Had a spare hour last Thursday and decided to write a little twitter bot. There he is above. His name is Grammer_Man and he corrects other twitter users’ misspellings, using data scraped from these Wikipedia pages.

Responses have been pouring in already, some agitated, some confused, but most positive — which was a pleasant surprise. In any event, the minimal amount of effort in coding has paid off many times over in entertainment.

You can see who’s responding at the moment by searching for @grammer_man, and also by checking his list of favourites.

Here is the (somewhat slapdash) code that powers our fearless spelling Nazi:

grabber.py

This module grabs the spelling data from Wikipedia.

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import os
import pickle

import requests
from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup

def grab(letter):
    '''
    Grabs spellings from wikipedia
    '''
    url = 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lists_of_common_misspellings/%s' % letter
    html = requests.get(url).content
    soup = BeautifulSoup(html)
    bullets = soup.findAll('li')
    retval = {}
    for bullet in bullets:
        if 'plainlinks' in repr(bullet):
            values = bullet.text.split('(')
            if len(values) == 2:
                retval[values[0]] = values[1][:-1] # shave off the ) at end
    return retval

def get_spellings():
    '''
    Returns a dictionary of {false: correct} spellings
    '''
    if not os.path.exists('words.pkl'):
        retval = {}
        for c in 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ':
            print 'Getting typos - %s' % c
            retval.update(grab(c))
        print 'Dumping...'
        f = open('words.pkl', 'w')
        pickle.dump(retval, f)
        f.close()
        return retval
    else:
        f = open('words.pkl', 'r')
        retval = pickle.load(f)
        f.close()
        return retval
    
if __name__ == '__main__':
    get_spellings()

bot.py

The bot. Selects misspellings at random, searches for them, responds to them, while also taking breaks between tweets and longer breaks every few hours.

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import os
import random
import time
import pickle

import twitter

from grabber import get_spellings

API = twitter.Api(consumer_key='XXX',
                  consumer_secret='XXX',
                  access_token_key='XXX',
                  access_token_secret='XXX')

MESSAGES = u'''
$USERNAME sooo you might wanna spell $CORRECT the right way next time!! Not your fault bro.
#
# All messages stored in here, one per line. 
# Edited out in order to save space in this blog post.
#
'''.split('\n')

def compose_message(twitter_post, mistake, correct):
    '''
    Choose a message from MESSAGES at random, substitute fields to personalise it and 
    check if it exceeds the twitter message limit. Try this 100 times before failing.
    '''
    retries = 0
    while retries < 100:
        retries += 1
        message = MESSAGES[random.randint(0, len(MESSAGES) - 1)]
        message = message.replace('$USERNAME', '@%s' % twitter_post.user.screen_name)
        message = message.replace('$MISTAKE', '"%s"' % mistake).replace('$CORRECT', '"%s"' % correct)
        if message and len(message) < 141:
            return message
    return None

def correct_spelling(twitter_post, mistake, correct):
    '''
    Correct someone's spelling in a twitter_post
    '''
    print u'Correcting @%s for using %s...' %(twitter_post.user.screen_name,
                                            mistake)
    message = compose_message(twitter_post, mistake, correct)
    if not message:
        print u'All messages were too long... Aborting...'
        return None
    else:
        API.PostUpdate(message, in_reply_to_status_id=twitter_post.id)
        return True

def search(word):
    '''
    Search twitter for uses of a word, return one if it's been used recently.
    Otherwise return None.
    
    TODO: Add time awareness.
    '''
    print 'Searching for uses of %s...' % word
    results = API.GetSearch(word)
    if results:
        for result in results:
            if not check_if_done(result.id) and not result.user.screen_name == 'grammer_man' and word in result.text:
                return result
    return None

def check_if_done(id):
    '''
    Checks if a tweet has already been responded to
    '''
    if os.path.exists('done.pkl'):
        f = open('done.pkl', 'r')
        done = pickle.load(f)
        f.close()
        if id in done:
            return True
    return False

def update_done(id):
    '''
    Updates a list of tweets that've been replied to
    '''
    if os.path.exists('done.pkl'):
        f = open('done.pkl', 'r')
        done = pickle.load(f)
        f.close()
    else:
        done = []

    done.append(id)

    f = open('done.pkl', 'w')
    pickle.dump(done, f)
    f.close()

def main():
    '''
    Main program flow
    '''
    words = get_spellings()
    counter = 0
    while True:
        word = random.choice(words.keys())
        post = search(word)
        if counter > 100:
            rand_time = random.randint(120*60, 240*60)
            print 'Done %s tweets, sleeping for %s minutes' % (counter, rand_time/60)
            time.sleep(rand_time)
            counter = 0
        # TODO: PROPERLY PRUNE THE MISTAKES/CORRECTIONS FROM WIKIPEDIA AND REMOVE THIS:
        if not u',' in word + words[word] and not u';' in word + words[word]:
            if post:
                result = correct_spelling(post, word, words[word])
                if result:
                    counter += 1
                    print '#%s Done' % counter
                    update_done(post.id)
                    time.sleep(random.randint(300,500))


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Grammer_Man uses the following libraries:

• python-twitter (Be warned: no proxy support)
• requests
• BeautifulSoup

Photo: Reuters

A select few quotations from a BBC article on Hitler’s bizarre popularity in India:

Latest reports say Bollywood is now planning to cash in. A film – Dear Friend Hitler – is due to be released by the end of the year, focusing on the dictator’s relationship with his mistress Eva Braun.

…

It’s hard to narrow down what makes the dictator popular in India, but some young people say they are attracted by his “discipline and patriotism”.

Most of them are, however, quick to add that they do not approve of his racial prejudices and the Holocaust in which millions of Jews were killed.

…

Nearly all the booksellers and publishers contacted in India say it is mainly young people who read Mein Kampf. It’s not just the autobiography – books on the Nazi leader, T-shirts, bags, bandanas and key-rings are also in demand. A shop in Pune, called Teens, says it sells nearly 100 T-shirts a month with Hitler’s image on them.

Dimple Kumari, a research associate in Pune, has not read Mein Kampf but she would wear the Hitler T-shirt out of admiration for him. She calls him “a legend” and tries to put her admiration for him in perspective: “The killing of Jews was not good, but everybody has a positive and negative side.”

I have to say, I find this peculiar naivety fascinating. I also can’t imagine what it must be like for a Western traveller to be walking down a street in, say, Bangalore, spotting a few people coming towards him clad in Hitler Apparel. Indeed, staying with Bangalore, since it’s such a huge IT hub… Should we expect to see originally well-meaning and innocuous (to Indians, that is) photographs of young IT workers on their IBM or Microsoft campus, posing happily with their corporate swipe-cards dangling from from their neck, the strap perfectly framing a portrait of their “Dear Friend Hitler”? Indeed, do such places, renowned for their lack of dress-code in the West, already have a strict dress-code in places like India, in order to prevent such embarrassments? I wonder.

And, before I go, here’s another great article from Der Spiegel on the same phenomenon, only this time in Pakistan. Yep, they’re at it too. Who knows – perhaps this new-found love for the 20th century’s most hated, genocidal dictator will only serve to foster a new friendship of shared values between India and Pakistan, leading to a stable peace! Surely no harm could come of future generations of two of the world’s most antagonistic and unstable nuclear-countries worshipping a genocidal, maniacal, militaristic dictator!

Brings a whole new sense to that Vonnegut quote…

For me, the biggest problem with libertarian thinking isn’t what its critics say: that is promotes some kind of immorality in its defense of self-interest in the context of capitalist economics.

Where I got off the bus is when I realized how terribly unsustainable libertarianism is, the naivete about how money corrupts, money being to power what matter is to energy. And lastly, the lack of consideration given to how unequal the playing field is, how much class does matter, and how libertarians seek to make a “clean break” from interventionist corporatism to capitalism without addressing the massive chain of abuse which has resulted into the polarization of the wealthy and the poor.

Unsustainability – most libertarians support the free market on the basis of rights and morality, not out of pure utilitarianism, but most tend to believe that a free market in a libertarian context would also provide the greatest opportunities to the greatest amount of people. I think this, too, is a matter of faith. So long as you allow the top few percent to own the vast majority of wealth, you will always have an underclass voting itself, amending the constitution, rioting, or revolting to get some of the upper or ruling class’s money. This is why Marxism refuses to go away in the Third World. Conservatives and classical liberals like to insinuate it has something to do with bankrupt political and economic ideals in an academic context (“Ivory tower Marxists”) but in reality the reason why socialism and communism continue to find purchase in the third world is because of crippling poverty, including things like landlessness, where you can inhabit a piece of land for generations, but someone just deeds it out from under you (a Zapatista complaint).

Labor movements, social welfare programs, guranteed minimum incomes — all of these proceed from human need, and I see no indication that the somewhat benign term “self interest” applies here, as much as “crass greed” does. Libertarians practically celebrate the concepts of wage slavery, sweatshops, and so forth, because – they say – that the people working in them would be “worse off yet” without them. Good luck, 5 years down the line, making that case while the peasants get restless. How anyone feels about the morality of who gets how much pie and who has to share, the reality is that humankind will only put up with so much before organizing, revolting, striking, or otherwise influencing the system such that it is more equitable for the poor – and more offensive to libertarians. No document will constrain that.

Money corrupts — this is why lobbyists have their way with the American system. The idea that somehow very rich people wouldn’t instantly corrupt a minarchist state in their favor is laughably naive. The US Constitution was supposed to prevent the growth of the state, among other things, and it has failed miserably in this regard because people (politicians, administrators, supreme court) have failed. Libertarians continue to believe that by simply abolishing large swaths of government (which I’m in favor of), that that will destroy the mechanisms by which the very rich basically own the US government. I say, whatever is left, will be corrupted, and grow yet again. Because every man has his price, and every politician, administrator, law enforcement official, and so on, can be bribed — as they are now. The idea of a government purely of laws and not of men is a superstitious religious belief — oh how I wish it were possible. I used to believe it was; I no longer believe this to be the case. Every week we see rich people getting off with a slap on the wrists – if that – having committed massive fraud (google Union Carbide Bhopal), while middle, working class, and the outright poor wind up in jail serving ludicrous sentences for petty crime. All institutions can be gamed with the right amount of cash. Libertarians will quote the old adage that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is interesting the degree to which they will turn a blind eye to centers of wealth, which are just condensed centers of power.

Anarcho-capitalists refuse to see this too – money will create a state which serves the person funding it, because every man has his price.

As it is now, he who can spend the most amount of money on lawyers and legal fights in civil court has the upper hand. I see this as only increasing in the kind of minarchist regime libertarians propose. The farmer caught with stray Monsanto seed having blown on to and grown in the corner of his field will have no choice but to capitulate repeatedly to Monsanto, as he does now. You can outlaw all sorts of lawsuits, but that won’t prevent people bringing them, twisting their arguments to fit them into pre-existing, legal avenues of relief.

Lastly, libertarians offer zero redress for past wrongs. “A free market….starting now!” while rich families who started on third base from the time they were born are on “equal footing” with those who never even got a turn at bat. There is nothing libertarianism has to offer the very poor, except the questionable explanation that the reason their cities are blighted is because of “government intervention” or “high taxes, preventing business investment” which explains a little bit of the problem, but not most of it. (Why would anyone do business in Manhattan or San Francisco if it was really all about regulation and taxes?)

The libertarians get it half right in their suspicion of and rejection of the state, but with me, personally, they fail completely at addressing the corrupting power of money. Their belief in the free market’s sustainability (whereby depressions are just “market corrections” proving capitalism works) doesn’t really address the generations of resentment, hatred, and alienation such events cause. This negative feeling is what sabotages the minarchist state. As much as the non-initiation of force principle is enough for libertarians to live on, it’s not enough for a hard-working father who has to face his children on Christmas with nothing under the tree because the auto plant he worked for dutifully for 20 years just shut down.

In fairness to libertarians, libertarians themselves are not the weak link. In their passion to prove that minarchism or even statelessness (as many libertarians are really anarchists) works, they will open their wallets, and they will donate to charities. Libertarians, by and large, are not the dishonest corruptors of the system they advocate: it’s the people in power who view libertarians as useful idiots who help them continue to perpetuate graft and fraud as a “way of doing business.” that are the problem. Those who would benefit most from what libertarians propose aren’t even libertarians: it’s the very wealthy who will use libertarian concepts to prevent taxation and regulation (resulting in unsafe mines, factories, and so forth, among other things), and who will use the money they make to use government in their favor should that be a better alternative.

I credit libertarians with, especially recently, front-burnering issues of corporate welfare and so on.

But in the end, greed is what drives business – not a celebration of the non-initiation of force principle, nor not even building railroads or making Rearden metal. What drives business is money, and businesses are whores, and they will do anything ranging from cold (firing loyal workers in depressed areas) to fraud (taking bailout money) in pursuit of this goal.

I used to believe, or wanted to believe, that businessmen were moral. I used to accept the lines the way Rand drew them – honest businessmen making these important things whose benefits trickled down to everyone else vs. second handers and leechers.

This was a stacked deck. It wasn’t some intellectual realization based on something I read, but something I’ve come to understand having worked 12 years now in a corporation, and before that for smaller businesses. I’ve never worked for anyone I’ve actually liked or whose character I’ve respected. I’ve never worked for anyone who wouldn’t at least flirt with dishonesty for a quick buck.

Money is what matters. Money is power. It will always be that way, and there will be no justice or freedom until some way is found to blunt its influence on the world.

I have no alternative system to offer. Having brought these ideas up before, the response is always the same: “Well what kind of OBVIOUSLY STATIST alternative to you propose? COMMUNISM?” or some bullshit response like that.

I propose nothing.

I simply say that libertarianism is unworkable in the long term, our progression from a somewhat libertarian society to what we have now in spite of the apparent guidance of the US Constitution proves it.

Power corrupts. Money is power. Money corrupts. And personally speaking, I dread a future based around money and business. I have little interest in either beyond the fact that money is necessary to provide food, clothing, and shelter. But as long as I’m working 50, 60, 70 hours a week to keep my health insurance premiums paid, you can tell me about freedom all you want, but I sure don’t feel free. I’m long since past the point where the conceptual abstraction of “freedom” is enough. If I don’t have the time or energy to dance, it ain’t freedom. And that’s what it is now: work, work, work, spend, spend, spend, until you die. All of life has been reduced to this. It’s dehumanizing, and it has created a corrupt, selfish (and not in that good Ayn Rand way that leads to awesome motors that run on nothing), dreary consumerist world.

One need look no farther than the health care debate, a debate which offers such lousy alternatives that I don’t care who ultimately wins.

Through taxes or being gouged by capitalist enterprises, the fact remains that many peoples lives, financial stability, and so on, will be considered expandable sacrifices to a bankrupt principle of laissez faire economics. Whether through fraud, waste, and the expropriation of my money through taxes, or through private enterprise gouging consumers, ultimately, the outcome is the same: Many of us will not be able to afford health care.

It’s all about money.

2000 years ago it was all about money.

2000 years from now it will probably be all about money.

I have no solution. All I know is neither state socialism nor libertarianism offers a realistic fix for these problems.

The idea of children going without health care, or having to go bankrupt and destitute because you or a family member gets sick and the bills pile up, is just not something I’m comfortable with morally, and it relates to no credible moral system I am aware of.

But these are, apparently our choices. (Libertarians may comfort themselves with things like, “Well if we enact tort reform,” and so forth – but this will have a minimal impact at best.)

That is, unless your daddy was filthy rich.

This is a culture where teachers are paying money out of their own meager paychecks for pencils and paper and crayons, and Britney Spears is worth millions.

I continue on, paying my own way in life, but I am so tired. So god damned tired. I don’t even know why I get out of bed in the morning. Money has ruined music. It has ruined art. It has created a gaudy, offensive sea of glowing, pulsing billboards fucking up my view of the night sky. It has torn up ecosystems and sentenced the lot of us to terrible crackerbox developments, and paralyzing monoculture where I feel my own imagination shrivel up and die. Or is it the work – the relentless, neverending work, to prove I’m worth something as a human…to stay…employable, in this “market correction.”

I still like libertarians and they are welcome in my home, but I fear their overall solution to the problems of the country or world have little or no future. Nearly 40 years of crap performance in elections would seem to be ample evidence for this.

But I guess I like libertarians because they are dreamers – even romantics. For all the “stiff upper lip” posturing that comes with arguments for self-sufficiency as the foundation for our culture, libertarians really see a romantic future where passions – for business or otherwise – would be unleashed and unrestrained, leading to the betterment of our species. I still respect it because I used to feel that way myself.

But any future in which all I do is work, and worry about money, and have to spend all of my free time analyzing banks and investment houses to see how they’re squandering my wealth and encrypting fraud and loss in novel financial instruments, is not something I have the energy to fight for anymore.

tl;dr: Money ruins everything.

School officials have threatened a hearing-impaired girl with suspension if she uses sign language to talk to her friends on the school bus, the girl’s parents say.

But officials at Stonybrook School — which is not a school for the hearing-impaired — and district officials in Branchburg, N.J., apparently believe signing is a safety hazard. They have sent a letter to the Lesko family ordering Danica to stop using sign language on the school bus or risk a three-day suspension.

The March 30 letter from her principal that said Danica was “doing sign language after being told it wasn’t allowed on the bus.”

The Leskos may file a lawsuit over the sign language ban, claiming officials are violating Danica’s civil rights and violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“She has a hearing problem, and now she’s being punished for using sign language,” Mary Ann Lesko, Danica’s mother, told The Star-Ledger of Newark. “It’s absurd.”

A horrific story already, my heart sank to a new low when I read the closing paragraph:

Danica’s parents say she began losing her hearing last November, when a classmate allegedly shot a bottle rocket near her ear. They have already sued the Branchburg School District over that incident.

Meanwhile, a Ugandan minister of parliament has proposed legislation to enforce a penalty of death for the “offence of aggravated homosexuality.”

Well then.

John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono has been given a lifetime achievement honour at Mojo magazine’s awards in London.

Mojo chief editor Phil Alexander, who hosted the event, praised Ono, 76, as “a huge influence on modern music”.

Bollocks.

Joseph Dana, one of the co-creators of the video above, has written the following to explain why he and Max Blumenthal made the video, and what he thinks it shows:

It’s about entitlement, stupid.

Max and I went on to the streets of Jerusalem at ten o’clock on a Wednesday to ascertain the feelings of the young population about Obama’s upcoming speech in Cairo. As is often the case, the streets of central Jerusalem were not filled with native Israelis but American Jews. Doubtlessly anyone who has visited Jerusalem has encountered the droves of American Jewish kids that are sent to Israel to study for a period of time from Teaneck or Westchester. We asked people a simple question, “What do you think of Obama and Israel?” Most of the people that we talked to were dual American Israeli citizens. The answers in this video reflect the education and worrisome perspectives that many American Jews harbor towards Israeli politics. The sense of entitlement that the American Jewish community has when it comes to Israeli policy is on full raw display in the words of these young adults.

Based on our interviews these people were from high socio economic backgrounds and had developed thoughts about current Israeli politics. The question is why more journalists are not covering this story. All you have to do is walk the streets of Jerusalem and you will find dozens of people that harbor the same beliefs. As a resident of Jerusalem, I can say that the people represented in this video are not members of a fringe group or simply drunk college kids. These people reflect the sentiments shared by many people in this country and this city. These people and their families are the core of the opposition to meaningful peace between Israel and her neighbors. This is what Obama is up against.

While many pro-life organisations have come out and condemned the killing on Sunday, the fact remains that violence and intimidation have remained a constant thread in the history of the modern-day movement.

According to data gathered by the National Abortion Federation, a pro-choice group, there had been at least nine killings in anti-abortion protests, 17 attempted murders and 400 death threats.

Bombings and arson attempts of abortion facilities also happen on a regular basis with cases often reaching double figures every year.

The most famous was probably the Christmas Day bombings which targeted three clinics in 1984 with the perpetrators dubbing them a “birthday gift for Jesus”.

More reading material of a distinctly more repulsive nature is available in this blog post on Carnal Nation, in which the author has used Twitter for its only sensible purpose: mining public opinion. Gathered there is a collection of “tweets” from a fringe-group of pro-life nutjobs who, ironically, celebrated the assassination.

They would seem to be also supporters of the death penalty, which would make one doubt the creedence of their claim that they believe every life really is sacred. Or perhaps their flawed logic is simply the product of having been brought up to believe fundamentalist dogma, and they see no logical contradiction.

In any event, here are some of the tweets:

George Tiller the baby killer was shot dead this morning. God bless the gunmen who hopefully won’t be caught.

was George Tiller the baby killers brain scrambled the way he scrambled full term fetuses.. one can only hope

No need to pray for George Tiller. We know he went straight to hell!!!!!

Tiller the Baby Killer is finally dead….God took care of what needed to be done….

the killing of tiller the baby killer was JUSTICE, not murder.

All very Christian and forgiving, don’t you think? It’s worth noting that the overwhelming majority of tweets from both sides of the abortion debate expressed horror at the assassination of Dr. Tiller. Indeed, the last tweet linked above seems to be from a particularly screwy individual, who also appears to be a proud racist.

So, these people aren’t in the mainstream, but the Internet acts as a veritable megaphone for their idiocy. The effects on their lives is predictable, as “the stupid, bigoted comments people used to make at the water cooler now get preserved for future employers to find using Google.”

But what effect does this have on the rest of us? Comment and phenomena like this will always be sought out to satisfy a kind of morbid curiosity many of us might have. Is there the chance this will result in it becoming more acceptable and popular?

Radiohead – Nude

Radiohead – Nude (Live at 93 Feet East, London, 2008-01-16)

Well handled by Thom, though, I must say. Reminds me of the Autechre bootleg, Live @ Lees Palace (2008-04-12), a fantastic bootleg in quality and setlist, almost ruined by some stupid bitch who keeps screaming and talking in the left channel… Or the drunken idiots who kept coming up to the bootlegger at Aphex’s 2008 Oxegen Festival gig.

It’s more excusable in the last two cases, but even so — what do you go to a gig for? To experience, enjoy and dance to the music? Or to scream into your poor, resentful friends’ ears any banal shit that comes into your thick head?

He was a constant user of anabolic-androgenic steroids, of which acne is a side effect — as is damaged sperm and shrunken testicles, both of which he also possessed.

Potentially NSFW photos of the severe damage done to his chest can be seen here.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find all three images equally repulsive.