IT'S ALL IN THE LINKS

Here's what a friend calls some pretty scary shit, what I call James Risen's weird hems and haws, what Sam Harris calls the reality of Islam, what Doug Ireland calls threats to press freedom on both coasts, what David Ehrenstein calls fait divers à la Cronenberg, a history of violence, plus the continuation, what Filmstrip International calls American Civics Volume II (a video) and, finally, what Current TV calls The Battle for America (also a video).

Postscript: Uh, dint mean to forget popcult maven Ryan McGee's running nitpick on last night's 2006 Grammys (a marathon shitfest I had the wisdom to avoid).

GOP Rep. Curt Weldon (l.) and Democrat Sen. Russell Feingold want details on federal data-mining. [AP file photos]PPS: Regarding the first link above ("some pretty scary shit"), a military and intelligence analyst I know with statistical expertise writes: "After reading the first few paragraphs of US plans massive data sweep -- 'Little-known data-collection system could troll news, blogs, even e-mails. Will it go too far?' -- I wondered whether it has occurred to any of the (rightly concerned or alarmed) observers that these systems may well be worthless for their advertised purpose?" He continues:

Numerous supporters [of data mining] babble such things as "we have to 'connect the dots.'" Data-mining systems do not connect the dots. They create more dots, probably 99.99% of which do not belong. The resources wasted trying to eliminate the bum "dots" is potentially enormous.

The intelligence failure that was memorialized with "a failure to connect the dots" was addressing the "dots" the FBI and CIA already had. More "dots" that in fact belonged might have helped but probably not. The failure -- and it was huge -- is analytical incompetence throughout top management at both agencies. Wholesale, automated data mining is more of the same. Both the country and the false positives are likely to pay a high price for the unabated analytical incompetence.

February 9, 2006 9:23 AM |

Categories:

Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
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