NOTE: This goes back to June 2010, a time leading up to the last off-year election. Presently (7/2014) I am getting a huge flood of hits on it -- it's probably being circulated again with all new dates to make it seem current.
This is a kind of general response to the kind of thing I think that email represents. I use the phrase "Not Really Right Wing Mom" to draw a connection with the web site "My Right Wing Dad" which has made a sort of database of such emails. Aside from the generalities it also addresses the way it is made to look like it came from a highly respected source -- a typical technique of such emails. One actually took a scathing anti-Bush tirade that was part of a book written by Gene Iacocca (the ex Chrysler CEO) a few years ago, eliminated all references to Bush and put in one small implied reference to Obama -- just enough, and passed it off as Iacocca's warning to the nation about Obama.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Mom,
I can only say so much about the article with a couple of minutes research, but will take a closer look at it later [as you can see I went on for more than a
couple of minutes, but still haven't dealt with the article point by point, but I'll get to that].
To me it extremely upsetting and somewhat frightening that good people who once saw politics in a fairly level headed way are up to their eyeballs in material that is so systematically dishonest.
I really think the reason things look so bad to so many people in America is to a big extent because this avalance of propaganda and twisting facts and seeing things one-sidedly is like nothing we've ever seen before. These forwarded emails are the worst. They are full of lies and there is nobody to track down and try to expose for the liars that they are. They make a constant racket of claims that public people like Rush Limbaugh would never touch because it would destroy their reputations, but these wild claims prepare people for Rush Limbaugh and others with their less wild but complementary assertions and their general conclusions..
The internet is a great thing potentially, but it has disoriented a lot of people. It gives every worldview however extreme a place to meet and build up steam. Not just "Tea Partiers", but people who believe 9/11 was a hoax and that really the Bush government blew up the World Trade Center; and a similar group in Britain says the blowing up of trains there was staged by the government. Not to mention it is the main way terrorists are recruited and promote themselves, and spread new techniques, like IEDs (Improvised explosive devices) and technologies for suicide bombers.
People no longer have to get in a room with people with different leanings, and discuss things, and arrive at a plausible view of things. There is no pull toward the center the way there was when we had 3 TV networks that have to give "equal time" to the counter-argument if they put on something that was blatantly political.
If you search for the supposed author of the "Wall Street Journal Article", named "Eddie Sessions" on online.wsj.com (Wall Street Journal Web page), you find nothing - I'm really don't know if there is any such person. WSJ wasn't the first place I went, and after what I learned so far, I was hoping to find an explanation. There are many links to analyses of this article on the web, one is
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/makebelieve.asp
This Snopes website is a major source for information on hoaxes. It does not seem all that purely liberal. At least, it (Snopes) runs ads like:
* "Barack Obama Video Jokes Watch Jokes made of Barack Obama."
* "Ann Coulter - Free Get weekly email alerts on the latest from Ann Coulter - Free!"
Anyway, about the article, the bottom line for Snopes was:
This piece was actually penned by Alan Caruba, who posted it to his "Warning Signs" blog on 2 January 2010.
There is some speculation that maybe, just maybe, it appeared as the blog equivalent of a "letter to the editor" on a WSJ blog, but it never appeared as an article, or even an editorial in the Wall Street journal.
Note that it isn't just innocently credited to the WSJ. The intro part of that email referred to the WSJ as "the most widely circulated newspaper in America". It bothers me to see editorial features called "articles" -- the WSJ has a very high reputation for journalistic integrity, but their editorial page can be quite propagandistic -- but this as I hope I've made clear goes way beyond that.
(Alan Caruba's -- the real author -- general info: http://www.blogger.com/profile/10901162110385985193, and here is the link to the article as posted on his web site:
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2010/01/obamas-make-believe-life.html)
I think the U.S. is probably essentially further from socialism than it was in the 1950s when some people had 90+% marginal income brackets, and Interstate Highways were starting to replace state roads and state or privately owned turnpikes and bridges for getting around the country. The post office had a monopoly on shipping packages; there were no Fedex or UPS. The "Phone company" was another monopoly that was called private, but was so tightly controlled and supported by the government that it didn't act like a normal private company). Bell Labs (the research and development part of AT&T) was more like a giant university than like any part of any business that exists today, and we have them to thank for the transister, integrated circuits, and lasers, the foundation of the whole top level of modern technology.
Broadcasting networks were governed by the "fairness doctrine" (so Fox news would not have been possible). The state and federal park system was being built up -- compare it to the tacky private tourist destinations that are mostly a thing of the past now -- the little museums and zoos, the wax museums, the cave tours, etc. They were "free market" but somehow didn't provide such a satisfying experience.
It is debatable whether all of these things are good or not, but what is not debatable is that we were far and away the most successful nation in the world at that time, and the middle class was stronger than ever before or since, and expanding. So the idea that, after 3 decades of mostly moving to the right -- towards deregulation in every area including financial products and oil drilling and coal mining standards -- that after all this rightward movement, the government might take on a new responsibilities, or taxes might rise back to where they were during the Reagan years -- that some movement back to the "left" will mean a rapid slide to Stalinism -- and that that could happen with half the fear and loathing that has been drummed up towards Obama -- it just doesn't hold water.
As technology and the business environment evolve, some things will seem to be best managed by government that never were before (or maybe never existed before) and some things that were government concerns get "spun off" to the private sector, or regulated businesses become deregulated, so they really behave like private business matters. All kinds of communication and transportation are far more "private" than they used to be. Meanwhile the environment and esp. the quality of the air and water became much more public matters, and while there was a cost to the private sector, the Great Lakes and many other bodies of water stopped turning into sewers.
Well, I could keep working on this for days, but had better stop for now and try to get some work done.
Love, Hal
Link to the fake 'WSJ' article with detailed comments
Friday, June 11, 2010
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Beck and Limbaugh, like Terrorists, Prefer Soft Targets.
In most of the conservative media world, I submit that if anyone has a really, really good argument that they don't like, they will simply ignore it. It seems very worthwhile to test this:
The test case has to do with some old news. The strongest arguments against waterboarding and like interrogation techniques were made by Matthew Alexander, who using typical law enforcement interrogation techniques as seen on The Wire or Prime Suspect found and helped destroy Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who was for a while the most wanted man in Iraq -- the genius of "Al Qaeda in Iraq" who dreamed up decapitating people on webcam, as well as Robert Baer, a veteran CIA operative in the mideast who is so not soft on terrorism and general middle east badness that he was almost put on trial in Washington for almost coordinating a plot to kill Saddam Hussein by anti-Saddam Iraqis back in the Clinton Administration. It would be hard to find two people more passionately critical of the trashing of Geneva conventions - why? because they almost lead to losing the war in Iraq and certainly lead to escalating the violence to the tune of several thousand dead.
But it's so much easier to pick on Al Gore or Jeremiah Wright or Sean Penn.
Using google Advanced Search:
GlennBeck.com (add "Site:GlennBeck.com")
Some more searches:
AmericanThinker.com:
The test case has to do with some old news. The strongest arguments against waterboarding and like interrogation techniques were made by Matthew Alexander, who using typical law enforcement interrogation techniques as seen on The Wire or Prime Suspect found and helped destroy Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who was for a while the most wanted man in Iraq -- the genius of "Al Qaeda in Iraq" who dreamed up decapitating people on webcam, as well as Robert Baer, a veteran CIA operative in the mideast who is so not soft on terrorism and general middle east badness that he was almost put on trial in Washington for almost coordinating a plot to kill Saddam Hussein by anti-Saddam Iraqis back in the Clinton Administration. It would be hard to find two people more passionately critical of the trashing of Geneva conventions - why? because they almost lead to losing the war in Iraq and certainly lead to escalating the violence to the tune of several thousand dead.
But it's so much easier to pick on Al Gore or Jeremiah Wright or Sean Penn.
Using google Advanced Search:
GlennBeck.com (add "Site:GlennBeck.com")
- Wright "God Damn America" ==> 13 hits
- Alexander "how to break a terrorist" ==> 0 hits
- "al gore" "global warming" ==> 1350 hits (far fewer if "climate change substituted; only 1 I think with "climategate")
- "al gore" "global warming" ==> 192
- "al gore" "climate change" ==> 127
- "al gore" "climategate" ==> 19
- wright "god damn america" ==> 6
- alexander "how to break a terrorist" ==> 0
Some more searches:
AmericanThinker.com:
- "Robert Baer" ==> 9
- "Jeremiah Wright" ==> 788
- "Matthew Alexander" ==> 0
- "How to Break a Terrorist" ==> 0
- Alexander "How to Break a Terrorist" ==> 0
- Wright "god damn america ==> 789
- "Robert Baer" ==> 13
- "Jeremiah Wright" ==> 968
- Robert Baer ==> 1 (in followup comment by subscriber)
- "Jeremiah Wright" ==> 445
- Wright "God Damn AMerica" ==> 1180
- Alexander "How to Break a Terrorist" ==> 0
Epistemic closure
Did you hear the one about epistemic closure?
I find this little introduction, in the NYTimes online at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/books/28conserv.html
"The phrase is being used as shorthand by some prominent conservatives for a kind of closed-mindedness in the movement, a development they see as debasing modern conservatism’s proud intellectual history. First used in this context by Julian Sanchez of the libertarian Cato Institute, the phrase “epistemic closure” has been ricocheting among conservative publications and blogs as a high-toned abbreviation for ideological intolerance and misinformation.
Conservative media, Mr. Sanchez wrote at juliansanchez.com — referring to outlets like Fox News and National Review and to talk-show stars like Rush Limbaugh, Mark R. Levin and Glenn Beck — have “become worryingly untethered from reality as the impetus to satisfy the demand for red meat overtakes any motivation to report accurately.” (Mr. Sanchez said he probably fished “epistemic closure” out of his subconscious from an undergraduate course in philosophy"
Funny they should mention the National Review, where you can read a critique of Epistemic closure as represented (according to the reviewer) in "Mark Levin’s massive bestseller Liberty and Tyranny". But then, "Many of Mr. Manzi’s colleagues attacked him for his takedown of Mr. Levin." (says the NYTimes review).
The NR "The Corner" review is at http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/198279/i-liberty-and-tyranny-i-and-epistemic-closure/jim-manzi
I find this little introduction, in the NYTimes online at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/books/28conserv.html
"The phrase is being used as shorthand by some prominent conservatives for a kind of closed-mindedness in the movement, a development they see as debasing modern conservatism’s proud intellectual history. First used in this context by Julian Sanchez of the libertarian Cato Institute, the phrase “epistemic closure” has been ricocheting among conservative publications and blogs as a high-toned abbreviation for ideological intolerance and misinformation.
Conservative media, Mr. Sanchez wrote at juliansanchez.com — referring to outlets like Fox News and National Review and to talk-show stars like Rush Limbaugh, Mark R. Levin and Glenn Beck — have “become worryingly untethered from reality as the impetus to satisfy the demand for red meat overtakes any motivation to report accurately.” (Mr. Sanchez said he probably fished “epistemic closure” out of his subconscious from an undergraduate course in philosophy"
Funny they should mention the National Review, where you can read a critique of Epistemic closure as represented (according to the reviewer) in "Mark Levin’s massive bestseller Liberty and Tyranny". But then, "Many of Mr. Manzi’s colleagues attacked him for his takedown of Mr. Levin." (says the NYTimes review).
The NR "The Corner" review is at http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/198279/i-liberty-and-tyranny-i-and-epistemic-closure/jim-manzi
The Echo Chamber Effect
Well, this has been discussed for years at least, but I'm just catching up on some of that discussion:
See, e.g.: http://thelurkingvulture.blogspot.com/2009/10/echo-chamber-effect.html
The 'Vulture' starts off with 'The echo chamber effect is hardly a recent phenomenon. In what perhaps may be an apocryphal quote, Pauline Kael is supposed to have said regarding the landslide victory of Richard Nixon over George McGovern in 1972, "I can't believe Nixon won. I don't know anybody who voted for him".'
This guy says he's a "Libertarian Christian", which is far from what I am, but part of the point of a "Truth Project", in my view (See rationalle for calling this blog "The Real Truth Project" - by the way, there are probably more "Real Truth Projects" than "Truth Projects", but I still like it because it reminds me of a childish "did not" / "did so" / "so are you" sort of argument which is the level we often get to in the epistemology business).
Um, I started a sentence didn't I, ... Part of the point of a "Truth Project" is the hope that people on both sides of many issues - those who aren't active and conscious propagandists at least, really would want to know the truth if it turned out that everything they think is wrong ... if they'd even consider the possibility.
Here's a guy with an attitude I like:
http://chris.pirillo.com/10-ways-to-eliminate-the-echo-chamber/ where he writes things like:
"Make yourself uncomfortable. I don’t do it often enough, but whenever I step outside my comfort zone – I grow."
OK, so is the blogosphere an echo chamber? No, it's lots and lots of echo chambers. There is the right wing blog echochamber and its many sub-echo chambers, there are liberal echo chambers populated by people who don't know, or don't think they know a single Tea-partier, and there are the various racial echo chambers (which functioned very well way before there was an internet). Religious cults like the Jim Jones one, and the Branch Davidians are super compact echo chambers. There are the online Islamic extremist echo chambers, and the brick and morter ones (certain mosques, madrassas, the Al Quaeda training camp), and there are the mega churches, and the Christian publishing business which can provide you with Christian romance novels, Christian diet books, Christian Yoga books ... hey you never have to go outside ... There is my beloved community of historians who don't know anyone who voted for George Bush ...
But there is something a little special about the internet. If you have to find books and magazines in libraries and bookstores (unless you only go to Islamic bookstores / Christian bookstores / "Radical" bookstores ...) you go to a store and you have to at least walk by books and magazines with other points of view. On the internet, you can go to your favorite blog, and never go anywhere except via links from that blog (or from your other favorite blog).
And before the internet there was the explosion of broadcast bandwidth and turning half the AM radio spectrum over to extreme angry talk. And now we can go to WNYC singles events, and whether we like it or not, we can live in a political district that always votes for one party or the other.
And why, why why are we like this? Well what's the alternative? Listen to every point of view and then the world will seem to have no coherence?
Here's a theory -- suppose you live the way humans did for a few tens of thousands of years -- before this strange period of literacy and "civilization". You know a few hundred people tops, and you will probably never know anyone else -- hey the people on the other side of the hill don't even speak the same language. Your societal worldview is limited to what a few hundred people can keep in their memories. You will never have an accurate view of the world by modern standards. What you need is a theory, a narrative, that gives some reasonable account of things, tells you what to eat and what not to eat. What men do and what women do, and for a select few, what a shaman does maybe. and so on. It seems we're driven to expand our set of explanations til they reach certain bounds. We seem to always want to have a theory of when and how the world was created (whatever we mean by "the world"). Once we have theories we typically are repulsed by alternative theories. If it weren't that way, we and those few hundred other people we know would have a coherent world view to which new (minor) facts could stick.
OK, in the immortal words of Ian Shoales "I gotta go".
See, e.g.: http://thelurkingvulture.blogspot.com/2009/10/echo-chamber-effect.html
The 'Vulture' starts off with 'The echo chamber effect is hardly a recent phenomenon. In what perhaps may be an apocryphal quote, Pauline Kael is supposed to have said regarding the landslide victory of Richard Nixon over George McGovern in 1972, "I can't believe Nixon won. I don't know anybody who voted for him".'
This guy says he's a "Libertarian Christian", which is far from what I am, but part of the point of a "Truth Project", in my view (See rationalle for calling this blog "The Real Truth Project" - by the way, there are probably more "Real Truth Projects" than "Truth Projects", but I still like it because it reminds me of a childish "did not" / "did so" / "so are you" sort of argument which is the level we often get to in the epistemology business).
Um, I started a sentence didn't I, ... Part of the point of a "Truth Project" is the hope that people on both sides of many issues - those who aren't active and conscious propagandists at least, really would want to know the truth if it turned out that everything they think is wrong ... if they'd even consider the possibility.
Here's a guy with an attitude I like:
http://chris.pirillo.com/10-ways-to-eliminate-the-echo-chamber/ where he writes things like:
"Make yourself uncomfortable. I don’t do it often enough, but whenever I step outside my comfort zone – I grow."
OK, so is the blogosphere an echo chamber? No, it's lots and lots of echo chambers. There is the right wing blog echochamber and its many sub-echo chambers, there are liberal echo chambers populated by people who don't know, or don't think they know a single Tea-partier, and there are the various racial echo chambers (which functioned very well way before there was an internet). Religious cults like the Jim Jones one, and the Branch Davidians are super compact echo chambers. There are the online Islamic extremist echo chambers, and the brick and morter ones (certain mosques, madrassas, the Al Quaeda training camp), and there are the mega churches, and the Christian publishing business which can provide you with Christian romance novels, Christian diet books, Christian Yoga books ... hey you never have to go outside ... There is my beloved community of historians who don't know anyone who voted for George Bush ...
But there is something a little special about the internet. If you have to find books and magazines in libraries and bookstores (unless you only go to Islamic bookstores / Christian bookstores / "Radical" bookstores ...) you go to a store and you have to at least walk by books and magazines with other points of view. On the internet, you can go to your favorite blog, and never go anywhere except via links from that blog (or from your other favorite blog).
And before the internet there was the explosion of broadcast bandwidth and turning half the AM radio spectrum over to extreme angry talk. And now we can go to WNYC singles events, and whether we like it or not, we can live in a political district that always votes for one party or the other.
And why, why why are we like this? Well what's the alternative? Listen to every point of view and then the world will seem to have no coherence?
Here's a theory -- suppose you live the way humans did for a few tens of thousands of years -- before this strange period of literacy and "civilization". You know a few hundred people tops, and you will probably never know anyone else -- hey the people on the other side of the hill don't even speak the same language. Your societal worldview is limited to what a few hundred people can keep in their memories. You will never have an accurate view of the world by modern standards. What you need is a theory, a narrative, that gives some reasonable account of things, tells you what to eat and what not to eat. What men do and what women do, and for a select few, what a shaman does maybe. and so on. It seems we're driven to expand our set of explanations til they reach certain bounds. We seem to always want to have a theory of when and how the world was created (whatever we mean by "the world"). Once we have theories we typically are repulsed by alternative theories. If it weren't that way, we and those few hundred other people we know would have a coherent world view to which new (minor) facts could stick.
OK, in the immortal words of Ian Shoales "I gotta go".
Sunday, May 23, 2010
The Boot, but not the Heel (Time For Better Search Engines, Part 2)
Well, here we go.
As many people must know, Secretary of the Interior Salazar did say "Our job basically is to keep the boot on the neck of British Petroleum to carry out the responsibilities they have both under the law and contractually to move forward and stop this spill,", which I discovered by throwing words out of the quote (as I should have thought to do); in particular, Rand Paul "improved" it just a bit by adding a heel ("boot heel on the") and changing "neck" to "throat". An ugly image that should have been disavowed by the administration, instead of being repeated, somewhat sheepishly, by Robert Gibbs, the worst presidential press secretary I can remember, at least I can honestly say that has always been my gut feeling.
But it affords an excuse for another lesson on search engines. Voila: http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/ which I found, described as "experimental" on searching for "search engine" "by date". I had already tinkered with the quote removing the heel, and continuing to use "-rand" "-paul" to find only pages with no mention of rand or paul, and was coming up with Robert Gibbs, then it was Gibbs quoting Salazar.
But the google news timeline really let me do just what I'd been wanting to do, namely find "who said it first". When I did a search for "boot on the neck of bp" using the timeline, I got an array of columns, one per date, with news stories. The bad news is it seems to be limited to news stories from major sources, but it did give a graphic picture of stories containing the phrase blowing up starting on 5/21, when Rand Paul was quoted slightly misquoting the quote. Arrows let me walk back in time -- little or nothing from May 13-20, then a cluster of references going all the way back to May 2, and then stopping.
I find the interface nicely graphic, but slow and cumbersome, and if somebody used the phrase a year or 2 ago, it really wouldn't be much help (correct me, google, if you can). But it did the job, and nicely shows the value of such a feature if we just improve on it a bit, and integrate it into regular google.
It also suggests another class of improvements we could use in our search engines: something approaching search by meaning. Computers can't really "understand" meaning, but they are getting better and better with translation, which indicates quite a bit of adaptation to the structure of language, and so, suppose I could have posed a search like this:
"{boot heel}* on the neck ..." where {...}* means "What's in the bracket or something roughly equivalent".
One problem is, if you have a million exact matches, and a smaller number of modified matches, how to give the user some handle on the variation(s). Typical "search by relevance" arguments would probably see the exact match as way better than the inexact match, so that it would be way, way down on the list. I'd suggest something like, as either an alternative or addition to the current type of google listing, something like:
VARIATIONS:
"boot heel on the throat" 11,707 hits [date range: 5/21-5/23]
"boot heel on the neck..." 1,305 hits [date range: 5/21-5/23] (I'm making the numbers up)
"boot on the neck" 7,222 hits [date range 5/2-5/23]
and then you would click on a variant to see all the specific examples in the format normally used by google, or another search engine.
There is much more to be said about search engines, and vastly much more that I don't know, I'm sure.
The thing about the internet is "The truth is out there", but often, like the dynosaur bone in the rock, it can be quite a job to pry it out of there.
As many people must know, Secretary of the Interior Salazar did say "Our job basically is to keep the boot on the neck of British Petroleum to carry out the responsibilities they have both under the law and contractually to move forward and stop this spill,", which I discovered by throwing words out of the quote (as I should have thought to do); in particular, Rand Paul "improved" it just a bit by adding a heel ("boot heel on the") and changing "neck" to "throat". An ugly image that should have been disavowed by the administration, instead of being repeated, somewhat sheepishly, by Robert Gibbs, the worst presidential press secretary I can remember, at least I can honestly say that has always been my gut feeling.
But it affords an excuse for another lesson on search engines. Voila: http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/ which I found, described as "experimental" on searching for "search engine" "by date". I had already tinkered with the quote removing the heel, and continuing to use "-rand" "-paul" to find only pages with no mention of rand or paul, and was coming up with Robert Gibbs, then it was Gibbs quoting Salazar.
But the google news timeline really let me do just what I'd been wanting to do, namely find "who said it first". When I did a search for "boot on the neck of bp" using the timeline, I got an array of columns, one per date, with news stories. The bad news is it seems to be limited to news stories from major sources, but it did give a graphic picture of stories containing the phrase blowing up starting on 5/21, when Rand Paul was quoted slightly misquoting the quote. Arrows let me walk back in time -- little or nothing from May 13-20, then a cluster of references going all the way back to May 2, and then stopping.
I find the interface nicely graphic, but slow and cumbersome, and if somebody used the phrase a year or 2 ago, it really wouldn't be much help (correct me, google, if you can). But it did the job, and nicely shows the value of such a feature if we just improve on it a bit, and integrate it into regular google.
It also suggests another class of improvements we could use in our search engines: something approaching search by meaning. Computers can't really "understand" meaning, but they are getting better and better with translation, which indicates quite a bit of adaptation to the structure of language, and so, suppose I could have posed a search like this:
"{boot heel}* on the neck ..." where {...}* means "What's in the bracket or something roughly equivalent".
One problem is, if you have a million exact matches, and a smaller number of modified matches, how to give the user some handle on the variation(s). Typical "search by relevance" arguments would probably see the exact match as way better than the inexact match, so that it would be way, way down on the list. I'd suggest something like, as either an alternative or addition to the current type of google listing, something like:
VARIATIONS:
"boot heel on the throat" 11,707 hits [date range: 5/21-5/23]
"boot heel on the neck..." 1,305 hits [date range: 5/21-5/23] (I'm making the numbers up)
"boot on the neck" 7,222 hits [date range 5/2-5/23]
and then you would click on a variant to see all the specific examples in the format normally used by google, or another search engine.
There is much more to be said about search engines, and vastly much more that I don't know, I'm sure.
The thing about the internet is "The truth is out there", but often, like the dynosaur bone in the rock, it can be quite a job to pry it out of there.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
It's Time for Better Search Engines (Who said: "..put my boot heel on the throat of BP")
Is there a search engine that will let me ask?
Who said: "..put my boot heel on the throat of BP"
OK Rand Paul said it, or lets say the the answer looks like a sort of summary "Rand Paul said it" AND a list of pointers to articles quoting Paul as saying it, and maybe a few quite different entries, such as Rand Paul saying he didn't say it. So what if I could say "show me the most atypical entries first". That sounds like a very generally useful followup question when you get 2 million hits, and as far as you can tell the all say more or less the same thing. Could a computer program do a reasonable approximation of what a human (with a year to wade through the 2 million hits) could do? My guess is yes, that wouldn't be a big stretch even.
I've been skimming so many web pages, I feel like I've seen something somewhere quoting someone in Obama's cabinet actually using a phrase like: "..put my boot heel on the throat of BP". Can I confirm that? or be very comfortable in saying it didn't happen (or hear who the Cabinet member was, and see if he/she gets fired the next day)? Well, I can find someone directly attributing the phrase to Obama: "I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP." Barry Obamma http://twitter.com/busybrains/status/14497679203.
An important question, and perhaps it represents one of those big stories the news media misses: How many people today, next week, next month, next November literally believe or will believe Obama did say that? Are there any pollsters asking that sort of question? My guess, it could easily be something on the order of as many people as think Saddam Hussein was directly behind 9/11 (at least some pollsters paid attention to that).
Relying on existing search engines and their limited abilities, how close could I come to answering this sort of question?
Well if somebody said it before Rand Paul, and Paul picked it up a couple of days later, wouldn't there be some references to this on the web, before there was any association between the phrase and Rand Paul?
Consider this Google search: "put my boot heel on the throat of BP" -paul
The quotes ("") mean I don't want just any combination of the words "put", "my", "boot".... but want that exact phrase. The "-paul" means nothing containing the word "Paul". So I get 4 hits, all from context being clearly from the Ron Paul interview, except for the twitterer directly attributing it to "Barry Obamma".
OK, but what if the quoted secretary was named Paul ____?_____ ?
I tried already -"rand paul", which picked up too many pages in which Rand Paul was just referred to as Paul. Some other approach? OK, when Paul was putting words in the President's mouth, he started with "What I don't like from the president's administration..."
HOW ABOUT: "put my boot heel on the throat of BP" -paul -"What I don't like from"
That cuts the hit count down quite a bit. There are a couple in which "don't" came out "dont" or "donit", or they just cut the quote down so the whole phrase "What I don't like from" didn't appear, and finally we are left with the twitterrer quoting "Barry Obamma" which I'm inclined to discount.
Suppose I could say "Who said it first"? Computer logic to approximate that could rely on that fact that every internet page in google's (or another search engine's) vast database will have a date and time of posting. In fact, can't I just tell google "display in order of posting", which would make the question much more easy to answer? NO, apparently not; at least I don't see how. I could probably put a front end on google accessing google via it's more computer friendly interface (or API), and voila, a new and useful search engine.
For more (and drier) discussions of search engines, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines
or searchenginewatch.com,
or just google "search engines". You will get, according to google "About 69,600,000 results". Bon appetite!
Who said: "..put my boot heel on the throat of BP"
OK Rand Paul said it, or lets say the the answer looks like a sort of summary "Rand Paul said it" AND a list of pointers to articles quoting Paul as saying it, and maybe a few quite different entries, such as Rand Paul saying he didn't say it. So what if I could say "show me the most atypical entries first". That sounds like a very generally useful followup question when you get 2 million hits, and as far as you can tell the all say more or less the same thing. Could a computer program do a reasonable approximation of what a human (with a year to wade through the 2 million hits) could do? My guess is yes, that wouldn't be a big stretch even.
I've been skimming so many web pages, I feel like I've seen something somewhere quoting someone in Obama's cabinet actually using a phrase like: "..put my boot heel on the throat of BP". Can I confirm that? or be very comfortable in saying it didn't happen (or hear who the Cabinet member was, and see if he/she gets fired the next day)? Well, I can find someone directly attributing the phrase to Obama: "I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP." Barry Obamma http://twitter.com/busybrains/status/14497679203.
An important question, and perhaps it represents one of those big stories the news media misses: How many people today, next week, next month, next November literally believe or will believe Obama did say that? Are there any pollsters asking that sort of question? My guess, it could easily be something on the order of as many people as think Saddam Hussein was directly behind 9/11 (at least some pollsters paid attention to that).
Relying on existing search engines and their limited abilities, how close could I come to answering this sort of question?
Well if somebody said it before Rand Paul, and Paul picked it up a couple of days later, wouldn't there be some references to this on the web, before there was any association between the phrase and Rand Paul?
Consider this Google search: "put my boot heel on the throat of BP" -paul
The quotes ("") mean I don't want just any combination of the words "put", "my", "boot".... but want that exact phrase. The "-paul" means nothing containing the word "Paul". So I get 4 hits, all from context being clearly from the Ron Paul interview, except for the twitterer directly attributing it to "Barry Obamma".
OK, but what if the quoted secretary was named Paul ____?_____ ?
I tried already -"rand paul", which picked up too many pages in which Rand Paul was just referred to as Paul. Some other approach? OK, when Paul was putting words in the President's mouth, he started with "What I don't like from the president's administration..."
HOW ABOUT: "put my boot heel on the throat of BP" -paul -"What I don't like from"
That cuts the hit count down quite a bit. There are a couple in which "don't" came out "dont" or "donit", or they just cut the quote down so the whole phrase "What I don't like from" didn't appear, and finally we are left with the twitterrer quoting "Barry Obamma" which I'm inclined to discount.
Suppose I could say "Who said it first"? Computer logic to approximate that could rely on that fact that every internet page in google's (or another search engine's) vast database will have a date and time of posting. In fact, can't I just tell google "display in order of posting", which would make the question much more easy to answer? NO, apparently not; at least I don't see how. I could probably put a front end on google accessing google via it's more computer friendly interface (or API), and voila, a new and useful search engine.
For more (and drier) discussions of search engines, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines
or searchenginewatch.com,
or just google "search engines". You will get, according to google "About 69,600,000 results". Bon appetite!
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Email from a Friend of a Friend: From Urban Legends to Political Smears
Anonymous forwarded emails have for years been a vehicle for circulating jokes, inspirational pictures and poems, a source of urban legends, and other frivolous but entertaining stuff.
Now, camouflaged by the fluff and amateur political commentary is a stream of carefully constructed lies and disinformation which does not look like the work of amateurs.
Unlike past, mostly local, whispering campaigns, email is harder to trace and easier to do on a national scale. A couple of years ago, I started getting forwarded emails from my Mom, with claims that could generally be shot down with less than 15 minutes of internet research. They seemed to be really affecting my parents' views, and based on what they told me, they were generally believed by most of their friends. But they were quite simply full of provable lies. They would show signs of having been forwarded a half dozen or so times, with visible 'CC' lists giving them a sort of homey look. When many people receive this sort of thing forwarded by a friend or relative, they are apt to trust it as coming from ordinary outraged citizens as they might not trust direct mass email, but many could simply not have originated as misinformation that the sender believed, which means they can't be anything but deliberately constructed lies, and the number of them, and the similar techniques used seem to prove that they are mass produced.
Here are a couple of references:
Now, camouflaged by the fluff and amateur political commentary is a stream of carefully constructed lies and disinformation which does not look like the work of amateurs.
Unlike past, mostly local, whispering campaigns, email is harder to trace and easier to do on a national scale. A couple of years ago, I started getting forwarded emails from my Mom, with claims that could generally be shot down with less than 15 minutes of internet research. They seemed to be really affecting my parents' views, and based on what they told me, they were generally believed by most of their friends. But they were quite simply full of provable lies. They would show signs of having been forwarded a half dozen or so times, with visible 'CC' lists giving them a sort of homey look. When many people receive this sort of thing forwarded by a friend or relative, they are apt to trust it as coming from ordinary outraged citizens as they might not trust direct mass email, but many could simply not have originated as misinformation that the sender believed, which means they can't be anything but deliberately constructed lies, and the number of them, and the similar techniques used seem to prove that they are mass produced.
Here are a couple of references:
The New Right-Wing Smear Machine by Christopher Hayes Oct 25, 2007
MyRightWingDad.net: FW: OBAMA DEATH LIST
If the same sort of phenomenon is going on with Liberal or Ultra Liberal sources, I would be very interested to investigate that as well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
What does it mean that this book is #8 Amazon bestseller today 2/18/2011?
