Gagged by Patriot Act

The Hartford Courant ran an article by the director of the Portland, CT library, who received one of the national security letters seeking information. The letter carried with it a gag order, so that it took the ACLU getting involved before she could even mention the situation to anyone. While her case was high profile, many weren't:

Reportedly hundreds of thousands of security letters have been sent out. The recipients remain gagged and can never speak about their experience, under threat of a five-year prison sentence. They can never describe the scope and nature of the information they give to the FBI.

How much has been passed on regarding how many? Who knows?

Revengeful Repartee

The next time you are tempted to offer that devastating remark on a mailing list or news group, think twice. You, too, might be insulting someone willing to drive 1,800 miles to set fire to your trailer, as happened in this story.

A Picture of Political Word Influence

This site has an interesting analysis of the purchase pattern of top moving political books. The influential books are those that connect distinct political philosophies - the ones read by people in both the "liberal" and "conservative" camps (though I think the break-out is pretty inaccurate when you actually talk to people). The site also has a white paper by the owner on the subject of book networks as well as some links to articles in the popular press.

Dave? Goo Goo, Gah Gah, Dave

Stanford University researchers have written a program that "learns to decode sounds from different languages in the same way that a baby does helps to shed new light on how people learn to talk," according to Reuters. It supports the theory (which is different from coming close to proof) that babies listen to sounds and sort out how the language is put together.

"In the past, people have tried to argue it wasn't possible for any machine to learn these things, and so it had to be hard-wired (in humans)," [Stanford psychology professor James McClelland] said. "Those arguments, in my view, were not particularly well grounded."

I want to know when they have the computer start talking, based on what it learned. Will the first word be programmama?

End of End of World News

The print version of Weekly World News, an almost three decade mainstay of news about yetis, half animal babies, alien babies, aliens, dead aliens, dead celebrities, and celebrity meltdowns is coming to an end by September, according to Reuters. I know this is bitter news for aficionados and Men in Black, but the online version will continue. I think it's time to dust off the copies of Nostradamus predictions and see where this puts us.

The New Censorship - the Information Age Meets Orwell

I came across this World Editors Forum blog entry on Paul Moreira's book Les Nouvelles Censures (The New Censorship, I think) indirectly and finally tracked it down. It's worth a read and some thought. Here's the center of the issue:

Moreira’s thesis is based on this paradox: in a society seemingly – and really – more and more transparent, the forms of censorship and control of information are becoming increasingly subtle and mechanical. In an age in which raw censorship isn’t possible anymore (at least in most true democracies), more and more resources are being put into controlling not what the people hear and see, but how they think and react to it.

According to Moreira, the journey between (controversial) news material and its actual delivery to the public now typically transits through a “communication filter” – a public relations firm, spokesman, or communication consultants. These filters, commonly known in the US as spin doctors, proceed to a play game of chess with journalists and news media.

It's not altogether a new observation - the book and documentary Toxic Sludge Is Good For You looks at the influence of PR on so-called news.

But look beyond the "spinning" of the news and you'll see that various interested parties are actually trying to redefine language - decidedly 1984 in flavor. When you control language, you control thought, and if you have enough success, it becomes virtually impossible for someone to oppose you, because you've made it virtually impossible for that person to even conceive of something different. In an age where catsup was supposed to be a vegetable (in the 1980s), the vice president isn't part of the executive branch of government (the current administration), and political parties hire consultants to try and use language to create impressions at contrast with reality, this is no longer a theoretical consideration.

An Evening of Harry Potter

We arrived at the World Eye bookstore in Greenfield, MA a couple of minutes past midnight - and, apparently, a long time after the crowds started appearing. This small storefront was packed with kids, teens, and adults that wanted first crack at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Most people were in street clothes, though there was a percentage in costume, including a young bow running about in a cape, pointing a wooden stick with a small start at the top (free wands the shop gave away), and yelling, "Blam!" It was like a young Emeril Lagasse taking up fantasy fiction with a vengeance. He also had on his hand an animal puppet, temporarily liberated from a store rack, and would alternate between the percussive onomatopoeia and "Make way for the magic otter!" That was still normal compared to the man in a costume that included some sort of veil for his face and and a coarse broom head mounted bristle side up atop his cranium.

It took maybe half an hour to get through the line, give someone my daughter's name, and then find out that the bookstore was charging full list price - not even a few dollars off. To think we went there in sympathy for the plight of the small shop. Blam. The magic otter has struck again. Somehow I think it will be a long time before I shop there again.

In the meantime, with this update, I just read that the book sold 8.3 million copies in the first 24 hours of sale, or about twice the rate of the sixth. I wonder how many trees that translates into? And apparently some newspapers, trying to get a review into print, have hired speed readers. They should have called my daughter, who had it done before the end of Saturday.

Federal Government, Seizure of Property, and Parsing an Executive Order

On Tuesday, George Bush signed an executive order that states

"all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,

(i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:

(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or

(B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;

(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or

(iii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.

It might seem fine to many because it refers to acts of violence, but look at the wording of B iii:

"or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order."

Purported to act? Last time I checked, which was a few seconds ago, purported means "commonly put forth or accepted as true on inconclusive grounds." In other words, because someone said so. Who gets to say so? The administration. And indirectly as well as directly? How indirect can you get? It's like asking how high is up: it depends on how far you want it to go.

According to an Associated Press story:

White House press secretary Tony Snow said the order targets terrorist and insurgent groups, including those assisted by Syria and Iran, that are not covered by existing authorities.

"What this is really aimed at is insurgents and those who come across the border," Snow explained.

Yes, that's why it looks to freezing US assets for groups supposedly getting their money from Syria and Iran. It's a scary time in this country, when you consider exactly what such wording would allow an administration to do. And this is an administration that has proven itself willing and able to stretch the meaning of words into whatever they want.

Jane Austen Makes the Publishing Rounds

David Lassman, the director of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, set out to learn how the British publishing industry would react to the author. So he bundled up some introductory chapters of her books, changing some small details (names, basically), and sent them on, according to a Guardian article. Apparently only one person responded noting that it was actually Austen. ("I suggest you reach for your copy of Pride and Prejudice, which I'd guess lives in close proximity to your typewriter, and make sure that your opening pages don't too closely mimic that book's opening.") Most simply responded with form letters, though, when questioned, were saying, "Well, oh, of course we knew it was Austen, or something famous, or maybe like a movie we saw once. You know, with Emma Thompson and she plays that potential old maid? Did you see it?" OK, possibly not quite like that.

This sort of literary prank does happen now and again, and the media generally treat it as something that no one has ever before tried. I do wonder how often the editors actually recognize the text and don't bother to say, "Oh, look, you're taking the structure of X" because they're ticked that someone is trying to trick them. Then again, maybe the kids - as they're often the only ones who will live on the meager salaries - that are in acquisitions haven't read them.

Alas, Poor Comma - I knew it, Samuelson

Robert Samuelson of Newsweek wrote an amusing piece about the slow decline of the comma. He seems to focus on some of the more obvious uses, such as setting off the introductory prepositional phrase. Personally, I would mourn the so-called Harvard comma - the last comma in a list of items that you use right before the word "and" - if I did not insist on including one at every occasion. I'm sure it drives copy editors made, but someone has to offer the literary world some tough love, determination, and an appreciation for clarity that I think the final comma provides.

Free Novel in Progress from Nobel Laureate

Elfriede Jelinek, Austrian feminist playwright and novelist, is experimenting with posting her new novel Neid - German for Envy - onto the web in parts as she completes them. Here's her web site - though the three chapters she has posted, as most of the site, are in German. If you'd like a sense of her writing, go to the site, look under the 2007 posts, and click on the Bambiland - Translated by Lilian Friedberg link.

Teenage Lit - and Product Placement

There has been some interesting coverage of an upcoming teen title. According to a New York Times article (sorry, no free link):

Near the end of an early galley of "Cathy's Book: If Found Call (650) 266-8233," a young adult novel that will be published in September, the spunky eponymous heroine talks about wearing a "killer coat of Clinique #11 'Black Violet' lipstick." But in the final edition of the book, that reference has been changed to "a killer coat of Lipslicks in 'Daring.'"

As it turns out, Lipslicks is a line of lip gloss made by Cover Girl, which has signed an unusual marketing partnership with Running Press, the unit of Perseus Books Group that is publishing the novel.

The article then explains that Lipslicks is made by Cover Girl - a Procter & Gamble brand - and that the company will promote the title on its Beinggirl.com site.

According to the article, what apparently happened was that Creative Artists Agency, representing at least one of the authors, went to P&G, which had already been in contact with CAA about other promotional deals. The book was already written, but the authors (both marketers that helped create the massive online PR campaign for the movie AI) and illustrators made changes here and there to satisfy the company.

Publisher Perseus Books Group was interviewed for the piece, and one quote in particular seem telling:

"What we are selling here to the customer or the reader is an experience that transcends the book itself," said David Steinberger, president and chief executive of Perseus, the publisher. "The relationships with Beinggirl.com and Cover Girl are enriching that experience."

As the Times noted in an editorial from June 17, "When a publisher starts talking about a book as 'an experience that transcends the book itself,' you know that what matters isn't going to be the writing." That seems obvious. The authors may be telling themselves that the allowed the intrusions with integrity, but it's the sort of virtue that calls a prostitute a whore and someone who marries for money "upwardly mobile."

If there were no other problems (and I think there are actually business problems, as I mention in my BizBlast blog), there would still be the issue of the writing. When you write with an eye on the cash register, whether the payment is in money or in-kind services, you no longer pay attention to either the audience or - more importantly, I think - to your own aesthetic self. I don't knock amrketing writing. I do it myself at times, and it does pay well. But it's not what I want to say; it's about what the company wants to say. To the degree you open a narrative to the needs of a corporation, you become upwardly mobile - that is to say, you prostitute your talent and work.

Merriam-Webster Rolls Out New Words

Merriam-Webster is ready to add about 100 new words to its eleventh edition Collegiate Dictionary. A number - like the Korean chaebol for a family-controlled large company, the filled Italian pasta agnolotti, India's Bollywood region, and the Latin-American soap operas called telenovelas - are American adoptions of foreign terms. But there are some unusual other ones:

• crunk - a style of Southern rap music featuring repetitive chants and rapid dance rhythms


• microgreen - a shoot of a standard salad plant (We used to call this a piece.)


• viewshed - the natural environment that is visible from one or more viewing points (What ever happened to the word view?)


• smackdown - the act of knocking down or bringing down an opponent (from professional wrestling, when defeating someone isn't enough).

I don't think a few words show a trend, but it is interesting how as a culture we do seem enamored of coming up with newer, shinier, more complex names for things that are already named. Maybe the plain experience of life isn't enough as we've become part of the grand marketing that is global society.

Using Words to Move Stock Numbers

Those who would game the system to advance their own economic market interests have been hard at work on the Internet. Ever get spam touting stocks? Ever wonder if anyone would believe the hyperbolic emails? Apparently they do. According to the Washington Post, the SEC is accusing two Texas men of cheating investors in at least a baker's dozen small cap stocks of $4.6 million by infecting PCs with viruses and using them as sources of spam emails. People who took the bait drove up prices long enough to let the men sell their holdings.

And in Russia, News.com.au notes that hackers issues a false statement announcing the arrest of the CEO of one of the country's main oil producers. The CEO must have been happy on one hand about the inaccuracy, but unhappy that the stock price fell, albeit by less than 1 percent.

This isn't a new type of activity on the Internet. Stock chat rooms used to be one of the main stomping grounds of they who would induce changes in stock prices. It's fascinating how the mere act of telling people what they would like to hear causes them to take specific actions, like spending their money, even though the source of the advice is highly suspect. That shows the stories that have the most power are actually not the ones others tell us, but the ones we tell ourselves. It's not the words on the screen, but the words in the head that tell us what we'd like to believe - that up is down and that we can have something for nothing just by asking.

Harry Potter Naysayers

I've seen some stories recently about how the Harry Potter craze is dying out, book sales dropping, and all that. It's left me scratching my head, because so much of the analysis makes little sense. Of course sales of the previous books have to level out if not outright drop. There are only so many people in the world who would be likely to read the series. To expect something else is more than wrong-headed; it's borderline stupid. How many other writers have had net worth estimated at north of a billion? That the series has been a financial success is undoubted, and I don't see that the last volume will do any worse.

I wonder, though, how much of the criticism is based on jealousy of author J.K. Rowling. There has been too much sniping over the years from the literati disdaining the work and shaking its collective head at how anyone could actually enjoy the books.

Does Rowling have weaknesses as a writer? Absolutely. All writers do. Personally I think that she could have profited from better and possibly stronger editing, but writing isn't just about the words. Writing is a way to tell stories, and at that, Rowling excels like few others. There is tension, interesting twists, characters that seem real - there's story. Those who are looking for the tumble and weakness are being driven by jealousy and spite. Better they - and we all, in our own ways - spend less time using language to attach and more time taking care of our own business and doing the best we can.

Nudist Author to Bare All at Signing

The author of "Nudity & Christianity" is scheduled for a clothing-optional book signing in Vermont tonight. According to various accounting, including this one in the Rutland Herald, Jim Cunningham is inviting patrons to remove their clothing when they get inside The Tempest Book Shop in Waitsfield. Guess there will be little judging books by their covers - but where do you keep the pens for the actual signing?

New Magazine Title Muscles In

When I first heard about Mob Candy, it sounded like a joke - the title calls itself "The Underworld Magazine of Mafia Politics, Pleasures and Power," according to a story in the Staten Island Advance:

The first issue features articles on Don Carlo Gambino's legacy; 50 years of mob "rats;" the FBI vs. Italian Americans, and a profile of Christian (Chris Paciello) Ludwigsen of Eltingville, a mobbed-up former Miami nightclub owner who once dated pop star Madonna and was the getaway driver in a 1993 Richmond Valley home-invasion murder.

And the magazine's home? Staten Island. What, New Jersey and Las Vegas don't hold the fascination they once did? Local models, scantily clad, provide the "candy." How will the public react? Here's the opinion of its vice president of advertising and sales:

"Most of the responses we've had have been very positive. People tell me 'I can't wait until it comes out,'" Ms. DiPietro said during a phone interview at the periodical's first public event -- a children's fund-raiser in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.

Yes, we really suggest that you give to this fund raiser - we'd hate to see something happen to your reading habits. It's supposedly a collaboration between a manufacturer/distributor of steel framing (who happens to be a former publisher of porn mags) and a clothing designer. Wonder if he does anything in cement overcoats...

Former Roswell PR Officer Says Aliens Real

This seems like something you'd see in an X Files rerun, but there is a story on Australia's News.com outlet that Walter Haut, who was the PR person at Roswell back in 1947 and the one who issued the press releases, including the one about it all being weather balloons, signed an affidavit only to be opened after his death. In it he claims that he saw both an egg-shaped alien space craft and the bodies of extraterrestrials with short bodies and big heads. I guess the truth was in there.

Crimes and Non-Punishment

I heard a snippet of a speech George Bush gave about the Scooter (what an embarrassing nickname to cleave to) Libby sentence. The reason he gave for commuting the sentence was because the 30 month period was "too harsh." But is commutation an all or nothing process? Couldn't the president have cut it back to what he thought was not harsh, especially as I suspect the Libby defense fund will probably pay the $250,000 fine and that although he can't practice law (until Bush presumably pardons him on leaving office), he could certainly work as a lobbyist or in some other managerial position where the premium is on government connections? The process of redefining language that Orwell mentioned in 1984 is, and was even then, a daily practice. Blink and you can forget that someone is trying to hoodwink you.

Deconstructing Google's Choking on Anti-Sicko Campaign Invitation

Yesterday I apparently joined many other bloggers in examining a blog entry from "Google's Health Advertising Team." It seems that the collective heat was a bit much for Google management, which had the blogger fall on her sword, saying that the opinion was hers and not Google's. Well, at least that's the simple explanation. Let's do some deconstruction:

Well, I've learned a few things since I posted on Friday. For one thing, even though this is a new blog, we have readers! That's a good thing.

No, you had one person post a note about the entry in a spot or two that get tremendous traffic and activity.

Not so good is that some readers thought the opinion I expressed about the movie Sicko was actually Google's opinion. It's easy to understand why it might have seemed that way, because after all, this is a corporate blog. So that was my mistake -- I understand why it caused some confusion.

A nice try, but corporations don't work this way. This wasn't one person's sole idea. At best, it was representative of an atmosphere in corporate marketing. Of course the company wants to make money - that's why it exists. And if you're in the business of selling ad space, one type of logical customer is a company in an industry taking a beating of bad publicity.

But the more important point, since I doubt that too many people care about my personal opinion, is that advertising is an effective medium for handling challenges that a company or industry might have.

In other words, her previous entry was correct in the first case. If healthcare is getting slammed, it can buy ads and pretend that the issues the movie raises don't exist.

You could even argue that it's especially appropriate for a public policy issue like healthcare.

Because they get really affected by public opinion and they've got gobs of money - and there is that movie that's out. Maybe you've heard of it.

Whether the healthcare industry wants to rebut charges in Mr. Moore's movie, or whether Mr. Moore wants to challenge the healthcare industry,...

Google is happy to sell ads to anyone.

...advertising is a very democratic and effective way to participate in a public dialogue.

If you can afford it - like healthcare.

That is Google's opinion, and it's unrelated to whether we support, oppose or (more likely) don't have an official position on an issue.

Because we want to take whatever money comes out way, unfettered by personal opinion.

That's the real point I was trying to make,...

That is, we want to sell you an ad.

...which was less clear because I offered my personal criticism of the movie.

And if I hadn't, you still would have known what I meant, but no one could have pointed out that our main principle is that contained in our bank accounts. Because if I had really been that out of line with company policy, my backside would be leaving divots from here to San Diego.

I think we all got the point the first time around.

Google Ready to Help Corporations Battle Negative Press

Thanks to a Slashdot.org reader for noticing this blog entry from "Google's Health Advertising Team." It discusses the Michael Moore movie Sicko as an entry into discussing how to use Google to counter the force of negative public attention:

We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding content network. Whatever the problem, Google can act as a platform for educating the public and promoting your message. We help you connect your company’s assets while helping users find the information they seek.

In other words, we can help you try to keep people from noticing what it is that you're doing wrong. Personally I'd say that for a company to try to pretend that it's not doing something wrong is an evil act. Google's corporate code of conduct says that its "informal corporate motto is 'Don't be evil.'" But they never said anything about advertising it.