The PR Newswire- Review

It has been a while since I combed press releases on the the PR Newswire. It can be a real treasure trove of information ranging from the merely pointless or ridiculous, to heights of self-promotion, propaganda and spin.


New National Study Shows Gays More Likely Than Non-Gays to Book Travel Online
"According to a recent nationwide survey, gay, lesbian and bisexual (GLB) adults who are online are more likely to book hotel reservations through online portals than heterosexual onlineadults."

This nationwide survey contained a subsample of only N=177 GLB adults, so the margin of error is a kind of large. But I'm not going to focus on methdology. Some lines I found amusing in this release include:

"About one-half (52%) of GLB respondents were likely to visit Travelocity.com when making hotel reservations, compared to 40 percent of non-gay respondents." (Officially making Travelocity the gayest travel website).

"Many GLB online consumers rely on gay-specific travel expertise when queried on the type of resources used when planning destination travel." (I wonder what 'gay specific' is modifying here, is it the 'travel' or the 'expertise?')


Traveling gay to Lincoln, Nebraska? Then this next press release should interest you.

The Historic Cornhusker Hotel Becomes a Marriott

"The Cornhusker Hotel, in Lincoln, Neb., has been re-flagged as The Cornhusker -- A Marriott Hotel... The original Cornhusker Hotel was built in 1926 and has been a fixture in the Lincoln community for over 75 years. In 1982, the original Cornhusker was imploded, rebuilt and reopened in December 1983. The lone links from the original Cornhusker to the one that stands today are the 26 "Corn Maiden" figures that grace the atrium's interior." (Hot lonely corn maidens are waiting for you.)


Not going anywhere soon? Just going to hang out at home and watch TV? Then this next item is a private matter between you and TIVO.


'ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT' and 'THE INSIDER' Get First Exclusive Sit Down Interview With Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau

"Their relationship developed in 1996, when Mary Kay (then 34) was a sixth grade teacher in suburban Seattle, and Vili (then 12) was her student... In August 2004, Mary Kay was released from prison at the age of 42. Since then she has reunited with Vili, now 22." (Sure, I lusted in my heart after one of my six grade teachers. But a note to young men everywhere... do the math. For Vili, twenty years is going to seem like fifty in about ten.)

"Based on the popular segment on "Entertainment Tonight," THE INSIDER reports from a unique "insider" perspective, using first-person interviews, special "inside" access, "behind-closed-door" reports, and "inside information" from knowledgeable informed sources and contacts." (As opposed to reporting from an outsider perspective, using third-person interviews, and hearsay from ignorant out-of-the-loop sources... which is more IHAT's angle.)


And, finally, I'll leave you simply with this. The headline hooked me.

CDC Under Media Fire Over Bloated Obesity Deaths Stats, Notes Consumer Group

"Last week's bombshell announcement that excess weight was accountable for just 26,000 deaths each year stands in stark contrast to the bloated 400,000 deaths statistic produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last year and has left many demanding answers as to why the agency made such grave errors in its calculations." (OK, the first paragraph gets a little too clever. Again, sounds like something I would have written... 'The CDC's flabby logic went a bit heavy on the numbers, resulting in a rather hefty overestimates in their final calculations. The government can blubber all it wants about science, but we know this is a big, fat mistake.')

In Our Time

While the old weathered alarm clock radio in my office does a decent job of tuning in some of the local DC stations, the shows themselves are usually not conducive to work. In order to remain productive, I need music that I know well, so that my mind is not distracted trying to learn the songs. If I have some sort of talk on, the content is such that I usually end up feeling dumber by the end. And commercials of any sort are tiresome. The creative in most radio ads are worse than television.

While venturing across the BBC's website, I have recently encountered a show called “In Our Time.” The format is very simple. Presenter Melvyn Bragg chooses a single topic (from the areas of Science, History, Religion, Culture, or Philosophy), invites three scholars on that subject to his show, then discusses the topic with them for about three-fourths of an hour.

Bragg seems one of the Renaissance types, already possessing a good fundamental wide-ranging knowledge of the topics, but not a know-it-all. He leads the discussion, moving it forward when a scholar gets bogged down in minutiae, but taking time to explore an interesting tidbit. He does not assume much knowledge on the part of the listener, but certainly expects something from them.

On days that I have not had to deal with clients and my time could be spent with analysis or writing, I have streamed a few episodes from their archives, or listened to the recent topic of the week.

This week he covered the Aeneid, a work I am sad to admit I own but have never read. Many people have read Homer, but fewer Virgil.

From Bragg’s introduction to the show:

“Out of the tragedy and destruction of the Trojan wars came a man heading West, his father on his back and his small son holding his hand. This isn't Odysseus, it's Aeneas and in that vision Virgil gives an image of the very first Romans of the Empire.

Virgil's Aeneid was the great epic poem that formed a founding narrative of Rome. It made such an impact on its audience that it soon became a standard text in all schools and wiped away the myths that preceded it. It was written in Augustus' reign at the start of the Imperial era and has been called an apologia for Roman domination; it has also been called the greatest work of literature ever written.

How much was Virgil's poem influenced by the extraordinary times in which it was written? How does it transcend the political pressures of Imperial patronage and what are the qualities that make it such a universal work?”


Despite my lack of foundational knowledge, it was a very interesting programme. I have also listened to topics on Machiavelli, George Washington and the American Revolution (from the British perspective), alchemy (of course), and the Battle of Thermopylae. I find that listening to this show in my office, I can split my mind between the work at hand and understanding the discussion. It has made for some very pleasant and fast-moving days.

There is really no one like this on American radio, or television for that matter. Not that there isn’t good educational programming to be found on PBS or on some of the cable stations, but that there does not seem to be ‘public intellectuals’ anymore. NPR can be enlightening, but I would hardly call much of their programming educational.

We had a public scientist while Carl Sagan was around, and Stephen Jay Gould for a bit after that. The closest we have now is Bill Nye the Science Guy, and that is scary. I remember when he was a bit comic actor on a Seattle-based sketch show ‘Almost Live’ (aired on Comedy Central in the early 90s). But even the first two men were relegated to areas of science, and hardly people who crossed the divide between academia and the real world on all fronts.

The U.S. has such a wealth of academics and intellectuals, whose work is too often disconnected from the everyman. It would be nice to open the lines of communication between the ivory tower and the trenches more often.

The question is, who out there would be the ideal host for such a program?

The Easter Peeps Challenge- Fond Memories

Google is offering a video search service now, and as an extension is accepting video submissions which will at one point be made available to the public. My first entry was a two minute, thirty second video of the 2005 Easter Peeps Challenge.

If and when the full video is made available by Google, I will link to it. Until then, Apply your imagination to this still of the new champion stuffing peeps into his mouth, then chugging a beer, all in under two minutes. My attempt at a transcript of the audio follows:


Florilegium Suburbanum (the brother-in-law and official time-keeper): And start!
Tim (the prior record holder): Actually, I think I did it in ninety seconds, didn't I?
F.S.: Shut up.
Unknown: Finish those first before you hit more peeps.
F.S.: Chug the beer, then eat more peeps.
Prurient. Interest.(Reporter #1): He's taking his time.
B.V. (director of photography): I think the chewing could get you into trouble.
P.I.: Yeah. Just swallow.
F.S.: [sarcastically] Yeah, just swallow.
C.B. (guest): Wash it down with that beer.
Tim: Wait 'til the beer hits the peeps in your stomach, man...
F.S.: Thirty seconds down.
Tim: Its like those dehydrated sponges where you add water, and they just... blow up.
F.S.: Or they turn into dinosaurs.
Tim: Yeah, they turn into dinosaurs.
B.G. (Reporter #2): You got it. You got it. You got it.
P.I.: You're so... your're so. You're in charge. You're in charge.
F.S.: He's a college student. He's used to eating disgusting shit.
laughter
B.G.: You got it.
P.I.: I think Andy has been practicing.
B.G.: You got it.
Tim: Nobody can eat 50 eggs.
B.G.: [starts chant] Andy. Andy.
Others join in: Andy.
P.I.: You're Mom will never know.
F.S.: One minute.
Mer (lobbyist SPCP, Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Peeps): uh oh.
F.S.: One minute remaining in kitchen stadium.
laughter
unknown: He's going to need to chug that whole beer.
F.S.: That's what he's got to worry about.
Tim: I'm sure I did it in ninety seconds.
F.S.: Forty-five seconds.
B.G.: You got it. You got it. Do it.
P.I.: [singing] Its the eye of the tiger, its the thrill of the fight.
B.G.: This is where you win it. This is where you win it, man.
F.S.: [falsetto singing] Its the final countdown.
B.G.: This is where you win it. This is where you win it. You got it. You can do the beer. You can do the beer.
F.S.: [breaking from singing Eye of the Tiger in the background] Thirty seconds.
B.G.: You got it. You got it. You got to win it now. You got to win it now.
B.V.: Ah, the last one's the toughest one.
unknown: Lubricate it down with the beer.
B.G.: You can do it. What's his time? What's his time?
F.S.: Fifteen seconds.
B.G.: You can do it.
unknown: Ah, no way.
B.G.: You can do it, Andy. You can do it.
F.S.: Ten seconds.
B.G.: Yes! Yes! Yes!
applause and cheers
F.S.: With five seconds left!
B.V.: Ladies and gentlemen. A new champion.
P.I.: Now he's going to go throw up. Atta boy.
B.V.: Aw, isn't that nice. The old champion congratulates the new. Yes. Very nice.
B.G.: 'Til next year
Andy: Those last two are so hard to chew. My jaw was tired.
Tim: One more time.
P.I.: Yea!
Tim: It just looks painful.
Andy: Those last two were just...
F.S.: When there was fifteen seconds and no beer drunk, I was starting to get nervous.
END

e-Vanity of e-Vanities: The Celeblog

The Wednesday edition USA Today, provided free by the Omni Chicago I stayed at Tuesday night, contained a first for me. It was the only time I can recall tearing a page from USA Today so I could study it in more detail.

The page was 3D, the headline "Celebs are blogging, like they never have before."

Nice generic headline, any sub-group of America could replace "Celebs": "Serial Killers," "Banjo Players," "Hermaphrodites," and of course it would be true because NOBODY was blogging five years ago.

(That headline reminds me of a second thematic thread, which dates back to the song 'Maniac' from the movie 'Flashdance.' If you are dancing like you've never danced before, aren't you probably dancing poorly? I mean, from lack of experience? Shouldn't the line have been "She's a maniac, MANIAC on the floor. And she's dancin' with more passion and intensity than all the times she's danced before."??? On the same note, shouldn't this headline have read "Celebs are blogging in greater numbers"?)

The piece proceeds to list the name and sites of some famous bloggers: Rosie O'Donnell, Zach Braff, Pat Sajak, Dave Barry, Ian McKellen, and David Duchovny.

Truthfully, several of these are not proper blogs. Sajak writes a piece from time to time posting on issues (many political), but offers no space for feedback or comments. He is really just writing and self-publishing a column.

Same with Ian McKellen's site. He answers fan questions by posting on his website, but they are answers to selected submitted questions. There is no opportunity for dialogue.

Dave Barry seems to have an honest to goodness blog, although many of the posts seem to come from someone named "judi," he does appear to add comments and link, and includes a chat function (which again this judi person appears to be doing the chatting with the readers).

I don't care enough about Zach Braff to actually see if his is a true blog.

Duchovny's blog looks like it might actually be interesting, but I think the whole thing is a part of the marketing push for the new film he directed. Harvey Pekar's blog was interesting too, for the two weeks he made entries until they (the producers of "American Splendor") told him he could stop. I assume this blog will wither shortly after the movie opens nationwide.

Finally, Rosie's blog is real, and hosted by blogspot (as is this one). Her entries read like Larry King channeling ee cummings.

Reading this got me thinking about how to measure the vanity of a blog. Establishing my own blog as the epitome of vanity online publishing, I attempt to derive a few telling characteristics:

*) Published for no one's pleasure but the author's own.
*) Limited or no readership.
*) Less about starting a dialogue than offering one's opinion as definitive fact.

But there is something more. I think the other indicators are predicated on one's assumption that people actually give a shit what you think. Actually, I think that is characteristic from which the other three points above evolve. The belief, regardless of the facts, that your voice should be heard and considered by all.

I suppose that is the engine which has driven all creative endeavors, good and bad. The only difference is now that there are no gatekeepers to prevent the bad from expressing themselves.

Usenet Archives

Once again confirming the saying that you can't outrun your past, I have searched some old Usenet groups that I may have haunted during my college years.

The Usenet was the place to be before blogs, back in the day when a thing called the "web" barely existed, and Mosaic was an interesting little piece of freeware that let you browse graphical pages in something called "hypertext markup language." Usenet groups were threaded, non-moderated discussion boards. Instead of a particular person having their own group (although there were a few who did), each group centered around a topic, and anyone was free to start a thread or continue one already on the board.

In college, besides logging into the Cleveland Freenet via a telnet session, or ftp-ing files and games from sites or back and forth with friends, there wasn't a whole heck of a lot to do on the Internet except chat. And in those days (oh boy here I go), we actually conversed in whole sentences online, for the most part.

I remember discussing an experiment with paper ketchup cups (the kind you get at some fast food restaurants where you have to pump your own ketchup), where I started unfolding the flaps of the paper cup one at a time and measuring the change in cup volume. It turns out the volume increases slightly, before dropping off to zero once all the flaps are undone. The silly notion started when I was tired of having to fill two paper cups with ketchup for my french fries (imagine the horror of having to fill two whole cups). I realized that opening up the cup a notch or two gave me some extra space to pump a little more.

Anyway, that thought actually had a home on the Usenet. I posted about it on alt.mcdonalds.

That's right, you see each Usenet group had a name, like alt.comedy.british (where I could interact with the few people in America who knew what Blackadder is), or alt.sex.clergy.kitchen.utensils (where I could, well, never mind that my lad).

You could read the newswires on the Usenet, and download pictures, so long as you had the UUDECODE software to translate ASCII text back into a gif.

What I was a little surprised to find is that people still inhabit the Usenet. Google, in another maneuver that doesn't seem to generate revenue on its face, allows users to create new groups for others to discover. Yahoo has their Groups and forums as well. But they seem to lose something in a web browser in Windows.

There was something so Wargames about a Telnet session. There was so little between you and your computer, and even less between you and what was then the Internet. Of course, there was a lot less out there, and the Internet was a much less scary place.

Fifteen years ago, Umberto Eco wrote that the Mac is a Catholic computer, because it required the church of OS to communicate with 'God.' PCs therefore, were Protestant, because DOS was a direct line to the kernal, no need for an intermediary.

He didn't write how the Internet changes this theology. It is the equivalent of changing from a geocentric to a heliocentric model of planetary motion. God isn't etched on the silicon chip in my machine. Its out there.

Anyway, after a couple crazy weeks of travel and lack of posting, I am back. Hopefully, this week will provide some breathing room to have independent thoughts. I am leaving for Chicago tomorrow, and have to start packing up our belongings for our move in a few weeks, but I'm sure there will be time.

Anyone up for a good old-fashioned "flame war"?