So let's get this straight. A 22-year-old UMass Dartmouth student lies to his fellow students, to his professors, and finally to several members of the media, elaborating on an increasingly far-fetched story about some Homeland Security agents who took a special interest in him after he requested an edition of Mao's Little Red Book via Interlibrary Loan, only to break down six days after the story broke and confess to making the whole thing up.
In the meantime the anecdote had been incorporated into editorials by credulous political writers like Ted Kennedy and Graham Lampa, who cited it as just one part of a larger evil/Republican trend.
At other websites, most notably Boing Boing, skeptical netizens looked into the student's claims almost immediately.
(Though there's no way to prove this, I was also skeptical of the story, and would have made a note of it on Graham's post had I not already used up my friendly skepticism quota in another thread. So I doubted in silence.)
The doubters had already piled up a quite a bit of circumstantial evidence by the time the student confessed, though the reporter who had first broke the story opined in his defense that "had the student stuck to his original story, it might never have been proved [sic] false."
The student's motive? Representative Man calls your attention to the final, admirably snarky paragraph of the Standard-Times story revealing the hoax:
"When I came back, like wow, there's this circus coming on. I saw my cell phone, and I see like, wow, I have something like 75 messages and like something like 87 missed calls," he said. "Wow, I was popular. I usually get one or probably two a week and that's about it, and I usually pick them up."
The Boston Globe also interviewed the student about the hoax, though (being somewhat more suspicious than Mr. Nicodemus of the Standard-Times) they didn't publish anything until the story had been retracted. Their story also lacks the dry and bitter censure of the Standard-Times piece.
Just as the story, when thought true, neatly illustrated many of the problems with the government's domestic surveillance, that same story, now that it has been proven false, raises many questions about our domestic media.
Blastfax kudos to the blogosphere skeptics, of course. And let's not be too hard on the various pundits who merely used the story for rhetorical effect — there are few among us who haven't at one point swallowed an MSM story without question because it confirmed our worldview. Or for any number of other reasons, for that matter.
The reporters, on the other hand, had and continue to have a certain responsibility as reporters, and the most important question we should be leveling at them right now is this:
Why are you withholding this student's name?
I'm not especially fond of anonymice generally, but even though I think anonymity is granted to far too many sources for little or no reason and with little or no explanation, this is an especially heinous case.
Let's review: a 22-year-old lied to the media at first by proxy (through his professors, whom he misled for weeks if not months) and then in several interviews, and even after it was in the news he stood by that lie for almost a week. At least two professors, at least two journalists, and all those people who called his cell phone know his name. And yet, as the Boston Globe story noted: "The student was not identified in any reports."
Yes, I know you probably don't think it's important to go after some faceless twenty-something in Massachusetts who told a lie, in academia no less — who could have thought it would get out to the real world? — but the public was bamboozled, and accountability isn't just for high-level politicians.
An anonymous source who admits to fabricating nearly all of his story does not deserve protection. He deserves to be identified, so there is a public record of his uselessness as a source and that same public doesn't get fooled again. Even if he'll likely never talk to the press again, he deserves to be identified out of principle, because for playing the reporters, for playing us like that, he deserves public derision.
So what if he broke down when he found out he'd been caught in his own lies? He's certainly old enough to be held responsible for his actions. So his social circle already knows? Not good enough: this was a national story, so let's let the nation know, already.
At this point, the fact that releasing his name would lower the public's perception of this student is not sufficient grounds to hold it. He is in no credible danger from the newsreading public (the only ones, it appears, who are still out of the loop) and, what's more, he was the instigator of a fabrication perpetrated upon that public, a major player in a news story of his own concoction.
The student should be trotted out and shown to be the fraud he is.
But just because this turned out to be a hoax, doesn't mean there isn't a greater war on democracy going down by those who would like to see a police state in place..
Doing laundry and packing up the loot. I'm still not sure where I'm going to be for New Year's (a ride to the Cities hasn't been forthcoming) but barring a Greyhound-related mishap I should be back "home" by Monday morning.
I keep imagining that my apartment will've been robbed, rendering many of my Christmas presents (particularly the DVD-player add-on for my increasingly ancient Xbox) useless. I left it in a state of complete disarray so doubtless it will take a few minutes to ascertain what's been lifted.
What with my puzzling lack of equipment-intensive hobbies, I'm considered somewhat difficult to buy for, so it's no surprise that I received so many gift certificates, most of which I used getting legal copies of one of my favorite cartoon series, Home Movies.
My brother Josh couldn't understand why I would buy three seasons of a show I already have on my computer. The show's creators said something similar on one of the commentary tracks — they aren't getting any money for these, apparently.
Mostly it was guilt, and a desire for several gigs of hard drive space. Ethicist Peter Singer is partially at fault as well. Curse that crazy vegetarian.
I have visions of a shirt, dark blue with teal writing:
The T-shirts at Target frustrate me. I love Target — bonus points to the cashier who wished me "Happy Holidays" while deep in "Merry Christmas" territory — but their T-shirts are all much too long to be worn untucked.
I know I'm not hip to fashion (in fact, I'm dimly aware of a few times I've actually refrained from buying clothing because it was too cool for me) but I feel like a crazy person in Target. In all the displays, the models are either tucking in their T-shirts or only pictured from the waist up, basically because if you don't tuck in the shirts they reach down to your crotch.
And that looks very strange to me. I think at this point 90% of the T-shirts I wear are commemorative; people are going to start wondering what was so great about Ormsby Hall in 2002.
Still ostensibly working on this cursed sociology essay: No deadline is the most terrible of all deadlines. It's not that I'm the only one still working on my paper, but I worry that with every day, my professor's expectations climb higher.
The paper itself does not get any better.
I had two family Christmases this weekend and walked away with a cookbook and several gift cards good at some of my favorite gigantic stores. One great thing about B-town is the confluence of power south of me on 371. Best Buy, Target, Cub Foods — it's good to know that I've got access to everything I'd need in the event of an apocalypse. And at such low low prices.
There's also a plethora of good restaurants. They're all good, except for Grizzly's. The food at that place is terrible.
Both Xmases were enjoyable in a family sort of a way. My relatives don't have much to say to me for the most part, and I don't have interesting answers to crucial questions like "how's Chicago" and "what are you doing next year."
Thank you, Fox News, for making Christmas a political issue for my family. I really needed to hear a bunch of talking points about various store policies and the malicious intent hidden in the all-inclusive phrase "Happy Holidays."
It's not as if Christmas itself isn't already becoming secular. Fox says 96% of Americans celebrate Christmas, and yet only around 80% of Americans are Christian — no, wait, nevermind.
See how tempting it is to argue about this! It's political dynamite, or gold. Whatever you need.
As I'm sure I've mentioned before, my little brother Matt graduated from Michigan Tech this weekend with a degree in mechanical engineering or somesuch.
To my great surprise, Houghton isn't not such a bad little town, either: there's more snow, but it's not as cold as Brainerd, the school is curiously "un-P.C." to borrow my father's heavily connotative term, and there seems to be an abundance of cheap, amusingly-decorated restaurants. Here's a picture from one of those restaurants, a shot of Our Bold Hero with Matt and his other little brother, Josh.
This is the fake smiles picture, the first one didn't turn out. Nor did my pictures of the awe-inspiring gnome murals which covered the walls. They were brewing beer!
The term "little" has long since become metaphorical, as I'm the shortest of the three brothers. Matt's Mexi-friend Steve — who as expected did remind me somewhat of Jubb, if only with his alcohol tolerance and filthy mouth — cut me deep with the observation that I also look younger than Matt.
For my part, it amuses me that we both graduated in the class of 2005. It's as if our personalities have finally diverged to the point where a mere age difference is irrelevant.
Though we still have roughly the same sense of humor. O, the crazily obscure references! I'm out of practice, compared to Matt.
Saturday night was spent, enjoyably if somewhat anticlimacticly, playing Halo 2 and half-watching various shows with Matt and his Michigan Tech friends, a good group.
I'm out of practice at Halo 2 but I'd like to think I caught on to the night's other main activity: mocking the inebriated Mexican. For his part, Steve spent much of the night savaging other players on Xbox Live, his nonsensical insults inviting such obvious, humorous comments that I'd classify all the trash talk as a kind of performance art.
When did the people in my spam emails start to have such unusual names?
I just got an email from Saumatra addressed to her "Dearest Jesper," and a quick peek at my trash folder reveals emails from Bhictoria, Eliezra, Hayley Bryan, Chance, Bernie Vinson, and the always ravishing Letha Lake.
Was there something wrong with the common, innocuous names spammers used to use? Surely those caused me to hesitate for crucial seconds before bouncing the messages back to their sender?
I can even remember a time, a week at most I think, when I was getting spam email ostensibly sent by some of my closest friends. Was that really just crazy coincidence? Or did some spammer give up his powers after falling madly in love with a mortal woman and leaving Faerie?
(Oh, and I'm going to be in Houghton this weekend. Supposedly it's the most wired middle-of-nowhere in the world, but don't expect any updates until at least Sunday when I'm back in B-town.)
Well, you know me and travel. Our Bold Hero missed two trains and arrived at the Museum of Contemporary Art slightly after the agreed-upon meeting time of 4:30. Live parrots notwithstanding, the first floor of the museum was underwhelming.
Breaking the most basic rule of a getting-together, Jinx had turned off her cellphone so I had to resort to asking a series of progressively less interesting-looking employees if they knew where this intern girl was. The assumption was that Jinx had sought out the most interesting people, as is her wont.
They had no clue, but she showed up a few minutes later and all was well. The journey to Evanston was mostly uneventful, we sat across the aisle from each other on the train. A woman in the seat behind me started knitting and Jinx found it strangely fascinating, so much so that I had to work very hard to establish the fiction that she was merely staring out the window at something.
At one point I was momentarily baffled when a crowd of disembarking passengers forced me to stop talking mid-sentence. A woman whispered that I should "just press pause" as she left. Best random encounter this week.
(Though on the busride home I sat behind, and eavesdropped on, the most well-adjusted undergraduate ever.)
The Squid and the Whale is... a good movie. I can see why it got good reviews; there's certainly no denying that it's got some quality scenes, mostly with the teenage son Walt. However, my general impression of the movie was that it was sort of like The Royal Tenenbaums except really, really awkward.
The father, especially, stood out as an accurate and irritating portrayal of a certain cultural type. For me, he was a bit of a Donny Don't, the twisted version of Our Bold Hero's daydreams about the future. The monster elitist. I was half-expecting him to lash out at his wife for using Elements of Style.
I'm not a fan of the whole uncomfortable-character-sketch genre, and this movie was full of awkward awkward moments. Though much better, it reminded me of The Office and Roger Dodger, neither of which I enjoy. I was cringing for probably sixty percent of the time; if I'd watched it at home no doubt I'd've been yelling advice to the characters instead of hiding in my hood.
Afterwards, sharing some terrible Mexican food with Jinx at a place nearby, I tried to tease out exactly what I mean by "awkward." It's a work in progress.
This was probably the longest I've ever talked one-on-one with Jinx, and though I'd like to think we discussed any number of things, the conversation was especially interesting when we got into one of my favorite topics: the people we dislike or hate, and the people who hate us. There's a good story or two there.
Jinx was apparently oblivious to the countless times I hung out with Ben? I guess that makes sense; she never played Illuminati or any of our videogame drinking games. When I think of Mariokart, I taste Kool-Aid and vodka. And I shudder.
For some reason, I find intense dislike extremely humanizing. It was good to know that, though she readily puts up with a half-dozen people I've no respect for, even a hopeless extrovert like Jinx has her limits. There's a certain solidarity, too, in telling someone who your enemies are. Not that I made a list, per se — this might have been one of those rare occasions when I get more information out of my interlocutor than I give out about myself.
As far as I can tell, and Jinx agrees, no one at Lawrence really dislikes me, which is actually a bit of a blow. Maybe I kept too low of profile. If I had taken myself a bit more seriously, would others have followed suit? Were my views transparent enough on the issues I thought mattered? Perhaps I picked the wrong issues.
I could tell that a few people disliked me somewhat, but by the end of college I was sick of unproductive confrontation. Perhaps I should have called more people out? Suffered fools a bit less often?
Is it possible to lead a rich, full life without making any enemies? Probably as unlikely as living such a life without regrets.
Still see Kicking and Screaming it isn't about making you awkward at all. (Also I think the character you liked was supposed to be young Baumbach, don't remember tho)
For what it's worth, I know a few people who think you're KIND of a jerk. Like Paul Karner, and folks like that. Many people will say, and have said to me, "What's with that Dan kid? Did he hate me?" I always say, "No, he probably disliked you, but grudgingly came to accept you despite his standoffish nature." I've honestly said that to several people!
Well that's a relief. Though this confusion is why I'm often tempted to do a feature on the people I dislike/hate. I'd call it the "Burning Bridges Edition."
Lurker, I mean, not a lurker, I mean, not googstalking you rather than studying for my comps (representative man + ourboldhero as my search string).
But I have recalled my FAVORITE ourboldhero memory: when my awful prospie, Rich (who goes there and runs a hip-hop show on LFM) was trying to score some weed and tried to be all gangsta with you.
You kind of just stared him down, and as you left, he told me, "Man, I feel bad that I almost started shit with that guy. He looks like the kind of guy who would whoop my ass."
As an only occasional smoker (celebratory cigars) and only temporary Chicago resident, I'm not the one most affected by the ban. But neither are the ban's primary supporters: nonsmokers who — as I've observed before — tend to worry more about getting the smell of smoke on their clothes than any potential health hazards.
Yes, potential: Smoking is bad bad bad, but the science on secondhand smoke is a lot iffier. At worst, we seem to be talking about the difference between a 1 in 80,000 chance of dying of lung cancer, and a 1 in 100,000 chance. In the words of Jacob Sullum:
[S]upport for the ban probably had little to do with the possible long-term health effects of secondhand smoke. It's hard to believe there are many people who sit in smoky bars and worry that, if they stay there for 30 years, their tiny risk of lung cancer might increase slightly.
Thank goodness we have the government to make using this perfectly legal substance more difficult and force businesses to do what they never would have done on their own.
Strange, isn't it, that there aren't a plethora of smoke-free bars already? I mean, if people really care so much you'd think one bar would declare itself smoke-free and take all the business?
What did that banner in Appleton say after the ban passed? "The smoke is gone and so is my business. Smoking ban supporters, where are you now"?
O, what revealed preference can teach us.
Of course, if there were smoke-free bars, I'd probably just tell ban supporters to make their own decisions and leave the rest of us alone.
As one of the apparent minority of nonsmokers who've come to actually enjoy the smell of a smoke-filled bar, I get pretty frustrated by these attempts to push smokers out into the cold. The only thing more frustrating is knowing that there are actually smokers who will support this ban, as they did in New York, because it makes it easier for them to quit. Get a spine.
It's hard to sum up the many negative feelings I have towards the ban, towards the very idea of a ban. As Jubb so succinctly put it when we were fighting the good fight with the pro-smoking minority at Lawrence: "It's repressive." This could very well be my hot button issue.
Let there be no mistake: in two or three years when the ban goes into effect for bars (it affects other businesses almost immediately), there'll be no stopping it. They say this will be a test period, but even laws with explicit sunset provisions are rarely allowed to lapse � years from now smokers and their supporters will still be in the minority, beaten down by the fragile sensibilities of the larger public.
Suspiciously ambiguous? I had hoped for ambiguously suspicious.
In Okinawa, people smoke everywhere. It doesn't seem to matter and no one cares. Shinbo-san, who's in charge of tech/internet in Ie-jima schools, smokes in the office around all his coworkers and no one ever asks him to stop. I almost did once, since I found the audacity of smoking in an office overwhelming, but thankfully I stopped myself.
60 Minutes perhaps a month/month and a half ago, did a piece on a company that gave smokers a year to quit or their asses were out on the street (I can't find the article on 60 Minutes website, if indeed a text copy exists). It was more of an employee rights story than one on smoking bans, but the subject is out there and 60 Minutes approached it from an angle that, if you did your job well, who the hell should really care what you do?
I like watching smokers, especially those comfortable with their habit that are not afraid of being caught or doing something shitty to their body. It's not glamorous, but there shouldn't be any kind discrimination because collectively we've decided SMOKING IS BAD.
Well, you know the World Health Organization is not hiring smokers now.
Rumor has it that they'll soon tailoring their hiring policy to exclude all unhealthy people. After a few years the plan is to start putting out a new skin magazine and fund the WHO with the profits.
So that's... three days I haven't been outside. A combination of essay-writing and total lack of motivation.
I must go to work tomorrow. This is the problem with a job without a schedule, my alarm goes off at three digits in the morning and I can choose to stay in bed. So I do, and I tell myself I'll make up the hours later. Once again the government's work-study money is saved.
I'm really getting into this sociology essay, though I have no idea what I'll talk about once I run out of fresh, slightly-flawed analysis and have to bring in the readings from class. It was amusing how Prof. Clark so consistently defended the readings earlier in the term (the power of statistics!) but the generally uncritical stance he took towards all the texts (save one) leaves me with little to do except check my data against their predictions.
I've learned so much math recently. I know now that the top bloggers tend to be in more populous areas — population is the single strongest predictor (r²=0.71) of how many Technorati 100 blogs a city will have — but the number of college graduates in the area doesn't matter much at all. I can show you this with math.
So many words I don't understand. It's all well and good to tell me the ideal Mallows C-P depends on p, but if I don't know what p is? And if I don't know what the thing is that you tell me that the p is?
Meanwhile, my brother is going to be an engineer at 3M. Two roads diverged...
For authors who don't rely on statistics at all — Sontag, who I loved, and Brooks, who I despised — there's no denying the existence of their pet phenomena. I can't refute the concept of "Bobos," and I don't win any points saying the top bloggers don't fall under that label. Better to scrape for examples that support Brooks' thesis. And the demon grows stronger.
I would be shocked, shocked, if I couldn't find examples of camp.
Tomorrow, after work and my epic journey to Evanston to see a movie with Jinx — doesn't The Squid and the Whale sound like an old Disney movie to you? — I'm hoping to finish. We'll see. I've got days yet, to do this and that.
There's a hierarchy to metablogging. At the top you have the lofty theoretical discussions of what blogs are, then you have first the content-related and then the technical suggestions for how to be a better blogger, followed by observations on the blogging of others, then the narrower statements of purpose about your own blog, then explanations for why you've decided to stop blogging, and below that, solicitations for reader feedback about your blogging.
And so on down the ladder to unlucky town. There's the notice that your blog will be moving, followed by excuses for not blogging, observations about your readership, and comments on technical problems with the site that you've fixed. Then we arrive at the comments on less critical changes you've made to the site, as in this excerpt from Manney's old blog:
"Last night I was really high on life. While on this natural high, I read Graham's website. Now, I like Graham, and I think his site looks really cool, but some of the shit he writes on there is just unforgivable. Example: the sidebar's boxes' background-color is now a more heavily saturated green, which gives a bit more liveliness to the page and a greater focus on the new sideblog.. I tried to go to go to his room so I could read to his blog out loud to him so that he would understand, but he wasn't there, and by the time he got back, I wasn't up to it anymore.
These are followed by otherwise contentless notes to explain that you won't be blogging again until a certain date, posts containing proposed changes you don't have time to do, promises to blog more often in the future, and finally, at the bottom of the pit, apologies for not blogging, of decreasing length.
Now that you know what level of hell I should be assigned to, I just wanted to note that I'd gotten rid of some of the extra site content no one was using (yes, that's right, I purposely rolled back functionality to make the site less cluttered) and added separate pages for my news articles and my creative nonfiction.
To my possible credit, I'm hiding this notice in the comments.
Am I the only one who finds the process of putting sources into MLA format incredibly fulfilling?
Zen, even?
Well, nevermind. You'd think this love of mindless chores would also apply to say, washing my dishes or cleaning my room, but then you haven't seen what my room looks like right now. I'm satisfied when I finish cleaning but I guess I don't do it often enough to get addicted to the high. (This observation also applies to exercise.)
Today is the honest-to-goodness last day of classes this term. I've got two papers due at the end of next week and no finals, so hopefully I can make up some hours at work. We had a sort of office party last week and I was told that I should take a set of little computer tools for work at the school, or possibly "for work at the school."
I'm not sure if there was an unspoken invitation to keep the tools and it's going to drive me crazy. My bosses could have just brought the tool set to school next week when they visited instead of giving it to me. So I guess it's mine? Merry Xmas?
Not that the term flew by, excactly, but it's stange to think that I'm a third done with my master's. So this is one-third of the knowledge I'm getting this year? I'll grant that I'm certainly stuffed full of theory now, I suppose that's grad school for you.
Apparently the worst is over. The core course was so freaky, something (read: my preceptor) tells me that the next two terms will seem easy in comparison.
I meant completing in the sense that formatting is often the last thing down. Usually it's last for me, but you may enjoy it so much as to do it first or in the middle somewhere.
So my cranberry fruit cup bread totally rocks with strawberry jam.
The Departure Lounge song "Christmas Downer" has been playing in my head for days now, and I think it's my new Christmas theme song. It appears that I've had one of my seasonal changes of heart. Who knows why?
I guess I'm usually in a good mood after Creative Nonfiction, unless I'm completely ashamed of my essay. This week's was rushed, but not bad.
Sad to think that I'll probably never see most of the creative nonfiction people again, and strange — the reality of a short stay on a large campus. I've been in a lot of workshops, and this was a good group.
Since Prof. McNulty basically introduced me to the class as "the blogger" (a situation I put myself in, I realize) and asked for my web address, I'm much too paranoid to give more detailed impressions here. One of the essays this term was about how creepy it is to find out someone has been blogging about you behind your back, for god's sake. I'll stick to meatspace gossip for the time being. Not that I have anything negative to say about anyone, no of course not.
Meatspace. I saw that term in Cryptonomicon and thought it was ridiculous, then Prof. Weiner uses it once and suddenly I think it's really useful. I can't think of the last time I picked up a word or phrase from a teacher.
I do have my own thoughts on the whole "blogging behind their back" thing, since obviously I do that quite often right here.
Many of the people I've written about have eventually discovered the blog somehow. Not by design, assuredly. It's not like I'm putting up Ourboldhero.com posters anywhere. Graham. At Lawrence I think it was Ann of Stillwater who outed me as a blogger, in Germany it was the Suburbanite. Here I got lazy and a Google search was enough, but I hadn't written much about my classmates yet. In none of these cases did people seem creeped out.
Though I suppose they wouldn't tell me if they were. I remember hearing that a few of them searched the archive for references to themselves. Some pestered me for enough info to turn this into a bad gossip column.
I guess I don't see the problem. The creepy part couldn't simply be having opinions about another peron — it has to be the public aspect associated with blogging.
But unlike the blogger from that girl's story, I'm not using real names for the most part, and the only way to figure out who most of these people are would be recognizing their faces in some picture. And with the exception of Graham, this site's readers are split into several groups of people who've never met each other.
Employers can't really find anything here: I blogged about the Politician for four years but while you can start with the Politician and figure out who he is, it's much more difficult to start with his real name and get to the Politician.
Maybe this is the blogger in me talking, but it is really public if you're just a silly name, if no one has any idea or even interest in who you are?
