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Category Archives: Idle Chit-Chat
A New Privacy Invasion to Fight
They are probably not unique, but spokeo.com has robots diligently combing the world for your personal information. What they have on you might be surprising. And, while it is possible, they don’t make it obvious how you can delete (or at lease hide from public view) the data about you they have gathered for profit.
Telephone numbers, addresses, relationships, and of course age are only a few of the things about you that they are selling.
So: time to get your profiles off of spokeo.com. If anyone out there knows of similar services out there, let’s consolidate the “quit making profit by selling my personal data” list.
NOTE: These instructions might be more complicated than necessary, but this method is what I tested.
- Go to spokeo.com
- Enter your name. Scan the matches for any that might be you. You will have to delete each profile individually.
- Select a profile. In the window that pops up, select “see it all”.
- You will go to a screen that tries to sell you the service, including “See all available information, including photos, profiles, lifestyle and wealth data.” Now you remember why you’re dong this.
- Copy the entire URL from the address bar of your browser.
- Down at the bottom of the screen is a teeny, tiny little link that says “privacy”. Click that.
- Paste in the URL.
- Supply an email address. TIP: you can tag your address with a plus sign. For instance, instead of getoffmylawn@damnkids.com you can use getoffmylawn+spokeo@damnkids.com. That way any email they send to you will be tagged. (This opens up a different discussion that I will leave for another day.)
- Try to decipher the CAPTCHA, then submit.
- When the email arrives, click the link and your data will be “removed”. I don’t honestly expect the data is actually deleted, but at least it’s a little more hidden.
- Repeat the process with any other profiles that might be you. You will have to use a different email tag each time.
- Write a robot that automatically deletes records from their database. If I had the skills I’d do it myself. With robots they gather, with robots we take away.
I recommend that you don’t do this “later”, or “tomorrow”, but now. If you have any troubles, leave a comment and I’ll clarify the instructions. If you know of other “services” like this one, let’s add them here!
Sticky Music
My sweetie and I both woke up with Christmas songs stuck in our heads. For me, the song was “Toy Jackpot” by Blackalicious, with its super-catchy chorus “Is it time yet? Is it time? I can’t wait” in a smooth hip-hoppish vibe. My sweetie emerged from slumber with “10,000 Watts” by Crystal Antlers, a high-energy song about Christmas lights, made to be turned up loud.
Now I have “10,000 Watts” in my head, too.
While very different in sound, these songs have two things in common: They are both really cool, and they both came from Target. In fact, you’ve probably heard parts of the songs already, along with a bunch of others, in Target ads. It was after watching an ad with a song called “You’ll Never Find My Christmas” that the light of my life encouraged me to go in search of the original music to download.
Well, what do you know? There’s a whole Christmas album for download for free at Target.com, and there’s not a dud in the bunch. Target found a bunch of different up-and-coming bands and gave them a great opportunity, and got themselves some fun advertisements built around the music at the same time. To me, this seems like exploitation done right.
For the Ebenezer Scrooges among you: Yes, Target is a big, giant retail corporation, and I’ve just become a shill for them. Lighten up, would you? It’s Christmas! These are good songs you wouldn’t get to hear otherwise!
So hop on over and give a listen — you just might find your new holiday favorite.
Cool Stuff on the Internet
Hey! Are you familiar with Hyperbole and a Half? Now would be an excellent time to check it out. Perhaps those already well-versed in hyperbolic lore could recommend particularly choice archival stories for newbies to peruse.
And as long as you’re looking at other sites that don’t take six years to load the way mine does, the November 24 Astronomy Picture of the Day just reinforces the growing urge inside me to head north in the next couple of years. APOD is awesome more often than not – I’m tempted to write a little program that turns each day’s picture into my desktop image. Not sure how that would fly on days like this one, however.
A little of this, a little of that
If I’m going to get a draft of Munchies done by the end of October, I’m going to have to get crackin’. I am way, way behind.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, two new kinds of banana bread out of the oven today, varieties never before imagined. Oh, yeah, life is good.
I’m trying to think of the last time I saw a movie that was advertised as an ‘event’. Maybe never.
My sweetie carries a copy of the constitution in her purse. Awesome.
Party Rats
I am typing this with plastic rats on my fingers. They click together now and then, but they do add a certain special something to the night-blogging experience, just like the packaging said they would.
Actually, the package said they would be “perfect for raves and night blogging.” There are few things that can claim to be even tolerable in both those situations, but here we have the Finger Rats. There are five rats, five colors, each beaming a different color of light out its nose.
I don’t know how I ever got by without them.
Party Rats in Action
A Measurement Rant
You’ve all seen this:
1 in = 2.54cm
The only problem is, that’s wrong*. This may seem nit-picky, but understanding why the above is wrong can uncover some clever ways people deceive others (and themselves).
“But everyone knows an inch is 2.54 centimeters,” I hear you say. Hold on a second there, Sparky! Let’s back up. An inch is a measurement. Let’s say I measure a piece of wood and find that it’s 57 inches long. Now I want to know how many centimeters it is. I multiply by 2.54 and discover that the wood is 144.78 centimeters long. So where’s the problem?
The issue is that I measured my stick to the nearest inch, and now through the magic of conversion I claim that I know how long that wood is down to a tenth of a millimeter. The idea that I could get that sort of precision with my tape measure is silly, yet people do this all the time. On road signs you’ll see “Exit 4 mi (6.4 km)”. Is the sign really accurate to 100 meters? That’s a tough assumption to swallow given the first measure is only accurate to the nearest mile.
A rule to remember: when you do a unit conversion, the result is always less precise than your original measurement. Always.
Here’s what your conversion table should read (although this isn’t quite perfect either):
1.00 in = 2.54cm
What’s the difference? Remember that an inch is a measurement. The number of decimal places indicates how exact the measurement is. If I measure something down to a hundredth of an inch, I can (usually) justify claiming precision to three significant figures after I make the conversion. So, if I measure my stick to be 57.0 inches, I can reasonably represent it as 145 centimeters long. The error of a tenth of an inch in the first measure is smaller than the error of one centimeter in the second, so I’m all right. 57.00 inches = 144.8cm.
The people who put things like “1 inch = 2.54cm” into textbooks will claim, “What we actually mean is that exactly one inch equals 2.54 centimeters.” The only problem is, That’s wrong too. First, with measurements there’s no such thing as exact. Every measurement contains error. Always. 1.0000000 inches is not the same as exactly one inch. Second, for almost every comparison of measurements in different systems, the conversion factor itself is not exact. An ounce is not 29.57 milliliters. It’s not 29.5735 ml.
So why does this matter? Ask yourself, how much product is in that bottle or can of your favorite beverage? 12oz or 355ml? In this case, we hope that the more precise measure is applicable. It would be informative if the bottler used 12.0oz rather than just 12; you know the Coca-Cola bottling company knows to great precision how much less than 12oz they can put in a can and still label it 12oz. Technically (though perhaps not legally), 11.50000001 oz could be labeled as 12, but that would not be anywhere close to 355ml.
This sloppiness with units is frightfully common. Even scientific papers with measurements in them sometimes don’t include the margin of error in the measurements – which makes the number pretty meaningless.
Don’t be fooled by false precision! Often it’s harmless, but even subtly it can give the impression that the peple who made the measurements are far more diligent than they actually were. This can give their arguments extra weight, without you even realizing it.
* It turns out I picked a bad example – in 1959 they redefined the inch to make this true. Go figure — the inch is metric now. See the comments below. So, as a unit, the conversion is correct. This has no effect on how you use the conversion in real life. I may go back and change this episode to use a better example.
CSI: Miami – Live blogging!
10:01 – Hip-hop! inner city. In eight hours a gun will be fired.
10:02 – Hoop-playing cops grab their guns and join a car chase on foot! Crime Scene Investigating cops, no less.
10:03 – Crime Scene Investigation is there for a routine stop in progress. Caruso in sunglasses! Happened to be in the neighborhood.
10:04 – Sunglasses off!
10:04 – Sunglasses back on! Oh, and a body in the trunk. Good thing DC was there.
During the credits, here, I’ll explain. We sometimes watch CSI: Miami. I enjoy mocking it, my sweetie enjoys mocking it and watching David Caruso. Tonight, with my sweetie as my spotter, I will bring you a blow-by-blow of tonight’s gripping episode.
It might be necessary to come up with some shorthand. DCSoff means David Caruso sunglasses off, DCSon means, obviously, on.
10:05 – according to Crestor’s animators, arterial plaque looks like bacon.
10:08 – DCoff tells the tech to document everything. Good advice, since that’s his job.
10:10 – first esophagus shot of the night!
10:11 – Matching humvees! Two people in two huge cars.
10:12 – Mrs. Olsen does not like the police. A suspect who insists on due process? On this show? Must be a fluke.
10:14 – Kicking the fuckin’ door open to take fiberglass samples!
10:15 – Crime scene investigators pawing everything! Even the bad guys’ gloves! (Thought that might give one of them an idea.) Touch each item once and throw it back down. Standard procedure.
10:16 – Talk about timing. The meth lab explodes!
Another commercial break as flames sweep over the heads of our really awful crime scene investigators.
10:18 – my sweetie drinks wine from the bottle for the first time!
I think we will need a shorthand for when DC takes his shades off on camera.
10:20 – house is trashed, so no one will know what bad investigators they were
10:20 – DCoff saves the day! Lifts the beam. Good thing he was in the neighborhood. Again. (Sweetie says they had already called him, so I guess the writers get a pass on this one.)
10:21 – DC without sunglasses – in the day, outdoors!
10:23 – I say Mrs. Olsen is running the meth lab!
10:24 – Hm. might be wrong already.
10:25 – Crime Scene Investigators go on a drug raid! ‘Cause, you know, that’s what they do.
10:26 – Time bombs! It’s a trap!!!!!! – Because they happen to know when the police will be there. Oooohh – elaborate triggered timers that couldn’t possibly go wrong.
10:27 – Nice shootin’ Tex!
10:28 – In the luxury interrogation suite – Crime Scene Investigators grilling a suspect! Because that’s what they do.
10:29 – DCoff emotes!
10:30 – Super-glamorous crime lab scene! Nice that the doc had a full-color printout handy.
10:31 – Second esophagus shot!
Going into the break without anything on fire.
Ah, Local news, how I love you.
10:36 – out of the break with slow motiong explosions, then a lab tech listening to music. Wait – wasn’t that lab tech canvassing a neighborhood earlier?
10:37 – Lab tech in denial after being in a blast. Side drama!
10:38 – “I heard you wanted evidence about the blast in the meth house.” No shit, Sherlock – THAT’S MY JOB!
10:38 – Sure, put the evidence in the clean room – AFTER I tear open the bag and take out the most important item.
10:38 – Back in the luxury crime scene offices.
10:41 – super slo-mo of the maid being beaten for reading her bible. No ambiguity of good and evil there!
10:42 – Crime Scene Investigators (and a helicopter!) going to make an arrest! Because that’s what they do. Oh, yeah, send the coroner, too.
10:43 – DCon->off! “That’s not the whole truth, my friend.”
10:43 – Montage! Work that pipette, baby!
10:44 – A machine beeps. We have an answer.
10:45 – DCoff takes us to commercial: “Natalia, Nothing is impossible.”
CSI: Miami – new night, same shades! (Those are the promo’s words, not mine.)
10:49 – DCoff teaching the forensics lab guys how to do forensics lab work!
10:50 – Suspect slow-motion pacing in the crime lab chicken-wire holding pen.
10:51 – Still pacing. Machines beep and whir.
10:52 – grisly crime reenactment.
10:53 – Full confession! Once again the CSI boys, in their secondary role as interrogators, find a suspect who does not ask for due process of law.
10:54 – Oh, snap!
10:55 – hearing trouble in the super-high-tech designer CSI lab. Flashbacks! Fire! Never mind you look like Lindsey Lohan’s big sister, it’s ok.
10:56 – People go to jail. No lawyers anywhere. The courts are implied, I suppose, but not really.
10:57 – DCoff understands. He’s going to get the illegal immigrant into school. Like this: “You’re going to school.” He puts his sunglasses on. Fade to black.
Switch channel: ANOTHER CSI: Miami! A modest boat ran into a highway bridge and brought it down! Concrete crumbling! A couple (girlfriend: bitchy) plunges into the drink! Whoever built the damn bridge is the one who should be going to jail in this one.
OK, so I’m not going to be giving a blow-by-blow on this one, although it’s starting out to be quite a bit more mockworthy than the previous. I will point out the most ridiculous elements, however.
11:06 – The witnesses say the boat was aiming at the bridge! Oh, wait, the pilot was dead. But seriously – who the hell built that bridge?
11:12 – DCoff knows the wheel base of every car without looking it up!
11:14 – database (that chirps) knows where all recent carp releases have occurred.
11:16 – chemically sensitive evidence goes into a manila envelope. DC’s sunglasses around his neck! What the hell does that signify? We’re going into uncharted waters, here.
11:18 – More wine! On a side note, got some wine cheap at Big Lots called Earth Wise. I have to say, those hippies can make a nice vino!
11:20 – “I’ll process this at CSI and see if I can get any prints.” Translation: “I’m off to do my job, then.”
11:21 – “Murder trumps the bridge”
11:22 – “It looks like over three million in jewelry. I’m going to need two more officers.” Because the warranty for each officer is only good for one mil in stones.
11:24 – a totally needless montage about making diamonds.
11:25 – a laboratory emerald is apparently not as hard as a natural emerald. Huh.
11:25 – “I happen to have the appraisal of the gems sitting here on this table…”
A moment here, during this break after we watched a named character die, to reflect on what makes CSI: Miami so fun to mock. Now is the time because despite the inherent ballsiness of killing a named character, the humor comes from the fundamental laziness of the scripts. Let’s face it, a crime scene investigator was in a place where no CSI wonk would have been in the first place. Caruso is doing a pretty good job of it, not getting too histrionic, but they’re going to make a deal of Speed not being prepared for the situation which is my point exactly.
11:38 – TV computers never cease to amuse me.
11:39 – Will she ask for a lawyer? Will she? Will she? No.
11:40 – she must be innocent; the soulful music started after she spoke.
Another break, more about writer laziness. Suspects confessing to lesser crimes to move the plot along would never, ever happen in real life, but once a week multiple suspects send themselves to prison to make the writer’s life easier.
11:47- “It only happens in Hell’s Bay” – luckily they had a nice graphic in the computer ready to go (with chirping sounds). As usual.
11:50 – DCoff(outdoors) wades into shark-infested water to save a boy in no danger, just to finish as the squad cars arrive. Sharks don’t fuck with David Caruso. And David Caruso can’t wait five friggin’ minutes for support to rescue a boy from sharks who’s not in the water. Another form of laziness, false drama. Unnecessary heroism concluded just as the people who would make the act simple arrive.
The show ended with a police funeral. It was moving, and well done, and I came away feeling, well, manipulated. More lazy writing, filling up the last five minutes of the show with something that couldn’t miss.
How much of this show is filler? Coifed science babes in dramatically-lit labs (with science!) doing science stuff. Sunglasses going on and off. Whats-his-name delivering the big lines. No cleverness. No risk. I came to mock David Caruso but I have to admit that with the material he’s been given he does a pretty good job.
And so we have our unintentional comedy. Lazy writers creating ridiculous situations and then lazily getting out of them by making humans act unnaturally. Then cover it up with slick editing and glitzy montages, and you have yourself a show. Still, good fun.
Things on the Internet that are Totally Cool
I’ve come across a couple of things on the Internet lately that are, well, totally cool. Neither of these things is particularly new, but they are particularly awesome.
DropBox
I found DropBox through my brother; we used it to share audio files for Moonlight Sonata across nine time zones. He would put updates in his folder, and they would appear in mine shortly thereafter. Not bad, but only the beginning.
All my writing is backed up on multiple machines, and on a server somewhere ‘out there’. No matter what computer I sit down to, the latest versions of all my stories are there. Effort required: none. I work on a story, save, and it automagically is updated everywhere else. The scenarios in which I lose work are extreme and hard to imagine. New files? No problem, as long as I save them in my DropBox folder.
For the security-minded, DropBox encrypts all the data they store, so you’re safe from hackers getting your stuff. The DropBox people have the key to the encryption, however, so you are not safe from subpoenas and warrantless government searches (which are common). Fortunately there is nothing stopping you from using your own encryption on the files first, and you will be the only one holding the key. I’m looking for the perfectly transparent, free, multiple-computer solution for this; when I find it I’ll let you know. Currently I manually encrypt sensitive files.
Edited to add: On the mac, it is quite simple to create a strongly-encrypted disk image. If you use Disk Utility to create a sparse image that’s less than 2GB and put that into your DropBox folder, then you can mount that image and save all your sensitive stuff in there. Works like a charm. I made my image 663 MB, and used AES-256 encryption (stronger is better, I figure).
DropBox is free for a limited amount of storage (2 GB), which is plenty for important text documents; for a small fee your limit can be increased to 50 GB. So far there are no products this simple and slick that you can install on your own server (so you can store as much as you want and control your own security), but that is only a matter of time, I suspect.
Pandora
People have been telling me about Pandora for a long time (in Internet years), but I’ve only recently started using it. It’s sweet! For those even farther under the rock than I am, Pandora is an Internet radio service that decides which song to play for you based on how you’ve responded to the previous songs. You can maintain multiple “stations” that have different kinds of music, based on what you’re up to at the moment or what mood you’re in. Currently I’m listening to a station called “Nirvana”. I chose a band and Pandora took it from there. I rejected a couple of tunes, gave a hearty thumbs-up to others, and off I go.
I’m a little disappointed that there isn’t much music in this list that I’ve never heard before. It seems like this should be a service ideal for helping me discover new bands, but it’s not quite there yet. Pandora seems a little too hit-oriented for my taste, but I’m hoping that over time, if I take the time to give a thumbs-up to stronger but more obscure music, I can deepen the pool of tunes Pandora draws from.
Sure I have a big heapin’ pile of music on my hard drive, and I still use it regularly (in part because Pandora has such a popular leaning), but using Pandora is way easier than sorting all my music into thematic and stylistic playlists that provide variety without straying too far from the stuff I’m in the mood for.
Mac note: The Mac’s ability to turn any part of any Web page into a dashboard widget worked awesomely with Pandora’s player.
Something Else
This article feels like it really should have a third item, but at the moment I can’t come up with one. Sure, there are the Internet game-changers like email and Google, but those are hardly news anymore. What would you put in this spot?
None of Your Damn Business
After reading a post in my buddy’s blog (and the articles that post links to) about National Security Letters I started to get more and more irate. Apparently, our government sends out thousands and thousands of letters to Libraries, Web hosts, and the like, saying, “We’re the government, we’re fighting terrorists, so give us everything you have about this person. Also, you’re not allowed to tell anyone about this, not even your lawyer.” This is not like a search warrant, because there is no judicial oversight.
The FBI’s use of national security letters to get information on Americans without a court order increased from 16,804 in 2007 to 24,744 in 2008. The 2008 requests targeted 7,225 U.S. people.
Those are all requests for personal information with no warrant, no need for probable cause, and no right to legal counsel even for the people who are not themselves under investigation. I’m not a trained legal scholar, but good lord, this can’t possibly be constitutional.
Well, it’s not like I have anything to hide, but if my ISP got served with one of these letters, would they turn over the information, or would they fight? Would Google protect the emails mouldering in that account that I rarely check? What about my Web hosting provider? I would love to see each entity that has my personal information publicly state that they will not turn over information without due process.
The only way this governmental bullying will be stopped is if everyone agrees not to be intimidated.
On a personal level, I’ve decided to start a policy of encrypting my emails. Not because there’s anything incriminating in there, but because if only secrets are encrypted, then everyone knows where the secrets are. And really, it’s nobody’s business but mine what I put in private correspondence. If everyone encrypted all their messages, the constitutional rape called National Security Letters would be pointless.
Toward that end I have installed Gnu Privacy Guard, which is based on OpenPGP (Pretty Good Privacy), a system which can withstand any attacks feasible at this time (naturally as computing power increases, the encryption must be made ever-more sophisticated).
It takes two to pass a secret message, however. I’m not able to encrypt messages to people who do not also have GPG or PGP installed, and who do not have my public key. The system works with a pair of keys – one I keep secret and another that everyone can see. When the message is encoded using one key, it can be decoded using the other. So if I have your public key, I can encode a message that only you can read.
It’s a bit of a hassle to set up GnuPG (available for Mac, Windows, and Linux), but once you have your key generated and all the pieces in place, it’s pretty transparent to use. My public key is now available on many servers, so once you have the plugin to your email program installed, it’s easy to load.
You can learn more through the link called “Jerry’s public key” on the sidebar in the top section. Please join me in taking the teeth out of National Security Letters and the bullying bureaucrats that use them.
Addendum: Comcast’s privacy policy states that they will not disclose information without a subpoena, warrant, or “other valid legal process”. Then they go on to say they will also disclose information if they think “the disclosure of information is necessary to prevent financial loss“. That means they reserve the right to sell out their customers if they think they could end up incurring legal costs to protect them. Sigh.
Open Letter to the Guy with the Battered Flag on his SUV
Yes, I’m talking to you. You know who you are; you’re the guy that thinks flag-burning should be constitutionally banned, yet you drive around with a tattered, battered mockery of the flag and the country it represents. Oh, I know you felt proud when you put that little flag on there. DAMN I’m a good American! Let’s all stand up and salute (me)! Just remember: when you bought that flag, you also took on responsibility.
Then you continued to fly that flag in the rain, and at night. Huh. Kinda disrespectful there, Sparky.
Now your flag is much the worse for wear. It is truncated, and the edge is tattered to threads. The dyes have all faded, especially the red, so that the stripes are barely discernible. Yet still you parade around with this thing attached to your car. How is this not worse than someone burning a flag as a conscious exercise of free speech?
There used to be a lot more of you. In the last patriotism boom millions of folks bought (incorrectly packaged and handled) little flags and put them on their cars. Look at me! I love America! What happened to all those little flags? I’ll tell you what happened: those patriots threw them in the trash once they got too tattered. Somehow sending a flag to rot in a landfill is not as bad a burning it.
Which brings me to the US Flag Code. You’ve already abused the hell out of the part that says “The flag should never be fastened, displayed, used, or stored in such a manner as to permit it to be easily torn, soiled, or damaged in any way.” (This is under the section titled “Respect for the Flag”.) It’s time to move on to disposing of your shameful insult to your country. What are you going to do? You’re not going to just throw it away, are you? You’re a patriot! The flag is a symbol of your country! That’s why you’re flying it in the first place. So what are you going to do?
How about “The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.”
Yep. You should burn that American Flag. Of course, this won’t be the camera-drawing antics of a hippie protester, but instead will be a solemn occasion while you consider the flag, what it stands for, and respect the service it has done. Gather the kids around to pass that deep respect on to the next generation. I recommend flagkeepers.org as a reference for the proper way to respectfully dispose of your little plastic badge of patriotism.
Gah! You’re going to throw it in the trash anyway, aren’t you. Yeah, you’re a real patriot.
Hacked!
Some of you may have noticed on this site a black-and-red screen with a self-congratulatory message from a bunch of assholes who are not me. Naturally this occurred when I was out in the middle of Nevada, so it took a while before I was able to effect repairs. Things are (mostly) working now. Actually, I had them fixed even before the hosting company became aware of the problem, apparently. The time they cite for the intrusion was 10pm July 3rd, but it was 10am or even earlier that the attack occurred. That fills me with confidence. (Maybe it’s just a typo in their message.)
My hosting company is setting up a new server and will be restoring this site from backups that are a few days old. Hopefully I’ll be able to update the database (no affected) to include episodes (like this one) and comments that have happened since the hack.
I assumed at first that the brand-new version of WordPress might have a security exploit, but then I discovered that jerssoftwarehut.com and all the sub-sites I have on that server (except paseeger.com, for reasons I can’t figure), were hacked. Then I tried to get into the control panel and it was hacked. That takes more access than even I have; the control panel code is off in some other place. No, my Web host was hacked.
I do not yet know whether the credit card fraud protection kicked in at about that time as a result of actual fraud or because I was traveling and some robot flagged the behavior as suspicious. It looks like there might be some bogus charges, but I won’t know for sure until I can talk to an actual human tomorrow. (I did talk to a human in India, but she was unable to access the information I need.
So now I have no credit card, and the ATM powers of the same card seem to be suspended as well (that or I’m misremembering my PIN). All the cash My sweetie thrust upon me for the trip, more than I would have taken otherwise, has proven a lifesaver.
Once I had a glowing recommendation for MM Hosting on this site. I really liked them at first; their service and responsiveness was fantastic. Things have been going downhill with them for a while, and I had already been investigating other options that gave me more control. Inertia has kept me here for the most part. No longer. Goodbye, MMHosting. I’ll be asking for a refund for the remainder of my contract.
What I’ve Been Up To
I’m rushing around getting ready to leave for a two-week writing conference. I’ll tell you about that once I’m on the road but I thought you might want to take a look at a Web site I’ve been working on for some nice folks I’ve never met face-to-face. It’s CAKE! Yummy!
Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange
It’s all about global warming and doing something about it. The planet’s getting warmer; best to have a plan. Take a look!
World Cup: US vs Ghana in real time!
Four years ago I was sitting in a bar in Prague when the US team was eliminated from the World Cup by Ghana. It was a crappy game; Ghana scored early and spent the rest of the time lying on the grass. Not the sort of game that could endear futbol to the American masses.
This morning I was geeking away in my office when the neighbor turned on the World Cup. Loud. In Spanish. My neighbor is not a native Spanish speaker as far as I know. As long as I was listening to the game, I decided to watch it. It didn’t take long before I realized why the neighbor chose the Spanish channel. I’m sticking with the English-speaking commentators myself, however, for comedic value.
It’s halftime as I write this, and Ghana is winning. Will they spend the second half lying on the ground pretending to be hurt? We don’t know yet. I’ve heard tell that this tournament is much less baby-filled than the one four years ago. In a totally unrelated bit of news, Italy and France, the two teams that competed for the championship last time, have been eliminated.
I’m curious to see whether the Japanese team spends time lying on the ground crying like a babies. Macho cultures like Argentina have no shame on the field, but Japanese culture is all about shame, and the avoidance thereof. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Japanese played a hard-nosed sort of soccer that would be (somewhat) more pleasant to watch.
OK, the second half has started. I’ll keep a running commentary, updating this page as I make my insightful observations.
Minute 47 – big chance for the good guys, good block, followed by a period of the us team milling around the perimeter waiting for someone on the Ghana team to switch sides, or something.
49:01 – a collision! They both got up and kept playing! Incredible!
50:45 – is it me, or is this ref in the way more than most? He’s not favoring either side, I’d say, equally in the way for both.
50:05 – Ghana showing they know how to just take the damn shot. Our boys should learn from that.
53:40 – Nice chance for the US. That’s the kind of pressure they need.
54:40 – Oh, crap, now it’s one of our guys lying on the ground. “He landed awkwardly,” the announcer said. Yeah, right. Dempsey wanted a whistle.
56:20 – Another US ankle-grab-to-get-a-whistle play. The Ghana player scorned him. As he should have.
59:45 – Announcer: The USA have to score. It’s that kind of insight that justifies bringing in a Brit to help with the broadcast.
61:50 – GOOOOOOOOOOOOAL! I was typing my last pithy comment and missed what caused the penalty kick, but the US collects.
64:25 – American announcer: He’s really stepped up his game. He’s approached it, he’s come up to… dammit, I don’t remember what he said. Let’s just say that the American guy is not going to be outdone by the Brit.
64:40 – Awesome work by the Ghana goalkeeper.
68:15 – get off the lawn!
74:00 – I’m too slow at typing to get the announcer’s stupid comments down before they say something else and I forget the first one. Right now they’re just chatting on about some player’s gloves.
74:50 – you know what makes a fascinating game? Two teams dicking around at midfield, showing no apparent desire to score. That’s what I like in a sporting contest.
75:50 – and as I typed that, a big chance for the US.
76:30 – get up, you wimp!
77:10 – oh, wait, he really is hurt. He came off and was replaced. I’d feel bad but let’s face it, I had a right to be skeptical.
78:30 – Oh, I love overdramatic announcers, too! Brit Announcer: Can the United States do it? Followed by more blahblahblah.
80:10 – Looked like a big chance for the US. I think the US guy was thinking too much about drawing a penalty and not enough about putting his boot on the ball. Almost scored anyway.
84:55 – You know what else is missing from this game? Endless offside traps by the US. They just did the first one of the half. Good riddance.
89:30 – Cleats to the chest brings a Ghana player down. Is he really hurt? His recovery was swift, I’ll say that.
91:00 – lame-ass yellow card against Ghana. FIFA should have a way to reverse calls like that; the guy will miss the next match because of it.
92:30 – US seems content to wait until the overtime period. Ghana on the attack!
93:30 – on a corner kick with no time left: “The US must defend this one well.” The Brit went on to explain that if they give up the winning goal with no time left they will lose. Really?
94 – Overtime! And the advertisers rejoice!
90:00 – It will be interesting to see if conditioning plays a role in overtime. The team with a little burst left in their legs will have a big advantage.
91:50 – the US goaltender kicks the ball to the Ghana goaltender. No one seemed interested in getting in the way.
94:40 – Ghana gets a breakaway goal! US defense caught napping and split down the middle. Trouble for the good guys.
95:25 – Brit: “this is where reputations are made. Some, broken. Ask the French and Italians.” American: “At some point you have to go and meet the parents.” (American quote may be inaccurate – they were coming too fast.)
96:45 – and Ghana is on the turf. The stretchers are out. Here we go.
98:05 – Brit: How many times can the US keep going to the well? Keep coming up with an answer? Keep digging up old clichés?
99:30 – Ghana on the turf again. This is what sport is all about.
100:34 – Ghana player goes down, ref not looking. He gets back up.
101:58 – Ghana dicking around more. Announcers saying the ref has to keep the game moving. Like that happens.
104:35 – US still not above a bit of turf work to try to draw a whistle.
105:35 – Announcers have gone into full “apologize for the US performance” mode. They’re conditioned to go 90 minutes. They’ve had to come from behind too many times. And so forth.
105:00 – American “If you see things happening, and you get there with your energy, you can really make good things happen.”
105:40 – Brit: “Forget the prep games, this is the real thing.”
106:20 – One guess who’s lying on the grass right now.
107:50 – US player manages to get into the penalty box before falling down, but only manages to draw a direct kick.
110:10 – Ghana player down for no apparent reason. US played on while they could. Here come the stretchers.
111:44 – still wasting time, Ghana player got up off the stretcher and seems ready to come back in.
112:30 – Ghana taking a full minute to sub a player. The clock ticks on. This is a serious flaw in the sport.
114:20 – It sounds like the British announcer doesn’t think it’s worth playing the rest of the game.
115:20 – Let’s see how long it takes for Ghana to get this kick in… about 30 seconds. I expected worse.
118:30 – I think the US players agree with the British announcer.
119:20 – US chance, then after the play a Ghana player sits down – he didn’t fall, mind you, and he wasn’t knocked over. He sat down. Where’s his teammate? The one who taunted the US player for going down. He’s got to straighten out his teammate! Happily he doesn’t get a whistle.
120:10 – an exciting moment as the US goalie tries to score.
And that’s all. Probably a better game than four years ago, but the same result. Perhaps, though, this game will do a slightly better job of selling soccer in the US than the World Cup did four years ago.
Both Ghana goals looked to me like defensive breakdowns by the US, but maybe that’s just the way soccer is. There were some long tedious parts that the announcers filled with blather, but maybe that’s the way announcers are. Now we return this blog to more interesting sports.
