AgPerson

Yesterday on The Show Ze Frank talked about his step-father teaching him the lesson that if you’re going to do something, you should do it well. Apparently Cambridge traffic officer #T61 took this lesson to heart. I parked my car on Everett street and dashed inside to print off my parking permit so I could move into a Harvard garage. Three minutes after I left the officer wrote the ticket. It took me a further eight minutes after that (damn broken printers) to get back outside and see another $30 down the tube. Touche, #T61, touche.

I’m glad to hear from Rachel (nearing the half-way point in her two year Peace Corps service in Madagascar) that USAID and the Peace Corps still teach the ABC approach to HIV prevention and planned pregnancy, despite political pressures at the highest levels to de-emphasize the “C” (condom use). Of course ABC alone won’t stop AIDS, but every little bit helps, and not playing idiotic far-right US politics with developing countries wracked by the AIDS epidemic is always a good step in the right…err…correct direction.

I am currently reading a short story collection titled _Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren’t As Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn’t Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out_. So far, so good.

David Pogue reviews the new TiVo Series 3, which can record in HD but costs a hefty $800. Many have scoffed at the high price compared to the DVR they can rent from their cable companies. I made the choice to go with Comcast’s DVR because I wanted HD more than I wanted to use my old TiVo, and I’ve just been amazed at the utter suckitude of it. To think, I had a TiVo *six years ago* that was better than this piece of crap that Comcast gives me. It is hard to explain what makes it so bad, I guess its sort of like how Mac users feel about Windows PCs — things are overly complicated, error messages are indecipherable, the interface is overly complex and unintuitive, the functionality is limited and the reliability spotty. If I hadn’t just bought a condo, I would find it a lot easier to plunk down the ton of money necessary to lower my blood pressure and make TV watching enjoyable again, but in my precarious financial state there is no way to justify it. I’m sure with time the Series 3 will come down in price, meanwhile I have to suffer with an absolutely horrid box courtesy of the idiots who think commercials exclaiming how “Comcastic” they are is a good substitute for actually caring.

Briefly, it bugs me that:

# After Veronica just “learned her lesson” about assuming bad things about people with the whole Parker situation, and feels really awful about it, she goes on and makes the same sorts of assumptions about the sorority and, when she gets the damning evidence, goes right to the paper rather that contacting the sorority leadership for comment. Yeah, I know its a big scoop, and a student journalist at, say, Brandeis, might be too excited by their story to risk “ruining” it by actually talking to people, but this is Veronica Mars — she’s discovered far more damning things before.
# Veronica lets the paper run the story with *her* byline even after she withdraws it, and the story contains details that she obviously could not have submitted in her original draft.
# Growing medicinal marijuana is *not illegal* in California — if the sorority’s story is true, and it certainly seems to be, what was going on is *not a crime*. While it may break Hearst College rules, the shocking revelation is far less shocking when you realize that, properly carried out, it was perfectly legal. And Veronica, smart girl that she is, surely knows this.

So those things bug me. Otherwise, a pretty good episode, even if the prisoner experiment was a bit obvious.

When I drove to work I could sing along to the music.

When I rode the bus, I could read a book.

When I walk, I ponder.

Whenever I was doing one, I missed the other two. Right now, with the walking, I miss the uselessness of riding a bus and the feeling that I can read because there is nothing else more important that I should be doing.

The CW seems to have been aggressively marketing _Veronica Mars_ as a girls show, positioning it to catch the lead-in audience from _Gilmore Girls_ and doing strange commercial tie-ins that are probably a turn off to most male (and probably many female) viewers. I hope this works for them, but I sorta wonder. You’re taking a show that’s trying to be “edgy” and “noir” and “dark” and positioning it for that elusive female bopper tween audience (or whatever). Not the choice I would have made, but for the sake of the show I hope it works and their numbers go up. Guess we’ll see when the fast national ratings come out later today. Much like _Buffy_ before it, _Veronica Mars_ has tons of critical praise and a rabid cult following, but so far has not been able to find major ratings success. That was sorta okay when they were on UPN, but now that they are on the combined CW network that is aiming to take on the majors, it won’t be enough to sustain the show.

*Update:* The fast nationals are out, and are about in line with last year’s ratings for the premiere. I could say a lot at this point about flaws in the ratings system, like how they undercount college students, but it doesn’t matter. This is not good at all for the future of one of the best shows on television.

*Update 2:* The final nationals show that retention in the target demos was fairly high and — get this — _Veronica Mars_ male 18-34 viewership numbers were up 23% over the lead-in show, _Gilmore Girls_ — despite being up against baseball! The numbers among adults 35-49 were also up a bit. Which shows that despite the CW’s targeting at the female youngsters, men and middle-agers tuned in. Yay for that! And with that crash course in Neilson ratings over, back to our regularly scheduled blog programming, whatever that is, and let us never speak of these things again. Right. 😉

Just finished watching _Veronica Mars_ episode 2×17, “Plan B.” Amazing episode. The choice of the song “Sway” by The Perishers to play behind the Veronica/Logan dancing scene was inspired. Don’t believe me? Read the lyrics. The emotional tension of that scene and is easy to miss among all of the other emotionally tense scenes in this episode. Still pondering all the things that happened, still wondering how they possibly fit so much plot and character development into one 44 minute span, still trying to put together all of the new clues and figure out what the heck is really going on. Five episodes left to watch on DVD, three days before the season three premiere. Things were a bit off earlier in the season, but its getting really damn good. Yikes.

David Plotz wrote an article (PDF) for _GQ_ back in 2001 about the loss of privacy and why it is a good thing. In it he revealed his social security number, banking data, the license plate of his car, and the like. I think its a pretty good article, and while I disagree with some of it I also agree with some of it. His most salient point is the idea that while tons of people are collecting information about us, they don’t actually care about that information in any human way. They just sift it with computers to find the things they need, not to “spy” on people. Of course this is part of what worries me, because if data has no “value” why take steps to protect it against people to whom it may have nefarious value?

Another idea I both agree with and take issue with is Plotz’s assertion that the most valuable privacy is that that gives us the freedom to open up and share our feelings with others. To the extent that Google is reading your email and AOL is recording your searches and someone is archiving your chats, I believe this creates chilling effects on that sort of “privacy.” How can you have enough trust to open up to people online, as we are increasingly doing, when the intermediary is very likely spying on you and sifting through what you say in ways that you don’t understand that may lead to consequences you didn’t anticipate?

Article reprinted below (and cleaned up a bit) if you don’t want to read the PDF.

Continue reading “They’re watching your every move. Big deal.”