Columbia University invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on its campus yesterday. Lee Bollinger, the President of Columbia, took severe criticism for extending the invitation. Personally, although I support President Bollinger’s decision, I was disappointed to hear him introduce Ahmadinejad with direct, personal attacks.

President Bollinger said in his introduction:

Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.

These lines were not necessary during the introduction, even if true. Challenge Ahmadinejad, point out his country’s record on sponsoring terrorism, accuse Iran of being a root cause of the continued chaos in Iraq, say what you want about the country’s treatment of homosexuals, demand clarification on their position toward Israel (i.e., whether they want to “wipe them off the map”), but the personal attacks–even if deserved–were a step too far during an introduction.

It is possible that President Bollinger was attempting to respond to the criticism that inviting Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia–a highly prestigious university–somehow legitimized the man. Perhaps, but if that is your concern, don’t invite him at all.

Do not get me wrong: Ahmadinejad does indeed show all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator who, in all likelihood, is both brazenly provocative and astonishingly uneducated. Many of his comments during his speech (that, for example, Jews live peacefully in Iran and that the country has no homosexuals) were flat out lies. Still, as much as I protest the man and his country, I do not protest Columbia’s invitation to Ahmadinejad to speak. I only wish President Bollinger had shown the unearned respect and courtesy not to cast personal insults during the introduction.

The tiny rock in my shoe causes a pain
          that it seems never will end.
With each placement of my sneaker
          my foot screeches in ineffable agony.
Oh! The hideous pain caused by this
          tiniest of stones is near reason to stop
          and remove my shoe.

And yet
          with my mind fixed squaredly
          on the anguish and misery in my shoe,
I momentarily set aside the perpetual suffering
          in my soul.

All previous cares and concerns
          are carried far away
          by the raging current of sorrow
          caused by this one small pebble.
I think not of the dark and hellish essence
          flowing in the blackened gutters
          of my mind’s inner passageways.
The seemingly endless torture of my days
          is wholly consumed
          and slips easily from my thoughts.

With this pebble in my shoe,
          I walk on.

– Tim Brooks

Let me say out the outset that this is not a paid ad. I tried a product, I liked it, and I’m sharing with you what I found out. I don’t do blog ads.

Okay, that said, let’s move on.

Like a lot of people, I spend a significant amount of time in front of my computer. So, like a lot of people, I spend a little time making my desktop–my computer desktop, not my actual desktop, which is a mess–look nice. For a couple of years, I have used desktop artwork from a talented artist named Vladislav Gerasimov. You can find his Web site here: http://www.vladstudio.com/home. I learned of him through a graphic artist I work with, and I really like Vlad’s work.

Vlad recently teamed up with Jury Gerasimov (I assume they’re related) of softshape on the Chameleon Clock–a piece of software developed by Jury that turns the standard Windows tray clock into an artistic and useful tool. However, with Chameleon Clock, you also can have Wallpaper Clocks: desktop artwork that actually keeps the date and time.

Some of the wallpaper clocks are bright and colorful, others dark and brooding. Some are more functional, others just fun to look at. But all of them keep time on your desk top, and they’re all beautifully done.  Together, the Gerasimovs have created  a great add-on to the Windows environment.

Give them a try by going here: http://www.softshape.com.

You know, I like baseball–I really do–but I still found it odd last night when I had a dream about the Red Sox and their current struggles.

In my dream, I was listening to a call-in radio show.  It essentially was Car Talk, but the guys doing the show were Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy–the TV announcers for the Red Sox.  When I called in, I pointed out to them that New York had left in their schedule four home games against a pretty tough team (Toronto) and then six away games against easy teams (Tampa Bay and Baltimore).  The Red Sox, by contrast, have three away games against an easy team (Tampa Bay, which has done them in before), followed by six home games against two tougher clubs (Oakland and Minnesota).  This was news to Don and RemDawg (I guess they had not bothered to look at the upcoming schedule).  On balance, I told them, the Yankees–who are playing much better baseball right now–have an easier set of games remaining.  Accordingly, I predicted that the Yankees would overtake the Red Sox and win the division. 

I did not stop there, however.  I also predicted that the Red Sox would lose in the first round of the playoffs and that the Yankees would win the World Series.  Don and RemDawg were very sorry to hear this; we said good-bye, and I hung up.

On this occasion, I am hoping dreams do not come true.

Back in the early days of the Web, organizations constantly were attempting to find ways to make people want to come back to their Web sites.  One original concept was that a site should have a really good Links page–a page people would bookmark and then come back to frequently to get to your links.  (Law firms, for example, liked to have links to all the local courts, libraries, and law resources, with the idea being that people view their site as some kind of portal into the legal world.)  This didn’t really work.  First, everyone was doing it.  Second, it turns out that Links pages simply give site visitors a vast array of juicy-looking exit points.  Finally, the advent of search engines like Google (or “the Google,” as our president says), made these Links pages fairly irrelevant.

More recently, some companies have put games on their site, thinking that games will drive people back to the site and, of course, cause them to buy more of their products or services.  The success of this approach will depend on your audience.  The Keebler Elf games on Kellogs’ Web site appeals to kids, applying the same marketing logic as was done with Joe Camel:  if you can get them to like the character, you can get them to like the product.  Although this may work well when your goal is Brand awareness, I have yet to see games on a corporate Web site–a site targeting an adult audience–that I thought were effective.

What I do find effective, however, are clever and imaginative contests that anyone can enter and the results of which the target audience will want to come back to see.  An excellent example of this is The New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest, which is held monthly.  They show you a cartoon, and anyone can submit a caption for it.  Then they let their on-line audience vote for what they think is the best caption (collecting your name and email address as you vote).  I try to go back every month to see what people have submitted, and usually the winning entries are extremely clever.

Another good example of using contests to attract your target audience is the Wine Limerick contest for Wine Enthusiast magazine.  What serious wine drinker does not want to demonstrate how witty he or she is?  They just recently posted the results, and I’m happy to say that my own father was one of four 1st place winners, having entered this little ditty:

I have an untamed predilection

for building a vast wine collection.

But my wife is incensed

o’er the vinous expense.

‘Tis a shame; I shall miss her affection.

Way to go, Dad.  For his efforts, he apparently gets two years of the magazine for free!  The cost to the magazine, therefore, is virtually nothing.  But they received hundreds of entries and probably thousands of additional eyeballs on their Web site.  Clever.

So, I have this phone problem. My company does Web development, strategic planning, that kind of thing. However, my phone number is one digit off from a medical supply store. You also can reverse two digits and get a chiropractic office. As a result, I get a number of interesting callers.

The calls intended for the chiropractic office are always trying to schedule or cancel an appointment–usually they’re cancelling. Once, as soon as I answered the phone, a caller started complaining rather angrily about the neck pain he had been experiencing since his last visit. When I told him he had the wrong number, he at first did not believe me. I gave him the correct number and suggested he try that one. I then wished him good luck with his neck pain. He was quite sheepish when he hung up, and I could tell he still was uncertain as to whether I actually was the chiropractic office just trying to brush him off.

One of my favorite calls was the very first call I received for the medical supply store. The middle-aged female caller said:

Yes, hi. My husband, he wears those tight nylon support stockings that improve circulation to your legs. Do you carry those? And do you have them in both black and brown?

I had no idea what she was talking about.

Then there was the call from the pharmacy:

Hi, this is Steve from [pharmacy name]. What’s the largest container of rubbing alcohol that you sell?

Moments ago, I received a call from someone asking if I carried a specific brand of reclining chairs that had been recommended by her doctor. I let her know that I do not but suggested she call the medical supply store. I gave her the number.

These people are all very appreciative when I tell them the correct number. I sometimes wonder if either of these other two companies get calls from people seeking Web services. Probably not.

Okay, I promise not to turn this into a sports rant, but I’ve just watched Eric Gagne lose yet another game for the Boston Red Sox. This guy may have been a solid pitcher at one point in his career, but either his age or his head has interfered with his ability to throw the ball. Tonight, he took a one-run lead into the bottom of the 8th and quickly got two out. After that, however, he walked three (being completely unable to find the strike zone after going up 0-2 on the third batter of the inning), gave up two hits, and allowed three runs to score. Three runs after two outs and no one on. And for that, he gets paid some pretty Big Bucks.

The Yankees, meanwhile, are on a tear, having one 11 out of 15 games in September. Boston’s lead in the division is down to 2 1/2 games, with 10 games left in the season (New York has 11). At one point it was 14 games. They lead the division by 12 games at the All Star break.

Cripes, I hate sports.

I suppose everything has an anniversary. Today is the 25th anniversary of the sideways smiley face.

On September 19, 1982, at exactly 11:44 a.m., a Carnegie Mellon University professor named Scott Fahlman typed this message in an on-line electronic bulletin board:

I propose the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-)

Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given the current trends. For this, use

:-(

Professor Fahlman asserts that he probably was the first to use this–he has seen no evidence that anyone used it before this date, although he concedes that it is a fairly simple concept.

It’s unclear when people started modifying this concept to connote different sentiments, such as surprise :-o sticking out one’s tongue :-p anger >:-{ or “you know what I mean, hint hint, wink wink” ;-) (Note: my apologies for the lack of punctuation in this last sentence. As it turns out, it’s hard to punctuate a sentence about use of punctuation to make facial expressions. See also Scott Johnston’s blog entry noting the difficulty of using smiley faces at the end of a parenthetical.) My guess, however, is that this trend started around 11:45 that same morning.

With all due respect to Professor Fahlman, I can’t stand these things. I suppose they’re harmless enough, but why not use language to express your meaning? Moreover, this simple language shortcut is the apparent parent to the obnoxious little emoticons that now pop up everywhere, even when you don’t want them to. As a PRIME EXAMPLE, WordPress converted my smileys here into emoticons when I saved this entry; I had to dig around in the WordPress options to find a setting that would turn these off so they would remain as intended. How annoying.

I suppose the only argument in favor of the smiley face is to ensure that the reader understands intended tongue in cheek. In the cold, sterile environment of email or text messaging, it is fairly easy to misinterpret the author’s tone and meaning. Even so, try to use words.

Mondays, I’ve decided, should be all about language. After all, last night’s Red Sox-Yankees game–a game that was dripping with almost stereotypical September drama: bottom of the ninth, two outs, Red Sox down by one, bases loaded, and up to bat comes David Ortiz, Big Papi, Mr. Walk-off–I really don’t want to talk about.

All that not said, considering I’m at the beginning of this little writing adventure (and no one is reading it yet), it feels like the right time to talk about opening sentences.

One is not supposed to judge a book by its cover–or so we’ve been told–but I confess I often do judge a book by its first sentence. The opening sentence is a wonderful opportunity for the author to make a strong first impression, to set a theme, or to introduce a mood. It provides a first peek into the story’s character and the writer’s mind. Consider “It was a dark and stormy night.” As maligned and over-played as that sentence is, think about everything it accomplishes.

I used to take my kids to the bookstore at midnight when the latest Harry Potter novel came out. After purchasing the book around 1:00 AM, we would proceed to the sidewalk, sit on the curb, and read the first sentence. The thrill of it always gave us chills.

As an exercise, I like to write opening sentences occasionally. Here are a few:

It was a creaky old porch swing, most recently loved only by spiders it seemed, but it still had a smooth, comfortable glide, and the early summer afternoon breezes felt good against Graham’s face.

This story’s really for people who have had their fingers gnawed off by alligators while they were trying to retrieve something dropped in a murky river, so if that’s never happened to you, you probably won’t like it.

My Aunt Gurt used to say I didn’t have a lick of sense, which, from my mind, was utterly bogus, and which, I’m not too modest to say, I proved completely false at the potluck dinner that Sunday when no one but me seemed to have any idea how to get yellow-mustard potato salad stains off the white carpet in the church meeting room.

What I could never really understand was why Tony chose me instead of Borky, considering that Borky had been married several times already and clearly had a much better knowledge of what made women tick.

“Get out of my face, you putrid little punk,” my daddy spat, shoving me backwards hard enough to make me fall on my ass.

To say I had a crush on Lilly, even after she killed Sheriff Perkins and his deputy, would be to understate the situation quite badly.

An opening sentence can provide for the reader what that little hole in the door must have provided Howard Carter when he discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb: a small glimpse of the mysteries and treasures within.

But you know, I will say this about the Red Sox-Yankees series. The two teams played 27 innings of baseball over the last three days. The Yankees won two of those 27 innings and, consequently, two of the three games. Friday it was the top of the 8th when they scored 6 runs and won 8-7. That was awful. Last night, it was again the top of the 8th … and one pitch. With two on and two out and two strikes on Derek Jeter, Schilling could have ended the inning (and a brilliant night of pitching) with a strikeout, keeping the game tied 1-1. Instead, his last pitch of the night did not touch ground until it had sailed deep over the Green Monster, putting the Yankees ahead 4-1.

Two innings out of 27.

But I really don’t want to talk about it.

Actually, it’s not quite fall yet–we have a few days to go.  But it was in the low 50s when I woke up this morning, notwithstanding the bright sunshine skimming the tops of the trees.  The air conditioner in the bedroom window was on a couple of weeks ago, but I doubt it will be on again.  I’ll need to take them out of the windows and store them in the basement soon.  Almost time to put in the storm windows.  I hate that task.

Fall has always been a time to start fresh.  Perhaps it’s because the air seems so clean.  Maybe it’s because here in Maine the summer never seems to fade into fall; it just happens, often over night.  One day you’re enjoying dinner on the back deck, the sun still up at 9:00.  A very short time later it’s getting dark by 7:30, and it’s too cold to eat outside.  (Although a glass of wine on the lower deck after work is still tolerable.)

Whatever it is, I always have used September as a time to begin doing something I’ve been meaning to begin doing for some time.  This year, I’ve decided to start writing again.  So, let’s give this blogging thing a try. 

I’ve been thinking about starting this blog for quite a while.  Those who know me are painfully aware that I frequently have something to say–whether it’s about placement of commas, the perennial fear of a Red Sox end-of-season collapse, single-malt scotch, splitting infinitives, bad drivers, bad presidents, good music, or just some random concept.  Perhaps this will give me a place to say it.

I look forward to seeing how it goes.