This Is Not News

There is a God.

I don’t just say that because I’ve had some spirital awakening, but rather because one of the country’s biggest spammers is now facing criminal charges. On May 14th, Howard Carmack, a.k.a. the “Buffalo Spammer,” was arraigned on charges of stealing two New York residents’ identities to open fraudulent e-mail accounts for spamming purposes, falsifying business records, forging e-mail headers, and ownership of a program intended for that form of forgery. His bail was set at $20,000 – though if you want to see a big number, Earthlink’s complaints accused Carmack of having sent 825,000,000 pieces of fraudulent e-mail.

In my own little uniburb, thanks to the miracle that is Mailwasher, I no longer fear spam. Instead, I laugh at the subject lines that shall never again invade my inbox, consigning them to oblivion (and sending an annoying mailer-daemon-style bounce message back whence they came, thus returning the favor by filling their inbox with useless junk). Read the remainder of this entry »

The image of Benjamin Franklin looms large over Philadelphia – residents and visitors to the city can drive on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to visit the Franklin Institute, perhaps after driving across the Benjamin Franklin Bridge from New Jersey. A half hour from Center City sits Franklin Mills Mall, which uses a number of Franklin icons to reinforce its regional identity, including a kite and lightning bolt and an enormous mechanical replica of Franklin’s head in the mall’s center court. Clearly, Franklin has a strong hold over his adopted home; the Smithsonian Institution’s Inventory of American Sculpture says that there are 41 statues of Franklin in the city. No other public figure has nearly that many statues devoted to him or her in any American city. There are 16 statues of George Washington in the nation’s capital; 14 of Abraham Lincoln in his home town.

To a Philadelphia native, Franklin’s near omnipresence seems perfectly natural – but as Philadelphia Inquirer writer Carrie Rickey commented in an October 10, 1999 article, “some of us who come from elsewhere are initially overwhelmed by Ben. We suffer from Benphobia. Philadelphia artist Flash Rosenberg dubbed this syndrome “the Bends.’â€? The comment was in part tongue-in-cheek, but it does raise questions. On what is our admiration of Franklin based? What do the images of Franklin convey to those who are unfamiliar? And does the abundance of portrayals of Franklin help give Philadelphians an understanding of the nature of the man and his accomplishments, as well as the revolutionary period in which he lived? A few years ago, I did a bit of a walking tour of the most prominent Franklin displays; I could go on at great length on the subject, but for now I want to focus on the portrayals of Franklin at two major Philadelphia institutions: the Franklin Institute, and the University of Pennsylvania. While certainly not a representative sample, they do illustrate some of the pitfalls of using public art as a means to create public awareness of history. Read the remainder of this entry »

So, over the holidays, did anyone else endure the bizarre Discovery Channel / Animal Planet special The Future Is Wild? According to that little show about the evolution of life on Earth 100-200 million years from now, everything’s going to turn into some kind of squid. Squids on land, squids in the sea, squids for you and squids for me. I kid you not, the whole show really seemed to be steered by unnamed “experts” who have a tentacle fetish.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the production values were amazing – a deceptively slick-looking mix of CGI, live-action, and simple shots of stuff like churning water to suggest the movement of giant squids, all earnestly narrated as though we’re pretty sure that Earth’s ecosystem is, even now, gearing itself toward squid. (And what of humanity? Oh, we ditched this mudball centuries ago, establishing colonies elsewhere, and we sent a probe back, through whose eyes all these multifarious squid-descendants are seen for the purposes of this special. Silly…don’t they know we’re going to evolve into Vorlons or something?)

With that in mind, I have some predictions of my own. Call it an inkling of our squid-filled future, with predictions aplenty of calamari calamity: Read the remainder of this entry »

I’m starting this essay while waiting for the start of a Monday Night Football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the San Francisco 49ers. Since the Eagles’ franchise quarterback Donovan McNabb broke his ankle last week, there’s a very good chance that the Eagles will lose and I will be a sullen, morose individual by the time I’m finished. Because while intellectually I can accept that the odds are against my team, I still believe they can win, and I certainly hope that they do.

You may ask yourself at this point why I’m going to spend three to four hours absorbed in something that’s likely to disappoint me. Besides a healthy dose of masochism, there’s something uniquely compelling about sports, because you can’t help but be aware that no one really know what’s going to happen next. It’s one of the greatest proving grounds for the notion that truth can be stranger than fiction. Last night I watched a football game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Denver Broncos, played in Denver, in the snow. Indianapolis’ kicker, Mike Vanderjagt, had missed field goals attempts in each of his last three games, but he hit a 54-yarder in the final seconds to tie the game. Then he hit a 51-yarder into the wind to win the game. All of those late heroics were only possible, however, because Denver’s placekicker had missed an extra point earlier in the game – his first miss in over 300 attempts. You write that in a script, no one believes it. But to see it unfold live was exhilarating. Read the remainder of this entry »

It’s been almost five months since our daughter was born, and it’s truly been a wonderful experience. One thing I’m quickly learning is that once you’re a parent, you need to come up with answers to a whole bunch of questions that were once easy to dismiss, and the process of finding those answers can be a painful one. We got a very sharp lesson in that reality earlier this week.

Alex is for the most part a very well-behaved child. She’s friendly, smiles a lot, and can attract a flock of grandmothers in a diner from ten feet away. The one slight hitch is her sleep schedule – as is little surprise given her genes, she has none. She tends to fall asleep late, and she absolutely hates her crib. What’s worse, even while asleep, she can sense the moment you put her in the crib, wake up and start telling you, loudly, what a bad idea this was. Her three favorite places to sleep are her baby carrier, in someone’s arms, and in the bed next to Pattie or me. Since only the latter is a safe place while both of us are asleep, this has usually meant that Pattie and Alex sleep in the bedroom at night, while I take a nap on the couch and wait for her to go to work, so I can catch a few hours in bed with the baby. Not exactly what you’d call conducive to ‘putting the baby on a schedule,’ which is the one piece of advice we seem to get from all corners. Read the remainder of this entry »

Ever try to convince someone that you’re not trying to cheat them? It’s not easy. A lot of times, you do it too well and only end up convincing them that you’re too much of a “smooth talker” to be trusted anyway. How’s that for a Catch-22? It’s a position I find myself in quite a bit. You see, I work in marketing. (Stop laughing.) Just last week I spent almost an hour on the phone with a customer at my credit union trying to convince him that our current auto loan rates weren’t (in his words) “some kind of bait-and-switch thing.” After forty-five minutes of reading and re-reading the terms and conditions to him, he finally believed me. However, he was quick to add, “I still don’t trust you people” before he hung up. (FYI, he really didn’t want the loan either, he just wanted someone to explain it to him, I expect to hear from him again when we run our home equity loan special next month.) I really don’t blame people one bit for not trusting marketers. They really shouldn’t, at least not when we’re trying to sell them something.

Allow me to explain. Contrary to popular belief, all marketers aren’t heartless, soulless individuals who take extreme pleasure from the suffering of others. (If you’ve read my previous piece on telephone and Internet scams, you might think I’m switching gears on you, bear with me.) Most people who work in marketing aren’t rich, present company certainly included. For the most part, we’re just trying to make enough to pay the bills and save a little – just like everyone else. Unfortunately, thanks to the way most marketing salaries are structured, how well we eat is directly linked to how well we can convince people to like us, trust us, and of course, buy what we’re selling.

Now the law of averages says that we can’t all be lucky enough to sell great products. There just aren’t enough great products in the world. Besides, why would you pay someone to sell something that sells itself? (Think about it, when was the last time that someone had to actually talk you into a box of Girl Scouts Thin Mints?) So, much like that old lawyer joke – when the facts are on your side, argue the facts; when the law is on your side, argue the law; when you have neither, bang your fist on the table really loudly – marketers need to make up for the weaknesses in their products somehow. So what do we do? Just about anything. For those of us that can’t afford to pay Britney Spears to dress up in tight retro clothing and lip sync, this means downplaying the weaknesses any way we can, overemphasizing the strengths any way we can, and getting you to like us, any way we can (within legal limits, of course). The reason for that last one is simple: the more you like us, the less you’ll think about calling that other marketer out there who’s selling something better than ours.

Here’s where the trust comes in (or flies out the window, depending on your view): getting a customer to like you can have little or nothing to do with telling them the whole truth. I’ve been told that I’m a lousy marketer because I’m too “blatantly honest ” (Thanks, boss. Coming from you, that’s a real compliment.) My attitude is that the truth catches up with you eventually so it doesn’t make any sense to lie to or even mislead a customer. Not all marketers think that. In fact, most of the people who are far better at selling than I am will tell you that detaching yourself from this job is the key. If you empathize too much with your customer, you may end up believing that they don’t need your product, and what kind of marketer would you be then?

By now you’re probably thinking that I must have been recently fired from my marketing job or have just bought a lemon from a fast-talking used car salesman to disparage my profession like this. Neither is true. My impetus for writing this piece is this: lately there have been far too many examples of people putting their trust into products, people, and companies that have done very little to earn that trust. Moreover, when given that trust, these people and companies act in their own best interests anyway.

Now I’m not just talking about Enron here, although what happened there had as much to do with slick person-to-person marketing as it did with misinformation. (How many Enron employees testified that they didn’t ask many questions about the stock or the retirement plan because their trusted the executives?) How about your doctor? How much do you trust the advice he or she gives you? According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, pharmaceutical companies spent $16 billion in 2000 trying showering doctors’ offices with free meals, tickets, and promotional items. So when your doctor prescribes a brand name drug over a generic (a move that will cost you more in the long run), is he or she doing it because the brand name is genuinely better, or because he has a closet full of promotional items emblazoned with that drug’s name? You won’t know unless you ask. So many of the decisions that you theoretically have some say in end up being made by someone else who isn’t going by what you need, but what someone like me has told them, or, given them. Again, you don’t know until you start asking questions.

And asking is the key – it’s the most important thing to do when you’re face to face with people like me. We’ll be content to play the “trust me and be my friend” game all day if you let us. Instead, let us work for your trust. Ask every question you want to, even if it starts to annoy us. Really, we just want the sale and we aren’t going anywhere even if you are annoying. What do you care, anyway, you can find friends on your own, you certainly don’t need some schlub in an uncomfortable suit and a pasted-on grin to say that he or she is your friend.

Let’s face it, this is a consumer-driven culture. In recent months, we’ve been asked to prove our faith in the “American way” not by being more active citizens, but by being more active consumers (and don’t think we at TINN are not a little irked at that bit of irony). But there’s a big difference between faith and blind faith. My advice (and take it for what you think it’s worth because I do sell financial services for a living, after all): take advantage of the freedom you have to be as darn suspicious as you want to be.

Back in December a group of writers on the Warren Ellis Forum were bemoaning the cliched dialogue that runs through so many fiction projects. Jay Faerber said, “I just always get annoyed when I see obvious I-learned-this-by-watching-too-much-TV dialogue. Like whenever you give someone CPR, you have to say ‘Breathe, dammit!’ or ‘Don’t you die on me!'” The ever-brilliant Gail Simone joked that these complaints put a crimp in her plans to publish a DON’T YOU DIE ON ME miniseries, and soon the thread was nearly derailed by dialogue-cliches-transformed-into-titles.

Never one to leave a good idea alone, Kevin and Dave spent a morning on IM running the concept into the ground. Considering that half of these seem to have made it into the ads for We Were Soldiers, we figured we’d share the results with you.

DT: I found the book I was looking for, by the way. It was under my copy of YOU’VE NEVER FOUGHT FOR ANYTHING IN YOUR LIFE NOW LIVE, DAMMIT, LIVE.

KO: Was it anywhere near NO, TAKE ME INSTEAD?

DT: No, that was on the shelf next to WE’RE ONLY GOING TO GET ONE CHANCE AT THIS.

KO: Wasn’t that the sequel to MEET YOUR NEW PARTNER?

DT: No, you’re thinking of IT’S TIME TO SHOW THESE PUNKS WE MEAN BUSINESS. Unless I’m getting that confused with I DON’T PLAY BY THE RULES.

KO: Didn’t that have a crossover with LEAVE THE GIRL OUT OF THIS, YOUR QUARREL’S WITH ME?

DT: Yeah, along with IT’S TIME WE SETTLED THIS ONCE AND FOR ALL. I ALWAYS KNEW IT WOULD COME TO THIS was a tie-in, there, I think.

KO: OK, the trilogy. The one that started with SO YOU’RE THE ONE BEHIND ALL THIS and LET’S GIVE HIM SOMETHING TO REMEMBER US BY.

DT: Yeah, none of them were as good as HE MAY BE CRAZY, BUT HE’S THE BEST DAMN DOCTOR I’VE EVER SEEN.

KO: I dunno. HERE’S YOUR AUTHORIZATION! was pretty good. But not as good as IT’S A CRAZY PLAN, BUT IT JUST MIGHT WORK.

DT: Well, really, what is? Except possibly THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN SEARCHING FOR MY WHOLE LIFE.

KO: Ah, yes, by the author of YOU’RE THE BEST THING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED TO ME.

DT: Part of the I NEVER KNEW I COULD FEEL THIS WAY series.

KO: My personal favorite, though, is probably SO… WE MEET AGAIN.

DT: A classic, like I HAVE PEOPLE IN THERE and HEAR THAT, FELLAS? WE’RE GOIN’ HOME.

KO: And who can forget LET’S EVEN THE SCORE? Or IT’S PUNKS LIKE YOU THAT GET GOOD SOLDIERS KILLED?

DT: I thought that was derivative of WHATEVER YOU DO, STAY WHERE YOU ARE, I’M ON MY WAY.

KO: Well, that itself was lifted almost directly from JUST BUY ME SOME TIME, I HAVE AN IDEA.

DT: Really? If anything, I thought it was inspired by I NEVER SHOULD HAVE LEFT HIM.

KO: It definitely shared themes with that, as well as YOU’RE MEDDLING IN FORCES YOU CAN’T POSSIBLY BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND. Which, as you know, was a stale rehash of LET’S SPLIT UP.

DT: The follow up to I DON’T BUY ANY OF THAT NONSENSE.

KO: Wasn’t that a spinoff of WHY SHOULD I TRUST YOU?

DT: Either that or HOW DO I KNOW YOU’RE TELLING ME THE TRUTH, I can’t remember.

KO: No, I think that was a spinoff of SO THIS WHOLE TIME YOU’VE BEEN LYING TO ME?

KO: Or was it THAT SON OF A BITCH KILLED MY PARTNER?

DT: That wasn’t I’M NOT GOING ANYWHERE UNTIL I GET SOME ANSWERS?

KO: Yeah, that’s it. By the creator of WHO’S INVOLVED? I WANT NAMES. And SO YOU WERE IN ON THIS TOO, HUH?

DT: And I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN YOU’D BE WRAPPED UP IN THIS.

KO: Didn’t he share credit with someone on THIS IS WAY BIGGER THAN YOU and THIS GOES ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP?

DT: Right, and YOU’RE IN WAY OVER YOUR HEAD ON THIS ONE.

KO: OK, so who was the co-creator? Was it the guy who did DON’T DO IT, IT’S NOT WORTH IT?

DT: No, YOU’RE IN WAY OVER YOUR HEAD was the guy that did NEVER THOUGHT I’D SEE YOU AROUND HERE AGAIN.

KO: I’ve loved his work ever since THE CHIEF’S NOT GONNA LIKE THIS and IF YOU DON’T STOP THIS CRAZY SHIT, THE COMMISSIONER’S GONNA HAVE MY ASS.

DT: Ever since he broke in as a production assistant on THIS COULD BE JUST THE BREAK WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR, you knew he was gonna hit big.

KO: Yeah. I think my favorite of his was SOMEDAY YOU’RE GONNA SLIP UP. AND WHEN YOU DO, I’LL BE THERE.

DT: It’s kind of sad that we’ve been at it this long, and we haven’t even mentioned SHE’S THE ONLY THING I EVER REALLY GAVE A DAMN ABOUT.

KO: Are you kidding? That was nowhere near as good as EVER SINCE SHE LEFT HIM, HE JUST HASN’T BEEN THE SAME.

DT: Well, you’re probably right, but SHE’S THE ONLY THING paved the way for EVER SINCE SHE LEFT HIM, not to mention EVERYTHING WAS FINE, UNTIL YOU CAME ALONG.

KO: Good point. Though I thought EVERYTHING WAS FINE was kind of ruined by its sequel, THEN SHE CAME ALONG, AND CHANGED MY LIFE FOREVER. Though the creator redeemed himself with ARE YOU CRAZY? YOU’RE GOING TO GET US BOTH KILLED.

DT: Yeah, but that wasn’t the original creative team on THEN SHE SAME ALONG — that was the same hacks that did ONLY ONE OF US IS GETTING OUT HERE ALIVE.

KO: Those guys. I knew they were bad news ever since LOOK, KID, I GOTTA WORK WITH YOU, BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN I GOTTA LIKE YOU.

DT: And I’M ONLY GOING TO SAY THIS ONCE. Ugh.

KO: Well, that was Shakespeare compared to IF WE GET OUT OF THIS ALIVE, I’M GOING TO KILL YOU.

DT: Which itself was a barely disguised remake of YOU’LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE.

KO: But that at least gave the star of LOOK, THAT’S ALL I KNOW, I’M TELLING YOU THE TRUTH his start.

DT: Yeah, and without that we probably never would have gotten IT’S ABOUT TIME SOMEONE DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

KO: Or I CAN’T DO THIS WITHOUT YOU.

DT: We might have avoided WE CAN’T GO BACK TO THE WAY THINGS USED TO BE, though.

KO: Yeah. That, and EVER SINCE THAT DAY, THINGS JUST HAVEN’T BEEN THE SAME BETWEEN US. But I did like WE’VE COME THIS FAR, AND I’M NOT ABOUT TO TURN BACK NOW.

DT: I wish the star had just stayed focused on GET OUT OF MY WAY AND LET ME SAVE THIS PATIENT.

KO: But at least he gave it his all in SO I BROKE A FEW REGULATIONS. I GOT RESULTS, DIDN’T I? Along with the girl from SHE’S GONE, AND I’LL NEVER FORGIVE MYSELF.

DT: True. And their reteaming in NOW, WE’LL NEVER KNOW was well worth it.

KO: I think something like THE TRUTH WILL DIE WITH YOU could have been well served by a pairing like that.

DT: Absolutely. The guy from COME OUT HERE AND FIGHT ME LIKE A MAN gave it all he had, but he just shouldn’t have been with the gal from NOTHING’S GOING TO HOLD ME BACK NOW.

KO: He was much better in LET’S FINISH THIS, RIGHT NOW, YOU AND ME. And she was pretty good in I WOULD HAVE GIVEN YOU EVERYTHING.

DT: Were either of them in WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO DO SOMETHING WITH YOUR LIFE?

KO: No, you’re thinking of the little-known I CAN’T STAY IN THIS TOWN FOREVER.

DT: Right, right. Was that connected to ALL YOU’VE EVER DONE IS HOLD ME BACK?

KO: Well, they had the same script doctor, but I suspect you’re thinking of I’M NOT LIKE YOU, DAD, I WAS NEVER LIKE YOU.

DT: Or maybe I CAN’T BE WHAT YOU WANT ME TO BE?

KO: Wait, that’s it. NOTHING WAS EVER GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU comes to mind as well.

DT: Do you have a copy of YOU? BUT I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!?

KO: No, but I’ve got I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT HER, which is by the same guy.

DT: That’s OK. I’m still trying to get through THIS ISN’T SOME KIND OF GAME.

KO: Ah, the sequel to THIS IS JUST A BIG GAME TO YOU, ISN’T IT?

DT: Is that as good as I’M JUST HERE TO GET A JOB DONE?

KO: I wouldn’t be so obsessed with it if it weren’t. But as much as it pains me to admit it, it’s really not as good as LOOK, YOU JUST STAY OUT OF MY WAY AND I’LL STAY OUT OF YOURS, GOT IT?

DT: Which was nice launch for the career of the star of YOU CALL THAT JUSTICE?

KO: A brilliant start to the YOU CALL THAT series, following up with YOU CALL THAT LOVE? and YOU CALL THAT DEMOCRACY? and of course the Australian version, YOU CALL THAT A KNIFE?

Last month Pattie discussed some of the things she has encountered as we anxiously and excitedly await the arrival of our impending bundle of joy/all night alarm clock.

This month, it’s my turn.

Those of you who have kids know this, but child-raising technology has advanced leaps and bounds over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As parents, you are not expected merely to love your children, feed them, clothe them, keep them from harm, and pass on your values and knowledge. Rather, you are expected to obtain a ton of items that will, allegedly, make the lives of you and your child more convenient, more fulfilling, happier, and healthier, and possibly give you whiter teeth and fuller hair, although I’m less sure about those last two.

This is not really a great situation for us, because Pattie and I are big planners. We research, cross check, cross reference, cross out, and so on until we’re cross eyed, at which point we either a) act on our brilliantly-thought-out plan or b) get thrown for a loop by some crazy, insignificant last-minute detail — I’ll let you guess which happens more often. So, once the new year rolled around and we realized we’re at about three months to go and counting, we realized it was time to roll up our sleeves and start planning.

My God.

We tried to start with the big stuff, like the crib. The good news is, cribs are very heavily regulated, because pretty much everyone recognizes that the place where an incredibly fragile baby is going to sleep ought to be just about the safest damn piece of furniture ever built, so that makes the process a little easier. However, there is no shortage of crib options, and the price of a good crib can go from $250 to $600 or even higher. You can get cribs that convert to toddler beds or even into headboards for twin beds; we hope to reuse the crib down the road, so we weren’t interested in those options. You also can get cribs that match a certain style of furniture, which means you have to decide if you’re going to one set of furniture for the nursery and then replace that when the baby grows up and gets a ‘kid’s room,’ or if you’re going to pick a furniture style from the start and add to it as the child’s needs change.

And of course there’s a whole different set of issues to consider in selecting other furniture, which isn’t quite as heavily regulated. This is where you, as the expectant parent, must dig deep into your memory for all the harebrained stunts you pulled as a child and try to imagine how your kid will try to improve upon them, and then try to select furniture that will stand up to these shenanigans. Also, while it seems like with cribs there is a wide disparity in price but relatively little in quality, the opposite seemed to hold true with the other furniture — dresser/hutch combinations all seemed to clock in at around the $1000 mark, even though some seemed very solid and others were basically pre-fab put-it-together-yourself items. What to buy, and from whom to buy it, and for how long to plan to keep it after we bought it? We had diagrams and maybe even flowcharts at this point, and eventually decided to buy a dresser and hutch that the baby will be able to keep using; we’ll add a bed and a desk down the line. This decision, of course, raised the question of whether we should buy the crib that matched the dresser.

At this point I have to give kudos to the staff at Karl’s in Philadelphia, the folks from whom we planned to order the dresser. I called up the person who’d been helping us and said, “What’s the difference between the $550 crib from the same furniture line as the dresser, and a $300 crib I can get from the local Babies R Us?” I liked this salesperson and this store a great deal, since they’re knowledgeable, they’re incredibly nice, and they have a terrific selection, and to be honest I wanted her to sell me on the $550 crib — I wanted to give her the business. She came right out and said, “Really the only difference is that the crib will match the rest of the furniture, and if that’s not important to you, go for the other crib.” Fortunately, we were able to buy a less expensive crib from Karl’s, and everyone went home happy.

Until we realized that we had only scratched the surface. Sure, the baby had a place to sleep now, but what about feeding? What about traveling? What about sheets for the crib we had just painstakingly selected? We got a couple checklists from various stores, and then put our own together and started looking for answers. We spent an hour or two just researching the first item — bottles, for crying out loud. Do we want the ones with the liners, or do we want the plain bottles? If we want the plain bottles, do we want an angled one or a straight one? If we want the liners, do we want bags or a hard plastic liner? I looked through reviews on Amazon, but for every parent who raved about a certain bottle, another claimed that it always spilled and her baby had horrible gas.

To take a break from the bottle imbroglio, I looked ahead on one of the checklists, and saw ‘Sassy Seat.’ That was the breaking point. “What the devil is a Sassy Seat?” I asked whomever I could find on Instant Messenger, none of whom were parents. “And do I need one?” As it turns out, the Sassy Seat is apparently a seat manufactured by the Sassy company, which is designed as a high chair that attaches itself to the table and allows the child to sit with everyone else, and use whatever food and other implements are within reach to transform the table into a work of modern art. I’m not sure how that brand name became a generic term, but then I’ve discovered that the baby industry is always throwing new terms at us. ‘Playpen’ is apparently no longer in vogue, having been replaced by ‘pack-n-play’ or, even better, ‘playard,’ even though an artificial structure that keeps the child in a relatively small confined space reminds me a heck of a lot more of a ‘pen’ than a ‘yard,’ but I didn’t know what a Sassy Seat was, so clearly no one wants my input on this issue. Which is just as well, because we still are trying to find a diaper bag that would not be out of place during a night on the town, which means I have to hurry up and shop for the formal burp cloths. Catch you later.

There is a rumor going around that the Internet will save you time and money and make you a more productive person. That you are reading this website at all indicates that you likely realize this claim is about as true as Michael Eisner declaring he has no ill will for DreamWorks and Jeffrey Katzenberg. Just in case you have stumbled upon this page by accident — which, when you think about it is once again all the proof I need — and still cling to the notion that your Internet Service Provider is a link to higher productivity, allow me to disabuse you of it here. You’ll thank me for it.

Now, first, I must admit, I have a somewhat unusual schedule in that many days, I have no schedule at all. I am a graduate student, and thus I spend much of my time in what is referred to as ‘independent research.’ Those of you without graduate experience probably understand this phenomenon better by its more popular name, ‘goofing off until the last minute and then cramming.’ I just do this on a recurring basis, so that the last minute seems to arrive every two days or so, and I often have to combine the cramming and the goofing off into one activity. Also, I frequently check entire shelves out of the library. But we have already lost sight of our main topic, as you should expect from a student of the liberal arts like myself. (If you are frustrated by this digression, consider it direct evidence of our central thesis — the Internet wastes time.)

One thing that I will sometimes do in the course of my day is to take care of tasks that my wife, burdened as she is by a real job, is unable to handle. So on the evening of Thursday, November 15th, I attempted to purchase movie tickets for the following night via the Internet. (If, given that date, you are unaware of what film we wished to see, I must congratulate you on your recent return from Alpha Centauri.) After several aborted attempts, in which my computer informed me it could not find the page I was looking for — it had been there a minute ago, but then another computer tried to ‘put it in a safe place’ or something — I finally hit the button marked ‘finish’ and went to bed.

I woke up to discover that ‘finish’ really meant ‘give up,’ because my computer now told me that I had not, in fact, purchased any tickets. Had to do the whole thing over again. Except now the thing really was being difficult. See, I have a code which allegedly entitles me to waive the surcharge that comes from buying movie tickets online. You input this code, then hit enter, and you are taken to a page that asks for your credit card. Only the credit card page tells you that you entered no code. You can go back and enter the code again, but the credit card page will insist that there is no code. It’s like that scene in The Matrix where someone gives Keanu Reeves a piece of mind-altering, reality-expanding advice and Keanu stares back in an intent yet uncomprehending way. You know which one I mean.

Now, the thing is, the reason I was ordering tickets online in the first place is a) the AMC Theater chain does not, to my knowledge, work with the Moviefone people to let me do this over the phone and b) everyone under the age of twelve — and half those over the age of twelve — were trying to get tickets for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. So each time I did this little type-the-code-there-is-no-code dance, another flargin’ show sold out and I had to try again. I spent an hour doing this before giving up, spending the rest of my day being late for appointments, and deciding in the end to just try again the next day. (We did, and the movie’s quite nifty, but that is neither here nor there.)

Of course, part of the problem may have been that, in another window, I was trying to sort out my finances. See, one result of that whole ‘independent research’ thing is that I produce lots and lots of paper. My printer often just gives up from the strain of it all, and would unionize in a heartbeat in my little anthropomorphic dream world. So I try to keep a lot of my records online, which means I have lots of things set up by which I can send money out or (occasionally) receive it with a few keystrokes. ‘Ah ha!’ you say. ‘Surely this is a convenience that saves time and money!’

Let’s think about this for a moment, though. Pattie once discussed how credit cards make it easier for us to spend money, because we don’t actually have to give up cash at the moment of purchase. Imagine how easy it is when you don’t even have to take out the credit card. Just type in an e-mail address — say, dave@conspicuousconsumption.com — and a password — like cash4unot4me — and voila! Despite being unwilling to spend an hour at the local mall because it’s too time consuming, you’ve spent two or three browsing pages at eBay buying things you would pick up and then put down at the store. (Or, if you’re me, you would pick them up, put them down, pick them again, walk to the checkout, turn around, put them back down, walk away, come back, compare the original item with a slightly different item, pick up the second item, put it down, pick up the original item, then put it down and walk sheepishly from the store when your wife gives you a look. My point remains.)

I have not discussed e-mail, which allows me to stay in touch with friends all over the country and field numerous lucrative offers to ‘Work from HOME’ from people who don’t realize I already do that, or Instant Messaging, which allows me to engage in 30-minute-long exchanges of puns centering on meteorological themes. This is not something I would put in my planner. I would not call someone up and say, “Hey, let’s have a conversation, in which every sentence incorporates a meteorological term, whose sole point is to discuss our ability to incorporate meteorological terms into sentences.” But I do it because of the darned Internet, and then I look at the clock and it’s four in the morning and I have to get to bed because I have another day of intensive research ahead of me. Speaking of which, I should be going. But before I do, remember.

There is no code.

“When in human history has positive change not been incredibly costly, selfless and bloody?”

Christian Gossett asked that question in an interview on this site, almost a year ago, and it’s been at the back of my mind ever since. Not News is dedicated to the idea that people can come together, talk through problems, look at evidence in a critical fashion, and come to an agreement on what should be done for the good of everyone. We sit at computers, surf the web for research, make some phone calls and post on the forums. Doesn’t sound very costly or bloody . . . or even all that selfless. The thought has entered my mind, more than once, that maybe all we’re really doing is salving some guilty consciences.

That thought hit especially hard as I read William H. Chafe’s Civilities and Civil Rights, an excellent book that tracks the progress — and lack thereof — of the civil rights movement in Greensboro, NC from the mid-50s through the 70s. Drawing on extensive interviews and written archival materials, the book is a tightly focused narrative that goes into great depth as it covers the community leaders and members that can get missed in larger overviews of the civil rights movement.

What is most fascinating, and most troubling, about the book is the vast disconnect it portrays between Greensboro’s image of itself and its reality. Greensboro had long considered itself a ‘progressive’ Southern city, with a more modern outlook and economy than many cities in the Deep South — and certainly with better, and fairer, relations between the city’s white and black populations. There was a black member of the city council in 1951, and also a black member of the school board. Several of the city’s philanthropists contributed significant sums to facilities in black neighborhoods, and a few major institutions were willing to work toward integration. And city leaders were almost always willing to discuss race relations in civil discourse, through official committees and informal talks.

The key word, there, is ‘civil.’ The powers that be did not want to ruffle any feathers, they did not want to provoke controversy, and they certainly did not want to suggest that conditions in Greensboro might be less than ideal. Change in Greensboro was expected to be attained through consensus, which meant that if anyone objected to change, then the status quo would be maintained in the name of civility, until the objector could be persuaded to change his mind. And rest assured, if a change would require that whites give up some of their entrenched power or privileged space in society, there would be objectors.

Greensboro was the birthplace of the student sit-in movement in February 1960, when four students and North Caroline Agricultural & Technical College grew frustrated with the slow pace of reform — lunch counters were still segregated, many jobs were off limits to blacks, and six years after Brown vs. Board of Education, black children still weren’t attending white schools. The students went to a downtown Woolworth’s, made purchases, and then st down at the lunch counter. When they were refused service, they stayed. Within days, dozens and then hundreds of students — and eventually adults — joined in the effort and brought commerce in downtown Greensboro to a standstill.

Here’s the interesting part. The powers that be of Greensboro did not respond to the students with a statement of, ‘Thank you for bringing this blatant hypocrisy and act of disrespect to our attention; we will remedy it immediately, and please accept our apologies.’ They criticized the protestors for being disruptive, threatened to enforce anti-trespass laws, and refused to believe that the protestors reflected the will of Greensboro’s black population. “It seems apparent,” said North Caroline Attorney General Malcolm Seawell, that these incidents have been promoted, encouraged, and even supervised by persons coming into North Carolina from other states” (Chafe 86).

Some white liberals did attempt to use the demonstrations as a catalyst for social change, as did a very small number of city leaders. But even those efforts showed the limits of a consensus-driven approach — a group of community leaders came together to negotiate first a moratorium on demonstrations and then an overall solution. They got the moratorium, but with the pressure off, and with the negotiating group having no official power to sanction anyone, businesses retrenched. The community leaders operated under the assumption that it was necessary to build up something close to unanimous public support for integration before anything could change. Meanwhile, the local Woolworth’s manager wrote to the governor, “We are fighting a battle for the white people who still want to eat with white people” (Chafe 93) — which pretty much sums up the chances for such a consensus. Fed up with the lack of progress, the students resumed the demonstrations, and eventually the lunch counters were integrated. But change only occurred when the oppressed made life uncomfortable for the oppressors, many of whom refused to believe they were doing anything wrong.

The civil rights movement is full of such stories. Local residents showing great courage and determination called attention to injustice, and when they tried to play within the existing system, they found their needs sacrificed in the name of political expediency. In 1964, for example, a group of Mississippi activists challenged the credentials of Mississippi’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention, on the grounds that black voters had been disfranchised — but President Johnson was unwilling to anger Southern Democrats by letting a vote on the credentials challenge go to the convention floor (where it almost certainly would have won). And when civil rights leaders began to call attention to the racial inequities of the American economic system, many of their political allies turned a deaf ear. Clearly, there are limits to working within the system, and you could make a strong case that a reform movement that relies on politely asking the system to change its ways is no reform movement at all.

So what are we left with? Is the only honest, and honorable, solution a remorseless, revolutionary struggle (to steal a phrase from Abraham Lincoln)? I’m not sure that’s the answer either — such a struggle is bound to cause resentments, and even if a revolution somehow put a just system into place, the overthrown would be more likely to nurse their grievances rather than become a part of the new society. There’s another Gossett quote that comes to mind: “No war has ever ended that did not begin another.”

The only truly lasting change will come when we change our hearts and our minds, and I don’t think that change can come at the end of a gun. It can only come slowly, and it will take a critical mass of everyday people who are willing to recognize that it is necessary. It will take people with the tools to analyze the world around them, to see where and how it could be better. One of the inspiring elements of Chafe’s book is the four students’ recollections of the role models that gave them the courage to take a stand — the teachers and leaders of their community, the people who did work within the system but weren’t afraid to tweak it where they could. When I think of what Not News can be, that’s what I like to imagine. We will always need heroes to stand up and shout, to call our intention to injustice. And it may be getting time to shout a little louder. But we also need people to talk to each other — and that’s why we’re here.