I was intrigued. With the constant headlines about failing newspapers, the constant trend of TV news networks trying to pass off op-ed slander as “Fair and Balanced” and my love for both of the shows referenced, I wanted to know more.
I respect everything that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report do. They're hilarious, they report solid facts, frame them based on their own opinions, but they're honest about their own biases. Most importantly, they don't make any claims to be doing real journalism. Now, I get some of my news from both of these shows, because I tend to agree with their point of view, so I wouldn't neccesarily have a problem if what the Huffington Post was saying was true.
What the problem is, is that it's not true. Their own data contradicts their assertion. Worst still, is that this is clearly highlighted.
From the article:
Thirty-two percent (32%) of adults ages 30-39 believe this to be true, while 42% disagree, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Thirty percent (30%) of those ages 18-29 say programs like the two Comedy Central shows that feature news reports with a comic twist are replacing traditional news outlets, but 35% disagree and another 35% are not sure.
Now, this article is on the Digg front page, and the vast majority of comments also seemed to miss this oversight in interpreting very basic data. So allow me to break it down Crayola style.
Colbert and Steward are replacing traditional news outlets. Agree or disagree?
People aged 30-39
Agree: 32%
Disagree: 42%
More people in this age group disagree.
People aged 18-29
Agree: 30%
Disagree: 35%
Again, more people in this age group disagree.
So when did we start declaring the minority opinion to be representative of a demographic?
When did everyone lose elementary school level math skills?
This morning as I was reading through my highly-neglected RSS feeds, something from Dark Roasted Blend caught my eye. In their Biscotti Bits feature, I noticed a nice meme mashup of Nighthawks and "I'm an anteater!"
Here's the text:
Don't worry if you can't figure out what this means. Here is an Internet Meme Database, if you are still curious (some nsfw).
While I’m not bowled over by the Boxxy meme, I think we found some interesting things to say about it. While most of the other Boxxy-related posts seem to concentrate on ‘The Girl’ or the timeline of the phenomenon, we wanted to highlight both the seemingly ground-up nature of the contagion as well as the back and forth between Valkyrie and the CBCR/CBRC, two loosely associated groups both claiming (more or less) ownership over the image board.
The opening scene gets the point across (everyone is trying to find out who Boxxybabee is), Jamie’s delivery is spot on (he refuses to read off of cue cards and actually memorizes his lines, btw) and little touches like the Boxxy quotes bookending the segments help move the story forward. I’m really happy with the way this episode turned out.
After spending years on the internet, you've no doubt come across Lolcats, Advice Dog, Hamsterdance, All Your Base, and many other memes. But memes are not exclusive to the internet.
In the 1976 book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, a meme is described as a unit of culture that is replicated from one human to another through exposure, often undergoing mutations. Dawkins argues that human culture evolves through the passage of memes in the same way that organisms evolve through the passage of genes.
With The Selfish Gene, Dawkins single-handedly inspired a whole field of study called memetics; the evolutionary approach to studying culture. Contemporaries of Dawkins like Susan Blackmore and Aaron Lynch have written and spoken at length about how simple practices like using a fork to eat and how to style your hair are memes in and of themselves.
Despite the heaps of literature on memetics, there are still countless flame wars about whether or not something is a meme. Most things are memes. The debate should focus on whether or not the meme is worth passing along.
The internet has sped up the dissemination of memes like no other media has been able to before. Because of this, the origins of many internet phenomena are easily accessible. But there are memes that were born prior to the internet that have mutated beyond recognition. Such is the case of Boulevard of Broken Dreams.
Click to expand.
A Google search for “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” mostly returns results for the 2004 Green Day hit. If you're a fan of Green Day, or an art buff of any kind then you're probably already aware of the fact that Green Day front man Billie Joe Armstrong claims to have “nicked” the title from the 1987 painting by Gottfried Helnwein.
But if you're any kind of an art historian then you're aware of the controversy behind Helnwein's Boulevard of Broken Dreams. At the time, Helnwein's painting was one of many reinterpretations of the classic 1942 Edward Hopper painting, Nighthawks.
Top: Nighthawks. Bottom: Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Hopper painted the original Nighthawks in 1942, just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The painting portrays an actual (now demolished) diner near Hopper's home in Greenwich Village. The scene conveys feelings of gloom, fear, and loneliness. Although the people are not alone, they are not interacting either. The street outside is empty.
Helnwein's reinterpretation of the work was met with mixed reviews; some lauding it as a great monument to the tragic, deceased Hollywood icons of the past, while others proclaimed it a defacement of a classic. But Helnwein's painting wasn't the only re-imagined version of Nighthawks. Just one year prior, artist Mark Kostabi painted two of his own: Greenwich Avenue and Hell Cafe.
Top: Greenwich Avenue. Bottom: Hell Cafe
There have been reinterpretations of Nighthawks before the internet and there are still more being made every day.
Nighthawks even inspired it's own music in the form of Tom Waits' 1975 album Nighthawks at the Diner.
The subject matter of Helnwein's Boulevard of Broken Dreams isn't that of war, but of the tragic loss of the American icons James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, and Elvis Presley. This is the imagery that inspired Green Day's song.
But where did Helnwein take the title from?
A song, of course.
The 1934 film Moulin Rouge, the second film made taking place in the famous Paris cabaret where the strip-tease was born, featured a song written by Al Dubin and Harry Warren called Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Although the first line, “I walk along the street of sorrow” is similar to Green Day's, “I walk a lonely road” the rest of the lyrics and music bear very little resemblance to one another.
Tony Bennet did a cover of the original Boulevard of Broken Dreams in 1950. Two years later, a new Moulin Rouge film was made, featuring yet another cover of the original. Today, the song has been covered by Marianne Faithful, the Diana Krall Trio, and more.
Why then would Green Day write a brand new song with the same title as an already well-established hit? Well they weren't the only ones to do so.
In 1984, the Finnish band Hanoi Rocks recorded their own original work entitled Boulevard of Broken Dreams, although it's unclear how they connect to the rest of the meme. The lyrics make no mention of gigolos or peep shows like the original song, and it would be three years before Helnwein would paint his work that tied the Nighthawks imagery that placed Sunset Boulevard icons in Greenwhich Village.
The Hanoi Rocks song seems to be an anomaly. The inspiration for the title is unknown. But three years later, immediately following Helnwein's Boulevard of Broken Dreams, poet Wolfgang Bauer wrote his own original song inspired by the painting.
Boulevard of Broken Dreams: song for Helnwein features lyrics about peep shows; an obvious reference to the phrase's origin in 1934's Moulin Rouge.
Only one year after Helnwein's painting, a John Waters film called Boulevard of Broken Dreams, the story of a struggling playwright in Hollywood was released; furthering the idea that the phrase “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” refers to Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard.
By 2001, the original Boulevard of Broken Dreams was completely omitted from the new Moulin Rouge! Film despite the fact that the meme first appeared in an early version of the movie.
Whether the phrase Boulevard of Broken Dreams refers to Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, Greenwich Avenue in upper Manhattan, or the Boulevard de Clichy in Paris, the theme that permeates through them all is that of empty loneliness. Hopper's Nighthawks was never intended to be a statement of the dark side of fame; yet it's now tied forever to that idea by Helnwein's work.
I’ve been using Ubuntu Linux for a little over a year on a few different systems. One of the common complaints from new Linux converts like myself is a lack of hardware support.
The more rabid of the Linux fanboys often make really poor arguments when it comes to this touchy and sensitive subject. This one came from a user in a recent OS flamewar on Digg.com.
“people say Linux sucks because it doesn't have drivers but the drivers are made specifically for Windows, I'd like to see a Windows box use a Linux device driver to get a piece of hardware to work!”
It’s true, a driver written for Windows will not work on Linux. A driver written for Windows won’t work on a Mac either; yet for some reason there are a great deal of hardware manufacturers writing drivers for both Windows and Mac OSX. The reason for that is that Macs represent a significant portion of desktop and laptop market share. Linux, as far at is may have come, still only represents 0.82% of the current market share. That’s not all together horrible. The idea that if 1000 people were randomly selected, eight of them might be Linux users is fairly impressive... to Linux users. The rest of the world couldn’t give a shit. And if the OS doesn’t support the hardware that people already have, the new people won’t support Linux.
But I am one of those human oddities who really enjoys using Ubuntu with it’s glitzy desktop effects. So I suffer through every minute of troubleshooting, testing, compiling, retesting, writing emails, and making phone calls, because when it all works I have a machine that works in a much cooler manner than yours. I know you own a Macbook. I’m still talking to you. That is, unless we’re talking about really great, fully-functional, uniformly designed apps that just work with little to no hassle. Then no, you win. I fully admit that if you are looking for an outstanding user experience, a well-built piece of hardware, outstanding tech support, and a huge cool factor, then by all means go buy a Mac. You’re not “thinking different” though.
I’m a dabbler. I like to tinker around with things, customize them, make them my own, you get the drift. I have a lot of hardware that I use regularly on my desktop in Windows Vista, but some of those peripherals would be handy on my Dell Studio 1535 that runs Ubuntu 8.04.
Today I’m going to attempt to get my Bamboo Wacom tablet to work. There are already some wacom drivers in the Ubuntu repositories, however none for tablets manufactured by Bamboo.
After plugging in the tablet, the stylus moves the pointer around the screen, but this isn’t enough. In Windows, I could vary the thickness of a line because the tablet is pressure sensitive. I’m aiming to have that same functionality here.
Step 1. Admit that you are powerless to your relentless urge to make things work in Linux and download the latest source code from linuxwacom.sourceforge.net directly to your home folder.
Step 2. Admit that a power greater than yourself compiled that package. Open the file with an archive manager, and extract it.
Step 3. Admit that in order to use Linux, you must turn your life over to Linux. Open your terminal and enter the following commands, one at a time.
cd linuxwacom-0.8.2-1 ./configure --enable-wacom make sudo make install
At this point I received some errors. I then entered the following command.
sudo apt-get install xorg-dev
This downloaded some development libraries necessary for the installation. I started over from Step 1, and the “make install” portion seemed to run smoothly. People slip. We're all human.
Step 4. Search your inner self and create a fearless moral inventory of what kernels are still installed on your system, and identify which one it is that you are using by entering the following command.
Uname -r
Mine showed up as 2.6.24-22-generic.
Step 5. Admit to God, yourself, and every human being that the driver you are currently using is wrong, and enter the following command to find out where to copy your new driver to.
Locate wacom.ko
You may get multiple lines. Find the one that has your kernel version in it. Mine showed up as /lib/modules/2.6.24-22-generic/drivers/input/tablet/wacom.ko
Step 6. Surrender your system completely and allow God to remove the defects. In the event that God does not start typing in the terminal, take the initiative yourself and copy the file with the following command.
From here the driver should be downloaded, upgraded, compiled, and copied to the correct location, but we have to configure xorg.conf. For those of you who may not know, xorg.conf is the file that tells your OS which drivers to use.
Step 7. Humbly ask God to remove your shortcomings. I don't know what that has to do with the xorg.conf file, but it's part of the program and the court will keep your kids if you don't comply. From the terminal, open the xorg.conf file with the nano command.
Sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
[note: some people tell me you no longer have to edit xorg.conf. My buddy Nick’s xorg.conf is completely blank. I don’t even know how his computer is functioning, but it is. If this is the case you are either SOL or you are one of those people that somehow has one of those mythical distributions of Ubuntu that “Just Works” with no problems. I hate and envy you.]
Step 8. Make amends with all of those who harmed you. And in case you harm anything in this next process, back up your current xorg.conf by pressing CTRL+O, and renaming the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup
Step 9. While fixing the problems in xorg.conf, make sure not to accidentally hurt any of the existing code. Scroll down until you see your “ServerLayout” section. It probably looks something like this...
Step 10. Look over everything in your xorg.conf and if you did anything wrong, admit it and address the problem. Save the file by pressing CTRL-O and saving the file as /etc/X11/xorg.conf, then CTRL-X to exit.
Step 11. Pray or meditate, asking not for your drivers to work, but for the wisdom to understand how to make them work. Unload and reload the wacom driver in the terminal with the following commands.
Sudo rmmod wacom
sudo modprobe wacom
grep -i wacom /var/log/messages | tail
You should see a bunch of messages scroll through the terminal like, “registered new interface driver wacom” and “input: Wacom BambooFun 6x8...”
Step 12: Have a spiritual reawakening and reboot.
Yay. It works. If you did everything exactly the way I did, then you should now you have the precision control of a Wacom tablet to use with the vastly inferior graphical editor, GIMP. And I bet a nice, cold, expensive lager would really hit the spot about now.
Remember: using Linux doens't make you cool. You exist to serve Linux.
Special thanks to EdTechDev for his guide. I used it as a study and tweaked it a bit.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 4:45PM ;)
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