Tagged: New York Times
Haikubot
Snap quiz: What do the following verses have in common?
And that’s how it went
all afternoon, one lizard
after anotherIt made me wonder
if snow leopards have a taste
for joggers as wellAs is typical,
the Pope stayed above the fray
and did not comment.Whether such tactics
will have a chilling effect
remains to be seen.
Answer: All four are inadvertent haikus, composed by humans but discovered by machines.
The first two come from a Tumblr blog created by New York Times editor Jacob Harris, who adapted some open-source compter code to scan the homepage of the New York Times, looking for snippets of text that conform to the Haiku syllabic structure: 5:7:5.
“Sometimes it can be an ordinary sentence in context, but pulled out of context it has a strange comedy or beauty to it,” Harris told the Nieman Journalism Lab.
The next two come from Haikuleaks, a project that searched for serendipitous poetry among the thousands of diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks in 2010.
A purest might say these poems are not really haikus, since they lack the requisite seasonal reference (kigo), and the twist (kireji) that injects the last line with surprise.
“Not every haiku our computer finds is a good one,” Harris wrote on the Times Haiku blog. “The algorithm discards some potential poems if they are awkwardly constructed, and it does not scan articles covering sensitive topics. Furthermore, the machine has no aesthetic sense. It can’t distinguish between an elegant verse and a plodding one. But, when it does stumble across something beautiful or funny or just a gem of a haiku, human journalists select it and post it on this blog.”
Both the Times project and Haikuleaks have their roots in Haiku Finder, an open source python script that crawls through text and ferrets out haiku. You can try it yourself by copying a large block of text—the bigger the better—and pasting it into the Haiku Finder search box.
If you do that with, oh, say, Nova Scotia’s broken Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, Haiku Finder coughs up this ironic bit of poetic wisdom:
Where accuracy
is critical, please consult
official sources.
When eco-trivia overwhelms real threats to the planet
With so many real and pressing environmental crises threatening to harm Planet Earth, why are so many well-meaning environmentalists so easily diverted into foolhardy projects like the campaign to ban plastic water bottles?
On January 1, the Town of Concord, Massachusetts, prohibited the sale of “non-sparkling, unflavored drinking water in single-serving polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles of 1 liter (34 ounces) or less.” To be clear, it’s still OK to sell small, plastic bottles of Coke, Red Bull, colored sugar-water, and carbonated water, and it’s OK to sell Just Plain Water in 40-oz plastic bottles or gallon jugs.
In an approving report on the ban, the Globe and Mail zeroed in an oft-repeated environmental trope that appears to have its origin in a June, 2007, editorial in the New York Times.
The recommended eight glasses of water a day, at U.S. tap rates, equals about 49 cents a year. The same amount of bottled water costs about $1,400, according to the tap water activist group Ban the Bottle.
Except:
- The recommendation for drinking eight glasses of water per day is quackery, debunked at Snopes.com and many other places.
- No bottled water defender recommends that people consume water exclusively from bottles, merely that it’s a convenient way to drink water in some circumstances — such as in a car or on a beach, where municipal water taps tend to be scarce.
- The proposition that bottled water use lowers public support for municipal water supplies (which are all but ubiquitous in North American towns and cities) suffers from an absence of evidence.
- The Concord, MA, ban wisely omits emergencies when municipal supplies are contaminated or unavailable—unusual, but hardly unheard of events.
For his part, Contrarian drinks many glasses of tap water, but from time to time, he prefers the convenience of a recyclable plastic bottle, whether newly purchased with water inside, or refilled with tap water from his non-municipal bore hole. Sometimes he freezes water in bottles to take to the beach on hot summer days.
When one of these bottles has served its purpose, Contrarian carefully places it in the recycle bin, thereby contributing revenue his rural municipality can use to maintain water systems in places other than Boularderie Island.
He would like the Globe and Mail and the Town of Concord to get off his case.
H/T: JP (who might disagree).
12-12-12
One would like to think of human history as an unbroken march toward enlightenment in which superstition and magical beliefs are gradually discarded in favor of rational thought and evidence-based decisions. One would like to, but then one remembers the media’s obsession with Mayan doomsday predictions never actually predicted by actual Mayans, and the scandalous failure of most Nova Scotia health care workers to get the ‘flu vaccine (thus depriving themselves, their families, and their patients of the most effective life-saving advance in medical history), and today’s numerological media trope-de-jour: the fact that today’s (arbitrary) date can be rendered as 12-12-12.
So it was with a mixture of amusement and chagrin that we read (courtesy of Lauren Oostveen of the Nova Scotia Archives) the New York Times’s account of the last 12-12-12 iteration, the one that occurred on December 12, 1912. The anonymous Times writer of a century ago cataloged the carry-on about arbitrary dates with an air of droll contempt that seems not at all dated.
[F]or those who live on past to-day, there will still be available some triple-plated dates of magical mischance. And one of them, to come a mere thirty-two years from now, will outdo all other combinations in the magic of its mixture. It will come on April 11, 1944, and the 4-11-44 that may then be written will, of course, bring out into the letter writing industry every soul that ever hugged a rabbit’s foot, threw a horseshoe over the left shoulder, or trembled when he broke a mirror or walked under a ladder.
So mark this down as one area where 100 years of humankind’s relentless march toward rationality appears to have gained no ground whatsoever. Here’s the whole Times piece:
Has Neal Livingston lost his %$@& mind?
A couple of years ago, a friend and I travelled to Inverness for a celebration honoring the wonderful author and columnist, Frank MacDonald. On the off-chance alcohol might be consumed, we sought lodging at one of the town’s two motels. Our choices were Grim and Grimmer.
Inverness had many charms — spectacular setting, fascinating history, unique culture, magnificent beach — but no economic engine since its coal mines shut down in the 1960s. Boarded up storefronts and seedy hand-painted signs for the few surviving businesses offered silent testimony to the community’s entrenched gloom.
Into this sad civic concoction came Ben Cowan-Dewer and Allie Barclay, a Toronto couple determined to achieve a dream that had eluded Inverness for decades: building a top-notch golf course on the coal-ravaged landscape that separated the down-at-the-heels village from its glorious beach.
In 2008, they moved their family down from Toronto, leaving behind Barclay’s career in finance. They found golf-savvy investors and crackerjack course architects. They assembled 14 parcels of land from various owners. In the depths of the deepest recession since the 1930s, they raised “tens of millions of dollars” to reshape the mine site and build an 18-hole links-style golf course that is winning rave reviews. Canadian Golfer calls Cabot Links, “the best course built in Canada in the last 50 years.” On Canada Day, the New York Times devoted the front page of its Sunday sports section to an article extolling the course as, “a resort-quality, high-end layout designed to be a true links golf course, a boutique category of oceanside golf architecture exceedingly rare outside the British Isles.” The Globe and Mail’s Jane Tabor was equally effusive, as was the Toronto Star.
The course now employs 125 Invernessers — a staggering total in a village of 1,800 souls. If they ever throw another party for Frank MacDonald, out-of-town guests will be able to stay at the architecturally smart, 48-room luxury hotel that overlooks the course. The Robin Donut chain has opened the town’s first drive-through. There’s talk of another hotel, and Cowan-Dewar promises a second 18-hole seaside course, Cabot Cliffs, if the first course attracts 15,000 rounds this season. For the first time in decades, Inverness might just have a future.
This is all terribly upsetting to Neal Livingston. The media-savvy environmental gadfly has been a constant thorn in the side of Cowan-Dewar and Barclay. Last year, he claimed the developers had reneged on an agreement to maintain a path from the highway to the far end of the town beach, although the parties to that agreement confirm that they worked out a satisfactory alternative path.
Last month, as the course was poised to open amidst a tidal wave of media accolades the likes of which Inverness has never seen, Livingston found another way to pee on the party. He issued a press release berating Nova Scotia’s Minister of Environment for being slow to act on his complaint that the course had damaged the beach.
In fact, officials of the Department of Natural Resources were quick to investigate — and reject — Livingston’s initial claim, although their investigation turned up a different issue: possible encroachment on real estate technically designated as part of the protected beach. You can see the devastating results for yourself in the photo above. (Kidding!)
As part of the links design, Cabot uses natural grasses and native vegetation. It is the least environmentally intrusive golf design possible. It replaces toxic coal mine tailings that had marred the landscape for decades, uncomplained-about by Livingston’s Margaree Environmental Association.
Here’s how golf journalist Robert Thompson viewed the contretemps:
The fascinating thing about the whole debate by a group of people opposed to any advancement in the town of Inverness is that they seem to ignore what they’ve gotten. The so-called “developer,” Cowan-Dewar, is hardly a developer in any traditional sense. Yes, there’s a golf course and a hotel, but this isn’t a huge residential development. And the project uses natural grasses throughout and has done its best to impose as little on the land as it can — its that sort of course. To top it off… the site was largely a remediated mine — and the boardwalk already runs along a sandy dune for several kilometres. I’m not sure how the golf course could do any more damage — or cross the boardwalk…
That’s exactly what a functioning democracy is all about. It’s about some individual opposed to a project making complaints time and again, having them shot down and finding new things to complain about. It is about an individual wasting government time and taxpayer dollars on complaints without merit.
What I find striking is that Livingston could maintain a seasonal residence in nearby Mabou for decades and yet remain indifferent to the desire of those whose ancestors settled this beautiful land in the 19th Century to make a living there in the 21st. Has lost his mind? Probably not, but he appears to have lost all sense of perspective, compassion, and common sense.
Infographic: Who gets US social support money?
Federal government benefits in the US —chiefly Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, income security, unemployment insurance, and veterans’ benefits—accounted for 17.6 percent of personal income in 2009. The New York Times today published another of its fantastic interactive charts, this one showing where federal assistance has gone over the last 40 years: what counties got what percentage of their personal income from which programs in each of those years.
This screenshot doesn’t do the actual chart justice, so click through to the original.
An accompanying story concludes that, while social support programs once went mostly to the poorest Americans, the middle class has recently become the largest recipient. Americans who complain vociferously about overly generous social programs are themselves recipients.
Wouldn’t it be illuminating to see something similar for Canadian federal and provincial government benefits?
Dollar Store chic
From the moment I first stepped inside one, I have regarded dollar stores as miraculous institutions, unappreciated by the cognoscenti. In this morning’s New York Times, reporter Jesse McKinley describes how he outfitted his new apartment in Albany, NY, entirely from items purchased at the various dollar stores that abound in the area (with a slide show). The daring Mr. McKinley does not observe my only rule of dollar store consumption: Avoid items intended to be ingested.
Donham’s Law of Fisheries Conservation reconfirmed
In an almost perfect illustration of Donham’s Law, the New York Times reports this morning that New English fishermen are pooh-poohing calls from fisheries scientists for greater restrictions, or even an outright ban, on cod fishing in the gulf of Maine.
The scientists point to new data showing cod stocks in much worse shape than previously thought; the fishermen say there’s an abundance of fish.
“Fishermen will almost always tell you that, and it’s not that they’re lying,” said Mark Kurlansky, whose 1997 book, “Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World,” documented how Canada’s once-abundant Atlantic cod were fished almost to extinction. “Landing a lot of fish can mean the fish are very plentiful, or it can mean the fishermen are extremely efficient in scooping up every last one of them.”
Donham’s Law of Fisheries Conservation states that All fishermen resolutely support conservation measures, except those targeting the species they fish for, and the gear types they fish with.
Required reading: shale gas document dump
Nova Scotians could be forgiven for feeling confused about prospects for shale gas fracking in the province. Is shale gas a sensible short-term approach to reduced carbon emissions? Or an environmental calamity waiting to happen?
Those who stand to profit from shale gas, and governments desperate for energy solutions that won’t cripple the economy, are predictably bullish on our shale gas reserves. Many environmentalists oppose fracking with the unreassuring obduracy they bring to every issue (see: the nonsensical flap over biosolids).
I have no idea who’s right about shale gas, but today’s New York Times offers a massive dump of insider documents purporting to show promoters have wildly exaggerated shale gas reserves, while regulators and venture capital companies have averted their eyes. The candid assessments range from “bubble” to “Ponzi scheme.”
[Note: The Times document reader is hard to use, but easier if you click the text tab at the top of the page. See also here and here.]
Stunning satellite view before and after the tsunami
The New York Times has posted eight interactive satellite images of tsunami-ravaged cities in Japan. By moving the blue slider in the center of the image left and right, you can transition back and forth between the before and after images. (You can’t do that on the screenshot shown here, only by going to the NYT site.)
H/T: Richard Stephenson
Complex passwords — not so important after all
A New York Times article explains something that has long puzzled me: why are institutions where security really matters so lax about passwords, while the corner store requires long, ever-changing, combinations of upper and lower case, alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric characters? Why are my credit union and my bank satisfied with a four-digit numeric PIN, which they never make me change?
The answer, according to a number of security experts interviewed by the Times, is that passwords don’t need to be strong or constantly changed. Worse, “[O]nerous requirements for passwords have given us a false sense of protection against potential attacks. In fact, they say, we aren’t paying enough attention to more potent threats.”
After investigating password requirements in a variety of settings, [Microsoft security specialist Cormac] Herley is critical not of users but of system administrators who aren’t paying enough attention to the inconvenience of making people comply with arcane rules. “It is not users who need to be better educated on the risks of various attacks, but the security community,” he said at a meeting of security professionals, the New Security Paradigms Workshop, at Queen’s College in Oxford, England. “Security advice simply offers a bad cost-benefit tradeoff to users.”….
One might guess that heavily trafficked Web sites — especially those that provide access to users’ financial information — would have requirements for strong passwords. But it turns out that password policies of many such sites are among the most relaxed. These sites don’t publicly discuss security breaches, but Mr. Herley said it “isn’t plausible” that these sites would use such policies if their users weren’t adequately protected from attacks by those who do not know the password.
Mr. Herley, working with Dinei Florêncio, also at Microsoft Research, looked at the password policies of 75 Web sites. At the Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security, held in July in Redmond, Wash., they reported that the sites that allowed relatively weak passwords were busy commercial destinations, including PayPal, Amazon.com and Fidelity Investments. The sites that insisted on very complex passwords were mostly government and university sites. What accounts for the difference? They suggest that “when the voices that advocate for usability are absent or weak, security measures become needlessly restrictive.”
Donald A. Norman, a co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, a design consulting firm in Fremont, Calif., makes a similar case. In “When Security Gets in the Way,” an essay published last year, he noted the password rules of Northwestern University, where he then taught. It was a daunting list of 15 requirements. He said unreasonable rules can end up rendering a system less secure: users end up writing down passwords and storing them in places that can be readily discovered.
“These requirements keep out the good guys without deterring the bad guys,” he said.
I’ve suspected this for a long time, although I may have carried it too far. I recently found my (former!) favorite password in the number-two slot on a list of most frequently chosen passwords.
