Shots in the Dark

American marine scientists have filmed, for the first time, an oarfish, a deep-sea creature that can grow to a length of 20 yards. It’s a very weird-looking critter.

Because rather than denying the existence of climate change, he wants to start a new federal agency to study it.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, planned to announce Monday that NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA’s National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.

Which means, of course, that unlike the members of the previous presidential administration, Obama respects scientists and their work.

The LA Times reports on the physiological consequences of falling in love.

Let’s put it this way: They’re good.

Arthur Aron, a social psychologist at Stony Brook University in New York, has done brain scans on people newly in love and found that after that first magical meeting or perfect first date, a complex system in the brain is activated that is essentially “the same thing that happens when a person takes cocaine.”

All that without the inconvenience of Mexican drug violence.

Activation of this part of the brain is primarily responsible for causing the sometimes bizarre behavior of new couples, which is linked to motivation and achieving goals: excessive energy, losing sleep, euphoric feelings and, occasionally, anxiety and obsession when they’re separated from their objetd’amour….

Plus: Happy partnerships (married or not) correlate to greater immune system function and longevity. So while love may not be quite all that you need, it’s certainly a fine start.

…as I have been for some time now…

The MSM is catching up to this blog in realizing that Twitter was the most over-hyped story of 2009 and that almost nobody really likes it—not even the marketers who are both its primary users and its primary audience.

Brand Week’s cover story this week is titled, “Is Twitter the Next Second Life?”.

Author Tod Wasserman writes,

If you’re a marketer who has steered clear of Twitter, your (non)strategy may be paying off! It’s possible that this Twitter thing may just take care of itself...

…Like Second Life, Twitter has become a wasteland for brands. Verizon, a company that spent more than $1 billion on advertising in 2009, has around 5,000 followers — about 0.3 percent the amount that Perez Hilton has. Coca-Cola has 15,000. Apple’s not even on Twitter. And some corporate Twitter accounts suffer from prolonged neglect. Delta Airlines’ Twitter page went from June 17 to Dec. 22 last year without a single update.

I find this all very encouraging, not least because it bears out what I’ve been writing for months.

“Twitter is a little bit overrated,” says [Goeff Contrill, the CMO for Converse]. “There will be a new media toy that will replace it in a year or two.”

When, I wonder, will David Carr write the column admitting that he’s been wrong all along?

He’s still fighting to overhaul the absurdly run student loan business to save the government billions—private lenders profit off the loans, even though they’re guaranteed by the government—but industry lobbying and the resurgent power of Congressional Republicans may kill the plan, according to the Times.

[Emphasis added for all those who think that the Massachusetts election represented a great populist outcry for reform and government accountability.]

House and Senate aides say that the administration’s plan faces a far tougher fight than it did last fall, when the House passed its version. The fierce attacks from the lending industry, the Massachusetts election that cost the Democrats their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and the fight over a health care bill have all damaged the chances for the student loan measure, said the aides….

Good thing education isn’t an important industry in Massachusetts….

This has been all over, but the Times reports on Yale’s endowment losses and budget cuts:

Yale University announced on Wednesday that it planned a number of steps to close a remaining $150 million budget gap, including cutting staff, freezing salaries for deans and officers, reducing the number of graduate students — even turning down all thermostats to 68 degrees.

Some important points, both from a substantive and a PR perspective:

1) the number of graduate students will be cut 10 to 15%

2) thermostats will be turned down to 68% (as a child of the Carter years, I automatically think, “Wait—they were higher than that?”)

3) If you make more than 83k, you’ll have to pay part of your health care. (To which I think, “Wait—you didn’t before?”)

4) Administrators’ pay will be frozen, while faculty and staff will get 2% raises. (Not bad at the moment, actually.)

The comments on the Yale Daily News site generally reflect frustration that administrator pay wasn’t actually cut, and one commenter wonders if they’re still flying first class to Davos….

Windsurfer Steven Schafer was bitten by a shark off Stuart Beach in Florida a couple days ago and died. This almost never happens—and, in fact, probably never happened in this part of Florida, Martin County, before. Unfortunately, the news media continue their shark-related hysteria with headlines like this one from ABCNews.com—”Stephen Schafer was Surrounded, Attacked by Sharks in Florida.”

Here’s the ABC lede:

Wind surfer Stephen Schafer, who was killed Wednesday by a swarm of sharks off the coast of Florida, had bruises on his arms that indicate he tried to fight off the feeding predators during his final moments.

Killed by a “swarm” of sharks? Is that really true? Here’s ABC’s proof.

…the 38-year-old surfer had 8 to 10 inch bite wounds on his right thigh and “numerous teeth marks” on his right and left buttocks.

Sounds to me like Shafer was attacked by a shark that bit him on the leg and ass, probably because it thought the wetsuit-clad surfer was a seal. There were other sharks in the water, true—but sharks aren’t pack hunters, and if there were really multiple sharks attacking him, you can be sure that the unfortunate man would have shown far more signs of that…

Now, of course, there’s shark hysteria in the media, like this Palm Beach local news website: Sharks Spotted One Day after Fatal Attack.

One day after a fatal shark attack in Martin County, schools of sharks were seen off Palm Beach.

Local news is speculating that “juvenile white sharks” were involved, mostly because, well, people want it to be the brand name. But again, white sharks don’t swim in packs, and they are almost never found in the warm waters off the Florida coast. My guess—a bull shark, maybe a tiger.

The Orlando Sentinel at least gets it right…

Kiteboarder Stephen Howard Schafer had multiple wounds, including an 8- to 10-inch bite on his right thigh and teeth marks on his right and left buttocks…

Note the difference between that and the ABC lede (which is linked to all over the web): “an 8- to 10-inch bite.” No talk of bites or swarms or being “surrounded.”

A bull shark or tiger shark was likely responsible for this week’s deadly attack on a Stuart kiteboarder, a shark expert said Thursday.

Note the singular. This is vastly more likely than “juvenile white sharks.” The Sentinel also reports that there were “perhaps two or three sharks” in the water, but points out that, while probably attracted by the blood, they didn’t bite Schafer. In fact, the life guard who rescued Schafer went unmolested.

Still, ABC reports on a swarm. Sigh. What happens next? This.

That’s a hammerhead shark, by the way. And hammerheads don’t attack humans. Nice work, yahoos.

Let’s reiterate: Humans kill tens of millions of sharks per year—so many that we’re wiping them off the face of the planet. Sharks kill a couple people a year. And we think we’re higher on the evolutionary ladder than they are?

Writing on the New Yorker’s website, George Packer decries Twitter.

The truth is, I feel like yelling Stop quite a bit these days. Every time I hear about Twitter I want to yell Stop. The notion of sending and getting brief updates to and from dozens or thousands of people every few minutes is an image from information hell. I’m told that Twitter is a river into which I can dip my cup whenever I want. But that supposes we’re all kneeling on the banks. In fact, if you’re at all like me, you’re trying to keep your footing out in midstream, with the water level always dangerously close to your nostrils. Twitter sounds less like sipping than drowning.

Like me, Packer was freaked out by David Carr’s column on Twitter in which Carr raved about how essential Twitter had become to his life. Also like me, Packer wonders if there isn’t an almost (perhaps not almost) physiological reason why the Times’ media critic is so enamored of a steady stream of Tweets.

I wrote:

This is a bit of a cheap shot, but since Carr himself has written about it extensively, I’ll go there: I wonder if his fondness for Twitter has anything to do with his much self-documented addictive personality. Wouldn’t Twitter hold particular appeal for a cocaine/adrenaline/information junkie?

Packer begins this section by quoting Carr and seconds my thought:

“There is always something more interesting on Twitter than whatever you happen to be working on,” [Carr writes].

This last is what really worries me. Who doesn’t want to be taken out of the boredom or sameness or pain of the present at any given moment? That’s what drugs are for, and that’s why people become addicted to them. Carr himself was once a crack addict (he wrote about it in “The Night of the Gun”). Twitter is crack for media addicts. It scares me, not because I’m morally superior to it, but because I don’t think I could handle it. I’m afraid I’d end up letting my son go hungry.

Whereas I just think I’m morally superior to it.

Just kidding. Like Packer, I fear the transformation of thought from a deep, sustaining meal to a package of Pringles—terrible for you, but once you start eating them….

And yes, I recognize that blogging isn’t exactly Remembrance of Things Past. As many of you have reminded me, blog posts can be dashed-off, careless things that later have to be walked back. But there is a gradation, and somewhere along this scale from Proust to blogging to Tweeting thought becomes trivial—yet, on Twitter, incessant. (Would we think differently about it if they had called it Chatter? Think about it.)

Unlike Packer, I’ve used Twitter a few times, just to make sure that I’m not simply being a curmudgeon. I’ve not yet found anything for which I truly need Twitter; I am insufficiently self-important to think that I have need of instantaneous information. (And fortunately I haven’t been in any disasters where that could be useful…or not.) Anything one could Tweet to me, one could email to me. Or just…you know…tell me.

And to be entirely frank, this fact provides with a sense of profound relief. I’m so glad I don’t need Twitter. Another endless stream of information is more 411 than I could handle-it’s like putting your mouth under a flowing faucet and being unable to move away.

Writing in response to Packer on the NYTimes “Bits” blog, Nick Bilton disagrees.

Hundreds of thousands of people now rely on Twitter every day for their business. Food trucks and restaurants around the world tell patrons about daily food specials. Corporations use the service to handle customer service issues. Starbucks, Dell, Ford, JetBlue and many more companies use Twitter to offer discounts and coupons to their customers. Public relations firms, ad agencies, schools, the State Department — even President Obama — now use Twitter and other social networks to share information.

Which only emphasizes another point that I’ve been making for months: The great advocates of Twitter, and the great users of Twitter, are all trying to sell you something. (Even if what they’re selling is only Twitter.) How wonderful that food trucks around the world are using Twitter to broadcast their daily specials. But I’ve managed to make it so far without that information, and my stomach generally thanks me for it. Likewise I have managed to survive without coupons from Starbucks, Dell and Ford.

Perhaps sensing the weakness of his argument, Bilton continues:

There are communication and scholarly uses. Right now, an astronaut, floating 250 miles above the Earth, is using Twitter and conversing with people all over the globe, answering both mundane and scientific questions about living on a space station.

I love that Bilton says Twitter has “communication uses.” That’s the kind of thought that you get when you Tweet. It only means something if you don’t think about it. It’s like defending cars by saying that they have “transportation uses.”

Moreover, I hope that astronauts floating 250 miles above the Earth surely have better things to do with their time than answering “mundane” questions, or else the NASA budget really does need to be cut.

But Bilton, unfazed, continues:

Most importantly, Twitter is transforming the nature of news, the industry from which Mr. Packer reaps his paycheck. The news media are going through their most robust transformation since the dawn of the printing press, in large part due to the Internet and services like Twitter. After this metamorphosis takes place, everyone will benefit from the information moving swiftly around the globe.

You can see that change beginning to take place. During the protests in Iran last year, ordinary Iranians shared information through Twitter about the government atrocities taking place.

This is the great Twitter defense, already a cliche, and on second thought it is pablum. As we now know, about half the information on Twitter during the Iranian protests was put there by the government—which is to say, it was disinformation; Twitter does not discriminate between truth and propaganda, and as suggested above, the majority of users are propagandists, whether they hail from corporate American or dictatorial Tehran.

In any case, it is not a serious argument to say that the media is changing and once it’s done changing, “everyone will benefit.” Simply using the word “transforming” does not make a phenomenon true or good. “Transforming” is a Twitter word. It takes a non-Twitter level of thought to realize that, in this case, it’s just bullshit.

I expect that Bilton is right and Twitter isn’t going away. But how can a thing be so wonderful when so many people wish that it would?

Writing in the Guardian on the above subject, Charles Brooker is hilarious.

Some people are complaining because it doesn’t have a camera in it. Spoiled techno-babies, all of them. Just because something is technically possible, it doesn’t mean it has to be done. It’s technically possible to build an egg whisk that makes phonecalls, an MP3 player that dispenses capers or a car with a bread windscreen. Humankind will continue to prosper in their absence. Not everything needs a 15-megapixel lens stuck on the back, like a little glass anus.

That is so true.

And don’t bring up videocalls to defend yourself: it’d be creepy talking to a disembodied two-dimensional head being held at arm’s length, and besides, the iPad is too heavy to hold in front of your face for long, so you’d end up balancing it in your lap, which means both callers would find themselves staring up one another’s others nostrils, like a pair of curious dental patients. (Videocalls are overrated anyway. You just sit there staring at each other with nothing to say. It’s like a prison visit: eventually one of you has to start masturbating just to break the tension.)

That is—well, now, wait a minute. I have no idea. It is a nice line though.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Wilfred M. McClay (who dat?) doesn’t love Luke Menand’s new book on higher education, “The Marketplace of Ideas—Reform and Resistance in the American University.” Though he calls the book “well worth reading,” he thinks Menand passive.

Menand declares at the outset that he will not be a “prescriptivist,” and although he breaks that pledge in small ways, it is true that he never puts forward any fully developed ideas for institutional reform. At times, indeed, he lapses into a kind of complacency.

Mr. Menand argues, for instance, that the failing credibility of the humanities has really not been a bad thing at all, because it means that “one part of the university,” by continually enacting a “crisis of institutional legitimation,” is “performing a service for the rest of the university.” This is a little like arguing that it is important to keep psychotics close at hand so that we can better understand the limits of sanity. Not the most powerful inducement for an outlay of $50,000 a year in tuition.

On the other hand, Gideon Lewis-Krauss (who dat?), writing in Slate, likes the book.

Louis Menand’s The Marketplace of Ideas manages to do many things in four short essays—describe the changing self-conception of the university, identify the difficulties behind curricular reform, and analyze the anxieties of humanities professors. But the book’s chief accomplishment is its insistence that what we take for academic crises are probably just academic problems, and they are ours to solve.

All of which contributes to my theory that book reviewers never really write about books, they only write about themselves, and its corollary, that the nature of a review is generally determined by the politics of the organ that prints it.