Joshua Glenn is a Boston-based writer, editor, and multimedia
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February 17, 2007
Hopefully we all understand by now that this Mooninite business was a viral marketing campaign that eschewed traditional ads in favor of enlisting the participation of wised-up youth. Members of the target audience were supposed to notice these LED throwies, recognize the Mooninite character (or at least recognize it as a silly cartoon figure of some kind), steal the signs, blog about them, take photos and post them to Flickr, and so forth. Which is exactly what some of them did.
There's a far more sophisticated version of this sort of viral marketing campaign going on even as a write this. A few days ago, Nine Inch Nails fans figured out that highlighted letters on one of NIN's tour t-shirts were a message leading to the website Iamtryingtobelieve.com. Since then fans have been led to discover other websites, audio recordings including a leaked album track from the forthcoming NIN album "Year Zero," working telephone numbers, and more, all carefully prepared in advance. These websites, recordings, phone numbers, and so forth embroil one in an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) whose storyline is the same as the one in "Year Zero": America is a dystopia, and violent resistance is on the move.
Back in August 2005, I wrote an item for Ideas about Jane McGonigal, then working as a designer and "puppetmaster" for 42 Entertainment, an Emeryville, Calif.-based outfit that creates elaborate ARGs for marketing purposes. McGonigal was branching out into political protest, using the same online social networking tools she'd manipulated for 42 Entertainment in order to get Americans in every state to reshelve copies of Orwell's "1984." Tomorrow McGonigal, now a research affiliate at the Institute for the Future, will be the first respondent in the Wired Science blog's "Ask a Scientist" feature. Got any questions for her about this Mooninite stuff, or viral marketing, or wired political activism? You can post questions here.
HELP US PROMOTE BRAINIAC: DEL.ICIO.US | DIGG
READ MORE FROM BRAINIAC: Attack of the Mooninites! | Eat your heart out P.T. Barnum | Son of Mooninite! | Panic in the Hub | Marketing Gone Awry | Mooninite Photo Op | Do the Mooninites have a posse? | Malden vs. Mooninites | Mooninite missives 1 | Mooninite missives 2 | Zebro video | Red Sox vs. Mooninites | Danger Bomb Clock | Mooninite kudos | Mooninite Man sighted | Mooninite guru? |
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 02:08 PM
February 16, 2007
A reader responds to my post about Amanda Marcotte and the successful campaign against her by the head of a large Catholic organization. The reader is a lapsed Catholic, so we'll have to take him with a grain of salt:
I'm afraid you'll have to specify just which "principle" Marcotte's foes are fighting for, unless it is the suppression of opinion. Catholicism is itself an opinion, of course, not a genetically determined condition. Being anti-Catholic in the nineteenth century was bigotry because it was tantamount to being anti-Irish, but today such is no longer the case. Anti-Catholicism now is in fact a form of anti-bigotry -- the same could be said of most forms of opposition to religion.
I'm not going to get in to the broader claims here, interesting as they are, but I will say about Marcotte that what I was trying to say was that I have more respect for criticisms of her based on her views on abortion, which is fair game for someone who has after all become a public and political figure, than for attacks on her use of vulgarities on a personal blog. She seems to think neither is fair, which is an odd position to take to someone devoted to speaking out and even picking fights -- for what is a political campaign but an invitation to debate?
Posted by Evan Hughes at 06:46 PM
February 16, 2007
In last Sunday's Word column, I mentioned the question of punctuating the title Ms. If it's not really an abbreviation, readers asked, why does it have a period?
No reason, was my answer, except to make it harmonize with Mrs. and Mr. -- and that answer still stands. But Ben Zimmer has sent along some Ms. information from decades before the earliest OED citations.
"Your reader who complains that 'Ms is not an abbreviation for anything and therefore does not need a period' might be interested to know that this has been a point of contention for quite a long time," he writes. "I discovered what is currently the earliest known cite, a 1901 article in the Humeston (Iowa) New Era commenting on the Springfield (Mass.) Republican's suggestion of Ms.":
As a word to be used in place of
"Miss" or "Mrs.," when the addresser is ignorant of the state of the
person addressed, the Springfield Republican suggests a word of which
"Ms." is the abbreviation, with a pronunciation something like "Mizz." But the Republican does not tell what the new word is or how it is to be
spelled.
"Because the Springfield paper spelled the word with a period, the Humeston paper confusedly assumed it must be an abbreviation for a longer word," notes Zimmer. (And the Springfield newspaper's original citation has not yet been excavated from its hiding place. Maybe we'll learn one day that Ms., like scofflaw, debuted in Massachusetts.)
For more on Ms., see Zimmer's post at the American Dialect Society's Linguist List.
Posted by Jan Freeman at 05:06 PM
February 16, 2007
Quick note:
A couple of days ago, Globe editor and music writer James Reed -- whose musical taste has not disappointed me yet -- reviewed "A Date with John Waters," an album of songs that the trash filmmaker believes would be the perfect soundtrack to any romantic outing. Among other tracks, Reed approves heartily of Elton Motello's "Jet Boy Jet Girl," which he describes as "a frank paean to gay sex that shares a melody with Plastic Bertrand's new-wave classic 'Ca Plane Pour Moi.'"
Now, I like that Plastic Bertrand song a lot, and I used to own an Elton Motello record -- I sent away for a grab bag of avant vinyl from an ad in the back of Rolling Stone, back in 1983 or so, and Motello's weird "Pop Art" was one of them. But I couldn't remember what "Jet Boy Jet Girl" was all about. I was going to call James and ask him to sing it to me, when I noticed that over at Salon today, you can download the song.
Oh yeah! Now I remember. True, (kinky) gay sex is a theme of the song, but the main reason that Waters likes it is probably because it's a Weird Al Yankovic-like tribute to/mockery of New Wave music. It's funny stuff...
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 10:43 AM
February 16, 2007
The week of Feb. 5, I wrote here twice about Amanda Marcotte, a iberal blogger formerly of pandagon.net hired by the John Edwards campaign as "blogmaster." The first post noted her hiring and saw it as potentially another step on the moon for blogger-kind. The second charted the beginning of her fall from grace, as a concerted campaign brought about her decision to resign.
Now Marcotte has written her tell-all of sorts on Salon. It's a valuable piece for its explanation of what really happened, but I must say Marcotte doesn't quite succeed in keeping my sympathy.
First she says her conservative enemies ought to have been able to distinguish between her personal blog posts and those on the campaign site. But come on, all opinions become fair game when you take on a public role. Moreover, in what amounts to the climax of her piece, she writes this:
Donohue and the long list of culture warriors on the league's board of advisors are dedicated to stomping out those very rights McEwan and I were defending. It's unlikely they took issue with just the coarse, comedic vernacular that we used to defend those rights.
But that is only an endorsement of her foes, in my view. They are fighting for a principle, not just railing against a potty mouth.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 09:14 AM
February 15, 2007
From a poster on Metafilter, a valuable find. If we are stuck on the notion that Iran is a country of oppression so great that life there is unending suffering, we miss out on what's going on. What we have is a volatile but complex and rich nation that Americans probably fail to understand even at the highest levels.
So it's worth looking at the Iranian people's art, to get a feel for what we face.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 05:29 PM
February 15, 2007
Josh: Your Bertrand Russell post sends me back. I actually had occasion to work a bit with William Drenttel in my previous capacity as an editor at the sadly now-defunct Legal Affairs magazine. Winterhouse, the studio Bill runs with Jessica Helfand, designed the magazine's first issues back in 2002.
One of my favorite ideas Bill had was enlisting the services of a French children's book illustrator (if memory serves) for the cover story of the magazine's fourth issue. The story was about a guy who had submitted a patent application for a series of chimeras: creatures that would be made by combining human and animal embryos. The ones that I recall are the humouse (man + mouse) and the humanzee (man + chimp).
The artist, whose name I'll have to look up at home tonight, created wonderful images of these as yet still imaginary creatures, rendering them as hovering between being scary and being scared of themselves. He depicted the humanzee regarding his reflection in a silver spoon. The humouse, who would end up on the cover, held his massive, mostly-mouse head in a very human hand.
Last January, when Legal Affairs stopped publishing, I put in a request for the poster-sized blow-up of the fourth issue that had graced the walls of the magazine's New Haven offices. The folks there were kind enough to oblige, and I'm happy to say that the humouse now presides over the den of my apartment, startling visitors and only occasionally giving me nightmares.
UPDATE: Bill Drenttel emails with the name of the artist -- Etienne Delessert.
Posted by John Swansburg at 04:00 PM
February 15, 2007
The Washington Post has a funny account of the day after the Westminster Dog Show for this year's winner, James, an English Springer Spaniel. More revealing of human than animal behavior. Read this bit -- then watch the video:
The day-after ritual includes lunch at Sardi's, the Manhattan landmark where the walls are covered with celebrity caricatures. And the highlight there is the ceremonial serving of the champion's meal. This arrives on a pewter plate and is set in front of the dog, who is sitting on a chair at a fully set table, white linens and all.
Surrounded by photographers, James snarfed down all the meat and promptly looked around as if to say, "You got any more of that?" This brought awwws and chuckles from the dozens of dog enthusiasts around the table. But one photographer didn't get the shot she wanted and loudly demanded that James get seconds, and step on it.
"We need more! We need more!" she yelled.
A few feet away, James's owner and self-described mom, Teresa Patton, frowned... this is the first time one of her animals won the Big One. And she wasn't going to watch her prize possession overeat his way to a tummyache.
"That's too much," she said, not very loudly. "You're going to make him sick."
With that, Patton grabbed the meat off the second plate that was headed James's way. James looked disappointed and the photographer fumed. For a good 10 minutes, there was a stalemate: photographer vs. owner, with James and his empty plate stuck in the middle.
"She brought the meat back to the kitchen," said Allen Patton, Teresa's husband, who is a teacher at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale. "And she's not bringing it back."
It takes a certain kind of determination to win at Westminster, and a different kind to face off with a New York photographer desperate for a money shot. The Pattons, it seems, have both.
Posted by John Swansburg at 03:02 PM
February 15, 2007
I posted yesterday about Little Joe, the gorilla who escaped in 2003 from the Franklin Park Zoo.
Little Joe was finally returned to his "exhibit space" this week, and I asked readers to comment on the newly fortified architecture of the gorilla exhibit -- while keeping in mind T.W. Adorno's comment that the contemporary, open-style zoo exhibit (with its moat too wide to leap) is more sinister and depressing, if you think about it, than the old-fashioned zoo cage with iron bars.
Here are abridged versions of a few of the responses I've received:
When I grew up near Boston in the 1960s, there was a fire in the lion house at the Franklin Park Zoo. The word on the street was that the lions set it themselves in an attempt to get a bigger living space. As long as we can still refer to what should be a habitat as a cage, we have a big problem. Little Joe has my best wishes for many happy escapes in the future. -- John C
I can really only stand for the large open-space zoos that afford a large roaming space for the captive animals (North Carolina Zoological Park is a fine example). The time of small "boutique" or city zoos is a thing of the past, in my opinion. -- Tim N
Although I agree with Adorno that moats and trenches in zoo exhibits keep the boundaries of their cages invisible, I'm not sure this environment can be said to "inflame the [animals'] longing for open spaces." Since he's anthropomorphising, I'll take the same approach and point out that most of us, whether on a beach staring off into the horizon, in a cubicle with a view of the vasty parking lot, or on our couch with the virtual horizon beamed at us through the tube, are quite content to remain there. -- Susan
My dad is the assistant director of the Sedgwick County Zoo (http://scz.org) here in Wichita, a zoo that has sort of defined modern zoos by starting in the late 1960s, when people were first starting to get the idea that bars [EXPLETIVE DELETED].... The SCZ's chimpanzee exhibits were the first in the world to get Jane Goodall's seal of approval.... Some people don't like the idea of an animal in captivity on general principle, and there's not much you can say to them. Most zoos nowadays, though, make managing the survival of a species their main goal, knowing that their natural habitats are being robbed faster than you can say, "Can someone give me $3 million to make this animal feel at home?" ... I can't make any forceful comments on Little Joe's exhibit itself -- the Globe story is short on certain details that would be critical for making a real assessment -- but it seems OK.... I doubt I'd be going out on a limb in saying that it looks like Little Joe will be pretty happy. -- Mike M
Thanks for writing, everyone. And thanks to Boing Boing for linking to this post yesterday.
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 02:49 PM
February 15, 2007
Over at Design Observer, one of my favorite blogs, William Drenttel posted recently about "The Good Citizen's Alphabet," a political and philosophical ABC book (abecedarium?), published in 1953. Written by Bertrand Russell and illustrated by Franciszka Themerson: Think Ambrose Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary" for kiddies.
Over half a century later, the book still feels outrageous. Yesterday, one Design Observer visitor was actually outraged, and commented:
It's ironic that Bertrand Russell, in his clamour for Socialism, chose to sarcastically describe liberty on the L page as "The right to obey the police," when Socialist regimes have threatened and beaten so many into that very obedience. Time has erased all sarcasm from that spread.
I want a copy! Thankfully, Drenttel has made a slideshow version of the book. Take a peek.
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 01:56 PM
February 15, 2007
In television news -- that is, news about television -- apparently Fox News is trying a new show on for size, a fake news program called "The Half-Hour News Hour" (get it?) clearly intended to counter the Daily Show. Not a bad idea in principle, but if the pilot or test episode is any indication, oy, the execution!
Actually, maybe this is a bad idea. First, this kind of copycat counterprogramming rarely succeeds. Say what you will about the Rush Limbaugh Show -- in a sense it's better than Air America. Second, what would the Daily Show be without Jon Stewart's talent? If you reverse the political leaning, it might look something like this.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 12:44 PM
February 15, 2007
As a Crooked Timber post by sociologist Kieran Healy rather haughtily points out, a parody of the U.S. government's ready.gov site, advocating readiness for national and manmade disasters, has been around about four years, and 3 Quarks Daily gets to it only today.
But who cares? It's a lot of fun. The primary target is the site's pictograms depicting citizens in dire straits either of various origins doing the right thing or the wrong thing. The pictograms are patently ridiculous and hard to decipher. Hence some very funny alternate interpretations. "If you spot terrorism, blow your anti-terrorism whistle. If you are Vin Diesel, yell really loud."
Posted by Evan Hughes at 11:29 AM
February 14, 2007
In a New York Sun article today, linguist John McWhorter uses the history of love -- the word, not the phenomenon -- to illustrate the way today's "mistakes" may morph into "simply tomorrow's version of the language."
Love was [used] as a noun, but quickly started being used as a verb as well. That is, when you say, "I love you" to someone, you are using a word that began as a noun just as fax, interface, and green-light did.
And long before that, the word's spelling and pronunciation had been evolving. Leubh is the root of love and believe, but
people started "mispronouncing" leubh just as you-know-who pronounces nuclear as nucular. But the planet keeps spinning and we have no sense that the "proper" pronunciation of belief is "beleubh." It was the same with the transformation of leubh into love. Every time we say love or belief, we are, technically, mispronouncing leubh!
Posted by Jan Freeman at 02:26 PM
February 14, 2007
Here's another Fred Astaire dance from "Royal Wedding" that might as well be the gold standard of grace. Single folks, even a coat rack can be your Valentine. And you can dally with a bowling pin to make the coat rack jealous.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 01:22 PM
February 14, 2007
Lo and behold, gov'nor, a piece in the (London) Times Literary Supplement that can be described as neat-o. It's a review of "Allen's English Phrases" and it discusses the current, as-we-speak development of the English language -- this is definitely happening, of course -- and the ways that development is being documented.
New Web sites like UrbanDictionary, PseudoDictionary, and Doubletongued are not only defining words and phrases at the instant they appear; they're also publishing entries in advance, out of a fun kind of neologistic hope. Hence idioms like these, presumably real and conjured:
One can read about irritations such as “carriage cruisers” (“A person who is unable to simply stand in one position on a train and decides . . . to move down the length of the train using the internal doors”) [now illegal in New York--Ed.] and the “Yoko factor” (“A term used to refer to something that splits up a group of friends”). UrbanDictionary is useful; it can be inventive (“slurk” – “a mixture of lurk and sneak”) and funny (“I beg to differ” – “I want to sleep with you”); but, as with so much of Web 2.0, there is more chaff than wheat.
But what wheat! The Yoko factor! That joins my internal dictionary instantly, whether or not anyone else is already saying it.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 12:34 PM
February 14, 2007
A trusted source passes along this tidbit about Mooninite LED throwy installer/TBS fall-guy Peter Berdovsky...
[Last night I was attending the] Akron/Family show at the Middle East, and midway through the show (it was sold out, and in the upstairs part, so the room was packed), I glance to my left and guess who was standing next to me? The mooninite guy with the dreadlocks -- Peter Berdovsky.
The room was all abuzz because he was there -- I heard several people mention it as they walked by -- and a few people approached him, seemingly with positive things to say. Also, he was carrying around a neon green, fuzzy stuffed animal, and he had a whole entourage of friends. Clearly, he didn't mind the attention from the crowd. I guess they're embracing their celeb status now?
What was it Oscar Wilde said about negative publicity being better than no publicity at all?
READ MORE FROM BRAINIAC: Attack of the Mooninites! | Eat your heart out P.T. Barnum | Son of Mooninite! | Panic in the Hub | Marketing Gone Awry | Mooninite Photo Op | Do the Mooninites have a posse? | Malden vs. Mooninites | Mooninite missives 1 | Mooninite missives 2 | Zebro video | Red Sox vs. Mooninites | Danger Bomb Clock | Mooninite kudos | Mooninite Man sighted | Mooninite guru? |
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 12:07 PM
February 14, 2007
A poster on Metafilter really got me enjoying life this morning, as I nurse a viral throat infection in a sleet storm, with a three-link post (click each link) of dance photographs. The first link show pictures of dancers in midair, calling to mind the astonishing Fred Astaire dance scene in "Royal Wedding" where he appears to climb the walls and ceiling mid-dance.
Another link shows dancers through a Kaleidoscope; another shows dancers jumping through things, be it powder or air; a third posted by a commenter shows an image series of the kind pioneered as a precursor to motion pictures in the 19th century by Eadweard Muybridge with his "Horse in Motion" work: they show a dancer at closely successive moments so that the motion is captured in a sense all at once.
Feels good to be alive, even on Valentine's Day.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 11:53 AM
February 14, 2007
That headline's just a glib reference to the title of an old Baudrillard pamphlet; I don't really want you to forget Waters. But his "Slow Reading" essay in CHE that I blogged about the other day has raised some hackles over at the Valve.
Bill Benzon writes:
Just what is the connection between reading among pre-schoolers and the readings that literature professors extract from literary texts? ... I understand that [Waters is] skeptical about current critical practice -- so am I -- and that he wants children to read -- so do I. I don't understand the connection he's making between these two.
Here's my take on the matter: If the connection between two parts of a published essay are unclear, blame the editor! It's certainly possible that Waters's argument could be less flimsy in places. But isn't that what editors get paid the big bucks for? Catching problems like that?
So far, though, the Valve-ers seem to want to lay the blame on Waters. Check out the debate -- pretty entertaining so far.
READ MORE: Slow reading revolution | Forget Lindsay Waters
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 11:46 AM
February 14, 2007
Patrick Smith, a Somerville-based commercial pilot, world traveler, and talented writer about whom we've written in the Globe a few times, mounts a defense of his repeated use of the un-PC term "stewardess" in his latest "Ask the Pilot" column for Salon.
Jan Freeman: Since it's too icy and rainy to go out today, want to weigh in on this topic?
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 11:34 AM
February 14, 2007
From one of the Onion's man-on-the-street interviews:
Harvard University has selected its first female president. What do you think?
Kent Livermore, Hammock Maker: "This only proves that to get the same opportunities as men, women have to work twice as hard and have twice as many fathers on the board of trustees."
Posted by Christopher Shea at 11:32 AM
February 14, 2007
Remember Little Joe, the 300-pound gorilla who in September 2003 escaped from the Franklin Park Zoo? In a testosterone frenzy, Little Joe leaped over a 12-foot-high, 12-foot-deep moat, crawled up a gorilla-proof wall, past an electrified wire, over a glass barrier, and through two sets of doors out of the gorilla pavilion. He attacked two people, scaled a fence and ambled off the zoo grounds for nearly two hours. Now, having been hidden away from the public for over three years while his "exhibit space" was fortified, Little Joe is back.
My kids will be glad to see the western lowland gorilla again... but what interests me is the redesign of his cage. See, when Little Joe escaped, then-Ideas editor Alex Star urged me to write something, anything, about it. (It was the Mooninite attack of that period.) We published a short item on Oct. 5, 2003, titled "Our gorillas, ourselves." Here it is:
LITTLE JOE MAY NOT have made it much farther than a Seaver Street bus stop, but news of the 300-pound adolescent gorilla's dramatic escape from the Franklin Park Zoo last Sunday was front-page news around the world.
Some headline writers, recognizing that an ape on the loose is a potent symbol of the id unleashed, turned Little Joe's little adventure into an epic of sex and violence. "Juvenile King Kong Spreads Panic in Boston," screamed The Mirror of London. "Teen Was Helpless Against Raging Ape," panted The New York Daily News. But many pundits and animal researchers noted that at least six primates have escaped from American zoos in recent years, which may confirm what Zoo New England CEO John Linehan told the press on Monday: "It's not the gorilla's fault." So whose fault is it? Some 60 years ago, German philosopher and radical social critic T.W. Adorno, then living in America, pinned the blame on a social order that makes false promises of freedom to its human captives. He compared advanced societies to modern zoos that replace bars with trenches. In so doing, they "deny the animals' freedom only the more completely by keeping the boundaries invisible, the sight of which would inflame the longing for open spaces."
In this analysis, those of us who complacently munched potato chips while watching Little Joe's zoobreak on TV may have more in common with the Franklin Park Zoo's gorillas, who (one hears) spend their downtime resignedly watching "Teletubbies" and nibbling "primate browse," than we might like to believe.
So... what to make of Little Joe's new cage? Click on the link below to see a graphic of the "improvements." Then tell me what you think!
Little Joe's new cage
**
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 09:03 AM
February 13, 2007
Great parody YouTube video making the rounds. It's basically a faithful recreation of an IT guy making a call on an office dweller to fix his machine, which has been down all day. It opens with the usual not-my-fault grumble from the Helpdesk about everyone needing to "learn the new system." Only the new system, the machine on the helpless guy's desk, is a book. He's making The Switch from the scroll.
It's a funny bit, most of all in its fidelity to the real-life situation. The "user" even offers the techie a glass of water, a classic move when you're feeling a little guilty about your incompetence. And of course the techie says no, because he'd rather just fix the damn thing and go home.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 10:41 PM
February 13, 2007
Lynne Truss's comic rage against apostrophe abuse helped sell a zillion copies of her punctuation manifesto, "Eats, Shoots & Leaves." But according to a report in the Independent on Sunday, Truss isn't laughing about the parodies her book has inspired.
In an outspoken attack on the wave of imitators who have spoofed the book's quirky title and cover design, Ms. Truss said she did not know how publishers of such imitations "live with themselves."
The parodies include "Eats, Shites & Leaves: Crap English and How to Use It," and "Doctor Whom," a "send-up about poor grammar acting as a catalyst for universal entropy."
Even the Vegetarian Society has clambered on to the bandwagon, with a booklet entitled "Eat Shoots and Leaves? More Interesting Cuisine from the Cordon Vert School."
Curiously, reporter James Morrison does not say where or when Truss made her comments; I would have expected an "outspoken attack" to produce longer or at least snappier quotes than anything printed here. But maybe there's more and better invective to come.
Posted by Jan Freeman at 08:26 PM
February 13, 2007
Henry Farrell, an assistant professor of political science writing at Crooked Timber, points out an element of the recent controversial foreign policy speech by Russian president Vladimir Putin that went relatively unnoticed. Putin ranted a little about the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a "not very well funded international organization, which focuses on internal security questions in Europe and Eurasia, with particular attention to minority issues and to democracy and election monitoring," as Farrell puts it. Putin:
"They are trying to transform the OSCE into a vulgar instrument designed to promote the foreign policy interests of one or a group of countries. And this task is also being accomplished by the OSCE’s bureaucratic apparatus, which is absolutely not connected with the [member] state founders in any way."
What Farrell takes from this is that the OSCE is in a sense succeeding because it's irking leaders like Putin, who don't want to be prodded and monitored by any multinational entity. In a smaller way, the Carter Center, a nonprofit public policy center founded by Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, is having a similar effect on leaders like Hugo Chavez. They don't want the Carter folks around on election day. And that's a good sign.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 06:07 PM
February 13, 2007
David Abel reports in the Globe today that an administrative law judge has ruled that horticulturist and UMass Amherst professor Lyle Craker should be allowed to grow marijuana for research purposes.
Currently the only legal supply of marijuana for research purposes is grown at the University of Mississippi by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a federal agency.
As Jessica Winter reported for Ideas last May in a piece called Weed Control, this limited supply -- and the quality of that supply -- has been a problem for both advocates and enemies of medical marijuana:
There is abundant anecdotal evidence and personal testimony to support myriad uses of cannabis to treat symptoms of cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and other ailments. As the FDA [has noted], however, scant clinical evidence exists to back these claims -- or, for that matter, to contradict them.
Paradoxically, the controls on official research of cannabis in America undermine both the medical-marijuana movement's efforts to prove the drug's benefits and the government's assertions of its dangers. Strangely enough, the case for pharmaceutical cannabis may, in the end, come down to good gardening -- and may depend on whether the government is willing to give up its monopoly on marijuana.
"I've spoken to patients who have used [NIDA marijuana], and they've said it's everything from worthless to other descriptions I should not use," Craker told Jessica last year. Looks like he might get his chance to grow some better stuff.
UPDATE: David sends along a link to the judge's decision.
Posted by John Swansburg at 04:42 PM
February 13, 2007
William Arkin, a former military analyst with Human Rights Watch who is now a fellow at the Kennedy School's Carr Center for Human Rights, has now spent several days at the center of a blogosphere cyclone over some intemperate remarks he made about American troops. (See this posting on Boston.com for an example of the concern Arkin's comments have spawned.) While making the argument that soldiers' support for the war could not trump American citizens' opposition to it, he complained that some soldiers thought they should exercise a veto on questions of war and peace. He'd just seen a a TV-news report in which soldiers complained about the anti-war movement. That report, he wrote, "is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary -- oops sorry, volunteer -- force that thinks it is doing the dirty work."
Bill O'Reilly proclaimed all-out war against Arkin and anyone who pays him for commentary (namely the Washington Post, which publishes his blog, and NBC), saying Arkin, and by extension the mainstream media, "hate" the military. The Post's ombudsman now says the word "mercenary" should never gotten into the paper (and makes the incredibly bad argument that the Post shouldn't be blamed for what's on its Web site -- hey, different staffs!), the Post's media critic has spanked Arkin, and Arkin has apologized for using the term mercenary, though not for the thrust of his argument. See here (and on the left rail) for his follow-up posts. The Post has asked him to stop writing about the subject.
All of which reminded me of this post by Harvard's blogger-economist Greg Mankiw, from last fall. He relayed the following anecdote, from another Web source, about Milton Friedman's efforts to end the draft in the late 1960's and early '70s. Back then, it was the generals, including William Westmoreland, who said an all-volunteer army would be a "mercenary" one. Friedman sat on a commission reviewing the draft.
In his testimony before the commission, Mr. Westmoreland said he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. Mr. Friedman interrupted, "General, would you rather command an army of slaves?" Mr. Westmoreland replied, "I don't like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves." Mr. Friedman then retorted, "I don't like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries. If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general; we are served by mercenary physicians, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher."
Posted by Christopher Shea at 01:20 PM
February 13, 2007
I'm a few days behind on this, but I wanted to continue along the thread Chris introduced in a post on Friday about trendy expressions or idioms and the people who get incensed by them, as described in Language Log.
I got a kick out of one quote in the Language Log piece. It was from John Simon, a famous and infamously cranky critic with a career constituting several decades of laying waste to undeserving works of art--plays, music, movies, doesn't matter. (Is it me or is he incredibly insensitive toward anyone female with a few extra pounds?) He says: "As long as there exists an active minority that knows how to distinguish between disinterested and uninterested, it is not too late to fight for such discriminating usage." That's classic Simon pedantry, but, sigh, I agree. I'm trying to hold on to the word "whom," which in spoken language at least keeps threatening to disappear. But courage! Press on!
That's what the grammar wars are all about, as the LL writer says: "These days, being a grammar snob is like being a devoté of Phish or Douglas Sirk films -- if everybody were into this stuff, it wouldn't be half as much fun."
Posted by Evan Hughes at 01:13 PM
February 13, 2007
Mark Frauenfelder of the popular blog Boing Boing has given Boston's Mooninite attack plenty of coverage. (ABC News made an online video of his criticism of Boston police and officials for overreacting.) Yesterday, however, Frauenfelder was tickled by a different Boston disaster: Ann Biglan, a Cape Cod woman whose car was so filled with garbage that she crashed in West Yarmouth.
Biglan's car
It seems that a number of old coffee cups and other items fell onto Biglan's brake pedal and accelerator, and she lost control. Let this be a warning to us all.
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 09:46 AM
February 13, 2007
Lest I sound like a shill for n+1, I should mention that I have also just received in the mail the latest issue (No. 24) of another of my favorite journals, Cabinet.
The theme of the issue is "shadows," and readers will discover an interview with Victor I. Stoichita, author of "A Short History of the Shadow," who explains, among other things, the symbolism of shadows in Renaissance painting; the four stages of shadow-understanding that Piaget claimed children go through; and the connection between the early modern craze for silhouette paintings and the belief that one's physiognomy reveals one's true character. Also in this issue: four specially commissioned artist projects about shadows; a history of the Austrian philosopher Otto Neurath's universal silhouettes (the ancestors of today's bathroom door and road warning symbols); an excerpt from a new book on the 18th-century "phantasmagoria," a horror version of the magic lantern show; the significance of Nixon's 5 o'clock shadow, and plenty more.
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 09:21 AM
February 12, 2007
I was struck by Josh's description of the essay by Nancy Bauer, the Tufts feminist philosopher -- or, rather, Bauer's own summary of her argument, which Josh quotes.
It reminds me of Susan Sontag's objections to most critical writing about art and literature, which she, too, believed was too "external" to the works themselves. What we need, Sontag famously wrote in "Against Criticism," is not more critical writing in the usual vein or veins but "an erotics of art."
It sounds as if Bauer is calling for an erotics of ... erotica.
Posted by Christopher Shea at 11:05 PM
February 12, 2007
Here's a blog that covers video games in large part, but takes good cracks at more general cultural crit. This post from last week about the ads from the Super Bowl is perceptive.
The Times made some fuss over the ads as reflections of the wartime American mentality. The blogger isn't buying it, and he's not bad at illustrating why. The ads that were supposed to be all about anxiety seem pretty campy and unthreatening. The post also points out, to its credit, that brain-scan studies did confirm in some cases that viewers were feeling anxiety or fear watching some of the ads, like this one. Beats me why, though.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 06:13 PM
February 12, 2007
Back in November, I mentioned in a Brainiac post that I'd written an essay titled "The Argonaut Folly" for the forthcoming issue of the journal n+1. Despite Chris Shea's cajoling, I coyly refused to reveal what the title meant. Well, the new n+1 is finally in the mailboxes of subscribers, and will soon be in bookstores everywhere, so the secret is out.
Josh submits 'Argonaut' essay to sleeping n+1 editor
My essay is a galloping history of a particular fantasy, more common than you might imagine, that gripped many of my favorite writers, thinkers, and artists -- from Nathaniel Hawthorne to the Beatles. It's a fantasy about not just working, but living in close company with one's most talented peers. Nietzsche wanted to do so; so did D.H. Lawrence and Andre Breton. I call it the Argonaut Folly because the Argonauts were the original band of talented individuals who together were able to accomplish great things, but whose very superiority (in my reading) rendered them misfits and losers among ordinary mortals.
Oh yeah, there are other fine essays in the new n+1, too. So far, I've enjoyed Gemma Sieff's gloomy report on post-apartheid South Africa; Imraan Coovadia's short story about a Pakistani nuclear engineer's surprisingly sentimental business trip to Pyongyang; and a terrific essay -- penned by Nancy Bauer, a feminist philosopher at Tufts -- which insists that "no philosophical analysis of pornographic objectification will enlighten us unless it proceeds not from the outside, from the external standpoint of academic moralism, but from the inside, from a description of pornography's powers to arouse." On deck: Keith Gessen's analysis of "Torture and the Known Unknowns" and Mark Greif's treatise on "Anaesthetic Ideology."
Other posts about n+1 and "The Argonaut Folly": 1 | 2 |
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 05:15 PM
February 12, 2007
I received from interesting comments from an acquaintance who writes about science regarding this article from today's New York Times. The article is strange fare for the front page, where it appeared, since it takes as its subject a single doctoral student at the University of Rhode Island. But it's pretty thought-provoking.
This student is a Young Earth Creationist, which means he thinks God created the Earth roughly (or exactly?) as described in the Bible, and did so no more than 10,000 years ago. Meanwhile he's a paleontologist who researches creatures that vanished in the Cretaceous Era, which ended about 65 million years ago. The guy does some rhetorical gymnastics when pressed, which is exactly what is required of him, I think:
"I am separating the different paradigms.”
He likened his situation to that of a socialist studying economics in a department with a supply-side bent.
But would that econ student write a dissertation that argued--nay, took as a baseline assumption--that supply side is right on the money? If so, we'd call him hypocritical, wouldn't we? The science writer says: "I don't know how he can live with the split: doing the science that says one thing but somehow believing another. My word for people like that is 'phony.'"
[Revised 6:12 p.m.]
Posted by Evan Hughes at 04:46 PM
February 12, 2007
The Sports Economist points to a story in the L.A. Times announcing that the Dodgers are trying out an ingenious ticket pricing scheme this year. The right field pavilion in Dodger Stadium will henceforth be the "all you can eat" section: For $35, you get a seat and unlimited concessions.
Given the outlandish cost of ballpark fare, this may sound like a pretty good deal. The LAT notes that the average fan spends $12.30 on food and drink per game, which actually sounds low to me, but then again I have an unfortunate soft spot for peanuts and Cracker Jack.
There are a couple catches, however. The obvious one is that your all-you-can-eat ticket does not include beer, which hasn't been sold in the pavilion for quite some time (a piece of Chavez Ravine trivia I learned the hard way during a Dodgers-Orioles interleague snoozer a few years ago).
The less obvious drawback to the all-you-can-eat plan is that the Dodger Dog is, in my opinion, the worst hot dog in baseball, and I say that having had dogs in more than 20 MLB parks (including all four of Milwaukee's Racing Sausages). So unless you really like cotton candy, I'd get some $10 upper deck seats (up this year from $6, alas) and spend the difference on food, drink, and a foam finger.
Posted by John Swansburg at 03:46 PM
February 12, 2007
In the past decade, books about language have been making a play for the Valentine's Day market, and why not? They're the no-calorie, no-wilt, low-priced alternative to you-know-what. Should your sweetheart be receptive to this sort of thing, there are several flavors to choose from.
Just out is Erin McKean's "That's Amore: The Language of Love for Lovers of Language." McKean, a lexicographer and author of "Totally Weird and Wonderful Words," takes her search for language tidbits international this time around. A taste:
Rouler un patin: Finally a great mystery revealed: this phrase is how the French say "to French-kiss"! Literally translated, Je lui ai roulé un patin means "I rolled a skate to him."
Evan Morris, otherwise known as The Word Detective, sticks with English in 2004's "Making Whoopee: Words of Love for Lovers of Words," a collection of etymologies:
When bimbo, which is a shortened form of bambino, Italian for "child" or "baby," first appeared in English around 1919, it originally meant a young person of either gender and, in fact, was most often applied to men. When a gangster spoke of a bimbo in the 1920s, chances were that he was referring to the sort of dim-witted street-corner thug we might today call a wise-guy wanna-be.
Mark Morton, in "The Lover's Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex" (2003), also covers English etymologies, though in more (and racier) detail:
The word hot, too, has been featured in amorous idioms since at least the early 14th century. Shakespeare, for example, uses the word hot as a synonym for lusty. In "Henry IV Part 1," Hal refers to a "hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta," and in "Othello" Iago implies that Desdemona and her supposed lover are "hot as monkeys."
Posted by Jan Freeman at 01:44 PM
February 12, 2007
I've just read a wonderful piece by Jenny Diski, a novelist with a blog, in the London Review of Books. Already we are in the territory that sets the LRB apart from the New York Review of Books; I am not aware of any blogger asked to write a piece in the latter. Also hip, in such an intellectual journal, is the subject of the article: the online virtual world called Second Life.
Diski seems intrigued enough by Second Life to want to join in the fun and see what makes it tick with a more attractive rhythm than real life (RL, as it is called in SL). But she casts a rather bemused eye in the end -- or really in the beginning:
So is the place stuffed full of extraordinary experimental poetry, song, fiction, art and architecture?
Second Life is a reiteration. It's a virtual world of buying and selling, profit and consumption, material decoration and political apathy.
And:
I was taken with the notion of becoming a great painter, but I couldn't see how Second Life would make me great at what I'm no good at in real life. If I wanted to think of myself as a great painter in spite of what I made on canvas or screen, I could just as well be delusional in the here and now.
On one (central) point, I must disagree with Diski, who seems to buy into an old image of the Internet as home of the pale geek:
The problem turned out to be (as it must) that Second Life is organised and inhabited by beings from the real world who have by definition very little experience of being anywhere or any way else.
The fact is that we are all now only too accustomed to what Sherry Turkle called, in the title of a book, "Life on the Screen." We sometimes prefer it that way, which may be the real problem.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 10:51 AM
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