Lobbyist

On PBS there is a Moyer & Company promo in which a woman laments that we (the American Everyman) don’t have a lobbyist working for us in Washington, D.C.

I did a search and found out at http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby that there were 12,655 Federal registered lobbyist in 2011 with combined expenditures of $3.31 billion dollars. (You’ll find a lot of interesting information at http://www.opensecrets.org)

Lobbies by definition are special interest groups whether they are the American Association of Retired Persons ($15 million spend in 2011http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000023726&year=2011), Pfizer Inc. ($1 million spend in 2011 http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=H04) or The National Association of Broadcasters ($13.9 million spend http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmsum.php?id=D000000202&year=2011, and on and on and on. A lobby’s business is looking out for their own issues.

The United States once experimented with a group of multi-issue lobbyists. The thought was that one person could look after the interests of a diverse group of people. So our population was divided up and assigned lobbyists. These multi-issue lobbyists were called Senators and Representatives. Apparently that experiment did not work out as expected. But maybe it’s time to reset that idea of representing a diverse group of people.

George W. Parker

Big Data

I came across an article on BBC.com this morning http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17682304 that redirected my entire morning. In it Dr. Mike Lynch⁽¹⁾ stated:

“Today, thanks to technology's mass appeal and accessibility, on a daily basis we collectively produce 2.5 quintillion bytes of data, and the growth rate is so high that 90% of all information ever created was produced in the last two years alone. The value of this information to organisations who want to keep ahead of the curve is huge.”

Here is the part that stopped me cold: “…90% of all information ever created was produced in the last two years alone.”  Emphasis is mine.

“…90% of all information ever created was produced in the last two years alone.” Where in the world did that statement come from? So I went word searching

The first thing I found  was an unattributed promotional piece on IBM’s site http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/bigdata/ excerpted below. (Please note that the noun “information” is “data” here. And IBM can help you with your “big data.”): 

“What is big data?

Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records, and cell phone GPS signals to name a few. This data is big data. “

Next up was http://bigdatalowlatency.com/ which lead to another IBM quote: http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/global/files/us__en_us__smarter_computing__ibm_data_final.pdf  Here again the noun in use is “data” not “information. (And IBM can still help you with your big data.)

 

I found a few more references to that IBM 90% data statement which I won't bore you with. Nowhere else did I find the word “information” used.  If Dr. Lynch had used the word “data” instead of “information” I would never have run along this tangent as there is a big difference in my mind between data and information.

Dr. Lynch has shown us that just because you have data doesn’t mean you have information.

⁽¹⁾ Dr. Mike Lynch OBE is founder and chief executive (CEO) of Autonomy, and executive vice-president (EVP) of HP Information Management. Autonomy, part of HP since October 2011, makes software that processes human information, or unstructured data, including social media, email, video, audio, text and web pages. From BBC.com

Required Reading, The Hunger Games?

When I was in high school our required reading included classical literature. Now it’s The Hunger Games. My son had to read it, I had to buy it, so I read it. It was okay. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. I would suggest some alternative reads.

Here are some quotes lifted from Wikipedia about The Hunger Games: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_Games

“… Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA) names the major themes of The Hunger Games as "government control, 'big brother', and personal independence".^[13]”  I would suggest reading 1984  by George Orwell. If you want to check out “Big Brother” go to the source.

“The Capitol makes watching the games required viewing.^[12] The theme of power and downfall, similar to that of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, was pointed out by Scholastic.^{[14] “}  Again I would suggest going to the source, Julius Caesar  by William Shakespeare.

“Donald Brake from The Washington Times, as well as Jessica Groover from the Independent Tribune, states that the story has Christian themes,…” If you’re looking for Christian themes then go for Moby Dick  by Herman Melville.


I want to point out that The Hunger Games is published by Scholastic, the ubiquitous school publisher. Do you think big publishing has taken a sales lesson from big pharma and are calling on the local dispensers (In this case librarians and English teachers.)  to push their wares? Schools all ready receive a percentage from their sponsored Scholastic book fairs. Are they just taking the next step?

Who is Dorfman's neighbor?

 

“The neighbor behind Dorfman was a widower with cats, but no dogs. The plan was to access his property from her backyard.”

So, is the neighbor behind Dorfman a man or a woman?

I was reading American Assassin by Vince Flynn when I was stopped cold by those two lines. They started at the end of a right hand page and finished on the following left hand page. I flipped back and forth a couple of times to verify that I had read it correctly. I had.

With all the “Instant Reporting” we get on the Internet poor grammar has flourished. How many times a day do you see the the repeated article the? We excuse it saying the writers are in a hurry, and we understand. Really it’s about what program are you writing in. I’m using Word right now and that repeat is hi-lighted. The same happens in Open Office. But on Blogger it is missed. I don’t have Word Press up and running but I am assuming it misses the repeat also.

But this was not an Internet article, tweet or blog I was reading. This was a hardback novel published by Simone and Schuster. And it wasn’t the only error. It was just the one that made me talk about the problem. Word and Open Office did not find that noun-pronoun disagreement. I wonder if the publisher doesn’t have software that would check for that type error. If so, they didn’t use it did they? What happened to the line editor? That position was probably downsized during the recession. Everything gets blamed on the recession.

How does one address the issue? Well, I assumed that Simon and Schuster would care less about what I thought. The author, Vince Flynn, may not be involved with the editing; he’s busy working on his next book. And he might take my comments personally. Maybe Flynn’s agent, Sloan Harris, would listen.

I couldn’t find an email address for Mr. Harris. (I’m way too busy to write and mail an actual letter to him.)

Now Mr. Flynn does have a comment page on his web site so I went there and commented on the line editing in American Assassin. It was an action and allowed me to move on with my life.

I know it looks like I decided to slough off the error just like everyone else seems to have done. But this is America and I have decided to ply capitalist pressures on Mr. Flynn, Mr. Harris, Mr. Simon and Mr. Schuster. I am not reading another thing by Mr. Flynn, nor viewing the American Assassin movie when it is released until I find out the true gender of Mr. Dorfman’s neighbor. And I encourage you to do the same.

George Parker

Plausible Stupidity

I do believe in "stupid." It happens all the time. I might be doing it now. And I am sure from some outside perspective my actions do not seem reasonable. But in a story, movie or novel, a sense of plausibility should not be suspended.

There is something I'll call "Plausible Stupidity." As an example, the heroine in a horror film opens the door that everyone (but her) knows should not be opened. Something in the story should give her a real reason for opening the door, missing boyfriend, suspicious noise, something needs to explain/justify her foolish action. Without that slim hook of plausibility her actions are just stupid.

Here are three examples of flawed plausibility which made me lay the books down and carefully and slowly walk away. In Stieg Larson's “The Girl Who Played With Fire” the police accuse Lisbeth Salander of multiple murders and have a nationwide dragnet searching for her while she hunts down her terrible father. Lisbeth's father shoots her and buries her alive. She digs her way out and shoots him. When the third novel, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest” opens, Lisbeth and her father are in the same hospital, next door to each other, neighbors. And there is no policeman in sight. Really? Suspected murderer, two suspected attempted murderers and not a policeman one to watch over either of them. I wonder what is going to happen next? Actually I don't wonder. I set the book down. That scenario violates “Plausible Stupidity” by the police.

How about this: I am hunting in South Texas and I discover the scene of a drug cartel shootout. Only one guy, who is just barely alive, has survived and he asks me for water. Of course I ignore him and search for the money. I find the money take it home and hide it, drink a beer, eat some supper, sleep with my wife and then wake up and decide to take some water to the dying guy. Really? Guess who by now is waiting for me at the shootout locale? This is the “Plausible” opening from “No Country for Old Men” by Cormac McCarthy.

Or this one. It's 1964 and I am a journalist living undercover as a former Nazi SS death camp guard. I've infiltrated a high level group that is supporting and protecting wanted Nazis. So I drive my highly visible and identifiable English sports car all over Germany from hiding place to hiding place. That's the plan to protect my cover in Frederick Forsyth's “The Odessa File.” For me these examples breach the “Plausibility” quotient. There is also something else they share, best seller success and movie deals. Obviously one man's implausible is another man's plausible.

George W. Parker