{"id":2411,"date":"2008-01-17T13:59:59","date_gmt":"2008-01-17T18:59:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ibiblio.org\/pjones\/wordpress\/?p=2411"},"modified":"2008-01-17T21:59:13","modified_gmt":"2008-01-18T02:59:13","slug":"our-post-ironic-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/our-post-ironic-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Our post-Ironic age"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We just received this note from which I&#8217;ll slightly alter to protect the guilty:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Subject: Research:  People &#038; dogs<\/p>\n<p>Dear P.Jones,<\/p>\n<p>I am doing research for a company called, [cookbook] Press in [a kind of a big city by Iowa standards], Iowa. They publish small cookbooks and single country books highlighting culture, crafts &#038; history of the specific nationality, with beautiful photographs included.<\/p>\n<p>Currently one of their projects is a book written as an autobiography about the dog, May, a Labra-doodle owned by the [cookbook] Press owner. After the huge success with, Marley &#038; Me, this has inspired [our press] to produce this book.<\/p>\n<p>I am researching a chapter titled: People that sleep with their dogs.<\/p>\n<p>I believe the study conducted by the &#8220;Stanley Lotus Institute of Farming&#8221; by Rob R Barron may be something interesting to include in the book.<\/p>\n<p>I notice this work is copyrighted on Wire.com [sic] How may I go about accessing the study?  I seem to be hitting a few brick walls. Naturally, full credit would be given to The Institute as well as Mr. Barron for the work cited.<\/p>\n<p>Could you be so kind as to direct me to the proper access of this study.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you kindly for your attention to this matter.<\/p>\n<p>Sincerely,<br \/>\n[guilty party]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>To which I answered:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nthe article that i referred to in a posting to my class in 2000 was<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/culture\/lifestyle\/news\/2000\/02\/34387\"> published in Wired magazine (a Conte Nast property)<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ll notice that Wired author, Jon Rochmis, points humorously to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?file=\/chronicle\/archive\/2000\/02\/16\/BU69055.DTL\">this SF Chronicle article<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>The Stanford study by Nie is summarized with graphs <a href=\"http:\/\/news-service.stanford.edu\/news\/2000\/february16\/internetsurvey-216.html\">in this press release<\/a> Nie and\/or Erbring are the folks if you want to talk about the survey<\/p>\n<p>All of that said, there is no &#8220;Stanley Lotus Institute of Farming&#8221; to my knowledge. In fact, I asked my students to ascertain the trustworthiness of the Wired article. The brighter ones realized that Jon Rochmis was committing satire.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/daily.stanford.edu\/article\/2000\/2\/22\/33\">Some at Stanford did as well.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>You can reach Jon Rochmis at xxxx@xxxx.com  or xxxxxxx@gmail.com<\/p>\n<p>Ask him about the dog study, I&#8217;m sure it will make his day.<\/p>\n<p>Bemusedly,<br \/>\nPaul Jones<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Next I had a wonderful exchange with Jon Rochmis who told me this about the genesis of his now 8 year old satire:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As I recall, we were in our morning story budget meeting when the Stanford study was brought up. Jokes flew. Jaws slackened. Eyes widened.<\/p>\n<p>I am a Cal guy. If you had seen a report like this from, say, Duke, perhaps you might have reacted similarily. &#8220;I gotta do something on this,&#8221; I said.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think I took more than a couple of hours on the piece; in fact, I&#8217;m sure I didn&#8217;t (yes, I know, it probably shows).<\/p>\n<p>Some inside jokes: The official name of Stanford is Leland Stanford Junior University (we Cal guys like to point out that our rivals are, indeed, a Junior University). He built the school in memory of his namesake son who died young. Leland Stanford was one of the &#8220;robber barons&#8221; involved in the transcontinental railroad (he was president of Central Pacific, I believe) and the building of San Francisco, hence the reference to Rob. R. Barron in the piece. Stanford is also referred to as &#8220;The Farm&#8221; because of its bucolic setting. And if you transpose the initials &#8220;LS,&#8221; you get &#8220;SL,&#8221; which for some reason I can&#8217;t now recall, I turned in to &#8220;Stanley Lotus&#8221; and the &#8220;Institute of Farming.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yes, you are right: this made my day (but it&#8217;s still early yet here on the far left coast). Thanks for including me in this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But <strong>WAIT THERE&#8217;S MORE!<\/strong> Jon just got this note from the researcher in Iowa:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Subject: Stanley Lotus Institute of Farming<\/p>\n<p>Jon,<\/p>\n<p>We do not know each other, thank god!<br \/>\nMy hat is off to you for wasting good half an hour of my life tracking down your satirical study published on Wire.com [sic]<br \/>\nIt was the dog part I was after, since I am researching a dog book,<br \/>\nthe chapter:  people who sleep with their dogs.<\/p>\n<p>I am a Luddite and don&#8217;t even like the internet, so thanks for making it even more unfriendly!<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m off to the library where I can touch something real.<br \/>\nThat not being YOU!<\/p>\n<p>Have a great day and I hope someone yanks your chain today for me.<br \/>\nWhen I want satire I&#8217;ll tune into one of the best, Stephen Colbert<\/p>\n<p>Ciao,<br \/>\n[guilty party]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We just received this note from which I&#8217;ll slightly alter to protect the guilty: Subject: Research: People &#038; dogs Dear P.Jones, I am doing research for a company called, [cookbook] Press in [a kind of a big city by Iowa standards], Iowa. They publish small cookbooks and single country books highlighting culture, crafts &#038; history [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}