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The Not-So-Tangled Web

If you thought anecdotes about my kids were bad, how about anecdotes about spiders?

I wrote a book about ants, but I know nothing about spiders. And indeed for the thirteen years I spent Manhattan, I don't think I saw a single spider in the two apartments I lived in. (One of the rarely-mentioned side benefits of urban living -- aside from all the walking -- is the lack of bugs, assuming you don't have cockroaches. I go to visit my parents in suburban Washington during the summer and I feel like I'm in a rain forest.) But here in the wilds of Brooklyn, we have spiders, mostly in our garden, but occasionally in the house itself.

This is the second September we've spent in this house, and I've now noticed a very interesting pattern. Right around September 15, a spider will reliably start building a web between the two rails on the little smoking balcony that leads to the stairs down to our garden. You can knock the web down; you can kill the spider; you can have a heavy rain wash it all away -- whatever you do, the next morning, a spider will have spun another web in the same spot.

Now, I can see that this is an ideal location for bug catching -- it's elevated about fifteen feet above ground, with few obstructions around it, and the two railings supply a perfect frame for the web itself. I can see the merits of the location, but I'm, you know, smart. How does the spider know? Do spiders do scouting missions? Can they assess a location before building the web? This is clearly not a swarm intelligence thing -- like ants optimizing routes to a food source -- because there's just one spider doing the analysis. All you arachnophiliacs out there, please explain what's going on...

We Set The Bar Pretty Low Around Here

As a father of little boys, you inevitably have in your head the folkloric stories of sons dreaming of growing up and doing all the grownup things their dads do: becoming a race car driver like dad, or a fireman. In our household, apparently, the same logic is at work, only with a small twist. Here's a conversation I had yesterday with our 3-year-old Clay, walking back from a morning in Prospect Park:

ME: You know how tall you're going to be in fifteen years?
CLAY: No?
ME: You're going to be as tall as daddy!
CLAY (big smile): Really?
ME: That's right.
CLAY (excitement rising in his voice): And then I can drink coffee!?!
ME: Um, yes... But that's not the best thing about... Oh, never mind.

Perhaps it's a sign that you have a problem when your son thinks the whole reason to look forward to adulthood is being allowed to have an iced latte.

My Tiny (And Brief) Life

So enough about the battleground states and Fallujah, enough about Rathergate and the latest Zogby polls: I got my copy of The Sims 2 yesterday!

Here's a brief summary of my first two hours with the game. I spend twenty minutes installing it while I skim the manual. Then I launch the game, and immediately opt to create a new family. The Sims 2 gives you far more control over the appearance and personality of your Sims, and so I spend what seems like hours crafting as exact a replica of my own family as possible, down to this new pink retro-preppy Izod shirt my wife just bought, and the striped pajamas our youngest boy wears. When I finish re-constructing the four of us, I find a nice little starter home in what seems like an appealing neighborhood, buy some furnishings with the remaining money I have, and we move in. And then, almost immediately, the Sim based on me burns to death in a kitchen fire.

Nice.

On Today's Menu: Flame Bait

Okay, you all know that I believe in the blogosphere as much as anybody, and that I've spent the last ten years of my life championing the power of bottom-up media and distributed intelligence. So I've been thrilled to see the team effort over the past ten days that toppled the CBS documents story. But could we have a brief reality check for just one split second? For all of you announcing that Rathergate is a watershed moment in the history of journalism, the moment when the swarm Davids finally outfoxed the big media Goliath -- remember that this was a story that was uniquely suited for the living-room journalism that flourishes in the blogging world. You didn't even need Google to crack this case: 95% of the relevant facts that proved the documents to be forged were available simply by switching applications. If there's a watershed here, it's this: from this day on, you can be sure that any time a national news story appears that revolves around Microsoft Word's auto-formatting features -- the blogosphere will OWN that story!

Think about the other major stories that broke in the last year or so involving misrepresentations or other abuses of power: the Plame Affair, Abu Ghraib, the whole missing-WMD madness. Did the bloggers contribute anything substantive to the reporting -- to the facts, not the opinions -- of those stories? No, because the central elements in those stories were not matters of typography; to advance them you couldn't just launch Microsoft Word or Google for "Niger documents." Until the blogosphere figures out a way to contribute to those kinds of stories -- and not just ones where a knowledge of font trivia makes you a genuine expert -- I think we'll still prove to be better at framing the news than making it ourselves.

Forgeries?

Whoa! Who thought typography could be this thrilling? This is like the final scene in Jagged Edge!

The Mud-Slingers Denounce Mud

None of you will be surprised to learn that I'm enjoying the surge of stories and newly discovered documents surrounding the President's National Guard tenure, though of course all of that should be taken with the caveat that it's not what he did back then that's relevant; it's whether he's lying about what he did back then that matters. (The old anti-Clinton distinction, in other words.) But one thing in the coverage of both this scandal and the swift boaters has consistently driven me crazy: television pundits who spend entire shows covering these decades-old stories, and who then have the audacity to complain about the campaigns not focusing on The Issues That Real Americans Care About. (Chris Matthews and guests were doing this last night, but it's a refrain that appears on pretty much every political chat show.)

The next time you hear that complaint registered by a TV personality, I advise you to visit the web sites for Bush and Kerry, and read through the transcripts of their recent speeches and appearances. You will find, almost without exception, that they are talking constantly about Issues That Real Americans Care About: outsourcing, new forms of energy, tax relief, medical liability, the Iraq reconstruction, cargo inspections. Here are two representative excerpts from the last two days:

THE PRESIDENT: Let me tell you something interesting about Wayne's business. He is called a Subchapter S corporation. That is an accounting term, or legal term -- legal term.

MR. LAM: Yes, it's a legal term.

THE PRESIDENT: Legal term. You and I aren't lawyers.

MR. LAM: No, sir. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: A Subchapter S corporation, like a sole proprietorship, pays taxes at the individual income tax level. So when we reduced all rates, individual income tax rates, we're helping Subchapter S corporations like Wayne's. (Applause.) Now, did it help you? The tax relief help at all? I'm sure -- that's called, leading the witness. (Laughter.) Yes, it helped, Mr. President. (Laughter.)

MR. LAMB: Yes, it helped. (Laughter and applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Let me tell you something. Listen to that rhetoric of this campaign. I'm running against a fellow who promised about $2 trillion -- well, I think maybe a little more than $2 trillion, thus far -- of new spending. So they said, how are you going to pay for it? He said, oh, we're just going to tax the rich; we're going to raise the top two brackets. That's called, taxing the rich. And guess who he taxes? He taxes Wayne. By running up the top two brackets, he's taxing nearly a million, about 900,000, Subchapter S corporations and sole proprietorships.

And from Kerry:

In the last three years, West Virginia lost 11,000 manufacturing jobs. But just today, a report came out that shows we've replaced those good jobs with low wage jobs – ones that pay an average of $9,000 less. A lot of them are part-time or temporary and don't provide any health care or benefits. That is wrong. That's George W. Bush and that's why we need a new direction for America.

But if you think it's tough to get by on $9,000 less, you haven't heard the half of it. Health care costs are up, tuition is up, child care costs are up, gas prices are up, and family income has fallen. So people are working two jobs, three jobs, working nights and weekends, just to make ends meet.

Four years ago, George W. Bush told us he wanted to create an economy where there was “high-paying, high-quality work” for everyone. He now says prosperity has returned and we've turned the corner. Well, that's just plain wrong.

No mention of the National Guard, no mention of the swift boats. If the media wants a substantive campaign, it's sitting right in front of them, waiting to be covered. But of course tax breaks for S Corporations don't make very good television, which is why they invariably don't get covered. And that in itself is fine: television is in the business of improving ratings, not civic discourse. Just don't complain about our declining political discourse when you're the one dragging it down.

George Bush's Cocaine Parties At Camp David

As much as I dislike our commander-in-chief, I have a hard time believing the tales -- emerging from Kitty Kelly's new profile of the Bush family -- of W. doing cocaine at Camp David during his Dad's administration. But the story reminds me yet again of the free pass that Bush has historically received from the press on the question of his cocaine use, which he has studiously dodged with cute answers like "When I was young and irresponsible I was young and irresponsible." Now, I'm against the "politics of personal destruction," and I thought Monicagate was a colossal waste of time. But Clinton wasn't supporting legislation that threw people into jail if they had affairs with their interns. Bush, on the other hand, has been a strong supporter of the war on drugs for his entire political life. So letting him joke his way out of answering the question is unacceptable. If a politician has actively supported the Drug War, then it's not the "politics of personal destruction" to ask whether he's ever served time in the opposing ranks.

 I wrote about this issue for FEED after the DUI arrest came out, days before the 2000 election. Sadly, what I wrote then is just as relevant today:

Here are the facts: possession of one to four grams of cocaine -- the amount that a semi-regular user with a bank account might keep stashed away in a drawer -- is a second-degree felony in the state of Texas. That puts it at the same level as Sexual Assault, Indecency with a Minor, Burglary, etc. George W. Bush supports those punishments, and so presumably he sees inquiries into those other offenses as the "politics of personal destruction" as well. Imagine a press conference transcript that reads: "Q: Have you ever robbed someone's house?" "A: "When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible (wink)." "Q: Have you ever committed sexual indecency with a minor?" "A: Look, the American people know that I made mistakes when I was drinking."

Would we accept such an exchange? Of course not. Refusing to answer the question of whether you kidnapped in your early years would disqualify you for city councilman, much less the highest office in the land. But that's precisely what's happening with Bush's cocaine stonewall when you think about it in the context of the drug war policies he currently supports.

The Sermon On The Mound

Okay, so Bush gave a good speech last night, particularly the last twenty minutes, where he finally made the Tom Friedman case for Iraq, and not the "smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud" canard. But I had to chuckle at that opening video, thinking back to the Democrats' version. Both films introduced the candidates by reviewing personal anecdotes that aimed to demonstrate their courage and character in difficult situations. But the contrast was telling.

For Kerry, it was pulling a Green Beret out of the water while sustaining enemy fire in the Mekong Delta. You might think that was impressive, but wait until you hear what the President did! When he was throwing out the first pitch at the World Series, he threw it from the top of the mound, more than sixty feet from home plate. And he did it in a tight-fitting jacket!

That's our leader. Other politicians would have thrown from in front of the mound, a mere forty-five feet away, or maybe even made some calls to influential people to see if they could get into the National Guard instead of throwing that pitch. But not George W. Bush.