Stay Free! Daily

The New York Times Goes Hollywood

Is the Times conspiring with the forces calling for sinking government money into roads and highways, as opposed to mass transit? 

"Obama, Pave Atlantic Avenue."

So sayeth the headline to a story about what New Yorkers want the new administration to spend money on. Funny thing is, the quote that the headline was taken from gives a very different impression of what the author wants:

I’d say we need bigger and better schools and hospitals, especially in neighborhoods like Bushwick in Brooklyn, where I live. Roads and bridges, they have other chances to get fixed, but kids get only one chance to go to school. If they asked me, maybe I might say, “Obama, pave Atlantic Avenue.” But that’s for me, and it’s peanuts compared to all the additional stuff we need to do, which is to invest in the schools and hospitals.

Kinda reminds me of Blurb Racket.

YouTube, the search engine?

This New York Times story about about the use of YouTube as a search engine caught my eye. Apparently, people — particularly kids — are using YouTube as their primary search engine for research projects, news, and other information. The Times paints this trend as the inevitable march of technology but I can't help but see it as the devolution of our collective brain. What we don't get in this story in the fact that defaulting to video-only search is, um, pretty stupid. While I can understand why a 9-year old would do it, you've got to wonder where his teachers are to give him a basic lesson in media literacy: video and text communicate differently and each has its strengths and weaknesses.

To use an example from the article, let's say you need info to do a school paper on the wallaby. A search on YouTube brings up, on the first page, two home movies of people encountering wallabies, a vodka commercial, and kids singing a Raffi song. Even if there was a documentary about wallabies, the student would have to sit, watch, and wait to see if any relevant information appeared. He would then have to transcribe it and check the spelling for any proper nouns or unusual words.

A Google search for "wallaby," however, brings up Wikipedia's wallaby page, a National Geographic factsheet about wallabies, and several other wallaby-relate websites. The information here is laid out clearly, and is easy to scan. The user doesn't have to worry about transcribing or spelling. And several items are hyperlinked in case he wants to find more information about particular points.

Clearly, there are smart uses of YouTube, and it's an essential resource for hunting down TV and video clips but there is no need to uncritically embrace it as a primary source for research.

Comparing how children and chimps learn

Some day when my brain is back and I no longer have an infant I would love to do a book about the pro-homosapien bias in the media. 

Exhibit A: This clip from a National Geographic documentary comparing the way humans and chimpanzees learn.

It's pretty interesting: When asked to perform a series of motions in order to get a treat out of a box, the human child will copy the adult's motions exactly. The ape copies the motions as well, until the box is replaced with a translucent version. Once it is, the ape — but not the child — will realize that half of the motions are pointless and take a shortcut to get the treat.

Conclusion? According to the filmmakers: Both humans and chimps learn through copying, but children are "better" at it.

I love it. The fact that children blindly follow the leader is portrayed as a sign of our intelligence while the chimp is seen as a slacker. C'mon, give the chimps some credit! For one thing, you're asking them (but not the kids) to imitate a creature of a different species. Would children be as good at copying if they were asked to imitate chimps? Secondly, the ability to imitate isn't the only thing in play here. The children, for instance, could simply be more obedient — or, at least, more obedient to other humans. Lastly, if learning is the goal, shouldn't the chimps get serious props for problem solving?

Granted, this clip is only a piece of a larger documentary and I'm undoubtedly taking some of this out of context. (In another scene, the author of the study addresses some of these issues. ) Still, the suggestion that this experiment is evidence of how "humans came to be the most successful species on the planet" rankles.

Then again, it's no surprise that the children are applauded for simply aping their teacher. After all, this is the educational model of grade school.

NCAA Says "Don't Promote Our Product"

Apparently not content with the miniscule coverage given to college baseball, the NCAA has decided that it prefers "virtually zero." A reporter for the largest newspaper in Kentucky was thrown out of a University of Louisville game in the College World Series because "it is against NCAA policies" to liveblog the game. It remains to be seen how much liveblogging this actually stops because NCAA policy only prevents him from liveblogging from the event - and the event was broadcast nationally, live. Also, someone in the crowd might own a PDA.

A lot of people are accusing the NCAA of copyright enforcement thuggery but I think that the NCAA is actually just being the ultimate internet purist: bloggers don't belong in the press box; they should be at home in their pajamas.

(Via CSTB)

Computer Press = Pravda?

At the risk of further offending the Apple Mafia, and noting that some of Stay Free's best (and favoritest) PC's and mp3 players are Apple products, I regret to inform you that not only is Apple not a big fan of critical reporting on Apple, neither is an important arm of the Apple-covering press.

According to Wired, PC World Editor-In-Chief Harry McCracken resigned after the CEO of the company spiked an anti-Apple humor article:

The piece, a whimsical article titled "Ten Things We Hate About Apple," was still in draft form when [new CEO Colin] Crawford killed it. McCracken said no way and walked after Crawford refused to compromise. Apparently Crawford also told editors that product reviews in the magazine were too critical of vendors, especially ones who advertise in the magazine, and that they had to start being nicer to advertisers.

That is one rigorous firewall between editorial and advertising you've established, Col. I wonder if it had anything to do with his past tenure at MacWorld ... why yes it does!

Crawford was former CEO of MacWorld and only started at PC World about a month ago. According to the PC World source, when Crawford was working for the Mac magazine, Steve Jobs would call him up any time he had a problem with a story the magazine was running about Apple.

I wonder why it is so hard to get people to believe that iPods are fragile. I mean, it isn't reported on much...

(Via Gawker)

UPDATE: McCracken stays, Crawford is kicked upstairs and out of an editorial role. Again, via Gawker, who reads Wired's blog so I don't have to.

A Magazine You Can Read in Your Underwear

I've been spammed for a lot of things that I neither need nor want. Out of all the junk I've received, however, I can think of nothing I want less than Blogger & Podcaster magazine. Finally, a print magazine worth leaving my computer for!

And it is apparently part of a trend, as I received this email on the same day that Boing Boing wrote about dubious net-to-paper daily Boston Now. I don't think that I can top the Boing Boing commenter who wrote "their slogan should be 'Bringing you yesterday's news tomorrow."

B&P—why not give them a snappy acronym—says that you can get the print magazine and podcast from their homepage. I hope that the podcast isn't just some dude reading the magazine.

ECKO...Ecko...ecko....

A couple of months back, I received in the mail a shrink-wrapped issue of Complex. I was unfamiliar with the magazine, which described itself as "A Marc Ecko Production" and "The Men's Guide to Consuming Culture." One of the mailing lists I'm on probably decided I was in the correct demographic for this publication. A sheet visible within the packaging offered me some sort of free subscription if I would just mail back the attached card. I don't know the exact details because I never quite got around to opening the shrink-wrap.

Don't get me wrong, I like magazines. I love them, in fact, and make my living from them. And I like free stuff. But, I don't know, I didn't open it. Maybe I wanted to stay faithful to the magazines I already read. Maybe I'm not that interested in gadgets and extreme sports. Perhaps I don't actually know who Marc Ecko is. (Was he the bad guy in Wall Street?) Still, I figured I'd at least rip open that plastic and flip through it. Skim, if you will. But other mail got piled on top, and it just never happened.

Last weekend I was doing a little cleaning in anticipation of a rare visitor to Casa del Silbert. I finally tossed out that still-wrapped issue of Complex. I brought the trash to the curb. The local sanitation crew picked it up and took it away.

Tonight, I arrived home, only to find in my mailbox…the hot-off-the-presses February/March issue of Complex.

I can't eckscape.

What's wrong with architecture?

The next issue of Stay Free! magazine (due out in 2014*, at the rate we're going) is going to look at how architecture and the built environment affect everyday life. I know next to nothing about architecture, so I've been poking around looking for ideas... and just came across a handy example of what I hate about this subject that I know nothing about...

Here is a piece by Witold Rybczynski -- a highly respected architecture critic -- with a headline that poses an interesting question:

Healthier by Design
A new charitable trust asks whether good architecture can help cancer patients.

But instead of trying to answer that question, Rybczynski merely fawns over the light and airy spaces created by fancypants modernists like Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind.The real people who use and live in these spaces seem almost an afterthought. If these buildings are intended for cancer patients, why are there so many staircases? Why the emphasis on building exteriors? A letter to the editor from the parent of a cancer patient says it best:

It's not clear...what condition the patients are in when they're staying at the Centres. Chances are they're not in the middle of chemo, that is, their immune systems aren't compromised at the time they're there. Otherwise, pretty design and materials just make it easier to catch some opportunistic disease... For example: in the ward my son was in, the double doors to the unit formed an air lock to keep airborne disease out. Visitors had to wear surgical masks and gloves, and scrub their hands before entering his room. No one could use the bathroom in his room but him, from the time he began chemo until he was ready to leave. How could these rules be observed in the Centres? Sounds impossible, so I have to assume that there is limited use except in hospice-style arrangements. Otherwise, Maggie's Centres are just prettier versions of Ronald MacDonald House.

Arguably, this relates more to architecture criticism than architecture itself, but I'd say the former reflects the priorities of the latter.

Anyway, I'm just getting going on this, so if anyone has any suggestions of things I should read or investigate for the next Stay Free!, by all means let me know.

*Actual wishcasting: Spring 2007.

60 Minutes on Bumfights, brain surgery

I watched 60 Minutes for the first time in ages on Sunday. There was a decent segment on the recent rash of attacks by teenagers on homeless people. Apparently, Bumfights -- a series of videos produced by scary white boys who assault homeless men and pay them to hurt themselves on camera -- has inspired several dolts to imitate what they've seen on screen and brutally batter homeless men. After watching the segment, I think I know how they feel, because I desperately wanted to throw a brick at the TV and pummel the smug dickwad who created Bumfights.

The interview took a predictable course, with Ed Bradley blaming Dickwad for the copycat crimes. But, despite my loathing of the kid, I found the exchange kind of ironic considering that, in the same program, 60 Minutes ran a favorable story on a dubious new surgical procedure designed to treat depression. "Deep brain stimulation" -- at least at this point in time -- is highly risky and experimental (involves inserting electronic "nerve stimulators" in the brain) and yet 60 Minutes promoted it on national television, all but guaranteeing that people are going to start demanding it before it's been properly tested. The episode reminded me of the medical disasters Elliot Valenstein documented in his brilliant history of the lobotomy. Scary stuff.

Maria Sharapova Said What?

I caught the very end of Maria Sharapova's U.S. Open women's singles triumph over Justine Henin-Hardenne on TV Saturday night. There was a mathematical error in her victory speech (referring to a total change in strategy as a 360 rather than a 180). The quote would be useful at my math-related day job, so I quickly turned to online news sources for the exact wording. Here's what I found.

Reuters:
"I figured I lost the last four times I played Justine so everything I did the last four times I had to flip 360 and do totally differently and that is what I did today."

Bloomberg:
"I lost the last four times I played against Justine so I figured everything I did, I had to flip it 360 and do the total opposite,'' Sharapova added.

dpa News (perhaps translated from German):
"I had lost four times to Justine, so I threw out everything I'd done and did a 360 (turn of strategy). I did the total opposite."

Eurosport:
"I figured I lost the last four times to Justine, so I figured I had to do the total opposite," she continued.

Sunday Times (U.K.):
"After four defeats in a row to Justine I knew that I had to change my game plan and I was able to do that."