Farmers – A Dying Breed. Finally.
By Brian | September 5, 2007
Via Instapundit, this sounds like pretty big news:
For the first time in 10,000 years, farming is not the dominating industry on a global basis:
Worldwide, in 1996 agriculture employed 42%, industry 21%, and services 37%. In 2006, the numbers are 36%, 22% and 42%. So in the period, services has overtaken farming on a global scale.
And thus passes a tremendous milestone in the history of our species. Farming, invented around 8000 BC, quickly dominated human activity and has so continued to for the following 10,000 years (give or take a few). And we even find that the tradition agriculture->industry->services transition doesn’t hold up globally. The industry segment simply isn’t big enough, so many workers skip to services.
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | 3 Comments »
Tempted by the Apple, but No Thanks…
By Brian | September 5, 2007
Fulfilling my obligation under the law that all blogs must post about Apple’s new product line announcements:
Ringtones on the iPhone
I’ve never understood why ringtones are so popular. Maybe if they were free. But people pay real cash money to change how their phone rings. Go figure. I don’t have an iPod, and I’ll never pay a single penny to make my phone ring differently. I guess I’m just weird that way.
My Rating: Meh…
iPod Shuffle in New Colors
$79 for an iPod that’s missing most of the cool features of an iPod. Again, I don’t get it. But they sell like hotcakes, so once again, I’m the weird one. And now, you can get one to match all your different outfits.
My Rating: <Headsmack>
Redesigned Nano
The postage stamp is dead! I haven’t seen it in person yet, but it looks like the screen’s dimensions are much more watchable. Still a little tiny to watch more than a few minutes of video comfortably, I’m guessing, but this sounds like the reasonable low-cost alternative in the iPod line.
My Rating: Nicely done…
iPod Classic
Yeah, because “Classic” worked so well for Coca Cola. Actually, it did. I’m just bitter because my super-cool Video iPod is now called “Classic,” and my 30GB is smaller than anything they currently sell. But, it does what I need and that hasn’t changed with this announcement. I think this upgrade is a “check the box” move. I can’t imagine anyone who has a Video iPod upgrading to a Classic. It’s only for folks who don’t have one yet.
My Rating: Meh…
iPod Touch
Oh, the pictures looked so good. The screen looks super cool, the touch screen interface is awesome. It’s got OS X, so it can do more than an iPod does – multiple windows on the screen at once, WiFi, that YouTube app, etc. And now I don’t need to pay exorbitant monthly fees for a phone that I don’t really want in the first place! But wait, what’s this? 8GB and 16GB? Aw, crap – it’s just a big Nano! Call me when you put a real iPod inside one of these cool devices, OK?
My Rating: So close, and yet so far…
WiFi on iTunes
A step in the right direction. If my friend is playing a song I really like, I can browse over to ITMS, tap a few times, spend my $0.99 and have the song on my iPod. They’re starting to tap into the impulse-buy market. Good for them. Next stop – digital radio, where I can listen to music for free, and then click when I hear a song I like and buy it for a dollar. I’ve always considered this the killer iPod app.
My Rating: Good progress toward nirvana
iPhone Changes
Cheaper 8GB model. Good for most folks. Really sucky for people who shelled out the higher price just a couple of months ago. Also, the 4GB is dead?!? That’s gotta be the shortest lifespan for a successful product in technology history, right?
My Rating: Wow…
Categories: Tech Talk | 4 Comments »
What a Wonderful Shadow…
By Brian | September 5, 2007
This is just awesome:
Categories: The World Wide Weird | Comments Off on What a Wonderful Shadow…
Air Force Bloopers…
By Brian | September 5, 2007
This can’t be good:
A B-52 bomber was mistakenly armed with six nuclear warheads and flown for more than three hours across several states last week, prompting an Air Force investigation and the firing of one commander, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.
The plane was carrying Advanced Cruise Missiles from Minot Air Force Base, N.D, to Barksdale Air Force Base, La., on Aug. 30, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a Defense Department policy not to confirm information on nuclear weapons.
The missiles, which are being decommissioned, were mounted onto pylons on the bomber’s wings and it is unclear why the warheads had not been removed beforehand.
So basically what we have here is, “You mean those things are armed?!?”
President Bush and Defense Secretary Gates were informed of the incident and provided daily briefings, the munitions squad commander is now unemployed, and the crews involved have been “temporarily decertified for handling munitions.”
But here’s my favorite quote:
“Nothing like this has ever been reported before and we have been assured for decades that it was impossible,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., co-chair of the House task force on nonproliferation.
So it seems that the people who screwed up last week have also been wrong for decades about whether such a thing could occur in the first place. Makes you wonder what else they claim it’s impossible to do with a nuclear weapon…
Categories: Random Acts of Blogging | 2 Comments »
The Gaffe Machine Processes Another Victim
By Brian | September 5, 2007
Last Thursday, I blogged about what I called The Gaffe Machine – that process that seems to have developed in our culture whereby televised events go generally unwatched until something controversial happens, and then the controversial “gaffe” becomes a self-sustaining media event, generating large ratings and various other forms of public attention.
Well, it’s been four days and already I have another example to share with you:
Comedian Jerry Lewis apologized on Tuesday for his use of an anti-gay slur during the weekend broadcast of his annual Labor Day Telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The controversial remark came Monday afternoon in the 18th hour of the live national telecast, when a visibly weary Lewis, 81, was joking on stage, pretending to introduce members of someone’s family as he mugged for the camera.
“Oh, your family has come to see you. You remember Bart, your oldest son, Jesse, the illiterate fag …,” Lewis said, as he apparently caught himself and ceased the gag in mid-sentence, turning on his heel away from the camera.
So here we go: absolutely no one watches 21.5 hours of the telethon. Most people, if they watch at all, tune in and out throughout the day. So virtually no one heard Lewis say those words. But this morning, it’s all over the Internet and every news story about the telethon is leading with it. The Gaffe Machine has begun to churn.
Enter the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD):
“Jerry Lewis’ on-air use of this kind of anti-gay slur is simply unacceptable,” GLAAD President Neil Giuliano said in a statement, adding that the comic’s remark “feeds a climate of hatred and intolerance” that could incite anti-gay violence. GLAAD urged Lewis to apologize for the comment and asked the entertainer to meet with members of the group “to help him understand why these words are so hurtful.”
I’m not defending what he said, but let’s think about this seriously for a moment. Jerry Lewis, a man who has dedicated the last 30+ years of his life to helping people he doesn’t even know, a man who has raised (and inspired others to raise) BILLIONS of dollars for medical research, social programs and community outreach programs, has “incited anti-gay violence” by “feed[ing] a climate of hatred and intolerance,” and now needs to meet with GLAAD representatives to “understand why these words are so hurtful.” Let’s also not forget that he’s 81 years old, and had been working for eighteen hours straight at the time.
I don’t know what Jerry Lewis truly thinks about gay people. None of us will ever know for sure. But I think the man’s life’s work puts him on the right end of the helpful/hurtful continuum, no?
On the upside, it seems as though The Gaffe Machine was unable to chew him up and spit him out, in the way it did for Don Imus, Michael Richards, Mel Gibson, Caitlin Upton, and so many others. Lewis issued this statement today:
“I obviously made a bad choice of words. Everyone who knows me understands that I hold no prejudices in this regard,” he said. “The success of the (telethon) and all the good that will come from it shouldn’t be lost because of one unfortunate word. I accept responsibility for what I said. There are no excuses. I am sorry.”
And a spokesperson for GLAAD subsequently said this:
“GLAAD thanks Jerry Lewis for his swift and direct apology for this incident. We join millions of Americans in applauding the important work of the Muscular Dystrophy Association and wish MDA and Mr. Lewis much continued success in their efforts.”
I think even GLAAD realized what they were up against this time. So hopefully, this one just goes away. We’ll have to wait and see. Even if it does, though, I’ll bet you a dollar that the day before Labor Day, 2008, every news story about the upcoming telethon will include a reference to this “incident.”
Categories: News and/or Media | Comments Off on The Gaffe Machine Processes Another Victim
How People Found Me – August Edition
By Brian | September 1, 2007
The Categories
| Category | August Count | July Count |
| Technology | 128 | 184 |
| Billy Joel | 60 | |
| Celebrity Look Alikes | 38 | 50 |
| DSL | 30 | 30 |
| ISBS Song/Lyrics | 28 | 14 |
| Overrated Films | 24 | 19 |
| Cal/Stanford | 17 | 16 |
| Family | 12 | 16 |
| Politics | 8 | 23 |
Queries were down as a whole, proportionate to the traffic (see this month’s healthcheck post), but technology related queries still ruled the roost, and Billy Joel still held on to the number two spot. The other categories also remained relatively stable, with the exception of “I Should Be Sleeping Instead of Thinking About You,” that country song that I still haven’t heard yet.
The Referring Sites
The list of referring sites remained relatively stable this month, with two notable exceptions. CNN.com and Sphere.com (the service CNN uses to link blog posts to their stories) went from nine referrals in July to fifty six in August. Note to self: when blogging about the news, link to CNN’s story. Also of note, images.google.com went from their typical 73 referrals in July to just 5 in August. Weird…
The Keywords
All told, 453 queries resulted in hits to Familygreenberg.com in August (about 110 fewer than were used in July). Here are some samples:
Once again, we begin with the odd and interesting:
| Query | Rank / # of Results | Comments |
| change dsl filter every six months? | 1 / 445,000 | Well, ya know, as those DSL filters filter out line noise, they can get full. Then you need to change them before all the noise spills out all over the room… |
| song lyrics how i’ve been waiting for you ba dum ba dum oldies | 2 / 11,600 | Gee, I hope he spelled “ba dum ba dum” correctly… |
| isquint crippleware | 5 / 14 | I’m not sure what that is, but it sounds nasty… |
| lions tigers and bears blazing saddles | 6 / 47,000 | No. Lions tigers and bears Wizard of Oz. Some folks will never learn… |
| most rented movies all-time | 7 / 389,000 | Not a bad query to run before renting a movie. Note that Netflix was #14 and Blockbuster.com was #92. |
| joyce deschamps | 7 / 118,000 | This is interesting for a pretty geeky reason: Joyce is one of the commenters in my Billy Joel Concert Review post – that post is so popular that a query on her name now returns my post… |
| how long should a 13 year old sleep for? | 9 / 2,700,000 | Approximately one year. Then they’re 14 year olds… |
| what’s wrong with lacrosse players | 13 / 252,000 | I’m wondering exactly what this person was actually searching for… |
| “high resolution pictures” +”fenway park” | 5 / 48 | Hey – I take offense to that query… |
| new yankee stadium | >500 / 2,130,000 | Now that’s more like it… |
| why is j.p. morgan so important? | >500 / 1,980,000 | I guess you should ask the thousands of people who work there and the millions who bank there… |
| 360 rockingham, simpson oj simpsons north rockingham avenue house |
>500 / 70,800 >500 / 13,600 |
ISBS readers – never giving up the search for the real killer… |
| bar mitzvah disney world | >500 / 175,000 | My oldest is only seven, but hey – that’s a pretty cool idea… |
| how much to bar mitzvah cost today | >500 / 223,000 | ya think this is the same person as the query above? ;-) |
| kristy brinkley | >500 / 213,000 | As per usual: ISBS – friend to those who can’t spell… |
| york peppermint patties | >500 / 229,000 | I get the sensation that I’ve received a pageview… |
| supreme court fonts | na / 491 | Nothing says justice like a good sans serif… |
And, back by popular demand (OK, Lisa told me she found it funny), the “adult” queries (STANDARD WARNING: you have been warned):
| Query | Rank / # of Results | Comments |
| you’re my instant pleasure dome | 74 / 264,000 | This one sounds dirty, but it’s actually a Billy Joel lyric |
| katie couric look alike porn | >500 / 44,600 | Ick. Ick, ick, ick… |
| sexmovie sleeping | n/a / 427 | I’m no expert, but I’m guessing there isn’t a lot of sleeping going on in those movies… |
| sleeping sex movie sleeping sex boys sleeping sex game sleeping sex movie sleeping sex pictures |
>500 / <various> | I’m guessing there’s a new movie out called “Sleeping Sex?” And who says perusing your website’s logs can’t be educational! |
| winnie-cooper daily updated pictures | >500 / 15,000 | Really? Daily updated pictures? Does she change that much day-to-day? |
| yung sodomy photos | 26 / 17,300 | There’s one in every crowd. My question: Do you think they meant “Jung,” as in sodomy photos of famous philosphers? Or did they mean “young,” as in “Sir, you’re under arrest…” |
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | 1 Comment »
Familygreenberg.com Health Check – August Edition
By Brian | September 1, 2007
| Metric | July | August | % Change |
| Visits | 1,041 | 838 | -19.50% |
| Pageviews | 1,574 | 1,253 | -20.39% |
| Pages/Visit | 1.51 | 1.50 | -1.11% |
| Avg Time on Site | 4:40 | 4:45 | +1.76% |
| Bounce Rate | 81.17% | 83.29% | -2.61% |
| % New Visitors | 86.55% | 84.25% | -2.66% |
Oof. No good news here. Obviously, I’ve become inordinately boring over the last month. Perusing the data, the main culprits are Harry Potter (45 views in July vs. 1 in August), my family’s personal pages (all down roughly 50% from last month), and various archives (some down 50 pageviews or more), so maybe it’s more about Google searches than the quality of my writing. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Sure…
I’ll also point out that it wasn’t such a bad month, as much as it was a bad couple of weeks in the beginning of the month. If I re-run the stats starting on July/August 13th instead of July/August 1st, the numbers come out like this:
| Metric | July 13-31 | August 13-31 | % Change |
| Visits | 521 | 588 | +12.86% |
| Pageviews | 768 | 926 | +20.57% |
| Pages/Visit | 1.47 | 1.57 | +6.83% |
| Avg Time on Site | 3:56 | 4:51 | +23.01% |
| Bounce Rate | 82.34% | 82.82% | +0.58% |
| % New Visitors | 87.14% | 81.29% | -6.71% |
So maybe things are looking up. See you in September…
Categories: Blogging about Blogs | Comments Off on Familygreenberg.com Health Check – August Edition
The Gaffe Machine
By Brian | August 30, 2007
Let’s talk for a minute about this woman:
Her name is Caitlin Upton, and she was the fourth place finisher in the 2007 Miss Teen USA Pageant. Despite the fact that the pageant didn’t even make the Top 20 Nielsen ratings, the above video has (as of this writing) been viewed by approximately 1.5 million people. Other versions of the video are on YouTube as well, and two of them are currently listed in YouTube’s Top 10 Most Viewed video list. It’s safe to say that more people have seen the video clip than watched the actual pageant to begin with.
It’s also safe to say that every last one of them thinks Ms. Upton is as dumb as a brick. The user comments on the above video call her everything from a “moron” to a “dumb bitch” to one who “only exists to give pleasure to men.” The thing is, she’s not so dumb. This from MSNBC:
Held up on the Internet as the quintessential dumb blonde, Upton was an honor student in high school who played varsity soccer for four years. This summer, she traveled to Germany with an elite soccer team that placed second in a tournament involving teams from a number of European countries. In her junior and senior years, she was her school’s president of SkillsUSA, which describes itself as “a partnership of students, teachers and industry working together to ensure America has a skilled work force.”
Upton’s long-term goals include enrolling in Appalachian State University to major in graphic design. On graduation, she wants to study special effects at the International Academy of Design Technology in Los Angeles and embark on a career designing special effects for movies and television.
On the Today Show the following day, she gave a much more coherent answer to the pageant’s question, and also came back later in the show to deliver “a flawless explanation of lunar eclipses.”
So what we have here is a character assassination. Caitlin Upton is not a dumb blonde, but she did commit the worst sin in America: she looked bad on television. Once she did that, millions of Americans formed and cemented their opinions, and no amount of explanation or second chances was going to help.
She’s also not the first non-moron to fall victim to this phenomenon. President Bush jumps immediately to mind. As does former Vice President Dan Quayle, and Vice Presidential candidate James Stockdale (of “Who am I? Why am I here?” infamy).
But there’s something else going on here as well. This is a new, 21st Century version of character assassination, in which no individual or group conspires to destroy a person. At least in the cases of Bush or Quayle, one could argue that their political enemies conspired to spin up injurious tales about them, altering public perceptions to achieve their own ends. In Ms. Upton’s case, our cultural mechanisms, including the glut of entertainment content available across thousands of cable and satellite channels, not to mention the almighty Internet, seem to automatically generate this kind of story, leaving the victim no one to blame and no effective recourse, despite the fact that the message is horribly inaccurate.
It feels as though the pageant is not so much televised to be viewed by the public, but to provide raw materials for those who would scan through it, find an embarrassing or humorous moment, and then highlight it for the world via YouTube or some similar vehicle. Then, social networking takes over and distributes the “gaffe” around the world, pointing people back to the source material only if they’d like further context.
In a weird way, the same can be said of the 29 “Presidential” debates that have been scheduled so far. I put the word “Presidential” in quotes because we all seem to be ignoring the fact that there is no presidential election this year, and so these debates are really about giving the candidates the opportunity to say something newsworthy. There is no real reason to watch them when they happen (and, in fact, very few people have). Instead, we count on the teeming millions out there (mainstream media and bloggers alike) to extract any controversial, embarrassing, humorous, or otherwise interesting snippet from them, post them in a publicly viewable forum, and then spread the word to the rest of us.
Both the pageants and the debates (and while you’re at it, throw in Reality TV shows, Award shows, most sporting events, and anything that’s ever been on C-SPAN), are no longer the end product. They are inputs for the giant Gaffe Machine that we’ve built with our technological capabilities and our short attention spans.
It all makes me wonder whether this Gaffe Machine is the cause or the effect. If the only way to see the gaffe was to watch the debate, might the entire debate be more informative? If the only way to hear Ms. Upton fumble on about “U.S. Americans” was to watch the pageant, would the pageant itself be more popular, and by extension, more entertaining?
Categories: News and/or Media | 5 Comments »
It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over…
By Brian | August 30, 2007
Coming up on September 1st, and the Red Sox lead the Yankees by six games in the American League East. As Mike Francesa of Mike and the Mad Dog (WFAN, New York) says, “The Red Sox are like the timezones – ahead in the spring and behind in the fall.” Look at this chart:
With the exception of 2004 (their World Series year), where they actually made a mini-run at the division at the end of the season, the pattern is always the same – build a small lead in the beginning of the season, and then watch it fade away by October.
This year, unfortunately, has been a bit different. The annual, mid-season lead spiked to double digits for the first time in six years, and this is their biggest lead for September 1st in that timeframe (data prior to 2001 was not easily available on the web). The biggest 9/1 lead they’ve blown has been 5.5 games (in 2001), so it’s not out of the realm of possibilities, but it’s going to be tough…
GO YANKS!
Categories: Sports Talk | 2 Comments »
Strange Bedfellows…
By Brian | August 29, 2007
| TO: | Senator Larry Craig |
| FROM: | Fmr. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez |
| DATE: | August 28, 2007 |
| SUBJECT: | Thanks… |
Larry,
Thanks for the air cover. Your timing is impeccable. Sorry I couldn’t meet you in that bathroom stall in Minneapolis like we’d planned. Maybe next time, OK?
Regards,
Alberto
Categories: Political Rantings | Comments Off on Strange Bedfellows…