SASCHA DOT COM

Starbucks Hmm

2009-07-02T23:01:00.003-04:00

This ad makes me think that Starbucks (or their ad agency) needs a grammar lesson. My first reading made me ask about the other 97% of Starbucks' coffee beans. My second reading (a day later) made me think that Starbucks hasn't dominated the market for the best beans, which has other implications. The third reading (yet another day later) was no clearer, and prompted the picture.

Best of all: no impact on my patronage! I rarely went to Starbucks before I saw these ads, and that hasn't changed. Maybe, given the economy, that's its own kind of success?

Poor MJ

2009-06-28T09:13:00.002-04:00

I imagine that many people feel about Michael Jackson’s death the way I felt about John Lennon’s murder on 8 December 1980: hard to reconcile feelings of surprise—shock is more like it—mixed with sadness and an immediate, very personal longing. I never met John Lennon, but on that day in 1980, I felt as though I had lost someone very close to me.

I don’t feel that way about poor Michael.

Strictly speaking, I should be more a child of Michael Jackson’s era than of John Lennon’s. The Beatles dissolved the band around the time I was born, while Michael truly came into his own—as an independent superstar, eclipsing both of his earlier incarnations—as I entered adolescence. There was a lot more of Michael Jackson on the radio than John Lennon, and certainly the radio-killing MTV was more attracted to Michael (and various other Jacksons) than to anything as old and dated as the British Invasion.

The sequined glove era just wasn’t me, though. As much as I admired Michael Jackson on various levels, from his stick-in-your-head songs to his dancing to the brilliant theatrics of his music videos and performances, I never found Jackson as compelling as Lennon, because I never found his off-stage persona at all meaningful. Where Jackson was a performer, Lennon was an artist. Jackson always seemed to find his highest level of expression literally moving in the spotlight—or trying to duck it, and the paparazzi too. Lennon spent much of his time in the spotlight, from his performances to his bed-in antics, trying to redirect those bright lights on to the world’s problems and our responsibility to try to solve them.

It is like the difference between Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan. Jordan remains (to my mind) one of the world’s most incredible athletes; watching clips of classic Chicago Bulls games, Jordan’s maneuvers are still eye catching. However, Ali remains (to my mind) one of the world’s most incredible artists, an athlete who tried to use the bully pulpit provided by his star power to greater social and political ends. Any clip of Ali boxing is incomplete without his corresponding commentary from the beginning and the end of each match, where he was as likely to spout off about the war in Vietnam as about his own (self-granted) title as “The Greatest.” Like Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson never rose above his performances to offer us anything deeper or more meaningful.

Perhaps my definition of art, and of artists, is too narrow. I respect Keats’ construction—that a thing of beauty is a joy forever—as much as the next guy, and by that logic I should take Michael Jackson’s body of work and admire it for what it is. In a way, I do. Jackson’s legacy is assured, and his death is very sad. But it is all the more tragic because what is left behind is as much our collective memory of Jackson’s own sadness, the emptiness that was his circus show life, as our recollection of any single one of his songs.

Foreign Exchange

2009-06-06T22:00:00.000-04:00

I've passed by this ad for a few weeks now and finally got a picture. While Nestea has built a very robust "Liquid Awesomeness" website to carry the whole campaign to its logical and absurd conclusion ... I'm not feeling the love on the bottling-a-foreign-exchange-student concept. It's just odd, and frankly, seems disconnected from "Steve" and the broader ad campaign.

Plus there seem to be some gaps in the scope of the campaign. For example, search for "Liquid Awesomeness" on Facebook and you get to the group for Jones Soda is Liquid Awesomeness. (And I just have no doubt that's true.)

For anyone interested, Adverblog has a longer description of the website and its development. Personally, I prefer my liquid awesomeness in coffee form.

Awesomely yours,

Fireside Spam

2009-06-04T17:50:00.002-04:00

A friend just wrote me: "Can I just say again
how odd it is to get emails from the office
of the President of the United States?"

Which is when I realized: it's Fireside Spam.

Unstructured Summer

2009-05-25T10:59:00.000-04:00

Let me call it as it was: I had to fight to get my time for myself.

I guess it's the way it is for many kids, the way it was years ago and remains today. Summers could be frustrating. It wasn't a matter of laziness, so much as a kind of frustration over someone else setting the agenda for my time. Whatever it was I was required to do, what I can say assuredly is that all I wanted to do was hang out somewhere quiet, listen to music, and read. Once a bookworm...

In this context, summers in Royalston always had a special feel—and not without its frustrations either. The rambling old farmhouse, and the seemingly endless surrounding woods and fields; the black flies (particularly in May) and the mosquitos; the periodic hammocks and tire swings; the cool inner parlor, with its uncomfortable couch; the warmer, outer parlor, with a similar couch; the childhood bathroom, with an Americana-themed wallpaper, and the childhood bedroom, still mine, with (oddly) a flower print wallpaper but a slate-blue trim on the doors, windows, and molding; and the kitchen, the big, farmhouse kitchen, the center of all activity as it is in most homes, but here (situated at the front of the "little house," for anyone familiar with the classic New England "big house, little house" construction) even more central, providing access to the main house, and with doors out to the east and west sides lawns; all of this reminds me of how much I treasured my unstructured summers, and how much I yearned for them when I couldn't have them. How much I yearn for them still.

Underneath that Faulknerian paragraph-sentence is something simple: the idea of freedom to explore: one's self, one's surroundings, and one's relationship to the world. And as much as we do this in relation to other things, we also need the freedom to do it in relation to nothing so much as our own thoughts. This is what summers are meant for, just the way that Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn found the good weather a supportive partner in their explorations of the world. One can navel-gaze any time of the year, but the warmth of summer is especially good for this. Having spent the weekend in Royalston, in this comfortable, Crossing To Safety-esque sometimes home of my childhood, I’m reminded of the whole dynamic once again.

And I’m reminded of what I want for my daughter—the same opportunity to experience the pleasurable freedoms of summer, to create a set of childhood memories that connect to a place and a time and a sense that the whole world, contained within a backyard, awaits exploration or quiet contemplation.

OpenOffice Update

2009-05-16T23:32:00.001-04:00

OpenOffice.org - the free, multi-platform, "office" software suite of programs and tools - recently launched version 3.1. I wrote about version 2.0 back in 2006, and since then the program has only improved further. Rather than repeat the whole structure of my original argument, I thought I would just punch out a few quick reasons why OpenOffice.org can and should replace your version(s) of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access:

1. Features. These programs do everything that Microsoft's programs do - and sometimes more. For example, any file / document can be exported to PDF format with one click (and without buying or installing any additional software, like Adobe Acrobat). With two clicks, you can control the quality of the PDF, the file size, the inclusion of bookmarks on the page, how it looks when it opens, and more.

2. Interoperability for imports. In addition to being able to open Microsoft Office documents perfectly, OpenOffice.org has worked for opening a range of other files, including former Microsoft files that have been corrupted or improperly closed. Moreover Microsoft has, in recent years, dropped some of the converters it used to include by default with programs like Word. OpenOffice.org still has them - and they work better than Microsoft's ever did anyway.

3. Interoperability for exports. Want to save a file (yours or someone else's) as a Microsoft Word document? OpenOffice.org will do it, with no problems. Want to convert that presentation into an easy, web-enabled Flash file? OpenOffice.org will do it, no problem. Got an old Access database you can no longer ... access? OpenOffice.org will open it - and let you extract the data into a spreadsheet.

4. Languages. Speak another language? Want to use an office program that knows that language, dictionary and all? OpenOffice.org can be had (for free) in a wide range of languages, from Afrikaans to Vietnamese.

5. Add-ons / extensions. The smart developers at OpenOffice.org use the Mozilla / Firefox model and have opened up a whole world of "extensions," additional items components (from new document templates to new functions), many of which can also be had for free.

6. Stability. Since I started using OpenOffice.org full time in 2003, I think I can count on two hands the number of times the program has crashed. That's with heavy-duty use, for files in multiple formats and across multiple platforms (Windows, Mac OS X, and even Linux). Six years, 10 crashes? When was the last time your software worked so well, Microsoft?

7. Environmental conservation. This may sound silly, but think about it: it's a lot more environmentally sensitive (and cost-effective) to deliver a program that requires no additional packaging. Each new computer you buy with Microsoft Office installed comes with crap you will likely throw out, from the packaging to the reinstallation CDs. OpenOffice.org is free, which means that it's readily available - which means that crap is unnecessary. Need a new copy? Just download it when you need it.

8. Global accessibility. Hand in hand with the environmental message is one of global do-gooding. Free software like this is liberating: classes of people can get easy access to a valuable, high-quality product. Yes, this is limited to people who already can afford a computer; but as the cost of hardware falls, the freedom to choose other software products increases their utility. And there is a reason that governments are also switching to OpenOffice.org: it saves taxpayers money, too.

9. Cost. You can't beat free. Seriously. Especially when free is really, really good.

Every software has some thing bound to drive a user nuts. For me, it's the hidden nature of OpenOffice.org's "Recent Documents" menu: it's only accessible when some kind of document is already open. But that's a small thing, and easily managed. Everything else is great, which is why, several years later, I'm once again back telling people to take a look. It's worth it.

Data Geek

2009-05-08T06:52:00.003-04:00

Doing some research for a ... well, some kind of article / blog post / op-ed [TBD] about art museum attendance, I happened on a cool feature of the U.S. Census Bureau: the Facts for Features section of their site. Given how much I love their data, I don't know how I've missed this previously.

Essentially, the Census Bureau each year publishes a set of stats keyed to specific holidays, drawing on their deep and rich data set about life in these here United States of America. For example, the most recent is about the upcoming 4th of July holiday, and includes information about cookouts (and the amount of meat we consume, or where our baked beans likely came from), fireworks, and even the dollar value of our annual trade with Britain, our former colonizer ($112.4 billion).

Fun!

And, while I'm on the geek front, also coming soon: some thoughts on the just-released version 3.1 of OpenOffice, my office "suite" of choice.

Class of 1989, Part 2

2009-05-02T17:13:00.000-04:00

An Open Letter to My Hampshire College Classmates (Revisited)

Dear Class of 1989:

On April 25th, the New York Times ran an article titled "Anonymous Donor Gives Millions to Colleges." Unusually for a news article, the headline was both attention-getting and accurate, and if you read nothing else you came away knowing something inspiring and slightly mysterious had happened.

My first thought was: wow, I wish I could do that. I wish I had the means to give multiple large gifts - of $5 - $10 million dollars! - to organizations I think worthy, and the secondary means to enforce what must be a kind of gleeful anonymity on the part of the donor.

But I don't. And most of us don't have that kind of money, either. (If you do, and you've been hiding, now would be a great time to step forward.)

Yet it is precisely because I cannot make a multi-million dollar gift that I am writing you to ask you to join me in supporting Hampshire College, which was notably (!) absent from the list of worthy schools that received one of these anonymous donations. As alumni, our support for Hampshire matters. The biggest reason is the immediate impact of our dollars on everything from the development of new course curricula to supporting financial aid needs for current students. The equally important secondary reason is that our dollars make a statement to the outside world of foundations and other donors about how much we value Hampshire, the experience it gave us, and the importance of their support, too.

At the end of last year, after hearing that only 14% of the Class of 1989 contributes to Hampshire (a lower percentage than the more recent graduating classes), I did two things. I increased my own annual giving by 20%, to $1,200, and I wrote a letter for Hampshire to share with my class to encourage more gifts. I am gratified that some of you took me up on the challenge and made a contribution, too. Still, the need remains and, alas, the response rate was not enough to make the Class of 1989 competitive with our peers. So, I am asking again. I am asking you to think about Hampshire, what it meant to you in the big picture of your life, and the opportunity - actually, I would say the responsibility - we have to ensure its continued success.

Here is what I consider to be the reality: Hampshire College cannot wait for an anonymous donor to come along and drop several million dollars into its endowment. It's up to us, the folks who went there, to show the world that we care. I am committing here, in writing, to giving an additional 20% this year. What are you willing to do? As the logo says, "To know is not enough."

***gazing

2009-04-26T22:36:00.001-04:00

I did it again just yesterday: I used three little asterisks in a row, twice, in my essay. I use them copiously in my diary; unofficially, I'd say twice per typed page, though possibly more depending on the entry and what I'm trying to capture about my week. And the fiction I write is filled with them, a preferred alternative to something as pedestrian as chapter breaks.

At some point yesterday, as I typed them out, I wondered quietly to myself why I use them, and so consistently; and I wondered whether they really serve as I intend them, or if instead they're a kind of cop-out, a writer's crutch to help me navigate around an idea I cannot pin down.

Which leads to the question: what do I intend them to mean or be?

In a world of unanswerable questions, that one I can handle: I like my asterisks because they help define and delineate the continuum of my thinking. And my thinking definitely functions on a continuum. I think my argumentative, opinionated writing tends to navigate around my main point, punching in for direct connections, and then moving back out to pull together related but distinct ideas. Over the years, a few people have complained that my writing can be maddeningly oblique (as is often intended); the asterisks help with that (also as intended). They help me separate out the direct points I want to make from those that are less so, and should lead the reader around without completely breaking a train of thought. This is essential of meeting that larger goal of threading together different ideas across a spectrum of perspectives.

Admittedly, they do sometimes serve as a crutch—when an idea just won't quite come together, and something is needed to help both separate the disparate elements and tie them together, and I am running out of time (on my self-imposed deadline) and I want to wrap something up...

I suppose my final comfort factor is: no one taught me to punctuate my writing this way, I just developed it on my own. Which, as these things go, makes me feel more comfortable about doing it. I'm not mimicking anyone's style (though many other writers do much the same thing). It's just me being me. If you can’t handle that, you’ve come to the wrong website.

***

Lest I go for one whole posting without the asterisks, there they are, this time as a segue to four items about writing and language. The first is a brilliant poke, from McSweeney’s, at our contemporary culture (with a hat tip to Liz for pointing it out): "Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era." The second and third are good pieces from the New York Times (here and here) on the 50th anniversary of Strink and White’s The Elements of Style. The fourth is a piece on Orwell from the New York Review of Books a few weeks back, and in particular the section on Orwell’s great work Why I Write. Whether you like writing, find writing frustrating or challenging, teach writing, or are mystified by how people who (seemingly) cannot write get by in the world, these are all for you.

The Letter & The Spirit

2009-04-13T22:59:00.001-04:00

I think there are two direct ways to approach a law: to abide by its letter and (or) to abide by its spirit. We can do both, as we interpret each. Or we can choose one path or the other, also subject to some interpretation. Let's put aside "big" laws, like prohibitions on murder or rape. For smaller laws - let's say jaywalking, or speeding on the highway, I think most of us are inconsistent. We obey certain laws to the letter, devotedly. Others, we choose to view as more flexible prohibitions, deciding for ourselves where the spirit of the law (not going 95 MPH) is more important than the letter (staying at or under 65 MPH). I have been thinking about this issue a lot this Passover holiday, and I'll tell you why.

***

If Jimi Hendrix had been an observant Jew, right now he might be posing the question: have you ever been afflicted? Well, I have.

Six days into the matzah-eating holiday of Passover, I feel fine. I have controlled my intake of matzah this year, and worked to balance it with a slightly higher proportion of fibrous fruits and vegetables than I have in some years past. If you are Jewish, and you've binged on matzah, you know what this is about; if not, I'll spell it out: constipation. (It's almost the opposite of a dirty word.)

Still, even with the occasional burdens of matzah, I love Passover. It's a joyous holiday, that reminds me of many of the best qualities of Judaism, particularly the ability to reflect on the past while focusing on the future - and embedding firmly the idea that part of the key to future success is teaching and exploring ideas, across (and within) different generations.

But part of the problem with Passover is that it seems to have lead contemporary Jewry - almost regardless of the degree of orthodoxy - to make some stark choices between the letter of the law and its spirit.

During this holiday, there is a wide category of foods that are off-limits, which in a short and untechnical description can be rendered as: any grain-based food that may have had an opportunity to leaven or rise, or any food that includes grains or other rising agents. It's that simple, and that simply defines the letter of the law.

The spirit of the rule, however, I interpret differently. We are told to eat matzah because of the symbolism of this flat, unleavened bread in the context of the holiday: it was the bread of slaves, and a reminder of that experience. Therefore, to me, the spirit of the law dictates refraining from other grain-based products that one might normally eat in leavened form - even if they follow the letter of the law in being produced with no leavened grains, as with the kosher-for-Passover marble cake, pasta, and cous-cous pictured above. I am sure the folks at Osem, Savion, and Gefen are all nice people, simply making a product for a niche in the market. At the same time, I think companies like these have helped create that niche where it did not used to exist.

We have these products in my house right now. We have a toddler, and I would rather her eat, and eat according to the letter of the law in this instance, than violate both the letter and the spirit because she needs more food than we can muster under a matzah-only regime. But I find these foods to be problematic; even for me, even with my own very personal and quirky levels of observance.

Mostly, I find them a challenge to the underlying message of this eight-day holiday: if, throughout Passover, we eat foods that are very similar to those we eat the rest of the year, I fear we will degrade the message of the holiday itself, the teaching from one generation to the next that we should remember when we were slaves in the land of Egypt, and the joyousness that came with our freedom. Matzah is that reminder, where kosher-for-Passover faux-Cheerios are not.

We should use less

2009-04-06T15:52:00.003-04:00

Are you interested in "a for-profit company that sells sustainable products and gives 10% of profits to water and sanitation projects. "

Check out useless, a new company with "useless" designed and branded products, from water bottles to really cool-looking bags made from recycled billboards.

The products look great, the premise is solid. - and best of all is that useless is looking to partner with colleges to "help campuses and students cut down on waste and raise money for clean water and sanitation projects."

Their first partner? My alma mater, Hampshire College.

Not so useless after all.

RSS Feed Update

2009-03-29T14:44:00.003-04:00

More technology notes: with the migration to a new server last week, and the other problems I was having with Blogger, the Atom & RSS feeds for my sites were not working.

Those problems should now be fixed. If you need to update your feeds, here's the info:
Atom: http://www.sascha.com/atom.xml
RSS: http://www.2rss.com/atom2rss.php?atom=http://www.sascha.com/atom.xml

Cheers!

Use Your Imagination!

2009-03-28T22:50:00.000-04:00

More great product news: if you're not so much interested in Dunkin' Donuts after seeing the calorie report from my last post, then perhaps you'll be interested in this new item I found on Friday at my local supermarket: Squeezy Fruit (or Squ'eezy Fruit), made by Goodness Gardens of New Hampton, NY.

First, there was Go-Gurt - yogurt in a tube - and now, of course, there's fruit in a tube. I'm actually surprised it's taken us this long to get to this point. Of course, it's hard to complain about Squeezy Fruit; having looked at the ingredients, it's about as natural as a fruit-in-a-tube product could reasonably be. It's more the principle involved: why do we need more processed fruit at all?

Well, I believe in markets and freedom, and so if there's a free and open market for squeezable fruit ... great. As it says on the side of the tube: Use Your Imagination!

Truth in Advertising

2009-03-25T22:40:00.002-04:00

This might be the most honest advertisement I've ever seen! Although it is also a bit astounding: are those calorie counts per donut? And really, is that supposed to be an inducement to buy, or a warning to run three laps around the block first?!

Dunkin' Donuts, I think you might have missed the mark with this one. But for those looking for to channel their creative energies into the magical field of donut-making, definitely check-out their latest promotion: the Create Dunkin's Next Donut contest. Hey, you could win $12 grand!

Ever Excellent Mia

2009-03-22T12:23:00.001-04:00

Thankfulness seems to be in the air at the moment. A couple of weeks ago, I offered some public thanks to the good people behind Evernote, an excellent note-taking program I have long used.

And then after that, there was radio silence, so to speak. The blog went dead because Blogger (owned and operated by Google) decided it no longer wanted to publish my material. Just like that.

Which is why I want to offer a huge public thank you to the good folks at Mia.Net, which has served as "host" for my websites and all-things-internet since the mid-1990s. They are terrific, helpful, patient (particularly with my mother), and they get things done. If you are looking for a company to handle your domain, website, e-mail, or server needs: talk to them.

***

More back story: I spent the first week of this blog "silence" trying to dig through the mountain of disorganized and largely useless "support" materials offered by the folks of Mountain View, CA, to try to figure out why - out of nowhere - Blogger had decided it didn't like me. I was getting a series of error messages that indicated Blogger couldn't publish to my server except, oddly, it could publish updates to the home page just fine. If during this period you happened to land here, and happened to see content coming and going, that's why: I could get the home page to publish, but not the sub-pages. In other words, it wasn't that Blogger couldn't publish, it just ... didn't want to.

Here's the thing about "free" anything: it has limitations. We live in a world increasingly riven by the fight between free and pay-per-use items, like the argument between free software versus paid, or free news content versus paid-for content. Items on the "free" side of the balance sheet have been winning the long war, as the state of the newspaper industry clearly indicates.

What "free" anything often lacks, however, is the help that is sometimes needed. I use (and love) Mozilla's Firefox web browser and Thunderbird e-mail client, and likewise use (and love) OpenOffice.org's suite of office software tools. Fortunately, I have had few problems with any of these tools and so have not had to put their equally free support systems to much of a test.

Blogger is also free - and problematic. Over the years, it has stopped working for me for days at a time. And each time, as I have gotten near the limits of my frustration, it has magically started working again, and so here I remain. This time, however, more than two weeks went by and it didn't fix itself. The error messages I was getting contained no helpful information, and searching Blogger's support systems based on those error messages generated nothing useful either.

And good fucking luck trying to get in touch with an actual person at Blogger or Google. Like many companies, the page on their web site that says "Contacting Support" is really just an endless loop back to the same page, with lots of detours to the same unhelpful information one has already seen.

I started looking for alternatives, like WordPress. What I wanted was something I could pay for, at reasonable cost but with enough financial motivation for the company that I could get actual support service when I actually needed it.

***

In comes Mia.Net. Blogger.com's problems are not their problems, to be sure. At Mia.Net, my sites have been on the same server, with the same set-up and the same ports and bells and whistles and do-hickeys for years. It wasn't like Mia.Net changed something and didn't tell me.

To the contrary, it seems like Blogger changed something and didn't tell anyone. I shared my problems (and error messages) with Mia.Net and they poked around and proposed a solution for us to test. They decided to switch me to a different server, one running Linux, as a means of perhaps solving the problem. So far, it seems to be working (and in the process gave me access to a whole new set of bells and whistles to control my sites).

So, this is why I am grateful: I am grateful that Mia.Net exists; that they have a well-run business; that I was able to reach them when I needed help; that they responded,;and that they helped me resolve the issue. Mia.Net is very affordable, but not free. And I don't care. In this case, free didn't help me - while the service I paid for was responsive and responsible.

In case anyone has any doubts: that's worth the price.

this is a test

2009-03-16T16:24:00.000-04:00

This is only a test. (But if you don't hear any white noise or beeping, that's a good sign.)

Evernote Thanks

2009-02-28T22:10:00.001-05:00

It's easy - too easy - to be constantly critical, in the negative sense, of what goes on around us. Therefore when something works as it should, it seems worth saying "Thank you!" And when the something that worked as it should is a small company with a good product, saying "Thank you!" publicly is even more important.

So: Thank you, Evernote!

I have been using Evernote since 2005 to track my notes and ideas, keep clips from web sites and other sources, and generally help manage my life. The early version of the program was easy to use, easy to learn, and free. Eventually, I upgraded to a low-cost paid version, which enabled a synchronization feature, so I could sync my "notes" across different computers using a USB flash drive as the go-between.

Last year, Evernote released version 3.0, an even more sophisticated version - also free - that offers the synchronization feature across Windows, Mac, iPhone, and other platforms, along with a web interface. The premium version, very reasonably priced at $45 per year, turns Evernote into a file server: drop attachments into your notes, and they also synchronize across the entire system. Open those attachments up, edit them, and the changes are saved back to the system.

All this was cool enough, but it was not until I ran into a problem that I really appreciated how great Evernote is. A note I created with multiple attachments got corrupted; first time it has happened, and I don't know what caused it, but it stopped the program from syncing. Within one hour of asking for help, I had a response asking for some more detail; within 12 hours I had an e-mail from Evernote with the solution to the problem. Everything was back to normal after that.

If you're the kind of person who likes to jot down ideas, keep track of receipts, categorize information or to-do lists across different areas of your life, take pictures or audio notes to remind yourself of different things, and more ... Evernote is the program for you. I cannot recommend it highly enough, and they deserve a public thank you for their great product, and for their great customer service.

Soon

2009-02-23T22:22:00.000-05:00

...There will be more content coming shortly...

Arguably Consummate

2009-02-16T16:25:00.000-05:00

I have been surprised lately to notice two words popping up endlessly, each in two very different contexts.

The first appears in news stories of one kind or another. That word is “arguably.” And, arguably, the word is journalism’s mitigator-of-choice these days. Just to make sure I wasn’t kidding myself that I have been seeing the word so often, and to soothe my curiosity, I did a Google News search, which came back with more than 17,000 hits. That’s 17,000 current news articles that use the word in the text or the headline, some examples of which are:

- Tour of California arguably best field assembled in US

- In Gingrich Mold, a New Voice for Solid Republican Resistance (“The Republican Party is arguably weaker today than it was in 1993...”)

- Mortgage Subsidies: Arguably Useless, Likely Expensive

- Students paying more, arguably getting less

- A 40-Year Wish List (“... airports and clean water projects that are arguably worthwhile priorities.”)

Arguably, in a 24/7 news cycle environment, when things keep shifting and a reporter doesn’t have time to nail down whether something might really be what they think it is (or want it to be), it winds up existing in a state of arguability. Actually, I would argue that the preceding sentence is true, without a doubt.

Perhaps using “arguably” is easier than writing a correction for a mistake after the fact, or another seemingly clever way of sidestepping the phrase “I think” as a qualifier for a thought. But it is overused. It is also unhelpful for the reader, especially since the word occurs in many articles purporting to be “analysis.” While analysis should not automatically imply certainty, if one is reading a publication for its expert opinion, and even the experts are constantly hedging on their opinion, well, it devalues the whole construct. After all, opinion is, by definition, arguable.

So it just seems consummately lazy. Which leads me to my next word: consummate.

As in: so-and-so “is a consummate professional,” or a “consummate” networker, etc. The word keeps appearing in the so-called “recommendations” for other people that pass by my eyes on the business networking site LinkedIn.com. I do not object to the word per se; rather, as with “arguably,” it is the overuse of the word that gives me pause, because it simply is not realistic that everyone is the best, an expression of perfection, at what they do. Instead, it feels like a lazy word: a way of offering high praise in what feels like grandiose terms, and avoiding the nitty gritty challenge of choosing one’s words carefully. After all, one can be very professional and still have weaknesses; most of us do.

Indeed, such weaknesses are themselves arguably the consummate expression of our humanity.

Apple Blinked, Stuttered

2009-02-08T17:03:00.001-05:00

Over on the other side today, I once again lavished some praise on Apple for its terrific retail sales and service. But I wouldn't be telling the whole story if I didn't also acknowledge that Apple failed one small test today - something that should have been an easy one.

My wife and I went to the Fifth Avenue store today to take a look at a new machine and, most importantly, get information about running Windows on a Mac. There are, alas, a few programs that my other half uses that work only in Windows ... but she needs another computer and Macs are definitely part of my present and future.

Conceptually, we know that Windows-on-Mac is possible, via Boot Camp or Parallels or other programs. Practically speaking, we wanted to see it in action: what does Windows really look like, how will it work, is there any impact on performance ... ? All obvious questions, most of which can be answered by reading items on Apple's web site - but reading the web site and seeing for one's self, in person, on the computer, is different. Isn't that the whole point of having a retail store, so people can see for themselves, in person?

So, it was a bit of a shame that Apple seems unprepared to address this question in any substantive manner. Not a single computer in the store was running Parallels, and only one - an old laptop - was running Boot Camp. The sales staff was trying hard to be helpful, but their knowledge in this area seemed more limited than we had expected. (Certainly more limited than I expected based on past experience.)

It is probably unrealistic to expect Apple to be able to demonstrate every piece of software it sells, but running Windows isn't every piece of software: it's been a major, if subtle, selling point ever since Macs moved to an Intel-driven computing platform. If someone from Apple ever reads this, I hope they'll take this into account for the future.

Guilt/Pleasure, 2009 Edition

2009-01-25T20:27:00.000-05:00

It's back! Burn Notice, is back! I wrote about my affection for this show back in August 2007, and through the Summer 2008 "season," that only grew. And now we get a winter "season," too.

Fans, rejoice!

DC, Then & Now

2009-01-18T22:52:00.001-05:00

In his column in today’s New York Times, Frank Rich looks back to his childhood in Washington, DC, and even mentions his attendance at Woodrow Wilson High School, which was also my high school. But Rich describes an environment that was the opposite (and precursor) to the one I knew: in my time—after desegregation, and in the era of Marion Berry—white (to say nothing of Jewish) kids were the minority population at Wilson.

I cannot speak to what Wilson is like these days; I’m too far removed. I can say that the new schools chancellor in Washington, Michelle Rhee, would certainly have been welcome when I was growing up. While Wilson was generally well-run (under the firm hand of then-principal Michael Durso), the impact of the mess within the broader school system was evident. One year, our English teacher missed about a quarter of the school year—but no amount of action by motivated parents (some of whom were lawyers) could dislodge her from her post, in the face of the intransigent teachers union. So the teacher kept her job, and we the the students suffered. In my senior year of high school, our island of (relative) calm was shattered by the first shooting of its kind to come across the transom. That seemed to me the beginning of the end.

The DC that Frank Rich grew up in has changed, but many things remain. Rich describes a place that is now and was then very segregated, such that growing up in the northwest part of Washington was and is like living in a different place altogether.

Obama’s election and soon-to-be inauguration is stunning, nearly as thrilling for me imagine as it is for Rich. Whether Obama’s arrival in the White House can change the nature of the capital city is an interesting question indeed. Entrenched DC politics, and out-of-date mindsets, may prove harder to conquer than the current financial crisis, but one can hope.

January Miscellany III

2009-01-15T08:27:00.001-05:00

I can admit this because, ridiculous though it is, it works: a few weeks ago, we bought the Iron Gym Total Upper Body Workout Bar.

It was late at night, we were tired and watching TV. There was an ad. We egged each other on, and the next thing we knew, we'd ordered it. After hanging up the phone, we wondered whether we'd just spent a bunch of money ($49.99 when all was said and done) on something that wouldn't work.

Imagine my surprise, then, to discover: it really does work! And it's basically small enough that even in an NYC apartment, we have room to stash it.

For anyone interested, though, it's now available via Amazon, which might be an easier place to order from, since the phone ordering process forces you to say NO to all sorts of other options (like monthly services) you probably won't want.

(Oh, and I'm up to five consecutive pull-ups now. How 'bout you?)

January Miscellany II

2009-01-13T21:34:00.001-05:00

If you’re a conscious adult over the age of 18, you’re probably aware that the print media industry is in deep trouble, and magazines face as many challenges as newspapers.

Which raises a question I have long wanted to ask: why, in an age of “just in time” everything, an era when you can order something on the web and have it delivered to your door the next day (if not earlier), when such a mind-boggling array of databases are linked together to bring mountains of junk mail to my inbox on a daily basis …

… Why does it still take most magazines six to eight weeks to "process" a subscription? Seriously. Even if you do the sign-up on the web, you get a note telling you that it’ll take that long for your first issue to arrive. Hunh? It’s not like I don’t know the current month's magazines are printed already. What’s the hold-up?!

No wonder that industry is in such trouble. Readers are using the internet, while publishers are still relying on the Pony Express.

January Miscellany I

2009-01-11T22:33:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my new hero, Bruce Schneier, and the continuing farce of “security theater.” For anyone interested in this subject, boingboing.net did an interview with Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff on the subject in mid-December. [Hat tip to Economist.com’s Gulliver blog.]