Snark + Internet + financial OMGCHAOS!@##! = funny.

…submit bad assets you’d like the government to take off your hands. And remember, when estimating the value of your 1997 limited edition Hanson single CD “MMMbop”, it’s not what you can sell these items for that matters, it’s what you think they are worth. The fact that you think they are worth more than anyone will buy them for is what makes them bad assets.

I’d like the gubmint to buy my 12″ G4 PowerBook with the fried motherboard. My price is $13,000.

Someone has come forward claiming to be the person behind the whole Nicole-Kidman / Studio-Arena hoax. There was speculation that Studio Arena itself was responsible. That isn’t the case.

According to Editor & Publisher…

The prank is allegedly the work of one Adam Templeton. A man identifying himself as Adam Trumpleton, and pointing to the Buffalo News stories, claims, in an e-mail to E&P, that he has no connection to the theater involved and placed the false item on a public relations Web site in order to embarrass Buffalo News owner Warren Buffett.

The original News story on Monday had reported that Kidman was coming to the aid of the longtime local showcase, the Studio Arena Theatre. Other local news outlets, including the major TV stations, as well as entertainment sites, had published the false story before the News.

They all got punked by a press release on a anyone-can-post site. What was so amazing is that it wasn’t very hard to do. Here, however, comes the bizarre rationale. It was all designed (supposedly) to embarrass Warren Buffet into saving Studio Arena.

Right. WTF.

On Wednesday, someone claiming to be “Adam Trumpleton” (his identity has not been confirmed) wrote in an email to E&P, “The point of the prank is this: Buffalo has its own Nicole Kidman right under its very nose — and her name is Warren Buffett. Let Warren Buffett, who has taken so, so much out of the city of Buffalo and given back zilch save the theater. Instead of counting on Nicole Kidman, who has no connection to the city of Buffalo whatsoever, let the city turn for one single time to one of the individuals that it has enriched to such an astounding extent: Warren Buffett.”

In his e-mail to E&P, “Trumpleton” stated: “Someone needed to smack him, and I am okay with the fact that it was me who had to do it. And my apologies to the staff of the theater if they felt this was in any way intended to embarrass them — it was not. They are doing an amazing job in light of huge adversity.”

The News reacted thusly:

Buffalo News Editor Margaret Sullivan issued the following statement to E&P: “Whoever this person is doesn’t have his facts right and clearly has an axe to grind against the paper and its owner. In fact, Warren Buffett has been extremely generous to the community, both through the newspaper and through his own successful efforts to bring employment here other than at the paper.”

People really are strange.

But one interesting side note - notice how for just about everything, everything in this city, people assume some big silver bullet or generous gazillionaire will just swoop down and make Buffalo great again. Pathetic.

At noon today, I’ll be joining the BNE’s Tom Kucharski and Buffalo.com’s Evan Parker Pierce today at Buffalo.com to chat about the recent Forbes article declaring Buffalo to be, like, the most dyingest city, like ever.

There are so many angles from which to approach the Forbes listing, including regionalism, taxation/business climate, cross-border issues, unemployment, white flight from the city and region flight south and west, etc.

Is the city dying? No. Is the region dying? No. But they’re shrinking and seems to be no political will to plan for a smaller and still-shrinking population or to really fix the fundamental problems that keep us flailing.

But we do have a shitload of fresh water, which isn’t going anywhere.

Then again, maybe it’s all about the calendar:

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Full message headers after the jump Read the rest of this entry »

Seems the story has legs, and what’s really sort of significant from my perspective is the fact that Jim Heaney didn’t break the news in the paper - he broke it on his blog. Good for him for doing that.

The paper’s version of the story appeared today on the front page.

In Chicago, you can search for crime information by street, by precinct, by crime committed, by date, etc. When you do, up pops a map showing the location, time, date, and manner of crime. Pick a random date (say, 7/27), and up pops a list of every crime reported that day. With a map. You can track where crimes are taking place and what kinds. It’s easy to use, easy to access, and provides useful information.

Buffalo needs something like that, and Joe Golombek has proposed it, but it won’t be implemented by an administration in which secrecy trumps transparency and fealty trumps merit.

Heaney was also interviewed by 103.3 the EDGE’s Shredd & Ragan, and the audio can be heard below (thanks to Shredd & Ragan and producer . I also heard Police spokesman Mike DeGeorge refer to Ragan as “sir” one too many times, and his “sensitive information” defense of why the police department withholds information was disingenuous, at best.

Subscribe Free for future posts  Add this player to my Page

Heaney will be on with Scott Leffler Thursday morning on WECK 1230, and he took my slot on the live chat at Buffalo.com, and you can read the transcript here at Buffalo.com.

Real estate “heat” map for Erie County:

Buffalo:

Given Buffalo home prices, why do we have public housing projects again?

An anonymous blogger at New York City’s Room Eight wrote some not-nice things about a political figure. The original posts are now gone, but Ben Smith outlines them:

Republican Dissident – whose blog appeared on the back pages of this site until he took it down April 15 – wrote as a harsh internal critic of the Bronx Republican Party which, in a quirk of local politics, is closely aligned with the Bronx Democratic Party. He attacked in particular Dawn Sandow, a Republican hire to the Bronx Board of Elections staff of the county party. City investigators, according to the New York Times and the New York Post, have been looking into questions of her residence and her relationship with the chairman of the Bronx Party, Jay Savino.

Republican Dissident also took issue with the district attorney himself, calling for the Bronx Republicans to run their own candidate against Johnson, a Democrat, and calling for him to be removed from an investigation of the Bronx Republican Party. “I would get another prosecutor than Bronx DA Robert Johnson, Bronx County GP always endorses him in every election he runs in,” Republican Dissident wrote.

By Buffalo standards, that’s pretty benign stuff. Nothing that any politician would get all huffy about.

But the Bronx DA issued a grand jury subpoena demanding that Room Eight reveal the name of “Republican Dissident”, as well as the identies of several anonymous commenters. In addition, the subpoena carried a caveat ordering Room Eight to not disclose the existence of the subpoena itself, under penalty of law.

From Ben Smith’s Affidavit:

I believe that there is a substantial possibility that the subpoenas that we have received represent harassment of those who criticize major figures in Bronx politics, and especially in the Republican Party, partly because it seems to be only critics whose identities are sought; partly because the District Attorney has refused to be specific about why he believes that the speakers posts reflect wrongful conduct; and partly because the subpoena was originally issued shortly after Dawn Sandow contacted Gur Tsabar to threaten prosecution because she had been criticized on Room Eight. The District Attorney has refused to be specific about why he believes that the speakers posts reflect wrongful conduct. On their face, it is difficult to conceive of how any of the criticisms posted – regardless of how tasteless – might be relevant to any grand jury investigation of alleged criminal activity.

In other words, there was no explanation given as to the supposed indictable crime the DA was allegedly investigating. It seems as if it was the political speech itself that was the subject matter of the investigation, and the Bronx DA’s office was patently abusing its subpoena power to try and expose, embarass, and punish “Republican Dissident” and commenters on Room Eight. I don’t think I can recall ever seeing such a blatant and outrageous violation of the First Amendment. Read Room Eight’s attorney’s affidavit for more detail about the DA’s position.

Ultimately, the Bronx DA withdrew the subpoenas, but Room Eight threatened to file suit if it wasn’t permitted to disclose the subpoenas’ existence on the site. The DA relented.

Blogging is no longer the unique form of expression it was four or five years ago, but there isn’t a lot of jurisprudence out there on the issue of criminal liability for blog posts and comments. Usually, cases are brought civilly for defamation. It seems like a complete overreach for the Bronx DA to have tried to chill protected political speech in this way, and there should, frankly, be an independent investigation carried out about this. Congratulations to Room Eight for standing on principle and fighting this illegal attempt to silence critics of the powerful.

Found here. His website is here.

And he’s earned 4 million theoretical internet dollars.

Apparently, the author of a local political website received a cease & desist letter/message from the Buffalo News after he re-published, verbatim, a story that appeared on the Buffalo News’ website. The author replies to the News’ C&D letter on his website, and includes the following paragraph:

Besides that there is NO such thing as copy-write material on the Internet when you invite readers to pass the story along via email etc.

That’s not true.

First of all, when you click to email someone a Buffalo News story, they’re sent a link to it - not the whole text. Secondly, when you click to Digg the story or post it to Facebook or some other social networking/bookmarking site, an excerpt from the story is posted - not the entire thing. None of that somehow automatically voids copyright protection.

You hold an immediate, automatic copyright with respect to anything you create, whether it’s a writing or a drawing. I am the copyright holder with respect to any of my posts, and you can’t reprint it in its entirety - with or without attribution - unless you have my express permission. That’s why outfits such as Creative Commons were created, to more easily enable republication of internet material.

When I am commenting on something that I saw published elsewhere, I am careful to make sure not only that I am attributing my source, but also linking to it and blockquoting the text so that you know it’s someone else’s work and not mine. Furthermore, I am careful to include only a portion of the text in the blockquote, and not the whole thing. I am encouraging you to go to the source itself and read the piece in its entirety (and to view the source’s advertisements, etc.)

Furthermore, my republication of excerpts from the original piece is protected by the Fair Use doctrine, which permits me to repost portions for the purpose of commentary. It’s a grey area, but no one’s ever complained to me about it. Most notably the Buffalo News, which I quote and cite most often.

By the same token, you own the copyright to your comments. By posting them here, you give me implicit permission to publish them in their entirety.

Then it probably is.

I thoroughly enjoyed these quotes from this article:

“Certainly, the allegations that we participated in any scheme with any knowledge of any scheme are totally, totally scurrilous,” Behr said. “This lawyer is an SOB, frankly.”

“This is scurrilous and scandalous that he puts stuff like that in,” Behr said. “He’s a real bastard, I have to tell you. This is not how you plead a lawsuit. He’s trying to shame us and embarrass us.”

The underlying facts, however, are more troubling:

Behr received a check for the amount owed, deducted his 15 percent fee, or $36,000, and sent the remaining $208,000 on to Yu, according to the lawsuit filed by IndyMac Bank in Pasadena, Calif., the nation’s seventh-largest savings and loan.

But there was a problem, the bank said.

The check was drawn on a home equity account the bank approved for two borrowers, and was fraudulent, according to the lawsuit filed against Behr on behalf of the bank by Richard

J. Landau of Ann Arbor, Mich. Landau demanded that Behr return the $36,000 fee, Behr refused, and Landau sued him in U. S. District Court in Buffalo.

Behr denies that he was part of any fraud.

It looks like the Buffalo lawyer was a unknowing patsy for a probably Nigerian scam operator. Here, the bank is the victim - not the lawyer, amazingly enough. I’d be very curious to see what sort of information “Xu Yu” sent to verify his identity. I guess I’ll have to pull up the complaint…

Lincoln : Douglas.

Kennedy : Nixon.

Now, it’s debate via Twitter. Tim Ryan (D-OH) and John Culbertson (R-TX) have been going at it on Twitter, engaging in a debate, of sorts.

Jason Linkins at HuffPo writes:

thrill to them yelling about ANWR, bragging about their exploits, issuing snarky commentary, all while a nation of Twits looks on and gawks, or adds their own noise. I especially love the portion of this exchange where Culberson types - over and over again - “I understand my Dem colleague Tim Ryan says here he opposes ANWR drilling because it will only reduce gas prices by 2 cents - it will be.” He’s run up against Twitter’s 140-character limitation, but he’s not going to let that stop him!

He concludes that it isn’t, in his opinion, a good example of democracy at work. Instead,

I guess this is just my way of saying that the world was a much better place before any of us were born, and these people would - like Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr - simply go outside and shoot each other in the face, the end.

There’s a website I check regularly now called “Paleo Future”. It basically reprints old depictions of what the future would look like. Via Fark, I found this depiction from 1961:

The status symbol of the year 2000 will be the home computer help, which will help mother tend the children, cook the meals and issue reminders of appointments.

Cooking will be in solar ovens with microwave controls. Garbage will be refrigerated, and pressed into fertiliser pellets.

Food won’t be very different from 1961, but there will be a few new dishes - instant bread, sugar made from sawdust, foodless foods (minus nutritional properties), juice powders and synthetic tea and cocoa. Energy will come in tablet form.

At work, Dad will operate on a 24 hour week. The office will be air-conditioned with stimulating scents and extra oxygen - to give a physical and psychological lift.

Mail and newspapers will be reproduced instantly anywhere in the world by facsimile.

The internet is primitively described there, and the home computer thing is pretty spot-on. I’d love it if my work pumped in extra oxygen, although I can do without “stimulating scents”. And where’s my 24 hour work week? The frozen garbage granules sound like a great idea.

At Paleo-Future, meanwhile, I thoroughly enjoyed this French set of postcards from 1900 depicting life eight years ago - especially flying tennis.

He’s addressing the whisper campaigns and smears head-on. The website has added a grassroots component called the “Fact Check Action Center” where supporters can challenge the smears themselves if, e.g., you get a chain email alleging that Obama is a Muslim Terrorist.

Which reminds me of a joke told by Artie Lange of the Howard Stern Show last week. When discussing Barack Obama’s full name (middle name: Hussein), they commented on how amazing it was that a guy whose last name rhymes with Osama, and whose middle name is the same as Saddams last name could be a contender for the presidency. Lange remarked, “could you imagine in 1948 if we elected a guy named ‘Harry Mussolini Tritler?’”

The site instructs you to do the following if you get some BS Clinton Republican lie about Obama:

If you receive a false smear email:

1. Forward the message to watchdog@barackobama.com
2. Reply All to the message and click here for text you can copy and paste in your response.

If you’re running Mac OSX, and if you’re a blogger or otherwise deal with images on a regular basis, do yourself a favor and download the free beta of Plasq’s Skitch.

I have never found anything quite as easy for capturing, manipulating, editing, captioning, and uploading images. Pre-Skitch, I’d have to involve Grab, change the resulting tiff to a jpg via Preview, make changes via Photoshop, and upload via Flickr or Wordpress.

With Skitch, I can drag an image into the program, make changes in a few seconds, and hit a button to upload it to flickr or Skitch’s own hosting. What took 5-10 minutes now takes 60 seconds.

Have you seen the new frontpage for WNYMedia.net? We’ve gone back to a portal - with a much better design than before. The idea is to make it more of a news site than just another blog.

But don’t you think, as a practical matter, “Western New York Media dot net” or “Double-u enn why media dot net” is too much of a mouthful? We need a new name for the site, I think. Any ideas?