The Internet is not one big fat lie, it's millions of little skinny ones

This is what Bill Gates calls a BGO -- a blinding glimpse of the obvious: Don't believe what you read on the Internet. Even President Obama blames fake online news stories for the tide of disinformation that pushed the election to its unlikely conclusion.

So how does that work, exactly? How is it that millions of us, mostly intelligent, wary, discriminating citizens, get sucked in by so much creative writing posing as real news?

Think about what causes something to go viral -- every marketer's dream.

The worst way to get anything to go viral is to try. One thing we seem to be very good at is spotting people or companies trying to play us, and we don't like that. We express our dislike by not sharing the video, or whatever it was we got. And inertia kills going viral. 

On the other hand we reward not trying -- think "Charlie bit my finger" -- by sharing the hell out of it. Which is how it goes viral.

On the Internet great success comes from not trying. 

Put up a big fat lie on the Internet and...not much happens. Concoct a story about how the city of Chicago sank into Lake Michigan, profusely illustrated, and you won't even get a yawn. It'll just sit there, lonely like a lox, attracting no attention. 

The magic is in little stories, little lies, little exaggerations -- lots and lots of them. Thousands. Millions. Take the truth and twist it just a little bit -- make it plausible enough that it's not shocking, just playing into whatever narrative you're serving, not arousing suspicion by slinking around on little cat feet. Do that over and over and over again and you create an atmosphere of agreement around that point of view you're pushing. Then people will share it innocently, and in droves.

Think of all those little skinny lies -- Obama doesn't wear a flag lapel pin, Obama didn't place flowers on the Tomb of the Unknowns, Hillary has some disease or other -- they get passed and read and believed and passed around some more. That's viral. 

And hardly anyone checks, even though snopes.com does a great job of sussing out the true from the false. 

Suddenly Facebook has awoken to the fact -- "I'm shocked. Shocked!" -- their platform is being used as a launching pad for a myriad of poop-filled micro-missiles of misinformation. 

Someone (Seth Godin?) said we trust the news media some of the time, we trust our friends most of the time and we trust ourselves all of the time. 

Checking every Internet story for accuracy would be impractical, cumbersome and stifling -- but doing just a little checking on our own before hitting "send" to our list of friends seems like a pretty basic responsibility.

We see how things turn out if we don't check.

One year a piñata

Sometime last year during the Republican primaries I became part of a loose email group consisting of a bunch of guys way off to my political right. Maybe it started when someone shared a meme making fun of President Obama bowing to the Emperor of Japan, or perhaps someone circulated an outraged email accusing the President of not laying a wreath on Memorial Day. The provocation doesn't matter, I did what I always do: I went to snopes.com to find out the real story and then I sent it to everyone who had gotten the original email.
Some of the people I knew -- mostly old school friends -- and some I didn't.
Over a few weeks this loose bunch of emailers' behavior gelled into a predictable choreography: Provocation from one of them, research and response by me.
So I became the designated piñata, which is how things remained until today, the day before Election Day. Putting it in David Letterman's terms, these are the
Top 10 Things I Learned Being a Piñata

1. We live in political echo chambers. Had I not joined this group, the rest of them would have endlessly circulated their (often inaccurate or completely fabricated) emails, expressing outrage at how horrible the [President][Minority Leader][Democrats in general] are. The idea of fact-checking would have never entered into the conversation.
2. Fox News has wormed its way into viewers' brains. I noticed their arguments were often very similar to one another, to the point of sharing exact phrases. I'm not a frequent Fox News viewer but on occasions when I've watched I was struck by hearing the very same phrases. Fox News has become a very effective meme propagator.
3. It's nearly impossible to change someone's mind. Over the past year I found hundreds of errors, exaggerations and flat-out confabulations I was able to show my rightie friends. This had zero impact. None. They remain resolutely and happily entrenched in their beliefs. Oh, and they blame Snopes.
4. It's easy to fall into the "He's an idiot" trap. Armed with overwhelming evidence supporting the correctness of my arguments, it has been difficult to see why I didn't pull off at least one conversion. But I didn't. So my conclusion was, over and over again, sterling educational pedigrees aside, they're too dumb to get it. What else could it be?
5. One issue overwhelms all other issues. Each of the guys on the email list had their own hot button: Israel. Muslims. Immigration, The debt. Whatever that issue was, it overshadowed everything else. And it also managed to color everything else to the point where no productive conversation could take place.
6. How school buddies have diverged politically over time. I have no memory of what my friends' politics were when we were together in school. My best guess is that in the majority of cases politics at that time really didn't matter--other than avoiding getting drafted into overseas peril. Today, decades later, how far apart we are.
7. No harm being the minority. Being continually on the defensive sharpened my thinking, improved my arguments and I learned things I probably wouldn't have otherwise.
8. Agreement overlooks many faults. People with whom I have seldom agreed (i.e., Glenn Beck, George W. Bush) suddenly became attractive when I found out we had a common enemy. 
9. Accuracy vanishes when forwarding a friendly point of view.The number of jaw-droppingly astounding claims I've received from my email buddies is amazing. They are just so delighted to hear Barack Obama has a Muslim love child, or Nancy Pelosi is a multiple ax murderer, or Bill Clinton's foundation funds ISIS, that they will pass it along without so much as the smallest effort to check its accuracy. 
10. This was fun. In an election season almost completely fun-deprived, being a piñata added a lot of enjoyment. I recommend it.

Trump vs. Clinton: Business school vs. law school

Debating head to head, Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump wasn't so much a contrast of competing ideologies as a vivid demonstration of differences in education. Trump famously went to Penn's Wharton School, one of the world's most prestigious business schools. Clinton was the valedictorian of her class at Wellesley, followed by Yale Law School -- arguably this country's best in that field.

Success in business school depends on doing some preparation -- mostly reading case studies -- but the real action takes place in freewheeling classroom discussions. The premium isn't so much on academic rigor as on the student's ability to wing it -- to react to situations rapidly, to act decisively, to demonstrate bold leadership. Successful business students aren't the deepest thinkers but they do excel at "read and react" -- assessing situations and moving quickly to resolution. Much of that shows up as brute force -- a sledgehammer works well in most cases.

Law school is almost the polar opposite. Law students wade through mountains of reading where the success of an argument depends, literally, on the placement of a comma or the use of a preposition. They are trained to approach situations with great academic rigor and to respond nimbly, deftly, creatively. It is the jaguar slinking silently through the forest, assessing the situation carefully before pouncing on its prey. The winner is the best prepared, but also the one who waits for his opportunity and then attacks without mercy. it is the scalpel used as a dagger.

And so it was for everyone to see in the first Trump vs. Clinton debate. During the first 30 minutes Trump fought valiantly to rein in his emotions and listen to his coaches -- don't bluster, don't make stuff up. But Clinton waited him out, knowing his fundamental nature was bound to surface sooner or later. It did, and she took full advantage. The final 60 minutes were textbook businessman vs. lawyer. In the business world the businessman has the advantage because the lawyer is often on his payroll. But in a political debate that advantage disappears and the lawyer is free to use all her weapons against the businessman.

For sure Trump's advisors will work to adjust his presentation style in time for the next debate, to be better prepared and more composed. Clinton, on the other hand, won't have to change very much at all -- she's fully armed and extremely dangerous.

This is who wrote Melania Trump's speech--and why

Last evening during the Republican National Convention we -- millions and millions of us -- unwittingly became part of a huge experiment. And it doesn't even matter whether we were watching the Convention on television, the experiment happened and we were all automatically part of it.
Melania Trump, Donald's very attractive Snow White-dressed Slovenian-born wife, confidently spoke on behalf of her husband. And the speech was generally well received.
Then the fun began.
I don't know exactly how it happened but someone -- for these purposes it really doesn't matter who -- compared Melania's speech to one Michelle Obama gave a few years back and, fascinatingly, a couple of paragraphs were oddly similar. In fact for about of minute of her speech most of the words words Melania spoke were identical and in the same order as Michelle's.
Scientists call this an observed phenomenon, one that requires explanation. And the first step toward explanation is the formulation of hypotheses -- guesses -- each of which is then examined and either verified or knocked down. At the end of the process, if it's done right, just one hypothesis is left standing, and then we have our explanation as to what happened.
Since the experiment took place in a very public forum, many observers have offered a wide array of hypotheses. Most of these weren't completely serious, as the spectacle of a beautiful white woman with an exotic accent copying a black woman from Chicago is an inherently comical construct. Comedy is contrast, and as this is textbook contrast it became the source of much merriment.
But for the purposes of this exercise let's list the ways this could have happened and, following the scientific method described above, let's see if we can arrive at the most plausible explanation.
First of all I think we can agree Mrs. Trump's speech was written by one or more human beings; this is not a case of some deity carving words on stone tablets or an alien beaming the speech onto the teleprompter. In other word some guy(s) and or gal(s) wrote the speech Mrs. Trump read last night. Could it have been Mrs. Trump herself? That's the first important question we need to answer. But while it's absolutely possible she could have written it, it's highly improbable she would have done so. Why? This is a woman who has shied from public appearances; this is by far the biggest stage on which she has performed. Virtually all politicians have speech writers so since public speaking isn't her main line of work it's nearly certain she had help -- and plenty of it. The fact that English isn't her native tongue is another compelling reason to believe the speech was written for her in whole or great part.
So our attention turns to the person or persons who actually wrote the thing. Imagine someone (we'll use female pronouns but the gender is immaterial) who is given the job of writing Melania Trump's speech on the opening night of the Republican National Convention. Wow! What an opportunity! The whole world is watching! You use those precious minutes to humanize Trump, you fill the time with squishy stories of Trump feeding babies at 4 am, playing touch football, showing up with lush bouquets at every anniversary.
But no.
Melania's speech was nearly devoid of any anecdotes at all; it was as clinical a presentation as someone bucking for board certification in urology.
So to soften the speech the writer includes a couple of paragraphs dredged up from Michelle Obama's of years ago. They are simple, streamlined and (compared with the rest of the speech) emotional. And the writer doesn't change many of Michelle's words -- hardly any in fact -- because (a) she doesn't think they'll be noticed or (b) she wants them to be noticed.
We live in an age of very easy access to information and, also, to tools that detect plagiarism. Most high school students are familiar with instances of teachers finding work that has been copied. Put "plagiarism tracker" into Google and you get "Top 10 Free Plagiarism Detection Tools for Teachers."
So the writer had to know her plagiarism would be found, and quickly.
But to what end?
As a career move it's suicidal unless the writer was doing it to embarrass Mrs. Trump.
In which case it was a spectacularly successful stunt -- in the short term.
What happens next? It's easy to track the author of each iteration of a Word doc so even if she tried covering her tracks, the person will soon be discovered.
It's possible -- barely -- that it will turn out the writer was doing her best to write a good speech for Mrs. Trump and using Mrs. Obama's words were a convenient crutch.
I would handicap that at about one chance in fifty.
Much more likely is that the writer will be found to be a mole, or at least not a Trump fan who did this to cause the speech -- and Mrs. Trump and then Mr. Trump -- to lose credibility.
If that is in fact the case, will Mr. Trump out the perpetrator, thus admitting he couldn't manage to keep his relatively small staff secure?
Or, much more likely, will the matter be buried, overwhelmed by the next news tsunami, and forgotten?

A Yankee pitcher and the Presidental election

When I was a kid the Yankees had a pitcher named Steve Hamilton. He was a lefty like me and about six foot six, and he would throw sidearm so he would absolutely destroy left handed hitters. To them, Hamilton's pitches must have looked like they were coming from first base. In those days baseball was played during the day so I would come home from school, turn the tv to the game, roll up a pair of socks, and mimic Steve Hamilton's pitching motion. I would watch -- one eye on the tv, one eye on the mirror -- as he would put his hands to his belt, pause for a moment, then slowly lift his right leg into a gigantic kick as his left hand would sweep around, waist level, and snap a curveball toward home plate. And I would be doing exactly the same, at the same time -- a mini-me decades before Austin Powers. My target was a pillow I'd placed across the room, sometimes the rolled-up socks would hit it with a satisfying pop, often they would sail into a lamp or out the door. No matter. I was learning to pitch from one of the best -- mistakes were unavoidable.
Clumsy segue to today's Presidential elections:
The United States is arguably the most visible country on earth. Even though we only have about 5% of the world's population, we are the leaders in just about everything -- especially innovation. We are the creators, the inventors of all kinds of good stuff from technology to government. We are the oldest democracy on the planet and consequently many other countries -- not all, but many -- look to us for guidance and leadership and inspiration. They may not always agree with us but they respect who we are, what we've done, and how we continue to do it. And in many cases, overtly or not, they imitate us.
Which is why election season is so consequential. Over the past few months I've had the opportunity to travel to Europe as well as to Latin America and Asia. In even the most casual conversations with locals, the elections come up as a topic of great interest. The predominant reaction I've gotten is confusion -- they just don't get what's going on over here. They often ask the question in comical terms -- Have you lost your minds? -- but many a truth is said in jest. They really do believe something has gone very wrong. They don't know who they should be following, or supporting, or even taking seriously. And they're aware what happens in America is often a predecessor to what happens in other countries, so now they're afraid of what may happen to them down the road.
They don't see our candidates the way many Americans do -- as buffoons. They see our candidates as shrewd politicians, each one with a well-defined strategy intended to get them elected. Trump is the America First isolationist. Sanders is the promise-them-anything socialist. Hillary is smart and experienced but flawed and untrustworthy. Cruz is the Bible thumper. Rubio is always on message -- whatever that message may be. And Kasich is the wholesome uncle trying to break into the party.
None of them are Steve Hamilton -- nobody I spoke with aspired to have any of our candidates be a model for their own country's leadership. Far from it.
One consequence of all this is it diminishes America in the eyes of the world. We become smaller, less trustworthy, less leader-like. We slip closer to become just another country -- a bit wealthier and stronger perhaps, but with leadership as flawed and erratic and myopic as everyone else's. The world really does expect more from us, and we're not giving it to them.
I want Steve Hamilton back.

This I learned from the President of Afghanistan

A couple of weeks ago I was walking down a New York street and Ashraf Ghani, president of Afghanistan, was speaking to me. Actually he wasn't speaking just to me -- he was being interviewed on NPR so a few other people were listening as well. But I wonder whether Ashraf's words hit them quite as hard as they hit me.

As interviews go it was pretty standard stuff -- How dysfunctional are politics in Afghanistan? Is the Taliban still a threat to your government's existence? Why is your economy falling apart?

And then came the reporter's most startling question: "Do you ever get angry at a situation?"

The question was unexpected because anger isn't the kind of subject interviewers generally ask politicians about. Their emotions fall into a squishy realm -- do we really care how they feel about issues they're dealing with? Not really. We mostly care about their positions and outlook -- Things are good or bad, favorable or unfavorable, easy or hard.

But this time the interviewer strayed from convention and asked Ashraf to break the fourth wall and allow us into his head as he deals with his big Afghan problems. "Do you ever get angry?" is the kind of question parents ask of each other when talking about how best to manage their children.
So I perked up a little, startled at the question but not expecting much of his answer -- just a politician's normal deflection.

But this is where the life-changing part comes in.

This is how Ashraf Ghani, president of Afghanistan, responded to the question: "If the situation makes you angry, then the anger becomes the issue."

This was for me -- no exaggeration -- a transformational moment. In one 12-word sentence life became a whole lot clearer. I suddenly saw there's the stuff that happens in my life (the "situations") and then there are my reactions to that stuff. That could be "the anger" the reporter asked about or, by extension, any other emotion such as fear, happiness, frustration, pride...anything really.

What became apparent to me in that moment, what Ashraf Ghani was really saying, is when a situation arises he either deals with the situation or with the anger it causes. But dealing with the anger is separate from dealing with the situation -- actually it deflects and detracts from it -- therefore making him much less effective.

Sudden clarity has the power to shock, and for the rest of that day I noticed how often I dealt with my reaction to a situation instead of the situation itself. For instance I was on the Lexington Avenue subway on my way to a meeting when the train suddenly stopped and remained motionless for some time. Since I was late for my meeting I noticed I was getting annoyed, then frustrated, then angry. None of which did anything to resolve the situation itself. When the conductor announced there was "a smoke situation in Union Square" causing the delay, I recalled Ashraf Ghani -- my anger had become the issue. So I shifted my focus onto what I had to do after the train began to move. Which it did, eventually. And I arrived at my meeting late, but way more composed than I would have previously.

Life is an endless minefield of situations: Last week I felt disappointment as one of my sons made a lunch date with me, and then canceled. The cable in my apartment died in the middle of an NFL playoff game. An important trip to Boston was canceled due to a snowstorm. Each time, separating event from emotion made a useful difference.

How often anger replaces the situation -- and how useless that is in solving anything.

Two things I learned this weekend, and one thing I found out I didn't know

Sometime during the year 1900 the head of the US Patent Office went up to Congress and suggested the Patent Office be shut down because, in his words, "Everything that could be invented has been invented." You have to admire the man for his candor as well as his willingness to put himself out of a job. You also have to wonder how this idiot got the job in the first place. But that's not the point. The point is that new things show up all the time and even if they're not patentable, they're interesting.
For instance this weekend I learned two new things so my inventory of knowledge increased by just a little bit--assuming the two glasses of wine I drank with dinner didn't wipe out the equivalent or greater amount.
I learned that in Argentina, burping in public is one of the rudest things you can do. I learned this because one of our guests drank a Diet Coke at the table and inadvertently burped--it happens to all of us. But this time she did it in the presence of an Argentinian, who was horrified. Apparently in Argentina public burping is worse than public farting, which is the inverse of what is true in most parts of the world. It does leave me wondering about the origins of why Argentinians are so passionately anti-burping. I also wonder if it's something that's true all over Argentina, or if it's a feeling concentrated in certain areas. The pampas vs. the cities, say. Anyway, it's something to Google on a slow day.
I also learned that fixing plumbing problems don't necessarily require the visit of an actual plumber. The heat on the second floor of my house wasn't working so my son called the plumber Tom, a wonderful man who's been tending to our various drips, leaks and heating outages for decades. It was New Year's Day and while he said he'd be glad to come over, he pointed out he would charge double his usual rate.  This gave me pause as I was looking at a $500 bill, at least. So I told our overnight guests to bundle up and make the best of it while I pondered the problem.
The next morning my son called Tom and suggested perhaps the issue could be solved over the phone. Tom agreed and first tried talking us through some possible fixes. When that didn't work, my son took his iPhone into the basement and set up FaceTime with Tom. After a few minutes Tom diagnosed the problem and my son was able to fix it. My second floor warmed up quickly, and the era of teleplumbing was born.
Finally, something I discovered I didn't know: How to take apart the frame under a bed -- that metal thing with rollers. You'd think it would be simple -- just attack it with a screwdriver, pliers and a hammer--some combination of those three will do the job. Well--no. Despite my best efforts at applying whatever I learned in engineering school, the frame proved wholly unforgiving and remains in one large immovable piece.
But at least it's on my warm second floor.
I'm going to burp at it.

From Thunderball to coloring books

Inspired by JFK’s endorsement, I read all Ian Fleming’s Bond books when I was a teenager. Recently I read a book of Fleming’s letters written contemporaneously with the publication of each Bond book. It fascinated me to learn about how uncertain Fleming was about 007, about how much advice he required, about how much support he needed to flesh out the details about the cars, locations, plants and animals he included in his books.

Concurrent with reading Fleming’s letters, I decided to read one of my favorite Bond books – Thunderball, the ninth of the 13 Fleming published. I was amazed at how thin it is, how flimsy the plot, how bare the dialogue, how one-dimensional the characters. It took Fleming just two months to write each of his books; he would retire to Goldeneye, his home in Jamaica, and write them each year in January and February.

Fleming’s formula was simple: An evil character threatens the world through some form of technology and Bond – at considerable risk to himself – uses his wile and physical talents to defeat him. And of course he gets the girl. While the books are set in different locations and the bad guys and weapons vary, the bones are identical. But the stories carry little suspense – they’re predictably pure escapism, paint by numbers.

Speaking of which--I recently noticed my son and his friends – all twentysomethings – spending considerable time with adult coloring books marketed, according to CNN, “to stressed-out, work-addled adults, who want to benefit from the quiet zen that a coloring session can bring.” Several coloring books even sit among the top ten Amazon best sellers.

By today’s standards Fleming’s Bond series are barely comic books, but they mutated and evolved to become the foundation of a giant book and movie business and icons of our culture.

Maybe adult coloring books will follow a similar path – increasingly complex patterns, the leap to apps, and finally “Coloring Book – The Movie.” In 3-D.

A mile wide, an inch deep

My friends have accused me of having too many interests, to which my reply is “Better to have a plate too full than not full enough.”

I intend for this blog to be eclectic – any topic, any subject, truly anything at all. No predictability.

The takeaway will be informative – I will share my interests and enthusiasm about each subject and offer data and insights not common or obvious.

A great deal of breadth, not a lot of depth.