Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Dennis Miller's brain fries on air Funny account of Dennis Miller's nutty behavior on his talk show. The guest was NSNBC liberal Eric Alterman. "You look so pissed off," said Mr. Miller. "What do you mean, I look pissed off?" asked Mr. Alterman. "I don’t even know what to say. You’re looking at me like—you’re just sitting there." Mr. Miller did an impersonation of what looked like a drunken, mentally disabled guy passing out. "Give me a question and I’ll ask you a question. What do you want to talk about?" Mr. Alterman laughed nervously. "Well," he said, "we could talk a little bit more about the way he misled the country." (Meaning George W. Bush.) Said Mr. Miller: "This is what I’m looking at, here, like this." He pretended to be asleep. When Mr. Alterman finished his spiel, Mr. Miller went bolt upright and snapped at the camera: "All right, you’ve been great. Come back anytime." Link Here's the video of the interview. Actually, Miller seems like his cranky old self to me. (Thanks, Francis!) [Boing Boing] My goodness, Dennis is looking more and more pathetic. So sad. 4:42:43 PM    trackback []

	Monday, March 22, 2004

Stuart vs Miller Like many of you, I'm a big fan of the Daily Show. And like NJ, I sometimes get my news there first. The first fifteen minutes are always great, but I usually tune out of the interviews. Occasionally, Jon can get some serious political guest, someone who is actually involved in the political scene. These interviews are always more interesting. I've also been trying to give Dennis Miller a try. Whooof... the show is struggling to find itself. After only a few weeks, they zagged hard and added a live studio audience. Now, Dennis is struggling to remember how to work an audience, and it shows. Dennis is also painfully republican, the kind that can't clear their eyes long enough to admit that there has been some questionable behavior in the Bush II administration. (I'll need to take some notes to find a specific example. Ping me if I go to long). Anyway, my point here is that Jon writes/delivers really good political satire, whereas Dennis is a better interviewer. Stuart does a better job of pointing out the conflicting statements among politicians of all stripes, while Dennis is getting some serious guests and asking them politically topical questions. Now if these two pieces could be put into one show... I think the ratings speak for themselves, though. Jon is clearly on top in this matchup. And unfortunately, I think Miller is going to have a hard time establishing himself. When he first started advertising for his show, the GOP was looking strong, the Demos had their hat presupposed on a crazy Dean, and it seemed like a great time for CNBC to take on the right-wing Fox. Now, however, after Dean gave us permission to be mad enough to nominate Kerry, Dennis finds himself ill-prepared to answer legitimate challenges from the left. For instance, his punchline to the Clarke allegations runs the line of "Well, you weren't a very good counter-terrorist, were you?", alluding that Clarke himself failed to stop 9/11. This completely ignores all the facts coming out and takes that blind defensive position that occasionally makes Dennis look apathetic. If only he could aim his superior intellect at all politicians, he'd take Jon in a heartbeat. 10:00:52 PM    trackback []

	Wednesday, February 18, 2004

another earthquake? did I just feel the building swish? damnit, I did feel an earthquake, a 4.x in the northbay near Clear Lake! I hate how 'loose' this building in Redwood City feels. :-( 12:39:39 PM    trackback []

	Thursday, February 12, 2004

Amazing West Wing resouce Paulette might find this interesting... Vic pointed me to the footnote TV page for the West Wing. An amazing resource for people who are fans of the show to see where all of these political references come from. [Driving Sideways] Neat! 2:25:19 PM    trackback []

trompe l'chalk Wow, very cool. He even draws it knowing the perspective of the camera taking the picture. I guess this guy's been around awhile, but I'd never seen his stuff: amazing trompe l'oeil sidewalk chalk paintings. Yes, they're actually flat. [nj] 2:08:05 PM    trackback []

	Sunday, February 8, 2004

The Daily Fallacy The Daily Fallacy takes online news articles (opinion, editorial, letters, etc.) and exposes fallacious argumentation. Registered users can respond to commentary. (This is my own blog) [Blogroots] This sounds very cool. I remember thinking about something like this when I was taking my Philosophy class at UoPhx. 11:13:21 PM    trackback []

	Tuesday, February 3, 2004

Interesting TiVO landmark.... In case you missed it... The close of Mr. Timberlake and Ms. Jackson's halftime duet drew the biggest spike in audience reaction TiVo has ever measured, the company says. Viewership spiked up to 180 percent as viewers used TiVo DVR capabilities to pause and replay live television to view the incident again and again. [Marc's Voice] 7:23:55 PM    trackback []

	Monday, January 19, 2004

Book Review - The Tipping Point The book "The Tipping Point", by Malcolm Gladwell, has been out for a while. I just finished reading it, took me about a week... ah, the benefits of no more school! Here's some notes. Gladwell tries to describe the tipping point mechanisms of social epidemics, such as word-of-mouth marketing, fashion fads, and crime waves. As he sees it, there are basically four rules to social epidemics: The Law of the Few - in social networks, there are connectors, mavens, and salespeople. Connectors are people who know lots of people. Mavens are people who know lots of things about particular subjects. Salespeople are people who can find or share a vibe with an audience. Between these three kinds of people, ideas spread. The Stickiness Factor - presentation of information is key to retention and action. Gladwell goes into great detail describing the mechanisms that make Sesame Street and Blues Clues so wildly popular with young children. Based on circa 1960s academic thinking on child development, Sesame Street uses a video magazine format, 3 minute segments, and mixed fantasy and human characters to teach basic knowledge such as numbers and letters. Developed from more recent child development theories, Blues Clues implements a single story arc to keep children engaged for a full 30 minutes. In both cases, simple changes to the content have had profound effects on its stickiness with children. (I personally found these discussions very enlightening, and now I watch these shows with my son with a keener eye.) The Power of Context, Broken Windows - simple environmental traits can have a dramatic impact on the people in that environment. For instance, Gladwell describes the crime epidemic in New York in the 1980s, and how removing graffiti and cracking down on turnstile jumping, relatively low-level crimes, had dramatic effects on the entire crime rate. The Broken Window theory suggests that subtle queues like broken windows make people care less about other aspects of the environment, crime raises, and the cycle feeds on itself. By fixing the little things, the feedback loop is cut. The Power of Context, Magic 150 - group dynamics break down after it reached 150 people. From decades of experience, the U.S. army organizes its troops into groups of less than 200 soldiers each. Businesses like Gore, Inc. do this as well, with amazing effects. On a physiological level, the size of the neocortex is directly proportional to the number of social connections that animals can maintain. If you're building teams, keep them under 150 people, and if they grow larger, split them up to keep group unity and performance high. As with most books, these are interesting points to ponder. His case study on teen smoking didn't quite connect for me, though, and was poorly related to a teen suicide epidemic in the remote island nation of Micronesia. In his after-word, he addresses this ill-formed comparison, and makes a stronger identification of the rash of Columbine-like incidents in schools across the U.S. (It seems to me that the Law of the Few and the Stickiness Factor have little influence on this epidemic, and that we must focus our attention on the broken windows.) Gladwell also addresses the impact that the Internet has, with all its new communications channels, on social epidemics. His argument is that many of these channels are being overloaded, and once again, we must resort to personal connections in order to filter useful and wanted information. I think we're seeing this now with the faltering of email under the burden of spam, and perhaps with the rise of weblogs as personal broadcasts. Finally, Gladwell offers a very compelling case study. A nurse in San Diego wanted to spread the word about diabetes, but found traditional forums lacking. So, she turned to beauty salons. She took the beauticians, who are often natural connectors, and turned them into mavens. She also seized on the captive environment of a beauty salon, where women spend anywhere from 2 to 8 hours at a time. All in all, a good read. The key takeaway for me is that an epidemic doesn't need to follow all of these laws to spread, but rather, focusing on any one of these laws can have a significant impact on the rise or fall of an epidemic. (I'm also reading Electric Meme and Crossing the Chasm... I suspect there's going to be a lot of overlap here :-) 11:13:47 PM    trackback []

Creative Class - flocking elsewhere? This one is for Paulette: Richard Florida, economic development guru and originator of the Creative Class meme wrote a thought-provoking, thorough, almost polemical essay in the Washington Monthly. His thesis: that current U.S. policy discourages creative and intelligent individuals from coming to this country. While homegrown talent may be seeking greener pastures abroad, the big problem is that top scientists, artists & entrepreneurs no longer see America as the place they have to be. Florida places the blame squarely on the Bush administration's post-911 xenophobia. The Smart Mob implications for this are that talent will flow to the most receptive communities. Greater mobility for individuals, greater economic value for individual skills, and a global information network create the conditions for the creatives and the thinkers to flock to wherever conditions are more favorable. Thanks to Alex and Jim! [Smart Mobs] 10:04:33 PM    trackback []