This week, the title’s been the soundtrack of my life…thanks to some bug the eldest brought back from a girl scout activity. Seriously, it’s not much fun feeling like you’ve got a gorilla using your chest as a combination sofa and trampoline.

Oh well…here’s hoping the weekend is less pleghm-filled.

1. “Love Can Destroy” – The Raveonettes
2. “Voices Carry” – Til Tuesday
3. “MyHope” – Molly Lewis
4. “Bastards of Young” – The Replacements
5. “Machine Joy” – Miss Kittin
6. “This Town” – The Go-Gos
7. “Blackie’s Dead” – Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansen
8. “Radio Free Europe” – REM
9. “Shoelace” – The Blibbering Humdingers
10. “Dreamin of a Whole Lotta Breakfast” – Rock Sugar

Long-time readers of this space are probably aware of my general cynicism toward broadcast media, mostly to do with the fact that the “news” isn’t really much about disseminating useful information than about selling advertising slots, and with vast swaths of the american public, the most effective ways of raising ratings (to get eyeballs on those advertisements) is through scandal, conflict and manipulation rather than providing reliable, objective, and detailed information.

Because actual information doesn’t necessarily interest most people…it doesn’t sell. As H.L. Mencken famously said, “no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”

Local news organizations are often the worst, alternately teasing with implied danger and innuendo and manipulating audiences with schmaltz and and emotional appeals…when they aren’t busy disgusing cross-promotional advertising as news reports (a story about a reality show airing during prime time on the affiliated network really isn’t “news”, is it?).

I could go on about this, invoking Kent Brockman and Ron Burgundy, but I’m sure you get my point. To be honest, it’s not a particularly new point – it’s the kind of “water is wet” thing that Ric Romero might report*. However, these last couple of paragraphs about vacuousness in the broadcast media serve as a pretty good introduction to an examination of what I’m reasonably sure is one of the better examples of shoddy reporting I’ve seen in a long time:

I present to you Survey: Video Games Linked To Reckless Driving, reported recently by WCCO in Minneapolis, MN.

Let’s just look at some of the many problems inherent in this report, starting at the beginning:

First of all, what jumped out at me immediately is the fact that the “Survey” in the title, referred to in the article itself as “a new study” or “research” isn’t actually named anywhere. The organization or instutution that did the research is never named, cited, or referenced. I’m going to bet that any researchers working on this particular topic had to cite their sources, why does the reporter get a pass?

Further, “Reasearchers” are mentioned having said “their data should not be taken lightly since car accidents are the number one cause of death in teenagers.” There’s the scandalous checkbox being ticked off, though this might have some authority if the researchers were named.

The next paragraph claims that the “research” was conducted in three different countries, but that doesn’t matter, because the report then mentions “Grand Theft Auto,” which is all anybody’s seeing, because it’s become the ultimate strawman for “scary video game,” and if the scare sticks, the purpose of the piece is fulfilled.

The piece then moves on to equivocation/debate portion, quoting first a “video game player” indicating how GTA is fun, but yeah, involves some recklessness, followed by more unsourced statistics. The other side is represented by Doctor David Walsh, who supports the article’s title almost verbatim. The doctor’s affiliation isn’t provided, though the way the piece is composed, it seems he’s got some authority – did he do the research?

After another unsourced statistical reference about the number of teenage traffic deaths in Minnesota, hitting both the Could This Happen to You? and Local Angle tropes – referencing that 19(!) teenagers had died in car accidents this year thus far, without context, to add to the dramatic presentation.

To add some context, according to statistics from the University of Minnesota, there were 421 TOTAL traffic fatalities in Minnesota in 2009, out of total population (acording to this google search) of around 5.2 million people.

So, four percent of all traffic fatalites are teenagers; though there’s no particular connection between traffic deaths and video game playing, or even whether than the teenagers were driving. Every traffic death is a tragedy to someone, certainly, but it’s not like this is an epidemic or anything; the lack of context implies an urgency that simply isn’t there.

Returning to Doctor David Walsh, we find that he hasn’t actually participated in the research – he’s the founder of the National Institute of Media and the Family, a media watchdog group who (was…they’ve since shut down and reformed with another name) in the business of pointing out content it deems harmful to children in the media. And appearing on TV and selling books…he’s apparently the go-to guy for “video games are bad, mmmkay?” pull quotes.

Not to mention that the ESRB, the software industry’s rating board (which, for example, gave GTA IV the perfectly appropriate rating of M – appropriate for ages 17+) called out his organization for seriously flawed video game reporting, citing innacuracies, misleading statements, flawed research, and ommission of material facts (kind of like, you know, this article). Walsh has also made the claim that the video game industry was promoting cannibalism after seeing a couple of stills from a zombie game. So, an authority without much authority; not that such things are mentioned.

Rounding out the article is the following quote, still unattributed, but nonetheless seems to scuttle the whole thesis:

The findings do not directly link playing video games to reckless driving. They only show an association. Researchers say the impact of playing games like “Grand Theft Auto” is minimal.

So, that’s the article. What was the point? Not to provide information, other than to reinforce unsubstantiated (even by the research allueded to) “conventional wisdom,” with “support” from attention whores with disgraced authority.

It does, however, drum up emotional turmoil in order to draw the eyeballs of parents who are justifiably worried about their children’s safety (but not necessarily in this case), and thus drum up their ad rates, while hoping that nobody notices (or worse, that they never noticed themselves) that the article is essentially content free, even if it mentions research.

It’s almost like a producer or editor decided they needed a controversial video game story, and somebody just assembled this story to hit some emotional notes and everybody’s fretting enough about the totally manufactured controversy to not notice how shoddily constructed the whole thing is.

What’s so sneaky about this whole business, really, is how there is just a nugget of truth to support the claims; nobody’s going to dispute that exposure to inappropriate media won’t have some effect on kids, or adults, for that matter.** The message that parents ought to monitor what their kids are playing, watching, or listening to is an important one (that’s why, for example, I do this with my kids so I know what they’re doing, and can explain or filter out what’s not appropriate for them), so, most people will give pieces like this a pass, never mind that it’s misleading, poorly researched, and written badly.

For me, though, even if it’s a good message, I can’t get behind the mischaracterization and manipulative delivery. Passing on even valuable information under false pretenses isn’t the kind of message I want to pass along.

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* – Romero’s not disingenuous, he’s just severely behind the times, though to be fair, so is most of his audience. And he’s got a good sense of humor about it.

** – I can provide plenty of personal anecdata about this. After I go through a cycle of playing a bunch of Gran Turismo (a very realistic racing sim) for a couple of weeks, when I find myself behind the wheel of a real car, I sometimes feel a small urge to take a corner with the proper racing line, which would definitely cross a yellow line. Doesn’t mean I do, nor does it mean that just because teenagers play GTA despite the rating (which is definitely not a realistic experience), they’re likely to go ahead and start jacking cars, shooting pedestrians, and visiting prostitutes for the health bonus then beating them up to get their money back because the video game influenced them to do so.** If they’re doing so, there’s a bigger problem at work, and it’s going to take a lot more parental involvement to fix it than just taking the video games away. Sadly, there aren’t any simple answers. Sorry.

** * Just like when I was a kid, I didn’t start worshipping Satan or believing I could practice witchcraft because I rolled some dice and drew maps on graph paper. My penchant for footnoting footnotes might be related, however.

Lo, so many years ago, the most excellent Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure borrowed the concept of a phone box shaped time machine from the venerable Doctor Who.

With the finale of series five, the debt is paid, given the Doctor’s clever appropriation of the favored time travel technique of Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan in order to save himself and the universe from the fate of being unmade.

Yes, dammit, I’ve been posting a lot about Doctor Who lately, but you know what, this is my web site and I can post whatever I bloody well want. And, this particular series of Doctor Who that just wrapped last night (in the UK…I have, shall we say…sources) was, in my opinion, the best of the relaunched series, and Eleven is actually pretty close to being my favorite Doctor (which up to this point has been a neck-and-neck battle between ten and five)…how can absurdities like this not win you over?

“I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool.”

And such hints for the Christmas special…an Egyptian goddess loose on the Orient Express (…in space)! Certainly sounds better than Kylie Minogue on the Starship Titanic. especially since it’s on the Moff,s watch. Shame we have to wait six months.

Oh well, shouldn’t be too long until the DVD releases.

Regular visitors to this space will not be shocked to learn that I’m a big Doctor Who fan. The new series (as well as many of the old serials, thanks to Netflix) gets a lot of play in my living room; it’s sufficiently geeky, and it’s something the whole family can and does enjoy together.

Like many Americans, I first encountered the Doctor via PBS broadcasts of the Tom Baker years, though I remember the Davison serials clicking with me a bit more when I was a kid; not sure why – must’ve been the celery on the lapel. Regardless of who was playing the Time Lord, however, I think what I enjoyed most about DW at the time was that it was something that my dad and I enjoyed together. I have many fond memories of the two of us sitting together on a Saturday afternoon puzzling out where the Tardis was heading next.

Perhaps that’s why the most recent episode (to officially air stateside, anyway), “Vincent and the Doctor, struck such a chord with me.

It’s one of the many “historical” episodes that harken back to the program’s mid-sixties roots (as it was originally conceived) as an educational program for kids. In this episode, the Doctor and Amy, his current companion, notice something strange in Van Gogh’s The Church at Auvers while on a visit to a gallery. Being the intrepid time travellers they are, they hop in the Tardis and travel to France, circa 1890, to investigate, meeting and befriending Van Gogh, and engaging in a relatively pedestrian monster hunt…

(to reveal further details without a spoiler warning would be in bad form; so consider this aside just that)

…and in an attempt to give their new friend some hope and pleasure, take him on a quick trip to a familiar gallery to show him the influence his work will have in the future, since he has such a difficult time seeing it for himself.

Of course, in the end, after taking Vincent back home and revisiting the gallery, they find that, aside from a couple of little changes, Van Gogh’s eventual fate didn’t change as a result of their encounter with him, as Amy was hoping it would.

Van Gogh, of course, struggled with mental illness and depression, and eventually took his own life (chronologically not long after this episode took place). The portrayal of Van Gogh in this episode, both in terms of script and performance (Tony Curran’s work here is masterful and nuanced, and really ought to be recalled come awards season) is consistent with a person experiencing bi-polar disorder or depression; this story’s Van Gogh is a man of soaring highs and crashing lows; damaged, but vibrant, as many creative people are; and indeed, much was made about how VanGogh the artist saw the world in a unique way. It was refreshing to see a characterization other than the common one (as was presented in the art class I took in middle school) of a creepy stalker who sends his ears to prostitutes in the mail (although to be fair, he did do that at one point).

Here’s the thing with depression, from someone who knows how it feels and how it looks from the outside: it’s a struggle. Life, for anyone, is a series of highs and lows. For someone with depression, those highs and lows are more pronounced; for some people, even the highest highs can’t compensate for the low periods. This occasionally leads to unfortunate ends such as those of Van Gogh, or my dad. And, in those cases, there’s very little that anyone can do to divert the depressed person from the path (especially if the person isn’t being treated); which, as you can imagine, is very difficult for loved ones left behind.

So, unsurprisingly, this episode resonated for me personally; it’s themes, as they say, were relevant to my interests. But, what puts this episode into stuff I like a lot territory is the subtle, mature and realistic way these themes were handled on screen.

Sure, the Doctor and Amy were able to show their new friend Vincent that, despite his doubts about his ability as an artist, his work would survive for decades, influencing and inspiring countless people, but in the end, even that knowledge wasn’t enough to save him and overcome his affliction. That doesn’t mean, however, that their presence in his life wasn’t important, or didn’t affect him in a positive way.

Pretty heavy stuff for a Saturday afternoon kids programme.

I appreciate the gentle, realistic hand the writer (Richard Curtis, known mostly for light comedy like the wonderful “Vicar of Dibley”) used in dealing with important, weighty subject matter, without falling back on any of the usual “Very Special Episode” tropes so common in other venues, such as American sitcoms; a plot sledgehammer becomes unnecessary when one has an affecting story, well told.

This was enough to make this episode part of stuff I like a lot…one doesn’t even need to mention how the skillful and economic use of a couple of tiny little details fit this largely standalone story into the larger arc of the current series. Such things are merely delicious icing on a very nice cake; this episode is definitely a high point of the series, and this particular series (that is, series five of the relaunch) is VERY GOOD.

A nice mix off the laptop hard drive this week, from which tracks two and three nicely complement the news that the stars of Mega Piranha and Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus are joining forces for the sure to be epic motion picture Mega Python vs. Gateroid, coming soon to a basic cable network near you.

That sound you just heard? My middle school self fainting due to lack of adequate blood flow to the brain.

Think about it.

1. “Woe is Mine” – Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson
2. “I Think We’re Alone Now” – Tiffany
3. “Electric Youth” – Debbie Gibson
4. “Freeway” – Aimee Mann
5. “Prophets of Rage” – Public Enemy
6. “The Word” – The Beatles
7. “We Could Be Looking For The Same Thing” – Silver Jews
8. “21 Things I Want in a Lover” – Alanis Morissette
9. “I’m Your Moon” – Jonathan Coulton
10. “Inside The Winter Storm” – Dragonforce

Wouldn’t you know it…it’s Talk like a Browncoat Day!

An enterprising passel o’ Browncoats on Facebook (I’m not going to link there; FB and I are havin’ what I call some ‘apart time’ right about now) up an’ decided that the ‘Verse needed another engagin’ little bit of arbitrary holiday mirth*, so’n they set this little shindig up for we internettin’ folks to take a whack at.

Consider yourselves duly informed.

In the meantime, I’ll be in my bunk.

While you’re considerin’ whether that last line is truly naughty or not, why don’t ya take a gander at the Firefly re-watch column from Richard Fife over yonder at Tor.com, because it makes for some good reading, and is certainly not a piece of gos se.

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* – Also, apparently, because it’s Joss Whedon’s birthday, which makes this whole shady enterprise more than appropriate.

In my mind, there are few things that tell you more about a person than that person’s answer the following question:

Which of these statements is more true?

1. “Killing is bad, therefore we have laws against killing.”
2. “There are laws against killing, therefore killing is bad.”

Feel free to substitute “Killing” with any other social ill; I suspect someone’s answer is going to be pretty much the same.

There’s just something inherently fun about the fact that the following is the official phrase the Guinness Book of World Records uses to measure quickest texting records:

“The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human”

Not much else to say, really…it’s just such a wonderful non-sequitir, it can’t be the only phrase someone could come up with that’s exactly the maximum length of the SMS protocol. Somebody consciously chose this, and that person might possibly be my hero. The only thing that would make it better would be the incorporation of “skeletonize a cow” somehow.

Just for kicks, I timed myself entering this text on my Samsung Gravity2 just now – 2 minutes, 40 seconds. A far cry from the world record of 35.54 seconds, but more important to me, done with no typographical errors. Not bad for a one-off.

If the spirit moves you, and you have a couple of minutes to give this a quick whack, feel free to share your time below.

This whole Gulf oil spill business is becoming a series of misattributions. A little while ago, I made mention of the fact that a lot of people looking for someone to blame for this disaster are blaming the good people of England instead of BP, who, through negligence toward safety and good craftsmanship, got this whole tarball rolling.

I’m not seeing that as much lately, which is refreshing. However, I’m seeing yet another misrepresentation, this time coming almost exclusively from the Right, attempting to redefine the spill as a “Natural” disaster or phenomenon.

This has a few benefits for those of the conservative persuasion. First, it allows for the spill to be characterized as the act of a wrathful God who’s really angry at the non-pious, because kicking hippies is fun for them. Secondly, by classifying this spill as an unavoidable unfortuanate quirk of nature, blame can be rhetorically deflected away from BP and other large multinational oil companies, who have traditionally allied themselves with (and supported monetarily) the Republican party and other conservative entities*, who tend to support the sort of regulation (lax, laisse-faire, revering profit over all other concerns) that’s favorable to the oil companies. This protects the lucrative relationship between the conservative faction in government and the energy companies in a more subtle way than simply apologizing publically to BP for how inconvenient this must be for them, because, not surprisingly, doing that didn’t go over so well with the public when Rep. Barton tried it.

The position of defining the oil spill as a “natural disaster” even has the value of being semantically true, assuming one’s also comfortable calling the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki “natural”, since nuclear fission is a naturally-occurring phenomenon.

As one might assume, I’m not comfortable doing that.

There’s no question that the effects of the gulf oil spill are and will continue to be disastrous for nature and the environment, but it wasn’t nature that caused the problem in the first place. We can’t let it be forgotten that this is a case of a collection of human beings attempting to harness nature’s power in an irresponsible manner, and now it’s costing all of us.

This problem is BIG, and it’s going to take the cooperation of all of us to eventually solve it. I’m not interested in laying blame, other than making sure that those responsible do their duty to help clean up the mess, though we can’t cloud the issue of what caused this in the first place; we have to call it what it is: a human blunder, not some random act of nature or god, or we risk missing the important lessons the mistakes that caused this man-made disaster can teach us.

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* – I make this claim with full knowledge that any big corporation is going to hedge its bets and make big contributions to both major parties – big political money is all about access; it gets contributors face-time with politicians to make their case; it’s unfortunate, but it’s true. I will, however, posit that it’s unlikely that even a full-blooded conservative Blue Dog democrat would let oil company lobbyists simply draft government energy policy without question the way say, the previous republican administration did.

A couple of weeks back, I wrote a little bit about “embracing the awesome”, as mentioned by one of my favorite internet people, author Carrie Vaughn. In her piece, she talks a little bit about “impostor syndrome”; the feeling a lot of us have on occasion where we feel like frauds in areas where we’re actually competent.

Carrie said she’s write about it again someday, though she hasn’t yet (probably something to do with her releasing two new novels this summer), but some other folks have, including Scalzi, who touched on it today, from the opposite direction: people who are obviously incompetent but fail to notice.

Scalzi’s piece is interesting, as always, though what interested me the most was actually a link found in the comments on his piece; an article by Steve Schwartz regarding the impostor syndrome feelings, and exploring where some of those feelings come from.

In trying to come to this answer, Schwartz presents the theory that there are three types of knowledge, which he colorfully calls:

1. Shit You Know
2. Shit You Know You Don’t Know
3. Shit You Don’t Know You Don’t Know

He provides numerous examples indicating that the only truly dangerous information falls into category three, and points out that the purpose of a good, well-rounded education is less about increasing category one than it is about making category three as small as possible. This means that a well-educated person, while having quite a bit of knowledge in category one, is going to have, by virtue of specialization in certain areas, and the survey nature of a liberal arts eduation is going to have a much larger pile of knowledge in category two.

Essentially category two is the stuff that you don’t know, but thanks to the research skill set you keep in category one, you can go about finding it without much difficulty.

Having a lot of category two information isn’t a bad thing; it makes you, as the author points out, “not dangerous” and generally reliable, which isn’t a bad place to be.

That is, until you think about how much stuff you know you don’t know in relation to what you do (and how no matter who you are, the stuff you don’t know you don’t know is always going to be an order of magnitude larger). It’s enough to make anybody feel a little dumb, inadequate and out of their depth.

The key to overcoming this feeling, is to recognize that really, nobody’s really in any better position than you are. The confident person you see is just like you, except they’ve already come to this realization that nobody really knows what they’re doing, and feel okay about it, or they’re one of those people who legitimately believe they know everything there is to know (they have very small stores of category two knowlege, and thus, a much larger category three than you), which makes them terribly dangerous.

Anyway, if you feel like a fraud sometimes, it probably means you aren’t, but if you always feel like you’re at the top of your game, then you might want to step back and re-evaluate things.

Over the last three decades and change, I’m at a place where I’ve started coming around to this realization; which means that I feel like a fraud perhaps a little bit less than I used to. I recognize, however, that a lot of that is kind of emotional memory of my childhood and young adult self-esteem issues, and, with work, can be overcome. As you might imagine, I find the analysis Mr. Schwartz presents more than a little bit comforting.