LB's Rambles

The Sins of Social Media

It is appropriate, one day after sitting through all-day Day of Atonement services (not to mention a 27-hour fast), to discover an alphabetical list of the sins of social media.

Social Media wiseman David Berkowitz has compiled the list at MediaPost's Social Media Insider blog. It is not meant to be exclusionary - like the Jewish atonement prayers, it is an alphabetical acrostic, the idea being that the letters of the alphabet can be shaped into words to list the sins we forgot to mention. This posting probably violates several of them. Sigh...

William Safire

William Safire has died. No matter what you may have thought about his politics, every good writer has lost a friend, mentor and champion. The English language has few such defenders.

The obituary in the New York Times, by Robert D. McFadden, is remarkably fair and accurate.

John Podhoretz has an excellent tribute in Commentary Magazine.

So does Lionel Tiger in Forbes.

May he rest in peace.

Hat tip: Instapundit

"Bulldog Drummond"

Reading the original "Bulldog Drummond," by "Sapper," is a little like eating some junk foods - you know it can't be good for you, but it's irresistable and tastes good. So it is with Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond. From his first appearance in this 1920 book by H. C. McNeile, under the pen name of "Sapper," Drummond proved an immediate hit with audiences - both readers and moviegoers. And he was Ian Fleming's model for James Bond - a rough but cool, honest, patriotic man, quick with his fists and his weapons. "Bulldog Drummond" is the subject of this week's review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you may listen to it here.

The plot is very James Bond-ish: Drummond, newly released from the British army after the war, and bored with a peaceful life, becomes involved in fighting a vast international conspiracy aimed at world domination, complete with a super-villain (who appeared in several more books). It's a thriller in the classic mold. If you enjoy James Bond, you probably would enjoy "Bulldog Drummond."

As always, let me invite you to visit www.classicmysteries.net and join in the discussion of classic mystery stories. Your opinions and comments are welcome.

Marxist Television?

What's going on here? I don't watch much TV, so maybe I was missing something. But at my breakfast place this morning, they had their TVs set - silently - to "The Price is Right," a quiz show I think has been around since I was growing up. And for some reason - I have no idea why - EVERYONE on the show was wearing Groucho noses, complete with eyebrows, glasses, nose and mustache. Everyone. The host, the contestants, the studio audience. EVERYONE. Without the sound, I can't explain the homage to Groucho Marx - any of my readers know what was happening?

I mean, I love the Marx Brothers, most of whose movies are still laugh-out-loud funny. But Groucho died in 1977, 32 years ago. A lot of the people on today's TV show weren't even born then.

If it rekindles interest in their movies, that's great. I own a dozen of them because, fortunately, there are two big collections now on DVD available through Amazon. The first, "The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection," contains all five of the earliest movies, the ones where Zeppo Marx was the romantic lead. The second, "The Marx Brothers Collection," has seven of the later films, including "A Night at the Opera," still one of the funniest movies ever made - back when it was still revived and shown in theaters, the New Yorker used to give it the blurb, "The Marx Brothers happen to Il Trovatore." If a new generation is discovering these movies, then being surrounded by Groucho noses is a small price to pay.

Autoplay Autorant

There are few things in my work day that drive me crazy more quickly than computer programs or websites that decide they are going to take over my computer. That includes such gems as those regular Windows messages saying STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND LET US REBOOT TO FIX OUR SECURITY GAP, or the way some security programs will grab control and let me know, rather officiously, that they are blocking my access to a suspicious website - which has turned out occasionally to be one of my own.

But at the heart of my complaint, at least in the online world, is the phenomenon known as autoplay. You know - the way you go to a site and suddenly find yourself assaulted with unsought video or audio that keeps on playing while you look (not always successfully) for a button to make it stop. This is - to be charitable - stupid. Nothing will drive me away from your site more certainly or more quickly than autoplay.

On the "misery loves company" theory, it's nice to know I'm not alone. At MediaPost's Video Insider blog, Eric Franchi of Undertone Networks has a first-rate post explaining why he would love to see the death of autoplay. His reasons are cogent. In the comments, several people point out that it's really auto-audio rather than auto-video which is so objectionable.

I can agree with that. Let's face it, a lot of us do visit websites at work. Even if we are working legitimately - or logging on from home - the sudden onset of sound, calling everyone's attention to what we may be doing, is extremely unwelcome. I know a lot of web designers who think it's ultra-cool - look what I can do; made ya look - but it's really just ultra irritating. Want to put a video or audio file there and invite me to click on it? Great. Glad to do so. But don't shove it down my throat.

I hope Franchi is right - I'd welcome the death of autoplay.

"Death at Crane's Court"

It's a curious fact that remarkably few Golden Age mystery stories were set in Ireland. One of the first to use Ireland as the primary setting was "Death at Crane's Court," by the Irish author Eilis Dillon. In the course of a long and prolific career, she wrote only three mysteries, all of them during the 1950s. "Death at Crane's Court" was the first, and it is delightful. A full review is featured on this week's Classic Mysteries podcast, which you can listen to here.

The story is set in Galway, at a residential hotel for elderly invalids - the kind of place where the ill and old may go to live out their lives. But it is the hotel's new owner who is found murdered, and it is up to the local police detective, with some assistance from a couple of the hotel's residents, to make sense out of the events. There is a fair amount of sometimes grotesque humor and some really bizarre events, but the mystery is designed as a puzzle for the reader, and it is very well done. The Rue Morgue Press is republishing all three of Dillon's mysteries; it's a pity she never wrote more.

As always, let me invite you to visit www.classicmysteries.net and join us there for conversation about fine mysteries. I hope to see you there.

Breaking the Habit

If Twitter isn't registered as an addictive substance, it probably should be. And it's not so much that many of us want to break the habit as it is a matter of keeping it under control. That is, if you want to get any work done or have any sort of a life, it's probably a good idea to set limits for yourself and learn how to handle the Twitter habit. James Mallinson has some helpful (and funny) suggestions at TwiTip on how to tame the beast.

Via Ragan's PR Daily

Not Necessarily the News?

By now, you may have heard the latest findings from the respected Pew Research Center for the People & the Press which say that the public perception of news reporting accuracy is down to its lowest level in the more than two decades that Pew has been taking its surveys.

Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial survey in this series about the news media’s performance in 1985, 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate. That percentage had fallen sharply by the late 1990s and has remained low over the last decade.

Speaking as someone who spent more than 30 years in broadcast journalism at the network level, I find the study infinitely depressing - and, I fear, unquestionably accurate. I would have to count myself in the current majority reported by Pew, and I think, frankly, that what we call the "mainstream media" has sadly and inexcusably squandered the public's faith.

Perhaps, as many critics have argued, we were always fools for believing in the "objectivity" of news reporting - certainly that's a relatively recent concept; think back over the history of both "yellow" journalism and the crusading journalism that has been common over the years. Perhaps we should accept that the concept of "fair and balanced" really isn't much of an ideal - it's better to be clear about a journalist's and journal's point of view - bias, if you will - and try to balance it with another journalist's or journal's opposite point of view. But for those of us who have labored in the field, it is still a sad commentary.

Scammers Try Again

Here's a warning about a new scam I've seen tried a couple of times now on Facebook - although the technique presumably could work on any instant messaging service.

I was working online when I suddenly got a Facebook IM from one of my friends - someone I know quite well. According to the IM, she and her husband had been mugged, robbed at gunpoint while visiting London, and needed a loan to help replace their plane tickets for the flight home this afternoon.

I thought it was curious, as I saw my friend night before last in New Jersey. So I picked up the telephone and called. She was unaware that her account apparently had been hacked. She has now been forced to close out that Facebook account and open a new one - and is trying to rebuild her friends' list.

It appears that the hackers obtain your password - not clear how; presumably from some phishing scam - and then try to contact likely-looking friends and engage them in an IM exchange, trying to get them to send money immediately.

I'm hoping, obviously, that nobody fell for the scam. The scammers didn't get far enough with me to give me instructions, but I have read of another instance of the same scam where they asked people to wire money to Western Union in London.

Suggestions: go to Facebook NOW and change your password. I did. Once they have hacked into your account, there's not much you can do except close it quickly and start over from scratch.

"And Be a Villain"

Nero Wolfe uses his considerable brainpower and Archie Goodwin provides the wisecracks and the muscle where necessary as the duo goes to work on an on-the-air murder in "And Be a Villain," by Rex Stout. The full review can be heard here on our Classic Mysteries podcast.

From a broadcaster's point of view, it is a murder most foul indeed - a guest on a live radio interview show dies after drinking the sponsor's soft drink. But it's a curious murder, for, as Wolfe soon discovers, virtually everyone he interviews is lying about it. Only by discovering why they are lying can he break through and figure out what really happened.

It's a great read, one of the many we discuss over at www.classicmysteries.net - I hope you'll visit me over there and join in the discussions!