Sunday, February 6, 2011
So... The Two Hikers Go On Trial Today.
It's Super Bowl Sunday. Yes. And if the Packers win, I'm sure I'll be in here after the game whooping and hollering because I am a Wisconsinite and it is a law of physics.
Meanwhile in Iran, though, you have far higher stakes, as the hikers still there, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, go on trial for "spying" today when they allegedly crossed the border into Iran while hiking in Kurdistan. 'Allegedly' is important here, as one of the Wikileaks cables shows US military officials as not believing they had ever actually set foot on Iranian soil (as well as some speculation as to their intent).
Sarah Shourd, the third hiker, is also being tried, albeit in absentia, as she was released earlier on medical grounds. No sane person expects her to actually show up.
So keep them in your thoughts today; hope for the best. You don't have to agree with what they were doing there in the first place. Nobody's asking you to. Just lend some support for their release is all.
Meanwhile in Iran, though, you have far higher stakes, as the hikers still there, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, go on trial for "spying" today when they allegedly crossed the border into Iran while hiking in Kurdistan. 'Allegedly' is important here, as one of the Wikileaks cables shows US military officials as not believing they had ever actually set foot on Iranian soil (as well as some speculation as to their intent).
Sarah Shourd, the third hiker, is also being tried, albeit in absentia, as she was released earlier on medical grounds. No sane person expects her to actually show up.
So keep them in your thoughts today; hope for the best. You don't have to agree with what they were doing there in the first place. Nobody's asking you to. Just lend some support for their release is all.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Random News Generator- Greenland
Obviously, when talking about Greenland, the first thing that's going to come to mind is its status as a front line in the climate change debate-that's-only-a-debate-because-it-would-cost-some-people-money-to-do-something-about-it.
And certainly that's not going to change today in the RNG. According to Earthweek, the water currently flowing into the Atlantic from the Arctic is the warmest in 2,000 years...
As part of a consequence of this warming, the Northwest Passage, heretofore frozen over, is opening up, and Greenland and Nunavut are teaming up to try and regulate any resulting shipping that might happen, worrying that ships not built for icy conditions might end up breaking apart and causing environmental catastrophe. At the forefront is a call for all ships going through the Northwest Passage to be double-hulled.
Meanwhile on stage, Moira Buffini, Matt Charman, Penelope Skinner and Jack Thorne have teamed up on producing a play, 'Greenland'. And if you've ever heard the phrase 'a camel is a horse drawn by committee', that is more or less what's going through the reviewers' minds, with it coming off as shrill yet sleep-inducing, even though the actual message is sympathized with. This is the big problem when arguing an environmentalist viewpoint: too few people know how to argue it properly. Charisma counts. A lot of environmentalists forget that. You can't just roll in somewhere, shriek 'WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE AND IT'S YOUR FAULT BECAUSE YOU WON'T PUT DO X' and expect people to want to have anything to do with you. They might just go the other way out of sheer spite.
My suggestion: toss up suggestion after suggestion- keyword, suggestion, as opposed to direct order- until you find something that someone's able to agree on. Not every proposal is palatable to everyone, but the thing about environmentalism is that there are a gazillion ideas out there to improve matters in a gazillion different areas of life, and you don't necessarily have to hit on every suggestion. What appeals to one person may not appeal to another, but most people are going to be appealed to by something. You just have to figure out what.
For example, if you're looking to get better gas mileage in winter- and considering gas prices, some of you might- you may want to look at this.
And certainly that's not going to change today in the RNG. According to Earthweek, the water currently flowing into the Atlantic from the Arctic is the warmest in 2,000 years...
"That body of water between Greenland and Norway’s Svalbard archipelago has warmed about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years.
That’s 2.5 degrees warmer than during the Medieval Warm Period, when Vikings farmed in Greenland from about A.D. 900 to 1300."
As part of a consequence of this warming, the Northwest Passage, heretofore frozen over, is opening up, and Greenland and Nunavut are teaming up to try and regulate any resulting shipping that might happen, worrying that ships not built for icy conditions might end up breaking apart and causing environmental catastrophe. At the forefront is a call for all ships going through the Northwest Passage to be double-hulled.
Meanwhile on stage, Moira Buffini, Matt Charman, Penelope Skinner and Jack Thorne have teamed up on producing a play, 'Greenland'. And if you've ever heard the phrase 'a camel is a horse drawn by committee', that is more or less what's going through the reviewers' minds, with it coming off as shrill yet sleep-inducing, even though the actual message is sympathized with. This is the big problem when arguing an environmentalist viewpoint: too few people know how to argue it properly. Charisma counts. A lot of environmentalists forget that. You can't just roll in somewhere, shriek 'WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE AND IT'S YOUR FAULT BECAUSE YOU WON'T PUT DO X' and expect people to want to have anything to do with you. They might just go the other way out of sheer spite.
My suggestion: toss up suggestion after suggestion- keyword, suggestion, as opposed to direct order- until you find something that someone's able to agree on. Not every proposal is palatable to everyone, but the thing about environmentalism is that there are a gazillion ideas out there to improve matters in a gazillion different areas of life, and you don't necessarily have to hit on every suggestion. What appeals to one person may not appeal to another, but most people are going to be appealed to by something. You just have to figure out what.
For example, if you're looking to get better gas mileage in winter- and considering gas prices, some of you might- you may want to look at this.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Super Bowl XLV Simulation
It's two days to the Super Bowl. Big game, well aware. But remember, in the end it's just a football game. Win or lose, the world's got other issues to sort out, chief among them the general political upheaval in the Middle East and northern Africa- Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, Yemen, Jordan, Israel's growing sense of unease, and it appears Syria made a run at being added to the list but the attempt fizzled quickly. Not to mention Iraq, of course.
So keep some perspective. Don't be the man who, as Bob Fenster wrote in Well, Duh! Our Stupid World, and Welcome to It, called an Arizona newspaper on December 7, 1941, while the Pearl Harbor attack was underway, asking for the score of a game between the Chicago Bears and then-Chicago Cardinals, saying "Aren't you getting anything besides that war stuff?" (For the record, the Bears won, 34-24.)
In that spirit, something I do every year before the Super Bowl is run a pregame simulation. Most people, for this purpose, use Madden. I consider this cliche, and so I pick something else.
This year, I've chosen The Bigs 2, with 2009 rosters.
'But Aaron', you are asking, 'the Super Bowl is football. The Bigs is a baseball game.' To that I say: shut your fool mouth. You are also saying 'Green Bay doesn't have a baseball team.' The Packers, for many decades, used to play home games in Milwaukee as well, three a season. So using Milwaukee as a substitute is perfectly valid.
Since the Packers are nominally the "home" team, the matchup is thus Pirates at Brewers, but since the game's in Arlington, Texas, the setting is the Rangers Ballpark at Arlington. Standard length is 5 innings, but today we're doing 9.
Starting lineups:
PITTSBURGH
1- Nyjer Morgan, LF
2- Freddy Sanchez, 2B
3- Nate McLouth, CF
4- Ryan Doumit, C
5- Adam LaRoche, 1B
6- Andy Laroche, 3B
7- Brandon Moss, RF
8- Jack Wilson, SS
9- Paul Maholm, P
MILWAUKEE
1- Rickie Weeks, 2B
2- Corey Hart, RF
3- Ryan Braun, LF
4- Prince Fielder, 1B
5- J.J. Hardy, SS
6- Mike Cameron, CF
7- Bill Hall, 3B
8- Jason Kendall, C
9- Yovani Gallardo, P
TOP 1ST: Morgan beats out a grounder to short, Sanchez isn't so lucky, though he advances Morgan to second. McLouth grounds to third. Doumit tags the first pitch and Hardy can't hang onto it, but Gallardo grabs the rebound and throws to first, beating Doumit to the bag and retiring the side.
BOTTOM 1ST: Weeks slaps one to left-center for a double. Hart strikes out, but on the third strike Weeks takes off for third and barely beats out the tag. Braun drives a deep fly ball to center, only to see McLouth rob him of a home run; however, he still sacrifices Weeks home. Brewers lead 1-0. Fielder also gives the ball a ride to center, but McLouth robs him too for the third out.
TOP 2ND: Adam Laroche decides he wants to try to play Home Run Derby too, and Mike Cameron decides he wants to play Home Run Killjoy too.
Commentator Damon Bruce: "Hahahahahaha. Wwwwwelcometothebigs!"
Andy grounds to second, Moss to first. Three up, three down, still 1-0 Milwaukee.
BOTTOM 2ND: Hardy starts with a worm-scorcher to left for a single. After an unsuccessful pickoff attempt, Maholm gives up a double to Cameron, putting two in scoring position. Hall makes the attempt to score them, but Wilson comes up with a big catch at short. Kendall grounds out to first, but moves the runners up and scores Hardy in the process, making it 2-0. Gallardo actually hits one to the warning track in left, but Nyjer Morgan gets under it and ends the inning.
TOP 3RD: Wilson hits one to the gap, or at least he would have had Cameron not closed said gap. Maholm grounds weakly to first, Morgan to second, end of inning.
BOTTOM 3RD: Rickie Weeks hits a chopper to second and Freddy Sanchez beats him on the throw to first. Hart smacks a ground ball to center for a single. Braun makes another excursion into deep center, only for Nate McLouth to be waiting to make the catch again. Fielder once again has a potential home run robbed, this time by Morgan. It remains 2-0 Brewers.
TOP 4TH: Sanchez puts a single into the left-field corner. McLouth hits one to right, but Hart gets under it in time. Ryan Doumit, seeing the game slipping away early and wanting to put things right while there's still time, activates the Big Slam.
Ah yes. The Big Slam, one of The Bigs 2's features. Here, the next four batters get one swing each, though Pittsburgh might only get three as Sanchez is already on base. Make contact with the ball and you hit it. Anyone that cannot theoretically come up with the bases loaded is looking for a single and, if they miss, won't count as an out for some reason that developer Blue Castle Games and publisher 2K Sports never bothered to explain. Whoever comes up after that is swinging for the fences.
Doumit swings and misses. Adam LaRoche misses too. Andy LaRoche, though, puts one in the luxury box, tying us at 2.
Moss flies weakly to Hart, and Wilson grounds to Hall.
BOTTOM 4TH: Hardy hits a double to right-center. Cameron strikes out on three pitches. Hall grounds out to Adam LaRoche. Kendall hits a frozen rope to center, scoring Hardy. 3-2 Brewers. Gallardo grounds to third for the final out, stranding Kendall.
TOP 5TH: Bill Hall snags a pitential base hit by Maholm out of the air. Prince Fielder takes a routine grounder by Morgan, but can't hold on to a line drive by Sanchez, leaving Corey Hart to field it for him. Since errors aren't scored in The Bigs, that gives Sanchez his second hit of the day. McLouth flies out to center, ending the inning.
BOTTOM 5TH: Weeks whiffs on a 104-mph Paul Maholm fastball, which he threw despite the fact that not even in an unrealistic videogame should Paul Maholm be able to do that without jaw-dropping quantities of steroids, but then rips one to center and gets a triple out of it. Hart grounds out, but easily scores Weeks. Braun hits a lazy chopper to Sanchez. Fielder, with the Brewers up 4-2 with two out, powers up the Big Slam with the bases empty. Fielder connects. Hardy connects. Cameron misses. Hall, with the assistance of dramatic slow-motion cutscenes, deposits his pitch three luxury boxes to the left of where Andy LaRoche went with his. 7-2.
Damon Bruce: "Well, luckily, most people who sit in luxury boxes can afford plastic surgery."
Kendall rearranges Wilson's face on a line drive, but Andy LaRoche picks up the ball and records the third out.
TOP 6TH: Hardy dives on a Doumit grounder and beats him with a throw to first. Adam LaRoche hits a comebacker to Gallardo, handled ably. Andy hits a fly ball to Braun, but Braun muffs it and gives up a triple. Moss can't score him, though, grounding out to Hall.
BOTTOM 6TH: Gallardo grounds to Wilson. Weeks takes an 0-2 pitch and sends it screaming to the left-centerfield gap. Hart goes to the same place, scoring a triple and Weeks. 8-2. Braun strikes out. Fielder hits a seeing-eye single to the right side, scoring Hart and making it 9-2 Milwaukee. Sanchez fields a Hardy grounder.
TOP 7TH: Wilson goes for the fences, but Cameron intercepts him at the warning track, and then dives to catch a Maholm fly ball to right. Nyjer Morgan hits one down the left-field line for a single. Hardy beats Sanchez on a throw to first, and the inning is over.
BOTTOM 7TH: Maholm's day is done, as Tyler Yates comes on to pitch in relief. Cameron grounds to first. Hall strikes out. Wilson ably fields a Braun grounder, and that's the inning.
TOP 8TH: David Riske comes in to relieve Gallardo. Always a Riske decision there. What's more risky is Braun, who again fumbles a fly ball, this time from McLouth; it allows a double. Doumit hits a screamer to J.J. Hardy, who shows Braun how people actually catch balls in The Bigs. Adam LaRoche sacrifices McLouth to third. Andy becomes another victim of Hardy's glove, and McLouth is stranded at third.
BOTTOM 8TH: Andy LaRoche bobbles a Riske hit, but picks it back up in time to throw him out at first. Weeks strikes out. Hart hits a solid double to left-center; he tries to take off for third, but Braun fouls the pitch off, because Ryan Braun can't do anything right. And then Braun hits the third out to Freddy Sanchez, making him 0-4 on the day. You suck, Ryan Braun.
TOP 9TH:
Trevor Time.
Moss lines out to Weeks. Hoffman activates Big Heat, which gives a huge boost to whatever it is he's throwing. As if Pittsburgh needed anything more to worry about. Wilson is duly blown away. The Pirates send in Eric Hinske as a pinch-hitter, which Trevor Hoffman responds to by... activating Big Heat again. Hinske never stands a chance.
That's the ballgame. Milwaukee-- I mean, Green Bay 9, Pittsburgh 2.
Which is a theoretical football score.
So keep some perspective. Don't be the man who, as Bob Fenster wrote in Well, Duh! Our Stupid World, and Welcome to It, called an Arizona newspaper on December 7, 1941, while the Pearl Harbor attack was underway, asking for the score of a game between the Chicago Bears and then-Chicago Cardinals, saying "Aren't you getting anything besides that war stuff?" (For the record, the Bears won, 34-24.)
In that spirit, something I do every year before the Super Bowl is run a pregame simulation. Most people, for this purpose, use Madden. I consider this cliche, and so I pick something else.
This year, I've chosen The Bigs 2, with 2009 rosters.
'But Aaron', you are asking, 'the Super Bowl is football. The Bigs is a baseball game.' To that I say: shut your fool mouth. You are also saying 'Green Bay doesn't have a baseball team.' The Packers, for many decades, used to play home games in Milwaukee as well, three a season. So using Milwaukee as a substitute is perfectly valid.
Since the Packers are nominally the "home" team, the matchup is thus Pirates at Brewers, but since the game's in Arlington, Texas, the setting is the Rangers Ballpark at Arlington. Standard length is 5 innings, but today we're doing 9.
Starting lineups:
PITTSBURGH
1- Nyjer Morgan, LF
2- Freddy Sanchez, 2B
3- Nate McLouth, CF
4- Ryan Doumit, C
5- Adam LaRoche, 1B
6- Andy Laroche, 3B
7- Brandon Moss, RF
8- Jack Wilson, SS
9- Paul Maholm, P
MILWAUKEE
1- Rickie Weeks, 2B
2- Corey Hart, RF
3- Ryan Braun, LF
4- Prince Fielder, 1B
5- J.J. Hardy, SS
6- Mike Cameron, CF
7- Bill Hall, 3B
8- Jason Kendall, C
9- Yovani Gallardo, P
TOP 1ST: Morgan beats out a grounder to short, Sanchez isn't so lucky, though he advances Morgan to second. McLouth grounds to third. Doumit tags the first pitch and Hardy can't hang onto it, but Gallardo grabs the rebound and throws to first, beating Doumit to the bag and retiring the side.
BOTTOM 1ST: Weeks slaps one to left-center for a double. Hart strikes out, but on the third strike Weeks takes off for third and barely beats out the tag. Braun drives a deep fly ball to center, only to see McLouth rob him of a home run; however, he still sacrifices Weeks home. Brewers lead 1-0. Fielder also gives the ball a ride to center, but McLouth robs him too for the third out.
TOP 2ND: Adam Laroche decides he wants to try to play Home Run Derby too, and Mike Cameron decides he wants to play Home Run Killjoy too.
Commentator Damon Bruce: "Hahahahahaha. Wwwwwelcometothebigs!"
Andy grounds to second, Moss to first. Three up, three down, still 1-0 Milwaukee.
BOTTOM 2ND: Hardy starts with a worm-scorcher to left for a single. After an unsuccessful pickoff attempt, Maholm gives up a double to Cameron, putting two in scoring position. Hall makes the attempt to score them, but Wilson comes up with a big catch at short. Kendall grounds out to first, but moves the runners up and scores Hardy in the process, making it 2-0. Gallardo actually hits one to the warning track in left, but Nyjer Morgan gets under it and ends the inning.
TOP 3RD: Wilson hits one to the gap, or at least he would have had Cameron not closed said gap. Maholm grounds weakly to first, Morgan to second, end of inning.
BOTTOM 3RD: Rickie Weeks hits a chopper to second and Freddy Sanchez beats him on the throw to first. Hart smacks a ground ball to center for a single. Braun makes another excursion into deep center, only for Nate McLouth to be waiting to make the catch again. Fielder once again has a potential home run robbed, this time by Morgan. It remains 2-0 Brewers.
TOP 4TH: Sanchez puts a single into the left-field corner. McLouth hits one to right, but Hart gets under it in time. Ryan Doumit, seeing the game slipping away early and wanting to put things right while there's still time, activates the Big Slam.
Ah yes. The Big Slam, one of The Bigs 2's features. Here, the next four batters get one swing each, though Pittsburgh might only get three as Sanchez is already on base. Make contact with the ball and you hit it. Anyone that cannot theoretically come up with the bases loaded is looking for a single and, if they miss, won't count as an out for some reason that developer Blue Castle Games and publisher 2K Sports never bothered to explain. Whoever comes up after that is swinging for the fences.
Doumit swings and misses. Adam LaRoche misses too. Andy LaRoche, though, puts one in the luxury box, tying us at 2.
Moss flies weakly to Hart, and Wilson grounds to Hall.
BOTTOM 4TH: Hardy hits a double to right-center. Cameron strikes out on three pitches. Hall grounds out to Adam LaRoche. Kendall hits a frozen rope to center, scoring Hardy. 3-2 Brewers. Gallardo grounds to third for the final out, stranding Kendall.
TOP 5TH: Bill Hall snags a pitential base hit by Maholm out of the air. Prince Fielder takes a routine grounder by Morgan, but can't hold on to a line drive by Sanchez, leaving Corey Hart to field it for him. Since errors aren't scored in The Bigs, that gives Sanchez his second hit of the day. McLouth flies out to center, ending the inning.
BOTTOM 5TH: Weeks whiffs on a 104-mph Paul Maholm fastball, which he threw despite the fact that not even in an unrealistic videogame should Paul Maholm be able to do that without jaw-dropping quantities of steroids, but then rips one to center and gets a triple out of it. Hart grounds out, but easily scores Weeks. Braun hits a lazy chopper to Sanchez. Fielder, with the Brewers up 4-2 with two out, powers up the Big Slam with the bases empty. Fielder connects. Hardy connects. Cameron misses. Hall, with the assistance of dramatic slow-motion cutscenes, deposits his pitch three luxury boxes to the left of where Andy LaRoche went with his. 7-2.
Damon Bruce: "Well, luckily, most people who sit in luxury boxes can afford plastic surgery."
Kendall rearranges Wilson's face on a line drive, but Andy LaRoche picks up the ball and records the third out.
TOP 6TH: Hardy dives on a Doumit grounder and beats him with a throw to first. Adam LaRoche hits a comebacker to Gallardo, handled ably. Andy hits a fly ball to Braun, but Braun muffs it and gives up a triple. Moss can't score him, though, grounding out to Hall.
BOTTOM 6TH: Gallardo grounds to Wilson. Weeks takes an 0-2 pitch and sends it screaming to the left-centerfield gap. Hart goes to the same place, scoring a triple and Weeks. 8-2. Braun strikes out. Fielder hits a seeing-eye single to the right side, scoring Hart and making it 9-2 Milwaukee. Sanchez fields a Hardy grounder.
TOP 7TH: Wilson goes for the fences, but Cameron intercepts him at the warning track, and then dives to catch a Maholm fly ball to right. Nyjer Morgan hits one down the left-field line for a single. Hardy beats Sanchez on a throw to first, and the inning is over.
BOTTOM 7TH: Maholm's day is done, as Tyler Yates comes on to pitch in relief. Cameron grounds to first. Hall strikes out. Wilson ably fields a Braun grounder, and that's the inning.
TOP 8TH: David Riske comes in to relieve Gallardo. Always a Riske decision there. What's more risky is Braun, who again fumbles a fly ball, this time from McLouth; it allows a double. Doumit hits a screamer to J.J. Hardy, who shows Braun how people actually catch balls in The Bigs. Adam LaRoche sacrifices McLouth to third. Andy becomes another victim of Hardy's glove, and McLouth is stranded at third.
BOTTOM 8TH: Andy LaRoche bobbles a Riske hit, but picks it back up in time to throw him out at first. Weeks strikes out. Hart hits a solid double to left-center; he tries to take off for third, but Braun fouls the pitch off, because Ryan Braun can't do anything right. And then Braun hits the third out to Freddy Sanchez, making him 0-4 on the day. You suck, Ryan Braun.
TOP 9TH:
Trevor Time.
Moss lines out to Weeks. Hoffman activates Big Heat, which gives a huge boost to whatever it is he's throwing. As if Pittsburgh needed anything more to worry about. Wilson is duly blown away. The Pirates send in Eric Hinske as a pinch-hitter, which Trevor Hoffman responds to by... activating Big Heat again. Hinske never stands a chance.
That's the ballgame. Milwaukee-- I mean, Green Bay 9, Pittsburgh 2.
Which is a theoretical football score.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
The One-Year Anniversary
Today, Random Human Neural Firings celebrates its first anniversary. For me, this is a bit of an achievement. As I established right out of the gate, this is not my first attempt at running a blog. If you Google the name of this blog- or my name, for that matter- you will quickly see another blog by the same name that I attempted in 2005. I didn't stick with it very long, because I never got any comments but for one guy (who's followed me here, you know who you are). It didn't seem worth the effort if only one person was ever going to see it apart from me.
Besides, as with a lot of my earlier writing, it really wasn't that good. So I went on to other projects. I'd attempt other blogs as well, but each was more abortive than the last.
A few years later, I came across a segment on the Today Show about Lisa Ling's excursion into North Korea. Lisa had been in my consciousness prior, primarily from other documentaries she had done for National Geographic- and, curiously, a Folgers commercial- but pretty firmly cemented her in my mind. I didn't watch The View, I didn't get Channel One in my school, so Explorer and Folgers were where I saw her first. Soon after, I came across a blog she was running on the now-defunct Uber. Lisa wasn't getting too many comments either, though she was definately getting some. There was some sort of conversation going on; more importantly, it wasn't a trollfest or the usual celebrity instance of a bunch of fanboys and fangirls gushing 'omglolILOVEYOU<3<3<3' every time some the celebrity in question ate lunch or burped or posted a vacation photo. There was intelligent discourse going on. And if there's one thing that will attract me to a message board, it's accessible, reasonably intelligent conversation. So after familiarizing myself more with Lisa's body of work (and as I've stated here before, a fine body of work it is), I hopped in. Evidently, I hopped in well, because after a little while, Lisa started noting how much she liked my posts. Well, that's always a bit of an ego-stroke. If she likes what I have to say, who am I to deny her? Uber would instead, shutting down and taking Lisa's blog with it. She shifted to Facebook and Twitter, but since I was on neither at the time, contact was lost. When I registered for Facebook, contact was re-established about halfway through the detention in North Korea of Lisa's sister, Laura, and Euna Lee. I joined thousands of other well-wishers, many of whom were doing more than I was capable of, all of whom deserve due credit (especially ringmaster Brendan McShane Creamer) and the vast majority of which are still friended with her today. After the release of Laura and Euna, things slowly got back to normal, and even though there was the period of no contact and the increased audience (still an intelligent audience; she has a way of attracting that), it became clear Lisa did still remember me, albeit a bit hazily, as on Facebook I was posting under my real name and on Uber I was posting under a screenname, mtvcdm. (It stands for 'MTV Celebrity DeathMatch', a show in which claymation celebrities fight to the death. Interestingly enough, Lisa appeared on the show once, fighting Lucy Liu. She almost threw a punch at one point. You can watch it here if you're willing to deal with an awful pregnancy subplot featuring Debbie Matenopolous.)
Besides, Lisa and I hadn't actually physically met yet. That was remedied when she gave a speech at UW-La Crosse, and since I didn't have a headshot on Facebook- my avatar was and still is the logo from the videogame Mirror's Edge- she didn't have any idea what I looked like. This led to the following first encounter in La Crosse:
Me: "Hi, Aaron Allermann."
Lisa: (quizzical head tilt)
Me: "...from Facebook?"
Lisa (instantly) "OMIGOD HI!"
That night, I first mentioned to her my interest in entering the journalism industry (I currently work in retail), trying to sum up my path so far, and to be honest, I made something of a botch of it. I babbled at her, pretty much, and it's a wonder I was even coherent enough to understand.
This is where another major factor comes into play, my brother, Erik, comes into the picture. He had written for the high school newspaper and majored in journalism at UW-Whitewater; I decided this was a path I wanted to follow. The path, however, was bumpier than I could have ever imagined.
I got onto the school paper my junior year, as the humor columnist (as was Erik), as I wasn't allowed on as a freshman or sophomore. My junior year just so happened to be 2001-02, and 9/11 came along early in the semester. Humor was the furthest thing from my mind, and so was just about everything else, for a solid week. I naturally wanted to do a 9/11 article for the coming issue. I wrote what was, for me, for the time, probably the best article I'd ever written to that point in my life.
It never saw print. My teacher killed it on the grounds that too many other staffers were writing 9/11 articles of their own. I forget what article of mine actually wound up in print. I'm really not interested in looking it up. To add insult to injury, I never got a senior year on staff. There was no staff. There was no paper. The faculty had shut it down because not enough articles had been written praising the faculty.
In college- Madison Area Technical College- I intended to major in journalism, only to find out too late that journalism was not offered as a major. There was one elective course, News Writing and Reporting, and since one class is better than nothing, I took it, taking along the AP stylebook Erik had given me. The instructor was Larry Hansen, the third major factor, who watched as I more or less blew the doors off everything but the human-interest segment (where I still scored a solid B and, as it would happen, my only piece to date that's seen print in an actual newspaper), doing what good teachers do and showing what I still needed to work on. As it would happen, I also had a manuscript for a book on journalism in the works. Again, as one of my earlier works, the writing wasn't very good by my current standards- the prose was rough; I could go back and point out several places where my arguments looped back around and ate themselves- and I've since shelved it. But the class and the manuscript got enough of a rise out of Mr. Hansen to offer me a student-help job as a research assistant for a future class he was creating. I leapt on it like a football player on a fumble. A day still sticks in my mind where I spent eight hours straight crafting a fictional crime report from scratch on basically adrenaline and maybe a bottle of Mountain Dew at some point.
Basically, my idea of fun. I was really rather sad to graduate and have to leave that post.
Since then, things had stalled out; no luck getting further articles placed in papers or anything placed anywhere. That's where I found myself on that day in La Crosse. Lisa's response was to keep at it, because something's got to break through sooner or later. Several months, several articles and rejections from most of the papers of record in the Great Lakes region later, the subject came up again, and this time Lisa suggested I start a blog.
Now, Erik had encouraged me to try blogging again as well. I was apprehensive; I'd tried and failed quite enough times already. But it was Lisa here that pushed me over the hump. The reasoning was, she's the professional, highly successful journalist with 20 years experience, and if the professional, highly successful journalist with 20 years experience says start a blog, what can you do but take another run at it?
That was last February 3rd. Soon after, Lisa reposted my first non-introductory piece, 'Burn The Debt Clock'. This instantly put to rest any 'but nobody's going to read it' concerns. Certainly someone was going to be reading now, and one of those readers is Lisa Freaking Ling. This time, this blog was not going to die in a week and a half.
Over the course of the year, she's continued to be very supportive, including a plug to a Marquette audience the next time she was in Wisconsin. If you've been wondering why her name keeps coming up around here, that's why. If it wasn't for Larry Hansen and Erik Allermann (the latter of which has helped out with editing along the way), this blog would not be worth reading. If it wasn't for Lisa Ling, this blog would not be here at all.
If you've liked anything, if you've learned anything here in the past year, go thank them. I'd appreciate it; I'm sure they would as well.
In any case, because this is, as stated, part of an attempt to break into the industry, being one year in is as good a time as any to see how things have been going on that front. I still have much to learn- one always does- but I'd like to think I've come a long way from where I was back in my high school days. These are what I consider to be my best ten pieces from the previous 12 months, presented in chronological order. Whether I have what it takes, that's up to you.
2/6/10- An Open Letter To The Racists
3/15/10- Japanese Minorities
4/17/10- Rationale and Inhibition, or Lack Thereof
5/4/10- Disrespect The Met
6/21/10- The Xhosa Cattle Killings
8/9/10- What Is An American?
8/24/10- I DON'T KNOW WHY WE'RE YELLING!
9/18/10- Cooper School and Maddow School
12/5/10- Wikiplexed
1/11/11- Easy Answers Where None Exist
Besides, as with a lot of my earlier writing, it really wasn't that good. So I went on to other projects. I'd attempt other blogs as well, but each was more abortive than the last.
A few years later, I came across a segment on the Today Show about Lisa Ling's excursion into North Korea. Lisa had been in my consciousness prior, primarily from other documentaries she had done for National Geographic- and, curiously, a Folgers commercial- but pretty firmly cemented her in my mind. I didn't watch The View, I didn't get Channel One in my school, so Explorer and Folgers were where I saw her first. Soon after, I came across a blog she was running on the now-defunct Uber. Lisa wasn't getting too many comments either, though she was definately getting some. There was some sort of conversation going on; more importantly, it wasn't a trollfest or the usual celebrity instance of a bunch of fanboys and fangirls gushing 'omglolILOVEYOU<3<3<3' every time some the celebrity in question ate lunch or burped or posted a vacation photo. There was intelligent discourse going on. And if there's one thing that will attract me to a message board, it's accessible, reasonably intelligent conversation. So after familiarizing myself more with Lisa's body of work (and as I've stated here before, a fine body of work it is), I hopped in. Evidently, I hopped in well, because after a little while, Lisa started noting how much she liked my posts. Well, that's always a bit of an ego-stroke. If she likes what I have to say, who am I to deny her? Uber would instead, shutting down and taking Lisa's blog with it. She shifted to Facebook and Twitter, but since I was on neither at the time, contact was lost. When I registered for Facebook, contact was re-established about halfway through the detention in North Korea of Lisa's sister, Laura, and Euna Lee. I joined thousands of other well-wishers, many of whom were doing more than I was capable of, all of whom deserve due credit (especially ringmaster Brendan McShane Creamer) and the vast majority of which are still friended with her today. After the release of Laura and Euna, things slowly got back to normal, and even though there was the period of no contact and the increased audience (still an intelligent audience; she has a way of attracting that), it became clear Lisa did still remember me, albeit a bit hazily, as on Facebook I was posting under my real name and on Uber I was posting under a screenname, mtvcdm. (It stands for 'MTV Celebrity DeathMatch', a show in which claymation celebrities fight to the death. Interestingly enough, Lisa appeared on the show once, fighting Lucy Liu. She almost threw a punch at one point. You can watch it here if you're willing to deal with an awful pregnancy subplot featuring Debbie Matenopolous.)
Besides, Lisa and I hadn't actually physically met yet. That was remedied when she gave a speech at UW-La Crosse, and since I didn't have a headshot on Facebook- my avatar was and still is the logo from the videogame Mirror's Edge- she didn't have any idea what I looked like. This led to the following first encounter in La Crosse:
Me: "Hi, Aaron Allermann."
Lisa: (quizzical head tilt)
Me: "...from Facebook?"
Lisa (instantly) "OMIGOD HI!"
That night, I first mentioned to her my interest in entering the journalism industry (I currently work in retail), trying to sum up my path so far, and to be honest, I made something of a botch of it. I babbled at her, pretty much, and it's a wonder I was even coherent enough to understand.
This is where another major factor comes into play, my brother, Erik, comes into the picture. He had written for the high school newspaper and majored in journalism at UW-Whitewater; I decided this was a path I wanted to follow. The path, however, was bumpier than I could have ever imagined.
I got onto the school paper my junior year, as the humor columnist (as was Erik), as I wasn't allowed on as a freshman or sophomore. My junior year just so happened to be 2001-02, and 9/11 came along early in the semester. Humor was the furthest thing from my mind, and so was just about everything else, for a solid week. I naturally wanted to do a 9/11 article for the coming issue. I wrote what was, for me, for the time, probably the best article I'd ever written to that point in my life.
It never saw print. My teacher killed it on the grounds that too many other staffers were writing 9/11 articles of their own. I forget what article of mine actually wound up in print. I'm really not interested in looking it up. To add insult to injury, I never got a senior year on staff. There was no staff. There was no paper. The faculty had shut it down because not enough articles had been written praising the faculty.
In college- Madison Area Technical College- I intended to major in journalism, only to find out too late that journalism was not offered as a major. There was one elective course, News Writing and Reporting, and since one class is better than nothing, I took it, taking along the AP stylebook Erik had given me. The instructor was Larry Hansen, the third major factor, who watched as I more or less blew the doors off everything but the human-interest segment (where I still scored a solid B and, as it would happen, my only piece to date that's seen print in an actual newspaper), doing what good teachers do and showing what I still needed to work on. As it would happen, I also had a manuscript for a book on journalism in the works. Again, as one of my earlier works, the writing wasn't very good by my current standards- the prose was rough; I could go back and point out several places where my arguments looped back around and ate themselves- and I've since shelved it. But the class and the manuscript got enough of a rise out of Mr. Hansen to offer me a student-help job as a research assistant for a future class he was creating. I leapt on it like a football player on a fumble. A day still sticks in my mind where I spent eight hours straight crafting a fictional crime report from scratch on basically adrenaline and maybe a bottle of Mountain Dew at some point.
Basically, my idea of fun. I was really rather sad to graduate and have to leave that post.
Since then, things had stalled out; no luck getting further articles placed in papers or anything placed anywhere. That's where I found myself on that day in La Crosse. Lisa's response was to keep at it, because something's got to break through sooner or later. Several months, several articles and rejections from most of the papers of record in the Great Lakes region later, the subject came up again, and this time Lisa suggested I start a blog.
Now, Erik had encouraged me to try blogging again as well. I was apprehensive; I'd tried and failed quite enough times already. But it was Lisa here that pushed me over the hump. The reasoning was, she's the professional, highly successful journalist with 20 years experience, and if the professional, highly successful journalist with 20 years experience says start a blog, what can you do but take another run at it?
That was last February 3rd. Soon after, Lisa reposted my first non-introductory piece, 'Burn The Debt Clock'. This instantly put to rest any 'but nobody's going to read it' concerns. Certainly someone was going to be reading now, and one of those readers is Lisa Freaking Ling. This time, this blog was not going to die in a week and a half.
Over the course of the year, she's continued to be very supportive, including a plug to a Marquette audience the next time she was in Wisconsin. If you've been wondering why her name keeps coming up around here, that's why. If it wasn't for Larry Hansen and Erik Allermann (the latter of which has helped out with editing along the way), this blog would not be worth reading. If it wasn't for Lisa Ling, this blog would not be here at all.
If you've liked anything, if you've learned anything here in the past year, go thank them. I'd appreciate it; I'm sure they would as well.
In any case, because this is, as stated, part of an attempt to break into the industry, being one year in is as good a time as any to see how things have been going on that front. I still have much to learn- one always does- but I'd like to think I've come a long way from where I was back in my high school days. These are what I consider to be my best ten pieces from the previous 12 months, presented in chronological order. Whether I have what it takes, that's up to you.
2/6/10- An Open Letter To The Racists
3/15/10- Japanese Minorities
4/17/10- Rationale and Inhibition, or Lack Thereof
5/4/10- Disrespect The Met
6/21/10- The Xhosa Cattle Killings
8/9/10- What Is An American?
8/24/10- I DON'T KNOW WHY WE'RE YELLING!
9/18/10- Cooper School and Maddow School
12/5/10- Wikiplexed
1/11/11- Easy Answers Where None Exist
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Chaos in Tahrir Square
The basic rundown of what's going on right now:
*Anti-Mubarak forces are more or less surrounded in Tahrir Square in Cairo by pro-Mubarak forces that amount to thugs. No uniformed officers; the military is standing there watching.
*Molotov cocktails have been thrown by the pro-Mubarak crowd; the military's been spending their time spraying water at the resulting fires.
*Some hours ago, pro-Mubarak people on horseback and camelback rode through what had been a tense-but-calm talk between the two sides, flogging anti-Mubarak people as they went. Since then, what's been going on has been described by CNN as a "street brawl."
*When either side captures someone from the other side, the captured party is bound to be beaten severely. Anderson Cooper found this out firsthand earlier when he was attacked by pro-Mubarak forces.
*The anti-Mubarak forces view the situation as a fight for their lives; they pledge to die defending Tahrir Square. They've been pulling up bricks from the ground and grabbing just about anything they can get their hands on to use as a weapon or a shield.
The situation is obviously still very fluid; it's a bit of a standoff right now. Here's the Guardian's update board.
*Anti-Mubarak forces are more or less surrounded in Tahrir Square in Cairo by pro-Mubarak forces that amount to thugs. No uniformed officers; the military is standing there watching.
*Molotov cocktails have been thrown by the pro-Mubarak crowd; the military's been spending their time spraying water at the resulting fires.
*Some hours ago, pro-Mubarak people on horseback and camelback rode through what had been a tense-but-calm talk between the two sides, flogging anti-Mubarak people as they went. Since then, what's been going on has been described by CNN as a "street brawl."
*When either side captures someone from the other side, the captured party is bound to be beaten severely. Anderson Cooper found this out firsthand earlier when he was attacked by pro-Mubarak forces.
*The anti-Mubarak forces view the situation as a fight for their lives; they pledge to die defending Tahrir Square. They've been pulling up bricks from the ground and grabbing just about anything they can get their hands on to use as a weapon or a shield.
The situation is obviously still very fluid; it's a bit of a standoff right now. Here's the Guardian's update board.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Sleep In, Punxsutawney Phil
A) You will not see your shadow tomorrow, because it will be snowing and therefore cloudy.
B) You will be wrong. Because you will be not seeing your shadow in the middle of Snowpocalypse or Snowmageddon or Snowmicide or Snowlocaust or Snowsterf**k or something.
This will be the norm. Historically, groundhog accuracy rates, of Phil and others across North America, tend to come in somewhere around the high 30's overall; Phil himself is showing at 39%. You'd do better flipping a coin, or flipping the signs: shadow means spring, no shadow means winter.
Proponents will tell you not to pay attention to the numbers and to just have fun with it. You know what's fun? Not going out in a blizzard.
Meanwhile, towards our neck of the woods, in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Jimmy the Groundhog- generally the groundhog of record should Phil prove unable to perform his duties- will be giving the same prediction in the middle of a 20-inch snow dump "capable of paralyzing parts of southeast Wisconsin."
B) You will be wrong. Because you will be not seeing your shadow in the middle of Snowpocalypse or Snowmageddon or Snowmicide or Snowlocaust or Snowsterf**k or something.
This will be the norm. Historically, groundhog accuracy rates, of Phil and others across North America, tend to come in somewhere around the high 30's overall; Phil himself is showing at 39%. You'd do better flipping a coin, or flipping the signs: shadow means spring, no shadow means winter.
Proponents will tell you not to pay attention to the numbers and to just have fun with it. You know what's fun? Not going out in a blizzard.
Meanwhile, towards our neck of the woods, in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Jimmy the Groundhog- generally the groundhog of record should Phil prove unable to perform his duties- will be giving the same prediction in the middle of a 20-inch snow dump "capable of paralyzing parts of southeast Wisconsin."
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