It's been demonstrated over and over again, but businesses refuse to learn the lesson: Homogeneity is its own punishment in the world of business. From the Washington Post today: [T]he experience of the past year suggests that we desperately need to bring more women into leadership positions on Wall Street, in politics, in regulatory bodies and in American life generally. For decades, corporations and financial firms have sponsored expensive training programs to promote more women into their ranks. They have launched much-needed maternity policies and flexible work arrangements. Most of these initiatives, however, have been pursued to make life easier for the women involved — or, more cynically, to remove the threat of lawsuit or adverse publicity for the firms. The financial crisis has exposed a quieter but equally pressing concern: We need women in leadership positions not only because they can manage as well as men but because they manage differently than men; because they tend — over time and in the aggregate — to make different kinds of decisions and to accept and avoid different kinds of risk. We need women who will say no to bad decisions based on male-dominated rivalries and clubby golf course confidences. We need women to blow the whistle when risks explode and to challenge the presumptions that too many men, clustered too closely together and sharing a common worldview, can easily indulge. As the constant wail from Wall Street should remind us, diversity isn't just nice in theory. It makes for better business. There's a related question here which no one is asking, which is whether the economic catastrophe facing the global marketplace is a result of a failure of white culture in America. The media is always quick to ask whether problems like violence plaguing minority communities are symptoms of a toxic culture in that community, but I haven't seen any questions to that effect in regard to this financial meltdown. I've written a good deal about monoculture on this site over the years; The correlation between diversity and success has been repeatedly demonstrated.

A few weeks ago, I asked the people who follow my Twitter account to describe the difference between lemons and limes. My immediate prompt was because I was trying to explain that some languages use the same word for both citrus fruits, and others only have a word for one or the other, and thus are forced to use descriptors to distinguish between which one is being specified. But the responses I got back ranged from charming to insightful, and all demonstrated just how strongly lemons and limes affect our senses. Here's a sample of the responses from Twitter and Facebook. The literalist: baffled: Easy: lemons are lemony and limes are more limey The bitter-sweet battle: ericagee: Limes are a little bit sweeter and a lot bit tarter :). antichason: lemons have a bitter undertone to the sour, while limes are sweeter. Which is why limeade will always be superior to lemonade. choirshark: lemons vs. limes: lemons are rarely tasting bitter to me, lime do sometimes The poets: freshelectrons: limes have a little taste of moonlight and silver in with the sunshine / citrus aromatics Wiley Wiggins: Lemons have a sweeter darker flavor, Limes are sharper and metallic, the sweetness is married closer to the acidity. The acid in lemons is fruitier. A few charming responses: gwentown: Easy: limes are better. [I loved the blatantly opinionated response here.] danwolfgang: lemons are great for lemonade, limes are great for marinades. [This sounded like Dorothy Parker to me.] otherniceman: lemons }{, limes () [Obviously nerdy, but still somehow clearly correct.] And then, those that were least literal and perhaps most evocative. These caught my eye because (at least as I read them) they seemed like totally unselfconscious responses based on how we perceive the taste and smell of these fruits. redmonk: limes taste rounder. JonathanDeamer: EASY. Limes taste more green. Harold Check: Lemons taste yellow. Limes taste green. Thanks to everyone who responded. If you're looking for a scientific distinctions between the two species, you can consult your favorite reference materials to learn about Citrus aurantifolia or C. latifolia (limes) and Citrus limon (lemons). A quick Google search for comparisons between the two fruit will yield a large number of people saying that limes are just unripened lemons. These people are stupid and should learn from the wisdom of the folks I've quoted above.

Please (re-)visit Dan Cook's seminal Nintendo's Genre Innovation Strategy essay from 2005. It's chock-full of his signature revelatory insights, in this case inspired by the excitement and skepticism surrounding the announcement of the controller for the Nintendo Wii (then known as the Revolution). Among many other inspired moments, Dan offers up, early in the piece, two key points. The increasingly hardcore nature of the game industry is causing a contraction of the industry. New intuitive controller options will result in innovative game play that will bring new gamers into the fold. He goes on to describe the evolution of individual genres within the gaming industry, reaching a conclusion that was surprising to me, but that intuitively felt correct upon re-reading: As the less hardcore players burn out on the game mechanics of their favorite genres, they too are at risk of leaving the game market. The result is a steady erosion of the genre’s population. What is left is a very peculiar group of highly purified hardcore players. They demand rigorous standardization of game mechanics and have highly refined criteria for judging the quality of their titles. With each generation of titles in the genre, they weed out a few more of the weaker players. This made me think of the recent innovations around the iPhone and, particularly, the games that have been created for the iPhone app store. Prior to the iPhone's release, high-end mobile phones had, essentially, become a really specific gaming genre, catering to hardcore "players", consisting of tech reviewers and industry analysts whose tastes had evolved as all genres must. "They demand rigorous standardization of game mechanics and have highly refined criteria for judging the quality of their titles. With each generation of titles in the genre, they weed out a few more of the weaker players." The iPhone was about Nintendo-style innovation, applying the same rules that Nintendo has, and achieving a quite Nintendo-like result of producing a device that is fun, satisfying, and very inexpensive to develop innovative games for. As Dan says about Nintendo's history of innovating in controllers: One of the easiest ways of creating a new genre is to invent a new series of verbs (or risk mechanics as I called them in my Genre Life Cycle articles). One of the easiest ways of inventing new verbs is to create new input opportunities. Nintendo controls their hardware and they leverage this control to suit their particular business model. And this is exactly what Nintendo has done historically. The original Dpad, the analog stick, the shoulder buttons, the C-stick, the DS touch pad, link capabilities, the tilt controller, the bongo drums … the list goes on and on. The touchscreen and tilt sensor in the iPhone are just another in the series of controller innovations, and they've yielded the results that these inventions always do. Only, instead of Mario being the brand that benefits from this new set of verbs, Apple is the brand that benefits. And all of this confirms my suspicion that the iPod and iPhone are not only designed to be subscription hardware that you repurchase constantly, but that Apple is deliberately creating their devices so that the only way you can level up in this game is by buying a new iPod or iPhone. It's worth concluding with one of Dan's final points: Nintendo’s strategy of pursuing innovation benefits the entire industry. It brings in new audiences and creates new genres that provide innovative and exciting experiences. The radical new controller is a great example of this strategy in action. Surprisingly, this also benefits Microsoft and it benefits Sony. As the years pass, the hard core publishers that serve mature genres will adopt previously innovative genres and commoditize them. Their profits will be less, but they’ll keep a lot of genre addicts very happy. Everybody wins when a game company successfully innovates. I see both of these strategies as a necessary and expected part of a vibrant and growing industry. Industries need balance and Nintendo is a major force of much needed innovation that prevents industry erosion and decline. According to Amazon's account of holiday bestsellers, "Nintendo Wii dominated the top sellers in video games and hardware including the Wii console, the Wii remote controller and the Wii nunchuk controller." Worldwide sales of the Wii are nearly equal to sales of the Microsoft XBox 360 and Sony Playstation 3 combined.

If you'd like to open up the package for your licensed copy of Microsoft Windows Vista, you only need to follow these three helpfully-illustrated steps. "The Windows Vista box opens with a swing-out section that holds your DVD and manuals. The box has two security seals that need to be cut or removed before it can be opened." The first time I opened a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate, it took me a solid 5 minutes to figure out how to do it without breaking the box.

In a blog post that I wrote for work today, I had occasion to use an interrobang as part of a title. Hooray! A chance to exercise some pointless effort in pursuit of typographical correctness. But chasing down that obscure character led me to thinking about an opportunity that still exists for all the type designers out there. Does any commercially-available font out there do a good job of anticipating modern uses of text like smileys and texting shortcuts, and create styled characters or ligatures for them? We will increasingly see marks like :) and "B4" and "OMG" showing up in print or in styled text online, and that means we should have appropriate typography to represent these words and phrases as our language evolves. This, of course, would also require a Unicode character representation to be added for common smilies, just as one was added for the Euro symbol when that currency was introduced. The Euro mark also offers us an opportunity to avoid a mistake made when that symbol was introduced. The familiar € mark was unfortunately introduced more as a logo than as a character, meaning designers were initially discouraged from tailoring the presentation of the symbol for appopriate display in the context of a particular font. With smileys, and especially with new text ligatures from characters that would never have been paired up in the past, we have the chance to see font designers interpret these new parts of the language in the context of type designs that may have existed in some form for centuries. That promises to be fascinating! Of course, I'm far from an expert about type, let alone about design in general, so maybe someone's already doing good work in this realm, and it's just escaped my notice. Either way, I look forward to finding out when I'll be able to use typographically elegant OMGs and ;)s on my blog.

One of my recurring fascinations is people creating works of art using common productivity software. Office Tools of Expression as a review of this medium that I wrote last year, and Excel Pile offered an overview back in 2004. Today, the idea of using office software as a means of expression is popping up more and more frequently. Danielle Aubert released 16 Months Worth of Drawing Exercises in Microsoft Excel about two years ago, as a fifty-dollar coffee table book offering exactly what the title suggests. Writer Response Theory presented a terrific overview of the work at the time, as well as an interview with Aubert: I started making Excel drawings, never spending more than 30-40 minutes on each one, and I tried not to get hung up on whether I was making non-representational versus representational versus abstract versus systems versus typographic drawings. I just made drawings about anything that I thought might be pleasing in some general way. After a while I started to copy one day’s drawing into a spreadsheet for the next day’s drawing because I found that that way the drawings could build on themselves and maybe become a bit more complex. But really my main objective when I began making them was to experiment with making ’small art’ - or the equivalent of my friend’s small poems - in Excel. And then, for the holidays this year, the Google Docs team has gotten into the game. They've released "Collaborative Spreadsheet Art", a winter-themed piece created by four artists working simultaneously in the web-based spreadsheet app. The introductory movie is only a minute long. The Google Docs holiday site offers more insights into the creation of the work, including a look behind the scenes. Now I'm just waiting for the various web-based art programs to make performance videos of people using their tools to do calculations and analyze data. If you're really taken with this stuff, my earlier post gathers up a list of interesting links about office app art.

In the middle of this year, in observation of his retirement from Microsoft, I wrote Bill Gates and the Greatest Tech Hack Ever, one of my most popular posts and one that I've had a number of people personally mention to me that they appreciated. So, I was delighted to see Dale Doughtery's appreciation of Bill Gates. Dale's my favorite blogger on O'Reilly's popular Radar blog, and this post shows why: A keen focus on the implications and sustainability of our choices in the tech industry. In many ways, Gates represents the "best of us" -- it's not just what he's doing but how he thinks about what he's doing. He's a curious geek. He wants to find interesting problems to solve. He believes that smart, self-motivated people working together can make a difference. Bill Gates reflects the best qualities of a generation that has grown up finding the innovative ways to apply science and technology to impact our everyday life in mostly positive ways. Even better, as pointed out by my friend and coworker Michael Sippey, one of my heroes, Dan Bricklin, showed up and weighed in on the post as well.

People who are into journalism and newspapers and the web and the death of print have been all a-twitter over the NY Times story today about the triCityNews, a little alt-weekly in Monmouth County, New Jersey. I spent a good bit of time in Monmouth County years ago, when I was a consultant and had a client there, but unfortunately my tenure in the area predates the triCityNews' era of journalistic service to the community. So I was interested to see what was so notable about this little paper. The Times bemusedly profiles the little alt because, it claims, the triCity "shuns" the web. They quote Dan Jacobson, owner and publisher of the paper, at some length in the piece. I've concatenated all of Jacobson's quotes in the article together here. Why would I put anything on the Web? I don’t understand how putting content on the Web would do anything but help destroy our paper. Why should we give our readers any incentive whatsoever to not look at our content along with our advertisements, a large number of which are beautiful and cheap full-page ads? [W]e want people to think of Asbury Park as the center of the universe. I don’t allow our name to be used on any kind of content on the Web — not bulletin boards or listings or anything. I don’t want anybody to connect The TriCityNews and the Internet. I don’t want anything that detracts from the paper and the presence of those big, beautiful full-page ads. There may come a time when the Web is all there is, and we will try to adapt, and if we don’t, well, hey, we had a great run. But right now, the Web makes no business sense for us.I just get on the Web site [of other newspapers], I look at what I need to and I never look at the ads. Right after we started, the dot-com bust happened and we have been running scared ever since. We live off the land and run it very lean. There is no debt, our office in downtown Asbury Park is very small, and we have never raised our rates, so people tend to stick with us regardless of what is happening in the economic cycle. All of us are pretty happy with our lifestyles — I was able to quit practicing law quite a few years ago — and are thankful that we seem to have secure jobs and what seems to be a good future in a pretty tough industry. In all of his quotes about the web and his business model and other newspapers and his big, beautiful full-page ads, Dan Jacobson never once mentions serving his community, researching a story, publishing information of any utility or value to his audience, or actually committing any act of journalism. That's not to say Jacobson doesn't value journalism. It's just that it's absolutely clear that his priority is his advertisers. Thus, I submit that the triCityNews, while certainly a paper, is likely not a newspaper. I would ask for clarification or rebuttal, or seek evidence to dispute this conclusion by looking in the paper itself, but that's not possible for those of us not physically located in its distribution area. I would invite Mr. Jacobson to respond in person here to this assertion, but I don't want him to compromise his apparent belief that the audience he serves doesn't not seek clarification of information through the web. I do, however, invite David Carr to explain his belief that this constitutes a "ray of light in [his] e-mail [sic] inbox". I won't hold him accountable for the headline on the story; we all know to blame the editors for that. But even a lighthearted story should have at least its fundamental assertions somewhat resemble the truth. And, as a minor side note to Mr. Jacobson, whom I suspect may read the response on the web despite his contempt for our medium: The word "plog" is currently the subject of a trademark application by Amazon.com. They are an online concern that has apparently found a way to make money merchandising products online, even when they aren't making use of big, beautiful full-page ads. Just as someone will succeed in doing in Asbury Park, someday soon. Related: I've rambled on about alt-weeklies and incuriosity in the past. Considering how well-known alts are for being politically liberal, it's interesting how culturally conservative many of them are.

I regularly use about a dozen different social web services, with dozens more that I have accounts on. Historically, I've used one of a very small number of photos of myself as my avatar or user icon on these websites. The other evening, I spent about an hour replacing my image on as many sites as I could find, because I thought it was time to replace my photo with a picture I discovered a few weeks ago. It's the awesomest photo ever. 'Sup, dog?

A few weeks ago, as a surprise gift for our anniversary, my wife got us a night's stay at the Revolving Hotel Room, part of theanyspacewhatever exhibition at the Guggenheim. Created by Carsten Höller, the room is a remarkable art installation that also happens to be a complete room suite that you can stay in for a night, letting us live the dream of camping out in the museum and sneaking out among the exhibits while it's closed. I had no inkling of the plan, just being told by my wife when to be ready to go out. Adding to the surreality, the BBC was there to greet us, filming our entrance and initial encounter with the exhibit for their video segment. I had been inclined to write a Yelp-style review of the stay ("The continental breakfast served in the morning was serviceable, but our room didn't even have a television!"), but since the Revolving Hotel Room is sold out, it seemed as if that would be unnecessary. As it turns out, the signature revolving motions of the platforms that hold the furniture in the room are barely noticeable once you're asleep, though when you're awake it's very easy to observe how quickly you're moving. In fact, that only thing that might have kept the night from being restful was the noise generated by the other exhibit pieces, echoing through the giant open rotunda of the building. But we had a friendly attendant/guide/security guard who, after escorting us through a personal tour of all the exhibits, graciously turned off all the artworks that used bright lights or loud sounds. Right when we returned from our stay in the room, Alaina posted a brief writeup as well as a photo set on Flickr including some images and video from our vantage point staying in the room. Since our stay was only the third night the room was open, not many reviews or images of the exhibit had filtered out, so we inspired quite a few follow-up stories, from Gothamist's salacious take to Art21's more analytical look. Art21 also hints at the part of the experience that perhaps lingers with me most: The other exhibits we took in. Being able to see the museum uncrowded and unhurried by the usual crush of competing patrons was the most memorable and distinctive part of the experience. We could take our time, really appreciate the works (as well as the incredible architecture of one of NYC's signature buildings), and form our opinions without the awareness of thousands of people around us. The fact that, to me, many of the works seemed informed by the short, text-heavy world I live in, all a blur of Twitter updates and SMS messages, made the exhibit in its entirety particularly resonant. The truth is, the Guggenheim as a space makes a terrible hotel. The room was hardly secluded, the amenities were perfunctory, and while the bed and chairs were comfortable enough, the gracious staff was the only part of the experience that compares to the quality of other fine hotels. That being said, I'd stay there again in a second.

Major labels function with the assumption that 90 percent of artists they sign are going to fail — that should have been a red flag for everybody. I mean that’s a bizarre business model in any arena. But particularly in the cultural arena, the idea that the system through which culture is transmitted is dictated entirely by profit should concern us, because that’s going to narrow the types of culture that are transmitted. And then, on top of that, the alternative venues of distribution are stuck in the shadows of these major labels. That's Dr. Bethany Klein, in an outstanding interview about her research into the commercial licensing of pop music, and its impacts on artists and the music industry as a whole. The interview is in support of her upcoming book As Heard on TV and you can read her dissertation on the topic as well. If you're so inclined, a few years ago I'd ranted about Bob Dylan's appearance in a Victoria's Secret ad, which certainly marks a nadir in the realm of musicians licensing popular music for commercials. Not because he was "selling out" (I don't believe in that idea), but because he is so damn unsexy.

"Gollywaddles!" Solicitor General Gregory G. Garre (no seriously, his initials are "GGG"!) aspires to the title of Most Ridiculous Person In The World today with his impressive and absurd display of intellectual dishonesty, as quoted in the New York Times article today on the Supreme Court's reconsideration of profanity on television: “The world that the networks are asking you to adopt here today, where the networks are free to use expletives,” said Gregory G. Garre, the solicitor general, may include “the extreme example of Big Bird dropping the F-bomb on ‘Sesame Street.’ ” It's Big Motherfuckin' Bird, people! It's Oscar the Bitch! (No Elmo.) Additional delights in this story abound, with the image of the supreme justices throwing around all kinds of euphemisms for common expletives, and even culminating in what I sincerely hope becomes the law of the land: Any joke is okay, as long as it's sufficiently funny. Justice John Paul Stevens suggested a novel standard for judging indecency. Is it ever appropriate to consider, he asked, “whether the particular remark was really hilarious — very, very funny?” Mr. Garre said funniness could play a part in the commission’s analysis of whether a remark was shocking, titillating or pandering. Justice Scalia jokingly summarized the new standard: “Bawdy jokes are O.K. if they are really good.” It is a new day, people. A new day.

Three years and one day ago, I got married. And then shortly after that, I wrote a post about getting married, which has become one of the most popular things I've ever written. If I have to be known for something, I'll definitely take that as a good representation of my work. But one of the ideas that I didn't talk about back then was what a terrible reputation marriage has. Having had most of my impressions of marriage and weddings informed by popular culture and the examples of society around me growing up, I got a rather skewed vision of what married life is like. This is especially true because my marriage started in a way that was necessarily very different from that of my parents. (Theirs was, by western standards, an "arranged" marriage, though I wouldn't describe the situation quite so glibly.) At any rate, here's what nobody ever told me about being married and having a wife and maintaining a marriage, based on (an admittedly rather limited, compared to long successful marriages) a great three years. It's fun! You've got somebody you like who goes with you wherever you go, and it's someone who knows your sense of humor and what kind of food you like and what makes you laugh. BFF! It doesn't have to be full of bullshit and drama like your single life. None of that "I don't know if this is what I really want." or "It's not you, it's me." idiocy. You're in there, you're up for the task, and things can just work smoothly every day if you let them. Awesome. It reduces your sense of obligation. You get an instant get-out-of-jail-free card for any event or external commitment that you don't want to go to, whether for legitimate reasons or not. You can just talk about how an obligation to your spouse and family takes precedence over whatever else is going on, and any reasonable person has to concede that your absence is justified. It's so much less work to go out. Like a lot of guys I know, I was always working when I was single. You have to be "on" all the time, obeying that compulsive curiosity of whether that latest person who walked into the room was The One. If you're like me, there was a lot of subconscious effort going into the work of always talking to the prettiest girl in the room. Now I still do it, I just bring her with me. The Ball and Chain is for Losers. I can't emphasize this enough. Adult men I knew growing up, or stereotypical sitcom dads on TV, were always talking about how "the old lady won't let me" just go and do whatever fun thing they wanted to do. News flash: If that's your life, it's both of your faults for being lame, uncommunicative, lazy bastards. Don't settle for misery. If my wife or I want to go do something, we just let the other know, and if the other person's not up for it, no problem. If they wanna tag along, even better. Married people are hot and getting hotter. I had never really done well, anything athletic before I got married. I'm hardly Michael Phelps now, but I am in the best shape of my life, and weigh a few pounds less than I did the day I got married. My wife is in terrific shape (if you're in or near NYC, go watch the Marathon this weekend and cheer her and her 30,000 closest friends on!) and I think we're both dressing better than we ever have. Even though I'm still very self conscious about the idea of exercising at all, I do it because it's fun and makes me feel good, not because anyone's nagging at me to get off the couch. Amazing what positive motivation can do. You can just say "screw everybody else" sometimes. Just like you don't have to feel compelled to socialize all the time, being married means you don't have to justify your weird political beliefs or obscure hobbies or bizarre musical tastes to anybody. You've got one person who's got your back (or puts up with your eccentricities) and if some other random stranger doesn't like it, who cares? You can have sex whenever you want. Perhaps the most pernicious and horrible thing people continually say about married life is that you either don't have a sex life or that it gets boring. Tip: If the sex sucks, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. You become less of an asshole. All the petty insecurities of the pre-adult years of your life, all the grievances you faced when your only family members you dealt with were those you were born with — those things start to fade away in a happily married life. If, as is the case for me, both partners genuinely love each other's family, you get a really great set of bonus relatives. In cases when people aren't that lucky, you at least get another sympathetic pair of ears to listen to your complaining about how crazy your family is. The thing is, I'm not saying being married is easy, or that it's 100% fun. But it mostly is! I feel like I got hoodwinked as a single guy because I heard marriage described so often as some cross between a prison, being grounded as a misbehaving teen, and being castrated. I don't doubt that lots of people make mistakes in who they marry, and I am not trying to be a pollyanna about the very real fact that a successful marriage takes a lot of dedicated effort, or that some people just can't make it work even with their best efforts. But most marriages work, even if the people who don't get it quite right end up being a lot louder about it. And even then usually take another run at it, or a couple of runs at it, until they get it right. That brings me to my last point. I believe in this institution, and I do believe it makes society better, if only for the simple reason that it tends to make guys like me act much less like assholes than we're inclined to be when we're single. But just forty one years ago, my marriage may well have been illegal. As a proud and unrepentant lifelong advocate and practitioner of miscegenation, my lifestyle would have been outlawed in many states, and not recognized as legitimate even in some territories where it wasn't explicitly legal. It is now a historical inevitability that our country will legalize marriage for all couples. Though the fight is particularly polarized right now, and we will naturally face serious setbacks on the way to civil rights for all, I believe the time is close. As we saw in the fight against interracial marriages, the forces against progress are most extreme and invested right when they realize that history is against them. Naturally, my wife and I have donated to support No on Prop 8 in California. But my motivation isn't political in this, it's simple and personal and based on my experience as someone who is, and has been, truly in love. In the months before my wife and I got engaged, we got to see a couple who we admire and respect whisk their way up to New Paltz, to get married on the only day that they'd be able to do so. These friends of ours have a simple love that is obviously apparent to anyone who's ever met them. That they had to have such a sense of urgency, such an awareness of fleeting opportunity, around an event as momentous as their wedding day, is a blemish on the concept of marriage itself. Fortunately, we got to take away a much better message. My wife and I saw that people we care about can get married on their own terms, that it doesn't have to be the scary, joyless institution that it's so often portrayed as. Instead, we saw a couple of our friends who have an obvious and abiding sense of humor, who helped us redefine the concept of marriage in our minds so that it could be something fun and stress-free and fulfilling. And it made us comfortable enough with the idea that we knew we were ready to get married ourselves. It's easy to say "oh, he wants to score political points by saying a gay marriage inspired him to propose to his wife". While that description is accurate, it's not the emotional truth of what happened. What happened was that seeing a real, honest, unconventional-but-honest marriage inspired my wife and I to commit to one another, which has brought me the greatest and most lasting joy of my life. It is something I'm generally private about, a quiet victory for my own sense of justice. But there was just a brief window in which our friends' relationship could enjoy the dignity of a simple wedding. There are those determined to shut that window again, though the effort will be futile in the long run. So I'd be remiss if I didn't take the time to point out that denying the right of marriage to any of us attacks and disrespects the institution of marriage for all of us. As it turns out, marriage is worth defending, no matter what you might see on TV. And to my wife, happy anniversary. I like you!

Sarah Palin has been unsurprising in her criticisms of Barack Obama's credentials and policies, fulfilling the traditional role of the vice presidential candidate being the most aggressive and pointed rhetorical attacker in a campaign. But a closer look at her deliberate use of vernacular and language reveals that she has gone far beyond any other candidate in vice presidential history in the dangerous and irresponsible implications of her attacks. She has phrased her attacks on Obama in a way that avoids accountability to the press while specifically addressing the subset of her audience who are most likely to advocate extreme actions against Obama. digg_url = 'http://digg.com/political_opinion/What_Sarah_Palin_Is_Saying'; I don't usually write about politics here; I leave the ugliness to those who seem to revel in it. But I think a lot about language, usually in a more lighthearted context like talking about yo mama jokes or lolcats. What's striking to me this election season, though, is that Sarah Palin has chosen to abuse her command of language so obviously without suffering any serious criticism for it thus far. The crux of the issue is simple: Sarah Palin has unequivocally associated Barack Obama with the idea of terrorism and specifically with "terrorists". Republican President George Bush has defined in our National Security Strategy, and the Republican Party's platform affirms, that we may identify and strike at terrorists before they have committed any defined acts of aggression against American citizens. George Bush has made clear, by stating before a joint session of Congress that "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Palin has used deliberate choice of language to avoid these connections being highlighted by the media, while increasing the likelihood that the target audience for her message will be incited by her statements. Through these arguments, it becomes clear that Sarah Palin's assertions are designed not to prove that Obama is unqualified for the office of the Presidency of the United States. Rather, she appears to be attempting to convince a substantial portion of her supporters that Obama supports terrorism against the United States and thus should be, at the very least, incarcerated as an enemy combatant (which we are doing to American citizens already) or at worst, assassinated for supporting terror. She has done this knowing full well that she can retain plausible deniability thanks to the ambiguity of her statements as they'll be interpreted by the media, by her detractors, and by her more reasonable supporters. Code Switching, Oprah, and Straight Talk Palin has been hammering home this alleged link between Obama and terrorism for weeks. And there's a deliberate intellectual dishonesty of using the plural form of "terrorist" for describing what was meant to be an allusion to William Ayers alone. But just as telling as her assertions is the way in which she phrases them. Obama is not consorting with terrorists, in her formulation, he's palling around with them. I'm not one of those overbearing language nerds who's chiding her for using informal speech; instead, I want to point out a deliberate and telling choice of grammar that she's employed. Linguists use the phrase "code switching" to refer to the act of using more than one language when speaking. As someone who grew up in a multilingual household, I'm intimately familiar with code-switching, and one of the most interesting traits about the practice is not merely how easy it is for people to switch language on the fly, but rather how the choice of language actually informs the meaning and the nuance of the words being said. This gets even more pronounced if we use an expansive definition of the idea of "code switching" and include switching between dialects of the same language. Then, we can look at some familiar examples to learn from them. For example, Oprah Winfrey is an extremely successful businesswoman, obviously well-versed in the General American or Standard American English that's the language of business in this country. But Oprah regularly and effortlessly code switches to AAVE (also known as "Black English" or, to its detractors, ebonics) on her show or in various media appearances. Though her use of the dialect is clearly sincere and authentic, it's also obviously a savvy way to stay connected to audiences with whom she wants to maintain a particular resonance or credibility. In short, code switching is an efficient way to target a particular message to a particular group without explicitly telling the world that's who you're speaking to. The context makes it obvious. We see George W. Bush do the same thing regularly, as well. No man who has an MBA from Harvard and grew up among the most privileged families in the United States can be unaware that "smoke 'em out" isn't Standard American English. That's not to say his use of folksy sayings is merely a put-on, but rather that it's a linguistic choice he makes in some settings, and with the same goal as Oprah: He's speaking directly to a particular audience in a way that resonates with them as credible, and signifies to others that they're not the target audience for his words. In the case of Sarah Palin, this strategy has been taken to its logical extreme. Where John McCain used the phrase "straight talk" in his 2000 campaign to represent the idea of telling the unvarnished truth, without regard to the actual grammar of the statements themselves, Palin has changed the meaning of the phrase slightly. In her formulation, "straight talk" is not so much about the clarity of the points being made, but rather a signifier of the dialect in which she is offering up her talking points. I'm not speaking solely of the North Central American dialect, though Palin's use of what's often referred to as "the Fargo accent" is of course one of her most distinctive verbal traits. In fact, you can see her attenuate how pronounced that accent is based on where and when she's speaking; In front of large crowds in rural areas it tends to be pretty strong, and when she's on TV with an interviewer (or on Saturday Night Live), she dials it back. Those attenuations are normal, and any of us who've ever done any public speaking in different circumstances know that we adapt our language to the audience we're addressing. Others have criticized Palin for her language. I have no interest in taking her to task over the fact that many of her statements lack a clear structure or that she often reverts to rambling, run-on sentences. The truth is, coherent, cogent public speaking, especially trying to tailor one's speech to sound bites, is a difficult skill that must be practiced. I don't fault Palin for not being expert at it yet, and in fact even when her syntax is tortured, the general point she's trying to make is often still very clear. Rather, the most dramatic technique in Sarah Palin's speeches is the use of vernacular to mask the seriousness of an assertion. Sarah Palin cloaks her ideas in "straight talk" to avoid them being subject to fact-checking that would happen if she were to use standard english to make the same points. Saying It Plainly Put simply, if Palin says "Barack Obama consorts with terrorists", she is making the assertion that he supports acts of violence against American citizens and the media will refute this obviously false assertion. If, instead, Palin says he "pals around with terrorists", she's used code-switching to mask the seriousness of the charge, obfuscating her meaning enough to get away with making an assertion that inevitably calls for the imprisonment or even assassination of a political opponent. This clever use of language only hides Palin's meaning from members of the press. Because writers for traditional media are usually highly educated and pride themselves on their mastery of Standard American English, they can often look down on dialects like AAVE and North Central English. Instead these forms of language being seen as legitimate and interpreted in the social context where they've formed, they're dismissed as being the words of "people who don't even speak proper English!" In the cases where the ideas aren't outright dismissed, there is still rampant misinterpretation of meaning: Reporters wrongly see a term like "palling" as imprecise, when compared to a word like "consorting". But these words are not imprecise to their intended audience. They are, in fact, clearer than using legalistic terms like "consorting". They amplify the urgency of the statements, and increase the sense for Palin's audience that they're on the same page with her, speaking a language too "plain", too full of "straight talk", for the press to understand. And they're right. Palin has consistently pitted herself against the media, depicting them as hostile and foreign to her campaign, and thus making it even less likely they'd take her less formal-sounding charges seriously. On top of this, by deliberately omitting the word "domestic" as a descriptor of "terrorist" after its initial mention in her speeches, Palin has amplified the recurring theme of "otherness" that the McCain campaign and its surrogates have pinned on Obama. There is an unequivocal attempt to assign a commonality of purpose and intent between Obama, his supporters and campaigners, and terrorists who would attack Americans. This is especially telling because "domestic terrorism" hasn't been raised, by Sarah Palin or anyone else, as an issue that the McCain campaign is genuinely concerned about. There has been no mention of Joel Henry Hinrichs, or Jim David Adkisson, or even Timothy McVeigh. There is not a single mention of domestic terror on the McCain campaign website except in reference to William Ayers. So it's impossible to assert that Palin is introducing this term to raise the issue of security for Americans; It exists only in the context of attacking Obama and inciting a specifically targeted subset of her audience to see him as deserving of imprisonment or violence. I firmly believe that Sarah Palin is a smart, talented public speaker who makes deliberate choices about her use of language to elicit particular responses from different segments of her audience. She's college-educated and has been a professional broadcaster, understanding the nuances of addressing a large audience. She is certainly experienced enough to understand that signifiers like "hockey mom" and "Joe Six Pack" are explicitly communicating to an audience that is white, overwhelmingly not college educated, and lives in rural or suburban areas. I know because I've been part of that audience. I grew up in an overwhelmingly white part of rural and suburban Pennsylvania, the very same place that many of these attacks are being leveled. I was coincidentally in Greensboro, North Carolina on the same day that Palin first talked about "Real America". I don't have a college education, and I've spent a lot of time around highly-educated professional writers working for the biggest media organizations in the world, and seen their attitudes about language, dialect and vernacular within our country. I've done enough public speaking myself to understand how important word choice, and use of slang, and choice of accent is when speaking to different groups. And it's obvious to anyone who knows American culture why Palin wouldn't identify as a "basketball mom" or talk about "Joe Forty Ounce". These things are not accidents. So we see a simple pattern emerge: George W. Bush uses informal language like "smoke 'em out" when referring to targeting terrorists, setting the precedent of such terms being not only appropriate for the conversation, but in fact binding as policy. Bush, Palin and the Republican Party keep most media outlets on the defensive by consistently distancing the media with both fair assertions of bias and unfair attacks on the journalistic imperative to act as a check to political power. Palin sets a tone from her very first national speech where her deliberate use of vernacular explicitly connects her to rural white Americans. Palin defines Obama as linked to terrorism, ignoring the actual issue of domestic terrorism in favor of a context which is most likely to inspire radical elements of her audience to pursue the Bush policy of striking at friends of terrorists before they have attacked. Palin presses the argument using language that the mainstream press cannot grasp firmly enough to refute or highlight as incendiary. I believe the vast majority of supporters of the campaign of John McCain are honorable, honest, well-intentioned and sincere Americans who want what's best for this country. And I believe that all of us, regardless of party affiliation or political support, deserve better than someone who cynically twists language to inflame and incite the very worst elements of our culture. That's why it's important to point out the danger of these actions. Sarah Palin's conduct has gone far past the bounds of decency, and far past even the most dangerous efforts of any previous candidate for such high office. This is an inexcusable, unforgivable, and unacceptable transgression and my belief is that she should be removed from consideration for the office of Vice President for her dangerous, unethical and unamerican display of irresponsibility.

I've long been a fan of playing the dozens, as is to be expected from anyone who loves language. Last night, in a fit of my usual insanity, I thought it'd be fun to throw out some "Yo mama" snaps themed around this year's election on my Twitter account: Yo moms such a ho they set up robocalls for all her booty calls. Yo moms so fat Russia can see her from their house. Things took off pretty quickly from there. Lore Sjoberg (you remember him from Brunching Shuttlecocks and his writing for Wired) picked up the meme and ran with it. His were some of the first, and funniest responses: Yo mama so fat, McCain refers to her as "Those Ones." Yo mama so fat, she got an endorsement from General Mills. (I would have gone with Colonel Sanders here; That's why Lore is a genius!) Yo mama so fat, her other biography is called "The Audacity of Hardee's Around the same time, a number of other fantastically funny folks joined in the fun: Fernando Rizo offers up "yo mama's such a ho, she said she'd sit ON Ahmedinejad with no preconditions" Matt Haughey added "yo mama so ugly, the RNC spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup" One of my personal favorites, Guillermo Esteves absolutely slayed me with "yo momma’s so fat, John McCain looked into her eyes and saw three letters: KFC." Absurd, obscure, specific — perfect! As these were taking off, Xeni Jardin, who was dropping some snaps of her own, featured the thread in progress in a post on BoingBoing. Fun! The comments there have lit up with more suggestions, and a Twitter search for other replies now offers up, well, dozens more. I've marked a lot of the best as my favorites on Twitter. While this is all in good fun, what's startling to me is that none of the jokes I've seen mention, or even allude to, race. Playing the dozens is a uniquely and explicitly African American tradition, and we obviously have an African American candidate favored in the race for the first time ever, and yet it hasn't come up. Some of this, of course, is selection bias due to the audience that Twitter reaches. (At least so far.) But as these jokes from last night are already making their way around online as email forwards and apparently getting quoted in offices across the country, it seems to me like the playfulness of the language and the absurdity of the medium may have masked something timely and fitting. This obviously and instrinsically black tradition has been adopted by a community like Twitter that is, frankly, disproportionately not black. You could see it as the deracination of the tradition, or even worse as a deliberate omission of cultural context in its appropriation. But I actually see it as something positive. A running joke on Twitter is all in good fun, but I find the unselfconsciousness of this little political gag to be a comforting reflection of the way that the larger trend around this election is moving as well. Like Barack Obama, playing the dozens is obviously black but we're able to just include that implicitly in our participation without having denying or diminish it. That feels like progress. And best of all, even if it is just a bunch of jokes on Twitter, making these jokes is something that anyone can take a turn with. Just like your mama.