Please Cite Your References

I listen to a lot of right-wing talk radio in my car. Take that as you will. I typically listen mid-day if I'm on my way to or from a meeting, lunch, or an errand since NPR is playing "classic or classical" music at that time of day and everything else on the radio sucks. I tend to listen for 15 minutes at most before I get sick of it and switch off. One of the things that gets me pissed fastest is what I'm going to call meme-fuscating: the practice of developing an idea that explains the world through your perspective and then repeating it often enough that you and your listeners subconsciously or consciously adopt that idea as fact. Meme-fuscating is so common that you can quickly get numb to it while listening to talk radio. It comes in high-level forms (liberals hate the military and think soldiers are dumb) and detail-oriented forms (Barrack Obama won't say the pledge of allegiance). The problem with meme-fuscating is twofold:

1. It gets repeated so frequently that it eventually becomes accepted as fact even outside of the immediate radio audience who hears it;
   
2. The high-level forms take on the feeling of religious belief and are so broad and nonsensical as to be unassailable -they are like inalienable truths to the radio listeners and hosts.
   

This morning, I was driving from the doctor's office and listening to Neal Boortz who was going on and on about Wesley Clark's recent comments regarding John McCain's qualifications to be President. Clark has come under fire for comments purported to slam the idea of McCain's military experience qualifying him for the Oval Office. Boortz ran in two directions with this story. He first wondered why Clark had stated that John Kerry's military record qualified him to be President in 2004. He then went on to say that Clark's comments and the spin on them in liberal blogs gave credence to the idea that liberals hate those in the military.

Let's just ignore the second prong of Boortz's attack. The first point -that Wesley Clark said John Kerry's war record qualified him to be President- made me wish that Boortz would cite his sources. The thing is that in the act of meme-fuscating, citations never occur. That would get in the way of the flow of the sermon. Perhaps I've spent too much time writing research papers, but I really think it's irresponsible to make such claims without backing them up. To help Boortz out, I did some research and found a transcript of Clark's speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention (hat tip to the next right). He said, in part:

John Kerry has heard the thump of enemy mortars.

... He's seen the flash of the tracers. He's lived the values of service and sacrifice. In the Navy, as a prosecutor, as a senator, he proved his physical courage under fire. And he's proved his moral courage too.

John Kerry fought a war, and I respect him for that. And he came home to fight a peace. And I respect him for that, too.

... John Kerry's combination of physical courage and moral values is my definition of what we need as Americans in our commander in chief.

It certainly seems that Clark is implying that Kerry's military service prepared him for office or at least that it reflects up on his character. He never directly says it qualifies him for office, but he does come close. How hard would it be to just mention the date and location of this speech instead of just talking in abstract terms? How hard would it be to admit that Clark never explicitly said what you claimed he said?

What's worse is that Clark is taking heat for something he didn't do. It turns out that in the course of an interview on Face the Nation this past Sunday, Clark was in the process of heaping praise on McCain when Bob Schieffer turned his comments around to attack Obama. Clark simply said that Schieffer's argument didn't make sense. Taken out of context with the rest of the interview, Clark's dismissal of the argument has somehow been taken as a criticism of McCain. If you don't believe me, watch the video here. Then consider what Clark had been saying before Schieffer interrupted:

I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war. He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he has traveled all over the world.

Now how is that slamming McCain? Why are we going to have to keep hearing about this story for days if not weeks?

Clearly Boortz shouldn't be alone in taking the blame for this episode of meme-fuscating. The major media outlets are running with the story as well. Maybe this is just an unfortunate side-effect of our rapid-fire media cycle, but some people are knowingly running with this story in a direction they know entirely misrepresents the truth.

Boortz's comments (along with dozens of others echoing similar cries) should not and cannot be understood as individual commentary when in fact they are emblematic of a larger movement that is entirely at odds with helping people understand the news of the day.

Wow That's Amazing

I'm a little at a loss for what to say about this video, except to say it's fun and very cool. They (Marginalia Project) are playing with a video technique, and I pulled some description of what it is from their website, pasted it below.


Chronotopic Anamorphosis from Marginalia Project on Vimeo.

Their Description of what you're seeing: The image is digitally manipulated by fragmenting it into horizontal lines and then combining lines from different frames in the display. The result is a distorsion of the figures caused by their motion in time, or, as Brazilian researcher Arlindo Machado calls it: chronotopic anamorphosis.

The effect was completely based on Zbigniew Rybczynski's "The Fourth Dimension", but transposed to Processing programming environment and performed in real-time.

The software still has some memory issues, specially when the image rendering is combined with video recording, as it can be seen in this video.

hat tip: Andrew Sullivan

Another One for the "Words Mean Things" File

Apparently words mean quite a lot to the American Family Association, so much that they have computers that scrub their way through AP stories before posting them swapping out the word Democratic Party and renaming it the Democrat Party. Interestingly, yesterday, a different scrubber went awry, changing an athlete competing for the Olympics' name from Tyson Gay to Tyson Homosexual. Hmm... that's interesting. Seems Mr. Homosexual "eased into" this year's Olympics, so perhaps we'll hear more about his exploits in the weeks to come. Meanwhile, coverage and a screen capture of the erroneous and bizarre event was posted at hte Salon.com war room here.

GZA + RZA + Bill Murray = Fun times

Ok, this is the encore to Tom Waits week, where I post one leftover video inspired by the Coffee & Cigarettes post. This doesn't involve the brilliant Mr. Waits, but it does involve Wu Tang Clan and Bill, "Groundhog Day Ghostbustin'-Ass Murray" talking about Mr. Murray's dangerous addictions to nicotine and caffeine. Also, in this post they discuss coffee popsicles, an idea I remember having multiple conversations about with friends on a visit to Chicago a few years back.

Manure Thief?

That's right, a manure thief fell into a vat of cow dung in Germany, then fled the scene buck naked. Now, I suppose if I fell into a vat of dung I would want to ditch my clothes too, but somehow I imagine that didn't entirely solve the problem. Does anyone else read this story and say, "WAIT! WAIT!!!! MANURE THIEF"?????!?!?!?!! Oh good, figured it wasn't only me.

Friday Fun Post

A few tidbits to keep you goin through the weekend... not that I won't necessarily post sometime Saturday or Sunday, but still. It's a list post, the weekend seemed a good excuse for that sort of thing. Now the list:

• There is a disease called Uncombable Hair Syndrome, and you can learn more about it here. The blog post linked discusses how the existence of this disorder points to a few interesting points, one being, "That from a therapeutic point of view, you need to look at the market value of finding a cure, before the whole finding a cure process to the start (i.e. do you think a lot of places are looking at treating uncombable hair syndrome?) Plus, if you take that question further, you can start getting into the arena of neglected diseases." Now neglected diseases are a serious and important topic of conversation. Uncombable Hair Syndrome... well, it's remarkable that it is existent, although I guess it sounds pretty frustrating. Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan
• Bill Gates Semi-Retires today from his full-time position at Microsoft (coverage of where Microsoft stands at this point in today's NYT) to shift into a larger role with the Gates Foundation. I, for one, hope that his shifting focus may allow more of the innovative thinking and rigor that clearly powered Microsoft's success as a company to push into the world of social change. It doesn't hurt to have a great mind choose to sink large amounts of his time and focus into building a better and more equitable world. Cheers, Bill.
• North Carolina offers free replacements for license plates that include the trendy and explicit kiddo speak, "WTF." I wonder if they'll offer the same for LMAO plates next. Details here.
• Finally, muskrats attack St. Louis. People in NC think to themselves, "WTF?" Honestly, I can't really embellish this one any more than that. Wonkette has some coverage, as does the Minneapolis Start Tribune.
  

Tom Waits & Iggy Pop from Coffee & Cigarettes

Here's a fun little piece from Jim Jarmusch's 2004 film Coffee and Cigarettes featuring Tom Waits and Iggy Pop. There's a bizarre energy about the scene, and I remember seeing this movie in a theater and walking away with this scene as one of my favorites, this and the scene with Bill Murray (watch out for it to be posted here shortly!).

Late Night Throw-back (Burgertime!)

That's right, it's Burgertime! A friend got me thinking about Apple IIc games today, and I found that there's an exhaustive list of games for the IIc listed on wikipedia (no big surprise there, actually), and as I started to scroll down, the first thing that caught my eye was Burgertime. I recognized others, but this game was definitely a classic of my childhood, this and Dig Dug!

I don't really know what else to say, except that this brought a huge smile to my face, as I suppose childhood memories are supposed to.

Wonderful Distraction Alert!

This is going to sound dirty, but you should seriously check out porkmoustache. I know, I know, it sounds... well, potentially very strange at the very least, but I would posit that the best adjectives to describe this singular phenomena are quirky and/or goofy. Super happy-making photo fun for your day.

Hat tip to my friend Tiff whose facebook page tipped me off to the moustache!

Laughable

Seriously, I just wanted to throw up a couple recent favorites from Wonkette. Here goes:

• On Tuesday they had a fun and exciting post about one of John McCain's most prominent Democratic supporters. Am I talking about our jowly and pugnacious senior senator from CT, Ole' Joe Lieberman? Nope, I'm of course talking about almost Governor of West Virginia Icky Frye. Don't know who he is? Check it out.
• Yesterday they, like many blogs, covered the new cover from New York Magazine, which prominently features a terrorist fist-jab between John McCain and Barack Obama. Are you wondering to yourself, "Terrorist Fist-wha???" No worrries, I got background for ya right here.
  

Tom Waits Ol' 55

Tom Waits week continues with a classic cut from his 1973 debut, Closing Time, "Ol' 55"



All Music Guide says, "The lyrics are terrific – “Well my time went so quickly/I went lickedly spitly/Out to my ol’ 55” is the song’s opening, and it progresses into a most moving account of a man and his car as one can possibly imagine."

I'll Go All Leviticus On Ya!

So James Dobson has begun trying to convince evangelicals not to vote for Barack Obama, and the Daily Show, as usual, has brilliant coverage of Dobson's comments. They do this funny thing that helps you see some of the irony in what Mr. Dobson has to say, they use what the kids are calling, "context."

Brilliant!