Big bake sale for Cary Tennis and King Kaufman
Filed under: California, culture, media | Tags: art, books, California, health, journalism, photography, San Francisco, writing
Leave a Comment 
Around the turn of the year, two friends and former colleagues of mine at Salon, Cary Tennis and King Kaufman, were hit with serious health emergencies. In November, Cary announced in his beloved advice column that he was diagnosed with a rare cancer, sacral chordoma, and would have to undergo surgery, which took place on December 17th. Vividly and eloquently, he has been keeping friends and fans apprised of his situation on his Open Salon blog.
In early January, King was suddenly taken ill and hospitalized for a rare, devastating ailment, Guillain-Barré syndrome, the cause of which is essentially unknown. Fortunately, after three weeks in the hospital and a physical rehabilitation center, he is now back home with his wife and young kids, on his way to what his doctors say is likely to be a full recovery.
For most people nowadays, a serious health crisis inevitably brings with it some financial strain. Friends of Cary and King have rallied to put together a terrific auction on eBay, the proceeds of which will go toward supporting these two great guys through their difficult times. A throng of talented and accomplished Salon alumni have contributed: Dave Eggers, Zach Trenholm, Heather Havrilesky, Keith Knight, David Talbot, Scott Rosenberg, Kate Moses, Larry Smith and Laura Miller, to name a few. The array of items up for bid include signed first editions of books, photographs, paintings and other original artwork. More details about the project on this Web site set up by the talented and generous Mignon Khargie.
The auction begins on Tuesday, February 9, and runs through the rest of the week; please check it out here and bid on any of this great stuff in support of Cary and King.
“Bluetoothing” Iran’s revolution
Filed under: culture, media, politics | Tags: foreign affairs, globalization, Iran, media, national security, NYT, politics, technology, Twitter
Leave a Comment Though it’s grabbing fewer headlines these days, the upheaval in Tehran that began last summer continues to simmer. Apparently the Obama administration has some evolving ideas about how to exploit the domestic dissatisfaction, which has been rising, along with the local price of tomatoes, for quite some time. How long can Ahmadinejad hold on?
I finally had a chance to read Nazila Fathi’s recent essay about her experiences reporting from, and then fleeing from, Iran, where she’d been working for the New York Times. It’s chilling at turns, but also uplifting, particularly with its focus on the regime-busting role that technology has played in the historic unrest. Last summer I focused at length here on the unprecedented ways in which digital technology was shaping events from Tehran to Tiananmen Square. With events in Iran, Twitter suddenly had gone from trendy social networking toy to subversive diplomatic tool square on the State Department’s radar. But until reading Fathi’s essay I hadn’t known about another fascinating technological application in the fight—the use of Bluetooth by dissidents to dodge the crackdown. As Fathi writes of Iran’s continuing unrest in December:
Last month, during and after the funeral of the reformist Grand Ayatollah Hossain Ali Montazeri, one of the demonstrators’ most useful tools was the Bluetooth short-range radio signal that Americans use mainly to link a cellphone to an earpiece, or a printer to a laptop. Long ago, Iranian dissidents discovered that Bluetooth can as easily link cellphones to each other in a crowd. And that made “Bluetooth” a verb in Iran: a way to turn citizen reportage instantly viral. A protester Bluetooths a video clip to others nearby, and they do the same. Suddenly, if the authorities want to keep the image from escaping the scene, they must confiscate hundreds or thousands of phones and cameras.
The authorities have tried to fight back against such techniques and the Internet itself, but have fallen short. In November they announced that a new police unit, the “cyber-army,” would sweep the Web of dissent. It blocked Twitter feeds for a few hours in December, and an opposition Web site. But other blogs and Web sites mushroomed faster than the government could keep up.
Also be sure not to miss Frontline’s compelling documentary on the infamous killing of Neda Agha-Soltan.
UPDATE, 1/28/10: According to the New York Times, Iran reportedly has just executed two men in connection with the election protests. Nine others have been condemned to death for same.
Buried by the Haiti disaster
Filed under: culture, media, politics | Tags: economy, foreign affairs, health, media, politics, recession, Wall Street, war
Leave a Comment Haiti’s devastation, now almost a week since the big quake, continues to saturate the media. It’s a lot to sift through and absorb; here’s where I’ve posted a handful of the most compelling links I’ve come across in recent days. For more, see Robert Mackey’s skillful curation over at The Lede blog.
One consequence of the historic disaster has been the burial of other developments that normally would’ve (and should’ve) been bigger front-page news:
Blackwater still gets away with mass murder in Iraq, despite that three of its security personnel present at the notorious events three years ago testified to what they saw as wanton killing and cover-up. “All three were horrified by what they thought was an unprovoked attack in 2007 that left 14 Iraqi civilians dead,” according to previously sealed court documents described by the Washington Post. Their testimony further confirms the war zone “horror movie” reported by others long ago. Five Blackwater guards on trial for the attack walked at the beginning of this month, acquitted on procedural grounds.
Wall Street’s top moguls sell Congress some shameless rationale for America’s historic financial meltdown. Testified Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase: “My daughter called me from school one day and said, ‘Dad, what’s a financial crisis?’ And, without trying to be funny, I said, ‘This type of thing happens every five to seven years.’ And she said, ‘Why is everyone so surprised?’” (Without trying to be funny: Who the f—k is he kidding?) Testified Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs: “Whatever we did, it didn’t work out well. We regret the consequence that people have lost money.” (Hear them in their own words, here.) Meanwhile, pretty much everyone working for their bailed out firms is making out like a bandit.
Vancouver wins a key battle in its progressive war on drugs, with a top court preventing the Canadian federal government from shutting down the city’s officially sanctioned injection site for heroin and cocaine addicts. Probably not top story material, but a development of great interest to me personally; I reported extensively on the cutting-edge project from the streets of Vancouver — first in 2003, when the Bush administration angrily declared the policy “state-sponsored personal suicide,” and again three years later, when they were proven dead wrong by Insite’s indisputable success.
Also don’t forget that today is Martin Luther King Day; here’s a video clip of Robert F. Kennedy announcing King’s death by assassination in 1968. And always worth rereading, MLK’s landmark “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” from 1963. It continues to resonate in new ways with Barack Obama presiding in the White House.
Obama defines the war that will define him
Filed under: media, politics | Tags: CIA, Dick Cheney, economy, foreign affairs, intelligence, national security, politics, recession, terrorism, war
Leave a Comment Another major wave of U.S. troops sent to Afghanistan. A Detroit-bound airliner imperiled by a terrorist on Christmas Day. A stunning blow to CIA operations targeting the Taliban and al Qaeda. A surge of political attacks against President Obama led by an aggressively partisan former vice president.
In recent weeks America’s current era of war has escalated to a next level. Obama didn’t preside over its inception, of course, but it is ever his to handle. Although the nation’s economic reckoning is far from over, what happens on the national security front is probably more likely to define Obama’s presidency than anything else.
His speech Thursday night addressing the U.S. intelligence debacle at Christmas reflected this. In his closing remarks, Obama made a point of disarming recent partisan attacks; although he didn’t name Dick Cheney specifically, some of his comments clearly were a retort to the former vice president’s assertion that Obama doesn’t take the terrorist threat seriously:
Over the past two weeks, we’ve been reminded again of the challenge we face in protecting our country against a foe that is bent on our destruction. And while passions and politics can often obscure the hard work before us, let’s be clear about what this moment demands. We are at war. We are at war against al Qaeda, a far-reaching network of violence and hatred that attacked us on 9/11, that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people, and that is plotting to strike us again. And we will do whatever it takes to defeat them.
In the New York Post, Rich Lowry beamed that Obama’s rhetoric could’ve been written by Dick Cheney himself.
Most striking was the president’s reiteration of the principles by which he will prosecute America’s long war:
Here at home, we will strengthen our defenses, but we will not succumb to a siege mentality that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we cherish as Americans, because great and proud nations don’t hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust. That is exactly what our adversaries want, and so long as I am President, we will never hand them that victory. We will define the character of our country, not some band of small men intent on killing innocent men, women and children. And in this cause, every one of us — every American, every elected official — can do our part.
On MSNBC Thursday night, veteran Washington columnist Howard Fineman pointed out how anxious George W. Bush had been to get through his final weeks in office without another terrorist attack taking place inside the U.S. Apparently Bush was plenty eager to get out of town with what he viewed as a clean post-9/11 record.
The equation Obama faces is not a matter of if, but when. American society would do well to accept that reality, as even David Brooks has now said. Fortunately, the current commander in chief appears driven to move ahead with a markedly different approach than his predecessor. “Instead of giving into cynicism and division, let’s move forward with the confidence and optimism and unity that defines us as a people,” Obama concluded on Thursday. “For now is not a time for partisanship, it’s a time for citizenship — a time to come together and work together with the seriousness of purpose that our national security demands. That’s what it means to be strong in the face of violent extremism. That’s how we will prevail in this fight.”
And the Best Album of 2010 goes to…
Filed under: California, culture | Tags: art, California, music, politics
Comments (1) How uninspired, all the obligatory end-of-year rehash — the Best of 2009 This and the Top 10 Yada-yada of That. It’s all so… last year. But, the good news: This dog from the future just did a quick dash to December 2010, and I’ve brought back with me the easy winner for the Best Album of Next Year. It’s already here.
One of the benefits of having your own blog (aside from some capacity for time travel) is that you can favor whatever you want, with impunity. Even so, that the acclaimed psychedelic-country-folk-rock band I See Hawks in L.A. are good friends of mine has nothing to do with the fact that their forthcoming album, “Shoulda Been Gold,” takes the aforementioned honor. Hands down. It’s a dazzling collection from their deep trove of music produced and performed over the past decade — a greatest hits record, as they like to put it, that contains no hits. It comes out officially on January 26 from Collector’s Choice Music, but you can be one of the first to get a hold of it right now, right here.
And you most definitely should. The album contains 17 tracks of vivid aural history, its harmonies and insights drawn from an American decade of relative desolation. The Hawks are one of the great original bands you shoulda heard by now, if you haven’t already. Don’t just take my word for it, you can look ‘em up on The Google: There have been volumes of critical acclaim for their four albums dating back to 2000, from the Los Angeles Times to Spin to USA Today. (The latter notably sidestepped cliché in praising the band’s “versatility, variety and power” and “intriguing dystopian science-fictional bent in the lyrics” — that is, this ain’t your garden variety country-rock band, folks.) There are cult favorite non-hits here such as “Humboldt” and “Highway Down,” but I’m particularly partial to several of the new and newly released tunes, among them the plaintive yet incandescent title track “Shoulda Been Gold” and the Cajun-inflected twirler “Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulet.” You’ll definitely start your new year out happy if you get your hands on this stuff.
Dick Cheney’s 9/11 conspiracy
Filed under: media, politics | Tags: books, Dick Cheney, foreign affairs, intelligence, national security, politics, television, terrorism, war
Comments (1) The former vice president took a break from hunting and fishing this week to return home to Fox News and fire away once again at Barack Obama. Headline-grabbing potshots this time included characterizing the sitting president as “radical” and calling the Obama administration’s decision to put Khalid Sheik Mohammed on trial in New York City “a huge mistake.” Cheney stopped just shy of labeling Obama’s policy as treason. “It’ll give aid and comfort to the enemy,” he said of the pending terrorist trial.
The retired veep is as entitled to his opinions as the next guy, one supposes, however politically motivated they may remain. But particularly since Cheney’s arguments depart ad nauseam from his views about the 9/11 terrorist attacks (see the saturated transcript linked above), it seems an apt moment to point out some news that bubbled up a few weeks ago regarding Cheney and that fateful September day. Newsworthy indeed, although it seemed barely to register in the media: A new book by John Farmer, a former attorney general of New Jersey who served as senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, says flat out that Cheney lied about how the U.S. government handled the Al Qaeda strikes on New York and Washington as they unfolded.
As someone involved in producing much coverage on the story of 9/11 (including this wide-ranging series for Salon in 2006), I can say that this is one conspiracy worthy of attention. (Numerous others, not so much.)
According to Jacob Heilbrunn’s recent review in the Sunday Times of “The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11,” Farmer handily debunks the Bush administration’s storyline that the White House acted decisively and effectively that day. He describes how both Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz “provided palpably false versions that touted the military’s readiness to shoot down United 93 before it could hit Washington,” according to Heilbrunn. “Planes were never in place to intercept it. By the time the Northeast Air Defense Sector had been informed of the hijacking, United 93 had already crashed.”
Moreover: “Farmer scrutinizes F.A.A. and Norad records to provide irrefragable evidence that a day after a Sept. 17 White House briefing, both agencies suddenly altered their chronologies to produce a coherent timeline and story that ‘fit together nicely with the account provided publicly by Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz and Vice President Cheney.’”
Farmer’s damning conclusion? “History should record that whether through unprecedented administrative incompetence or orchestrated mendacity, the American people were misled about the nation’s response to the 9/11 attacks.”
It gets one thinking about a comment Cheney made to Fox’s Sean Hannity on Tuesday night, discussing the memoirs he’s currently writing about his 41 years in Washington, dating back to the Nixon administration: “There are some fascinating stories and interesting things I was involved in.”
Do tell, Mr. Vice President.
The killing of Neda
Filed under: media, politics | Tags: CIA, film, foreign affairs, Iran, media, national security, politics, technology, Twitter
Comments (2) The new documentary “A Death in Tehran” continues the stellar investigative work of Frontline, casting light on the fate of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose murder during Iran’s election chaos last summer commanded historic attention. On the PBS/Frontline web site you can watch the documentary in its entirety. It’s well worth the time. The film illuminates the circumstances of the shooting and its aftermath through extensive use of amateur video from the street protests and interviews with people close to Neda — including the doctor who tried to save her as she quickly bled to death on the street.
The chilling footage of Neda’s death in late June zipped around the globe on an unprecedented digital wave, instantly making hers the face of the rising reformist movement in Iran. One compelling segment of the documentary details how the Iranian hardliners reacted to this threat against their grip on power.
In response to the international outcry over Neda’s death — including President Obama’s confirmation that he’d seen the “heartbreaking” video on YouTube — the regime set about attempting to rewrite the story, pointing a finger at the CIA and outside agitators, the same forces they blamed for the mass street protests and allegations of vote rigging that led to the greatest upheaval in Iran since the revolution of 1979.
The film also uncovers some remarkable footage of Neda’s killer, “a member of the Basij militia who’d been brought into Tehran by the regime’s Revolutionary Guards to stamp out the ‘Green Revolution.’” In an interview with Frontline, Arash Hejazi, the doctor who tried to save Neda as she lay dying in the street, describes watching the crowd’s reaction to the man who had fatally shot her. “They started to discuss what to do with him,” Hejazi recalls. “They grabbed his wallet, took out his ID card and started shouting, ‘He is a Basiji member; he is one of them,’ and started swearing and cursing him, and he was begging for people not to harm him or kill him.”
Incredibly, the killer walked. “They believed the police wouldn’t do anything to him as the Basiji are really powerful and he would have easily have got away,” Hejazi says, “so in all of the chaos they decided to release him.”
The documentary describes how the regime sought further to cover up a brutal crackdown: “The Iranian government admits 11 protesters were killed on June 20, but doctors from three Tehran hospitals confirmed at least 34 deaths. Other bodies were buried by security forces without first being identified.”
New York Times blogger Robert Mackey, who has cranked out much excellent coverage of the fallout from the Iranian election, has more here. In late June, I wrote extensively about the unprecedented role digital media played during the upheaval on the streets of Tehran; that’s available here.
Helping fix the error-filled news
Filed under: California, media | Tags: California, future-of-journalism, journalism, language, media, San Francisco, technology
Comments (1) I’m very happy to announce my involvement in a new startup called MediaBugs, where I’ll be serving as associate director and community manager. I’m joining with project founder and director Scott Rosenberg (with whom I had the great pleasure of working during my years at Salon) for what we anticipate will be an exciting and, hopefully, groundbreaking effort. We are now in the process of building out our Web site, with plans to start rolling out the service in early 2010. The two-year project is funded by the Knight Foundation, and will focus on all manner of media in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In a nutshell, MediaBugs will provide a neutral, civil forum where the public can report errors they encounter in the news and try to get them fixed. The idea is to leverage the open-source power of the Web to achieve greater transparency and dialogue among media institutions and the public, and thereby improve the quality of the news.
We see it as a winning proposition for everyone involved — a way to begin rebuilding public confidence in the media, while offering our fellow journalists a compelling tool they can use to enhance their work in this ever-dynamic digital age.
Why focus on fixing errors in the news? For one, public trust in the media wallows at a historic low. As Scott explained in a recent blog post, there are several reasons for this — perhaps chief among them that the news is riddled with mistakes, and an extraordinary percentage of them go uncorrected.
There are different kinds of errors, but even the seemingly trivial ones matter. (And there are a great many of them, as detailed at the above links, a status quo surely not helped by today’s painful editorial cutbacks.) If the local paper or news site regularly publishes misspelled names or inaccurate dates, how can its readers trust that it got the really important stuff right?
The problem afflicts small and big players alike. This week, the Washington Post’s public editor Andrew Alexander was compelled to explain why a respected sports columnist at the paper whiffed big time with some of his World Series coverage.
“By my count,” Alexander wrote, “the column contained at least 20 typos, grammatical errors or misspellings.”
Curiously, the Post treated a cleaned-up version of the piece, posted online after the shoddy print version went out, as separate. That’s a questionable distinction, with the lines between blog posts, columns and articles rapidly blurring these days, and with digital and print newsroom operations fast merging. There is still no correction appended to the online version of the World Series column, so unless you’d already caught wind of Alexander’s write-up you wouldn’t even know about the flurry of mistakes that appeared in print. Doesn’t seem like the best way to win over skeptical readers.
For more details on how MediaBugs will work, visit our site here, and stay tuned for more soon.
Bay Bridge boondoggle
Filed under: California, media, politics | Tags: California, economy, future-of-journalism, journalism, San Francisco, Twitter
Leave a Comment The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge has been “closed indefinitely” after a rod installed during last month’s emergency repairs snapped during rush hour on Tuesday evening, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. I’m extra thankful this morning that in 15 years of living and working in this city I’ve been able to commute almost exclusively by public transportation or bicycle. Compared with the 280,000 daily car commuters suffering today’s fallout (not to mention all the train riders getting further jammed in by them), that probably makes it too easy for me to say this: There are at least a couple of reasons to be thankful (relatively speaking) for this latest meltdown.
First, it’s a live exercise in what could happen when the most important transportation artery in the region gets knocked out under more perilous circumstances — a terrorist attack, another catastrophic earthquake, etc. Nobody can say there wasn’t an opportunity to prepare. Second, it again puts a glaring light on key questions about the boondoggle that is the new eastern span of the bridge — namely, why is it billions of dollars over budget, beset with quality-control problems and years behind schedule?
Aerial view of an empty Bay Bridge on Wednesday. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP)
It’s an understatement to say that the project has long been ripe for serious journalistic investigation. If the beleaguered Chronicle can’t get it together, perhaps others will rise to the task. According to Baynewser, an interesting collaboration is underway from SF Public Press and McSweeney’s. “Our reporters have been digging up documents for close to two months on the massive construction project, one of the most challenging, costly and complex bridge projects in U.S. history, and have found some surprising new facts about how and why the costs, currently projected at $6.3 billion, continue to rise,” says Public Press chief Michael Stoll. With this latest setback, perhaps the new Berkeley-based California Watch will get interested as well.
“Preparing for a tough day with Bay Bridge closure,” tweeted Mayor Gavin Newsom this morning. He recommended following @BayBridgeInfo to stay informed. As of about 6:30am, the prognosis there was not good: “Repairs are now under way, still unknown how long repairs will take or when bridge will reopen.”
UPDATE: Given the rapidly changing media landscape here, how did initial coverage of the Bay Bridge crisis flow?
In the hands of the Taliban
Filed under: media, politics | Tags: foreign affairs, intelligence, journalism, media, national security, NYT, politics, terrorism, war
Leave a Comment As Barack Obama continues wrestling with decisions about a war that could define his presidency, veteran reporter David Rohde’s account of his seven-month ordeal as a captive of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan makes for some compelling reading. Along with two Afghan colleagues, Rohde was kidnapped in November 2008 while attempting to meet a Taliban commander for an interview. This June, upon reading the surprising news of his escape to freedom — the kidnapping had been kept quiet by the New York Times and other media organizations out of fear for Rohde’s safety — I was anticipating the narrative account surely to follow.
Months later, Rohde’s retelling does not disappoint. In an ongoing five-part series in the Times, his dispassionate tone combines with thoughtful attention to detail to give the reader confidence that, although some of his recollections may be imprecise, his harrowingly close view of America’s elusive enemy was also a profoundly revealing one. In political terms, Rohde’s subsequent analysis cuts in several directions.
In the first installment of the series, war hawks will find some forceful affirmation in Rohde’s seasoned assessment of the enemy:
Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taliban had become. Before the kidnapping, I viewed the organization as a form of “Al Qaeda lite,” a religiously motivated movement primarily focused on controlling Afghanistan.
Living side by side with the Haqqanis’ followers, I learned that the goal of the hard-line Taliban was far more ambitious. Contact with foreign militants in the tribal areas appeared to have deeply affected many young Taliban fighters. They wanted to create a fundamentalist Islamic emirate with Al Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world.
For those who decried the Bush administration’s conduct of its so-called war on terrorism, there is also persuasive evidence here. “My captors harbored many delusions about Westerners,” Rohde writes. “But I also saw how some of the consequences of Washington’s antiterrorism policies had galvanized the Taliban. Commanders fixated on the deaths of Afghan, Iraqi and Palestinian civilians in military airstrikes, as well as the American detention of Muslim prisoners who had been held for years without being charged. America, Europe and Israel preached democracy, human rights and impartial justice to the Muslim world, they said, but failed to follow those principles themselves.”
From Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib, this would come back to haunt Rohde directly — a consequence of which many intelligence and military leaders had long warned. In the second installment out today, Rohde describes how his pleas for release were rebuffed:
When I told them I was an innocent civilian who should be released, they responded that the United States had held and tortured Muslims in secret detention centers for years. Commanders said they themselves had been imprisoned, their families ignorant of their fate. Why, they asked, should they treat me differently?
Among the dramatic turns in Rohde’s tale is a remarkable deception perpetrated by his primary captor. (Also see Monday’s piece.) More than just a gripping account, though, his writing further illuminates a Gordian conflict with no end in sight — and on the eve perhaps of some momentous choices in Washington. It’ll be interesting to see what more perspective Rohde offers as the series continues through Thursday.
UPDATE: Some New York Times readers are taking issue with the presentation and placement of the Rohde series (titled “Held by the Taliban”). As I make clear above, I’m with executive editor Bill Keller on this one:
When David Rohde escaped after more than seven months in captivity, it was clear even as we celebrated that his experience was one more window into a long and complicated war. No other journalist, as far as I know, has had such an experience of the Taliban from the inside. As I hope the series makes clear, this is not a story about David Rohde, it is a story about the character, strength and organization of the people the U.S. is fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It provides detailed insights into the minds and motives of the Taliban’s footsoldiers. It also reveals the extent to which the Taliban has, with impunity, colonized a swath of Pakistan. Yes, it is a hell of a story, but it also adds rich detail to our understanding of the Taliban.
Part three of the series is now available here.
The “Mcfarthest” spot, mass air traffic and a Minnesota-size memory
Filed under: culture, media | Tags: art, economy, environment, globalization, maps, politics, technology, travel
Leave a Comment I’ve always loved maps. They reward the longer gaze. Especially in these digitally frenetic times. Whether depicting authentic truths or questionable claims, or one of many shades in between, they tend to provoke expansive thinking about the world. Or they zoom you in on something unexpected and compelling. Their borders inherently are porous to the imagination. And they can be just plain cool to look at — hand me a copy of Oxford’s Atlas of the World and I’ll be entertained for a healthy chunk of time flipping through those oversized pages. No iPhone necessary.
Of course, digital media allow mapmakers and collectors to take things to a next level. The Strange Maps blog is one great place to browse. A recent post featured the work of blogger Stephen Von Worley, who decided to chart America as fast-food dystopia by depicting McDonald’s ubiquity from coast to coast. The nagging question that was his point of departure: What’s the “McFarthest” one can possibly get from a Big Mac? Unsurprisingly, not very far at all, even in the relatively unpopulated West:
According to Von Worley’s calculations (per the summary at Strange Maps):
There are over 13,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the U.S., or about 1 for every 23,000 Americans. But even market penetration this advanced doesn’t mean that McDonald’s is everywhere. Somewhere in South Dakota is the McFarthest Spot, the place in the [continental] U.S. geographically most removed from the nearest McD’s. If you started out from this location, a few miles north of State Highway 20 (which runs latitudinally between Highways 73 in the west and 65 in the east), you’d have to drive 145 miles to get your Big Mac. (If you could fly, however, it’d be only 107 miles).
If you did decide to fly, you’d be contributing to some incredibly congested air traffic, especially if it’s during daylight. See this nifty depiction of 24 hours worth of planes flying the global skies:
Also worth watching is this feat of mapmaking by Senator Al Franken, who from memory composed one of the United States (while taking questions, no less) at the Minnesota State Fair:
Now if he and his comrades could only draw up a health care plan with such facility…
The world according to Flarf
Filed under: culture | Tags: art, language, poetry, technology, Twitter
Leave a Comment After I posted about the strange poetry of search yesterday, I was happy to receive an email from my friend Alex Davis, a poet and former classmate in the MFA program at University of San Francisco, with some clarification about the realm into which I had stumbled. Turns out there is a whole literary “movement” built on search engine detritus. (Of course there is.) It’s known as Flarf. It dates all the way back to the beginning of the millennium.
Apparently the method of the flarfists “was to mine the Internet with odd search terms and then distill the results into often hilarious and sometimes disturbing poems, plays, and other texts.” This was hardly a new artistic impulse. But its digital extension — a kind of Cut-up 2.0, if you will — certainly seemed to capture the tenor of these times. According to flarf’s Wikipedia entry, “Early or ‘old-school’ flarf is marked by a certain distinctive tonal ‘dialect’: it is often peppered with phrases like ‘aw YEEEAHH,’ intentional typos, mildly offensive language (e.g., childish references to bodily functions), oblique political ’statements,’ and incongruous animal imagery.”
Indeed. Or, as one early practitioner put it, the dominant tenor of flarf could be described as “a kind of corrosive, cute, or cloying awfulness. Wrong. Un-P.C. Out of control. ‘Not okay.’”
(Lordy, I don’t really even want to touch the later breaking phenomenon of Twitter poetry: “Situations of stimulation often climax I just cant handle your seed Love is held like hidden treasure – 3:41 PM Aug 16th from web”)
But let us leap from the realm of theory. Back in 2006, issue 3 of Switchback, the fine literary publication from USF, featured “The Ways to Switchback,” which made flarfingly grand use of phrases that people had entered into search engines to reach the publication’s site. (The image to the left, featured in that issue, is “Eventual Slide,” by artist Jeremiah Stansbury.) See such points of departure as “japanese toilet noise disguise” and “addicted to picking ear wax” and the essay-inspiring “does a chimpanzee dream?”
