Kottke: “Let’s not beat around the bush: this is the best thing ever.”
January 2013
How can one man be on the wrong side of an issue twice? Buzz Bissinger (creator of Friday Night Lights) is a bad judge of character and a terrible journalist.
My cover story about Lance Armstrong, my affirmation of faith, was the worst piece of opinion I have ever written. I did a disservice to myself. More important I did a disservice to readers.
Yes, I agree on all counts. But then there’s this:
I will not take all the blame.
Because I was played by Armstrong. I was played when he told me with such heartfelt conviction that he was “at peace” with the decision he had made not to fight the USADA any longer. I believed the assertions coming time and time again from his camp that USADA head Travis Tygart was conducting a vendetta and witch hunt, offering immunity to known liars just so they would testify against Armstrong.
So let me get this straight: you defend the guy when he’s brazenly lying, then you turn on him when he’s about to do the right thing and confess? It doesn’t make any sense. Until you get to the end of Bissinger’s article:
When he reads this column, he will no doubt accuse me of jealousy and a need for revenge because I, like a thousand other journalists, was hoping that he would confess to me.
I did want him to confess, because I knew it would be a nice notch on the belt, lots of pats on the head from editors who were all over me to get to the exclusive. I did coo in his ear, playing the familiar but odious game of pissing on his detractors. I did write him emails saying that no journalist would treat him more fairly than me. I detested those emails. I was only further contributing to the slime.
Wow. Just wow.
Buzz Bissinger: I Was Deluded to Believe Lance Armstrong When He Denied Doping
This is the color palette of a certain movie starring Dustin Hoffman. (The palette was created by compressing each frame of the movie into a line.) That thick, pool-blue colored line should give it away …
via Logan
Watson, the IBM supercomputer, was given a lesson in slang recently. The Awl reports:
In order to make the genius computer speak in a way modern idiots would understand, researcher Eric Brown forced Watson to digest the entirety of UrbanDictionary.com—the whole filthy thing, with its Boston Steamers and Donkey Punches and King James Versions.
But once it had been exposed to the language of Urban Dictionary, shit got weird:
Watson couldn’t distinguish between polite language and profanity—which the Urban Dictionary is full of. Watson picked up some bad habits from reading Wikipedia as well. In tests it even used the word “bullshit” in an answer to a researcher’s query.
IBM researchers ultimately had to wipe the material from Watson’s memory.
