The internet is a sham.: October 2005

Monday, October 31, 2005

I want it their way

This video of two Chinese students singing "I want it that way" had me cracking up in my studio alone with headphones on. Notice the kid in the background who can't be bothered enough to watch the two serenaders. He's playing video games. Awesome. (I saw this via GNXP, and you might want to check out the other video in that post.)

Labels: media, music

Seeking Single, Dumb, Unsuccessful, Unmotivated Woman

Maureen Dowd has a New York Times Magazine piece this weekend where she discusses how "the triumph of feminism [lasted] a nanosecond [in the 1970s] while the backlash lasted 40 years." As usual, I find the style of her argument more offensive than the content, but since this is a Magazine piece and significantly longer than her column, it is actually readable.

One funny thing that I noticed was that she repeats the same story she related in an earlier column that was about men being turned off by successful women. So I went back and checked the original column, and sure enough, she doesn't merely retell the same story, the first two paragraphs are repeated verbatim:

A few years ago at a White House Correspondents' dinner, I met a very beautiful actress. Within moments, she blurted out: "I can't believe I'm 46 and not married. Men only want to marry their personal assistants or P.R. women."

I'd been noticing a trend along these lines, as famous and powerful men took up with the young women whose job it was to tend to them and care for them in some way: their secretaries, assistants, nannies, caterers, flight attendants, researchers and fact-checkers.
(Men Just Want Mommy) and (What's a Modern Girl to Do?)

Of course, there's nothing wrong with quoting yourself, particularly as this weekend's article is actually adapted from her forthcoming book. But it's still funny. And frankly, since I don't have evidence to the contrary, I'm taking her account at face value: apparently, men are turned off by intelligent, successful, driven women. Therefore, it must be the case that I'm not a man.

As for the larger message of the longer article (and the new book), there are several facets she considers: money, standards of beauty, marriage, and the whole laundry list of what "feminism" covers. She's right that there has been a cultural backlash against some of the '70s feminists, but interestingly enough most of it stems from women who feel that the feminist aesthetics and politics of that age were simply too radical. For a change, Dowd doesn't lecture and snark until the reader submits, she does present the facts fairly.

Some of her conclusions are a little alarmist, I think. But I think she's fundamentally right that a generation of women are now entering the workforce believing that gender inequality is largely a thing of the past. I would argue that this is an inevitable byproduct of a large degree of success that previous generations of feminists have had, and perhaps a little alarmism from Maureen Dowd and her cohort might serve to keep us vigilant.

Labels: feminism

Friday, October 28, 2005

How novel - a blog critiquing blogs

I've had several recent conversations about the value of "open" web information sources like Wikipedia and blogs when compared to "traditional" sources like encyclopedias, journals, and institutional news sources. In the end, I do see the value in the newcomers: I do check Wikipedia when I'm not particularly invested in strict attention to detail and I want an overview. Blogs are useful for finding a.) links to institutional materials I have missed and b.) helping me weigh the merits of opposing opinions. But, fundamentally, I value the "mainstream" sources of information. I know they're flawed, I'm not so naive as to believe everything I read. But let's face it: with all their flaws, mainstream news sources can offer two things that the communal web sources haven't come close to touching: depth and reliability. Sure, blogs are good for getting a superficial take on nearly every issue, but they're virtually useless when you would like in-depth coverage of any issue, because it is hard for the armchair journalist to make it out to dangerous and far-off locales (where there may be few intrepid bloggers writing in your language) to write a compelling blog entry.

In the end, I guess all I'm arguing is that while we are right to celebrate these new venues, we need to be careful not to overstate their importance. And we certainly should not be teaching the new generations of netizens that blogs, Wikipedia, and other communal offerings are replacements for their professional counterparts. If we do, we will increasingly find ourselves limited to only those free communal offerings and without recourse to professional and reliable information. To this effect, you should read (ironically enough) a blog entry from Nicholas Carr's "Rough Type" on the same subject (and its wider implications):

Forced to choose between reading blogs and subscribing to, say, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Atlantic, and the Economist, I will choose the latter. I will take the professionals over the amateurs.

But I don't want to be forced to make that choice.

. . .

Implicit in the ecstatic visions of Web 2.0 is the hegemony of the amateur. I for one can't imagine anything more frightening.
(The amorality of Web 2.0)

On a completely unrelated note:
Let's hope Zack is right about where the video iPod is headed. Personally, I think he's being too optimistic. We've all been waiting for flash drives to replace moving component drives for years. It'll be great if it happens in the next 18 months, but I'm thinking it'll take 5 years or so. I do, however, agree that Apple should upgrade my recently purchased iPod.

And speaking of Apple:
I've been meaning to point out that I find it endlessly amusing that OS X Tiger's startup "progress bar" is just a placebo. It isn't actually measuring any sort of progress at all: it is just there to reassure you. How does it know how long the bar should take until it reaches the end? Practice. It stores how long it took to boot up last time, and times its meter using that rubric. It stores the time it takes to boot (in seconds) here:

/var/db/loginwindow.boottime

Apparently my last boot took 2.253010 seconds. The engineers at Apple must have a sense of humor (or are humorless robots that make humans laugh, anyway) because the application that displays the bogus progress bar is called, of all things, WaitingForLoginWindow! For more information on this and other Tiger tricks, check out Daring Fireball: Tiger Details.

Labels: blogging, media, technology

Friday, October 14, 2005

Charade!

Wow, I just found out (via waxy.org) that Charade is in the public domain. I already own the DVD and I have often recommended it to friends. Well, now I can recommend it to everyone. Go watch Charade.

Labels: media

Wednesday, October 5, 2005

The War on . . . Oh Who Am I Kidding?

Ernie was right about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Maybe I do give people the benefit of doubt too frequently. Now a whole bunch of sets on the Suicide Girls site have been censored. Instead, this is what you see:

(suicidegirls.com/boards/3970654)

But [Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales endorses the rationale of predecessor [Reagan-era Attorney General Edwin] Meese: that adult pornography is a threat to families and children. Christian conservatives, long skeptical of Gonzales, greeted the pornography initiative with what the Family Research Council called "a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general."
(Washington Post - "Recruits Sought for Porn Squad")

Every time I hear about groups like the "Family" "Research" Council (yes, "family" and "research" each get the bunny-ear treatment), I think back to the old adage about the enemies of my enemies and the friends of my enemies. And it looks like my enemies consider Alberto Gonzales a friend.

Labels: conservatism, fud, media, sham

Sunday, October 2, 2005

On Safety

For some reason, I've been spending a lot of time looking at departments of Near Eastern studies. Don't ask me why. Just laugh at this gem I found on Princeton's site:

Some applicants expect us to be flattered if they apply only to Princeton; in fact it makes us uneasy. It is much better for you to spread your risk. Even if you have set your heart on coming to Princeton, you should at least apply to Harvard as a safe school.
(www.princeton.edu/~nes/factsheet.html)

Labels: academia, comedy

The internet is a sham.