bookofjoe
Submitted by jim on Thu, 01/05/2006 - 13:40
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Wow, what a great evening! I just get back from a rare theatrical outing (King Kong, loved it) to discover that one of my favorite blogs has discovered Listology and linked us up! Joe, "the world's most popular blogging anesthesiologist", said very nice things about this site on his blog, bookofjoe (where I recently learned about the Grand Canyon skywalk and the survival necklace, among other interesting things). Thanks Joe!
Congratulations on the linkage, Jim!
I think the Canyon SkyWalk is a hideous defacement of the canyon's natural beauty, but it will save lives, so I guess I can't object too vociferously.
Thanks!
Yeah, I was torn on the skywalk between the engineering and "I'd like to walk on that" wow factor, and the fact that I don't even like cell phone towers messing with the view.
Well, whaddaya know, it is a "hideous defacement of the canyon's natural beauty" and it looks as if I have hoax on my face. The Hualapai have committed Skywalk on the Grand Canyon.
"Like the car and buses. The white man made it, and it came out strong," the 84-year-old tribal elder said of the skywalk. "We've got to give it a chance." Bender did not comment on the white man's gift of blankets.
The Independent adds details of special non-scratch booties, 14 miles of unpaved roads, half a million pounds of steel cubes... and Mr. Buzz Aldrin.
And the answer is: four Boeing 757 jets. Skywalk is as heavy as four Boeing 757 jets.Here's the bit I got a kick out of from the Washington Post article:
Since when are tofu and pilaf the foods of the overprivileged?!
I recommend the North Rim, even more so now that they've constructed this monstrosity. The North Rim is pristine and uncrowded. I went there in August '05 and had a great time.
How is that not a hoax?
I don't care that it's been in Outside and National Geographic and on KLAS-TV... or that there's an absolutely hilarious video. The tribal home page (such that it is) doesn't mention it. The survey company also seems to be unaware of its involvement.
C'mon, "steel and glass Skywalk... 71 fully loaded Boeing 747s." Ten years from conception to completion. Why hasn't everyone heard of this? Everything should be scrutinized with a skeptical eye... although I have my doubts as to whether that works.
So strange is has to be true (unless Snopes is in on it too).
urbanlegends, Scholastic News, KTNV-TV all seem to be in on it. But the Grand Canyon Resort Corporation, which supposedly is building the thing or built the thing, doesn't mention anything about it.
...and riddle me this: Why aren't there any pictures of the construction?
We could just googlemap it.
Hmm. And there's this.
Now that serves two purposes; it made me laugh and it made me feel better about all of the time I've been squandering.
Did you read the entire thread? (If not, no big loss. Squandering, I tell you.) Peggy is a hero in every sense of the word... except the sandwich sense. The thread is chock full o' humourousness. "Considering that the Hualapai's previous claim to fame was having the 1st Indian Casino to go out of business, I wouldn't hold my breath on this one."
I admit that I thought the "71 fully loaded Boeing 747s" was weird because there was no way that you could fit seventy-one planes' worth of people on a walkway at the same time but some people actually did the math "That means that they are saying that they expect it to have to hold 71,000,000lbs/4 or 17,750,000 lbs or 8,875 tons. That's a lot of fat tourists. And their Winnebegos. It makes sense if they're expecting 150 families arriving in their Abrams tanks." [and later] "I don't go anywhere without my Abrams."
The pictures are both funny and sad. You'd think that $30 million would get you some orange cones in addition to your yellow police tape. Perhaps those monies are being set aside for the Abramoff Defense Fund. Squandering as far as the eye can see.
How did you find that page? I like to think that I do search well but I didn't find it and it's been up over a month. While I didn't spend much time searching I did spend too much time (if you see what I mean)... to have someone else find it, that is.
I just got lucky. You mentioned construction photos, so here's the Googling I tried. At the time of this writing, the link above is hit #3.
Oh, and I did read the whole thing. I can squander with the best of 'em. Great stuff, squanderific.
I am now feeling a lot better about time-squandering in the name of truth and justice.
Why oh why didn't Wal-Mart link to this or this... or even this?
Wow.
I don't think Walmart did this intentionally (no corporation is that stupid), but *somebody* did that intentionally: either a rogue racist programmer or an internal joke that accidentally made it onto the live site.
Wal-mart said it was just random, not racial, and I believe them.
Once again, I don't think that there is anything random in computers. Even when they're "rolling dice." And if they are rolling dice there's no way the dice come up Martin, Dorothy, Jack and Tina.
I will also not give Wal-Mart the benefit of the doubt. Corporations (especially privately held ones) operating without transparency should be viewed skeptically.
But Wal-Mart has said that it is/was the act of a "well-intentioned" business manager trying "to promote a DVD about the black leader." The Martin Luther King, Jr. DVD was assigned to "overly broad category of DVD boxed sets," according to Wal-Mart president Carter Cast. The rest of the African-American biographies were, assumedly, dragged along with that DVD. There is some evidence to support this.
Leaving aside the fact that the Dr. King product is not a "DVD boxed set" a search of the google cache does reveal that I Have A Dream was "May We Also Suggest"-ed for fourteen different boxed sets. These include the very white Christopher Guest, Monty Python, News Radio and Christopher Guest DVD sets. All of these suggestions were accompanied by the Dorothy Dandridge and Jack Johnson DVDs... What's Love Got To Do With It does not appear in any of them.
Carter Cast claims that this suggestion could occur with any of more than 260 products... including the sugar white "Best Of Hitchcock, Vol. 1 (Collector's Series)." The google cache (and I can't/won't spend more time digging more thoroughly/broadly) does not contain any Hitchcock/King combos. Cast also says that this may have existed for the past year.
Carter stated that, "I know the person was well-intended in trying to get the 'I Have a Dream' speech out as a cross-sell," that there was no racist motivation and that this feature has been shut down. I would hope that Wal-Mart, a company which knows the global position of every single widget that they sell, can go directly to the source of this unfortunate incident.
Perhaps "business manager" is the title of all their data management employees and they may all be well-intentioned but I do not understand how they can determine the precise motivation and not a precise date... or more precise. I think your explanation(s) and those of others are much better informed than mine... even if I don't quite understand them.
I also note that the "Similar Items" click-thru feature has not been disabled (yet?) on the Wal-Mart site. That feature was how a total of four items (not three "Recommendations") were associated with "The Planet of the Apes" television series. There is no mention/statement concerning these events anywhere on either the walmart or the walmartstores sites (yet?)
I'm too cynical to expect corporations (especially privately held ones) to come clean about mistakes and wrong-doing. It is up to us to hold them to that standard. What does discourage me is that this role and the broader discussion of race is being led by the blogosphere. I dream of a day when DVDs will not be judged by the colour of their cover but by the content of their programming.
Hey! I take it back. The Washington Post reports that MLK has been linked to Friends... a show that wouldn't recognize an African-American if they showed up in Season Nine.
Computers don't do anything randomly. I did just think of a benign possibility in addition to the bad ones I listed above, though... Some recommendation engines look at the hive purchasing history and then build associations that way: so if some Walmart customer(s) happened to recently buy Planet of the Apes and some black history books in the same order, that could then result in the recommendation engine making the association.
All very speculative, of course, knowing nothing about their actual implementation details.
I'm not so certain that corporations necessarily clear any kind of stupidity bar.
It is impossible to think that this was random... you and I together will never live long enough to see such a coincidence. It is likelier that an infinite amount of monkeys will show up on your doorstep with a rough draft of Hamlet.
(I think that) We can agree that if the movie listings were automatic then Wal-Mart is racist. Trying to pin the algorithm on an individual "rogue racist programmer" is akin to attributing slavery to decisions made by individual early 19th century plantation owners.
If it's an internal joke I think that also speaks towards a culture of racism at Wal-Mart. I don't think it's funny. I don't think anyone should think it's funny. Ridiculous is different than funny.
The last (and I think least likely) possibility is that it was a lone gunman, so to speak. If this is so then Wal-Mart should easily be able to track this person down, expose them and fire them. Nothing happens on a server at random (unless you hear monkeys at the door.) The fact that Wal-Mart hasn't taken this step reveals their culture, reveals their racism.
The "this" that was done in the phrase "did this intentionally" was get caught. I can believe that President Bush doesn't care about black people. I cannot believe (or I am amazed) that he would let a city drown. Saying that no government is that stupid is to make a distinction between revealed and hidden racism.
I would argue that the only difference there is in this case (both with Wal-Mart and the U.S. government) is that the cancer has been revealed. The cancer itself remains the same.
I can agree with much of that (even if my original post didn't imply (or exply) much of it), although I'd be interested to know if Walmart's recommendation engine is home-grown, or commercial off-the-shelf software. While they no doubt have teams of programmers working on the site, much of programming is cobbling existing components together. Most folks don't reinvent the wheel unless they have to.
Of course, even if it's off-the-shelf, it's probably a (very lowly) Walmart employee from among the horde entering in the metadata, which informs the recommendation engine how to associate products with each other. Such a person might be difficult to track down. We'll see how the story unfolds.
Sorry. I didn't mean to respond to words that I put in your mouth. I did mean to say that, from the perspective of Wal-Mart's culpability and responsibility, this cannot be thought of as accidental.
I do not claim to understand database management and recommendations that are generated through that management. I do have a tough time thinking that, whether or not the software was in- or out- house, it could produce such singularly crappy results without purposeful intervention.
I'd love to understand the scenario under which small, discrete pieces of metadata could lead to any association with the non-fiction treatments of Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Dandridge, Jack Johnson, et al. let alone an association with all of them.
Even if those products were mixed in with the DVD to the Planet of the Apes movie I would be just as suspicious. The absence of that movie, any of the sequels, the Tim Burton remake, The Complete Collection of BJ and the Bear, the first season of Friends... The Venn Diagram algorithm that pops out those results begins to look awfully suspect.
When you hear hoofbeats you should think horses, not zebras. As I've said, I don't know the internal mechanics... but how could this happen without a racist set of criteria or a racist override of the system? Tech specs baffle me so I'll accede to your knowledge but I remain baffled.
I think that (unfortunately) the story has already unfolded... and is over. That speaks to the racism (and laziness, corruption, etc.) of corporate media. If America, its press, politicians and citizens, were ready to deal with racism then New Orleans would still be on the agenda.
...and of that I doubt you can persuade me otherwise.
Once again I was unclear. What I meant was: "Of course, even if it's off-the-shelf, it's probably a (very lowly) Walmart employee from among the horde entering in the racist metadata, which informs the recommendation engine how to associate products with each other."
From a technical perspective, I do not see how a recommendation engine could spit out Martin Luthor King biographies in association with Planet of the Apes without one of the following happening:
1. Walmart built their recommendation engine in-house, and some programmer(s) on that system coded in "special cases".
2. Walmart is using an off-the-shelf recommendation engine, and whoever did the metadata data entry tagged Planet of the Apes with "black history."
3. Walmart is using an off-the-shelf recommendation engine, the metadata is clean, and the programmer(s) that wrote the code that talks to the recommendation engine coded in "special cases" that override the results the engine returns.
There are probably other possibilities, but I sure can't think of any that are benign.
Yay, Jim!
:-) Thanks!
Wow, I'll take all of this as good news.
I'm thrilled you chanced King Kong and even more delighted that you loved it. The film needs all the fans it can get considering the backlash it is suffering (which I do not understand in the least).
I'm also very happy word is spreading about a site that has given me much joy over the years (years? Geez...).
Congrats on the exposure and the great evening!
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
:-) Thanks! It was a great evening, and I came away totally psyched about Kong. I'm really surprised about its relatively (to expectations) lackluster reception as well. It's a shame too, because at much as LotR, this is a movie that will suffer greatly viewed on a small home screen (the smaller the screen, the greater the suffering).
I should get my review up in a few minutes, give or take.
Yeah, years, isn't that amazing?
It is amazing (years, we say!), even if I am trying not to think about it too much! :)
I have been trying to push all my friends and relatives to buck the 'catch it on DVD' trend and see King Kong on the big screen because, yup, the film nearly demands and definitely deserves it. I cannot believe how terrific it is! And here I half-expected Jackson to pull a Cameron and vanish after LOTR, frightened by the weight of his past achievement. Nope, Jackson just jumped and amazingly topped his Oscar winner.
Again, I am so glad you got the chance to enjoy it and did!
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
You are so right. I am glad that, in addition to being a genius filmmaker, PJ remains indefatigable. He is one person who seems to take joy in his work, and he hasn't let the fame or money change him too much (aside from his personal appearance). Maybe it's because being in NZ allows him to be detached from the H'wood machine and stay grounded.
I pray he remains strong and healthy, so that he can make the Hobbit before too long.
If I may be so bold, he is an action- and horror-movie auteur, if there can be such a thing.
"Smaug awakens December 19, 2006" in Lord of the Rings: Episode I -- The Hobbit.
Personally I'm looking forward to Dude, Where's My Ring? and Crouching Gollum, Hidden Balrog.
LOL
I would be very excited if he got to bring The Hobbit to life, but seeing how much I love King Kong, I may be just as excited to see him move on.
And I am so happy he is indeed moving. I am still in awe that he followed up his last Oscar-hogging film so quickly. The fact that he did it so well staggers my little mind.
I think he is probably as close to being an auteur as a director can be tackling a multi-hundred-million-dollar baby with a cast and crew of thousands. The man is certainly in a certain class nobody else can claim at the moment; he is a master maker of (gasp) popular genre films. Of course, he is so much more, but that's praise enough for one too-long post...
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
I think I heard his next movie is going to be an adaptation of The Lovely Bones.
I've heard that rumor, and that coupled with the praise still rushing around the novel certainly makes my mouth water!
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
I'll see whatever PJ rolls out next, of course, but I had some problems with the book. Nonetheless, I'm curious to see what he does with it!
Yes, I heard that too. I hope he does it.
I define an auteur as someone whose films have their fingerprint. Kong has his all over it.
I'd argue that, these days, there's more auteurism in horror than any other genre.
As long as we realize the term auteurism is a quality-neutral term, I can certainly agree.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs