Zombies: fair & balanced?

In case mind control programming doesn't keep the zombie population from spazzing out, and concern is mounting (see Study: Climate zombies threaten “collapse of society”), Congress has put in place a (classified) bill that defends against flesh-eating (classified):




That's Old Age thinking according to Steven C. Schlozman, MD, who says that Zombie Autopsies should be the next step in understanding why such a large part of the population...


The Zombie Autopsies with Steven Schlozman, MD from GCP authors on Vimeo.

Note to self: If Zombies are Red, Vampires are Blue (earlier in Film Threat), what about the Vampire Economy or The Frankenstein Economy: Monster metaphor of the moment?

Meme tracking and the News Cycle

A new Cornell study, Meme-tracking and the Dynamics of the News Cycle, is discussed by the New York Times in Study Measures the Chatter of the News Cycle. This study is interesting on a few levels, since the Cornell project tracks "the quotes and phrases that appear most frequently over time across this entire online news spectrum. This makes it possible to see how different stories compete for news and blog coverage each day, and how certain stories persist while others fade quickly."

But so far the effort seems to be targeted to prove that blogs lag slightly behind mainstream media and other details which can safely be concluded from casual looks at Google Hot Trends, and aggregators like Techmeme, PopURLs, and Original Signal. Social problems and political hot potatoes are safely avoided, as are steps toward improved decision-making. For a neglected perspective, see the recent AEP post on Anthony Downs' "Issue-Attention Cycle."

The problem with news is that celebrity, impulse twit-ches, and emotion rules -- "if it bleeds, it leads" still applies. News mostly feeds us lurid filler. Recognized on a basic level since at least the time of Edward Bernays is that advertising and politics are propaganda. This can be seen in behavioral targeting, web tracking, and the careers of people like consultant Frank Luntz. For some background on "framing" for the social mind, see Douglas Rushkoff's PBS docs Merchants of Cool and The Persuaders. Right now the pitchman has a foot in the door, but there's more coming, like "social-networking TV," an electronic panopticon where you can "participate in your own manipulation," as EBN mused.

Still the Cornell study is worth a look, and we can expect more visualizations because you can download MemeTracker data. There's also a beginning of a discussion by Zachary M. Seward of the Neiman Journalism Lab, Chris Anderson, and Scott Rosenberg.

Here's an excerpt of the NYT article:

'The paper, “Meme-tracking and the Dynamics of the News Cycle,” was also written by Jure Leskovec, a postgraduate researcher at Cornell, who this summer will become an assistant professor at Stanford, and Lars Backstrom, a Ph.D. student at Cornell, who is going to work for Facebook. The team has set up interactive displays of their findings at memetracker.org.
Social scientists and media analysts have long examined news cycles, though focusing mainly on case studies instead of working with large Web data sets. And computer scientists have developed tools for clustering and tracking articles and blog posts, typically by subject or political leaning.

But the Cornell research, experts say, goes further in trying to track the phenomenon of news ideas rising and falling. “This is a landmark piece of work on the flow of news through the world,” said Eric Horvitz, a researcher at Microsoft and president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. “And the study shows how Web-scale analytics can serve as powerful sociological laboratories.”

Sreenath Sreenivasan, a professor specializing in new media at the Columbia Journalism School, said the research was an ambitious effort to measure a social phenomenon that is not easily quantified. “To the extent this kind of approach could open the door to a new understanding of the news cycle, that is very interesting,” he said.'

Rush: PDFs cannot be searched

Should Adobe expect a support call from Rush Limbaugh? A post by Media Matters could make you wonder how someone could miss both the Find and Search functions. Here's an excerpt from Memo to Limbaugh: Try CTRL+F before blasting Dems for purportedly unsearchable bill:

"During the February 13 broadcast of his syndicated radio program, Rush Limbaugh claimed that Democrats 'have reformatted the bill -- they've made it a PDF [Portable Document Format, created by Adobe Systems] file when they posted it. Now, for those of you that don't use computers, basically what that means is that it cannot be keyword searched. A PDF file is essentially a picture of a page. And, so, you can read every page, but you cannot keyword search it. It's not a text file as legislation normally is as posted on these public websites. They don't want anybody knowing what's in this."

It does seem that somebody doesn't want those of us that don't use computers to know what's in the bill. You'd need a computer and a lot time searching to figure out what was in the 1000 pages or so that, like the Patriot Act, most legislators won't really read.

Stints in The Onion, The Daily Show, & The Colbert Report

via Boing-Boing... The Sound of Young America interviews Ben Karlin, the lead writer and more for The Onion, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report. I like the idea that a "news" show should actually look at the statements of people making the news and use real clips to prove points.

The interview doesn't work here but you can watch it at Boing-Boing or CurrentTV. Truthiness can be embedded though; here's Stephen Colbert's Speech at the White House Correspondent's Dinner (2006):

Free Monkees 'Head' amost gone

While YouTube audio still works... from the Monkees movie Head, which was written and produced by Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson. This clip, which was like a title sequence but without titles, is cut off so the surprise cut-away is missing. For more on the script of this sequence see Mirror / Ditty Diego Changes, which looks at the shooting script and notes changes plus techniques & set-ups, characters, and obscure cinematic references.



After Effects tip: Motionworks had 2 nice tips recently...
Cinema 4D: The Vibrate Tag shows how "the vibrate tag can be used to add automatic animation and save time when working in Cinema 4D." After Effects: Looking Through Lights shows "how you can look through a camera linked to a light and see exactly what the light is pointing at, making lighting your After Effects scene easier and more intuitive."

Tim Robbins' NAB keynote speech

Tim Robbins' NAB keynote speech was funny and serious, and criticized the broadcast industry focus on fluff. Robbins could be wrong -- maybe we aren't better than that!

Anyway, there are various versions of the speech available now:

- AR&D's Media Reinvent shot a big screen on a $100 Flip camera.
- Tim posted audio and text on Huffington Post.
- Ad Age has audio in Hear the Six Best Minutes of Tim Robbins' Controversial NAB Speech.

Robbins had much more to say than Ad Age gives you, but they do hint at background details. Lost Remote gave more background in a live-blog.

Update: There a few more... Broadcasting & Cable has an article and the mp3, and TV Worth Watching has more.

The Pentagon Goes Hollywood

The Pentagon's relationship to Hollywood is hardly monolithic, although filmmakers who go native are often refused support, like Francis Coppola with his excellent Apocalypse Now.

Truthdig is hosting an interesting article on the conscription of popular imagination with The Pentagon Goes Hollywood by Nick Turse, author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives. The TomDispatch author interview is below.

Unfortunately, this excerpt article makes no mention of Jack Valenti and his infamous support for propaganda injection. Few of us remember which filmmakers volunteered to sprinkle their films with propaganda, even for recent projects after the September 11 attacks. For additional details see The Boston Globe series "Hollywood Goes to War," "Collateral Brain Damage? The Hollywood Propaganda Ministry" at Ratical, Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies, and "The Manufacture of World Order: The Security Services and the Movie Industry" at Media/Culture Journal.

Hacks v. Flacks

Beet.TV has an short section of a 10-month old interview with Chris Anderson of Wired about video and "the long tail." The original interview, available as parts 1 & 2, was quite good.

Beet's actual topic though was commentary and links on a skirmish between journalists (“hacks”) and publicists (“flacks”), this time after Anderson published flack e-mail addresses he blocked. It's an interesting way to peek into those worlds. Anderson himself followed up, and even the New York Times jumped in to downplay damage to PR -- but at least giving Sheldon Rampton and PR Watch rare coverage.

China bans unapproved reincarnation

China bans unapproved reincarnation!

I missed the news of this new law in August, which aims at keeping future religious leaders of colonial Tibet pre-approved by the Communist Party.

The uses of PR video

News Videographer ponders the uses of PR video now easliy available on the web.

Update from comments by News Videographer: Video news releases or VNRs (also referred to as fake TV news) are slippery. I think those pieces should be acknowledged if used for more than free stock footage. But I haven't thought deeply beyond pondering things like the Sourcewatch article.

The panopticon of social-networking TV

As EBN mused, "Participate in your own manipulation!"

Watching TV Online posts about the electronic panopticon of "Social-networking TV":

"According to New Scientist, Microsoft is working on a version of its instant messaging system that is designed to connect to your TV, DVD player or media player and keep track of everything you've watched - to make TV viewing a less lonely viewing experience.

"The messaging system allows online buddies to see what the others have been watching. So groups of friends can synchronise their viewing habits and chat about what they've seen.

New Scientist thinks it's a powerful idea as Marketing experts have long recognised that personal recommendations from like-minded peers are far more influential than adverts or other forms of publicity."

Microsoft is not the first to believe in social TV, both Joost enables viewers to chat live with others watching the same channels and the service also works with Gmail. and Jabber instant-messaging accounts. And Babelgum will enable viewers to discuss, discover and recommend their favorite programs through a social network."

Redefining reality by editing Wikipedia

Recent reports from Wired and Daily Kos discussed attempts by certain organizations (Fox News, Diebold, Wal-Mart, ExxonMobil, the CIA, and the U.S. House of Representatives) to redefine reality by editing Wikipedia articles in their favor.

While it's interesting we all know this now, the problem is that we all know this now, and the even the stupid evil-doers will learn about IP addresses. For more see:

Lost Remote's WikiScanner reveals anonymous Wikipedia editors
Crooks & Liars' An embarrassed Fox News hits Wikipedia

I don't think that any one could have predicted that

Did someone Photoshop that picture or is 'My Pet Goat' really upside down? ...and from Crooks & Liars, a day late:

'Today is not only the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, it is the day six years ago that Bush received the infamous “Bin Laden determined to strike in US” Presidential Daily Bulletin. Carpetbagger has more, and there’s a blogswarm going on as well…'

Condoleezza Rice (aka Madame Supertanker) was the National Security Advisor who read Bush his briefings in 2001. Later she made the infamous statements including "I don't think that any one could have predicted that..." and "this was not a warning." Again, the title of the the August 6, 2001 PDB (gif): "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." Spocko's Brain has a video that effectively lays out the context of the PDB (the briefing presented to the President by the National Security Advisor) with a timeline highlighting some of the official warnings that clearly anticipated the 9-11 attack.

Heckava job Condi.

I dont know, maybe it was the doses

Reelpop prescribes Incarcerex: "Anti-propaganda propaganda from Brooklyn-based animation artist Haik Hoisington, touted by Andrew Sullivan and Reason Magazine. Hilarious."

Dick's shadow world

The current Vice-President and associates have an interesting ad campaign via noise machine talking points and visuals designed to obstruct Congressional investigation and disclosure of Executive Branch activities (taught in grade schools as 'checks and balances'). Crook & Liars gives you access to some of the issues discussed on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Countdown.

Tipped Cow gets mad

Oddly, Creative Cow seems to be in the process of censoring sites, posts, and writers -- and blocking IP addresses of those who go off-script however defined. It seems they don't want to mention sites or possibly products from unapproved vendors, and filter results and postings with an internal blacklist of "enemy" sites. It's said that dvxuser.com and dvinfo.com do this too, and God knows if that's true or who else does this.

The discussion began on the AE-list; General Specialist summarized the discussion and hosts comments, and was purged from the Cow for posting about the banned sites! A very good discussion then followed in comments. Capria.TV also added reasoned discussion. The whole episode got my overactive imagination thinking of Lewis Mumford's The Myth of the Machine series, with the Creative Cow as an electronic panopticon or megamachine similar to a Sumerian temple construction by slaves surrounded by gang bosses and an army.

Someone also suggested "that ALL the content (especially the product reviews) should be taken with a major grain of salt." Well that goes for every content provider, not just the Cow, because I've witnessed a number of reviews adjusted by a star here or mouse there. I once asked why I was doing a certain feature article and was told it was a "vendor obligation piece," meaning a major advertiser wasn't getting mentioned enough and needed custom staff exposure. And that was at a good outfit. Some writers might insist they never seen such things but they have been "chosen" to do a article instead of someone else. Articles aren't really born in general staff meetings as is often claimed. Other problems with reviews is that they pay low, require expertise, and have tight deadlines, so some writers need to lean on press kits written by marketeers (who find the pay scale better than their old media jobs). It's not a total lock, but a sleaze factor can creep in at times.

The big boys play a much more serious game than the Cow, so remember "Aim High" so you don't shoot your friend in the face. For some background of the role of expert marketeers, see The Corporation and Douglas Rushkoff's PBS docs Merchants of Cool and The Persuaders.

Update 06-29-07: The Cow responds and along with HD for Indies tries to convince that everything's dandy with glittering generalities, but neither address issues and background discussed on the AE List and on General Specialist (the comments especially). AE has flourished with the free exchange of advice and discounts, back at least to the old AOL forum where top users and developers shared tips cooperatively, raising all boats.

O'Reilly name-calls once every 7 seconds

from Jim Romenesko:

An Indiana University study finds that Fox News personality Bill O'Reilly calls a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night. "It's obvious he's very big into calling people names, and he's very big into glittering generalities," says IU j-prof Mike Conway. "He's not very subtle. He's going to call people names, or he's going to paint something in a positive way, often without any real evidence to support that viewpoint."

Also from The Poynter Institute, this time the design/graphics aggregator, EyeTrack07: The Myth of Short Attention Spans and addenda.

Our national nightmare is over

Digital Tampering & Forensics

In honor of this week's Photoshop CS 3 announcement, here's Computing Photographic Forgeries from Science News, with more at Hany Farid's Research site at Dartmouth.

Update: more from Science News...
The next steps in photography could blur reality

"Cutting Edge" Spin

Google video has some really good documentaries available, and they're not limted to 10 minutes like YouTube. Here's two:

The Cutting Edge - The Magic of Movie Editing looks at the art and technique of editing film, with commentary from Scorscese, Spielberg, and others.

Like Feed, Spin used satellite feed footage to expose the media-constructed reality of politics in the 1992 presidential election.

By the way, theDossier.ukonline.co.uk also has a good collection of hard-hitting & odd docs, but in low quality Real format.