Keeping it in the family

I am fascinated by (and terrified of) media empires. And while Walt Disney's is pretty scary, none scares me so much as Rupert Murdoch's.

When you own so much, it can be difficult to find sources outside of your media family. Take this passage from a recent Wall Street Journal article by Stacy Meichtry concerning Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi:

Mr. Berlusconi has charged the foreign media with fanning his troubles. In one episode, he accused News Corp., which owns The Wall Street Journal, of orchestrating personal attacks on him through the media in retaliation for the Italian government's decision in late November to raise the value-added tax on satellite TV subscriptions, a market dominated in Italy by News Corp.'s Italian pay-TV unit Sky Italia. Rupert Murdoch, CEO and chairman of News Corp., called the allegations "nonsense" in an interview on Fox Business Network earlier this month. A spokesman for News Corp. declined to comment on the matter.

Rupert Murdoch commenting on his business to a company he owns? Is anyone even trying? Does that really add anything to the article? Here, let me show you how silly this is.

U.S. President Barack Obama is questioned for the details of the bailout. His daughter Malia interviews him on this:

Malia Obama: Daddy, are you doing everything right with the bailout?
Barack Obama: Yes.

Malia gives the news to Sasha Obama, who works it into her essay on U.S. economic policy. (it's amazing what they make third graders do these days!) An excerpt below:

When Malia asked my dad if he was doing the right thing with the bailout, he said he was. I think he would know, because he is the Leader of the Free World, after all. Bo didn't have anything to say, but he did scratch his ear and whine for a treat.

(Awww, it's so cute when children capitalize abstract concepts like Love and Leader of the Free World!)

But at least Sasha's report isn't printed on the front page of one of America's newspapers of record. That would just be silly.

I bounce like kanga, get high like planes

"Stoned wallabies create opium crop circles"

No pictures, but probably the best mental image you will get all day.

P.S. If they were to try these creatures in a court of law, would it be considered a kangaroo court?

Tweet: "Web site" is proper AP style!

Despite reading Doonesbury every day, this feature on the Columbia Journalism Review Web site was rather difficult.

And quite amusing.

To blog is to pee one's pants.

"People who speak in metaphors should shampoo my crotch." -Jack Nicholson

Congratulations, Randolph High School class of 2009!

You made it through those awkward years of high school and are now ready to take on the world. But before you do, here is a refresher course in metaphors in case you ever have to, say, give another graduation speech as president of the Student Government Association.

In "The Dead," James Joyce employs an extended metaphor full of battle imagery to drive home the tension of the dinner party and the militaristic outlook of the time. This is 1914, after all, and Ireland seems poised on the brink of civil war:

A fat brown goose lay at one end of the table and at the other end, on a bed of creased paper strewn with sprigs of parsley, lay a great ham, stripped of its outer skin and peppered over with crust crumbs, a neat paper frill round its shin and beside this was a round of spiced beef. Between these rival ends ran parallel lines of side-dishes: two little minsters of jelly, red and yellow; a shallow dish full of blocks of blancmange and red jam, a large green leaf-shaped dish with a stalk-shaped handle, on which lay bunches of purple raisins and peeled almonds, a companion dish on which lay a solid rectangle of Smyrna figs, a dish of custard topped with grated nutmeg, a small bowl full of chocolates and sweets wrapped in gold and silver papers and a glass vase in which stood some tall celery stalks. In the centre of the table there stood, as sentries to a fruit-stand which upheld a pyramid of oranges and American apples, two squat old-fashioned decanters of cut glass, one containing port and the other dark sherry. On the closed square piano a pudding in a huge yellow dish lay in waiting and behind it were three squads of bottles of stout and ale and minerals, drawn up according to the colours of their uniforms, the first two black, with brown and red labels, the third and smallest squad white, with transverse green sashes.

After that, the metaphor dissolves, having served its purpose. It doesn't wander, it isn't mixed, and everything matches up. At one paragraph in length, it achieves everything Joyce aimed for.

How to use a metaphor:

1. Make it brief. Metaphors should last for a paragraph at most, because if they go any longer you will inevitably lose your way in the deep, dark forest of metaphor with no gun to keep you safe from the bears that hide in the crevices of contemplation eating the honey of deception.
2. Make everything match up. That last one was confusing, right? Corresponding parts go together. Parents are lifeguards. Teachers are beach umbrellas. Don't tell me I'm going to get attacked by a shark without telling me what a shark corresponds with. Otherwise I'll spend the rest of my life wary of land sharks.
3. Don't mix. You'll use this little nugget pretty frequently in college. Despite the hilarious absurdity of the image, I am not chased by seagulls through the halls of Randolph High. Rather, I am chased by seagulls on the beach. Which means, of course, that I am chased by cops through the halls of RHS.
   
4. Make it believable. Don't tell me that Pizza Palace is like an arcade on the metaphorical boardwalk because you idly spend your time and money there. Pizza Palace is the pizza place on the metaphorical boardwalk because you order pizza there. There may very well be a joint that corresponds to the arcade, but a pizza place is not it.

I cooked up this handy reference chart displaying the efficacy of metaphor in writing:



As for the title for this post, well, it is believable; I just haven't told you the corresponding part yet.

You do it alone, but everyone can see the result. And make comments.

Our next lesson will be in speaking to your audience, in case you are ever made salutatorian and also have to make a speech at graduation without embarrassing yourself.

Things aren't so different

Perhaps I've been reading too much apocalyptic literature.

Bailout
- a prayer -

By the East River, there we sat and wept, when we remembered Wall Street

Great animating Spirit,
maker, breaker of bonds,
that draws the cycling tides
round our knees or out to sea
in black night or red dawn,
that shades green our eyes
as earth grays, is concretized,
hear our prayer.

Through our neglect of custom
we have fallen from Your favor.
On our own account we no longer savor
Your richness. How quickly we
have learned the cost of our actions.

Is our smoke displeasing,
factories replace ox and kid –
is this foul incense?
Our machines slaughter stock
for us now, is this displeasing?
Have we not fallen
toward Wall Street and prayed?
Must we ourselves dash the blood
upon your altar, above our doorframes,
renounce our old ways, forsake
Detroit’s sweet machines?

Accept our new sacrifice,
one point one trillion backed
by your people, allotted by our priests,
loaded on Your people’s backs.

To You, oh Economy, we offer this gift,
as our fathers shed blood
so the sun might rise
as our mothers pinched us,
so we might shed tears
and again the sun
might greet our eyes.

Amen.

White House TV

- or, "It hurts to agree with the Drudge Report" -

Yikes! ABC will be broadcasting live from the White House with a special on healthcare reform?

That's like broadcasting live from within a private office of an auto exec. Any way you go about it, you're going to be a guest.

However, if you view the White House as an American institution and not Obama's personal property, you can begin to see why this almost makes sense. Drudge, of course, is skewing the issue. Let's see what the fine succinct folks at USA Today have to say:

On the night of June 24, ABC News and Obama will host a health care town hall at the White House. The president will take questions "from an audience made up of Americans selected by ABC News who have divergent opinions in this historic debate," according to the network.

Double yikes! Let's zoom in on that last sentence for a second. Are you focused? Good. Now check out this quote of ABC News Senior Vice President Kerry Smith:

"ABCNEWS [sic] alone will select those who will be in the audience asking questions of the president. Like any programs we broadcast, ABC News will have complete editorial control. To suggest otherwise is quite unfair to both our journalists and our audience."

So the media is more similar to the government than we initially thought. Now instead of the government picking the reporters who will ask "the best" (read: softball) questions, ABC News is hand picking an audience that will surely represent America in every way.

Well I certainly hope to see Joe "A Little Off His Rocker" Nonagerian and Jane "Single Ethnic Minority Mother Living in the Projects Who Might Or Might Not Have A Drug Problem" Doe. Because that's what town hall meetings are truly like. And it will sure as hell make it more interesting than Billy Collins and Bill Cosby sitting around, wondering what they're doing there.

Actually, those last two might not be so bad. But drunken farmers and hostile auto workers would certainly be better. Let's hope they let them in.

What happened here?

It seems the emphasis of this blog has shifted away from the independent media as a whole, though that will definitely be a major component of future posts. For now, at least, this blog will be about me (but aren't all blogs). Well, not about me specifically, but about things I find interesting and relevant.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Thank you, professor Cohen, wherever you are, for giving me a reason to begin this blog. It's a good exercise in creativity and analysis.

Some promotion:
I'd like to encourage everyone who reads this to check out my good friend Pete's blog. The captain of last year's Ithaca men's rowing team, he is at a USRowing lightweight sculling development camp. He's chronicling his story here.

Some Self-Promotion:
As an editorial intern in the Arts and Entertainment section of the Ithaca Times this summer, it is my job to proof copy, write articles and help put together the "Times Table." My first article was published yesterday, and I think it came out all right.

I also contribute to the Ithaca Times arts blog, Popcorn Youth. You can read my most recent post here, and I'll repost it below as well.

In other news, I am working on an honors thesis next year with Professor Michael Twomey. The topic? Prophets and the Apocalypse. (Not to be confused with "Profits and the Apocalypse," a terrifying tale of why the sinking world economy is a sign of the end times.) If I find anything interesting or relevant, I'll post it here.

What's on your summer reading list?
[Originally posted to the Popcorn Youth blog June 5, 2009]

I think the last teen/young adult book I read was Frindle in eighth grade. By this point I was reading mostly Tom Clancy, and just getting into John Grisham. Ho ho, I thought, I’m so mature. This book is about fifth graders, ho ho.

But then I really liked it. It had all the classic elements of teen lit: school, struggles with teachers and bullies, a smart kid to outwit them all. I sure wasn’t getting everything in Rainbow Six, but this I could understand. I’d been through stuff like this in the past.

Frindle was, if I remember correctly, very light-hearted, with no more conflict than student versus teacher or student versus bully. A little alienation here and there, but nothing big. That’s what I thought I’d find in Slob, local writer Ellen Potter’s latest teen novel. I was completely wrong. This book cuts pretty deep. And does it really well.

I first picked up this book doing research fro an upcoming article on Potter, thinking it would be important to know some of her work and style. I finished the whole thing in about two hours, unable to put it down.

Slob tells the story of Owen Birnbaum, a seventh grader growing up in New York City. He has an IQ of 139 and is 57% (e.g. 57 pounds) heavier than your average 12 year-old. His weight, of course, has him as the butt of many cruel jokes, including those of his teacher. He didn’t always used to be so heavy. In fact, he only started putting on weight about two years ago after an event that isn’t named until three-quarters of the way through the book. He has the stretch marks to prove it.

Owen’s an inventor, and is trying to come up with a contraption to see into the past, in order to see what happened two years ago. What is this mysterious event? Well, you’ll have to read for yourself, but if Dostoyevsky wrote a children’s book, he’d probably treat it in a similar way. The psychological implications of the incident are well-treated and the event itself is incredibly dark and heart-rending.

It’s a nice coming-of-age tale in which villains can be heroes, supposed heroes can be villains and everyone has a secret. Oh, and the guy with the one-point-short-of-genius IQ? He’s not nearly as good at understanding other people as he is at understanding his homework.

So if you’re looking for something to read this summer that’s not too challenging and won’t take up too much time, try a young-teen novel like Slob. It’s okay, Edward Cullen and Robert Langdon will be there when you get back.

A New Opportunity

May 22, 2009 - USRowing adds yet another collegiate championship regatta into the spring racing mix. Besides the risk of the race dates coinciding, isn't it a little absurd that there are so many "national" championships? That's three "national" championships we have now in the United States.

What is USRowing thinking? IRA is widely considered the national championship for men's racing. A new championship not just under the name of but actively controlled by USRowing pits the prestigious Intercollegiate Rowing Association against what amounts to its parent company. If you want to row internationally, the only way to do it is through USRowing.

Rowing championships are messed up enough as it is. Take a look at the ACRA championship results. In the men's varsity eight, Michigan destroyed the competition, finishing nearly eight seconds ahead of the UC Davis. Last place was Texas, with a 6:31.1. See the strength gap?

It's even more pronounced in the men's varsity four with cox, which Penn State won with a 6:40.2. LSU staggered across the petite-finals line with a 7:31.0. In the third-level final, Binghamton finished with a 7:10.6 (bad seeding?) while Ohio State struggled for a 7:42.5, over a minute behind Penn State.

What I like about the ACRAs, though, is the emphasis on small boats.

Everyone knows the Varsity 8 is the holy grail of collegiate rowing, showing you can field eight strong rowers at your school. But what about schools that only have, say, four great rowers and twelve other mediocre ones? Question: Do you put together a strong four and a mediocre eight or a mediocre eight and a mediocre four?

Answer: You put your strongest guys in the eight, because that is your Texas Football Team(TM). Your Texas Football Team wins you respect, even if all the players are weaker than those soccer pansies (read: scullers and other technically good rowers, etc.) who are only good for giving you kickers. You lead with your Texas Football Team because it's the biggest penis you have to flaunt.

USRowing could really shine in offering elite-level competition in small boats and sculling (1x, 2-, 2x as well as 4- and 4x). This is an unfilled niche in the rowing championship market. Both the NCAA and IRA championships focus on big boats (eights and fours). The USRowing championships would offer a nice championship for smaller schools and those that wish to focus more on sculling.

From the press release:

"The purpose of creating this event is to provide a post-season regatta for the collegiate community that truly reflects an open format across multiple boat classes," said USRowing Chief Executive Officer Glenn Merry. "Our junior programs have really embraced small boat rowing and sculling, and this regatta will provide similar racing opportunities for collegiate rowers."

That "open format" does not exist now, but USRowing stands able to really create it with this championship. Long under-represented, sculling and small-boats offer a great opportunity for smaller schools and teams that do not have the recruiting power of D-I and Ivy schools.

Who are you?

So I'm on the Drudge Report today and I see the top banner ad is for the antioxidant resveratrol, which it claims is supposed to reduce aging.

Well, I just so happen to be taking part in a resveratrol study right now, to determine its effect on athletic performance. I clicked on the link to learn more, and it took me to this site, news3news.com. I read all about this reporter, Katie Wilson, who researched and tried resveratrol etc. etc. Hmmm, I thought, this looks like an advertisement.

So I clicked on a link. Bingo.

Supposedly "News 3 News" is out of Sacramento, California. There is even real-time weather in a sidebar and news from California at the bottom of the page. But all links take you to the ResvPure homepage. Ah ha! You got me!

It turns out there is a legitimate "News 3" in Sacramento, KCRA. But who is this Katie Wilson? After some research, I don't think that's her real name. This was the closest I found, but she parts her hair a different way.

Of course, you should be suspicious any time you click on an ad and are directed to a seemingly legitimate news or blog. But who knows who else links to this?