, as some sort of high-tech Bodhisattva. He was, by the accounts of many who worked with him, kind of an asshole. That is the price of having a clear vision and dragging others along.

The fruits of that vision are far, far greater than Apple, impressive as that would be all by itself. Look at desktop computers before the Macintosh and after. At music players before the iPod and after. Music sales before iTunes and after. Smartphones before the iPhone and after. Tablet computers before the iPad and after.

In all of those technologies, Apple wasn't the first player in the game, but Apple drew a sharp line where everything changed. No one since Henry Ford has changed his industry more profoundly and enriched more lives than Steve Jobs, and whether you have a Mac, Windows or Linux on your desk, an iPod or a Sanza hooked to those earbuds, an iPhone or an Android in your pocket, you're carrying a bit of his legacy. Not too shabby.

Why Redbox should buy Qwixter

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 07:00:18 GMT

In spinning off its DVD delivery business, Netflix is clearly betting on the decline of DVDs. It's hard to argue against that long arc of the technological universe, but it's going to be a long time before everyone has broadband with sufficient speed and high enough caps to make streaming or downloading attractive. Rights-holders also make streaming a fragmented mess, with movies and TV shows split between Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, iTunes, and cable company and satellite pay-per-view.

Blockbuster was killed by a convergence of forces -- Netflix and other streaming sites among the technorati, Netflix DVD delivery for the cinephile set looking for obscure films, Redbox at the other end of the technological and pop-culture spectrum. No doubt the woes of the USPS, and the likelihood of less frequent deliveries and higher postage in the future, weighed in the decision as well.

So what if you could merge the convenience of Redbox with the depth of Qwixter? Picture this: You put a movie at the top of your queue. If your movie is at a nearby Redbox kiosk, the site tells you where, and you reserve it; if not, you specify where you want it sent, and you get a notification when it's there. When you return your movie, you can opt to snag one of the unreserved movies at the kiosk or wait for the next movie in your queue to be sent (or both, if you have a >1 disk at a time plan).

The only question I can't find an answer to is how often Redbox re-stocks its kiosks. If it's daily, or even every other day, then the distribution mechanism is in place to make it at worst a little bit slower than Qwixter. There's also the Jetsons solution, with movies deliverable in hours instead of days: Outfit Redbox kiosks with a DVD burner that dispenses self-destructing Flexplay discs.

Is this democracy? No, it's Iowa.

Sat, 13 Aug 2011 16:43:11 GMT

This weekend is one of the cherished quadrennial rituals of our democracy. Every media outlet from CNN to Beanie Babies Quarterly* has a satellite truck in Ames, Iowa, so that their reporters can do four live shots an hour on how irrelevant the Straw Poll is.

The straw poll is an easily rigged, endlessly gamed non-event that has a historically poor record of predicting who wins the Iowa caucuses, which are themselves a poor predictor of who gets the presidential nomination. I know this because CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, AEIOU(Y), Fox News, the New York Times, the Washington Post, I Can Has Cheezburger, and BBQ* told me so. They also provided in-depth investigative pieces on who has the coolest tent (air conditioning is a big thing), and -- because it is a statutory requirement when a reporter goes to a state fair -- what kinds of crazy shit people are coating in batter and deep-frying these days.

This year, all of the buzz is over the new candidate who isn't there (Rick Perry, off declaring in South Carolina); the putative front-running candidate who is there but not participating (Mitt Romney, at the Iowa State Fair so he can rally his supporters to get out and not vote); and the non-candidate whose never-ending bus vacation serendipitously turns up wherever cameras are (do you really need to ask?). Then there is the field of sort-of contenders who are mostly interesting because some will likely become non-candidates after today's non-event. And Thad McCotter, whose name no one knows, which is a pity because it's a pretty cool name.

We face daunting challenges in This Greatest Nation on God's Green and Fecund Earth, and we need serious people to lead us in this time of trial. When the candidates scramble over each other to pander to the tea party faction of the Republican base, treating "tax" is such a dirty word that small nails are eyed with great suspicion, it's important to have the Fourth Estate on the case to ask the hard question: "Have you tried the fried butter on a stick?"

* I made Beanie Babies Quarterly up. If it actually exists, don't tell me.

Intended consequences

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 16:16:45 GMT

For a century after the Civil War, Southern politicians found no end of clever ways to keep black people from voting. Rather than fight head-on against the proposition that black citizens were, in fact, citizens, they devised "simple" restrictions like grandfather clauses, poll taxes and literacy tests, which they could use to keep blacks from voting while claiming, farcically, that wasn't their intention.

Taking a page from that noble history, anti-choice state legislators are passing regulations clearly intended to make abortion legal on paper but impossible in practice. In Kansas, the state where Dr. George Tiller was shot to death in church, the three clinics that perform abortions will have to close on July 1 unless they can comply with new "safety" regulations. These rules are uniquely applied to abortion; they do not apply if you go to a Kansas hospital for a heart-lung transplant.

The room where abortion procedures are performed must be at least 150 square feet. It must have a closet for janitorial supplies at least 50 square feet(!). The procedure room must have a temperature between 68 and 73 degrees, and the recovery room must have a temperature between 70 and 75 degrees.

Read that last one again. Assuming that these clinics don't have separate climate control systems for each room, the clinic has to maintain a temperature between 70 and 73°F. Any clinic that manages to jump through all the hoops -- and these are just a few highlights -- can have a license denied or revoked if a committed anti-abortion inspector holds the door open long enough to shift the temperature a couple of degrees.

Care to guess which political party passed this law? That's right. The one that promotes itself as the party of smaller government and fewer regulations.

On eras and their ends

Thu, 12 May 2011 07:21:07 GMT

This American Life has a story on college students' celebrations of Osama Bin Laden's death. The gist of the piece was that these "millennials" have little memory of a time before 9/11; killing Osama took out their lifelong boogeyman. A student interviewed for the piece talked about her sister, who was in utero on Sept. 11, 2001, and would never know the fears she'd lived with for the last decade.

Nor, the piece implied, could we old folks understand. "It happened to us," one student said, in a statement of youthful narcissism with a grain of truth; for us, 9/11 was the beginning of a "new normal". For them, it's been just "normal."

But as I was listening, it dawned on me that I did get it. I got it because when I was that age, I was watching kids my age dance on top of the wall that split Berlin and the world into mutually hostile halves. I had never known a time without the threat of the communist menace and nuclear annihilation. In 1989, or certainly by 1991, I knew that my hypothetical kids would never know that fear. I liked the thought.

Forty-odd years before that, our grandparents' generation breathed a satisfied sigh, because the horrors of world war and the crushing despair of the Great Depression would never be visited on their children. They responded by having a staggeringly huge number of them.

The observation that this has happened before is followed, sadly but inevitably, by the realization that it will happen again. The Baby Boomers had a seemingly endless war and the looming dread of the draft, fears they escaped in a flood of sex and drugs. My generation had no draft and wars that were over in time for halftime at the next Super Bowl, but the sex and drugs would kill you. There was scarcely a decade between the fall of the Communist menace and the rise of the jihadist one.

The death of Osama bin Laden is not, of course, the end of terrorism. We knew nine and a half years ago that there would be no V-T day. Terrorism would not sign an instrument of surrender on the deck of a battleship. But a clandestine burial at sea is as good a place as any we will get to draw a line across the years, to say to the next generation, you, thank the gods, will never know what it was like. You will, no doubt, have your own fears, but you will not inherit ours.

One warm night, twenty or thirty years from now, I will be listening to a This Venusian life neurocast on my iPons cerebral implant. Iraglass 3.0 will interview a college-age kid. And she will be rejoicing because her children will never know the fear of rampaging zombie hordes.

You bet your sweet ass he is

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 19:18:18 GMT

I am enjoying this way, way too much.

I see a pattern here ...

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 19:15:54 GMT

Item: The "Protect Life Act," HR358, would allow hospital emergency rooms to refuse to terminate a pregnancy -- even if that refusal kills the pregnant woman. This would be, as far as I know, the first law that allows refusal of life-saving care in the name of "conscience," let alone in the name of "protecting life."

Item: Fueled by yet another wave of fraudulent hidden-camera videos, House Republicans are on the warpath against Planned Parenthood. PP offers cancer screening, HIV tests, contraception and advice on same -- and abortions, which account for 3% of their activities. That 3% is what matters to the House Republicans, who are pressing to cut off funding to PP and have not suggested an alternative provider for the other 97% of their services.

Item: The "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," HR3, has had one noxious provision cut out -- one that would fund abortions to victims of "forcible rape" but not, you know, all those friendly rapes. Still in the bill: Employers whose insurance plans cover abortion would lose their tax deduction, with the (intended) result that employers won't offer abortion coverage.

Item: During the lame-duck session of Congress in December, House Republicans killed a bill that would have committed the US to fight child marriages. The bill passed the Senate unanimously, but House Republicans feared that the NGOs receiving grants might fund abortions.

Conclusion: Republicans are perfectly willing to restrict women's access to health care in the name of restricting access to abortion.

Remember the real victims

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 18:37:09 GMT

Stung by criticism of aggressive political discourse, the right wing has reacted by aggressively playing the victim.

Sarah Palin is the target of a "blood libel"; the Washington Times describes the reaction as part of an "ongoing pogrom"; Pat Buchanan describes Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck as targets of a "lynch mob."

Surely, no race in the whole sweep on human history has suffered as the right-wing talking heads have suffered. Where are the memorials? Where are the museums? Where is the day of remembrance? Where are the names carved in black granite?

On this day to honor Martin Luther King, Jr., who was merely persecuted and murdered, where are the bitter tears for the millionaire white gentile pundits who have suffered the bitter sting of ... SHARP CRITICISM?

We must all do our small part to help the oppressed, to bring some light and comfort into their bleak, dark mansions. I suggest buying Ann Coulter's next book, which will no doubt be titled "GENOCIDE" in blood-dripping all caps.

Like déjà vu all over again

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 01:21:10 GMT

The 1996 election was the first one covered in a serious way on the Web. It was great! You could follow your local races instead of waiting for the once in a blue moon when your races came around on the crawl.

That is, if you could get through at all. They call it the cutting edge because it's painful and there's blood. News sites were overwhelmed, and at times it seemed like the morning paper would be on your doorstep before the Web page loaded. The good thing about the old broadcast media is that they don't get harder to see because more people are watching.

This year is the first election that mobile apps are a major force. It's kind of comforting to see that some things never change.

Double standard? Hell, yes.

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 18:41:43 GMT

Former House speaker and still a pigfucker Newt Gingrich is at it again. Readers of this blog with long memories may recall that in a 2004 entry, I took issue with his complaints of a "double standard" in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. He apparently felt that it was unfair to hold American servicemen to a higher standard than terrorists.

In his missive on the "Ground Zero" "mosque" (which isn't at ground zero and isn't a mosque), he trots out the old double-standard complaint right up top:

There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.

So according to Gingrich, we should honor our commitment to freedom of religion in the United States only after Saudi Arabia, the country with perhaps the worst record of religious tolerance on Earth, does so. Once again, we have the two-faced argument that the enemy is evil and despicable and must be defeated by lowering our standards to theirs.

Yes, Newt, there is a double standard. A higher standard for any country that is anything like what we claim to be and want to be. I do not believe that the standards of a medieval theocracy are in any way a benchmark for ours.

We are right and they are wrong, and we are better than they are. That may sound a bit like the "American exceptionalism" that is a core belief of the Right, but their version is a carte blanche to ignore the rules that bind other nations, and does not include any obligations to actually uphold the higher standards we espouse.

Or is it possible that conservitives' alleged reverence for the Constitution takes a back seat to an emotional wedge issue in an election year? Fetch my smellin' salts.

T-shirt questions

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:31:14 GMT

I'm looking to create a T-shirt design. Is there an alternative to Cafepress that anyone recommends? Preferably one that offers a bigger cut. CP is sort of the industry standard, but I'm weighing alternatives.

In a related question, does anyone know where I can find a Cherokee translator? I think I've got a couple of decent T-shirt slogans based on an online dictionary, but I'd like an actual speaker so I don't wind up like someone with a "Number five with fried rice" tattoo.

X-posted.

A partial list of politically incorrect headlines

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 19:42:56 GMT

Germany blitzes England

England falls at World cup, still 2-0 in World Wars

English hooligans react to loss; France surrenders

Bad paragraph of the day, crime reporting division

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 07:09:17 GMT

Courtesy of The Daily Beast.

Investigators say they believe that Huckaby drugged Sandra and molested the girl with a rolling pin before strangling her and stuffing her small body, still clothed in a pink Hello Kitty T-shirt and Hannah Montana flip-flops, into a black Eddie Bauer suitcase.

Is this the new model for making money from news? Product placement? I'm almost surprised they didn't write "Investigators say they believe that Huckaby drugged Sandra with Xanax™ and molested the girl with a Williams and Sonoma rolling pin before strangling her with a Dora the Explorer belt ..."

Hey, Arizona: Fuh shu, mang.

Mon, 24 May 2010 14:17:04 GMT

So apparently, Arizona isn't done going batshit on immigrants yet. First it was the "your papers please" law, then a ban on "ethnic studies" classes. Now they're reassigning English teachers who "have accents."

"Having an accent" is like "having a temperature." Everyone who speaks has one. What they're after here, but won't actually say, is "foreign" accents. "English learners" -- Arizona's term for what used to called ESL, English as a Second Language, students -- need to learn English with, apparently, whatever passes for a standard Arizona accent.

And they do have a point. A thick foreign accent can be severely limiting, relegating the speaker to brutal, dead-end, low-prestige jobs like governor of (say it with me) Cahl-ee-FOHr-nya.

The most dangerous thing about this law, like other recent close-the-border-behind-me laws, is how arbitrary it is. Is Arizona targeting teachers who sound like Bill Clinton, Sarah Palin, David Cameron, or for that matter Arnold Schwarzenegger?

I doubt it. In fact, I'll bet a crispy quesadilla (I think those are still legal in Arizona) that no one paler than a paper grocery bag gets targeted by this new policy.

Hi, I'm Andy ...

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 00:50:04 GMT

... and I'm a recovering cable news junkie.

I discovered the "recovering" part today. Earthquake in Baja California, felt in SoCal (Brooke, you okay?). I did what I've habitually done, which is turn on CNN. After about ten minutes of listening to them read off twitter feeds, field phone calls and cut to affiliates reading twitter feeds and fielding phone calls, I decided I'd check back in an hour or two when they actually know something.

This may seem normal to many of you, but trust me, it constitutes progress for me.

Today in advertising

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:11:15 GMT

The following are actual products:

- A prescription medication for "inadequate eyelashes."

- A "clinical strength" anti-perspirant for people who "think they sweat too much." I'd give them points for satire if they'd actually called it "placebo."

- A no-touch hand soap dispenser so you don't have to get icky germs from the soap pump.

Our hardy pioneer ancestors would be spinning in their graves except that hardy pioneers don't spin.

How not to run a network

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:54:06 GMT

So in a little more than three months, NBC has alienated its affiliates, nuked its Prime Time lineup, lost to Letterman, and now is pissing on Conan. I have a hunch the negotiations with Comcast went something like "We'll sell you USA, but you have to take NBC."

Seriously, guys, there are one or two stupid things you haven't done yet -- you can still slap Brian Williams' mother on live TV. Of course, you'll have to buy time on Fox if you want anyone to see it.

Today in dumb punditry

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:35:48 GMT

"You know, if they bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to New York, he'll probably get government health care." -- Neal Boortz (paraphrase from memory)

Um, I'm pretty sure the doctors at Gitmo are on the government payroll.

"I've said for many years now that neutrality is not part of my being," -- Lou Dobbs

And it only took 30-some years in journalism to figure that out?

Photo gear advice sought

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:15:09 GMT

I'm looking at two lenses. One is a Canon IS 75-300mm USM (http://www.adorama.com/CA75300AF2UR.html), the other 55-250mm stabilized (http://www.adorama.com/CA55250AFSR.html). Both have the same aperture range, f/4-5.6. I'm leaning toward the stabilized lens.

Thoughts? Any alternatives I should be considering? I don't shoot a lot of sports or anything like that; I need a long lens for candid portraits more than anything, and I think the IS will help in marginal light.

Joyce Flint Holland, 1921-2009

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:08:39 GMT

When Joy was a little girl in Mount Airy, Georgia, she once summoned the courage to ask her mother, "are we poor?"

"No, child," Mother answered. "We just don't have any money."

It was no minor distinction. Growing up in Appalachia during the Depression, Joy certainly saw enough of real poverty. Not just a lack of money, but of dreams. A narrowing of horizons. A grinding, grim existence that she certainly saw, but that never took root in her.

Somehow, there was always just enough. Enough to fill the always-cold house with piles of books that covered every flat surface, and might start piling up on one of the dogs if it moved too slowly. Enough to send Joy, her two brothers and her two sisters to college.

The war brought Joy to Atlanta, where she met her husband, about whom the less said the better. Some 20 years and two children later, she was a young widow, a medical transcriptionist at the VA, and the author of more than a dozen children's books that ran 14 printings.

When the first black family moved in around the corner, opening a day care center with a mostly-black clientele, some of the local biddies tried to recruit her for their campaign to run "them" out of the neighborhood. Instead, she brought them cookies and did her best to make them feel welcome, to make it clear that they did not speak for her.

I'm spinning off the mere facts of her life because I cannot find the words to express just what a remarkable woman she was. She was the only Scrabble player my mom, a state champion, could never beat. While her face grew wrinkled, and her back stooped, her eyes kept their childish sparkle, and her wit, while quick, was never cruel.

When her sister Rosena died, Joy was helping clean out her house (no mean feat). She was carrying a heavy, framed portrait of my great-uncle Sam when someone offered to take it from her. Without missing a beat -- she rarely did -- she pulled away, saying, "he ain't heavy. (pause for effect) He's my brother."

She outlived one husband, all four of her siblings and one of her children, and whatever pain she bore, she kept to herself. Until a few years ago, when her mind began to slow, the sparkle in her eyes began to dim, and for the first time I saw her react with mindless anger and fear. If there is a crueler disease than Alzheimer's, I don't want to know about it.

In her confusion, when she didn't know where she was or what decade she was in, she was full of restless energy. She had to get home; Mother would worry.

Tonight, just at dusk, her long twilight drew to an end, and she went home.

Okay, so it ain't exactly "Oz."

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:52:03 GMT

The Huffington Post is reporting that con man Bernie Madoff got in a fight with a fellow inmate over the stock market. Madoff apparently won.

So without further ado, from the home office at Eglin Air Force Base, the Top five signs you're in a white-collar prison:

1. The prison gangs are the "Bulls" and the "Bears"
2. You've learned to fashion a shiv from a copy of the Wall Street Journal
3. Conjugal visits with former clients (why stop screwing them now?)
4. Vocational training includes Sarbanes-Oxley compliance
5. Prison bitches called "interns"

Welcome to 1979

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:55:15 GMT

Okay, so let's recap. We're in a deep recession with skyrocketing unemployment. U.S. automakers are circling the drain. The US is calling for a boycott of Iran. There's a swine flu epidemic. And now, in the latest cover version of a disco-era hit, the Justice Department is investigating IBM for its dominance of the mainframe computing market.

Forget about Hollywood. It's the real world that's running out of ideas.

No he di'n't!

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:33:54 GMT

One of the best, and most inexplicable, anchor bloopers ever. h/t Jon Stewart.