Month: August 2013

The Authorship Algorithm

by Brendan James

Patrick Juola developed a program that performs a mathematical analysis of literature; the software helped identify J.K. Rowling as the true author of The Cuckoo’s Calling. He considers the possible abuse of this kind of program:

This technology is clearly a double-edged sword. If Rowling can be identified by computational analysis, what about whistleblowers? Is anyone safe from the modern equivalent of Sherlock’s all-seeing eye? For the moment, yes. The person who truly violated Rowling’s privacy was not my computer or even the Sunday Times reporter, but the tipster who suggested the investigation in the first place. It’s simply not feasible to look at every potential author to see who might have written a book; without old-fashioned detective work (and informants), the haystack is still large enough that needles can successfully hide.

What Our Conspiracy Theories Say About Us

by Patrick Appel

Jessie Walker discusses his new book, The United States of Paranoia:

Victoria Taylor calls Walker’s book “a thoroughly researched and completely readable look at infamous and forgotten conspiracy theories and presumed cabals throughout American history”:

Walker identifies five American conspiracy archetypes: the perceived enemy within (think the Salem witch trials), the enemy outside (al-Qaeda, Indian tribes during the colonial period, religious movements), the enemy above (e.g. the government, secretive masterminding organizations out to establish a New World Order, like the Illuminati), the enemy below (slave uprisings) and the “benevolent conspiracy” (angels, the Theosophical Society). Some groups fall into more than one category, and in some cases the differentiating lines are blurred, but just about all myths can be viewed as at least one of these.

In another review, Laura Miller explains how conspiracy theories catch on:

As Walker sees it, our brains are predisposed to see patterns in random data and to apply stories to explain them, which is why conspiracy theory can be so contagious. Although conspiracies do exist, we need to be vigilant against our propensity to find them whether they are there or not. The most sensible outlook would appear to be that of Robert Anton Wilson, who concluded that “powerful people” could well be “engaged in criminal plots” but who found it unlikely that “the conspirators were capable of carrying out those plots competently.” Or, I would add, of covering them up effectively. It’s the ineptness of human beings in executing elaborate schemes and then shutting up about it afterward that makes me skeptical of almost all conspiracy theories. Besides, if the U.S. government was masterful enough to engineer the 9/11 attacks, why couldn’t it also plant some WMD in Iraq?

Salon has an excerpt from the book. It concludes:

The first decade of the twenty-first century saw three particularly notable eruptions of elite paranoia. The first came with the reactions to the 9/11 attacks. The second was the response to Katrina, when powerful people’s fears both fed and were reinforced by the centralization and militarization of disaster relief. And the third began when Barack Obama became president, as commentators treated a group of unconnected crimes as a grand, malevolent movement. As is often the case with paranoid perspectives, this connect-the-dots fantasy said more about the tellers’ anxieties than it did about any order actually emerging in the world.

Should Everyone Learn To Code?

by Patrick Appel

A software engineer shakes his head:

[I]f you aren’t dreaming of becoming a programmer—and therefore planning to embark on a lengthy course of study, whether self-directed or formal—I can’t endorse learning to code. Yes, it is a creative endeavor. At its base, it’s problem-solving, and the rewards for exposing holes in your thinking and discovering elegant solutions are awesome. I really think that some programs are beautiful. But I don’t think that most who “learn to code” will end up learning anything that sticks.

One common argument for promoting programming to novices is that technology’s unprecedented pervasiveness in our lives demands that we understand the nitty-gritty details. But the fact is that no matter how pervasive a technology is, we don’t need to understand how it works—our society divides its labor so that everyone can use things without going to the trouble of making them. To justify everyone learning about programming, you would need to show that most jobs will actually require this. But instead all I see are vague predictions that the growth in “IT jobs” means that we must either “program or be programmed” and that a few rich companies want more programmers—which is not terribly persuasive.

The Worst Chemical Weapon Attack In Decades? Ctd

by Chas Danner

https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/370244842716020736

Earlier this week, Noah Shachtman and Colum Lynch filed a report on the Assad regime’s previous use of chemical weapons. It may shed some light on last night’s attack, which, like earlier Syrian chemical weapons attacks, left victims with a variety of symptoms both consistent and inconsistent with exposure to an deadly agent like Sarin gas:

U.S. analysts speculate that some of these atypical effects may be the result of Assad’s military using an atypical mix of chemical arms, so-called “riot control agents,” and conventional munitions on the battlefield. In December, one former chemist for the Syrian regime told Al Jazeera that this blending of weapons was done, in part, to create a confusing blend of symptoms — and mask their source. …

Contributing to confusion is the long-standing suspicion that Assad’s forces are brewing up their unconventional weapons in unconventional ways. One of sarin’s two main precursors is isopropanol — rubbing alcohol, basically. But the material used for chemical attacks can’t be purchased in any drug store. While the commercial stuff typically is 70 percent water, the weapons-grade isopropanol is highly concentrated, with less than 1 percent water. That makes it extremely hard to obtain. Some outside observers believe the Syrians are using less isopropanol than usual in their sarin in order to preserve their precious stockpile of the precursor. (It would also produce milder-than-normal effects in a victim.) If the dilution theory is true, it could be an indication that Assad intends to hold on to his chemical arsenal for a long, long time — and unleash it only when his rule is once again under threat.

Shachtman also rounded up analysis of last night’s attack.

Put Off By Punctuation

by Matt Sitman

Josh Jones highlights novelist Cormac McCarthy’s unusual punctuation style which, as he confirmed in an interview with Oprah, entails never using quotation marks or semi-colons:

James Joyce is a good model for punctuation. He keeps it to an absolute minimum. There’s no reason to blot the page up with weird little marks. I mean, if you write properly you shouldn’t have to punctuate.

More on his style:

McCarthy declares his stylistic convictions with simplicity: “I believe in periods, in capitals, in the occasional comma, and that’s it.” It’s a discipline he learned first in a college English class, where he worked to simplify 18th century essays for a textbook the professor was editing. Early modern English is notoriously cluttered with confounding punctuation, which did not become standardized until comparatively recently.

McCarthy, enamored of the prose style of the Neoclassical English writers but annoyed by their over-reliance on semicolons, remembers paring down an essay “by Swift or something” and hearing his professor say, “this is very good, this is exactly what’s needed.” Encouraged, he continued to simplify, working, he says to Oprah, “to make it easier, not to make it harder” to decipher his prose. For those who find McCarthy sometimes maddeningly opaque, this statement of intent may not help clarify things much.

Not everyone is enamored, however. From Jacob Lambert’s 2009 parody of McCarthy’s The Road:

With the first gray light he rose and walked out to the road and squatted and studied the country to the south. Godless and blasted. A madman’s timeshare. The trees dead, the grass dead, the shrubs dead also. The rivers dead. And the streams and reeds, the mosses and voles. Dead as well. He glassed the ruins, hoping for a shred of color, a wisp of smoke, a faroff Cracker Barrel. There was nothing but swirling gloom, a grasping murk. He sat with the binoculars and the gray, and thought: the child is my warrant. If he is not the word of God God never spoke, although he might have scribbled something on a paperscrap and passed it along. He bit hard on his blistered upperlip. If only I had thought to give him a name. If only.

An hour later they were on The Road, an Oprah’s Book Club selection. He pushed the cart and both he and the boy carried knapsacks in case they had to make a run for it. Cannibal rapists, roving bloodcults. Greenpeace volunteers. In the knapsacks were essential things: tins of food, metal utensils, a broken Slinky, a canopener, three bullets, a picture of ham. He looked out over the barren waste, the scorpled remain. The road was empty, as was its wont. Quiet, moveless. Are you okay? he said, quotation marks dead as the reeds. The boy nodded. Then they started down the road, humming a sprightly tune. The tune was silent, and unsprightly.

Capturing Egypt’s Killings

by Patrick Appel

Max Fisher has an interview with Egyptian photographer Mosa’ab Elshamy. He reflects on “how significant events really end up taking seconds”:

As a photographer you always have to keep the shutter on — we call it the burst mode. I have full sequences, and sometimes it starts with somebody standing, but in the sixth or seventh photo, he’s got a bullet through his head, and it all took less than a second.

The consequences of that moment, of this guy getting shot or avoiding a bullet that killed someone else — it’s a very significant thing, and more often that’s becoming lost. I try to focus on that in my pictures, I try to include as few people as possible; just a man sitting with a killed friend of his, or a mother mourning next to a daughter. It’s a very individual act, one person killing another person.

Check out a Flickr gallery of Elshamy’s work here.

MoDo’s D’ohs

by Chris Bodenner

On the heels of her latest transcribing error, which frames de Blasio’s wife as homophobic, Dan Amira highlights Dowd’s history of quoting people inaccurately.

The Appeal Of Used Book Stores

by Jessie Roberts

Charles Simic contemplates it:

Years ago, in a store in New York that specialized in Alchemy, Eastern Religions, Theosophy, Mysticism, Magic, and Witchcraft, I remember coming across a book called How to Become Invisible that I realized would make a perfect birthday present for a friend who was on the run from a collection agency trying to repossess his car. It cost fifteen cents, which struck me as a pretty steep price considering the quality of the contents.

What made these stores, stocked with unwanted libraries of dead people, attractive to someone like me is that they were more indiscriminate and chaotic than public libraries and thus made browsing more of an adventure. Among the crowded shelves, one’s interest was aroused by the title or the appearance of a book. Then came the suspense of opening it, checking out the table of contents, and if it proved interesting, thumbing the pages, reading a bit here and there and looking for underlined passages and notes in the margins. How delightful to find some unknown reader commenting in pencil on a Victorian love poem: “Shit,” or coming across this inscription in a beautiful edition of one of the French classics:

For my daughter,
make beauty, humanity and wisdom
your lifelong objectives; and in all circumstances
you will know what to do. Happiness will be
the reward for your efforts.

This Is How Immigration Reform Dies

by Patrick Appel

Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte, head of the committee that has jurisdiction over immigration, has come out against a pathway to citizenship. Brian Beutler thinks immigration reform’s chances just got slimmer:

How likely is immigration reform to become law if the Republican with the most immediate power to shape the legislation opposes citizenship for current immigrants? I’d say not very likely — not without him and the contingent in the party he speaks for getting tossed under the bus.

Ezra adds:

If you’re peering into the tea leaves, here’s what that means.

First, Goodlatte thinks the trends in the House Republican Conference support flat-out opposition. As head of the relevant committee, if he thought serious immigration reform had a chance, he’d hold a bit of fire in order to ensure he kept his role in the process. That was his strategy early in the debate.

Second, he’s fairly confident that House Republican leadership won’t roll him to get a bill done. Again, if that seemed like a possibility, he might be a bit more reticent in order to preserve his seat at the table and avoid any humiliation. But this suggests he doesn’t believe Boehner et al will fight him to pass something that the Senate could stomach and the president could sign.

Josh Marshall wants supporters of immigration reform to stop “pretending that this bill is going to pass and get about the business of explaining to voters who is stopping it from passing or in fact stopping it from even getting a vote”:

 This tends to be something center-left reformers never get. The bill is dead or near dying. Letting this drag on only demoralizes people who think that government can act in the common good because it makes it seem as though the bill is dying of natural causes or some hopeless terminal illness — something tied to the nature of the Congress or the ‘process’ itself.

But that’s deeply misleading and damaging to the prospects of reform ever succeeding. The bill didn’t die. It was killed. So forget the heroic measures to revive it and get about telling the public who killed it and holding them accountable for their actions.