Banapana

Only the Lottery Will Bring Meaning to Your Mundane Existence

Over at Steve Silvers Strategic Communications Blog, he’s posted a great example of condescending advertising (my favorite kind!). This one’s for the Colorado state lottery, too, which makes all the more irritating because goading people into gambling seems like a particularly vile activity. It makes me think, too, though, that most of these state lotteries use the money for education and yet I’ve never seen one commercial tout that fact. It’s such an easy pitch. If you win the lottery, you win, but if you lose, the kids win. You’re essentially making a donation to public schools—the tickets should say thank you! I suppose the state governments and their advertisers don’t think that the general putrid horde of slobbering reprobates will see any value in such an approach.

What Google Suggest Tells You About Intelligence

As Slate and Ben Casnocha have illustrated, since Google Suggest uses prefixes (or early sentence fragments) to find suggestions, just exactly what that prefix is matters. If you start a search with “How 2…” as opposed to “How does one…” the suggestions you receive would seem to indicate the level of intelligence of your fellow searchers. “How 2…” as a prefix will yield suggestions such as “grow weed” and “get pregnant,” whereas “How might one…” will yield suggestions such as “protein differ from another” and “account for the rise of Andrew Jackson to victory in 1828.” Not subtle differences at all. Of course, the classic one for me is the “Can I/May I” distinction. I had that one beat into my brains at some point.¹ So let’s see…

Some suggestions for Can I… 1. have your number 2. has cheesburger 3. tap that 4. be pregnant and still have a period

Suggestions for “May I…” 1. be frank 2. have this dance

Not quite as entertaining as others, but then I guess folks aren’t generally asking Google for permission. I find the larger take away to be what an associate of Ben Casnocha said: we don’t lie to Google. The search box is the confessional of the 21st century.

Another great distinction that will yield awesome results is the “Is it wrong to…” and “Is it ethical to…” distinction. ↩

New Levels of Stinginess Probed By Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch is going to take his ball and go home. In a recent interview, he informed all that he intends to eventually block Google and some other search engines from indexing his News Corp. sites and then start charging for content. Apparently, Murdoch has been taking a nap for the last some odd ten years. More ridiculous still, Murdoch seems to have a problem with fair use itself, making claims towards dismantling it. I think it would be a good psychology study to look at what number of billions of dollars actually makes a person completely lose their grasp on reality—it can’t just be one billion. Cory Doctorow’s analysis of the situation is dead on over at BoingBoing along with the best quote I’ve read in weeks:

“So good luck with that, Rupert. have a delightful, Howard-Hughesian dotage, acting out a crazed, Moby-Dick dumbshow against the Internet…”

What’s My Prize for Being the 100,000th Person to Say that Photoshop Blows

Now and then Daring Fireball throws a link my way that, for the thousandth time, reminds me how glad I am I don’t deal with Adobe software anymore. They have literally reached the heights of Microsoft-level disdain for ugliness and shoddiness. I mean, when an entire blog is dedicated to illustrating how much your software stinks, how do you not make a clean-up effort? Photoshop started doing SO much that I didn’t need it to do and started getting in my way so badly version after version that I finally made the permanent switch to Acorn. Photoshop and Illustrator were the only programs on my machine that crashed with any regularity (and it was regular—almost clockwork). I probably wouldn’t have been able to rid myself of those curses if I were still a professional designer, but as a free-ranging artist, I have the pleasure of not running any of Adobe’s bloatware on my machine anymore.

Who Knew Amazon Was An Absurdist Publication?

I like hanging around on Amazon, perusing the numerous objects of necessity-filling that I had not known previously existed, but who knew that the reviews themselves could be hilarious? Take milk. At first glance, you might think, “Sure I could review milk. It might taste good or bad or creamy or not,” et cetera. But then, you would not be taking full advantage of the potential absurdity available to reviews of milk—or the ridiculous uses of said milk! Me, personally, I started with the 1 star reviews of milk, because bad reviews are funnier. Nonetheless, there are gems throughout.

[Hat tip to Marginal Revolution for spotting this inanity.]

Look Ma, I’ve Made Science!

I recently returned from a beautiful trip to Amsterdam where for four days of my ten day trip I was conferring with cognitive scientists at the Cognitive Science 2009 Conference. I am very proud to say that a paper of mine on search and prediction was accepted in to the proceedings and I was asked to make a poster presentation.¹ For posterity I’ve put the poster up here on Banapana for anyone curious. Questions are welcome in the comments on this post or in the comments section on the poster page.

My paper was co-authored with my advisor Patrick Shafto of the University of Louisville, as well as Chris Baker and Joshua Tenenbaum of the MIT Computational Cognitive Science Group. Many thanks go to them for helping me obtain my first academic publication! ↩

Pictures of Pictures

This is one of the funnier incidents of media serendipity I’ve seen in a while. Of course, I love to cover events when people spy on the government or the government spies on people, but here we have regular old people “spying” on regular old people. Robert Palmer, a graphic designer who’s been making some noise with his revamp of the Republican Health Nightcare Chart, also happened to spot some kids from his Hilton hotel room taking a picture of their cars. And then, in a way that could only happen in the 21st century’s media mania, he found the pictures they were taking. I just feel like it’s worth mentioning because it helps me to hone my sense of just what banapana is.

You Can’t Yell ‘Fire’ in a Crowded Theater but You Can on TV

[UPDATE: Apparently, I'm clearly not the only one with a problem with Glenn Beck. A petition making the rounds has caused multiple advertisers to stop their support of Glenn Beck's show. If his rhetoric and fear-mongering bothers you, you can help by signing this petition---maybe we don't need licensing after all; this is democracy in action!]

The general (colloquial) understanding of the free speech principle in the United States is that you can say what you want so long as it doesn’t endanger others; that is to say, you cannot yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater when there isn’t a fire. So what about yelling “Fire!” on television or in email? Or instead of yelling fire, what about spreading malicious lies that inspire riot? Fox News Commentator, Glenn Beck, consistently tells lies on his “news” program. And they are just the kind of lies that would upset his viewers. The worst of it is, I don’t think Beck cares all that much about these issues or sees anything wrong with bending the truth, because his primary concern (as with most TV personalities—not just the conservative ones) is his television program’s ratings and whether he is selling well with advertisers. His a cynic and the worst kind.

I can’t help but feel that the airwaves are too powerful to be put in the hands of men and women who mean to manipulate the public for commercial gain and not use them for establishing facts and educating the public. I’m not at all adverse to a diversity of opinion. You have every right to say that the bills before congress on health care are “scary” or that you believe they represent socialism—such statements constitute opinion. But there should be a limit for the number of blatantly false statements you make on the air. We have to have licenses to own cars because they are dangerous, doctors need licenses to practice because they can do damage—shouldn’t hosts on television shows have licenses as well? The FAA certainly regulates the use of cursing and anything they deem indecent; why is falsehood ignored? And if you want to complain that licensing “news” organizations could potentially shut people out, well, there’s always the internet.

People have been complaining about the polarization of politics in the country for a while and they often cite the beginning for that in the early to late eighties. According to Matthew Dowd on ABC’s “This Week,” Justice Antonin Scalia—who now firmly represents the right side of the court—was still approved by the Senate by a vote of 98. Is it any coincidence that the consolidation of radio stations and the introduction of cable television in this country coincides with this enormous uptick in our polarization? The media has towerized and the public’s views have become polarized. There is simply less information out in the system and less room for pragmatists, who, while not ratings-grabbers, are nonetheless central to reasonable debate in our country.

On the one hand, I’m almost happy to sit on the sidelines of a debate such as this, since it could easily be one that fades away with time. Murdoch and Co. will never monetize the internet the way they intend to, and the world audience for anything is balkanizing. Even Glenn Beck, at his best, nets only 2.2 million viewers. It may seem like a lot, but in a country of 304 million people, it’s seven-tenths of a percent. And I, for one, would rather see fact-checking come from public and academic institutions like FactCheck. But can they handle all the muck that’s out there? As television’s audience numbers wane and internet site popularity grows, we’ll just have the same old problem all over again. You can just make up facts to suit your argument.

A Quickie: Idiotarod

Hopefully more to come today, since I’ve been away from my blog for a week and a half in Amsterdam, but first just a quick note on a new word that I found and love: Idiotarod. Not exactly sure how I would pronounce this, but clearly some cue should be taken from the original Iditarod—the world’s most famous sled-dog race. Instead, Idiotarod brings to mind the thousands of commuter vehicles, sit idly in their slowly moving lanes every weekday. [Thanks to Vica of La Vida Vica for coining such a great word!]

The Watchdogs Get Distracted By T-bone Yet Again

It can never be underestimated how much the US media, driven by profit motive and not ethics, can fail to see the point in a story that they are reporting simply due to the fact that the real point is not the point that gets ratings. I’m a little behind the curve on this story as I am across the pond and my access to US news (and Internet connections) is infrequent. Nonetheless, with regard to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates and the “beer” diplomacy engaged by the administration, it would seem that a significant matter has been lost in the chatter. As always, Christopher Hitchens has the real thread of the matter at hand and I have to second and third the point that he makes in his editorial on the matter that (regardless of his color) Gates’ constitutional rights were infringed upon. The media has utterly failed to see this in a post-racial fashion—surprise, surprise. And moreover, we as a people, have been so saturated with police shows and crime dramas, lauding all police everywhere as heroes, defending a fictional right of the police to do what’s necessary to fight crime that we have rolled over when it comes to what they have no right to do.

About nine months ago, I posted an important lecture from an excellent lawyer on how to deal with the police. It is simple. Do not talk to the police. If you are guilty do not talk to the police. If you are innocent it is even more critical that you DO NOT TALK to the police! They are not on your side, no matter how much they assure you they are. It is their job to clear up the facts of the case, through evidence, not hearsay, and not your obligation to help them. You’re merest utterance can and will be used in court against you—a mistake of the facts, a matter of confusion, the police getting wrong what you said. You have the right to remain silent and you should. Personally, if the house belonged to Henry Gates, I think he would have been better suited simply not talking to the police. It’s not to say that you don’t have the right to speak your mind on your on property, but you are better served by letting your rights speak for you. When a police officer asks you anything about your person, your belongings, your occupation of a certain house, ask them what is their probable cause for asking. Or, better yet, say nothing! They cannot insinuate a crime—well they might, but what would sound better in front of a judge?—The suspect was testy and or belligerent? Or, the suspect said nothing? You have rights. Trust yourself to them. Do not talk to the police.