Don't Miss Nikki Finke's Snarky Oscar Smackdown

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This is the ultimate takedown, "Nikki Finke's Oscar Live-Snark.

"Uh-oh. Seth MacFarlane opens the show with a lame joke. No one laughs. He does an impression. No one knows who he’s imitating. Does this guy even have any experience doing standup? Obviously not. This is one of the lamest show openings I’ve ever watched. The worst part is that Seth is killing every punchline by laughing over it. And here comes the inevitable Mel Gibson putdown.

This is going to be a loooooong night. “The room is dead,” says one agent from inside the Dolby Theatre.

Thank God, William Shatner (as Capt Kirk) is saying what I’m thinking; “The show is a disaster.” And I agree with that newspaper headline, “Seth MacFarlane Is Worst Oscar Host Ever.”

Read it all at the link.

And more from Ed Driscoll, "Hollywood Sucker Punch."

Google's Really Advanced Search

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You've know doubt heard of Advanced Search. How about Really Advanced Search?

I spotted this at the bottom of a Google Search Results page today and had to take a look.

Among the search features, including the usual ones, are:

• words almost, but not quite entirely unlike:
• rhyming slang for:
• this exact word or phrase, whose sum of unicode code points is a mersenne prime:
• subtext or innuendo for:

and this:

• the words , but not , unless they contain either the intersection of phrases , , and or a gerund in which case the disjunction of and will also be taken into account (on Tuesdays). 

At the bottom of the page are also several links:

You can also... Tickle a unicorn Download our ranking code so you can run Google at home Search by odor Some of the features of really advanced search might make a good coding project. They might also be a challenge to explain. But they really make a better April Fools Joke.

Tips from Google: What's Missing?

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One of my colleague's recent bookmarks caught my eye:  How to solve impossible problems.  
The link is to a story by John Tedesco of the San Antonio Times about Google search guru Daniel Russell who posed a daunting challenge to a room full of investigative journalists:

What’s the phone number of the office where this picture was snapped?

Here's the photo:
What makes this challenge difficult is that there is no direct information about the office from which the picture was snapped.
According to the article, "(Russell) wasn’t asking for a phone number for the skyscraper in the picture, which sounds hard enough. He wanted the phone number of the precise office where the photographer was standing when the picture was taken.  Nothing in that office was even in the photo. Yet in a few minutes, Russell, a research scientist at Google, revealed the answer by paying attention to small details and walking us through a series of smart Google searches."

Yes, most of us don't put Google's full power to use. Advanced features can make searching more surgical.  The article goes on to illustrate Boolean modifiers (what works and doesn't) as well as operators many people haven't tried lately, if ever. It's a good summary; take a look.
But Google is all about finding. Nothing about how good a result may be. This is typical of most students. We laugh when we hear "If it's on the Internet, it must be true," but that's how students actually behave. We're getting better at finding. We've made little progress at evaluating.
It's really not Google's business to tell us what to believe. And we resist attempts at interference when it comes to second-guessing what we want to see--although search engines are paying attention to what we click and are influenced by our choices.  Which is why it becomes all the more important that we develop good investigative habits.
Spoiler Alert
I managed to find an answer I'm pretty sure is right, but there is still some conjecture involved. If you'd like to solve Russell's challenge, go ahead. Answers are easy to find, thanks to Google.  Here's Russell's blog, and some answers.  Did I/they get it right?

A Search I Couldn't Find

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I'm certain it happens to all of us.  We just can't find something we're looking for. We run out of options and/or energy and have to give up (for now or for good). It's one reason why I consider information research mastery on the Internet to be somewhere around 80%.

This happened to me recently while looking online for information about a musical score. A member of my church (where I'm the music director) recommended an arrangement of a hymn she heard while on vacation. Here's an excerpt from her email:

"I was in Albuquerque in May for my granddaughter's high school graduation; she played a recital on violin accompanied on piano. There was a beautiful arrangement of "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, arranged by Paul Bailey and Charles Romer.  It would be a beautiful piece to play on a Sunday morning if you know of a violinist."

Normally, this would be plenty of information to track the piece down to a source.  I was hoping to find a copy to download (for free or a license), but would have settled to find the publisher and order a copy.

A sensible query would be:  come thou font of every blessing paul bailey charles romer.  It's pretty long, but to find the song title and the arrangers, this seems like the best path.  But it doesn't work. In Google, you get about six relevant entries matching the title and arrangers before Charles Dickens references start popping up--apparently the most popular match for Charles. None of the results is a musical score or a path to a score.

Putting quotes around the title is risky. Am I sure the title is spelled correctly or includes only these words?  There is another spelling for fount (font). Putting quotes around the arrangers names may also eliminate all the instances where a middle initial is used. But it's worth a try. Quotes around the title returns 2 results, neither of which is relevant. Quotes around the arrangers names (separately) returns about 6 results, none of which is a musical score. The results are mainly bulletins that shows the song was performed in a service.

Hmm.

I thought I would try a Deep Web search by going to a database of scores and publishers. The biggies in this field (e.g., www.sheetmusicplus.com, jwpepper.com, etc.) don't list the song with these arrangers. There are plenty of arrangements of the song, but by different arrangers. This is starting to feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. But which Deep Web haystack?

Advanced search filters didn't help, limiting results to violin and title or arrangers produced no relevant results that lined up all the information.


I did find the music online and downloaded it. But the granddaughter first had to share a link with me. Sometimes the quickest way is still to ask someone who knows.

There are other clues such as the publisher of the music that may be found just with good searching.  I found that before I gave up. I'll leave that as the challenge. Who published the music? And if you're up for a tough challenge, where can you download a copy?

Searching isn't as hard as Thinking.

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Just google it. You're bound to find something you're looking for.
Finding is no longer the challenge it once was. Knowing what you are looking for remains no easy matter.

Asking the right question usually precedes touching a computer. What are the hours of the Louvre? Go to the computer. What is 4 degrees Celsius in degrees Fahrenheit? Go to the computer.

These are the average one-off questions an Internet search is really good--and fast--at answering.

But what about the occasional harder question? Harder questions include: a) those that lack precision in what is being asked, b) those with competing or rival answers and c) those with no known answers.  Googling the Internet is not particularly useful at answering this last type.

A and B type questions occur frequently and make easy searching harder. I've blogged before on the need to fact check B type questions to avoid trusting misleading and/or malicious information. Investigative searching is a remedy for establishing the credibility of answers.

Let's focus on A, ambiguous questions. These are questions that may be answered different ways (with different answers) and still be right. An example used on our web site is for the search challenge: What is the top speed of earth's fastest animal? Like most ambiguous questions, this question is unintentionally ambiguous. Only after searching and finding rival answers does its ambiguity become increasingly apparent. This requires real thinking.

Skimming the top ten Google results for the query speed fastest animal, possible answers include:

• cheetah (3)
• peregrine falcon (2)
• sailfish (2)
• pronghorn antelope
• wildebeest
• lion
• thompson's gazelle
• quarter horse
• man
• cow dropped from a helicopter

The student is confronted by a common problem: which one is right? The underlying problem is not that there are multiple answers (which one is right?) but that these are answers to different questions (which question am I supposed to answer?).

The problem could be simplified by rethinking the question: what animal travels the fastest? Now the differences between air, water and land don't factor in (cheetah is fastest on land, sailfish is fastest in water and peregrine falcon is fastest in air). The fastest speed belongs to the falcon.

But another search result--a cow dropped from a helicopter--reveals further ambiguity in the question. The originator of the question may have assumed the animal needs to travel under its own power. In that case, the falcon, which 'cheats' by virtue of gravity, could be bested by the cheetah. By the same token, what prevents an astronaut orbiting the earth from beating the falcon? It ultimately depends on the question.

The example is ridiculous but illustrates how 'right' answers may differ depending on how a question is interpreted and how thinking is aided by searching. Questions that leave room for interpretation make Internet searching more difficult (and may be more interesting). Teachers are advised to try the searches their students are likely to use in an attempt to avoid asking ambiguous questions and inviting 'smart' answers in return.

For the individual, questions may be improved the same way: try a search and see what happens. Don't expect the best answer the first time because the right question has not yet been asked. It's very hard to think of a question you haven't though of yet. Iterative queries are good at helping discover and refine questions.

So, how would you ask the fastest speed question? Go ahead and post your response.

Here are a couple more ambiguous questions that need refinement. See if you can figure out an unambiguous question without searching; then try a search.

• How many buffalo are living in North America today? link
• Between 1918 and 2012, in what year did Americans pay the most for a gallon of gas? link

'CBS' Used to Be Followed by 'News'

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[UPDATED]

When the lights unaccountably went out at the preposterously named Mercedes-Benz Superdome last night during the biggest sports event of the year,  you might have thought that CBS, broadcasting the game, would have made at least a minimal effort to address for viewers what had just happened.

You would have been wrong. Instead, in a shocking example of journalistic malfeasance, the CBS Sports flunkies on site (and the CBS News people on site or in New York) at first punted in panic  and went to commercial, and then took the position that, well, we'll wait till the NFL suits tell us what to say before we explain anything. What had happened? What was happening in the stands, where tens of thousands of spectators were in the dark in more ways than one?

Broadcast sports journalism has long been mostly a bad joke, with print sports journalism not far behind. Witness the weak response to this remarkable event this morning among our vaunted sportswriters, a breed that I once respected in general but now associate with one phrase: "When're they going to bring out more free shrimp?"

There were some exceptions, like Bob Raissman in today's New York Daily News:

"At a time when they should have been aggressively gathering news, CBS’ crew was satisfied with the crumbs the NFL dropped on them. And they swallowed the scraps gladly. Not once during the 34-minute delay did a representative of the National Football League appear on camera to attempt to explain what caused half the Superdome to lose power.

Why should they? No one from CBS put any pressure on them.

Instead of having anyone with a microphone express a hint of outrage, they accepted what was going down. ..."

Yes they did, like the house stooges they actually are.

But where was CBS News, which presumably had at least one news reporter there among the 5,000 media hacks sent to New Orleans, many by news organizations that otherwise wouldn't cover the Second Coming if it required paying for a flight and a hotel room?

As the blackout stretched on, what were they doing at CBS News headquarters in New York? Did it not occur to those descendants of Walter Cronkite to perhaps elbow their way onto the air, you know, like in the old days, with a brief news report that at least indicated that something very unusual had happened, and questions were being asked?

If it did, there was no sign of it last night. No, the attitude was clearly: We'll wait till we're told what to say.

This, from Will Leitch at Sportsdonearth.com, is worth reading on the subject.

Also, while we're on the subject of lackey reporting, when might it occur to the media that the real advertising story last night wasn't who had the best or worst ad (the perennial narrative), but rather, why couldn't CBS sell advertising time?  I wasn't counting, but it seemed to me that most of the ads aired last night during the Super Bowl (with the exception of the cheap local ads slotted in during the regular segments where the local TV stations get their allotted time)  were non-revenue CBS house-ads -- promos for CBS shows -- and barter-deal promos for the NFL.

That might be a story, it seems to me. That is, if any actual journalists were covering this, rather than just swooning over the content of the relatively few beer, car and junk-food ads that did actually air.

Meanwhile, it went unnoted by the NFL handmaidens who CBS trots out to broadcast the game, but hey, how about that murder suspect down there on the field?

Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis was described by a CBS stooge last night as "an extraordinary individual who has impacted sports and community."

Why yes, how true, how true.

That would underscore the recent incident after the Ravens beat the Broncos in postseason, when Ravens players jeered a USA Today reporter who had the temerity to ask the glowering Mr. Lewis about an unfortunate incident in which he, Lewis, was accused in a still-unsolved double murder. Inconveniences for Lewis in that 2000 murder case were that a victim's blood was found in his limo, where Lewis had instructed fellow passengers to keep their mouths shut about the incident.

"... Lewis pleaded guilty in relation to the case: for obstruction of justice, a misdemeanor. He originally was charged with two counts of murder but struck a deal with prosecutors in exchange for his testimony against two of his companions that night..."

That's from Brent Schrotenboer of USA Today, who has some journalistic guts, and who had this to say about Mr. Lewis and his misadventure.
 
I'll provide a little more background on the Lewis case in a bit. But gotta go now! I see they're bringing out more free shrimp and king crab claws to the buffet table, and you know how the line forms, up in the press box.

[UPDATE: An angry anonymous commenter who claims to have some knowledge of CBS (shooting from ambush, the way all anonymous flamers do, of course) scoffs that I didn't do my homework, that CBS "sold" all of its ad slots for the Super Bowl. Right, just like USA Today "sells" 1.7 million copies a day, when in fact more than half are given away, with the numbers cooked through in-house barter deals. That fact is, most of the Super Bowl commercial air time -- a total of 47 minutes -- was devoted to house ads promoting CBS or affiliated shows ("sold" and accounted for in-house) or barter-deal promos for the NFL and affiliates. Media reporters noted weeks before the game ago that CBS said it had "sold" all of its ad slots for the Super Bowl-- but they didn't ask questions about to whom and under what circumstances. They didn't ask how many of those ads sold for the the real-cash price of $3.8 million for 30 seconds, which is what CBS was said to be charging. I guarantee you, financial analysts are asking the right questions, and they're not depending on CBS flacks for the answers.]

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Google's Really Advanced Search

To contact us Click HERE
You've know doubt heard of Advanced Search. How about Really Advanced Search?

I spotted this at the bottom of a Google Search Results page today and had to take a look.

Among the search features, including the usual ones, are:

• words almost, but not quite entirely unlike:
• rhyming slang for:
• this exact word or phrase, whose sum of unicode code points is a mersenne prime:
• subtext or innuendo for:

and this:

• the words , but not , unless they contain either the intersection of phrases , , and or a gerund in which case the disjunction of and will also be taken into account (on Tuesdays). 

At the bottom of the page are also several links:

You can also... Tickle a unicorn Download our ranking code so you can run Google at home Search by odor Some of the features of really advanced search might make a good coding project. They might also be a challenge to explain. But they really make a better April Fools Joke.