Quote of the Week

We had two solid contenders for this week's Quote of the Week crown, one of whom is a familiar face around these parts. In an epic rant about the ludicrous trillion-dollar platinum coin proposal that inexplicably gained traction last week before quickly being shot down (but not before turning our political and economic discourse into a Simpsons-esque farce), Stephen Colbert delivered a classic line about the recently re-elected President Obama, saying, "we should have known a coin was Obama's solution to everything—it was right there in his slogan... CHANGE!"

The whole clip is worth a watch, if only because Colbert does an excellent job of breaking down the whole it's-legal-because-it's-not-technically-illegal basis upon which the entire proposal relied, which is interestingly pretty much the same basis upon which Obamacare was upheld by the Supreme Court this summer. Nevertheless, this week's Quote of the Week is going to come from a totally different source, although also technically a familiar "face" around here.

A couple of years ago, an IBM supercomputer named Watson made waves when he (it?) beat two great Jeopardy! champions in an exhibition match, in the process demonstrating the potential for computing in the next generation. The IBM team has continued to fiddle with Watson, hoping to refine the computer's ability to comprehend human language (and to minimize some of the memorable gaffes that he made on the show). Part of that tinkering process involved incorporating slang into Watson's vocabulary, which... well, let's just let Fortune's Michael Lev-Ram tell the rest of the story.

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"[IBM research scientist Eric] Brown attempted to teach Watson the Urban Dictionary. The popular website contains definitions for terms ranging from Internet abbreviations like OMG, short for "Oh, my God," to slang such as "hot mess." But Watson couldn't distinguish between polite language and profanity—which the Urban Dictionary is full of. Watson picked up some bad habits from reading Wikipedia as well. In tests it even used the word "bullshit" in an answer to a researcher's query. Ultimately, Brown's 35-person team developed a filter to keep Watson from swearing and scraped the Urban Dictionary from its memory. But the trial proves just how thorny it will be to get artificial intelligence to communicate naturally."
                                                - Michael Lev-Ram, Fortune

Too funny. I can't get the concept of a foul-mouthed robot spewing insults at everyone out of my head. In fact, it makes me want to build a Watson for myself and program him only with things he picked up from Urban Dictionary. But I digress.

I still think that the potential for artificial intelligence is incredibly high, but this speaks volumes about how weird and nuanced human thought and communication can be, and therefore how difficult it can be to replicate. Given how frequently public figures put their feet in their mouths with episodes of careless and thoughtless speech, I can only imagine how bad things might be for a computer that hasn't been programmed to understand the subtleties of (and contradictions in) modern language.

[Fortune]

Too good (and important?) not to share

Barry Ritholtz shared a classic Stephen Colbert rant about the incredibly shaky justification that the Obama administration recently used to order a drone attack on a U.S. citizen (I'm sorry, "terrorist") living abroad. It's a really well-done piece by Colbert, and it raises some pretty important questions, too.

The Colbert Report
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It seems that our leaders are only too eager to leave the Constitution behind ever since 9/11. That, to me, seems incredibly short-sighted, regardless of the short-term outcomes.

Quote of the Week

Along with his compadre Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert has long been a mainstay here on the blog, particularly in Quote of the Week and Clip of the Week (see here, here, here, here, and here). I'm a sucker for those guys mostly because they do a fantastic job of straddling the tricky line between informing and entertaining, a task that isn't nearly as easy as it seems (I know, I've tried it).

This week, Colbert is back in my Quote of the Week, but this time around it isn't from him, but about him. From this week's New York Times Magazine, your long-form Quote of the Week:

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The new Colbert has crossed the line that separates a TV stunt from reality and a parody from what is being parodied. In June, after petitioning the Federal Election Commission, he started his own super PAC — a real one, with real money. He has run TV ads, endorsed (sort of) the presidential candidacy of Buddy Roemer, the former governor of Louisiana, and almost succeeded in hijacking and renaming the Republican primary in South Carolina...

'It’s bizarre,' remarked an admiring Jon Stewart... 'Here is this fictional character who is now suddenly interacting in the real world. It’s so far up its own rear end,' he said, or words to that effect, 'that you don’t know what to do except get high and sit in a room with a black light and a poster.'”
                              - Charles McGrath, New York Times Magazine

The whole piece is worth a read, because it (like Colbert) stands as evidence of the strange intersection between entertainment, news, politics, and money. Comedy Central, Fox News, CNN, and The Huffington Post are all somewhere along the same continuum between entertainment and news, but none of them is serving up purely one or the other.

What Colbert has long been serving up as "fake" news is seemingly anything but fake, all while the "real" news is simultaneously becoming less and less real (and more and more spun). It's a strange, strange media world that we now live in, and Stephen Colbert is just the strangest individual within it. Love him or hate him, he is the future of news and entertainment. Now if I could only figure out if that was a good thing or not, I'd be all set.

[New York Times Magazine]

Quote of the Week

We'll keep this one short and sweet. Stephen Colbert is absolutely on fire in this clip, in which he tackles the revelation that our new health care law will mandate that birth control be provided for women essentially free of charge.

I've certainly got my own issues with that concept, but I don't think it's anywhere near the list of top 50 most nauseating things to come out of Washington in the last 5 years. Of course, you wouldn't know that from the response in some corners of the media world, and that's what Colbert does such an expert job of taking down in his inimitable comedic style.

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"If we give your daughters and granddaughters access to birth control, they will instantly turn into wanton harlots with an insatiable appetite. Because you know women--they're always on the edge of nymphomaniacal orgiastic abandon."
                               - Stephen Colbert

The Colbert Report
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Honorary "Quote of the Week"

I was going to save this one for "Quote of the Week" next Tuesday, but after reading a couple of follow-up articles, I decided it deserved its own post.

Yesterday, Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert testified before Congress as part of a hearing entitled "Protecting America's Harvest".

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In case you were wondering, my "Quote of the Week" candidate comes around the 1:11 mark in that video:

"This is America. I don’t want a tomato picked by a Mexican. I want it picked by an American, then sliced by a Guatemalan and served by a Venezuelan in a spa where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian.”

Colbert and Jon Stewart have been on fire lately, and this is no exception.

But of course, not everybody was amused. I noticed while watching the video that a certain humorless "Mr. King" didn't deign to crack a smile during the entire 5 minute clip. As it turns out, Mr. King had more to say on the issue afterward.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), the conservative ranking Republican on a House Judiciary subcommitte on immigration, says that the presence of Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert at a hearing this morning weakened the credibility of Democrats who support giving citizenship to illegal immigrant farm workers.

“Amnesty supporters frequently claim that Americans won’t do hard work, a claim which is insulting,” said King in a statement. “Maybe amnesty supporters should spend less time watching Comedy Central and more time considering all the real jobs that are out there that require hard labor and don’t involve sitting behind a desk. If they did, they would realize that every day American workers perform the dirtiest, most difficult, most dangerous jobs that can be thrown at them.”

First of all, I don't even know what convoluted point Rep. King is trying to make here. Is he insinuating that Comedy Central viewers are all unemployed? Or that they all perform desk jobs (like he does) and therefore don't actually work hard? Or is he trying to suggest that all of Colbert's testimony is complete B.S., and that Americans actually do perform the work that he spent 5 minutes pointing out is done by migrant workers (or shipped abroad)? I sincerely have no idea what he's trying to say--all I know is that it seems to come directly out of the "pissy partisan congressman" playbook. Big man needs to lighten up.

I don't honestly know why Colbert was invited to testify, except to bring some star power and attention to an issue that's largely ignored (or at least hopelessly obscured by political rhetoric). It's an interesting strategy, and given Americans' obsession with celebrity (see here, here, here, and here), it's probably pretty intelligent. But regardless of the reasoning, and setting aside the obvious humorous slant to his testimony, he makes some pretty fantastic points. His underlying argument is well-reasoned, and shouldn't be dismissed simply because he's "just" a celebrity. So was Al Franken, and now he's a senator.

And to pretend that this is by any means a Democrat-vs.-Republican matter is just insulting. Congratulations, Rep. King, for hijacking Stephen Colbert's "Quote of the Week". Your quote, not his, is the one worthy of recognition.

For your utter humorlessness and unwillingness to drop your own political rhetoric for even 5 minutes, you, Representative Steve King, are the winner of this week's honorary "Quote of the Week". Well done, buddy.

[Talk Radio News]

Clip(s) of the Week

Yes, the point of "Clip of the Week" is to post a quick and entertaining clip once a week. Yes, last week I introduced this feature by posting a video of a girl getting blasted in the face by a watermelon on national television. And yes, there are technically 4 video clips this week, totaling 30 minutes of internet video, which only someone as shiftless and work-from-home-ly as I am would actually bother to watch all the way through. And yes, the first two actually require you to click on a link because I couldn't figure out how to embed the videos on my blog.

But so what, Stewart and Colbert are on fire this week, and this all seems vaguely newsworthy. And yes, I'm seriously thinking of going to D.C. on October 30th. Don't judge me. Just watch and enjoy.

"Take it down a notch...for America"

"Now is the time for all good men to freak out for freedom"