ARTS & FARCES internet

First the Wall Street Journal publishes a breathless article announcing Steve Jobs’s liver transplant. The article was unsourced and disgraceful in its violation of the Apple chief executive’s privacy. Then the New York Times got all pissy about being beaten to the scoop and published a ridiculous story about Apple’s corporate secrecy.

Now this, from the Times on the death of entertainer Michael Jackson:

“The death of Mr. Jackson was the latest Twitter-enhanced luminary spectacle that is specific to Los Angeles, with the customary body-slamming paparazzi, weeping celebrities, grim-faced officials trying to maintain dignity and tourists seeking their succor along Hollywood Boulevard, where the police were forced to place barricades on Friday to hold back the throngs seeking to peer at his star on the Walk of Fame.”

You’re kidding me, right? Twitter-enhanced luminary spectacle, body-slamming paparazzi, and tourists seeking their succor? If that’s not the worst piece of “news” reporting I’ve ever read, it has to be in the top two.

Never mind that the photo caption at the top of the article notes a billboard “tribune” at the 02 Arena in London. The billboard is presumably a tribute.

Everyone makes mistakes—even stupid ones—but the US paper of record is really, really slipping.

No links because links are votes and represent a value of exchange on the web. The Journal and Times are undeserving lately.

In 2003, I had a catastrophic equipment failure in my office. My working hard disk—including all of my manuscripts—and its backups were destroyed. Back then I never archived my projects, only backed them up, redundantly. I thought that was enough. I was mistaken. In referring to my earlier writings, I discovered that much of that writing holds up pretty well, so I’m reproducing it here for reference and the record. This article is the introduction and overview from Macintosh Hypermedia Volume I, Reference Guide (Scott, Foresman and Company, 1990).

The concept of hypertext, and its more recent hypermedia branchings, has not changed much since first envisioned by Vannevar Bush in 1945. It has taken this long for both the hardware and software to catch up. Now, with the introduction of the Macintosh hypermedia software tools such as OWL International’s Guide and Apple’s HyperCard, we have the beginnings of nothing short of a paradigm shift in the way we deal with data, information, and knowledge.

These software tools, however, are only half of the complete hypermedia solution; to be really useful, they require appropriate hardware that is only now beginning to appear. Apple’s recent introduction of a CD-ROM drive targeted for the mass market signals the first acknowledgment by a major computer manufacturer of this vast opportunity to reshape the way individuals work with overwhelming amounts of data and information, and, in turn, refine that raw data and information into useful knowledge tools.

The availability of appropriate hardware and software solutions for the Macintosh community leaves only a single stumbling block to overcome - a somewhat typical chicken-and-egg dilemma. Few CD-ROM titles will be available, and most will be of questionable quality and innovation, until a terminal mass in unit sales of the CD-ROM drives themselves is reached. Conversely, few CD-ROM drives will be sold until unique and plentiful titles are available. This is at least partially addressed by Apple’s entry into the CD-ROM drive market with a reasonably priced unit that is sure to appeal to a broad base of users.

The foreseeable CD-ROM products, however, can at best be termed first generation and as few as two years from now will be seen as terribly obsolete. CD-ROM is a read-only storage medium (it’s only half-literate; it can’t write), and as Ted Nelson said, “... a read-only medium in this day and age [is] intrinsically oppressive.” For this reason, CD-ROM will not play an equal role (relative to the hypermedia software tools) in the work proposed here; it will be surveyed, along with other mass-storage devices as guideposts to future incarnations of more appropriate hardware.

Most people with chronic health problems are much more private about their health conditions than I’ve been. I made the decision early on that I would operate in full disclosure mode about my health. This wasn’t a gradual process with me. I was all-in from the start. But make no mistake; the choice to disclose was mine and mine alone.

It took me a couple of years after my kidneys failed in 2000 to figure out that my days of working 16-18 hours every day were over. I researched what my obligations were with regard to disclosure and found that there basically were none. But I felt something—not really a moral obligation—but something that told me the best path for me was full disclosure.

When I went to work for Utne Reader in 2002, for example, I disclosed my condition—because not disclosing it would have placed an undue burden on the small publishing company. We worked it out so I’d work 75-percent time, thereby not qualifying for company-paid health insurance. Both parties were satisfied with the arrangement. When I went to work at the University of Minnesota in 2006 I also disclosed my condition. My health condition—and associated costs—wouldn’t make much of a dent in the University’s fiscal situation, but I disclosed in the first interview anyway. Why? To this day I’m still not sure except that something told me it was the right thing to do.

But it was my decision.

Last night, in one of the worst pieces of “journalism” I’ve ever seen, the Wall Street Journal reported that Steve Jobs had a liver transplant about two months ago. The bylined work was totally and completely unsourced. Sources amounted to an unnamed “person familiar with the thinking at Apple,” a corporate governance attorney that has no relationship with Apple or its board, a surgeon in Saint Louis who has never treated Jobs, a Saint Louis transplant specialist who, also, has never treated Jobs, and “people who have seen him” at the Apple campus.

In April the US National Security Agency (NSA) disclosed that its warrantless wiretaps instituted at the behest of the George W. Bush administration—including domestic email—have exceeded any legal limit since late 2008. According to James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, reporting for the New York Times, a former NSA analyst “described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation.” Email messages were collected in a secret database, codenamed Pinwale, that could be queried freely so long as no more than 30 percent of the total database was searched in a single command.

At the same time, the Obama administration claimed it had taken the necessary steps to bring the NSA into legal compliance. Under the law, the NSA can surveil only those Americans suspected of having links to international terrorism and only then after obtaining permission from the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The NSA, in Congressional testimony, steadfastly maintains that any “overcollection was inadvertant.” Representative Rush Holt (D-New Jersey), chair of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, told Risen and Lichtblau that he disputes that position and that “the people making the policy don’t understand the technicalities.”

Risen and Lichtblau report that the NSA is believed to have overstepped its legal bounds in 8-10 cases. But in each of those cases, potentially thousands of email addresses were illegally surveilled. “Say you get an order to monitor a block of 1,000 e-mail addresses at a big corporation, and instead of just monitoring those, the N.S.A. also monitors another block of 1,000 e-mail addresses at that corporation,” a senior intelligence official told the reporters.

A little more than two months ago, my fistula used for dialysis failed. A fistula is an arterialized vein; a vein and an artery that are surgically attached, allowing blood to flow in both directions. Two large needles—in my case 14-gauge—are inserted in the blood vessel, one to pull blood out and pass it to the filter; the other to return it from the filter to the body.

When my fistula failed, I had no way to dialyze—and without dialysis I would eventually die. The only choice available was to have a tunnel catheter surgically placed in my chest with two lines directly to my heart. I was not looking forward to this because the first tunnel catheter I had—when I was first diagnosed with permanent kidney failure—got infected and I almost died from the resulting sepsis. But the choice was to take the risk with the catheter or eventually die.

What I didn’t know was that I was going to have to basically restart the dialysis process from scratch. First the catheter, then one small needle, then two small needles, then two larger needles, then two largest needles.

On June 1, 2009, I had a single 16-gauge venous needle placed with the arterial flow relegated to the catheter. On June 5, 2009, the same; and again on June 8 and 12, 2009.

On June 15, 2009, I had two 16-gauge needles—one venous; one arterial—successfully placed for the first time. That will continue until I gradually work my way back up through 15-gauge needles to 14-gauge needles. Each needle size hurts an order of magnitude more than the next smaller size. The one thing that’s different than when I began dialysis is that each and every needle placement has been successful (knock wood). When I started using my first fistula there were days when I was stuck with eight needles, none of which were successful and I was sent home without dialysis. That was no fun at all, but I have to tell you:

Starting over sucks rocks.