Dowbrigade

Lars-Erik Fisk: Volkswagenball

at the Fleming
Museum at the University of Vermont

view
quicktime movie (698 kb)

The Dowbrigade is off to give another driving lesson to his 19-year-old
son, the one who wants a Hummer so he can crush other cars out of parking
spaces, the one who eats frozen burritos raw to save time.  He claims
if he has a driver’s license he can get a job. We suspect this to be
merely another cruel delaying tactic and are going ahead with our secret plan
to leave the country suddenly without telling him.

So this will probably be out last post of the day.  When we get
back from these sessions we are in no shape to do anything but self-medicate
and lie in a quiet, darkened room for a while….

Against
his better judgment, the Dowbrigade has agreed to attempt one of the
toughest tasks he has tackled in his entire teaching career – explaining
NFL Football to a class of foreign college students who don’t know a
forward pass from an actionable offense. We tried to avoid it, having
ventured there before, but they begged.

The job, from a didactic point of view, is somewhat akin to teaching
quantum mechanics to a school
of fish. And, of course, they need to know it by Sunday.

It is not that the subject matter is THAT complicated, although on this
New Hampshire Primary night it is appropriate to note that Sen. Eugene
McCarthy once said "Being in politics is like coaching Professional Football
– you need to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough
to think it matters." This is not the problem; all of my students (3
Japanese, a Korean, 2 Thais, a Brazilian and a Saudi) are smart and well-educated.
But not a one of them has ever seen a single play of a single game, in
person or on television.

The problem is that their old Professor here tends to go off on wild
tangents when addressing the subject of Pro Football.  One minute
we are explaining the line of scrimmage, and the next we’re waxing lyrical
about
Football
as a Metaphor for Post-Industrial Cultural Domination, or decrying the
racial inequity in football upper management, or obsessively spouting
obscure statistics like points scored off of turnovers or average yards
per penalty.

When we come to our senses, the students are staring at us like we’ve
started foaming at the mouth, and are no closer to understanding the
intricacies of the Great American Game than they were before we began.
Believe us, we’ve been there before.

But not this time!  We’re going to keep it simple this time, stick
to the basics, maintain distance and decorum.  To that end, we have
discovered an entertaining site, Football Basics, from the NFL
for Kids web site.  It explains everything!  With funny
animated cartoon players demonstrating the different positions, the equipment,
the rules
of the game. Now if we can only remember to avoid the topic of instant
replay entirely.  And the tuck rule.  And the point spread…..

playfootball.com

Pander:n., & v.t.
1. go-between in clandestine amours, procurer; one who ministers to evil
designs. 2 v.i. minister (to base passions or evil
designs, or person having these)

Japander:n.,& v.t. 1. a western star who uses his or her fame to make
large sums of money in a short time by advertising products in Japan that
they would probably never use. ~er (see synecure, prostitute) 2. to make
an ass of oneself in Japanese media.

Clever and well-designed (once you get inside) site documenting the
escapades of Western Media Whores chasing their Yen yen in the Land of
the Rising Sun. Try going to the alphabetical listing and look for your
favorite stars – they’re probably there!

from japander.com

This article from the New
York Times covers a company whose role
seems to be to help business travelers avoid costly faux pas when traveling
abroad. Reminds the Dowbrigade of the time we politely accepted a gourd
filled with a viscous liquid during a midnight celebration with a Jibaro
tribe in an Amazonian clearing, and found ourselves talking to the trees about 45 minutes later. At which point the Chief told us he was
very happy and honored we had agreed to marry his daughter. Fortunately,
he was just joking (the Jibaro have a piquant sense of humor).

When I was in Shanghai on business, about the only thing to do on
a free night, after having made the required stroll down the Bund by
the river, was to visit
the Shanghai Circus in a vast Communist-style People’s Auditorium. Being
a Westerner, I was able to buy the most expensive $5 seat: right
on
the aisle,
down front. Suddenly, I was "chosen" by the circus master and
escorted onto the stage. A large board was wheeled out and an acrobat stood
in front
of it. His partner across the stage suddenly threw a knife at him, and
in a lightning moment it thrust into the board just below his elbow. The
audience
burst into thunderous applause. I stopped smiling.

from the New
York Times

The
archives of the Bill Clinton presidential library will contain 39,999,998
e-mails by the former president’s staff and two by the man himself.

"The only two he sent," Skip Rutherford, president of the Clinton
Presidential Foundation, which is raising money for the library, said Monday.

One of them may not actually qualify for electronic communication because
it was a test to see if the commander in chief knew how to push the button
on an e-mail.

Former Ohio Sen. John Glenn has the distinction of being the first American to
orbit the Earth and the only person to receive an e-mail written by Clinton when
he was in office.

The e-mail was sent with the help of Clinton staffers to the space shuttle while
it was in orbit and Glenn was a part of the crew. It praised Glenn for his return
to space after almost 40 years.

"He’s not a techno-klutz. I don’t think President (George W.) Bush sends
e-mails, either," Rutherford said of Clinton,"Most of the decisions
in the Oval Office are made through decision memos."
Rutherford
said.

The 40 million e-mails of the Clinton administration are almost exclusively comprised
of memos, notes and correspondence among his aides and cabinet members

from Yahoo News

KEYES, Calif. — No one quite remembers the last big fire
to rage through town, but a firestorm — fueled by sex and the Internet
— has engulfed this rural community. The source of the trouble comes
straight from the town’s firehouse, where the pornography career of one
of its own has many fuming.

On Jan. 13, most of the town’s 33 volunteer firefighters walked off
the job for three days after a cadet was fired for allegedly visiting
a pornographic website. The details are in dispute, but by some accounts
the cadet was accused of hacking into the pay-to-view pornographic website
of Chantel Lace, otherwise known in town as Alexas Jones, a volunteer
firefighter, wife of the assistant fire chief, and daughter-in-law of
the chief.

”It’s not just about the porn star issue; that’s only a part of it,”
said Jared Gibson, one of the firefighters who joined the walkout.
He and the rest of the crew did not want to leave their jobs, he said,
but needed to make a point. ”It’s about having people run the department
the right way.” Captain Herb Collier, who also joined the walkout,
said he wants assurances that the Joneses’ pornography business stays
out of the day-to-day operation of the firehouse.

Jones said she has no plans to resign her nonpaying post, although she
has been on leave since November because of a problem with her hip.
"As far as pushing me out, that’s not going to happen,” she said Wednesday
night. ”When I’m on duty, I don’t mix my two jobs."

from the Boston Globe

What’s up with Technorati? As a devoted follower of the Blogosphere and
our own position within it, the Dowbrigade regularly consults a number
of specialized resources; Feedster to find blogs posting on specific topics
of interest, the hit counters and referers lists built into Manila, our
Blog creation tool of choice, and Technorati to learn about our corner
of the Blogging universe and see who is linking to the Dowbrigade.

But lately, Technorati is taking longer and longer between its periodic
sweeps to record and evaluate these links. Today, for example, the information
about the Dowbrigade on Technorati is almost TWO WEEKS out of date. We
realize the number of Blogs to be tracked is exploding, but is this really
the best they can do?

Even worse, from our egocentric POV, is the misleading statement "Blog
last updated 12 days, 2 hours and 43 minutes ago"! The exactitude of
this pronouncement lends it an air of official authenticity, when obviously and
unfortunately
it is completely mistaken.

As someone who takes great pride in the regularity and consistent quality
of our postings, the Dowbrigade takes it as a personal affront and insult
being told that he has not been doing his Blogging for the PAST TWELVE
DAYS. It emotionally and almost physically hurts to see that condemnation
of our work habits and authorial responsibility in such a respected and
widely consulted source.

Hey Dave! Our Blog is updated EVERY DAY, multiple times, and having
you tell uninformed or curious users who took the time to check out the
posting
universe of the Dowbrigade that we have been flagrantly remiss to the
point of not being able to post ANYTHING for 12 days makes us angry and
hurt. At least change the text to read "This listing not
updated for 12 days" or "Last checked 12 days ago" or something.

Your service in invaluable and we know it means a lot to many bloggers.
However, we don’t know how much longer we will be able to tolerate the
psychic beating we take every time we see those damning words "Blog last
updated.." We suspect we are not alone.

The Dowbrigade has decided to finally weigh in on an idea that has been
circulating around the Blogosphere for several weeks now – Adopt-a-Journalist.

The concept was popularized by Jay
Rosen, and then interestingly commented
on by Al
Giordano and Halley
Suitt, among others. The basic idea is
that to counteract the relative anonymity and lack of accountability
on the part of Major Media writers and reporters, Bloggers should choose
a single reporter and monitor, repost and comment on all of that individual’s
journalistic output.

Come on! That’s the most invasive, repugnant and counterproductive idea
we have heard in the ‘Sphere since paid subscriptions! Who appointed
us to be the Thought Police? And Who is Going to Monitor the Monitors?
What a misguided, uncivil and rude waste of time!

Never content to be a nattering nabob of negativity, the Dowbrigade
does have a couple of suggestions for keeping track of the Major Media,
and enabling the thinking public to weave their useful but limited reporting
into our pastiche of emerging understanding.

First, all news reporting should be clearly identified with a particular
reporter, editor or news desk. Major papers like the New York Times do
identify the individual authors of their feature articles, but many less
prominent stories on the inner pages run anonymously. In addition almost
all of the stories coming out of the news wires, AP, UPI and Reuters,
which are of course picked up and published by hundreds of local papers
around the world, are completely anonymous.

Then, and most importantly, every single professional reporter should
have his or her own RSS feed. When we read an interesting or thought-provoking
article, we should be able to instantly (by clicking on their name) subscribe
to that writer’s feed, and to review his or her aggregated writings,
in order to get a clear idea of their views, political orientation, history
of positions on the issues, etc.

This would allow those of us who value diversity of opinion and resist
taking the network pap at face value the opportunity to see where these
opinions are coming from and weave their occasionally important voices
into a better rounded collection of professional, personal and identifiably
biased punditry from across the political spectrum.