I was teaching high school in Crown Heights back in the early 90s. My second year as a teacher began in the shadow of the Crown Heights Riots of 1991. The riots were touched off when one of the cars in a motorcade that included Lubavitcher Rebbe Schneerson hit and killed a young boy named Gavin Cato.

No one then (and maybe not even now) could agree on the details of the act itself and the ensuing sparks that set off a 3 day riot that consumed New York. But many people could agree (albeit for very different reasons) that then NY Mayor David Dinkins did a horrible job stemming the violence.

The perception of Dinkins’ handling of Crown Heights riots had a significant impact on an election in which Dinkins was defeated by a law and order candidate named Rudy Giuliani. Rudy won the election by 44,000 votes.

The soft mayor was replaced by the tough mayor. It certainly didn’t matter that during the Dinkins era (during which Clinton provided funds for several extra thousand cops on the city’s streets), one could already see the beginnings of a downward trend in crime statistics. The nation was also experiencing demographic and other shifts that would dramatically reduce crime across the board. A recent article in NY Magazine (an interesting piece on how Rudy now runs against New York) points out some interesting numbers:

The murder rate [in New York City] dropped 74 percent. But murders also dropped 73 percent in San Diego; killings were down 70 percent in Austin, 59 percent in Honolulu, and 56 percent in Boston. None of those miracles, however, was accompanied by a cult of personality forming around the relevant mayor.

And it probably doesn’t matter much that stats such as the murder rate in NYC are much lower under the more low key and managerial Mike Bloomberg than they ever were under Rudy.

The perceptions surfaced during and after the Crown Heights riots, along with the hiring of some key law enforcement thinkers such as Ben Bratton (The top cop and the driving force behind NYC’s changes in the way they dealt with high crime areas – later canned because he was getting too much of the credit), and a demographic and national shift towards a reduction of violent crime created a perfect storm and the former mob-busting prosecutor was the ideal person at the ideal moment to ride that storm to national prominence.

Of course, his impressive performance post 9/11 provided Rudy with his presidential campaign’s launching pad. But a car accident in Brooklyn provided the trigger for the development of the record and the messaging on which that campaign has been built.

Huckabee’s What Really Matters ad translated:

“Are you about worn out from all the television commercials you’ve been seeing? …”

I begin my commercial with this trite and condescendingly asinine question (rolling an ad asking if you’re tired of ads) because I think you are an absolute friggin idiot.

“… Mostly about politics, I don’t blame you.”

Why would I blame you when we can both blame the Jews?

“At this time of year sometimes it’s nice to pull aside from all of that…”

You know, that. Critical thought. Secularism. The fact that my wife’s maiden name is McCain. The New Yorker.

“… and just remember that what really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ.”

You can embrace this birthday by doing something as noble and holy as using Christ to garner cheap, ego-driven political gain, or you can just reflect on the fact that Rudy Giuliani is most likely spending Christmas with gays.

“On behalf of all of us …”

Us of course refers to me, Jesus, the guy who whitens my teeth and any Mormon who admits that their religion is sort of kooky and agrees to vote for me.

“… God bless and Merry Christmas.”

Fuck Kwanzaa.

I’ve always been irritated by argument that online social networks somehow hinder offline relationships. Proponents of this viewpoint always conjure a picture of a now empty stoop on a tree-lined street. For most, I think online socializing replaces the absence of socializing. And often, friendships that start online can grow into something more.

Take for example a couple of dudes named Jim and Larry who first connected playing in a historical fantasy baseball league at Imagine Sports.

Their connection was built around the playing of an online game. But then, Jim needed a kidney.

Three years ago, Google introduced a new Labs feature called Suggest. The idea is that as you type letters into a searchbox, Google’s algorithms attempt to predict the rest of the word(s). When the feature first launched (you can now find it in many search and tool bars including Firefox), I performed a one letter test. I typed in one letter and tracked what Google would suggest based on that one tap of the key.

Today, I did the same test. While many of the results are the same, there are some interesting differences. First, there is the rise of Google itself. Whether it is simply algorithmic or not, Google products own seven of the ten displayed suggestions for the letter G (Orkut as the first suggestion for the letter O could give one pause). Second, there is the rise of the ecommerce players (Is this related to the holidays? But I ran the test at almost the exact time of year in 2004). Third, unlike three years ago, there are some just plain weird results that I can’t quite figure out. Fourth, porn still does not lead the pack for the letter P, but two adult sites I had never heard of (and I’ve been doing the research since the day I got dsl) have appeared in the list. Fifth, there are some new sites in the list that you may have heard of including Facebook and Youtube (twice). Finally, Pell was still nowhere to be found when I typed in the letter P, but at least Paris Hilton was ousted from the top spot as well.

Hard to remember a time when Tara Reid was topping Target, eh?

	2004	2007
a:	amazon	amazon
b:	best buy	best buy
c:	cnn	craigslist
d:	dictionary	dictionary
e:	ebay	ebay
f:	firefox	facebook
g:	games	google
h:	hotmail	hotmail
i:	ikea	imdb
j:	jokes	john lewis
k:	kazaa	kohls
l:	lyrics	limewire
m:	mapquest	mapquest
n:	news	next
o:	online dictionary	orkut
p:	paris hilton	paypal
q:	quotes	qvc
r:	recipes	redtube
s:	spybot	sears
t:	tara reid	target
u:	ups	utube
v:	verizon	verizon
w:	weather	wikipedia
x:	xbox	xtube
y:	yahoo	youtube
z:	zip codes	zoey zane

Yahoo has since served up their own Search Assist. Where do they differ with Google when put to the one letter test?

j: jessica alba
l: lowes
m: myspace
n: nfl
p: photobucket
q: qvc
r: renne sloan scott baio
u: ups
w: walmart
x: xbox 360
z: zip codes

When playing Guitar Hero (something I have yet to do because my Wiife™ has cornered the Wii in our house) there is an immediate inclination among guitar players and game reviewers to compare the actual act of playing a guitar to the act of playing the game.

Forget it. There is no relationship between being a guitar hero and playing Guitar Hero.

People become guitar heroes so that they can feel the rush of 30,000 screaming voices and gaze through the wall of waving lighters and cell phones as they select a fivesome or sixsome to join them for a few hours of wired, drunk and naked partying before everyone trashes the hotel room, and the band, along with the hottest, best-performing groupies loads back into the custom, waterbed-lined bus and rolls on to the next town.

People play Guitar Hero because they aren’t rock stars and need some way to kill time while trying to take their minds off of that fact.

The old Atari game called Journey Escape was of course the more realistic simulation.

Helped by your loyal roadies, you’re on the road with Journey, one of the world’s hottest rock groups. A spectacular performance has just ended. Now it’s up to you to guide each Journey Band Member past hordes of Love-Crazed Groupies, Sneaky Photographers, and Shifty-Eyed Promoters to the safety of the Journey Escape Vehicle…

While they often provide hours of entertaining gameplay, any rock video game that does not involve visits to rehab and checkups for STDs should ultimately be seen as little more than the next iteration of Pong.