Bleg: The Stereotypical American ... ?

I've been asked to give some suggestions for an academic project, and I thought I'd ask you to help brainstorm, especially if you were born in another country, or lived for a while in another country, or are closely connected to people meeting either of those two criteria. The question is this: what are some of the characteristics that people outside of the United States believe the stereotypical American possesses? (Apart from thinking only people who live in the US are called Americans, I mean.)

You can respond in the comments below, or via email, Facebook, Twitter, text message, etc. Your name will not be passed along, nor will any offense be taken. (Since I already know I live in the greatest country in the world! ;))

Thanks in advance.

Grammar question. How say you?

There is a myriad of reasons why ...

Or should it be, there are a myriad of reasons why ...

Consider also:

There are a score of reasons why ...
There is a score of reasons why ...

There is a dozen reasons why ...
There are a dozen reasons why ...

There are a handful of reasons why ...
There is a handful of reasons why ...

Is the verb after There supposed to agree with the quantity-noun (myriad, score, dozen, handful) or the word (noun) reasons? And does the of, where it appears, make any difference?

My own ear leans toward(s) is when there is an of and the other way, when not. Which seems inconsistent after the most fleeting of thought(s).

tia

Deep Thought

What came first, JavaScript's truthy or Colbert's truthiness?

Huh. All this time, I thought "arse" rhymed with "farce."

British and Australian readers, please advise. Ben Yagoda says:

Arse and ass look different in print. However, in Britain, where non-rhotic (that is, silent r) pronunciation is the standard, they would sound the same.

(Many of his commenters dispute his assertion.)

Anyone want "12 weeks of complimentary digital access" to the NYT?

First come, first served.* Send me an email or DM. New subscribers only, it sez. And remember that you already get free access if you're getting home delivery of the paper paper.

[Update] Sorry if you wanted it. Already claimed.

*(Unless I don't like you.)

Please help out StrangeAppar8us

If you've read Rumproast, you're familiar with StrangeAppar8us. It seems he's had a bit of bad luck, to understate matters rather severely, and he could use some coin.

If you can help out, that'd be great. Visit this Roast Post. You can even send money by snail mail, if you don't like doing financial transactions over the Web.

And don't just take it from me that he's a good egg. TBogg and Angry Black Lady agree.

Which means traffic coming from here won't exactly jump out, relatively speaking, but hey, every little bit helps.

Do you ever come here on your phone? [UPDATED 2x]

UPDATE: Mobile template is now on. UPDATE2: Now back off.

Blogger has rolled out a new feature that they claim will make viewing this blog on your phone better:

MORE »

"Koch Brothers Exposed"

Robert Greenwald emails to say Brave New Films has a new project underway and he'd like your help:

(alt. video link)

T-shirts with a logo by Shepard Fairey are available for a donation.

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P.S. Ed is right, of course, but only to some degree. There is a time when having a concrete image -- a face of the opposition -- is useful. Not all citizens are as well-informed as those of us who obsess over politics would like, and given that reality, it is important to come up with ways to pique their interest. These approaches work, like it or not. With the stakes as high as they are, the smart activist uses what works. We can all sing kumbaya and have Very Serious Thoughtful Discussions when we get things back in balance.

Besides, the Koch brothers spend huge amounts of money funding the denialism of anthropogenic global warming. WHICH DOESN'T EXIST BECAUSE AL GORE HAS A BIG HOUSE AND FLIES IN AIRPLANES!!!1!

See what I'm saying?

Update on Whistleblower Protection

Remember this, from back in early January?

"The breeding ground for all of that corruption is secrecy."

Here's a story that probably went under your radar. I know it did mine. It seems that the Whistleblower Protection Act, which would finally have ensured real legal rights to federal employees who dare to speak up about the bad stuff they see on the job, which had virtually unanimous support in both houses of Congress, was killed by … an anonymous hold, placed by a lone Senator.

Yes. "Virtually" here means "everyone except that one cowardly Senator." Who we don't know for sure is a Republican, but I know how I'm betting.

That post went on to offer a segment from On The Media featuring Tom Devine, Legal Director of the Government Accountability Project, and then finished thus:

In case you missed it at the end of that clip, GAP is now asking for help, in conjunction with OTM, in determining who the anonymous Senator is.

Through the efforts of OTM listeners, we're now down to five Senators who won't give an answer: David Vitter (R-LA), James Risch (R-ID), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), and Mitch McConnell (R-KY). If one of those is a Senator of yours, you may wish to pitch in on the effort to get them to make a statement.

Also, for your listening pleasure, here is Bob Garfield, co-host of OTM, as a guest on the Leonard Lopate show, yesterday (via):

The whole thing is about 37 minutes long. The whistleblower discussion is the main topic, and it's at the start. Stay tuned at the end to hear Bob's take on Glenn Beck, the sale of the HuffPo, etc.

If you'd rather, you can download an MP3 at the above link.

Where Should I Visit in San Francisco?

A friend planning a trip writes, in part:

... I'm considering spending a couple of days in CA. I've been to Southern California but not to SF. How many days would you recommend are the minimum to get to see the most important places, and what would you suggest I visit?

Please weigh in, in the Comments, on the Facebook, via email or the Twitter (@bjkeefe). Thanks.

"The breeding ground for all of that corruption is secrecy."

Here's a story that probably went under your radar. I know it did mine. It seems that the Whistleblower Protection Act, which would finally have ensured real legal rights to federal employees who dare to speak up about the bad stuff they see on the job, which had virtually unanimous support in both houses of Congress, was killed by … an anonymous hold, placed by a lone Senator.

Yes. "Virtually" here means "everyone except that one cowardly Senator." Who we don't know for sure is a Republican, but I know how I'm betting.

Here's a good segment from this week's On The Media to bring you up to speed. It's seven minutes long.

Here's a detailed post from Climate Science Watch on the machinations through the end of 2010. Climate Science Watch is part of the Government Accountability Project. The person interviewed in the audio clip above is Tom Devine, Legal Director of GAP.

In case you missed it at the end of that clip, GAP is now asking for help, in conjunction with OTM, in determining who the anonymous Senator is.

Your attention please

What TBogg says.

Roy Edroso is a good man and alicublog is one of the best things about the Internet. Please do what you can to help. Thanks.

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[Update 2011-01-06 14:42] I should at least thank Ed Bluestone for the original idea mucked with above. See Comments for details.

[Update 2011-01-16 22:58] Good news.

Bleg: Skype is making me want to kick puppies

Hi, Internet:

I am trying to figure out why Skype won't work on my friend's computer. It's well within the system requirements Skype lists at the bottom of this page (the machine in question: Windows XP SP3, 512 MB RAM, 2.13 (-or-close) GHz processor) and it ran Skype fine until a couple of months ago. I don't know Skype well, but I have downloaded it and installed it and got it to run without drama on two other machines, one running XP, the other running Vista. I have also uninstalled and reinstalled Skype on the problematic machine -- trying both the latest stable version (4.2.0.169) and the v5 beta.

The built-in "Echo/Sound test" works fine.

The problematic machine is clean as far as I can tell -- fully up to date with Windows patches and drivers, and not infected according to several different scanning packages. All other apps work as expected. Skype seems to consume an inordinate amount of CPU on this machine -- typically 75-90% while on a Skype-to-Skype call, according to Windows Task Manager, and closely related, it is so sluggish that it appears to be frozen if you had normal expectations. I haven't actually been able to make it crash after a day of playing around with it, but I can see why my friend thinks it has.

One possible clue: it behaves better just running through the speakers than it does with a USB headset/mike plugged in. That is, in the latter case, text messages sent back and forth don't appear, the elapsed call time doesn't update, can't even get a response from something as simple as Help→About, etc. (Granted, with no mike in the former case, I'm not doing an apples-to-apples comparison.)

I can't find a conflict with drivers or ports, to the extent that I know how to check for those things. The various Windows admin tools all indicates "this device is working properly," including the one for the headset/mike.

[Added: The headset/mike unit is a "Skype-approved" one, according to what's stamped on it, and I believe my friend bought it through Skype, or at least, on Skype's recommendation. Also, due to the CPU usage symptom hint noted above, which appears whether or not I have the headset plugged in, I don't think this is the only problem, even though it seems to aggravate it.]

Any suggestions would be most welcome. TIA.

Finally! Help for those of us who write screeds on the Internet!

(Updated below)

Oh stop lying. You know you're as bad as me -- if you're not pounding on wingnuts in the Bloggingheads.tv forums, you're explaining at length to Donald Douglas why he is an idiot. Or writing a sternly-worded admonition to the guy currently posing as the WaPo's ombudsman. Or whatever. So you know that sick feeling of composing a lengthy masterpiece, only to have the site, or your connection, or your browser, or your computer, choke at exactly the wrong moment. And then where is your deathless prose? Gone, that's where.

But maybe that doesn't have to happen, ever again! (If you're using Firefox.)

Enter this add-on I just happened across, Lazarus: Form Recovery, which proclaims:

Never lose anything you type into a web form again! Lazarus securely auto-saves all forms as you type, so after a crash, server timeout, or whatever, you can go back to the form, right click, "recover form", and breathe a sigh of relief.

And at more length on its home page:

Ever had one of those “oh $*#@” moments when you've finally finished filling out a long form, and hit submit only to see an error message? And when you hit the back button, the form was blank... If so, you know you need Lazarus. And if not, you have a chance to install Lazarus before disaster strikes!

Using Lazarus, you can recover lost forms with a single click. Lazarus automagically encrypts and saves every form as you type. If the submission fails or if you forget to send it or your computer or browser crashes, then you can return to the page and recover the form data you originally entered.

Now works with WYSIWYG editors, Rich text boxes and AJAXified forms.

So far, all I can tell you is it installed from here without drama in the usual add an addon way. Under the principle (corollary to Murphy's Law) that if you bring an umbrella it never rains, I suspect that I will not have a browser crash while I am in the middle of typing away for at least the next six months, by which point I'll have long since forgotten that I installed this thing.

But who knows? Maybe you will give it a shot and it will save you some agita. Please let me know in the Comments or by email if it does. Or if it already has. Thanks! (Or, you're welcome!?)

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Update

2010-07-21 09:16

Eponym reports in the Comments that he has done a little testing, and it appears to work as advertised.

2010-07-21 12:03

Just ran a quick test of my own, and it also worked. See Comments.

In Which I Do More Copying and Pasting

Because this is new to me (I was one of those who thought is was just a "posh-sounding" thing), and I ought to look into it a little more.

Basis points - an admonition

Quite why I am telling people things that any decent financial journalists' stylebook ought to have I don't know, but I have seen so much grievious abuse of the humble basis point over the last month or so ...

1) A basis point is a measure of differences between two interest rates (that's what a "basis" is; also futures and forward rates but those are basically the same thing). It is not merely a posh-sounding way of saying a hundredth of a per cent. Talking about unemployment rates, GDP growth or whatever in basis points doesn't make you look cool, it makes you look like you don't know what you are talking about (I once saw someone write that the rate of income tax was 4000 basis points. Puke.) There is a partial and occasional exception for inflation rates, as of course the inflation rate is the basis between an indexed gilt and an ordinary gilt, but usually it is not correct to talk about inflation in bp either.

2) A basis point is a measure of differences between interest rates. The current 3m dollar LIBOR is 0.54%, it's not 54bp.

3) Given that the basis point has been invented, use it. If one interest rate is 0.6% and another is 0.48%, the spread between them is 12bp. It is not "a 25% difference".

It's not difficult. The phrase "basis points" really just means "and now, since I am talking about interest rates, I am warning you that I propose to talk about adding and subtracting them rather than multiplying and compounding them, and also I am multiplying the quantities by 100 to make them easier to deal with". Bloomberg, Reuters, the FT and WSJ are all regular offenders with respect to this poor little unit.

The above was posted by the management at D-squared Digest.

Feel free to dispute the definition, of course.

Help With Video Playback? (bleg, also)

In messing around with some embedded videos below, I found that I could make video clips play that wouldn't play previously by right-clicking in the video window, clicking "Settings," and unchecking "Enable hardware acceleration." Could just be my ancient machine. Anyone else ever had this experience? Or, if you know of an embedded vid that didn't work for you previously, would you try it, and let me know, in the Comments? Thanks/HTH.

Bears Watching

Marcy Wheeler, who blogs at/as emptywheel, is looking to go full-time as a blogger, along with a co-investigative blogger and a researcher. Jane Hamsher, who runs the site Firedoglake -- which hosts emptywheel along with tons of other fine work -- says that she's been trying to secure funding for Marcy to do this, and unable to get it through more traditional channels, has turned to the community. There is a donation link on Jane's announcement post page (and on FDL's home page), which went up about 40 hours ago, as of this writing. Their goal is $150,000 (doesn't say for how long this sum is to last), and so far, they're up to $25,631 from 456 donors.

If you're a proponent of new media and citizen journalism, here's a chance to put your money where your mouth is.

I don't know Marcy's work well enough to make a recommendation, but I do know that she has a good rep (Thers says "Marcy Wheeler represents the best of the left blogosphere"), and Jane lists some of Marcy's blog-complishments as part of the appeal. If you have some spare dollars, I can think of lots of worse places to put them, that's for sure. I mean, it's not like the banks are safe or anything anymore, right? ;^)

Bush Administration Torture Memos Released (Updated)

This may be of interest to some of you:

Bush Torture Memos Released By Obama: See The Complete Documents

[...]

The Huffington Post has obtained the memos and is putting them on the website for the public to view. Please help us read through the material and report back what you find.

Email address for reporting your results at the link, along with statements (excerpts?) from Obama and Patrick Leahy.

I've skimmed them -- so far, it does not look like more than an occasional name or codeword has been redacted. Hurray for Obama.

The documents are displayed through a fancy viewer of some kind. Use the full screen button on the viewer, unless your eyes are way better than mine. If I come across a more readable version, I'll update this post. [UPDATE BELOW]

(Cross-posted on the BH.tv forums)

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[UPDATE] The ACLU has PDFs of the memos, links to which are all gathered up on one handy page, along with some remarks of their own for context, and some other materials. Came across this thanks to Glennzilla, whose post you might want to look at, and whose blog is certain to be a good place to watch for the next few days, even more so than it usually is. Also, hat tip to Jim Newell of Wonkette for pointing me to Glenn -- nice laugh there despite the gruesomeness of this situation.

Bleg: Your Favorite Post?

Jon Swift, the Web's most reasonable conservative, has invited me to submit what I think was my best blog post of this past year. He plans to do a wrap-up of the best blog posts from everyone on his blogroll, as he did last year. He's a good guy in that way, among many others. I am honored that he has asked me to participate.

If anything I wrote this past year comes to mind, please drop a note in the Comments or shoot me an email about it. You need not find the exact link if you can describe it. (More precisely than "that one about Obama," I mean.)

Thanks.

Serendipity

John D. MacDonald
(Internet connection not shown)

While pitching the Travis McGee series to a friend via email, which was prompted by my paraphrasing Meyer's belief that the written word was the best way to convey complex ideas (said email and this blog not necessarily included), I had to look up a factoid (guess where I went) and while browsing the page came across something I'd never heard of before:

Unknown to most followers of McGee, the Library of Congress's "Center for the Book" commissioned a short work by MacDonald. He responded with an essay entitled "Reading for Survival", which is a conversation between McGee and Meyer on the importance of reading. The 26-page essay was released in a limited edition of 5,000 copies and was available for a small contribution to the Center for the Book.

To those of you searching for last minute gift ideas: hint, hint.

Anyway, I had a fantasy that I could find this online somewhere (my inner wingnut wants to say SINCE MY TAX DOLLARS PAID FOR IT). I haven't come across the full text yet, but I did find some excerpts posted on the Rambles and Byways web site. Which, of course, I shamelessly CTRL-Ced and now shamelessly CTRL-V SINCE MY TAX DOLLARS PAID FOR IT:

"The nonreader in our culture wants to believe. He is the one born every minute. The world is so vastly confusing and baffling to him that he feels there has to be some simple answer to everything that troubles him. And so, out of pure emptiness, he will eagerly embrace spiritualism, yoga, a banana diet, or some callous frippery like Dianetics..."

"Here in America, as elsewhere, there will always be tremulous little people of dim intellect and hyperactive imagination, burning for explanations to all life's vicissitudes. They grow impatient with learned analyses of the present. They are defeated by histories that illuminate the past. No species of scholarship or analysis could ever satisfy them; for they need that Wondrous Explanation that will quiet all their fears, thrill them with villains to revile, and never tax their feeble powers of intellection."

"The same idea was said in a different way by Eric Hoffer, the old dock-walloper, in his book years ago titled "The True Believer". Hoffer's theory was that the best fanatics are people who have nothing in their heads but wind, smoke, and emptiness. Then if any idea manages to slip in there, it does not matter how insipid or grotesque that idea might be, it will expand to fill all the available emptiness, and it takes over the individual and all his actions. He cannot hear any voice but his own. He is beyond reason, beyond argumentation. He is right and everyone who does not believe exactly the same as he is wrong."

"My point is that the man who reads is using the fabulous memory storage and relationship analysis of the brain his ancestors developed eons ago. He is facilitating his survival in the contemporary world. He will recognize the pockets of fanaticism around him and know what is causing these universal foci of dementia. Of course, he will be called an egghead or a bleeding heart or a secular humanist, but he can lean back and, in a certain way, enjoy the marvelously crackpot rantings of a Jesse Helms, a Botha, a Meese, a Kohmeni, a Falwell, a Qaddafi, a Gorbachev, an Ortega, a Noriega----people from both ends of every spectrum, whooping and leaping and frothing, absolutely livid at the idea their particular warped vision of reality is not shared by everyone. Their basic lack of education, of reading, of being able to comprehend the great truths of reality has left empty places in their heads, into which great mischief has crept."

Awesome.

Thanks, Internet!

I forget, did I say this already? Hint, hint.

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(pic. source)