Too funny to pass up: WolfpacksforTruth.org: The Real Story on George Bush's "Wolves" Commercial
(Update) There's another funny send-up at The Poor Man.
On a more serious note, here's the FactCheck analysis of the Bush "Wolfpack" advertisement.
David Brooks examines the state of nation's work culture and ethic in his essay A Nation of Grinders, which ran in today's Times magazine.
"Four-fifths of American college students, according to a Jobtrak.com study, believe it will take them 10 years or less to achieve their career goals. Three-quarters of U.S. college students expect to become millionaires, and 52 percent expect to have achieved this stratospheric status by the time they are 50. "
If that's a current survey, I can only imagine what the numbers would have looked like back in 1997, when I left college. The generation now about to turn 30 has felt this crash more than anyone. We graduated from college at the height of the bubble, when hopes (and expectations, too) were at their highest. Five to ten years, and often several jobs later, many of us are still looking for the success and security that felt somewhat closer before we even began our career paths.
At the same time, I have to say I prefer the sentiment that success should be the actual result of work and execution rather than luck, which so much of late 90's success seemed to revolve around. I figure it's better for me: I'm not the type to ever win the lottery, but if it's about work, at least I have a fair chance.
The real problem our culture has with the idea that success should be based on hard work, integrity, consistency? It doesn't play well to the masses, and it doesn't make for good television. Ever notice in most of our television shows, nobody really seems to have a job? Do the characters in "Friends" ever miss dinner because they have to work late, or fly to three cities in a week so they can make enough to pay for an apartment half the size of the one on the show? Of course not. That's no fun.
I was sitting around having beers this week with a couple of guys who are, by all measures, immensely successful in their careers. They were trying to figure out how real people live in New York in their twenties, work a casual job and still pay their rent without going massively into the red. I have to admit, I'm not sure either how it works. Can anyone explain? Maybe I just need to watch more television.
"...people who live in Manhattan or Los Angeles or San Francisco or even Dallas have to keep reminding themselves that their experience is not typical. In most places in America, there are no massive concentrations of rich people and hence no Madison Avenue boutiques, no fine art galleries, no personal shoppers. There is just the country club, and certain social pressures to be just this affluent, to prove you are a success, and no more so."
Fortune replies to the Harvard Business Review's argument that high-tech is becoming another factor of production. It covers most of the points that I raised previously. It's always to know you're not just a ranting lunatic (or at least, there are others ranting from the same perspective.)
First off, a big congratulations to my sister Vanessa, who will be getting her undergraduate diploma from Barnard today (campus-wide graduation is tomorrow), as well as my buddies in the business school who are getting their degrees -- including my high school buddy Jeremy.
Jeremy's lucky enough to already have a job lined up (and a nice one at that) but the Times is reporting that despite many new graduates wanting to go on to grad school rather than try to find a job, "the market value of advanced degrees is unlikely to rise enough to make the investments worth it." They're particularly highlighting medical and law degrees, but I can tell you that the number of people applying to business school has been up for the last 2-3 years as well (although I don't know if the number of graduates will rise.)
I'm halfway through my second post-graduate degree (years ago I earned a masters from Columbia in journalism, an industry that always has an oversupply of labor.) If the value of advanced degrees is declining, does that mean I'm losing value twice as fast?
The Times today published an extensive article detailing how Jayson Blair, 27 fabricated multiple stories over a four year career at the paper. Not only did Blair concoct quotes and details, in many cases he wasn't even in the location his dateline said he was.
"The reporter, Jayson Blair, 27, misled readers and Times colleagues with dispatches that purported to be from Maryland, Texas and other states, when often he was far away, in New York. He fabricated comments. He concocted scenes. He lifted material from other newspapers and wire services. He selected details from photographs to create the impression he had been somewhere or seen someone, when he had not."
Provably fabricating a quote or story detail is enough to justify a reporter losing their job, even at a lesser page. It's stunning that Times editors tolerated multiple instances of such behavior from this reporter.
It's also stunning that the fact that a reporter was not submitting travel expenses didn't throw up immediate red flags. Did they think he was just paying for it out of his own pocket when his datelines were from all over the country?
Any good editor knows that the biggest product of a newspaper isn't the printed edition. It's the credibility of the organization. The Times' credibility has suffered a huge blow from this, and the editors are to fault as well as the individual. Certainly, there is no shortage of capable and willing reporters who would love to have filled that job if they had fired Blair earlier.
The story is all the more disturbing given how many of the stories they relate I can remember reading. Even though I worked as a reporter, and know errors happen, I still tend to regard what's reported in Times stories as the gospel truth, or at least a best-faith effort at it. Unfortunately, I guess the editors at the Times, like most of us, don't expect outright fabrication by the people we deal with. Especially given that even when you write a completely true story, people will often complain about misquotes and errors, making it harder for editors to detect inaccurate reporting. (I've had complaints about misquotes from interviews I taped recorded, where clearly they said exactly what I wrote.)
The Times article dances around the issue of race with regards to Blair's rapid rise at the paper, despite consistently erratic performance. There's no shortage of great reporters out there who have trouble finding work. Blair clearly what immensely charismatic, but it's apparent there was more going on than simple charm. I appreciate the concept of the diversity program, but it should be about finding more qualified minority employees (which is not so hard in the reporting business), rather than protecting unqualified ones.
Interestingly enough, the San Antonio Express-News reports that Blair had previously crossed paths with Macarena Hernandez. Blair's plagiarism of Hernandez's article eventually led to his downfall after the Express-News contacted the Times to demand she be credited properly.
More reporting from the Times: Accounting of the Deception.
Also:
Gothamist summarizes the Times article and links to other coverage.
Coverage in The Washington Post.
New Hampshire's state symbol, The Old Man of the Mountain, apparently collapsed this week. That's a tough break for the state, which has the symbol on their quarter and used it as a tourist attraction. I was able to see it a few times in college when we went hiking up in New Hampshire, and it was pretty neat. Franconia State Park is one of the most beautiful areas in New England, and even without the face it's still a great fall destination for hiking.
Apparently they're going to try to build a replacement, although the original "face" was a natural formation, not something carved into the mountain.
Update: CNN has a somewhat more well reported account.
[Via Megnut]
The New York Times has a great article by Paul Krugman on the illogic of Bush's tax cut proposal.
"The average American worker earns only about $40,000 per year; why does the administration, even on its own estimates, need to offer $500,000 in tax cuts for each job created? If it's all about jobs, wouldn't it be far cheaper just to have the government hire people?"
Krugman wrote The Return of Depression Economics in the late 90's. It's still the best, most clearly written book on macroeconomics I've ever encountered.
The SF Gate has further coverage of our favorite Iraqi propagandist, Minister McGoo. Information chief unshakable as Baghdad falls around him. Has anyone heard from him since Baghdad fell yesterday? I expect him to show up on David Letterman sometime soon.
11:22 EST Update: PR Flacks Lament Disappearance of Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf
TeeVee.Org's article: Crappy Journalism, Unfair and Imbalanced points out that the problem with Fox News coverage isn't its slant, or its bias -- it's the shoddly, unprofessional and unobjective in its delivery, and ignores good sense in jumping to conclusions based on incomplete information, abandoning any attempt at impartiality or thought. Even if you're totally pro-war, you're better off watching CNN or NBC and knowing what's going on than watching Fox's cheerleading.
Fox News Channel's slogan is: "Real Journalism -- Fair and Balanced." Forget the arrogance of having a slogan like that. Let's boil it down to the basics: before you can get to fair and balanced, you've got to practice real journalism. This weekend I didn't see any of that going on at the Fox News Channel.
The San Francisco Gate also has an extensive analyis of war coverage that particularly compares broadcast network and cable news coverage.
I have to add my voice of agreement to Jason Kottke's applause for al-Jazeera. We may not like how they report stories. But heck, I don't like how Fox News reports stories, either. The Arab network represents one of the first independent news sources in the Arab world. Such news agencies are a critical component of modern democray. Of course they report from an Arab perspective, with a slant towards empathy for the suffering of Iraq's civilians. Our news agencies slant towards reporting the humanitarian side of our soldiers and their families in just the same way. You don't have to read them -- but respect the effort they're making, all the same.
The Iraqi information minister has definitely upped the ante this week; I suspect he's setting himself up for a Hollywood second-career, or at least a made-for-TV-movie.
Read more on 'Victory over America'.
"We defeated them yesterday. God willing, I will provide you with more information. I swear by God, I swear by God, those who are staying in Washington and London have thrown these mercenaries in a crematorium.
"As President Saddam Hussein said: God will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of Iraqis."
If you misssed my earlier post about this giant of the media, take a gander.
If the Iraqi information minister was an actor, they'd fire him for hamming it up as the evil despot lackey of this particular debacle.
This morning, he was giving a live interview with Al Jazeera declaring, as always, that the US is being defeated handily. (The Scotsman - International - Information minister delivers the rhetoric) Unfortunately, at the same time CNN was airing live video of US tanks making incursions into Baghdad.
Regardless of how you feel about the war, you have to admit this guys bluffing is getting pretty funny. One day he's saying that the US hasn't pushed into Iraq significantly, and the next day he's saying, well, they took Baghdad airport, but we pushed them back.
Someone said it's hard to keep giving these briefings when at this point, he has to worry about them getting disrupted by coalition troops. Me, I'm dying to see what I would consider the seminal TV moment off all time -- the Iraqi information minister declaring victory, right as US troops run in and tackle him. Think of it as the international version of COPS.
P.S. they are now showing video of Baghdad center where you can hear the sound of gunfire in the distance. It's too bad that wasn't happening when Al Jazeera was doing the live, outdoor interview.
P.P.S. CNN just said that he read a statement saying that US troops are "on Baghdad." I guess it was getting hard to stay credible.
Keep up with the latest from the man in Iraq.
The war, in some ways, is like reality TV in reverse... (continued)
Continue reading "Most Likely to be Remembered as a Schmuck" »
Found these gems on Amazon today after seeing someone reading "The Idiot's Guide to Communing with Spirits." I'm wondering if maybe we could send some of these to Washington as a handy primer. Or maybe that's who wrote them...
Amazon, incidentally, is now recommnending Living Wicca (a witchcraft lifestyle-guide) to me, since I searched for the first book. Nice try... no sale.
The New Yorker has an interesting piece by Louis Menand, The Thin Envelope: Why College Admissions has Become Unpredictable. Especially in light of this week's affirmative action ruling by the supreme court.
I'm not totally sure how I feel about the use of race in admissions. Especially in business school admissions (my most recent experience) it seems to me that asking any information that does not speak to the immediate qualifications of the student should be questioned. Given my professional career, academic performance, personal qualities, why should which box I check in the "race" category change my chances of entry? This is a particularly personal question to me; given my mixed ethnicity, I have the right to make such a choice. I don't see how such a system can claim to be both internally consistent and equally fair to all races.
I found one section of the Harvard Business School application even more dubious, if not downright offensive -- the one where they ask where your parents went to school, and what they do for a living. As someone well into my career, what reasonable meaning could my parent's occupation possibly have? How could it possibly be an indicator to my personal integrity, professional skill or experience. My only thought is that it may be an indicator of how much I'm likely to donate to the school, or how famous (and/or well connected) my parents are. Is that any better or worse than say, asking how many generations my family has lived in this country?
Feed your war news addiction with a near real-time compilation of breaking reports at The Command Post - A Warblog Collective
I love it because it saves me looking at multiple sites, or waiting for one to post the latest update. Plus, most of the minute-by-minute news is really only worth a sentence or two, but the news sites generally feel compelled to write a 300 word-story for each new tidbit.
My only criticism? A bit too much news from Fox television, for my taste, combined with somewhat of a hawkish lean; but you'd expect that from folks following every battle action so closely.
Today's network news catchphrase seems to be "preparing the battlefield." I guess if we're going to do "surgical strikes" (1991 lingo), then we first need to prepare the operating theatre. Still, it seems like a very removed replacement term for "blowing the crap out of things high on our list." Does anyone else think the military shows are increasingly sounding like FoodTV? Will Tommy Franks be punctuating his bomb damage assessments (BDAs) with the occasional "bam"???
Looking at MSNBC this morning, they've got the "war timer" up now. Seems that it's become mandatory to put up a countdown timer on the overlay any time anyone gives any kind of deadline. Is it really necessary to track exactly how many minutes remain? Is the first missile really going to launch when the timer reaches zero? No. If Saddam steps down at hour 48, minute 2, will we still attack? In international diplomacy, should there really be "buzzer beaters" to avoiding war?
Fortune has an article that Generation X (those age 25-35, approximately) has experienced the worst career reversal seen since the Great Depression. I'd argue the game isn't over yet, but it's true that I'm stunned how many of my friends have been laid off at least once, over the past few years -- and many of them graduated from Ivy League (or better, heh) colleges. It's tough to see this happen to the people who most bought into the promise of education -- work hard, go to a good college, have a great career. My hope remains, however, that this game isn't over yet. Those who were positioned best before the current recession (depression?) will be ready to take advantage of the bounce back -- if our student loans don't crush us first.
" Now that the thrill ride is over, Gen X's plight seems particularly bruising. No generation since the Depression has been set up for failure like this. Everything the dot-com boom delivered has been taken away--and then some. Real wages are falling, wealth continues to shift from younger to older, and education costs are surging."
Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, manages, as usual, to sum up the intuition of many intelligent Americans: Why is Bush so determined to attack Iraq, and why now? His article, which is heavily influenced by the thinking he developed in his book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, is that as a nation we should be figuring out how to unravel and reverse the conditions that are creating "undeterrable" menaces like those of 9/11.
"...only by helping the Arabs gradually change their context — a context now dominated by anti-democratic regimes and anti-modernist religious leaders and educators — are we going to break the engine that is producing one generation after another of undeterrables.
Slashdot has an extended interview with Alton Brown, host of Good Eats on the Food Network.
Alton: No matter how much creativity goes into it, cooking is an art -- or perhaps I should say a craft. It abides by absolute rules, physics, chemistry, etc. and that means that unless you understand the science you cannot reach the art. We're not talking about painting here -- cooking's more like engineering. I happen to think that there is great beauty in great engineering (the wing of a Boeing 777, a suspension bridge) but they are not works of art, they are works of science. To my mind art is a matter of personal expression and the exchange of ideas; food is in the end, fuel -- a means to an end.
News.Com is reporting that a draft bill being introduced in Congress would authorize copyright holders to disable consumer's PCs being used for illicit file trading. Not only that, but it would immunize them from any state or federal laws and most civil liability for damages. Sounds like it's time to finally join the EFF.
"The legislation would immunize groups such as the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America from all state and federal laws if they disable, block or otherwise impair a 'publicly accessible peer-to-peer network'"
The New York Times has a great requiem for Jimmie Lee Robinson, a Chicago-native blues guitarist/vocalist who fought the gentrification of the neighborhood near U. Chicago where he learned his trade. "A Chicago Bluesman, Reaching Crossroads, Gives Up His Fights."
Watching NYU community gobble up the immigrant neighborhoods of the East Village... replacing genuine ethnic restaurants with the Taco Bells and KFC's that suburban students prefer... it's not hard to understand that Robinson had reasons to fight for a neighborhood that others simply saw as delapidated.
If cutting himself shaving hadn't decided it, Marty was now definitely realizing that it was probably going to be a bad day, on the balance.
Okay, the photographer wasn't gored or anything... he probably had the camera on a boom with a remote shutter release, so he may not have even been on the street level. Still, nice photo.
Okay, can everyone stop quoting spokesmen when they declare that some massive failure was the result of a "perfect storm" of some condition they were supposed to have under control?
The latest to float this claim was NYSE chairman Richard Grasso, who called the Worldcom scandal "the perfect storm of failure." Ummm.. no. This was not the convergence of three minor failures. This was a huge case of accounting fraud. And it wasn't a once-per-hundred-year kind of thing, either, quite obviously.
Before this, we've had the perfect forest fire (can't find the citation, but it's been used to refer to several), the perfect meteor storm, and even a "perfect little ice storm", just to name a few.
Time for a perfect little thesaurus, perhaps.
According to The L.A. Times, the Bejing Evening News finally retracted a story it stole last week from The Onion about the U.S. Congress threatening to move out of the capitol, but it's apparent they still don't quite understand things. As part of the retraction, they took a shot at the satire rag for being, well, not entirely accurate.
From the Times:
"Some small American newspapers frequently fabricate offbeat news to trick people into noticing them, with the aim of making money," the paper said. "This is what the Onion does."
It cited a recent Onion article about the U.S. government issuing life jackets to all Americans for some unexplained reason. "According to congressional workers, the Onion is a publication that never ceases making up false reports," the Evening News said.
Several amusing things going on this morning:
The Bejing Evening News has egg on its face after
reprinting (without credit) a satire article from The Onion as real news. Sadly enough, so far it hasn't chosen to retract the story and tell its readers that the U.S. Congress is not, in fact, demanding a capitol with retracting dome (for good weather days.)
The original Onion Story
The Bejing Evening News site (I'd link to the story if I could read Chinese.)
In unrelated news, God now has his own blog. You have to wonder though, wouldn't the Devil be more amusing, long term?
Steven Jay Gould passed away yesterday at the age of 60. I don't have much to add to the New York Times obit, except to say that as a child who was interested in science, several of his books were the best reads I ever picked up.
"One of the most influential evolutionary biologists of the 20th century and perhaps the best known since Charles Darwin, Dr. Gould touched off numerous debates, forcing scientists to rethink sometimes entrenched ideas about evolutionary patterns and processes. He is credited with bringing a forsaken paleontological perspective to the evolutionary mainstream."
Whatever blog writer chose to link to his obit as "succumbed to natural evolution" needs to stop writing and read Gould's books.
Police units in Japan and Korea are bracing for violence at the World Cup. Japan's police have little or no experience with unruly crowds, so they've been practicing ffor stadium riots over the last few weeks - including simulating a "crowd of fire-setting, motorcycle-driving fans". Um, how many fans are bringing their motorcycles with them on the plane? Still, seems like rather a lot of fun, except for the part where they practice using the water cannon and giant nets on you. Oh yeah, and the big whacking stick (see: Simpsons.)
For each game, the Japanese police will mobilize more than 7,000 riot police. (To be fair, there is also increased concern regarding terrorism.)
The Koreans are somewhat less worried, having gained experience dealing with violent student protests. Somehow, though, I don't think that a bunch of teenage/early-20s college students compares with a crowd of skinhead soccer hooligans for sheer destructive power.
With Mother's Day approaching, a number of organizations are doing their annual P.R. stunt of releasing press releases estimating what mom's would get paid if compensated for their labor. According to CNN Money, the estimates range from $60,000 to over $600,000 -- the "salary of a top-notch CEO."
I'm all for valuing the contributions of mothers (hi mom) but some of these organizations should be embarassed by the quality of their estimates. If these guys were doing this as a case study, they wouldn't get the job. Ric Edelmen, chair of Edelman Financial Services is the source of that high-end, $635K estimate. RicEdelman.com's tag line is "your financial planner." But they arrive at their estimate by totalling the annual salary of each job role a mom undertakes, from financial planner ($70K) to computer systems analyst ($60K). Um... so you're telling me that she does twenty-odd jobs, but produces as much value as full-time employees doing just one of those each? Or that her work is as leveraged doing it for 3-6 people as it would be doing it for the thousands of customers some of these jobs impact? Sorry, but I'm not letting Ric Edelman be my financial planner any time soon, if this is how carefully he thinks.
So there was an earthquake here in New York... and as usual for East Coast earthquake, nobody noticed. It's like someone threw a party, but didn't invite anyone at all. It's not like California, where earthquakes aren't news unless buildings fall over. Here, we need the news report to confirm that what we felt the night before wasn't just the garbage truck going by outside. We don't even think of word "earthquake" until we see the news the next day... and then we think "oh yeah, that thing I felt last night... or was that indigestion?"
Faced with a study by the Boston Globe that found 91% of seniors at Harvard graduated with some kind of honor, and half of undergraduate grades were A or A-, Harvard is trying to figure out how to restore B as the average grade.
One proposal: make a B+ closer to A-, so professors are more likely to give Bs. Uh, guys, are we not understanding the point of this discussion?
We always joked about grade inflation at "that other school" when I was in MIT, but we never imagined anything like this...
Rejected Senator Holling's digital copyright bill, which would ban technologies not specifically approved as "copyright-friendly", has been massively rejected by both the high tech industry as well as thousands of consumers. One group that seems to have arisen from this debacle is DigitalConsumer.Org, a "grassroots" lobbying organization dedicated to promoting the rights of end users. This is a good thing.