This class has given me access to some extremely useful resources--legal documents, custom searches, government databases, this is the sort of stuff a compulsive researcher lives for. I only hope I will be able to find the time to sort it all out over the summer, become proficient at some of it. This 34 year old drug, alcohol, and estrogen addled brain may be the surest bet in getting there eventually, but it doesn't move so quickly and there was a tremendous lot to absorb in a decidedly short time. I suspect that the younger students (or at least the ones who cared to do so) assimilated this information more easily than I am able to do, we all grew up in a technological maelstrom, but my first computer was a Commodore 64 running on DOS. The first time I had opportunity to use the internet, I was 19 and well on my way to intellectual stagnation. I can only assume that many of the online resources explored in class were not as fantastical and exciting to others as they were to me.
The thing I hate most about school is the pervasive feeling that I'll never have the time to thoroughly grasp anything I have learned until I'm no longer a student and have forgotten the vast majority of it. In this class, however, I have learned things with nearly universal practical application to the other educational endeavors which normally keep me too busy to learn anything at all. I'm looking forward to putting all of this to use.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Taco Night?
The most important question in my world right now is this:
How many calories are there in a Taco Bell Beefy Crunch Burrito?
God bless America, they made like, laws and stuff recently forcing fast food companies to make their nutrition information accessible.
http://www.tacobell.com/nutrition/information
Looks like I'm I'm just barely in the clear with 500 calories, 200 from fat (my rule is nothing over 500 calories, less than 250 of them can be from fat)
But let's stop pretending that I'm not going to want two hard shell tacos supreme as well. . . .
Uggg, that's an additional 400 calories, 200 from fat. First they start bugging me about a major field of study, then this. Why does it seem like life is conspiring to make me choose between things :(
How many calories are there in a Taco Bell Beefy Crunch Burrito?
God bless America, they made like, laws and stuff recently forcing fast food companies to make their nutrition information accessible.
http://www.tacobell.com/nutrition/information
Looks like I'm I'm just barely in the clear with 500 calories, 200 from fat (my rule is nothing over 500 calories, less than 250 of them can be from fat)
But let's stop pretending that I'm not going to want two hard shell tacos supreme as well. . . .
Uggg, that's an additional 400 calories, 200 from fat. First they start bugging me about a major field of study, then this. Why does it seem like life is conspiring to make me choose between things :(
In Search of 72
I was listening to someone complain about dating guys wearing clothes from 1972, when it occurred to me that outside of a vague generalized conception of a stylistic upheaval between the 60's and the 70's, I can't really picture with any specificity what a stylish outfit from 1972 looks like.
When in doubt about fashion trends, the place to look is Hollywood.
First stop: Wikipedia's listing of the 10 highest grossing films in 1972 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_in_film).
Oooooo, #2 is The Poseidon Adventure, I remember loving this movie--Gene Hackman has never since been so dramatic, Shelly Winters had never before been so Reubenesque, and Carl Malden. . . .okay, he was pretty much the same as usual.
Next stop: Google images, The Poseidon Adventure (http://www.google.com/search?q=the+poseidon+adventure&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1366&bih=638)
This is certainly a gem:
But in any era, rich people on boats aren't representative of much other than rich people on boats. Perhaps a more appropriate avenue of inquiry would be the #1 grossing film of 72, The Godfather. Diane Keaton has never been my favorite actress, but no one can deny that she has always lived on the cutting edge of urban fashion.
Eureka!
Loud pattern, excessive frills, but on the whole, I've seen worse.
When in doubt about fashion trends, the place to look is Hollywood.
First stop: Wikipedia's listing of the 10 highest grossing films in 1972 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_in_film).
Oooooo, #2 is The Poseidon Adventure, I remember loving this movie--Gene Hackman has never since been so dramatic, Shelly Winters had never before been so Reubenesque, and Carl Malden. . . .okay, he was pretty much the same as usual.
Next stop: Google images, The Poseidon Adventure (http://www.google.com/search?q=the+poseidon+adventure&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1366&bih=638)
This is certainly a gem:
But in any era, rich people on boats aren't representative of much other than rich people on boats. Perhaps a more appropriate avenue of inquiry would be the #1 grossing film of 72, The Godfather. Diane Keaton has never been my favorite actress, but no one can deny that she has always lived on the cutting edge of urban fashion.
Eureka!
Loud pattern, excessive frills, but on the whole, I've seen worse.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Under Where?
The "C string" (https://www.cstringdirect.com/) is marketed as an innovative and stylish new product which will eliminate panty lines and tan lines. There is no area of the product's direct order website which does not feature hypersexualized images of improbably thin, young, and beautiful women and also omni-present are product-claims in large lettering with emphatic exclamation points.
There is a section of the site devoted to consumer testimonials featuring the rave product-reviews of ostensibly satisfied customers.
The "Ladies Classic Brief" from Fruit of the Loom (http://www.fruit.com/ladies_girls.shtml?D22030) is marketed as a comfortable pair of cotton panties, a description which encompasses the entirety of the page's product-claims, printed without punctuation in bold, but small and unassuming font. Though there is a beautiful woman depicted in the advertisement, she appears to be at least in her 30's, she does not dominate the image (which is of a plastic-wrapped multi-pack of panties), and her imagery is not overtly sexual. There are no consumer testimonials in evidence on this site.
One can only assume that the C string's comparative excess in advertising is due to the fact that no human being would ever purchase or wear one, as such I believe that it's also safe to conclude that the product testimonials are false.
The Ladies Classic brief needs little promotion, it sells itself (with the help of a few creatively worded signals such as "generous full cut" to those of us who are neither improbably thin nor young). It's made of cotton, it's more comfortable than a thong, and those two facts are enough to sell a gazillion pairs. When deciding between competing products, one of the most important things to keep in mind is that an item accompanied by a huge advertising budget probably needs one to compensate for its uselessness.
There is a section of the site devoted to consumer testimonials featuring the rave product-reviews of ostensibly satisfied customers.
The "Ladies Classic Brief" from Fruit of the Loom (http://www.fruit.com/ladies_girls.shtml?D22030) is marketed as a comfortable pair of cotton panties, a description which encompasses the entirety of the page's product-claims, printed without punctuation in bold, but small and unassuming font. Though there is a beautiful woman depicted in the advertisement, she appears to be at least in her 30's, she does not dominate the image (which is of a plastic-wrapped multi-pack of panties), and her imagery is not overtly sexual. There are no consumer testimonials in evidence on this site.
One can only assume that the C string's comparative excess in advertising is due to the fact that no human being would ever purchase or wear one, as such I believe that it's also safe to conclude that the product testimonials are false.
The Ladies Classic brief needs little promotion, it sells itself (with the help of a few creatively worded signals such as "generous full cut" to those of us who are neither improbably thin nor young). It's made of cotton, it's more comfortable than a thong, and those two facts are enough to sell a gazillion pairs. When deciding between competing products, one of the most important things to keep in mind is that an item accompanied by a huge advertising budget probably needs one to compensate for its uselessness.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Fringe-research
So, I was finishing writing a blog about piracy when it hit me--the latest episode of Fringe might be available online tonight!
Pirate site #1 (http://ganjavideo.com/a/1/fringe) says, no.
Pirate site #2 (http://www.tv-dome.net/?s=fringe) says, no as well (but in a marginally ruder tone of voice)
Legal site (http://www.hulu.com/search?query=Fringe&st=0&fs=) unsurprisingly says, no.
This is all very unacceptable, I've been watching Fringe online for nearly a month, in which time I have seen every episode to date--the last three within a day of their release to people fancy enough to have cable. Saturday night is Fringe night, right after research blogs--such is the way the well-oiled machine of my life functions.
Perhaps IMDB can shed some light on the nature of this travesty--it was certainly helpful when I needed to know why Agent Francis (who was killed by a robotic shape-shifter early in the 2nd season) inexplicably appeared in an episode near the beginning of the third season (as it turns out, they had already filmed the episode in the 2nd season, but had never aired it and needed some filler).
Alas, cruelty and lament! IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1119644/episodes#season-3) says that the next episode will not be released for another two weeks.
Didn't television shows follow a strict one-a-week format when I was little? With none of the two weeks here, three weeks there sporadic nonsense until the off season began? Maybe I'll try to find out next blog.
Pirate site #1 (http://ganjavideo.com/a/1/fringe) says, no.
Pirate site #2 (http://www.tv-dome.net/?s=fringe) says, no as well (but in a marginally ruder tone of voice)
Legal site (http://www.hulu.com/search?query=Fringe&st=0&fs=) unsurprisingly says, no.
This is all very unacceptable, I've been watching Fringe online for nearly a month, in which time I have seen every episode to date--the last three within a day of their release to people fancy enough to have cable. Saturday night is Fringe night, right after research blogs--such is the way the well-oiled machine of my life functions.
Perhaps IMDB can shed some light on the nature of this travesty--it was certainly helpful when I needed to know why Agent Francis (who was killed by a robotic shape-shifter early in the 2nd season) inexplicably appeared in an episode near the beginning of the third season (as it turns out, they had already filmed the episode in the 2nd season, but had never aired it and needed some filler).
Alas, cruelty and lament! IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1119644/episodes#season-3) says that the next episode will not be released for another two weeks.
Didn't television shows follow a strict one-a-week format when I was little? With none of the two weeks here, three weeks there sporadic nonsense until the off season began? Maybe I'll try to find out next blog.
A Pirate's Life for Me
When Napster first appeared on the world-wide web in June of 1999 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster), the music industry trembled in fear. If people were allowed free and limitless access to perfect digital copies of any song they liked, how would the struggling artists, producers, and distributors who create hit albums be able to survive? Let's find out.
Over the last 12 years, pirating technology has exponentially improved and its usage has become a common fact of American culture. It would be interesting to learn if, in the wake of pirate-culture, there are any record companies left and if so, how they are faring?
Lady Gaga alone sold an estimated 50 million albums and 51 million singles between 2008 and 2011 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Gaga) for her label Interscope Records. Each copy of The Fame Monster goes for $10.45 at Wal-Mart (http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=lady+gaga++albums&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=5WE&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivnso&biw=1366&bih=638&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=4780195101952206667&sa=X&ei=uuSXTZW8DO-K0QHdzIz5Cw&ved=0CEwQ8wIwAQ#), assuming her other two CD's are similarly priced, that's approximately $522,500,000 in gross album sales, without including her 51 million singles). So much for the starving record companies, but what about the starving artists?
Without figuring in royalties, endorsements, or sign-on bonuses, Lady Gaga grossed an estimated $133,000,000 for 2010 in concert ticket sales alone (http://www.silive.com/entertainment/music/index.ssf/2010/12/2010_concert_tour_revenue_tick.html).
All of this means one of two things: either people in the music business live in an alternate universe where Earth-currency is so devalued it's exchange rate with the local tender is 1,000,000 to 1, or the recording industry is doing really well.
Why all the fuss then? The RIAA is still dumping millions into lawsuits against illegal downloaders and downloading sites, it seems an awful waste if piracy doesn't really affect profits--unless you consider power.
Many people have never considered the implications of the power record companies have enjoyed since shortly after Thomas Jefferson invented the phonograph, but if you've ever listened to a record, the radio, an 8 track, Music television, a cassette, a CD, or the radio--you've listened to something the recording industry has wanted you to hear.
Record companies don't simply sell albums, they control music itself--as completely and ruthlessly as De Beers controls diamonds. No studio conglomerate can tell you what to like, but make no mistake that it can decide what you hear. The greatest band in the world may be playing two shows a night every Friday in Gallup, NM, but if you don't live there, you'll never know about it unless a record company wants you to--or unless you have access to a P2P file-sharing network.
In its relentless assault upon bit torrent networks and free media hosts such as Youtube, the recording industry isn't trying to lock down a measly few million in pirated property, it's trying to retain a monopoly on its product--and it knows it's running out of time. Soon it will occur to people that they can produce/distribute their own music and decide what to like on their own--not as a hobby or an illegal act of piracy, but as the most sensible way to interface with a limitless world of musical expression. And when that happens, the industry is dead.
Over the last 12 years, pirating technology has exponentially improved and its usage has become a common fact of American culture. It would be interesting to learn if, in the wake of pirate-culture, there are any record companies left and if so, how they are faring?
Lady Gaga alone sold an estimated 50 million albums and 51 million singles between 2008 and 2011 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Gaga) for her label Interscope Records. Each copy of The Fame Monster goes for $10.45 at Wal-Mart (http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=lady+gaga++albums&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=5WE&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=ivnso&biw=1366&bih=638&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=4780195101952206667&sa=X&ei=uuSXTZW8DO-K0QHdzIz5Cw&ved=0CEwQ8wIwAQ#), assuming her other two CD's are similarly priced, that's approximately $522,500,000 in gross album sales, without including her 51 million singles). So much for the starving record companies, but what about the starving artists?
Without figuring in royalties, endorsements, or sign-on bonuses, Lady Gaga grossed an estimated $133,000,000 for 2010 in concert ticket sales alone (http://www.silive.com/entertainment/music/index.ssf/2010/12/2010_concert_tour_revenue_tick.html).
All of this means one of two things: either people in the music business live in an alternate universe where Earth-currency is so devalued it's exchange rate with the local tender is 1,000,000 to 1, or the recording industry is doing really well.
Why all the fuss then? The RIAA is still dumping millions into lawsuits against illegal downloaders and downloading sites, it seems an awful waste if piracy doesn't really affect profits--unless you consider power.
Many people have never considered the implications of the power record companies have enjoyed since shortly after Thomas Jefferson invented the phonograph, but if you've ever listened to a record, the radio, an 8 track, Music television, a cassette, a CD, or the radio--you've listened to something the recording industry has wanted you to hear.
Record companies don't simply sell albums, they control music itself--as completely and ruthlessly as De Beers controls diamonds. No studio conglomerate can tell you what to like, but make no mistake that it can decide what you hear. The greatest band in the world may be playing two shows a night every Friday in Gallup, NM, but if you don't live there, you'll never know about it unless a record company wants you to--or unless you have access to a P2P file-sharing network.
In its relentless assault upon bit torrent networks and free media hosts such as Youtube, the recording industry isn't trying to lock down a measly few million in pirated property, it's trying to retain a monopoly on its product--and it knows it's running out of time. Soon it will occur to people that they can produce/distribute their own music and decide what to like on their own--not as a hobby or an illegal act of piracy, but as the most sensible way to interface with a limitless world of musical expression. And when that happens, the industry is dead.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Are Turtles Made of Beef?
Recently, while unlocking the secrets of mock turtle soup, it occurred to me that I have no idea what real turtles are made of.
The question isn't as silly as it might sound, after all--most animals seem to be made of meat. Chickens in particular, are made of poultry, cows are made of beef, and many varieties of fish are made of seafood.
After much grueling research (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle), I am pleased to report that turtles are made of a substance known as crema de tortuga, which is used in countries with flexible legal systems as a primary ingredient in cosmetics.
The question isn't as silly as it might sound, after all--most animals seem to be made of meat. Chickens in particular, are made of poultry, cows are made of beef, and many varieties of fish are made of seafood.
After much grueling research (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle), I am pleased to report that turtles are made of a substance known as crema de tortuga, which is used in countries with flexible legal systems as a primary ingredient in cosmetics.
Misinformation Overload
We never thought to appreciate encyclopedias enough; they were simple, concise, and indisputable in their unwavering authority.
In 6th grade, I wrote a report on Chaos Theory--from start to finish, all of the information I needed (or would ever be able to unearth) could be found in the hallowed pages of The Encyclopedia Britannica.
Now you can do it all from home, with or without the steep investment in encyclopedias which will ultimately be uselessly out of date. It's supposed to be simpler now--a few practiced keystrokes and you're connected with the sum total of human knowledge. Here's the catch:
The vast majority of human knowledge isn't knowledge at all, but ill conceived assumption and hearsay. Fact-checking sites like http://www.snopes.com/ can help to weed out the riffraff, but snopes can't cover everything, or even a significant fraction of everything.
As I see it, there really isn't any such thing as information overload--information is good us, and if there is so much of it that it becomes dizzying, that's good for us too. Stimulus improves cognitive capacity. But misinformation overload is another matter.
Utilizing the information bananza of the internet, I can ostensibly find a digital representation of the Pakistani Constitution in 3 seconds flat (http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/constitution/), but what I can't do is know if that representation bares any resemblance to any authentic Pakistani constitution, past or present. Believe it or not--the issue is money.
Neither I, nor a friend, nor a local library paid for that copy of Pakistan's constitution, it was free. Free things are nice, they provide me with access to stuff for which I would otherwise have to pay. But free things also take something away--our standing as satisfied or dissatisfied consumers, or more to the point: our right to complain.
Britannica depends upon sales for its existence, and those sales depend upon costumer satisfaction. If the information one finds in her $800 dollar encyclopidea-set proves to be inaccurate, she may demand a refund, and she will certainly not be buying another set as her niece's birthday present. If customer dissatisfaction with a product reaches a consistent and critical point, competing companies will exploit that fact and offer a superior product in an attempt secure the disillusioned market-share.
Incentive is the name of the game. There are certainly people offering accurate information out of the good of their hearts, but in a commodity-free market, those people are unfortunately indistinguishable from others who offer misinformation out of genuine ignorance or ulterior agenda. There isn't any incentive to devote resources to sorting it all out, because there is no profit in doing so.
The Russian people were the first to find this out the hard way when Socialist theory was misapplied to an economy that was not ready for it. When per capita income was institutionalized, specialized domestic services and products unilaterally declined in quality. The rest of us are finding out now--at least, those of us who can't afford to pay for quality.
In 6th grade, I wrote a report on Chaos Theory--from start to finish, all of the information I needed (or would ever be able to unearth) could be found in the hallowed pages of The Encyclopedia Britannica.
Now you can do it all from home, with or without the steep investment in encyclopedias which will ultimately be uselessly out of date. It's supposed to be simpler now--a few practiced keystrokes and you're connected with the sum total of human knowledge. Here's the catch:
The vast majority of human knowledge isn't knowledge at all, but ill conceived assumption and hearsay. Fact-checking sites like http://www.snopes.com/ can help to weed out the riffraff, but snopes can't cover everything, or even a significant fraction of everything.
As I see it, there really isn't any such thing as information overload--information is good us, and if there is so much of it that it becomes dizzying, that's good for us too. Stimulus improves cognitive capacity. But misinformation overload is another matter.
Utilizing the information bananza of the internet, I can ostensibly find a digital representation of the Pakistani Constitution in 3 seconds flat (http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/constitution/), but what I can't do is know if that representation bares any resemblance to any authentic Pakistani constitution, past or present. Believe it or not--the issue is money.
Neither I, nor a friend, nor a local library paid for that copy of Pakistan's constitution, it was free. Free things are nice, they provide me with access to stuff for which I would otherwise have to pay. But free things also take something away--our standing as satisfied or dissatisfied consumers, or more to the point: our right to complain.
Britannica depends upon sales for its existence, and those sales depend upon costumer satisfaction. If the information one finds in her $800 dollar encyclopidea-set proves to be inaccurate, she may demand a refund, and she will certainly not be buying another set as her niece's birthday present. If customer dissatisfaction with a product reaches a consistent and critical point, competing companies will exploit that fact and offer a superior product in an attempt secure the disillusioned market-share.
Incentive is the name of the game. There are certainly people offering accurate information out of the good of their hearts, but in a commodity-free market, those people are unfortunately indistinguishable from others who offer misinformation out of genuine ignorance or ulterior agenda. There isn't any incentive to devote resources to sorting it all out, because there is no profit in doing so.
The Russian people were the first to find this out the hard way when Socialist theory was misapplied to an economy that was not ready for it. When per capita income was institutionalized, specialized domestic services and products unilaterally declined in quality. The rest of us are finding out now--at least, those of us who can't afford to pay for quality.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
What Was The Question?
You know that you've gotten old when you suddenly realize that Meatloaf song you always loved was actually performed by The Who. There isn't room here to recount all of the reasons my boyfriend is lucky to have me, but nestled comfortably among the top 5 is the abysmal incompetence of my functional short term memory.
I can recite every term and definition from the vocabulary section of my 4th grade CTBS test, I can quote the movie "Heathers" verbatim, and (for god knows what reason) I can tell you that blanding's painted turtle embryos undergo a natural developmental process similar to the metastasis of cancerous cells which renders them immune to the effects of senescence and effectively immortal--but I can't for the life of me remember what I ate for lunch, if I ate lunch at all, or what pigheaded thing my boyfriend might have said before distracting me with something sparkly.
It makes me wonder: was it all of the bully-related head trauma in the 80s? The copious quantities of LSD in the 90s? The alcohol that saturated both of those decades and the better part of the next? Or do most people my age experience a reduced capacity for memory?
Using "When does memory start to decline" as my Google search parameter, I found this interesting article (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010814063231.htm) which purports that my memory has been continuously in decline for 10 years or more.
Of course, in the search for that article I encountered unrelated studies which claimed that sleep is essential for memory performance (I haven't gotten any since starting school in 09), which could just as well account for my cognitive malfunction as anything else.
I can recite every term and definition from the vocabulary section of my 4th grade CTBS test, I can quote the movie "Heathers" verbatim, and (for god knows what reason) I can tell you that blanding's painted turtle embryos undergo a natural developmental process similar to the metastasis of cancerous cells which renders them immune to the effects of senescence and effectively immortal--but I can't for the life of me remember what I ate for lunch, if I ate lunch at all, or what pigheaded thing my boyfriend might have said before distracting me with something sparkly.
It makes me wonder: was it all of the bully-related head trauma in the 80s? The copious quantities of LSD in the 90s? The alcohol that saturated both of those decades and the better part of the next? Or do most people my age experience a reduced capacity for memory?
Using "When does memory start to decline" as my Google search parameter, I found this interesting article (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010814063231.htm) which purports that my memory has been continuously in decline for 10 years or more.
Of course, in the search for that article I encountered unrelated studies which claimed that sleep is essential for memory performance (I haven't gotten any since starting school in 09), which could just as well account for my cognitive malfunction as anything else.
Things you can tell, just by looking
Here is a fun fact: The right to privacy does not appear anywhere in the United States constitution nor has it ever been guaranteed by law. America's laws are based primarily on autonomy and property--what this means (among other things) is that if I can see it, hear it, or smell it from public property, than it belongs as much to me (or anyone else) as it does to you. This principle of ownership extends to everything from distributing fliers with your name, telephone number, and address on them to handing out photographs taken from the sidewalk of you changing clothes in front of your bedroom window. Spooky, no?
You might say something like:
"But even the government isn't allowed to spy on us without a warrant, this surely implies a right to privacy."
To which I would respond, "The government is certainly allowed to spy on you without a warrant, spying on citizens from park-benches, cars, and through video surveillance is the fundamental basis of police-work."
At this point you might choose to refine your statement, "The government cannot unduly invade our privacy, it cannot tap our telephones or sift through our computer files/emails without a warrant."
And I would answer thus, "Though the government was once constrained as you describe, it was always based upon constitutional protections from illegal search and seizure, and not a matter of privacy. Furthermore, the 4th Amendment from which such protections stemmed was creatively maimed in the supreme court throughout Reagan's presidency (after which in most cases a refusal of consent to be searched legally constituted 'probable cause' to be searched) and then completely annihilated by George W. Bush's Homeland Security Act, which granted the government virtually unlimited power to read private emails, eavesdrop on private messaging/telephone conversations, and to conduct blanket sweeps monitoring all electronic communications in the country. You have no right to privacy."
With the advent of the internet, this already complicated and poorly understood issue of privacy became increasingly muddled--if I can see it from my own property, from my own living-room, the law must doubly support my right to possess, reproduce, and distribute it--so long as it isn't copyrighted material; I don't mean to harp on this point, but context is everything and one's understanding of this issue and the world at large will benefit from bearing in mind that unlike the civil liberties of the past, property rights are alive and well.
It is worth noting that the government is not so gung-ho in its position (or lack thereof)when private citizens are doing the snooping and it is being targeted. A brief overview of what happens when the Federales are forced to swallow their own bitter medicine can be found here: http://reticentinformation.blogspot.com/2011/02/loose-lips-and-sunken-ships.html
Now anybody can stream nearly unlimited information about anyone from anywhere in the world. Even so, many people believe that their personal information is secure, that worrying about hackers is the sole province of conspiracy theorists and paranoid malcontents. They might be right about the paranoia, but consider that I am the opposite of a hacker (A.K.A., the most computer illiterate person I know)and in 5 minutes of online blundering, I can garner my Library Orientation instructor's:
Middle initial (http://www.mylife.com/caitlinbagley)
Email address, work number, work address, photograph (http://libguides.murraystate.edu/profile.php?uid=28597),
Links to various family members/friends facebook profiles/personal information, which in turn lead to more such links with widely varying levels of security (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000726390810#!/caitbagley)
Academic contacts in both Murray and Bloomington Indiana (http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/caitlin-bagley/contacts/)
Tenure as Indiana University's student chapter president of the American Library Association (http://iuala.org/contact-us/36-executives/5-caitlin.html)
As I'm simply a student making a point and not an identity thief, hacker, government agent, or fixated psycho, I didn't take this exercise any further than the first page of Google results and a simple Facebook search. But imagine if you will, someone with more technical know-how, motivation, and/or sinister leanings devoting much more than 5 minutes to a similar project, and you might begin to understand the anxiety that some people feel about their digital information.
Let's get down to brass tacks: The only sure way to protect your digital information is to refrain from having any.
Believe it or not, there's no rule that says you have to have an account with Facebook or any other social network. If you do have a Facebook account or email address, there is nothing that can force you to register with your real name, post accurate personal information, or upload photographs of yourself. If (like myself) you do upload accurate personal information/photos to Facebook/email accounts, there are generally privacy settings which serve to make information more difficult to access.
Here is a much better blog than mine on the subject: http://news.cnet.com/2010-1071-947327.html
You might say something like:
"But even the government isn't allowed to spy on us without a warrant, this surely implies a right to privacy."
To which I would respond, "The government is certainly allowed to spy on you without a warrant, spying on citizens from park-benches, cars, and through video surveillance is the fundamental basis of police-work."
At this point you might choose to refine your statement, "The government cannot unduly invade our privacy, it cannot tap our telephones or sift through our computer files/emails without a warrant."
And I would answer thus, "Though the government was once constrained as you describe, it was always based upon constitutional protections from illegal search and seizure, and not a matter of privacy. Furthermore, the 4th Amendment from which such protections stemmed was creatively maimed in the supreme court throughout Reagan's presidency (after which in most cases a refusal of consent to be searched legally constituted 'probable cause' to be searched) and then completely annihilated by George W. Bush's Homeland Security Act, which granted the government virtually unlimited power to read private emails, eavesdrop on private messaging/telephone conversations, and to conduct blanket sweeps monitoring all electronic communications in the country. You have no right to privacy."
With the advent of the internet, this already complicated and poorly understood issue of privacy became increasingly muddled--if I can see it from my own property, from my own living-room, the law must doubly support my right to possess, reproduce, and distribute it--so long as it isn't copyrighted material; I don't mean to harp on this point, but context is everything and one's understanding of this issue and the world at large will benefit from bearing in mind that unlike the civil liberties of the past, property rights are alive and well.
It is worth noting that the government is not so gung-ho in its position (or lack thereof)when private citizens are doing the snooping and it is being targeted. A brief overview of what happens when the Federales are forced to swallow their own bitter medicine can be found here: http://reticentinformation.blogspot.com/2011/02/loose-lips-and-sunken-ships.html
Now anybody can stream nearly unlimited information about anyone from anywhere in the world. Even so, many people believe that their personal information is secure, that worrying about hackers is the sole province of conspiracy theorists and paranoid malcontents. They might be right about the paranoia, but consider that I am the opposite of a hacker (A.K.A., the most computer illiterate person I know)and in 5 minutes of online blundering, I can garner my Library Orientation instructor's:
Middle initial (http://www.mylife.com/caitlinbagley)
Email address, work number, work address, photograph (http://libguides.murraystate.edu/profile.php?uid=28597),
Links to various family members/friends facebook profiles/personal information, which in turn lead to more such links with widely varying levels of security (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000726390810#!/caitbagley)
Academic contacts in both Murray and Bloomington Indiana (http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/caitlin-bagley/contacts/)
Tenure as Indiana University's student chapter president of the American Library Association (http://iuala.org/contact-us/36-executives/5-caitlin.html)
As I'm simply a student making a point and not an identity thief, hacker, government agent, or fixated psycho, I didn't take this exercise any further than the first page of Google results and a simple Facebook search. But imagine if you will, someone with more technical know-how, motivation, and/or sinister leanings devoting much more than 5 minutes to a similar project, and you might begin to understand the anxiety that some people feel about their digital information.
Let's get down to brass tacks: The only sure way to protect your digital information is to refrain from having any.
Believe it or not, there's no rule that says you have to have an account with Facebook or any other social network. If you do have a Facebook account or email address, there is nothing that can force you to register with your real name, post accurate personal information, or upload photographs of yourself. If (like myself) you do upload accurate personal information/photos to Facebook/email accounts, there are generally privacy settings which serve to make information more difficult to access.
Here is a much better blog than mine on the subject: http://news.cnet.com/2010-1071-947327.html
Saturday, February 26, 2011
"How To Make Mock-Turtle Soup" or "I'm Really Tired & She Said it Would Be Okay"
I have seen the words "mock-turtle soup" a thousand times while skimming through various recipe books, but they have never inspired me to investigate further. I had "actual" turtle soup once in Ocalla, Florida, and though it was good, it was not good enough to interest me in attempting to approximate it in absence of the unfortunate turtle that gave it its flavor. But tonight, I am feeling saucy, and the question I can't get out of my head is this: What is a mock-turtle?
Based on a hot tip from a sympathetic party, I will begin my investigation at smitten kitchen (http://smittenkitchen.com/). Perhaps mock-turtle soup is not as popular today as it was in the 50s when most of my cookbooks were published, this site's search engine gave me the digital equivalent of looking at me like I am stupid. Touche, smitten kitchen, touche--you've won this time.
I guess it's back to the drawing board (aka: google.com).
Typing "mock-turtle soup recipe" into google gets an immediate hit from "cooks.com", a site I visit often--though she can be a fickle lover (such as with the 'Shepard's Pie debacle' of '09), she is usually steadfast and reliable.
According to the site's top recipe (http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1748,149175-233204,00.html), a mock turtle is ground beef seasoned with ketchup, Worcestershire, sherry, sugar, cloves, allspice, and bayleaves. This mysterious combination of ingredients evokes numerous questions and bizarre speculations about what real turtles are made of, but they will have to wait till next Saturday.
Based on a hot tip from a sympathetic party, I will begin my investigation at smitten kitchen (http://smittenkitchen.com/). Perhaps mock-turtle soup is not as popular today as it was in the 50s when most of my cookbooks were published, this site's search engine gave me the digital equivalent of looking at me like I am stupid. Touche, smitten kitchen, touche--you've won this time.
I guess it's back to the drawing board (aka: google.com).
Typing "mock-turtle soup recipe" into google gets an immediate hit from "cooks.com", a site I visit often--though she can be a fickle lover (such as with the 'Shepard's Pie debacle' of '09), she is usually steadfast and reliable.
According to the site's top recipe (http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1748,149175-233204,00.html), a mock turtle is ground beef seasoned with ketchup, Worcestershire, sherry, sugar, cloves, allspice, and bayleaves. This mysterious combination of ingredients evokes numerous questions and bizarre speculations about what real turtles are made of, but they will have to wait till next Saturday.
Lenny Bruce is not afraid. . . .
I don't mean to sound curmudgeonly, but I'm a little bit touchy about this subject. The first time I ever saw a cellphone was on a horrific television program called "Saved By The Bell". The show centered around a group of narcissistic and affluent suburban high school students confronting a new nauseatingly watered-down and parent-friendly version of a typical teenage issue each episode. Just when it would begin to look like the group's pet geek wouldn't be able to buff the scratch out of dad's Hummer in time for the Spring Formal, Zack (the consummate product of Germany's top secret eugenics program during WW2 and defacto group leader) would whip out his tissue-box sized cellphone and make a call, saving the day with his astounding powers of. . . . speed dialing?
When this program was originally aired in 1989 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096694/), kids who were merely rich had pagers clipped to the waistbands of their $100 Guess jeans. People with mobile phones were either CIA agents, cocaine entrepreneurs, or hotel heiresses. I remember seeing the show and immediately thinking about Richie Rich, the gazillionaire cartoon protagonist who taught Regan-era children that if you throw enough money at any problem, it will go away. Zack and his cellphone were representative of everything wrong with post-Sesame Street America. Richie Rich had won, and in winning was reborn more powerful than ever in the form of Zack. Banjo playing frogs who sang soulfully about the hardships of being green gave way to purple dinosaurs droning about citizenship to an endlessly looping backdrop of patriotic marching music. George H.W. Bush gleefully danced atop Buckminster Fuller's grave like a madman, his malevolent eyes gleaming in the gathering darkness.
That being said, my spouse du jour bought me a cellphone in 1999. After a day of acquainting myself with what a sea-otter must feel like after being radio-tagged by National Geographic, I threw the vile device in the garbage. I tried again two years ago; texting had become fashionable and seemed like a less invasive method of having nowhere to hide. But after losing three phones (and replacing two of them) in the space of three months, I realized that like Tom Bombadil when faced with Sauron's abominable ring, the phone simply had no power over me--I could never care about one enough to be trusted to keep track of it.
A few weeks ago, a couple of girls outside of Faculty Hall--cellphones in hand--were lamenting how annoying it was that people wouldn't stop calling them. It had been a long and arduous day and I was unable to stop myself from pointing out that they could always just turn the devices off. The loudest complainant retorted that she had a sick relative, and as such was obliged to be constantly available.
It isn't that I am unsympathetic to an illness in the family (nor am a blind to the fact that a cellphone would have handily saved me a 2 mile walk home from Library Orientation two weeks ago), but when I suggested that I could remember when humanity managed to survive (however crudely) seemingly unimpeded before the advent of cellphones, they looked at me as though I were speaking Aramaic.
Now we have Smart Phones, and up til this moment I have been able to say with pride that I have no idea what one is, or what makes it so smart.
Apple (http://www.apple.com/iphone/?cid=wwa-naus-seg-iphone10-024&cp=www-seg-iphone10-smartphones&sr=sem) tells me that with an "iphone4", I can pretend like I'm Jadzea Dax Bantering from a shuttle-craft with Captain Sisko on the bridge of DeepSpace9--as tempting as that is, face to face real-time videophone conversations seem like an extension of the ever elaborate ruse that causes people to ignore what is in front of them in favor of what is not.
The phone also offers something called a "retina display", which is apparently an ultra-scientific way of saying "real sharp picture". If you were wondering why it is important (or maybe it was just me) for your telephone to display pictures in which pixels are impossibly small, the helpful demonstration picture (http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/retina-display.html) suggests that it is so you won't feel like you got ripped off when you are inspecting your display window for microscopic flaws with a powerful magnifying glass.
The next heading reads: "Multitasking. Give everything your undivided attention" followed by an explanation of how iphone4 allows users to divide their attention between several applications at once, which is just silly.
With iphone4's HD recording feature, a user need never actually be engaged in anything again! Unburdened of her life while it is going on, she can concern herself with recording it in high definition so that she may nostalgically relive events for which she was never fully present through a quasi-real digital filter.
I can't go on, it's making me sick--suffice to say that with iphone4's highspeed internet access, GPS mapping, television, video game, and music storage/streaming capabilities, no one will ever actually have learn anything, know anything, go anywhere, or experience anything firsthand ever again.
When this program was originally aired in 1989 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096694/), kids who were merely rich had pagers clipped to the waistbands of their $100 Guess jeans. People with mobile phones were either CIA agents, cocaine entrepreneurs, or hotel heiresses. I remember seeing the show and immediately thinking about Richie Rich, the gazillionaire cartoon protagonist who taught Regan-era children that if you throw enough money at any problem, it will go away. Zack and his cellphone were representative of everything wrong with post-Sesame Street America. Richie Rich had won, and in winning was reborn more powerful than ever in the form of Zack. Banjo playing frogs who sang soulfully about the hardships of being green gave way to purple dinosaurs droning about citizenship to an endlessly looping backdrop of patriotic marching music. George H.W. Bush gleefully danced atop Buckminster Fuller's grave like a madman, his malevolent eyes gleaming in the gathering darkness.
That being said, my spouse du jour bought me a cellphone in 1999. After a day of acquainting myself with what a sea-otter must feel like after being radio-tagged by National Geographic, I threw the vile device in the garbage. I tried again two years ago; texting had become fashionable and seemed like a less invasive method of having nowhere to hide. But after losing three phones (and replacing two of them) in the space of three months, I realized that like Tom Bombadil when faced with Sauron's abominable ring, the phone simply had no power over me--I could never care about one enough to be trusted to keep track of it.
A few weeks ago, a couple of girls outside of Faculty Hall--cellphones in hand--were lamenting how annoying it was that people wouldn't stop calling them. It had been a long and arduous day and I was unable to stop myself from pointing out that they could always just turn the devices off. The loudest complainant retorted that she had a sick relative, and as such was obliged to be constantly available.
It isn't that I am unsympathetic to an illness in the family (nor am a blind to the fact that a cellphone would have handily saved me a 2 mile walk home from Library Orientation two weeks ago), but when I suggested that I could remember when humanity managed to survive (however crudely) seemingly unimpeded before the advent of cellphones, they looked at me as though I were speaking Aramaic.
Now we have Smart Phones, and up til this moment I have been able to say with pride that I have no idea what one is, or what makes it so smart.
Apple (http://www.apple.com/iphone/?cid=wwa-naus-seg-iphone10-024&cp=www-seg-iphone10-smartphones&sr=sem) tells me that with an "iphone4", I can pretend like I'm Jadzea Dax Bantering from a shuttle-craft with Captain Sisko on the bridge of DeepSpace9--as tempting as that is, face to face real-time videophone conversations seem like an extension of the ever elaborate ruse that causes people to ignore what is in front of them in favor of what is not.
The phone also offers something called a "retina display", which is apparently an ultra-scientific way of saying "real sharp picture". If you were wondering why it is important (or maybe it was just me) for your telephone to display pictures in which pixels are impossibly small, the helpful demonstration picture (http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/retina-display.html) suggests that it is so you won't feel like you got ripped off when you are inspecting your display window for microscopic flaws with a powerful magnifying glass.
The next heading reads: "Multitasking. Give everything your undivided attention" followed by an explanation of how iphone4 allows users to divide their attention between several applications at once, which is just silly.
With iphone4's HD recording feature, a user need never actually be engaged in anything again! Unburdened of her life while it is going on, she can concern herself with recording it in high definition so that she may nostalgically relive events for which she was never fully present through a quasi-real digital filter.
I can't go on, it's making me sick--suffice to say that with iphone4's highspeed internet access, GPS mapping, television, video game, and music storage/streaming capabilities, no one will ever actually have learn anything, know anything, go anywhere, or experience anything firsthand ever again.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Free-ish Information
Since I already have The New York Times website pulled up after briefly researching wikilinks, I believe it will be interesting to find a recent article that will to some degree demonstrate the state of the Freedom of Information Act--is it alive and well? Are government organizations adhering to the law which compels them to disclose?
The first article (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/us/politics/29issa.html?scp=1&sq=freedom%20of%20information%20act&st=cse) that appears on a search for "freedom of information act" on the Times database reports on a Republican representative's (Darrell Issa) efforts to obtain a comprehensive list of everyone who has requested information under the FOIA and any communications between requesting parties and relevant federal agencies between 2005 and 2010. The article mentions that requests for information are routinely delayed (often due to the resources of the organizations involved being sapped by oversight requests such this one) and concludes with the reminder that Congress is exempt from FOIA provisions.
A single recent topical article, in which mention is made of a Congressman attempting to track those who dare to request information, bureaucratic delays of information release, and our own representatives circumventing the legislation they passed in the name of transparency, all of this in the first 13 paragraphs that randomly appeared on the subject. It is safe to conclude that the FOIA is very much alive, but was never quite well--but on a more optimistic note, the amount of effort which is expended to thwart the FOIA is proof of a sort, that the legislation is in part doing what it was intended to do, if it weren't, conservative opponents of federal accountability (such as Congressman Issa) wouldn't be so concerned about it.
The first article (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/us/politics/29issa.html?scp=1&sq=freedom%20of%20information%20act&st=cse) that appears on a search for "freedom of information act" on the Times database reports on a Republican representative's (Darrell Issa) efforts to obtain a comprehensive list of everyone who has requested information under the FOIA and any communications between requesting parties and relevant federal agencies between 2005 and 2010. The article mentions that requests for information are routinely delayed (often due to the resources of the organizations involved being sapped by oversight requests such this one) and concludes with the reminder that Congress is exempt from FOIA provisions.
A single recent topical article, in which mention is made of a Congressman attempting to track those who dare to request information, bureaucratic delays of information release, and our own representatives circumventing the legislation they passed in the name of transparency, all of this in the first 13 paragraphs that randomly appeared on the subject. It is safe to conclude that the FOIA is very much alive, but was never quite well--but on a more optimistic note, the amount of effort which is expended to thwart the FOIA is proof of a sort, that the legislation is in part doing what it was intended to do, if it weren't, conservative opponents of federal accountability (such as Congressman Issa) wouldn't be so concerned about it.
Loose Lips and Sunken Ships
Is it terrible that I didn't care? Does my lack of interest signify that the dark forces of apathy, having gained a foothold in the American soul, are stepping up their campaign and routing the synaptic defenses which keep our limbic systems plugged into the national character? When the world crumbles down around my ears, will its fall echo in the mournful tenor voice of Ralston Hill recounting General Washington's desperate plea: "Is anybody there? Does anybody care?"
So I may have heard some things about wikileaks--if there is an advantage to existing in a relative state of friendlessness other than nobody wanting to borrow ones shoes, it is surely the opportunity one has to listen quietly to what those around her are saying. Here is what I think I know (having avoided reading a single word on the subject) about wikileaks as compiled from the ambient buzzing of humanity on cigarette breaks outside of Faculty Hall, in line at the grocery store, and flipping through radio-stations in search of that really pretty song about the guy who (figuratively) collects women's hearts in a jar:
It would seem that some person or persons have designated a Wikipedia-like web space for users to publish secrets of governments, corporations, and high-profile individuals. The U.S. Federal Government--abhorring unchecked gossip about itself--attempted to shut down the site, curtailing free expression in the name of national security, but was ultimately forced to give up fruitless efforts to legally eradicate the extensively mirrored site
Don't get me wrong, free expression is a huge deal to me. It is the adamantium framework around which all of my strongest beliefs are articulated, but seriously--what do people expect? Until such time as the Angel of The Lord grabs his trumpet and cues up the Armageddon orchestra (featuring the musical stylings of the Continental Congress) it will be Adlai Stevenson's voice that echos in my mind, saying "Your public servants serve you right; indeed, often they serve you better than your apathy and indifference deserve."
The last activist political demonstration in which I took part occurred on a strip of grace officially designated as Murray State's "free speech zone"--for those who have been happily living in caves since Jimmy Carter left office, a free speech zone is a place where it isn't illegal for Americans to exercise their fundamental constitutionally guaranteed right to free expression, you know, the one which was inviolable before the second Bush administration took power but eviscerated well before the American people reelected the second Bush of their own free will. To say that I am deeply disturbed by this state of affairs wouldn't begin to cover it, but the first amendment has been functionally dead for years, and as such I fail to see how the desecration of her corpse rates front page news.
That being said, it's time to find out if what I've absorbed through osmosis bears any resemblance to the generally accepted truth, and more specifically, if wikileaks has ultimately been silenced by the home of the free and the brave (thus vindicating my cynicism), or if the Bill of Rights has uncharacteristically triumphed over the efforts of those who are charged with administering its protections.
My work here is made blessedly simple by the fact that wikileaks has been a relatively hot news item, because of this I can skip most of the traditional nonsense and move straight on to the good stuff. First (and presumably last) stop: The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/). Phase two (typing "wikileaks" in the site's search-bar) leads me to an article ( http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/w/wikileaks/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=wikileaks&st=cse) which provides an excellent overview of the wiki-scandal to date. As it turns out, most of my information was relatively accurate, but incomplete. This plot has been thickened by rape charges against wikileaks' founder, criminal investigations launched by the U.S. government, internal squabbling among wikileaks operators, and debilitating cyber-attacks against organizations deemed unfriendly to wikileaks and free information in general.
My cynicism is well founded; there was a court decision to shut down the website, and that decision was reversed not out of deference to free speech, but out of the untenability of enforcing it. Unable to silence the site directly, the federal government is investigating its founder in an attempt to silence it indirectly. I'm not blind to the reality that some information is secret for good reason, that certain knowledge falling into the wrong hands could endanger individuals or even nations--but as a people, we cannot afford to concern ourselves with the government's right to secrecy when the government has failed to concern itself with the people's right to free expression. It is reasonable for informed and free people to make concessions under circumstances which warrant them, but it is madness for people who have been forced to concede those freedoms which ensure their ability to inform one another to do the same.
So I may have heard some things about wikileaks--if there is an advantage to existing in a relative state of friendlessness other than nobody wanting to borrow ones shoes, it is surely the opportunity one has to listen quietly to what those around her are saying. Here is what I think I know (having avoided reading a single word on the subject) about wikileaks as compiled from the ambient buzzing of humanity on cigarette breaks outside of Faculty Hall, in line at the grocery store, and flipping through radio-stations in search of that really pretty song about the guy who (figuratively) collects women's hearts in a jar:
It would seem that some person or persons have designated a Wikipedia-like web space for users to publish secrets of governments, corporations, and high-profile individuals. The U.S. Federal Government--abhorring unchecked gossip about itself--attempted to shut down the site, curtailing free expression in the name of national security, but was ultimately forced to give up fruitless efforts to legally eradicate the extensively mirrored site
Don't get me wrong, free expression is a huge deal to me. It is the adamantium framework around which all of my strongest beliefs are articulated, but seriously--what do people expect? Until such time as the Angel of The Lord grabs his trumpet and cues up the Armageddon orchestra (featuring the musical stylings of the Continental Congress) it will be Adlai Stevenson's voice that echos in my mind, saying "Your public servants serve you right; indeed, often they serve you better than your apathy and indifference deserve."
The last activist political demonstration in which I took part occurred on a strip of grace officially designated as Murray State's "free speech zone"--for those who have been happily living in caves since Jimmy Carter left office, a free speech zone is a place where it isn't illegal for Americans to exercise their fundamental constitutionally guaranteed right to free expression, you know, the one which was inviolable before the second Bush administration took power but eviscerated well before the American people reelected the second Bush of their own free will. To say that I am deeply disturbed by this state of affairs wouldn't begin to cover it, but the first amendment has been functionally dead for years, and as such I fail to see how the desecration of her corpse rates front page news.
That being said, it's time to find out if what I've absorbed through osmosis bears any resemblance to the generally accepted truth, and more specifically, if wikileaks has ultimately been silenced by the home of the free and the brave (thus vindicating my cynicism), or if the Bill of Rights has uncharacteristically triumphed over the efforts of those who are charged with administering its protections.
My work here is made blessedly simple by the fact that wikileaks has been a relatively hot news item, because of this I can skip most of the traditional nonsense and move straight on to the good stuff. First (and presumably last) stop: The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/). Phase two (typing "wikileaks" in the site's search-bar) leads me to an article ( http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/w/wikileaks/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=wikileaks&st=cse) which provides an excellent overview of the wiki-scandal to date. As it turns out, most of my information was relatively accurate, but incomplete. This plot has been thickened by rape charges against wikileaks' founder, criminal investigations launched by the U.S. government, internal squabbling among wikileaks operators, and debilitating cyber-attacks against organizations deemed unfriendly to wikileaks and free information in general.
My cynicism is well founded; there was a court decision to shut down the website, and that decision was reversed not out of deference to free speech, but out of the untenability of enforcing it. Unable to silence the site directly, the federal government is investigating its founder in an attempt to silence it indirectly. I'm not blind to the reality that some information is secret for good reason, that certain knowledge falling into the wrong hands could endanger individuals or even nations--but as a people, we cannot afford to concern ourselves with the government's right to secrecy when the government has failed to concern itself with the people's right to free expression. It is reasonable for informed and free people to make concessions under circumstances which warrant them, but it is madness for people who have been forced to concede those freedoms which ensure their ability to inform one another to do the same.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
On the third day of pizza. . . .
Every long once in a while, maybe once every 6 years, I get an overpowering craving for which the only solution is to add anchovies to my usual order of pepperoni and extra cheese pizza. Two days ago this abomination was fantastic, yesterday it was pretty good, but as I was eying the box again today around lunch-time, I was forced to wonder: Was this a hassle-free method of raising cholesterol while avoiding actually cooking anything, or was I flirting with food-poisoning? Just how long do anchovies keep in the refrigerator?
Google has been letting me down a lot lately, and now is no exception. A search of "how long do anchovies keep in refrigerator" reveals a million forums from cooking websites. The information available here is probably accurate, and had I not chosen this for my blogging assignment I would be more than willing to gamble my health on it, but this is bigger than just me--I'm being observed, judged, recorded for posterity, and these anecdotal snippets of folk wisdom aren't going to cut it for Mr or Mrs John Q. Professor. Fortunately, I have a backup plan.
My survival instincts have served me well, and what they usually tell me is this: when in doubt, trust a source that has a lot to lose from leading you astray. It is the very same instinct that allows me to eat at the establishments of corporate fast-food behemoths with impunity; McDonald's for example has billions in the bank, billions that they would prefer not to lose to me in a highly publicized lawsuit subsequent to poisoning my quarter pounder with cyanide. This is the delicate equilibrium of capitalism and consumer in a hyper-litigious society. Who has more to lose than McDonald's? Perhaps no one except Exxon, Hollywood, and the U.S. Government.
Typing "FDA" into my Google search bar, I immediately get a hit--welcome to the United States Food and Drug Administration's home page ( http://www.fda.gov/). The listing for "food" in the user-friendly interface immediately catches my eye, and I select the sub-category, "consumers". Here ( http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/default.htm) there is a link for "fresh and frozen seafood, selecting and serving it safely" with a section on "storing seafood" ( http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm077331.htm).
A dead end. There is a lot of fascinating information here, but it is limited to safely storing uncooked seafood after it is purchased--I'm going to have to brave the site's search engine. Several misses later (including "storing cooked foods", which I found to be quite succinct), I search for "refrigerator" and find a heading that reads "how long can I keep my food in the refrigerator/on the shelf"--bingo.
This link (http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/Transparency/Basics/ucm194273.htm) leads me to another link for the FDA's refrigerator and freezer storage chart ( http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/Seniors/ucm182679.htm#storchart). According to the FDA, I should not eat this pizza. Fresh fish and fatty fish should be discarded after two days in the refrigerator. This is what scientists refer to as a "major bummer", I'm going to have to cook. Farewell dear anchovies, until we meet again in 2017.
Google has been letting me down a lot lately, and now is no exception. A search of "how long do anchovies keep in refrigerator" reveals a million forums from cooking websites. The information available here is probably accurate, and had I not chosen this for my blogging assignment I would be more than willing to gamble my health on it, but this is bigger than just me--I'm being observed, judged, recorded for posterity, and these anecdotal snippets of folk wisdom aren't going to cut it for Mr or Mrs John Q. Professor. Fortunately, I have a backup plan.
My survival instincts have served me well, and what they usually tell me is this: when in doubt, trust a source that has a lot to lose from leading you astray. It is the very same instinct that allows me to eat at the establishments of corporate fast-food behemoths with impunity; McDonald's for example has billions in the bank, billions that they would prefer not to lose to me in a highly publicized lawsuit subsequent to poisoning my quarter pounder with cyanide. This is the delicate equilibrium of capitalism and consumer in a hyper-litigious society. Who has more to lose than McDonald's? Perhaps no one except Exxon, Hollywood, and the U.S. Government.
Typing "FDA" into my Google search bar, I immediately get a hit--welcome to the United States Food and Drug Administration's home page ( http://www.fda.gov/). The listing for "food" in the user-friendly interface immediately catches my eye, and I select the sub-category, "consumers". Here ( http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/default.htm) there is a link for "fresh and frozen seafood, selecting and serving it safely" with a section on "storing seafood" ( http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm077331.htm).
A dead end. There is a lot of fascinating information here, but it is limited to safely storing uncooked seafood after it is purchased--I'm going to have to brave the site's search engine. Several misses later (including "storing cooked foods", which I found to be quite succinct), I search for "refrigerator" and find a heading that reads "how long can I keep my food in the refrigerator/on the shelf"--bingo.
This link (http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/Transparency/Basics/ucm194273.htm) leads me to another link for the FDA's refrigerator and freezer storage chart ( http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/Seniors/ucm182679.htm#storchart). According to the FDA, I should not eat this pizza. Fresh fish and fatty fish should be discarded after two days in the refrigerator. This is what scientists refer to as a "major bummer", I'm going to have to cook. Farewell dear anchovies, until we meet again in 2017.
Where the heart is. . . .
With Valentine's day rapidly approaching, it didn't seem out of the ordinary when my eldest daughter and fiance approached me to ask, "What is the origin of the traditional candy heart shape?"
They asked me, they said, because it seemed like "the sort of thing [I] would know", and to the esteemed credit of their collective powers of inference, they were correct: it is the sort of thing I would know. As such, I am at a loss to describe the respective shame and disappointment experienced by myself and my loved ones in that moment when as it turned out, I didn't have a clue.
Here I will attempt to remove this blemish from my personal record and restore honor to my family name. First stop: Google.com, search query: "origin of heart shape".
Ugggg, it's going to be one of those days--checking wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_%28symbol%29) and a hit from Yahoo Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080123223720AACAYHL) for reference ideas, the consensus of the knowledgeable (never to be confused with those who possess knowledge) is that there is a great deal of controversy over the symbol's origins. This is the sort of thing that shakes my faith in the progress of humanity; by my kindergarten year in 1982 I had been promised flying cars, colonies on the moon, and robot servants in the coming millennium, and though I am not bitter, it is arguable that I have every reason to be so--but who among the authors of Omni, Discover, Popular Mechanics, or Weekly Reader would have predicted that in the age of the information superhighway, with scientists on the brink of quantum computing and artificial intelligence just around the corner, I would be unable to procure a definitive answer to a simple question of symbological history?
The Wikipedia article sources pointed to a promising text authored by one Dr Armin Dietz (http://www.heartsymbol.com/), but upon further investigation Dr. Dietz appears to be a doctor of cardiology, not symbology or semiotics. Also referenced is P.J. Vinken, who is ostensibly a neurologist (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.410010114/abstract); this illustrates a major flaw in the use of Wikipedia for research--even a well cited article is little more than useless if its sources are not credible experts in the field of study relevant to it.
Redefining my google searches first to "scholarly articles heart origin" and then "Dr of Symbology" yields nothing at all relevant. Narrowing it to "expert on symbols" (in the dim hope of starting with a credible expert and tracing it to an authoritative text on the subject) leads me only to the Japanese symbol for "expert" (http://www.japanese-symbols.org/japanese-symbol-for-expert). I can find plenty of encyclopedias of symbols, but no credentials for their authors.
The Wikipedia article and many other disappointing sites reference a Slate Magazine article (http://www.slate.com/id/2159800/), which references Dr Eric Jager (http://www.english.ucla.edu/index.php/Faculty/jager-eric), a professor of midieval literature at UCLA with an interest in literary theory. It appears as though he is the closest thing to an Dr of Symbology I'm going to find. The Slate article says the same thing as all of the others--the heart symbol may have originated in North Africa with the seed-pod of a contraceptive plant (silphium) in the 7th century B.C.E.. The Catholic church is purported to claim that the symbol first appeared as a vision of the sacred heart as seen by a saint in the 17th century C.E., and someone referenced only as a "leading scholar of heart iconography" contends that the symbol is derived from a crude (and failed ) attempt by Aristotle to draw the human heart.
I am far from satisfied. I am now qualified to parrot the beliefs and anecdotes of a knowledgeable English professor, but where are the PhD holders in history of symbology or iconography? The poor obsessed souls who have devoted their lives to unlocking the secret pasts of modern semiotics? Where is the scholar who can state plainly: the earliest physical evidence of this symbol's appearance is a parchment connected to (insert culture) around (insert year)?
They asked me, they said, because it seemed like "the sort of thing [I] would know", and to the esteemed credit of their collective powers of inference, they were correct: it is the sort of thing I would know. As such, I am at a loss to describe the respective shame and disappointment experienced by myself and my loved ones in that moment when as it turned out, I didn't have a clue.
Here I will attempt to remove this blemish from my personal record and restore honor to my family name. First stop: Google.com, search query: "origin of heart shape".
Ugggg, it's going to be one of those days--checking wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_%28symbol%29) and a hit from Yahoo Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080123223720AACAYHL) for reference ideas, the consensus of the knowledgeable (never to be confused with those who possess knowledge) is that there is a great deal of controversy over the symbol's origins. This is the sort of thing that shakes my faith in the progress of humanity; by my kindergarten year in 1982 I had been promised flying cars, colonies on the moon, and robot servants in the coming millennium, and though I am not bitter, it is arguable that I have every reason to be so--but who among the authors of Omni, Discover, Popular Mechanics, or Weekly Reader would have predicted that in the age of the information superhighway, with scientists on the brink of quantum computing and artificial intelligence just around the corner, I would be unable to procure a definitive answer to a simple question of symbological history?
The Wikipedia article sources pointed to a promising text authored by one Dr Armin Dietz (http://www.heartsymbol.com/), but upon further investigation Dr. Dietz appears to be a doctor of cardiology, not symbology or semiotics. Also referenced is P.J. Vinken, who is ostensibly a neurologist (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.410010114/abstract); this illustrates a major flaw in the use of Wikipedia for research--even a well cited article is little more than useless if its sources are not credible experts in the field of study relevant to it.
Redefining my google searches first to "scholarly articles heart origin" and then "Dr of Symbology" yields nothing at all relevant. Narrowing it to "expert on symbols" (in the dim hope of starting with a credible expert and tracing it to an authoritative text on the subject) leads me only to the Japanese symbol for "expert" (http://www.japanese-symbols.org/japanese-symbol-for-expert). I can find plenty of encyclopedias of symbols, but no credentials for their authors.
The Wikipedia article and many other disappointing sites reference a Slate Magazine article (http://www.slate.com/id/2159800/), which references Dr Eric Jager (http://www.english.ucla.edu/index.php/Faculty/jager-eric), a professor of midieval literature at UCLA with an interest in literary theory. It appears as though he is the closest thing to an Dr of Symbology I'm going to find. The Slate article says the same thing as all of the others--the heart symbol may have originated in North Africa with the seed-pod of a contraceptive plant (silphium) in the 7th century B.C.E.. The Catholic church is purported to claim that the symbol first appeared as a vision of the sacred heart as seen by a saint in the 17th century C.E., and someone referenced only as a "leading scholar of heart iconography" contends that the symbol is derived from a crude (and failed ) attempt by Aristotle to draw the human heart.
I am far from satisfied. I am now qualified to parrot the beliefs and anecdotes of a knowledgeable English professor, but where are the PhD holders in history of symbology or iconography? The poor obsessed souls who have devoted their lives to unlocking the secret pasts of modern semiotics? Where is the scholar who can state plainly: the earliest physical evidence of this symbol's appearance is a parchment connected to (insert culture) around (insert year)?
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Standard for Legitimacy
I was recently reading an article (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-pakistan-shooting-20110130,0,2032633.story) about a man employed by the United States Embassy in Pakistan who was implicated in a shooting on the streets of Lahore. Embassy officials were demanding the release of the diplomat, who was being held by Pakistani police and charged with murder, on the basis of diplomatic immunity. Pakistani law enforcement however, contended that the suspect's immunity (or lack thereof) was a matter for the courts to decide.
The suspect claims that he shot the armed men in self-defense, after they attempted to rob him, while friends and family of the victims claim that he murdered them in cold blood--I am in complete agreement with the Pakistani sentiment that it is the province of a court of law to determine the suspect's guilt or innocence, but our sensibilities diverge in the questions of whose court, and on what basis?
I submit first that the question of diplomatic immunity is irrelevant, if the diplomat has committed cold-blooded murder, he should be held accountable for it regardless of what status or documentation he might possess. But before the question of guilt can be addressed, there is a question of judicial legitimacy that must be answered: should Pakistani laws/legal institutions be recognized by American entities?
I submit that no government is legitimate which codifies into law the enslavement of a people, women specifically in the case of Pakistan. Is this view ethnocentric? Absolutely, but not on the basis of any illusions of American cultural superiority--our own legal system certainly has its problems and our human rights record is far from unblemished--but in the conviction that every culture is bound to get some things right, and that our own 14th Amendment (equal protection under the law) is America's greatest contribution to humanity's cumulative understanding of inalienable rights.
Convictions being what they are, I have no intention of attempting to research that which is more a matter of conscience and ideology than one of factual information, but the supporting arguments do raise a quantifiable question. I remember reading in Time Magazine about the horrors inflicted with impunity upon Pakistani women by Pakistani men: fathers, brothers, and sons murdering (on the basis of adultery) their wives, sisters, and mothers who had been sexually assaulted--without due process and in full compliance of the law, which recognizes a woman's testimony as worth half that of a man's. There is no question for me, that the government which condones such practices is invalid, the question is this: Does the government condone such practices?
I can't even remember when exactly I read that article, 10 years ago? 15? Information has a funny way of becoming out of date and frankly, once I enrolled in an institute of higher education, I no longer had much time or opportunity to learn. This one is going to be much trickier to answer, as there will be competing ideologies presenting what data is available in a light which most effectively supports the preconceived notions attached to them. Statistics and figures originating in this region will be difficult to determine with any certainty because personal expression and the press is tightly controlled by a government which determines its own transparency must submit to no oversight other than its own, as such I will be limiting my research to those gender inequities which can either be found in written law or are reliably demonstrated to be de facto law.
Entering "women in Pakistani law" into google, the first link that appears is published by "marxist.com", though I have no quarrel with Marxists in principle, the name carries the promise of an overt political agenda catering to a specific niche demographic. Such openly branded sources are excellent for purposes of reading that which one knows in advance will support the views she already held (I use "Women Now" publications for this sort of thing), they are not, however promising sources for the task at hand--I'll come back to it if I have to.
The next hit is more interesting, if not quite what I'm looking for--an article published by an organization called "Islam For Today" (http://www.islamfortoday.com/pakistanwomen.htm). This source is also overtly politically motivated and I cannot verify any of the information on Pakistani law printed therein, but the article is a good reference for comparison in that it is published by a Muslim organization and is thereby highly unlikely to be colored by anti-Islamic sentiment which might skew facts elsewhere. . . . .unless Islam For Today is an anti-Islamic organization posing as an Islamic organization in order to discredit actual Islamic organizations, but there isn't really anything defamatory in the site's content and paranoia is premature at this stage of inquiry.
20 domains which utterly lack cited sources later (and a fruitless search of the New York Times) , I have no choice other than to commit a cardinal sin; goodbye pride, hello Wikipedia. This link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Pakistan) appeared in a Google search of the parameters "women's rights in Pakistan". Though it confirms most of what I originally believed about the status of women in Pakistan (with the caveat that women's rights vary greatly across class and region), I am entirely unfamiliar with many of the sources included, and the citations from sources that I do recognize are at least 5 years old and many of them originate with politically activist organizations (Amnesty International, for example).
I'm going to have to regroup on this one, I still believe what I originally believed but I have no definitive proof that what I believe is true. This adventure in research was a somewhat epic failure.
The suspect claims that he shot the armed men in self-defense, after they attempted to rob him, while friends and family of the victims claim that he murdered them in cold blood--I am in complete agreement with the Pakistani sentiment that it is the province of a court of law to determine the suspect's guilt or innocence, but our sensibilities diverge in the questions of whose court, and on what basis?
I submit first that the question of diplomatic immunity is irrelevant, if the diplomat has committed cold-blooded murder, he should be held accountable for it regardless of what status or documentation he might possess. But before the question of guilt can be addressed, there is a question of judicial legitimacy that must be answered: should Pakistani laws/legal institutions be recognized by American entities?
I submit that no government is legitimate which codifies into law the enslavement of a people, women specifically in the case of Pakistan. Is this view ethnocentric? Absolutely, but not on the basis of any illusions of American cultural superiority--our own legal system certainly has its problems and our human rights record is far from unblemished--but in the conviction that every culture is bound to get some things right, and that our own 14th Amendment (equal protection under the law) is America's greatest contribution to humanity's cumulative understanding of inalienable rights.
Convictions being what they are, I have no intention of attempting to research that which is more a matter of conscience and ideology than one of factual information, but the supporting arguments do raise a quantifiable question. I remember reading in Time Magazine about the horrors inflicted with impunity upon Pakistani women by Pakistani men: fathers, brothers, and sons murdering (on the basis of adultery) their wives, sisters, and mothers who had been sexually assaulted--without due process and in full compliance of the law, which recognizes a woman's testimony as worth half that of a man's. There is no question for me, that the government which condones such practices is invalid, the question is this: Does the government condone such practices?
I can't even remember when exactly I read that article, 10 years ago? 15? Information has a funny way of becoming out of date and frankly, once I enrolled in an institute of higher education, I no longer had much time or opportunity to learn. This one is going to be much trickier to answer, as there will be competing ideologies presenting what data is available in a light which most effectively supports the preconceived notions attached to them. Statistics and figures originating in this region will be difficult to determine with any certainty because personal expression and the press is tightly controlled by a government which determines its own transparency must submit to no oversight other than its own, as such I will be limiting my research to those gender inequities which can either be found in written law or are reliably demonstrated to be de facto law.
Entering "women in Pakistani law" into google, the first link that appears is published by "marxist.com", though I have no quarrel with Marxists in principle, the name carries the promise of an overt political agenda catering to a specific niche demographic. Such openly branded sources are excellent for purposes of reading that which one knows in advance will support the views she already held (I use "Women Now" publications for this sort of thing), they are not, however promising sources for the task at hand--I'll come back to it if I have to.
The next hit is more interesting, if not quite what I'm looking for--an article published by an organization called "Islam For Today" (http://www.islamfortoday.com/pakistanwomen.htm). This source is also overtly politically motivated and I cannot verify any of the information on Pakistani law printed therein, but the article is a good reference for comparison in that it is published by a Muslim organization and is thereby highly unlikely to be colored by anti-Islamic sentiment which might skew facts elsewhere. . . . .unless Islam For Today is an anti-Islamic organization posing as an Islamic organization in order to discredit actual Islamic organizations, but there isn't really anything defamatory in the site's content and paranoia is premature at this stage of inquiry.
20 domains which utterly lack cited sources later (and a fruitless search of the New York Times) , I have no choice other than to commit a cardinal sin; goodbye pride, hello Wikipedia. This link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Pakistan) appeared in a Google search of the parameters "women's rights in Pakistan". Though it confirms most of what I originally believed about the status of women in Pakistan (with the caveat that women's rights vary greatly across class and region), I am entirely unfamiliar with many of the sources included, and the citations from sources that I do recognize are at least 5 years old and many of them originate with politically activist organizations (Amnesty International, for example).
I'm going to have to regroup on this one, I still believe what I originally believed but I have no definitive proof that what I believe is true. This adventure in research was a somewhat epic failure.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Money and Power
Last week while writing about the State of The Union Address, I made a jab at Congress, referring to the political body as "a hundred multimillionaires". Though I don't for a moment doubt the validity of that statement, in the interest of exactitude I wonder--just how many members of congress really are millionaires?
The first hit on Google.com for search query, "how many members of Congress are millionaires" is a listing from CBS news' website (www.cbsnews.com), so it's a good bet that here (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20023147-503544.html) is where I need to go.
According to CBS, in 2009 261 members of congress (out of 535, nearly half) were verified millionaires. It's interesting that Americans demand as a fundamental right in civil/criminal matters, to be heard by a Jury of their peers while saturating nearly 50% of Congress with those who represent only the wealthiest 1% of their citizens. If the other 99% of Americans ever start to feel alienated from the political process, they can look to their own voting habits for a solution.
CBS is a corporate broadcasting megalith which depends upon it's reputation of accuracy for its viewership and is subject to intense international scrutiny by that viewership's vastness. The network is not equipped to compete with Fox for the ludicrously inaccurate news demographic, leaving it no choice but to uphold an ethical standard of diligent fact-checking, accurate reporting, and public retraction of reported information which later proves to be inaccurate. As such, I consider CBS' website to be an accurate source of information.
The first hit on Google.com for search query, "how many members of Congress are millionaires" is a listing from CBS news' website (www.cbsnews.com), so it's a good bet that here (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20023147-503544.html) is where I need to go.
According to CBS, in 2009 261 members of congress (out of 535, nearly half) were verified millionaires. It's interesting that Americans demand as a fundamental right in civil/criminal matters, to be heard by a Jury of their peers while saturating nearly 50% of Congress with those who represent only the wealthiest 1% of their citizens. If the other 99% of Americans ever start to feel alienated from the political process, they can look to their own voting habits for a solution.
CBS is a corporate broadcasting megalith which depends upon it's reputation of accuracy for its viewership and is subject to intense international scrutiny by that viewership's vastness. The network is not equipped to compete with Fox for the ludicrously inaccurate news demographic, leaving it no choice but to uphold an ethical standard of diligent fact-checking, accurate reporting, and public retraction of reported information which later proves to be inaccurate. As such, I consider CBS' website to be an accurate source of information.
Monday, January 31, 2011
State Of The Union
In the wake of a Republican takeover of Congress and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, domestic politics have been far too depressing to bother subjecting myself to the impotent words of a great president beholden to the oversight of bigots, sociopaths, and the functionally illiterate. But were I compelled (and I am) to choke down yet another helping of bitter disappointment with a side of bile and research the recent State of The Union Address, what I would want to know is if President Obama has persevered in his commitment to more or less ignoring the LGBT voters who helped to elect him--with gay teen suicide garnering international media attention and civil rights flagrantly denied to a sizable segment of the American populace, did he even bother to mention us? A question not so much formulated as preexisting and omnipresent.
In most research situations, my first instinct is to defer all quandaries to the Mystic Oracle of the West (more commonly known as Google), but as the State of The Union Address is a ubiquitously televised event and seeing is believing, in this case I'll skip straight to Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/) and watch the thing.
Eureka! The first hit on Youtube for search query "State of The Union Address 2011" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZdEmjtF6HE) was posted by the White House on the Obama administration's own official channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse) as ascertained by clicking the publisher's link just below the video thumbnail in the list of search results--I'm going to consider this source reliable on the basis that the administration, having written, produced, directed, filmed, and released the address, could have falsified it before the fact much more effectively than after.
The exercise yielded this result: Yes, the president mentioned the LGBT community once, solely in context of the repeal of DADT, in the last ten minutes of the address, for about five seconds of an hour-long speech.
Admittedly, it was worth the whole thing to see the relative absence of applause and the looks on congressional faces when President Obama said: "We simply can't afford a permanent extension of our tax cuts to the wealthiest 2% of Americans." This is the sort of comedy one can't script, it has to emerge naturally from the overall distance from reality that can only be achieved by placing a hundred multimillionaires in the same room with one another.
There are those who would suggest that an hour is an excessive amount of time to devote to one small question, and that the pertinent information could have been more expeditiously unearthed elsewhere, but I strongly advocate a more holistic approach to research. A snippet of information taken out of context with the whole that originated it can often be misleading, information from a secondary source is only as accurate as the fact-checkers and political leanings of the entity that publishes it, and in watching the address in its entirety, I have been enriched with knowledge outside of the specific topic at hand, knowledge which may come in very handy when I have another paper to write, when my oldest daughter asks me about the future of clean renewable energy, or when I'm simply trying to gain a better understanding of the world around me.
In most research situations, my first instinct is to defer all quandaries to the Mystic Oracle of the West (more commonly known as Google), but as the State of The Union Address is a ubiquitously televised event and seeing is believing, in this case I'll skip straight to Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/) and watch the thing.
Eureka! The first hit on Youtube for search query "State of The Union Address 2011" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZdEmjtF6HE) was posted by the White House on the Obama administration's own official channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/whitehouse) as ascertained by clicking the publisher's link just below the video thumbnail in the list of search results--I'm going to consider this source reliable on the basis that the administration, having written, produced, directed, filmed, and released the address, could have falsified it before the fact much more effectively than after.
The exercise yielded this result: Yes, the president mentioned the LGBT community once, solely in context of the repeal of DADT, in the last ten minutes of the address, for about five seconds of an hour-long speech.
Admittedly, it was worth the whole thing to see the relative absence of applause and the looks on congressional faces when President Obama said: "We simply can't afford a permanent extension of our tax cuts to the wealthiest 2% of Americans." This is the sort of comedy one can't script, it has to emerge naturally from the overall distance from reality that can only be achieved by placing a hundred multimillionaires in the same room with one another.
There are those who would suggest that an hour is an excessive amount of time to devote to one small question, and that the pertinent information could have been more expeditiously unearthed elsewhere, but I strongly advocate a more holistic approach to research. A snippet of information taken out of context with the whole that originated it can often be misleading, information from a secondary source is only as accurate as the fact-checkers and political leanings of the entity that publishes it, and in watching the address in its entirety, I have been enriched with knowledge outside of the specific topic at hand, knowledge which may come in very handy when I have another paper to write, when my oldest daughter asks me about the future of clean renewable energy, or when I'm simply trying to gain a better understanding of the world around me.
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