Holy crap! I’m getting push-polled on slot machines in Maryland! Too bad I already oppose them! You’re wasting your time, suckers!

(Honestly, I don’t know how to feel about this.)

If it weren’t for you, I’d have never known not to say shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker or tits on television. I don’t see how that’ll come in handy, but thanks for taking it to the Supreme Court.

Dear Chris Matthews,

Nice work. Now do this to the rest of them like the media should have been doing for years. Hint: none of these? Republicans? know their history or they wouldn’t be? Republicans. Heck, anyone who has been paying attention for the last 7 years ought to have a hard time being a Republican.

Sincerely,

Everyone

I read a lot on the Internet and follow a lot of different news sources, so it’s nice to finally feel like I can believe something about a celebrity. Here’s what writer Neil Gaiman has to say about Angelina Jolie:

I like Angelina. She’s nice, very professional, and has a slightly goofy sense of humour. Last time I met her was November 2005, when she was doing the acting bit of Beowulf. Even then, it had already been reported in the papers that she had closed down production on Beowulf by walking off the set after a fight with Ray Winstone — two weeks before her first day on set. I realised that where she was concerned the press were happy to simply make up stuff that sounded credible. It didn’t need have to have any basis at all in reality.

Other than that, I’m assuming that everything else I read is crap. Neil Gaiman: America’s most trusted source of news.

John Gruber writes:

Lately, the correlation between AAPL stock run-ups and actual news regarding Apple is zero. Whereas most of the time there is any actual news, even news that to me seems good for Apple, the stock goes down.

Which is something that I’ve been noticing for a while, and not just with Apple. It seems like the stock market responds to just about any news by punishing the company involved. Did you quarterly results meet analysts predictions? The stock goes down. Did it beat them by too much? The stock goes down. That’s just strange.

But what’s downright dumb is when? nothing happens and the stock rises. How is that possible. So here’s my theory: good news does make stock prices go up. But not when most traders first hear about it. To them, anything in the press is bad, so anytime they read about a company, the stock goes down. But a week later when they talk to somebody smart enough to know what’s going on, the price starts creeping up.

The reason for the sudden dip is that there’s a small but significant number of day traders that are nothing but reactionary lemmings. On the other hand, there are lots of smart people out there who slowly begin to fill in the larger mass of traders in on the good news. The thing is that the lemmings all hear about the news at the same time, but the word of mouth filters out slowly over a few weeks.

What do you think?

Dear Newspapers,

I know you’re threatened by the Internet. It’s completely understandable. And I know you’re interested in getting in on some of this sweet blog action. No rules, no fact-checking, no standards. It’s a sweet life.

So welcome to the world of blogging. Enjoy yourselves! But do me a favor: if you’re going to call part of your website a blog, you have to provide a feed for it. And no, a feed for your entire site doesn’t count. A blog is an informal, irregularly scheduled collection of writings that you can subscribe to. Mixing that with your wire service articles isn’t cool.

Thanks,

Jemal

p.s. The same goes for podcasts.

Macworld UK is reporting that:

At issue is Apple’s insistence that artists allow fans to buy individual tracks unbundled. Radiohead object to this, as the band wants to sell its albums as they were meant to be heard – complete.

In accordance with their wishes, I hope you will join me in my solemn oath to uphold Radiohead’s wishes that their songs be allowed the artistic integrity that they deserve:

1. I pledge to boycott listening to Radiohead’s music on the radio or purchasing singles, since it is so important to listen to their songs in the appropriate context. To help others enjoy this music, I will call in and request radio stations not to play Radiohead’s singles.

2. I also pledge to only ever listen to the album in one sitting, without pausing, rewinding or skipping from track to track, as the artists intended. Otherwise, I’d just be ruining this amazing music, none of which any of us have heard.

3. I will write to Radiohead to ask them to please release the CD as one single track to encourage this kind of behavior. If they could rig it so that it won’t allow pausing, rewinding or fast-forwarding, that would be great as well.

4. Since allowing people to rip the album will give them even more control, I will ask them to include software on the disk to prevent that sort of whole-sale destruction of the integrity of their album. If they could make said software install itself into a hidden area on any computer that it is inserted into, that would be ideal.

5. I will also ask Radiohead if they would never play any songs off of their albums live unless they intend to play them in the order that they are on the album, and with the same exact transitions.

This is, after all, serious music.

Or these jumped-up nitwits could get over themselves and stop trying to control how people enjoy their music and just appreciate the fact that they have a huge following of rabid fans who will buy any damn fool thing they produce, no matter how indulgent or pretentious. Also, they should realize that allowing people to purchase a sample song off of their album without purchasing the entire album will generate them more sales, not less.

I’ve discovered a great source for news and information at The Spatula. What I like about it is that it seems to cover a lot of the stories that the mainstream media won’t and it does it with a unique spin.

The best part though, for me, is that users of the site can contribute their own stories to the members section of the site. And right now, I’m the featured member of the week! After this week, you’ll be able to find my article over in the members section where I’m hoping to see more examples of great citizen journalism in the future.

So check it out and let me know what you think of both my article and the site in general.

Dear Republican Politicians,

Since it seems that each and every one of you have a secret gay sex life, don’t you think it might be time to come out of the closet? I mean, I don’t care if you want to stay in the closet, I really don’t, though I find your hypocritical voting records troubling, but think of what a life as an openly gay politician would mean. No more hiding out in public restrooms, no more embarrassing press conferences, no more sneaking around trying to think of people to blame for your arrests.

The thing about all of this is that eventually, everyone will find out what you’re up to (I’m looking at you, Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham) because you keep having sex with people! Those people aren’t going to watch you vote against gay rights year after year without speaking up. So why not just come out and defuse the whole situation? You know, stay ahead of the situation.

And just imagine what a relief it will be when you can stop this whole self-loathing thing! You can stop supporting those beards you’ve been paying for, you can meet somebody who shares your interests in lowering the capital gains tax and flower arranging, and best of all you can listen to a much better class of dance music! I mean, aren’t you tired of pretending you like line dancing when you could be at one of DC’s many gay clubs? I’m sure the selection in Idaho is limited, but after a long day on the senate floor disenfranchising minorities and restricting civil liberties, you can take your pick of clubs to do some poppers and mingle with cute guys hungry for a sugar daddy.

Just promise me you’ll think it over.

Your constituent,

Jemal Cole

Dean is author Steven Berlin Johnson’s newborn son. He writes:

I think it would help him get a head start in the world to have a lot of pagerank right out of the gate. So instead of sending flowers or food baskets, just link…

Just doing my part. Congrats!

The best thing about Netscape.com being bought by AOL and then becoming a clone of digg is that when Consumerist publishes an article containing the dirty tricks that AOL uses to keep people using their crappy service you can post a link to that site on a subsidiary of AOL.

That might, in fact, be the only good thing about the whole deal.

There’s an ongoing debate about how much the public can trust the information they get from bloggers. The gold standard, of course, to which people compare bloggers are journalists. Journalists, the occasional Jayson Blair aside, have a pretty good reputation for fairness and accuracy. And bloggers certainly can’t compete against that standard.

The problem is that the reputation, earned by a few reporters, is evenly applied to all of them. Obviously, this is just as unfair as painting all bloggers as partisan douchebags because of… well, you know can fill in that list as easily as I can. Heck, stick me on that list.

Which brings me to the point of this whole diatribe: I was reading Jalopnik the other day for my dose of snarky automotive news (vitamin SAN!), when I came across an article about recalls. Now, as a consumer obsessed with quality, reliability and safety, this is the kind of thing I’m fascinated with. You see, recalls are often seen as a sign that a company makes lousy products. But the way you measure the quality of companies that make children’s safety equipment (e.g. car seats, strollers, high chairs) is by how many recalls they order. You see, companies in that segment that don’t give a damn about your kid cracking his skull open don’t do much safety testing, especially on shipping products, and they don’t issue many recalls.

Automotive recalls are a bit stickier. Some recalls are initiated by the automaker. Others are forced on them by government regulators. Some are the result of lawsuits brought by consumers. It’s almost impossible for the consumer to know which is which.

People who saw Fight Club know about the recall coordinator’s formula:

Take the number of vehicles in the field “A”, multiply it by the probable rate of failure “B”, then multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement “C”. A times B times C equals X. If X is less that the cost of a recall, we don’t do one.

In the book, the narrator goes on to describe how this means that they do a lot of recalls on silly things like windshield washers, but tricky electrical problems that are expensive to correct and hard to prove get settled by lawyers.

So when you see that a company has a lot of recalls, you have to determine the cause of the problem, the cost of the components, and the reason a recall was initiated to determine if the automaker in question is a scummy manufacturer of unsafe vehicles or a responsible company that is concerned with your safety and well-being.

Needless to say, this isn’t what most people do. It’s hard. So they just count the recalls and stay away from companies that have a lot of them.

And sadly, even that is too hard for some journalists.

Back to the story: Jalopnik’s post was nothing more than a link to an article by BusinessWeek Online called The Most Recalled Cars 2006. I read the article, saw that they provided a small amount of context to the recall issue, and felt disappointed that they didn’t try to do any real reporting. You see, their article was just a pointer to some information they dug up on Edmunds.com about which cars had the most recalls.

As the owner of a 2005 Honda Accord, I was a little surprised to see the 2006 Accord listed in their top 12. I’ve been checking on Honda recalls pretty regularly (I said I was obsessed) and didn’t remember seeing 3 for the Accord. So I jumped over to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: Office of Defects Investigation Recall Search (I have it bookmarked), and sure enough, there were 3 recalls listed for the Accord. Upon closer inspection, I realized that one of them wasn’t from Honda at all – it was for an after-market manufacturer of replacement headlights. Let’s be clear: these aren’t Honda parts. They aren’t made by Honda, sold by Honda, or recommended by Honda. These headlights are the ones preferred by the Kids These Days™ because they’re whited out and don’t contain the little amber bits that will ruin their rep.

Even closer inspection made me realize that this didn’t just affect Honda Accords: this recall covered several Hondas and Chevys and Fords and Toyotas. And then I remembered this paragraph from the article:

Moreover, as parts sharing has increased, recalls often encompass a variety of brands and vehicle types. One 292,000-unit recall due to faulty headlamps from a third-party supplier, Walnut (Calif.)-based Anzo USA, for instance, affects Hondas (HMC), Toyotas, Fords, and Chevrolets alike.

The recall that they’re talking about is the one I found listed for the Accord – but that paragraph makes it sounds like a) the headlamps are original equipment, b) the same part is used on all of those cars and c) that the part was failing. In fact, this is a whole line of completely different after-market parts that were shoddy by design.

So I dug a little deeper. The top vehicle on their list with 4 recalls was the Chevy Silverado 1500. But two of those recalls were for after-market headlamps. The second vehicle was the Dodge Durango with 4 recalls. 1 minute of searching turned up 6 actual recalls, all of them real, all of them affecting more vehicles than either of the 2 recalls affecting the Accord, and several of them very serious. The funny thing was that the last of these recalls was initiated two weeks before the BusinessWeek article went to print, but even throwing out that one, they were still off.

So, being the Web 2.0 collaborative kind of guy that I am, I left comments on both Jalopnik and the BW site letting them know that the data was faulty. Here’s what I got back from the author of the article:

Hello readers, this is Matt Vella, the author of the story. As was mentioned in the text, recalls are hard to get a handle on for several reasons, including multi-manufacturer parts sharing and the complexities of manufacturer-initiated reporting. In reference to Jemaleddin’s points, we included the head lamps recall to illustrate how some recalls range far beyond one brand or manufacturer. The chart within the article was created with research in conjunction with Edmunds.com’s database. But as you point out, these number fluctuate constantly. This piece is intended to take a broad look at the trend. Thanks for reading!

Of course, my point wasn’t that the numbers fluctuate. It’s that they got them wrong. And guess what: they still didn’t correct the problems. Blaming Edmunds.com is a nice touch, but doesn’t solve the problem.

So I commented again, giving them all the necessary data to fix the story. That one they didn’t post. Maybe it was the part where I questioned their commitment to the facts. Whatever. Here’s the real data:

To sum that up: half of their data is wrong. And what are they planning to do about it? Evidently nothing. Meanwhile, people visiting their page, and pages that have copied their lousy table like Jalopnik, will get not only an incomplete picture of the recall situation, but an incorrect one.

Now, will this cost any of those automakers sales? Probably not enough to hurt them (though GM is on the brink) since the pain is spread around so many companies. But the fact that BusinessWeek would rather throw Edmunds.com under the bus than fix the data that I was able to provide them with less than 10 minutes of research says something pretty sad about the state of journalism. The days of big time bloggers being able to delete valid criticisms and dodge hard questions are over. Maybe it’s time we hold journalists to the same standards.

Better autism bloggers have already covered the stupidity of the Chicago Tribune’s Painful questions of blame (reg. required), but a couple things leapt off the page at me, so I have to get in my two cents.

For those who haven’t been following the Katie McCarron story, her mother, a doctor, broke down, killed 3-year-old Katie, and then tried unsuccessfully to kill herself. The press, and members of the “Mercury Epidemic” crowd have been placing some, if not all, of the blame on Katie and her autism.

Which, of course, makes me sick.

But back to the article:

Indeed, few medical battles are more charged than that between parents who believe mercury in their children’s vaccines brought on autism and the medical establishment that has found no evidence to support that claim…

Others suggest that perhaps working among other doctors skeptical of the vaccine connection created an emotional tug of war for McCarron.

My question is, what would these “others” that the author has been talking to have had McCarron’s co-workers do? Support a theory with no evidence? Pretend that there was something to the mercury hypothesis to make her feel better?

Seriously, are these “others” trying to blame the doctors who told Karen the truth for Katie’s murder? Huh? Let’s leave aside the point that if Katie was 3 years old, there was no mercury in any of her vaccines.

If blame is to be laid at anyone’s feet other than Karen McCarron, it should be those who perpetuated the vaccine hysteria and convinced her that there was a cure for Katie’s autism – and that the medical community was trying to keep it away from her. If those same litigious anti-science idiots hadn’t dedicated their time to making autistic children into bogeymen in order to get funding for their idiotic treatments, maybe Karen wouldn’t have thought that her daughter’s life would be a miserable ordeal. Jared’s life certainly isn’t.

Dear Media,

You know I haven’t been a big fan of yours since I heard that some incredibly large portion of the public still thinks that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and that we found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And your cowardice in confronting the Bushies about their lies is getting grating.

But I know how you can make it up to me. Stop referring to visits from Bush and his administration to the troops in Iraq as “surprise visits.” Why?

1. If every visit is a surprise visit, it’s not that surprising anymore.
2. It’s not as though Bush is showing up with a keg and hiding in a darkened barracks to celebrate.
3. The purpose of a surprise visit is to surprise someone. Bush’s purpose in not telling people he’s coming is to avoid being blown up since we still have basically no control over the country.

So do me this favor, and we’ll be square. It’s a small thing, and it shouldn’t be too difficult considering that it’s the truth.

Thanks,

Jemal

For those that thought I was being a little harsh to the ladies of the “Autism Every Day” video, please check out this Channel 19 report, Mother confesses to suffocating daughter:

Morton Police said 37-year old Karen McCarron confessed to suffocating her three-year-old daughter, Katherine…

Katherine McCarron had been diagnosed with autism.

Morton police said Karen said she wanted to end her pain and her daughter’s pain, as well.

But that’s an isolated incident. We also have a murder-suicide in England:

Police have identified a body found in the River Humber as that of a mother who apparently jumped to her death with her 12-year-old autistic son.

Two thoughts:

1. When these folks talk about killing their kids, they’re not kidding. Somebody needs to step in when people start talking about killing their children and take these things seriously. I don’t want to fall into the 24-news-channel “any 3 related events is an epidemic” fallacy, but the fact that in each of these stories the mothers are being portrayed not as killers, but as poor sad women pushed to the edge makes me sick.
2. There’s a relationship between depression and autism. Autism Diva writes: “The majority—but not all—parents of autistic kids are autistic, BAP, bipolar, OCD or unipolar depressive. Autism Diva thinks that especially tendencies toward OCD and bipolar are seen in some of the more vocal parents.” I can’t speak to what the percentages are, but when physicians diagnose children with Autism, they need to take a closer look at the parents.

UPDATE, May 24, 2006: A third makes the epidemic official.

An Albany couple has been charged with first-degree arson and first-degree manslaughter in the death of their 19-year-old son, who died after being burned in an apartment fire.

According to Albany police, Nicolaas Dirk DeGroot, 45, and Agnes Elizabeth DeGroot, 48, started a fire in their apartment and left their son, who had severe autism, locked inside.

BoingBoing and Slashdot are both linking to this story about the world’s last ninja. Let’s take a loook:

But he also has watched his legacy co-opted by goofy caricatures such as “Mutant Ninja Turtles” and schlocky Hollywood send-ups like “Beverly Hills Ninja.”

“I think it’s pathetic,” Hatsumi says of the ninja’s modern image.

Wow, how tragic. Our modern cynicism and lack of respect is tarnishing the true spirit of ninjitsu. What best exemplifies that spirit?

Legend says that during one battle, Takamatsu snatched an eyeball from a would-be Chinese bandit.

Oh yeah: eyeball snatching. Get bent Hatsumi. We’re talking about assassins here, not artists or poets. Ninjas are nothing more than deadly prostitutes, pal, and in fact they’re lower than prostitutes, because at least they make somebody happy.

TangleBones: the only website willing to take on the ninja menace.

Much like everyone else, I’ve been disappointed with the way that reporters have handled the failures of the Bush administration. Let’s face it, when most of the population believes that Saddam was involved in 9/11, the media isn’t doing a very good job.

So imagine my surprise when I read Keith Olbermann’s The Nexus of Politics and Terror. Keith actually addresses the fact that the Bushies seem to raise and lower the terror alert levels for purely political reasons! I’m so shocked! Not at the Bush administration, because nothing is below them, but by MSNBC for doing a story like this!

If that doesn’t impress you with MSNBC’s cojones, watch the videos of the recent Bush snafus with the press. Oh sure, the White House press corps is giving it to them as well, but nobody even shows that on the news!

Thank you MSNBC – and please, don’t just roll over and give them a free ride again like you have been for the last 5 years.

Admittedly, I haven’t been following Wilma very closely, because the last time I heard anything, it was a category 1 hurricane and I was thinking that I could blow off paying attention to it entirely.

Now that it’s a category 5 is it too early to start crapping my pants and screaming about the end of the world? Is this global warming? I mean, can I start thinking of The Day After Tomorrow as a reference guide at this point?

And then I have to worry about indictments being handed down on half of the administration: note to 51% of America: thanks, assholes. Like I needed to worry about that on top of all these natural disasters.

You know, I really thought that last year’s election and the general stupidity, mendacity, malevolence, and incompetence of George W. Bush and his administration would put me over the edge of being outraged and stressed out about the world around me, but this year is just too much. Can I tap out or something? I mean, I had to stop listening to NPR in my car last year to keep from going into work foaming at the mouth – now I can’t even watch the local news segments that come on during the commercials in Lost without getting freaked out.

Can’t we just call a truce on all of our wars and politics and trade disputes until Nature stops trying to eradicate us? ‘Cause I could use a break.

I had a friend who was a bit of a conservative that used to try to get me to read articles from the Washington Times. In reading these pieces I would always end up telling him, “I just cannot understand how you can read a newspaper written by such illiterates. I’ve circled all of the spelling mistakes and highlighted all of the grammar errors. How do you expect me to be convinced by something like this?”

But he went on reading it because it reinforced the opinions and prejudices that he held so dear. And I’ve continued to not read the Washington Times.

Until this morning. I was standing at somebody’s desk waiting for them to show up and glanced down at this article about the Angels in the sports section. Here’s the way they quoted Bill Stoneman, the Angels’ general manager:

”I used to go to games when I was growing up was a very quiet, reserved crowd,” said Stoneman, who grew up nearby in West Covina. “That crowd doesn’t come to Angels games anymore.

”The crowd now is really into and unbelievably passionate. Sometimes you think you are on the East Coast, in the northeast. The fans there are very passionate about their sports. And Angels fans, every year, are becoming more like those passionate northeast fans.”

Don’t be embarassed if you have to read that through about 15 times. I know I did.

Now obviously, they could have just written down exactly what he said and pulled out some “uh” and “ah” noises, but even so: you don’t quote your main source in a way that makes them look like an idiot. Right? Right?

Good old Skank pointed out an article on Salon titled, Has Google Peaked? I gave a general answer to that question, but I wanted to respond to this paragraph separately:

The recent announcement of an alliance between Google and Sun is another sign of potential future trouble. Usually when Google trumpets something, it has a product ready for prime time (even if it’s a product that remains in beta for years). But despite the media froth about Google and Sun joining forces to attack Microsoft on the desktop, all the companies have agreed to do is distribute and promote each other’s products—and without a plan to actually make it happen.

Translation:

“Those bastards! They told us they were making an announcement, we got all frothed up guessing about what it would be, we printed all sorts of rampant speculation, and now we’re disappointed! Sure, it’s our fault for printing unsourced rumors, but we’ll blame them anyway.”

While Google has fallen victim to this sort of thing a few times, the all-time worst punching bag for the rumor mill is Apple. Every time Apple stages an event, the internet is flooded with speculation that gets picked up by the tech journalists who pass it on to millions of other people. When Apple finally announces whatever product or service they’ve been planning, stock market analysts are disappointed because it isn’t what was rumored, and Apple’s stock price falls.

Let me stress this part: Apple’s stock price falls because people are disappointed that the truth isn’t as good as the lies they were told. “The new PowerBook is only 30% faster and 15% lighter? I heard it would be made of fairy dust, make waffles and cure my impotence. Apple sucks.”

Another great bit of tech journalism about Apple: when the iPod nano came out, every article talked about how beautiful and pristine and clean and stunning it was. And now they’re all reporting that it scratches easily. What? Something that’s prized for its beauty and you have to take care of it? You can’t keep Faberge eggs in the coal bin? The horror!

So do me a favor, tech journalists: put a lid on it. If you’re going to print something, either make sure that it’s true or be willing to be publicly caned when it turns out you were full of it.