The Good Wife 4.3: "Template Based Link Analysis Algorithm"

Another sassy, technologically hip episode 4.3 of The Good Wife last Sunday, featuring Dominic Chianese, of Sopranos Uncle Junior fame, as an elderly hard-of-hearing judge trying a high-powered case at the cutting edge of social media and how they can operate in our society.

It was a good night for Chianese, with simultaneous appearances in The Good Wife and Boardwalk Empire, both on at 9pm Eastern (see my review of Boardwalk Empire).  Chianese was especially excellent as the judge on The Good Wife, turning out to be totally on top of the high-tech courtroom action, signalling his command with a comment about "a template based link analysis algorithm".

The case involves manipulating Google searches to bury adversaries in the search results.  Like all the episode on The Good Wife this year, last Sunday's was ripped from the headlines, to borrow a phrase usually used for Law and Order.  With  Presidential election day just a few weeks from now, last Spring's Republican primary, and the possible ascendency of Rick Santorum in that process, seems long ago.  But when Santorum looked to be riding high, a manipulation of Google to give an unpleasant result in searches on his name - a piece of clever, nasty work which actually had been done a few years ago - achieved more than a little attention in some places.

On The Good Wife, Will gets a lesson in what can be done to anyone with a sufficiently technologically sophisticated adversary.  Will's  not only buys off his clients, but rigs Google so that searches on Will's name bring up a "disbarred lawyer" tag.  Not likely to help the firm in its quest to become financially solvent.

Fortunately, Alicia has better results in her personal affairs.  Not only does no one have evidence of her and Will's affair, but when an intern claims she slept with Peter, Kalinda gets her to unwittingly reveal that she was lying.  This leads to a  great next-to-last scene in which Alicia kisses Peter (the last scene was Will searching on his name).

But speaking of reunions, Kalinda and her husband's is wearing thin already.  I'd much rather see Kalinda working cases, than going through lame kinky scenes with the husband.

Hey, if you like Dominic Chianese, he's an lengthy video interview I did with him several years ago, about his work on The Sopranos:




transcript of the interview




See also The Good Wife 4.1 Meets Occupy Wall Street ... The Good Wife 4.2: Reunited

And see also The Good Wife 3.1: Recusal and Rosh Hashanah ... The Good Wife: 3.2: Periwigs and Skype ... The Good Wife 3.7: Peter v. Will ...  Dexter's Sister on The Good Wife 3.10  ... The Good Wife 3.12: Two Suits  ... The Good Wife 3.13 Meets Murder on the Orient Express ... The Good Wife 3.15: Will and Baseball

And see also  The Good Wife Starts Second Season on CBS ... The Good Wife 2.2: Lou Dobbs, Joe Trippi, and Obama Girl ... The Good Wife 2.4: Surprise Candidate, Intimate Interpsonal Distance ... The Good Wife 2.9 Takes on Capital Punishment ... The Good Wife 2.16: Information Wars

Super Tuesday: Money Isn't Everythng in Politics

Mitt Romney outspent Rick Santorum better than ten to one in GOP primary states voting or caucusing today.   The result:  Santorum won in Tennessee, Oklahoma, and North Dakato;  Romney won in Massachussetts, Virginia, Vermont, and Idaho, and won by a whisker in Ohio.  And Gingrich, who also has spent much less than Romney, won big in Georgia.

Is this an example of money talks, everyone walks your way in voting booths across America?  Hardly.  Rather, these results show that people vote their hearts and minds, whatever media satuaration may say to the contrary.

Which I think is a very good thing, even though I would not vote for any of these candidates in any election.  But a defeat for money is a good thing for democracy in America.  I've been saying, ever since the outrcry against Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision which unleashed big spending and corporate financing of campaigns, that it's no big deal.   Because, as John Milton and Thomas Jefferson saw, as long as there's some truth in the field, no amount of falsity - in today's terms, false advertising - can drown it out.

Of course, people will differ on what they perceive to be truth.   I think the greater truth resides with the policies of Barack Obama as what America most needs.   But what we certainly don't need is a Presidential election determined by money, and  Romney's weak showing decisively says that's unlikely to happen.

Santorum's Deficient Education

Probably Rick Santorum's blanket denunciation of colleges and universities as "indoctrination mills" is the least offensive of his 18th-century regressive, repressive views publicized in the past few weeks.  But that's because his views about contraception, for example - which he opposes, even though he always says he wants to reduce teenage pregnancies - are so far gone and off the wall.

But since I know a  little something about college education, I thought I'd mention how at variance with reality Rick Santorum also is about that.

First, I should say I'm no blind advocate of higher education.  I've always found some merit in Cole Porter's "a college education I would never propose, a bachelor's degree won't even keep you in clothes".   A university degree isn't necessary for everyone.  Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs all did just fine without one.

But the claim that a college education is a course in indoctrination is just nonsense.  Where I teach at Fordham University, no one ever told me or even encouraged me to present a specific political or cultural point of view.    That's what academic freedom is all about.

More important, I've never told a student what to think.  The goal, as every college professor knows, is to teach students how to think.  Or, in the Writing Workshop course I'm currently teaching, how to write, clearly and effectively, whatever your point of view.

Perhaps there are professors somewhere who teach differently.  But I've never met one.  And for those many that I have known, their emphasis has always been on teaching students how to think clearly.

Wherever Rick Santorum got his education, he obviously failed to learn that lesson.

John King Fails to Ask Santorum Crucial Follow-up Question in CNN Debate

The point just came in the CNN Republican Presidential debate in which moderator John King asked Rick Santorum about his views against birth control.

Santorum gave a long answer, mostly about the large number of children born out of wedlock, how they are so often in poverty, and how that was ruining our country.   He decried children born to children (teens).

A follow-up that asked Santorum if he realized that contraception would help with that problem was logical and necessary.  Why, indeed, then, are you against contraception, King should have asked Santorum.  

But no such question was forthcoming.

Questions from the audience in these debates are often boring.  But this kind of questioning - or lack of questioning - from a professional journalist moderator was plain and simply incompetent.

Rick Santorum's Wikipedia Page Is Locked

Rick Santorum's Wikipedia page is locked - or "fully protected," to the use the Wikipedia parlance - which means no one other than administrators can write to the page, make edits, make corrections.  The protection started on February 18th and will be in effect until the 21st, unless an administrator removes the lock.

An administrator is a special kind of editor, with power not only to edit a page, but block it from other editing, and block other editors who vandalized pages - for example, writing obscenity on a page.

Why is blocking a page such a drastic step?  The answer is because no one can add information to or, again, correct an error on a blocked page.   There are "talk" pages on Wikipedia, on which someone can call attention to an error that needs correction - but only an administrator can make this correction.

Why is this so important?  Santorum is, by any standard, one of the two leading candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination.  His Wikipedia page has been read more than a million times in the past 30 days.  That's pretty important.   If there's an error on his locked page, or new information that needs to be added, tens of thousands of people a day will be getting this wrong or incomplete information.

How would one know that this page is locked?  There's a little gold lock in the upper right-hand corner. 

Why was it locked?  My wife, who edits on Wikipedia, has been trying to find out.  (She was one who told me this page was locked, a few hours ago.)   You do this by asking on the talk page of the blocked article why it was locked.  Or on an administrator page.  So far, there has not been much of an answer.

Wikipedia, as I wrote in my 2009 book New New Media - I'm currently finishing a new edition - revolutionized the way we get knowledge by operating on reader/writer consensus rather than editorial fiat.  When administrators fully block a page, this cuts at the very heart of Wikipedia's advantage - not to mention our democratic process, which depends on accurate information being available to the voting public.

The page may be unlocked by the time you're reading this - but it's locked right now, and this whole affair requires some looking into.

Note added at 3:30pm, February 20:  Rick Santorum's page was just changed from "Full Protection" to "Semi-Protection," after objections to the full protection raised by several editors including my wife.  The reasons for the full protection are not entirely clear, but "edit wars" (repeated deletion and reinsertion of the same text) over Santorum's positions on contraception were at least a contributory factor. "Semi-protection" a much less extreme form of protection, in which any one can edit, as long as they have an account (Wikipedia allows people to edit who do not have accounts), which is at least 4 days old and has made at least 10 edits on Wikipedia.  The change to semi-protection is a big improvement, but still interferes with Wikipedia's ideal of anyone being able to update a page, or correct an error.

What the Iowa Caucus Results Show about Campaign Financing

There has been much outrage expressed - by unlikely allies Newt Gingrich and Chris Matthews - about the baneful influence of political commercials financed by big money groups not specifically affiliated with any candidate.  Gingrich, who came in 4th in Iowa, and Matthews of MSNBC, specifically singled out the four million dollars worth of campaign ads put on the Iowa air by a pro-Romney group against Gingrich.

And Gingrich did lose.  And Romney did win-

But by a total of eight votes.  And Rick Santorum, who came in such a close second, had virtually no money spent on his behalf on ads.   He came in so close to first the good old-fashioned way - by pressing the flesh, in-person, across Iowa.

I agree with literally none of Santorum's views that I know of.  But I appreciate the unavoidable conclusion of his almost-victory: spending on TV commercials counts for nothing.  One candidate spent a fortune, the other spent next to nothing, and they both came in tied in the lead.

I've been arguing, for years, that the Jeffersonian view that people are inherently rational, can separate truth from falsity, means we shouldn't get so upset about campaign financing, and in fact the government, as per the First Amendment, should stay totally out of this.  Last night the Republican caucuses in Iowa made this point with clean, mathematical eloquence.

Why Obama Was So Wrong to Sign the NDAA into Law

On the last day of 2011, Obama signed into law what may well be the worse piece of legislation to come across his desk.   The NDAA - the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 - has actually been on the books since 2008, and has language that authorizes indefinite detention of suspected terrorists without trial.   An attempt to amend the bill to prohibit the indefinite detention of American citizens on U.S. soil was defeated in the Senate.  Obama supported the amendment, and issued a Presidential letter along with his signing of the NDAA, stipulating that his "Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens".

But he signed the bill into law anyway.

Why is that so wrong and dangerous?

Let's first look at the logic of the section of the law (Section 1021) that authorizes indefinite detention without trial, for it does have its logic.  Let's say the FBI is able to break-up a terrorist plot on American soil, something it was not able to do prior to September 11, 2001.  If the suspects were arrested and put on trial - as required for all other people arrested - they would be entitled to mount a defense, call witnesses, etc.  The prosecution could be compelled to reveal sources and information which could impede stopping of other terrorists, and damage American security.

And that logic is not insane, not unsound.  It has merit.  But does it justify what could be done to American citizens having nothing to do with terrorism?

I believe Obama when he says he won't use the law to lock up Americans indefinitely without trial.  But what about his successors?

I'm old enough to remember what America was like when JFK was President - a country full of hope and purpose.  If JFK had signed such a bill into law in 1962 - after Richard Nixon, beaten in the Presidential election of 1960, and again in the California gubernatorial race of 1962, had announced that the press would not have "Dick Nixon to kick around any more" - would I or anyone have imagined back then that Nixon would be sitting in the White House just seven years later?   I certainly did not, and yet Nixon was elected President, and created an "enemies list" which was secretly targeted for harassment by his administration.   That enemies list consisted not of terrorists or even run-of-the-mill criminals, but of Nixon's political critics, period.   Is there anyone alive back then, or who has studied that history, who has confidence that Nixon would not have used an NDAA to not only harass but lock up without trial the Americans he deemed the worst of his enemies?

Obama, in part because of that law - which has been rightly denounced by the American Civil Liberties Union and has angered progressives who are his political base - could conceivably be a one-term President.   Look at the Republican candidates for President.  All but  Ron Paul are far more hawkish than Obama.   Are you confident that Rick Santorum or Mitt Romney wouldn't use the NDAA to put Amercans in detention without trial, for reasons they thought justified?

Bill Clinton made a similar error, less grievous, perhaps, when he signed into law the Communications Decency Act, which punished salty language on the Web (including political) with fines and imprisonment. Fortunately, the Supreme Court struck down that violation of the First Amendment. 

Obama missed his chance to defuse this currently ticking time bomb to American democracy and due process.  It's now up to the Supreme Court to strike the NDAA down for the unconstitutional game of Russian roulette that it is with our freedom and way of life.