Allan Jenkins

Tom Schaller's wonderful and dead-on rant about the state dinner gatecrashers -- and about the media who feed them.

 

I am sick to my stomach over That Couple. And now comes news they are peddling their exclusive story to the highest media bidder. Disgusting, but hardly surprising.

I’m not going to use their names because you can be sure that, between giddy calls to their agent and lawyer, they are rushing to their computer every half hour to Google themselves. Who’s talking about us now? What are people saying? Look, another picture of us on the web! We’re more famous than any of our friends—no, all of our friends, combined! Tehehehee—the joke’s on you, America!

No, you’re not famous; you’re infamous. You’re situated squarely at the bottom of an already too-deep and increasingly murky barrel of celebrity culture, celebrity journalism, and (un)reality TV, the depths of which are probably making even Andy Warhol cringe in his grave. I want this to be your fifteenth minute. I want your egg timer to ding now, so you can exit our national discourse as swiftly, completely and permanently as possible.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/11/that-couple.html

Wikipedia.org is the fifth-most-popular Web site in the world, with roughly 325 million monthly visitors. But unprecedented numbers of the millions of online volunteers who write, edit and police it are quitting.

That could have significant implications for the brand of democratization that Wikipedia helped to unleash over the Internet -- the empowerment of the amateur.

 

News Hub: Wikipedia Volunteers Quit

1:44

Wikipedia is extremely popular with the public, but not so much with the volunteers who run the site. They're quitting, raising questions about the future of Wikipedia, says WSJ.com Senior Technology Editor Julia Angwin.

Volunteers have been departing the project that bills itself as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" faster than new ones have been joining, and the net losses have accelerated over the past year. In the first three months of 2009, the English-language Wikipedia suffered a net loss of more than 49,000 editors, compared to a net loss of 4,900 during the same period a year earlier, according to Spanish researcher Felipe Ortega, who analyzed Wikipedia's data on the editing histories of its more than three million active contributors in 10 languages.

Wikipedia used to be about the information. Today, it's a seething turf battle between "deletionists" and "inclusionists" -- and pity the poor newbie who attempts to add an article or correct a mistake.

Why is it broadly accepted that the elderly should have universal health care, while it’s immensely controversial to seek universal coverage for children? What’s the difference — except that health care for children is far cheaper?

Nicholas Kristof notes the same arguments being used against health care reform -- it's the creeping wedge of socialism, it will lead to dictatorship, old people will die -- are the same once used against Medicare and Social Security.

Today, of course, even the crustiest old Teabagger is probably not offering to give up his social security for the good of the Republic. Even a Palinite can see Social Security is a good thing.

And as for Medicare being a bad thing: Americans are more likely to die before age 65 than the citizens of any other developed country, but, once Medicare kicks in, have some of the best prospects in the developed world.

So why not give universal coverage and national health care to children? It would be cheaper than giving it to old people, and a far better investment. If America is to have a hope of thriving in the 21st century, it had better be raising a generation or two of well-educated, well-fed and healthy young people.

For nearly 500 years, the Reinheitsgebot — German Purity Laws — have established quality standards for beer, but does it hinder innovations in brewing? Locke McKenzie asks German beer makers and enthusiasts.

When one speaks of people fettered by the chains of society, beer brewers rarely come to mind. In the U.S., craft brewers have all the freedom in the world. They can brew outlandish beers, and consumers will greet each batch with curiosity, if not enthusiasm. In Germany things are different. No matter how badly they want to be free, the powers that be constantly tie the hands of brewers.

As Dick Cantwell, head brewer at Elysian Brewing Company, said, “Incredulity is the first response that I’ve gotten from Germans that I’ve told about my pumpkin beer.”

Within the brewing world, people see the German market as a major part of the canon, but never as a source of innovation.

One more beer post. From the excellent Locke McKenzie.

Beer is the third-most-consumed liquid in the world (after water and tea), but not long ago it was still surprisingly hard to find a decent beer bar in Los Angeles. No, not an ultra lounge cordoned off by velvet ropes and cologne-soaked bouncers or a high-end speakeasy specializing in retro cocktails. A bar. One that serves craft-brewed beer.

This is a trend I can get behind.

In Copenhagen, we have Charlie's, a tiny English pub with 18 excellent (and often changing) brews on tap. But Charlie's is so small and crowded (think Tokyo subway at rush hour) that your enjoyment of fine brew is clouded by the (friendly) jostling and unavoidable spillage.

And you can forget about having a remotely private conversation. Ask a friend how they liked the new James Bond film and everyone within 3 feet (that would be anywhere from 11 to 15 people, depending on girth) will chime in.

So a dedicated beer bar... with space... great cask ales... a knowledgeable staff (Charlies bartenders know everything about beer, but haven't the time to talk) would probably go down well here in Copenhagen.

Lovely essay by art historian Bruce Cole about Norman Rockwell's "Freedom of Speech."

Like Cole, I have always admired this painting. Its message, to me, is simple: civic debate can be civil debate. And should be.

Of course, the town meeting illustrated might be unanimous. Perhaps the fellow is simply seconding a motion. I prefer to believe he disagrees with the majority, but that his confidence in the civility of the meeting, his confidence in the civility of his peers, lets him speak honestly, without being shouted down, without fear.

The town meeting may reject his motion. But they will greet him on the street, still come to his diner. The town doctor (he's on the left) will deliver his wife's babies. The grocer (he's on the right) will still let him run up some credit.

They will all still respect the person -- even if they don't accept the views. They respect each other more because they are all at the town hall.

That's my interpretation, anyway.

But in 2009, is that Fantasyland? It would seem so.

We saw many "town hall" meetings on health care reform broken up by organized Tea Baggers who traveled hundreds of miles to cause trouble. We even see appeals to bring guns to town hall meetings to intimidate anyone who dares to have a minority opinion (Google: health care town hall violence guns -- I don't make this up). And we see a Joint Session of Congress violated by an ignorant heckler who happens to be a Congressman.

So much for civility.

In 2009, the painting is Utopia. Palin, Limbaugh, Beck don't want anyone to stand up in a town halll -- unless it is to second the motion.

AT&T has "asked' its employees to fake it in the fight against Net Neutrality.

The company’s top policy officer sent a memo to workers on Monday urging them to hide their company affiliation before posting anti-Net Neutrality comments to the Federal Communication Commission’s Web site.

“We encourage you, your family and friends to join the voices telling the FCC not to regulate the Internet,” AT&T Senior Executive Vice President James Cicconi wrote in an internal communiqué forwarded to Free Press (and posted here). “It can be done through a personal e-mail account by going to www.openinternet.gov and clicking on the ‘Join the Discussion’ link.”

Coming from one of the company’s most senior executives, it’s hard to imagine AT&T employees thinking the memo was merely a suggestion.

If that weren’t bad enough, Cicconi urges them to choose from a list of talking points sanctioned by the PR department -- fearful perhaps of what employees might say if they went off script.

Amazing, though hardly surprising.

This is St.Petersburg, today. And Leningrad during the Siege. The photograph is two photographs, 2009 and 1943, merged.

As Martin G, on whose blog I found the photo set, puts it: "the exact same location caught at two moments in time. A wormhole opens, we cannot help but fall into it."

In this excitement-packed edition of Grumpy Old Communicators you will hear us wax lyrical about such diverse topics as:

• Karen, her baby August, and the scandal she’s created (and if you want to know where the idea for Karen came from, check out Australia’s far less raunchy but equally seductive young lady who is looking for her Mr Right and only has his misplaced jacket to go on; the video is below, as is a link to some thoughts by a superb Aussie media commentator — and no, that’s not Lee, it’s Tim!)
• Twitter follower numbers and a reference to the superb The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein
• Simon Crisp and IBM’s new division
• David Jones and his truly excellent MAIL process for social media engagement
• QR codes, the Three Minds blog and Allan’s B+B website

All in all, 29 minutes and 22 seconds of disarmingly direct conversation over a shocking Skype line that makes you wonder if your two intrepid communicators were actually alive at the time, or were communicating via telepathy, a Ouija board and a plump and quite harmless 50-something-year-old landlady by the name of Mrs Scoggins who dabbles in the occult and thinks she’s a channel for ‘those on the other side’.

 GOC 002: On sex with Danish blondes, Twitter and QR Codes [29:23m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download

You can, of course, download the conversation right now to your audiophonic weapon of choice. Equally, and probably more preferably, you can in addition subscribe to this podcast in iTunes, by copying this here subscribing link and then pasting it into the box that pops up when you click on the ‘Subscribe to Podcast…’ link under the ‘Advanced’ toolbar option (see the image below).

Nothing gives Hoppo and me greater pleasure and joy than recording another podcast. We had a lot of audio problems, unfortunately, but I think we managed to throw down some pearls.

Enjoy!