I feel like I’ve pointed to this
I feel like I’ve pointed to this before, but in case I haven’t, here’s a list of the 100 best first lines from novels. I’m partial to those of Pride and Prejudice, Lolita, and Anna Karenina.
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Entries for January 2006
A big dog on the subway with
A big dog on the subway with a fur-coated owner and a brick in its mouth. And I believe it’s a “pit bull-type” dog.
The life and times of “broadcast pioneer”
The life and times of “broadcast pioneer” Edward R. Murrow. “During the war, Murrow never had to play the role of the dispassionate reporter. He was an important player in the Allied war effort, and, under the circumstances, that did not conflict with his journalistic role.”
Mark Rothko’s Seagram murals were to hang
Mark Rothko’s Seagram murals were to hang in the then-new Four Seasons restaurant in NYC. How did they come to hang instead in the Tate Modern in London?
In Meet the Fockers, the sign on
In Meet the Fockers, the sign on a terminal at the O’Hare airport is typeset in Chicago, an old Macintosh system font. Har har. (via mark)
Malcolm Gladwell on different types of generalizations
Malcolm Gladwell on different types of generalizations and when it’s helpful to generalize (and not). I don’t know about all that, but I *hate* “pit bull-type” dogs and I still think they should be banned.
Blogs versus the NY Times in Google
In 2002, Dave Winer of Scripting News and Martin Nisenholtz of the New York Times made a Long Bet about the authority of weblogs versus that of NY Times in Google:
In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times’ Web site.
I decided to see how well each side is doing by checking the results for the top news stories of 2005. Eight news stories were selected and an appropriate Google keyword search was chosen for each one of them. I went through the search results for each keyword and noted the positions of the top results from 1) “traditional” media, 2) citizen media, 3) blogs, and 4) nytimes.com. Finally, the scores were tallied and an “actual” winner (blogs vs. nytimes.com) and an “in-spirit” winner (any traditional media source vs. any citizen media source) were calculated. (For more on the methodology, definitions, and caveats, read the methodology section below.)
So how did the NY Times fare against blogs? Not very well. For eight top news stories of 2005, blogs were listed in Google search results before the Times six times, the Times only twice. The in-spirit winner was traditional media by a 6-2 score over citizen media. Here the specific results:
1) Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans.
Search term: “hurricane katrina”
3. Top citizen media result (Wikipedia)
13. Top media result (CNN)
56. Top NY Times mention (NY Times).
61. Top blog result (Kaye’s Hurricane Blog)
Winner (in spirit): Citizen media
Winner (actual): NY Times
2) Big changes in the US Supreme Court (Rhenquist dies, O’Conner retires, Roberts appointed Chief Justice, Harriet Miers rejected).
Search term: “harriet miers”
4. Top media result (Washington Post)
5. Top citizen media result (Wikipedia)
8. Top NY Times mention (NY Times)
11. Top blog result (TalkLeft)
Winner (in spirit): Media
Winner (actual): NY Times
3) Terrorists bomb London, killing 52.
Search term: “london bombing”
1. Top media result (CNN)
2. Top citizen media result (Wikipedia)
21. Top blog result Schneier on Security
No NY Times article appears in the first 100 results.
Winner (in spirit): Media
Winner (actual): Blogs
4) First elections in Iraq after Saddam.
Search term: “iraq election”
1. Top media result (BBC News)
6. Top blog result (Iraq elections newswire)
6. Top citizen media result (Iraq elections newswire)
14. Top NY Times mention (NY Times)
Winner (in spirit): Media
Winner (actual): Blogs
5) Terri Schiavo legal fight and death.
Search term: “terri schiavo”
2. Top blog result (Abstract Appeal)
2. Top citizen media result (Abstract Appeal)
4. Top media result (CNN)
65. Top NY Times mention (NY Times)
Winner (in spirit): Citizen media
Winner (actual): Blogs
6) Pope John Paul II dies and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger appointed Pope Benedict XVI.
Search term: “pope john paul ii death”
1. Top media result (CNN)
3. Top citizen media result (Wikipedia)
58. Top blog result (The Pope Blog: Pope Benedict XVI)
No NY Times article appears in the first 100 results.
Winner (in spirit): Media
Winner (actual): Blogs
7) The Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Search term: “gaza withdrawal”
1. Top media result (Worldpress.org)
31. Top blog result (Simply Appalling)
31. Top citizen media result (Simply Appalling)
No NY Times article appears in the first 100 results.
Winner (in spirit): Media
Winner (actual): Blogs
8) The investigation into the Valerie Plame affair, Judith Miller, Scooter Libby indicted, etc..
Search term: “scooter libby indicted”:
1. Top media result (CNN)
15. Top blog result (Seven Generational Ruminations)
15. Top citizen media result (Seven Generational Ruminations)
43. Top NY Times mention (NY Times)
Winner (in spirit): Media
Winner (actual): Blogs
And just for fun here’s a search for “judith miller jail” (not included in the final tally):
1. Top media result (Washington Post)
3. Top blog result (Gawker)
3. Top citizen media result (Gawker)
No NY Times article appears in the first 100 results (even though there are several matching articles on the Times site).
In covering the jailing of their own reporter, the Times lagged in the Google results behind such informational juggernauts as Drinking Liberally, GOP Vixen, and Feral Scholar.
Winner (in spirit): Media
Winner (actual): Blogs
Here’s the overall results, excluding the Judith Miller search:
Overall winner (in spirit): Media (beating citizen media 6-2).
Overall winner (actual): Blogs (beating the NY Times 6-2).
Some observations:
- My feeling is that Mr. Nisenholtz will likely lose his bet come 2007. Even though the nytimes.com fares very well in getting linked to by the blogosphere, it does very poorly in Google. This isn’t exactly surprising given that most NY Times articles disappear behind a paywall after a week and some of their content (TimesSelect) isn’t even publicly accessible at all. Also, I didn’t look too closely at the HTML markup of the NY Times, but it could also be that it’s not as optimized for Google as well as that of some weblogs and other media outlets.
- “www.nytimes.com” has a PageRank of 10/10, higher than that of “www.cnn.com” (9/10), yet stories from CNN consistently appeared higher in the search results than those from the Times. The Times clearly has overall authority according to Google, but when it comes to specific instances, it falls short. In some cases, a NY Times story didn’t even appear in the first 100 search results for these keyword searches.
- By 2007, it may be difficult to differentiate a blog from a traditional media source. All of the Gawker and Weblogs, Inc. sites are presented in a blog format and are referred to as blogs but otherwise how are they distinguishable from traditional media? Engadget paid to send 12 people to cover the CES technology conference, probably as many or more than the Times sent. The Sundance film festival was heavily covered by paid writers for both companies as well. In the spirit in which this bet was made, I’d have a hard time counting any of their sites as blogs. (And what about kottke.org? I get paid to write it. Am I still a member of the citizen media or have I crossed over?)
- Choosing appropriate news stories and keywords for those stories was difficult in some cases. Katrina was a no-brainer, but was the Terri Schiavo story really one of the top eight news stories of 2005? Resolving the methodology for this bet in 2007 will be tricky. I wonder how the Long Bets Foundation will handle its determination of the victory.
- Wikipedia does very well in Google results for topical search terms. Overall, traditional media still dominates (in first appearance as well as number of results), but blogs and Wikipedia do very well in some instances.
- What do these results mean? Probably not a whole lot. Nisenholtz asserts that “[news] organizations like the Times can provide that far more consistently than private parties can” while Winer says that “in five years, the publishing world will have changed so thoroughly that informed people will look to amateurs they trust for the information they want”. It’s difficult to draw any conclusions on this matter based on these results. Contrary to what most people believe, PageRank has a bias, a point of view. That POV is based largely (but not entirely) on what people are linking to. As someone said in the discussion of this bet, this bet is about Google more than influence or reputation, so these results probably tell us more about how Google determines influence on a keyword basis rather than how readers of online informational sources value or rate those sources. Do web users prefer the news coverage of blogs to that of the NY Times? I don’t think you can even come close to answering that question based on these results.
The eight news stories were culled from various sources (Lexis-Nexis, Wikipedia, NY Times) and narrowed down to the top stories that would have been prominently covered in both the NY Times and blogs.
The keyword phrase for each of the eight stories was selected by the trial and error discovery of the shortest possible phrase that yielded targeted search results about the subject in question. In some cases, the keyword phrase chosen only returned results for a part of a larger news story. For instance, the phrase “pope john paul” was not specific enough to get targeted results, so “pope john paul ii death” was used, but that didn’t give results about the larger story of his death, the conclave to select a new pope, and the selection of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI. In the case of “katrina”, that single keyword was enough to produce hundreds of targeted search results for both Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Keyword phrases were not tinkered with to promote or demote particular types of search results (i.e. those for blogs or nytimes.com); they were only adjusted for the relevence of overall results.
The searches were all done on January 27, 2006 with Google’s main search engine, not their news specific search.
Since the spirit of the bet deals with the influence of traditional media versus that of citizen-produced media, I tracked the top traditional media (labeled just “media” above) results and the top citizen media results in addition to blog and nytimes.com results. For the purposes of this exercise, relevent results were those that linked to pages that an interested reader would use as a source of information about a news story. For citizen media, this meant pages on Wikipedia, Flickr (in some cases), weblogs, message boards, wikis, etc. were fair game. For traditional media, this meant articles, special news packages, photo essays, videos, etc.
In differentiating between “media” & citizen media and also between relevent and non-relevent results, in only one instance did this matter. Harriet Miers’s Blog!!!, a fictional satire written as if the author were Harriet Miers, was the third result for this keyword phrase, but since the blog was not a informational resource, I excluded it. In all other cases, it was pretty clear-cut.
Scratch the World with cars as records
Scratch the World with cars as records and pedestrians as crossfaders.
Matt calculates the cost of a la
Matt calculates the cost of a la carte television, i.e. ordering TV shows from iTunes. His yearly cable bill is $648 but the cost of watching all hs favorite shows from iTunes would be $800. I bet the networks love this math, especially since it cuts the cable companies out of the loop. But in an a la carte-only world, how would you discover shows in the first place?
The Onion interviews Stephen Colbert. “It used
The Onion interviews Stephen Colbert. “It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that’s not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything.”
Some of the onscreen special effects on
Some of the onscreen special effects on Doctor Who were generated by a home computer called the BBC Micro. “A brief sequence during this program actually showed the BBC Basic and assembler code used to create the console display”
Burgertime art. The pickle’s package is *very*
Burgertime art. The pickle’s package is *very* disturbing to me. Yet, I cannot look away. (via nelson)
Why do journalists drink so much Tab?
Why do journalists drink so much Tab? Futhermore, if, as conservatives would like us to believe, the political and cultural tempo of the country is being dictated by the pulse of the liberal media and they all guzzle fantastic amounts of Tab, why is Tab not more popular?
Well, Garrison Keillor sure didn’t like Bernard-Henri
Well, Garrison Keillor sure didn’t like Bernard-Henri Levy’s American Vertigo much. I’m about halfway through…review soon (hopefully).
Scott Nelson produces a “tribute brand” called
Scott Nelson produces a “tribute brand” called MIKE that’s an homage to Michael Jordan, Nike branding, and shoes. After looking at his products (photos and interviews here and here), I’m amazed Nike hasn’t sued him back to the Stone Age. Nelson’s site is mike23.com.
The Pixar model of making creative products: “
The Pixar model of making creative products: “We’ve made the leap from an idea-centered business to a people-centered business. Instead of developing ideas, we develop people. Instead of investing in ideas, we invest in people. We’re trying to create a culture of learning, filled with lifelong learners. It’s no trick for talented people to be interesting, but it’s a gift to be interested. We want an organization filled with interested people.” Pixar University sounds *amazing*.
Judith lost her camera (and most of
Judith lost her camera (and most of her pictures) on her trip to Hawaii, so she’s using other people’s photos from Flickr to produce a trip journal.
Hypothesis: Brad Pitt adapts his appearance to
Hypothesis: Brad Pitt adapts his appearance to that of whoever he’s dating at the time, kind of like how dogs start to look like their owners. Here’s some supporting evidence.
Four things
Caterina tagged me and it’s Friday, so what the hell?
Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Minimum wage worker, green bean canning factory
2. Tutor, in college physics
3. Web designer, for about 6 different companies
4. Blogger, kottke.org
Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. Ocean’s Eleven
2. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
3. The Day After Tomorrow
4. Finding Nemo
Four places I’ve lived:
1. Minneapolis
2. Rolla, MO
3. New York
4. San Francisco
Four TV shows I love:
1. Six Feet Under
2. Doctor Who (the original series)
3. Family Guy
4. Oh gosh, I dunno
Ten highly regarded and recommended TV shows that I’ve never watched a single minute of:[1]
1. 24
2. Lost
3. The Sopranos
4. Any reality TV show
5. Arrested Development
6. Battlestar Galactica
7. My Name is Earl
8. Deadwood
9. Desperate Housewives
10. The Wire
Four places I’ve vacationed:
1. Kauai, HI
2. Beijing
3. Paris
4. Rapid City, SD
Four of my favorite dishes:
1. Bologna sandwich
2. Soup dumplings
3. Cinnamon ice cream
4. Just about anything on a tasting menu
Four sites I visit daily:
1. google.com
2. flickr.com
3. robotwisdom.com
4. waxy.org
Four places I would rather be right now:
1. In a bathtub
2. On the beach
3. In space
4. Paris
Four bloggers I am tagging (but who won’t do it because they’re too old school…how’s that for a taunt?):
1. Meg Hourihan
2. Matt Haughey
3. Paul Bausch
4. Anil Dash
[1] I added this question because I was thinking about it the other day. I know, such a bad-ass rule-breaker.
Spanglish
Somewhere in Spanglish, there’s a damn good movie trying to get out. Not that I didn’t like it; Cloris Leachman was hilarious and Adam Sandler’s surreal performance simultaneously puzzled and impressed me…he seems to be turning into an actual actor. And the morality angle was solid. But there was something a little bit off about it, and I don’t think it was because I thought it was going to be a straight-up comedy.
The issues involved with buying and selling
The issues involved with buying and selling moon dust. Back in 1993, a 200-milligram moon rock was sold for $442,500.
Nice interview with Josh “Shake” Schachter about
Nice interview with Josh “Shake” Schachter about del.icio.us. “I would not say [that I am an] entrepreneur - the enterprise of the thing was always dragged along by the thing itself.”
Blast from the past: influential online game
Blast from the past: influential online game SiSSYFiGHT 2000. I know a married couple that met on SiSSYFiGHT.
A list of films that have the
A list of films that have the most Star Wars actors in a non-Star Wars film. Flash Gordon and Labyrinth each have 17 Star Wars actors in them. (via cd)
The delicate marketing of Brokeback Mountain. In
The delicate marketing of Brokeback Mountain. In Manhattan for example, analysis of the city’s various social microclimates was used to select the opening theaters to de-emphasize the art-house aspect of the film. (via dj)
On the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth,
On the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, a fun essay about Mozart as a hacker.
“It’s time for the abortion-rights movement to
“It’s time for the abortion-rights movement to declare war on abortion.”
The Folk Typography Pool contains photos of
The Folk Typography Pool contains photos of type made by people who are not designers, typographers, or calligraphers. (thx, paul)
SupersizedMeals.com is a blog documenting “foodstuffs
SupersizedMeals.com is a blog documenting “foodstuffs of epic proportions”. Recently featured were a 100-patty burger, a 29” pizza, and a sandwich made from an entire loaf of bread sliced lengthwise.
The new Pixar overlords at Disney Animation
The new Pixar overlords at Disney Animation wasted no time in cancelling Toy Story 3. “Sequels should only be made if there is a really great story that demands it, and should be the domain of those who created the original film.” Could this be the end of Disney’s straight-to-video animated crap-o-ramas?
Out and about
Some player names I observed while playing Fastr (a multiplayer game based on guessing tags for a selection of Flickr images) last night for about 15 minutes under my usual online nickname “jkottke”:
jkottkesucks
kottkesucks
jkottkesucksass
ihatekottke
yes no one likes kottke
For some reason, this reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from Being John Malkovich where he’s just popped out of his own head and onto the side of the New Jersey Turnpike and a passenger in a passing car says, “Hey Malkovich, think fast!” and pegs him in the head with a beer can.
Averaging Gradius is a movie of 15 simultaneous
Averaging Gradius is a movie of 15 simultaneous games of Gradius layered on top of each other. Robin says: “So what you see, instead of a single ship going at it, is a fuzzy cloud of ships — bright where strategies overlap, faint where someone does something especially daring (or dumb).” Very cool; reminds me of Jason Salavon’s amalgamation of Playboy centerfolds.
Fan-produced video for William Shatner’s cover of
Fan-produced video for William Shatner’s cover of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. (thx, renee)
James Frey is on Oprah today and
James Frey is on Oprah today and Gawker had someone blogging the show while it was being taped earlier today. Oprah hammers Frey pretty hard and he admits that most/all of the Smoking Gun’s allegations were true. (thx, hillary and mike)
Email correspondance between members of The New
Email correspondance between members of The New Yorker staff and one of Caitlin Flanagan’s sources in writing this story about Mary Poppins’ author P.L. Travers. The source, Travers biographer Valerie Lawson, wrote a letter to the editor complaining that Flanagan had not properly attributed items in the story to Lawson. “The exchange offers a glimpse at the sausage-factory aspect of how the magazine handles complaints, and raises interesting questions about what journalists owe, in terms of recognition, to their sources.”
Political party members’ brains get a rush
Political party members’ brains get a rush from “ignoring information that’s contrary to their point of view”. “None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged. Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones.”
In the spirit of the reimagined trailer
In the spirit of the reimagined trailer for The Shining, here’s Brokeback Top Gun and Sleepless in Seattle.
Winners of the Design Within Reach 2005 Champagne
Winners of the Design Within Reach 2005 Champagne Chair Contest. The salon dryer chair, the high chair, and the school desk chair are pretty neat.
Established TV news stars are moving to
Established TV news stars are moving to NPR. “Network news is increasingly generating prospects for NPR in part because some broadcast journalists think the networks are veering away from serious, in-depth reports.”
As France becomes more like the US
As France becomes more like the US in eating habits, the famously thin French are getting fatter. “Some of the reasons for the increase in obesity are those that plague the United States and much of Europe: the lure of fast food and prepared foods, the ubiquity of unhealthy snacks and sedentary lives.”
Absolut is ditching their famous bottle ads
Absolut is ditching their famous bottle ads campaign (which is 25 years old) in favor of references to pop culture sans bottle. (via do)
NY Times food critic Frank Bruni spends
NY Times food critic Frank Bruni spends a week “undercover” as a waiter at a Boston restaurant. “People are hungry, and then they’re drinking. Two of the worst states that people can be in.”
Photos of the Shipbreaking Yards in Bangladesh
Photos of the Bangladesh shipbreaking yards by Brendan Corr. Strict environmental laws in the Europe and the US make “recycling” these ships there difficult, so US and European companies outsource the salvage to Bangladesh, where laws are looser. Compare with Edward Burtynsky’s photos of the same. (thx, malatron)
Update: Article from The Atlantic about shipbreaking (thx, john) and a soon-to-be released book called Breaking Ships (thx, john #2).
Cheatsheet for how to get to a
Cheatsheet for how to get to a human operator on various automated phone systems. When calling Best Buy, “press 1,1,1,#,# and then wait through the 3 prompts asking for your home telephone number”. (thx, scott)
Manhattan’s Chinatown didn’t bounce back after 9/11 and
Manhattan’s Chinatown didn’t bounce back after 9/11 and the city’s Chinese are moving elsewhere in the city to find cheaper rents. (via dg)
The designer of Comic Sans on how
The designer of Comic Sans on how that beloved font came to be. Photos of Comic Sans in the wild.
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