Wikipedia | The Electron Pencil

01/18/2016

Hot Air

Women, You Owe Us Explanations

Jimmy Wales, the founder and big boss of Wikipedia, told Scott Simon on Weekend Edition Saturday that 85 percent of the contributors to the free online hive-mind encyclopedia are male. Wales says that troubles him.

Troubles me, too. Wanna know why? Because it’s so goddamned easy to contribute to Wikipedia that a child can do it. And I’d bet more children, overall, than women contribute to it.

It’s a damned shame that the info resource used by most humans on this planet largely — very largely — reflects the POV of guys. Where are you, smart women? Why aren’t you adding to the entries about Émily du Châtelet and Rosalind Franklin? Why aren’t women who study Harriet Tubman tripping all over each other to add to the abolitionist’s Wiki page?

Do you know who Henrietta Leavitt was? How about Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin? Or, for that matter, Hypatia, Irène Joliot-Curie, Melissa Franklin, Zaha Hadid, or Indra Nooyi? They all have Wikipedia pages and, presumably, have been mostly defined therein by males. For that matter, why isn’t there a Wiki page on Siza Mzimela?

Screen Shot 2016-01-18 at 1.22.29 PM

[L to R] Hypatia, Melissa Franklin, Siza Mzimela

●

More Q’s. Why is the entry on Birth Control not a place we can read about the desire of women to enjoy sex without worry of conception? Only a woman can write that. The Birth control entry is very dry and clinical. The reasons women use birth control are not. Surely, women can dig up primary sources explicating the need and want to engage in non-procreational bonking. Instead, we’re treated to gobs of citations from vagina-fearing religionists about why birth control is worse than putting a Glock in the hands of a tot. (In fact, there’s even a separate, lengthy entry entitled Religion and birth control.

We hear a lot about mansplaining, the propensity of guys to lecture women. You know what? We could use a little womansplaining. No, wait — a lot of it, please. The tools and the opportunities are waiting. So am I.

▼

Less News Is Bad News

I caught the news out of the corner of my eye that Al Jazeera America is going under and it saddened me. My primary news sources are NPR, the New York Times, the BBC, and Al Jazeera America (AJAM).

I get my AJAM fix online as I long ago gave up on TV as a dependable source for news. AJAM online always seemed to me to be sober and rational, its reports mercifully absent the shrieking, alarmist, celeb-worshipping crap most stateside corporate media shovel into our ear- and eyeholes on a 24-hour-a-day basis.

Even the look of AJAM’s home page was calm, its background color midnight blue with an Arabic script logo resembling a drop of water.

Screen Shot 2016-01-14 at 2.56.27 PM

Muted

●

The Big Mike school of journalism holds that there are no such things as pure objectivity, real truth, and the all-too-ephemeral qualities of fairness and balance our for-profit news mongers try to sell us. Ergo, I want to see human and global issues through the eyes of many and then try to make sense of the whole chaotic mess in my own head.

If you haven’t peeked into how other countries cover the news, I highly recommend it. You’ll be shocked at how differently the folks in Lebanon, Ireland, China, and Nigeria see things. That’s why my preferred news deliverers are an American nonprofit as well as a for-profit biz, a non-profit from the UK, and a for-profit one from the Arab world.

AJAM is the television news operation owned by the House of Thani, the gang of monarchists who run the tiny Arabian peninsula nation of Qatar. These dynasts love to play both sides of the coin, allowing the US and the UK to operate an air force base there from which the Allies can run bombing missions all around the Middle East whenever our generals feel moody. Qatar also has allowed the Afghan Taliban to run an office in the country. The royals like to brag about labor unions and women’s suffrage now being allowed in the country; left unsaid is the fact that both advances were forbidden until very recently. Qatari law allows for stoning and flogging for convicted criminals. Migrant African workers flock to Qatar for what are promised to be high(er)-paying jobs but many find themselves forced into abusive servitude and suffer severe human rights violations.

For some as yet unexplained reason, the royalists who oversee this mess have sunk good dough into a pretty decent news outfit. One possible justification for investing in Al Jazeera: the Qatari kings and princes simply want to make a buck.

Which they aren’t doing via AJAM, ergo that arm of the Al Jazeera Media Network will go dark by April 30th.

When AJAM came onto the scene back in 2013 after buying up the distribution network and the other assets of Al Gore’s Current TV operation, it hoped to reach into most Americans’ living rooms. Unfortunately, the very idea that an Arab-run news source would be infiltrating our happy homes caused some of AJAM’s biggest cable carriers to drop it.

Still, a year ago AJAM was able to gain entry into more than 61 million American homes, a penetration rate of better than 52 percent. Precious few people in those American homes chose to click to the news station, though, with daily viewership hovering between 20,000 and 40,000. That’s kids stuff.

Murricans didn’t care for AJAM despite the fact that it had been established as a Delaware corporation with administrative headquarters and main studios in New York and satellite studios in eleven other US cities. Who, after all, wants to be told by Arabs what’s going on?

You know this already but it needs to be iterated: the citizenry of this holy land wants to get its info strictly from homegrown leggy blondes, tough-talking older men, and Comedy Central jokesters.

Screen Shot 2016-01-14 at 2.44.49 PM

Your Trusted News Sources

▲

09/10/2012

1 Comment

All in the Family, Anatole Broyard, Apollo 11, Archie Bunker, Ayn Rand, Carl Sagan, Chicago Teachers Union, Lake Monroe, Melvin Tumin, Philip Roth, Richard M. Nixon, The Human Stain, The New Yorker, Wikipedia

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“For me, the most ironic token of that moment in history is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon. It reads: ‘We came in peace for all mankind.’ As the United States was dropping 7.5 megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity: We would harm no one on a lifeless rock.” — Carl Sagan

▲

PAY ‘EM: DAY 1

Give teachers the dough they deserve. Do not increase class sizes. Do not extend the school day.

And if necessary, raise taxes.

Let’s cut the bullshit now.

The Chicago Teachers Union strike is everybody’s business.

▲

LUCKY US

Steve the Dog and I took a walk at dusk yesterday on the shore of Lake Monroe in the Paynetown State Recreation Area.

A blue heron flapped past a few hundred yards off, probably heading home for the night. Fish feeding on surface bugs splashed in the water around the marina.

This Is Minutes From Home

✍

Paynetown was a bit lonelier than it’s been for months. The temperature hung around 64 degrees.

We walked fast — well, as fast as my creaky ticker would allow us. I may have to wear a long-sleeved shirt tonight.

Our hellish summer is nothing more than a memory.

▲

KNOW THINE SELF

Author Philip Roth takes Wikipedia to task in the New Yorker this week.

Philip Roth

✍

Apparently, the Wikipedia entry on his novel, “The Human Stain,” recently contained faulty info on the inspiration behind the story. Wikipedia says the book is based on an incident in the life of Manhattan writer Anatole Broyard. Roth says it’s really based on something that happened to Melvin Tumin, a noted researcher in race relations in America.

Roth states in an open letter to Wikipedia that when he contacted Wikipedia in an effort to get the entry corrected, he was told he was not a credible source.

Hah!

✍

Apparently, Wikipedia needs its info verified by third-party independent sources. Roth, per the online encyclopedia’s own guidelines, is not.

All this makes a whisper of sense, when you think about it for a moment. Wikipedia doesn’t want people editing their own entries. Hell, I’ve been tempted more times than I can remember to create my own Wikipedia entry, describing myself as the Midwest’s greatest unheard-of writer. My newspaper and magazine articles, my books, my online posts have thrilled readers and moved them to tears. History, my fantasy entry would read, will recognize Mr. Glab in much the same way that Van Gogh in the art world was celebrated after his death.

Vince And Me

✍

But then I remember that Wikipedia won’t allow me to define myself in its database at all.

Can you imagine, for instance, how noted self-admirers like Richard Nixon or Donald Trump would portray themselves?

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’ve occasionally fantasized hinting to someone I know and trust that I really deserve a Wikipedia entry. Now, I wouldn’t suggest anything outright, but if the person whose ear I bent might take it upon her- or himself to immortalize me thusly, well, who am I to protest?

Anyway, Roth goes on for 2677 words to correct the bit of false information. I suppose that’s what a prolific writer would do. The Philip Roth bibliography entry in Wikipedia states he’s penned 27 novels. He hasn’t challenged that bit of data.

A “writer” such as Ayn Rand could have easily dashed off, say, half a million distorted, specious, and borderline psychotic words correcting some minor point in her Wikipedia entry.

“Writer”

✍

Writers write. Even “writers” write.

Roth’s open letter is fascinating because it reveals a bit about the life of Melvin Tumin, who was grilled for using “hate speech” in a classroom once. It seems he’d discovered in the middle of a semester that two students had not attended one of his classes. Taking roll one day, he asked the class if anyone knew the students. “Does anyone know these people?” he asked. “Do they exist or are they spooks?”

Ha ha. Spooks, meaning phantoms or wraiths. But at the time Tumin uttered the word, it also was a more “palatable” substitute for “nigger.” Archie Bunker on “All in the Family” regularly referred to black men as spooks.

Lovable Hater

✍

Tumin was subjected to a grueling inquisition, even thought he’d been known for years for his sensitive work in race relations.

Roth’s letter, like the novel, explores the issues of character assassination, hysteria, and groupthink. In the letter, he also ruminates on what it means to be black.

So it’s much more than a run of the mill letter to the editor demanding a correction. It’s a neat little look at us.

Aren’t you glad writers write?

▲

✍

THE LITTLE THINGS

Here’s a picture of sand, magnified 250 times.

From I Fucking Love Science

▲

04/03/2012

The Pencil Today:

✍

THE QUOTE

“The average citizen knows only too well that it makes no difference to him which side wins. He realizes that the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey have come to resemble each other so closely that it is practically impossible to tell them apart; both of them make the same braying noise, and neither of them ever says anything.” — Will Rogers

♢

MODERN PROBLEMS?

Wait, Will Rogers said that in 1928?

♢

UH OH

The story behind every homicide is complicated and often contradictory.

Don’t get me wrong — this George Zimmerman character is one ultra-weird customer. Mix that with a deranged Florida gun law and you get Trayvon Martin on a slab in the morgue.

But it’s not at all hard to imagine a scared kid acting on impulse and jumping this creep who’s been following him at night in a strange neighborhood.

✍

It’s no capital offense, natch, but it adds a layer of nuance to the narrative.

The problem is our corporate media loath nuance. They dig black and white, good and evil, an unhinged racist versus a black teenager carrying a bag of Skittles.

Oh wait — it was an unhinged racist versus a black teenager carrying a bag of Skittles.

Here’s the real nuance the slick news stenographers are missing — Trayvon Martin died because this nation can’t let go of its Wild West mythology. High Noon, baby. The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. We aim to protect our womenfolk and churrens.

Book it — George Zimmerman saw himself as the hero saving his neighborhood from the savages. The state of Florida put the gun in his hand. He ain’t the only one unhinged in this case.

♢

STRIPPED DOWN JUSTICE

Your Reagan/Bush/Bush Supreme Court at work: yesterday, the Goths who make up the court’s usual 5-4 majority have affirmed the right of jailers to strip search you repeatedly should you have the misfortune to be nabbed for something even so trivial as riding your bike without a bright enough light at night.

Yeesh.

“This Is Gonna Hurt You A Lot Worse Than It’s Gonna Hurt Me.”

✍

Yep. Some poor schmo who was cuffed because of a clerical error and was strip searched twice while in custody for a week, sued a New Jersey county for his ordeal. The guy was arrested for not paying a petty fine (he actually had paid it but his record was mismarked) so he was thrown in with the rest of the hoodlums, gangbangers, homicidal maniacs, child molesters, arsonists, and other assorted thugs that called the county jail home in 2005.

Naturally, jail officials wished to protect their aforementioned guests from such a vicious character so they inspected his anus and rectum a couple of times to make certain he wasn’t smuggling a submachine gun into the joint.

“Yeah, We Found This Up A Jaywalker’s Ass.”

✍

Little did his jailers care that he was a nice, stable, professional man, a finance executive for a auto dealership with a family.

But who knows what such a man might stash in his trunk. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, cited cases of people being arrested for the likes of disorderly conduct and public nuisance hiding tobacco and lighters in their rectums. Naturally, an accused person’s dignity and and decency must be disregarded in the face of such imminent dangers.

So, the five justices who gave us the Citizens United ruling have now determined that your ass is ours should you be suspected of even the most minor transgression.

Hey, did I mention the guy who brought suit was black?

♢

BEER LAKE

The Loved One and I are fast approaching our two-and-a-half year mark here in the garden spot of Indiana, beautiful Bloomington.

I still don’t know my way around a lot of this sprawling megalopolis. And many things still puzzle me. For instance, why is there a That Road?

That’s why I like to read the big glossy, full-color Monroe County map that my neighbor and pal Tom Thickstun gave me about a month ago. And — swear to god — I look up Bloomington things on Wikipedia.

See, I’m a trivia junkie and I look things up at random on Wikipedia. Oh, I know it’s not an authoritative resource. Still, it’s got a lot of cool and fun things in it.

So last night I looked up Lake Monroe. I love the fact that I live five minutes up the road from this fairly good sized, pretty lake. I enjoy taking Steve the Dog down to the Cutright and Paynetown ramps at dusk so we can watch people pull boats out of the water. (Yeah, I’ll admit it — my evenings aren’t as scintillating as they once were.)

Do you realize that the entire project to dam Salt Creek, saw down all the trees in the river valley, and even buy out the town of Elkinsville in order to create the lake cost a mere $16.5M. Man, that’s nothing.

Anyway, I kept scrolling and I came to a Trivia subhead. It reads: “According to the List of countries by beer consumption per capita, the total world consumption of beer is approximately 1/3 of the volume of Lake Monroe at maximum capacity.”

Now, I so want this to be true for the simple reason that someone had to calculate the world population’s intake of beer and then compare it to the volume of Lake Monroe.

One-Third Beer

✍

Who in his right mind would do that?

I mean, if it were you, wouldn’t you look for a lake whose volume matched exactly the world population’s intake of beer?

And is that what’s imbibed in a year? A decade? Since the historic “Tastes great — less filling” debates?

✍

I clicked on the List link and saw nothing in the main article to indicate this startling factoid. If such proof exists, it must be in one of the reference articles cited at the bottom.

Believe me, I wasn’t going to click on all those links in search of this bit of hypertrivia.

Oh alright, I know it was probably some smart-assed college kid who was drunk on an amount of beer equal to 1/3 the volume of Lake Monroe at maximum capacity who pranked this Wiki edit.

And Then He Passed Out On The Back Stairs

✍

Still, I wish it were true.

♢

DISORDER IN THE COURT

Uh huh.

♢

The Electron Pencil

Category Archives: Wikipedia

Hot Air

Women, You Owe Us Explanations

[L to R] Hypatia, Melissa Franklin, Siza Mzimela