Elevate the Ether
Filed Under Media, Musings, Technology | Leave a Comment
In the last few months, Gail Collins of the New York Times has become one my most-favorite pundits, making clear, concise points with a keen sense of humor.
This morning she looks at those insufferable computer upgrade notices that are seemingly always there, and always ready, willing and able to promise a more-wonderful life in the ether.
It’s depressing to realize that my computer is more bent on self-improvement than I am. At home, my laptop is so ready to update that it can barely be constrained.
The other day, I found three different pleas floating around on the screen. The “Dell Support Center Automatic Upgrade” was the most tempting since it sounded as if the computer wanted to give me a really good seat on a plane.
…
There was a time when I would have responded, but nothing good ever seemed to come of that. The updated computers were never any better at doing the things I wanted to do than the old ones. And there’s always the possibility that I could trigger an inadvertent disaster.
(Illustration found here).
The reason Collins’ commentary so struck me, forcing me to respond is that the “Upgrade” bullshit on my laptop is always striking without warning — although there are still those little floating notices, the real bitch is when they ‘Upgrade’ without saying a damn thing.
The last two days, when I turned on the laptop, went through the opening stages and tried to log on to Mozilla Firefox and out into the InterWeb, some bad shit would seemingly appear — white screen, the little circling indicator bubbling over with enthusiasm — that would scare the techno-shit out of me.
I couldn’t move, nothing happened — the little circling indicator would keep bubbling along.
After manually shutting off the computer a couple of times, a little box would appear and tell me that the guts of this machine was in the process of upgrading with “One of three updates complete: Do Not Turn Off Computer.”
WTF!
Technology can be dangerous to the ignorant.
After recalling how her Blackberry wouldn’t do anything other than re-dial the telephone number of a racist former US senator, Collins allows a mechanical conspiracy:
My darkest suspicion is that my computers are preparing to join their comrades in overthrowing humanity so machines can rule the earth.
I have seen quite a few movies on this theme, and really, the signs are everywhere.
The other day, Jim Dwyer reported in The Times about a man in Brooklyn whose oven broiler turns on every time the cellphone rings.
Experts think this is caused by electromagnetic interference.
However, I believe the oven is ticked off because its owners, in typical New York fashion, use it for storage rather than for actual cooking.
And it is in cahoots with the cellphone, which probably is resentful because it is not allowed to spend its time doing the things cellphones really enjoy, like talking to Trent Lott.
Read Collins’ entire post here.
This brings us to the conclusion that… Shit! Gotta upgrade or die…
Historical Horror of the Shame
Filed Under Madness, Media, Orwellian | Leave a Comment
In my eighth-grade history class (circa 1962), we would have studied a historical document similar to the one released on Monday, and although content might have been far less graphic, one thing was for sure – it would not be anywhere, anyhow at all connected to the US; most-likely from centuries past, in some more cruel and violent age.
The Spanish Inquisition, maybe.
No great gut surprises in the at-long-last release of a May 2004 CIA IG report on “Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogations Activities,” which finally found the light of day after nearly five years — torture is still torture and the US government was making ugly in the name of ALL US peoples.
Just a little sample of the back-ass-wards approach of the arrogant madness of George Jr.’s tenure in power and how they knew what they were doing was way-wrong: “This looks like the kind of stuff Congressional hearings are made of.” Waterboarding, for example, would “shock the conscience of any legal body looking at the results of the interrogations or possibly even the interrogators. Somebody needs to be considering how history will look back at this.”
(Illustration found here).
History is in the now, not tomorrow, or even yesterday.
Intelligence isn’t the central word with the CIA — the sledgehammer approach is its historical mainstay and have been using torture, threatening to use torture and teaching how to torture for a long, long time, as the big difference here this week (and really since Abu Ghraib) is the secret has become way-more exposed.
The naked truth, so to speak — and it runs in the face of eighth-grade history of the US being the light of the planet, the best place on earth to live, where freedom and “doing the right thing” the centerpiece of American society.
Although the US did practice genocide, did screw around with governments in South America (and in the Middle East, i.e., Iran) and did drop a bomb on a Japanese city that started the whole world crying, never before in public has the nastiness been so revealed — the emperor has no clothes.
Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish has the near-perfect prose:
Notice the shift from the standards of the past.
In the past, the US was known for being a country whose soldiers would never mistreat prisoners; now, the US wants the world to know that US custody is something to be dreaded.
That’s what Cheney did to America.
He’s proud of it.
If you are ever captured by a US soldier, and suspected of terrorism, you know that torture will be coming soon.
The values of Washington and Eisenhower and Reagan are inverted.
The reputation of the US as a defender of human rights is reversed.
The point is that America must be feared for its willingness to abandon all human rights.
And the point, therefore, has already been made.
There’s no putting the torture genie back in the bottle.
The IG’s report released this week has been very-heavily pre-marked — the word, redacted, has become synonymous with all of George Jr.’s misdeeds from his entire time in office, and among the word’s numerous definitions, to make ready for publication; edit or revise, also includes, black out – suppress by censorship as for political reasons — and only in time will the full, ugly story be exposed.
Maybe.
The report: “Though heavily redacted, the version of the report made public this week documents stomach-turning practices, apart from the hundreds of waterboardings, which we already knew had occurred. There was emotional torture: One detainee was told that if another attack occurred, his children would be killed, and another was told that, if he didn’t cooperate, the interrogators would “get your mother in here.” There were near-strangulations, mock executions and threats to maim prisoners with power drills.”
Also on Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced John Durham, the Connecticut-based prosecutor who is already investigating the destruction of videotapes of CIA interrogations, will conduct a widening exam into all this torture mess, but will only go after the fall guys and not George Jr., Dick Cheney or any of those young shithead-lawyers who wrote all those infamous “torture memos” released earlier this year.
Not everybody wants any kind of CIA investigation.
Reportedly, CIA Director Leon Panetta pitched a bitch-fit, “profanity-laced screaming match,” at the White House over investigations into agency misdeeds, even threatening to quit.
ABC News:
Amid reports that Panetta had threatened to quit just seven months after taking over at the spy agency, other insiders tell ABCNews.com that senior White House staff members are already discussing a possible shake-up of top national security officials.
“You can expect a larger than normal turnover in the next year,” a senior adviser to Obama on intelligence matters told ABCNews.com.
Since 9/11, the CIA has had five directors or acting directors.
Panetta should quit or be replaced — making it a quick six in eight years.
Supposedly, the CIA works for the US peoples, and the spy agency should let their bosses in on whatever is going bad or wrong in the organization — the CIA most-likely needs an ass-whipping.
Glenn Greenwald has really been covering this mess like a fly on some real-bad shit.
First, his post Monday on the IG report itself, found here — he breaks down the ugly and even title’s the piece, “What every American should be made to learn about the IG Torture Report.”
And on Tuesday, Greenwald launches into those defenders of torture — that post is found here.
Must reads.
The earth and all those dwell upon it are living in an extreme-interesting period of history — great economic and climate changes are not only a-coming, but are here now, not to mention the horror of wars and beyond-rumors of wars waging all over the globe — and for US peoples, a time to witness how a constitutionally-mandated democracy could end up so shamefully deep in the toilet over such a short space.
Down the Baseline
Filed Under Media, Politics | Leave a Comment
Last summer, I had some sort of political epiphany as candidate Barack Obama near-nonchalantly shot/tossed a basketball in front of a crowd of US troops in Afghanistan — Too cool for school.
One can watch the event here.
From a Washington Post/ABC News poll released yesterday:
Among all Americans, 49 percent now express confidence that Obama will make the right decisions for the country, down from 60 percent at the 100-day mark in his presidency.
Forty-nine percent now say they think he will be able to spearhead significant improvements in the system, down nearly 20 percentage points from before he took office.
As challenges to Obama’s initiatives have mounted over the summer, pessimism in the nation’s direction has risen: Fifty-five percent see things as pretty seriously on the wrong track, up from 48 percent in April.
…
Before Obama’s inauguration, 61 percent of independents expressed confidence in his ability to make the right decisions for the country. That number fell to 52 percent about 100 days into his presidency and now sits at 41 percent. Confidence in his judgment has also slipped substantially among seniors.
And the problems seem to run in deep, deep water:
WaPo polling analyst (Jennifer) Agiesta cautioned that independents were likely a greater factor, but she said Obama’s problems among Dems and liberals were clearly playing a key role:
“This is the first sign that something is going wrong with his base.”
No wonder — the Mid East wars are turning shitty.
And along that baseline is a scream to bring the troops home: A poll of 1001 U.S. adults published in the Washington Post on Thursday found that 51 percent said the Afghan war was “not worth fighting,” compared to 47 percent who said it was. Among Democrats, it was 70 percent to 27 percent against the war.
And like some bad-plotted story, Obama might encounter a real hurricane this weekend as he trips up to Martha’s Vineyard for a holiday — As the world goes to shit in a wire basket.
Clueless Shock
Filed Under Finance, Media, Musings | Leave a Comment
As the economy tanks, the more wealthy of us are also going down the drain, albeit in slower, easier fashion.
From the New York Times yesterday:
But economists say — and data is beginning to show — that a significant change may in fact be under way. The rich, as a group, are no longer getting richer.
Over the last two years, they have become poorer. And many may not return to their old levels of wealth and income anytime soon.
…
Last year, the number of Americans with a net worth of at least $30 million dropped 24 percent, according to CapGemini and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management.
Monthly income from stock dividends, which is concentrated among the affluent, has fallen more than 20 percent since last summer, the biggest such decline since the government began keeping records in 1959.
Bill Gates, Warren E. Buffett, the heirs to the Wal-Mart Stores fortune and the founders of Google each lost billions last year, according to Forbes magazine.
In one stark example, John McAfee, an entrepreneur who founded the antivirus software company that bears his name, is now worth about $4 million, from a peak of more than $100 million.
Mr. McAfee will soon auction off his last big property because he needs cash to pay his bills after having been caught off guard by the simultaneous crash in real estate and stocks.
“I had no clue,” he said, “that there would be this tandem collapse.”
Clueless is the cue.
Former Fed honcho Big Al Greenspan also had no clue:
“In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working,” Waxman said.
“Absolutely, precisely,” Greenspan replied. “You know, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I have been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.”
Enough to make a grown man cry.
And Big Al’s replacement also keeps the shock pity flowing.
The US and the whole-wide world have arisen from the ashes of fiscal foolishness:
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the global economy is “beginning to emerge” from a recession after “aggressive” action by central banks and governments.
“After contracting sharply over the past year, economic activity appears to be leveling out, both in the United States and abroad, and the prospects for a return to growth in the near term appear good…”
Be afraid, be very afraid…
Big Ben blubbered last summer — June 9, 2008, to be exact: “The risk that the economy has entered a substantial downturn appears to have diminished over the past month or so.”
I’m just plain shocked…
The Late, Great News Game
Filed Under Media, Musings | Leave a Comment
UPDATE BELOW
“I’m glad you’re not overreacting. What do you wanna run?”
“I don’t know. What do I wanna run? — They didn’t do it.”
“They didn’t do it? You don’t have close to that. You have unattributed cops.”
“She doesn’t have ‘Gotcha!’”
“You don’t have “Gotcha!” for page one until you have a shot of the kids.”
“So we’re going on the perp walk.”
“What time do they walk?”
“So we stretch it a little — You gonna pay for that?”
“Yes, we stretch the deadline to eight o’clock. If we get art on the two kids at the walk of shame, it’s “Gotcha!” If we miss them, the subway is page one.”
“The subway is bullshit!”
“You don’t have it, you know it. You wanna run the story? You got five hours. Get the story. Do your job! Do your job!”
– Executive Editor Bernie White admonishing his hyper-active Metro chief in ‘The Paper.’
(Illustration found here).
Don Hewitt, creator of “60 Minutes” and a pioneer in broadcast journalism, died Wednesday at age 86.
Among the many accolades to be planted at the feet of Mr. Hewitt in the next few days, and there will be many, one of the most-interesting is seemingly a nod towards the current ugly brand of TV news.
From the Washington Post’s Hewitt obit:
Mr. Hewitt’s impact on television was almost unparalleled, said Marvin Kalb, founding director of Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy and a former reporter for CBS and NBC News.
“We never made money before ’60 Minutes,’ ” Kalb said of news and public affairs programs.
“That had probably, with the exception of the introduction of the Internet, the most profound impact on television news.
It meant that everybody else had to make money, and in the quest for profit, standards began to fall.
Then add the Internet and you can see the powerful impact the combination of new technology and news profitability had upon the quality of the product.”
And the ‘quality of the product’ nowadays sucks.
‘Money’ is a key word in Kalb’s comment above.
And if truth be known, money was also part of the ideal for another journalist (though not really the right word, ‘journalist,’ for this guy) who died this week, Robert Novak, dead from cancer.
He once remarked in an interview that Medicare wasn’t needed, and when reminded of the folks benefited by the program — the poor and elderly — Novak shrugged with a quip, “We all die in the end…”
And like Hewitt, Novak was an influence on the current state of TV news, though, it will be debated whether it was for good or bad — Novak made popular the in-the-face, big mouth quasi-journalistic approach now popular on Fox News.
Both these old dead guys contributed to the sleaze, one most-likely inadvertently, and the other most-likely didn’t give a shit.
Prior to the financial success of “60 Minutes,” TV news was a network’s freebie, a “public trust” venture that didn’t really depend upon making money.
Although Hewitt would innovate a bunch of new ideas, like cue cards and graphics on screen during the 1950s, even staging the first televised presidential debate (between Nixon and JFK) and expanding CBS news to half-an-hour, it was the news-magazine format that changed the whole game.
Quickly after its launch in September, 1968, “60 Minutes” climbed to the top of the TV rating and has near-about stayed there: The show remained in the top 10 for 23 years, hitting No. 1 five times and earning 13 Peabody Award during his tenure. In the most recent TV season that ended in May, the program ranked No. 13, averaging 14.3 million viewers.
And like the entertainment division, high ratings mean big bucks.
Although “60 Minutes” practiced good journalism for the most part, the problem was in the imitators.
The networks (not much to cable in them days) responded — ABC with “20/20,” puffing the career of one Barbara Walters, but NBC never ponied up with a similar show (at least nothing I could Google).
And TV news transformed news gathering in general, moving from straight reporting to cross-dressing entertainment with journalism, thus slowly and surely the print side of the industry started its long, slow slide into oblivion.
In 1975, the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE), the bailiwick of print journalism, revised and renamed the 1922 “Canons of Journalism” to a “Statement of Principles” (about the same thing, but in easier language) and again in 1996.
Both new versions, however, left out a critical ending to the 1922 edition, the claim of “Decency“:
A newspaper cannot escape conviction of insincerity if while professing high moral purpose it supplies incentives to base conduct, such as are to be found in details of crime and vice, publication of which is not demonstrably for the general good.
Lacking authority to enforce its canons the journalism here represented can but express the hope that deliberate pandering to vicious instincts will encounter effective public disapproval or yield to the influence of a preponderant professional condemnation.
And insincerity is now part of the problem, and the problem is so bad, the ASNE, for only the second time in its history (1945), canceled its annual convention for 2009, citing “…uniquely stressful period in our business as we face both structural change and deep recession.”
No shit, Sherlock.
This year alone, at least 10 major newspapers, including such giants as The Philadelphia Daily News, The Miami Herald, The Boston Globe and The Chicago Sun-Times, were on the financial ropes and were slashing newsroom staff or closing altogether.
The demise earlier this year of the fabled 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News — an award-winning, highly professional outfit — can be seen as a microcosm of the industry.
In Time magazine’s obit for the newspaper:
In shuttering an operation sprung in 1859 from a gold-mining camp just blocks from its downtown Denver home, Scripps directly or obliquely blamed everything — the economy, the Internet, demographics — and everybody — Denver Post panjandrum William Dean Singleton, ignorant consumers, bloggers — for the diminished tabloid’s demise. They certainly were factors.
But the black hats in this sad Western tale are the suits: the Scripps’ newspaper executives whose ineptitude over the past 25 years fumbled away a prime market to a competitor they should have killed off two decades ago.
The ‘suits’ and greed once again.
Even in young reporter Mark Twain‘s day, newspapers survived through its community, good or bad:
Twain witnessed a Chinese man who was chased and stoned by hoodlums under the eye of a policeman who did nothing to interfere.
“I wrote up the incident with considerable warmth and holy indignation,” Twain wrote.
“There was fire in it and I believe there was literature.”
He was astounded when the article didn’t appear.
The editor of the paper explained that “the Call was…the paper of the poor; it was the only cheap paper. It gathered its livelihood from the poor and must respect their prejudices or perish….The Call could not afford to publish articles criticizing the hoodlums for stoning Chinamen.”
Twain concluded, “I felt a deep shame in being situated as I was — slave of such a journal as the Morning Call.”
Of course, the movie quoted above, The Paper, represents the ideal of newspaper journalism, a position of importance in the community and with those professionals working in its crazed newsroom.
Noted film reviewer Roger Ebert nailed it:
Watching “The Paper” got me in touch all over again with how good it feels to work at the top of your form, on a story you believe in, on deadline.
Here on the movie beat everything is pretty neatly scheduled and we don’t cover a lot of crimes (“Ace Ventura” excepted).
But I used to write real news on deadline, and those were some of the happiest days of my life.
This movie knows how that feels.
Ebert also threw in a far-distant-preview barb in his review — and this from March 1994 — on the ‘suits’ knowing all about journalism:
Last week, the new owner of The Sun-Times, Conrad Black, was quoted as criticizing journalists: They get too involved in the story, they all want to be stars, they’re cynical, they’re disillusioned, and a lot of them drink too much.
Everybody seemed scandalized that he would say such things. I think the problem was that he couched them as criticisms. A lot of the people I’ve worked with would use them as boasts. “The Paper” knows all about that, too.
Damnit! You know I can’t talk — I’m on deadline!
UPDATE: 8/20/09 PM
Just came across Glenn Greenwald’s latest, which goes into a more-fine detail on nowadays journalism, scoping in on the Tom Ridge political/terror alert bullshit and with one line nails what goes for MSM news reporting these days: ‘These journalists are the anti-I.F. Stones.’ (Most-excellent ring to it).
Read Greenwald’s post here.