Month: January 2017

When a new president takes office, the White House press corps gets a new face behind the briefing podium. The White House press secretary is the key to controlling the flow of information between the presidential administration and journalists—putting together press releases, holding briefings for the press corps, and facilitating access to top officials in the administration. But the idea of an official White House press secretary is more recent than you might think.

Back in the 19th century, the press didn’t even have a regular presence at the White House—partly because the president just wasn’t as powerful as Congress, so journalists didn’t see a need. William W. Price, a reporter for the Washington Evening Star, was perhaps the first White House beat reporter, stationing himself outside the White House to interview people on their way out of the building starting in 1895, and inspiring other reporters to follow suit. In 1896, some newspaper correspondents decided to take over a table outside the president’s secretary’s office (the 19th century equivalent of the chief of staff). They never really left, but it would be decades before the press got a dedicated presidential liaison.

During Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, one of his aides, George Cortelyou—the president’s “confidential stenographer“—began issuing presidential press releases and disseminating copies of the president’s speeches for the first time. Roosevelt finally gave the press dedicated space in the White House, meeting with reporters regularly.

Still, the first person to officially hold the White House Press Secretary title was George Akerson, who was appointed to the post in 1929 by Herbert Hoover. Akerson, like many subsequent press secretaries, had once been a journalist, serving as a Washington correspondent for the Minneapolis Tribune. He later became Hoover’s assistant when Hoover was Commerce Secretary and served as his right-hand man during the presidential election campaign. Just how well Akerson did the press secretary job, though, is debated. Some call him “incompetent,” while other historians say the loyal aide merely took the blame for his boss’s clear distaste for the press. He wouldn’t be the last press secretary to have his legacy tied up in his boss’s shortcomings, however.

TO QUOTE A PRESIDENT

Nowadays, we may hear the president’s words (and tweets) verbatim all the time, but the populace didn’t always have access to presidential sound bites. Before Hoover, reporters weren’t even allowed to quote their interviews with the president directly in the press. (When Woodrow Wilson became the first president to hold a formal press conference in 1913, the whole thing was off the record—no quotes allowed.)

But although Hoover would change this policy and promise a more open relationship with the media, his standing with the press fell rapidly over his term. Despite his promise to answer questions from journalists, for instance, he required reporters to submit all questions beforehand to Akerson, who met with the press twice a day. He would only answer the questions he liked, and sometimes, he wouldn’t answer any at all. In fact, the press wasn’t truly free to quote the president until Eisenhower’s administration, two decades later.

A MODERNIZING PRESS

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office after Hoover in 1933, the press secretary’s job had changed drastically. Stephen T. Early was the first press secretary to deal with a media landscape that wasn’t just newspapers but included radio and newsreels, too.

Early, a respected reporter who had broken the news of President Warren G. Harding’s 1923 death while at the Associated Press, had a key role in FDR’s media strategy. At his urging, the president held twice-weekly press conferences for the first time. Early also helped Roosevelt create his famous fireside chats—comforting, conversational radio broadcasts that appeared throughout the 1930s and early 1940s. Early left his post shortly before the president’s death, returning to the White House for a brief two weeks later to work with Truman after the sudden death of press secretary Charles Ross [PDF].

New press secretaries have had to grapple with new challenges of the job each year. Mike McCurry (one of Bill Clinton’s press secretaries), for instance, was the first to televise press briefings in their entirety. First, he allowed a few minutes of the briefing to be filmed, slowly allowing the cameras to film more and more. He came to regret this when TV stations began broadcasting his briefings live during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, later calling it “the dumbest thing I ever did.”

And the position of press secretary is (slowly) evolving, too. The post has historically been filled by men, and there have only been two women in history to take on the role. Dee Dee Meyers, Bill Clinton’s first press secretary, was the first, taking the podium in 1993. Meyers later became a consultant for The West Wing, and the character of the press secretary in the show, C.J. Cregg, was inspired by her. (Played by Allison Janney, Cregg is also the only fictional character to ever conduct a real White House press briefing.) George W. Bush hired Dana Perino in 2007, making her the second woman press secretary in history.

INSIDE THE PRESSURE-COOKER

It’s rare for one press secretary to stay in the job for more than a few years because it’s so stressful. Only five press secretaries have stayed for the full term of the president who hired them. One of the longest-serving press secretaries, Marlin Fitzwater, told Editor & Publisher in 1996 that he thought his six years in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations were too much for him. “I think it’s too high-pressure. You get along OK, but you don’t realize how your effectiveness becomes diminished by just the daily battles,” he said. “I don’t think a press secretary can survive in that kind of a pressure cooker for more than four or five years.”

Of course, the pressures of the job differ based on the relationship the press secretary has with the president. Dwight Eisenhower’s press secretary James Hagerty, for example, was one of Ike’s most trusted advisors, traveling to be by his side when the president was recovering from a heart attack and when he had surgery. Sometimes, in the middle of a press conference, Eisenhower would stop to consult with Hagerty. And Hagerty was the first one to allow journalists to quote the president’s words at press conferences in full, verbatim—giving him another boost in the eyes of the reporters he worked with.

Presidential administrations aren’t always so trusting. Scott McClellan, press secretary for George W. Bush, had difficulty squeezing accurate information out of senior White House officials, and as a result, his credibility with the press tanked. “He got pounded day after day because the president didn’t allow him to do much more than repeat the talking points,” Slate political columnist and CBS journalist John Dickerson wrote in 2006. Dickerson described the resignation of “dutiful, gracious, and somewhat piñatalike McClellan” as “one last symbolic mission” of self-sacrifice. Like Hoover’s press secretary George Akerson, McClellan was caught between reporters demanding more—and more accurate—information and White House bosses who didn’t want to reveal anything.

SERVING AS A GO-BETWEEN

But according to Ron Nessen, press secretary under Gerald Ford, the basic requirements of the job are the same regardless of the president. “I think most press secretaries, no matter what their background is, come to understand that the same set of rules apply year after year, administration after administration: Tell the truth, don’t lie, don’t cover up, put out the bad news yourself, put it out as soon as possible, put your own explanation on it, all those things,” he explained in an article for eJournal USA.

And while each president has a unique—occasionally combative—relationship with the press, McCurry says that the press secretary shouldn’t be the enemy of members of the media. “The press office has to be an advocate for the press and the public’s right to know inside the White House,” he told the White House Historical Association. “Sometimes you will lose out to other priorities, but at least the press will sense that someone is looking out for its interests. That is the way to best serve the president. The modern presidency cannot work effectively if it is constantly at war with the media.”

In the 1990s, PC users didn’t have the ability to stream movies, video chat with friends, or play high-definition video games like they do today. Instead many turned to screensavers as a source of entertainment. The 3D pipes, zooming stars, and infinite brick walls of the early home computer era have all but vanished from our desktops, but Motherboard reports that a Dutch digital artist has made them the focus of his new art exhibit.

In “Sleepmode: The Art of the Screensaver,” Rafaël Rozendaal showcases 27 classic “moving paintings” from the not-too-distant past. They include the very first screensaver (a.k.a. a blank screen), as well as one of the first moving graphics developed by screensaver pioneer Jack Eastman (he was inspired to code “Flying Toasters” after walking into his kitchen late at night and picturing his toaster with wings).

At Rotterdam’s Het Nieuwe Instituut in the Netherlands, the four oldest screensavers will be displayed on their original PCs for added authenticity; the show opens January 27 and runs until June 25. If you can’t make it to Rotterdam in that time frame, Rozendaal has also made a collection of interviews with classic screensaver creators available online. And of course, you can always pull up one of the many old-school screen savers on YouTube and transport your computer back to 1999.

[h/t Motherboard]

Psychologists say little girls have about six years before they’re affected by harmful gender stereotypes about their intelligence. The researchers published their findings in the journal Science.

Belief in oneself is not just some fluffy idea. A multitude of studies have shown that girls and women who are confident in their abilities are more likely to succeed in school and in their careers. They’re more likely to take risks, score higher on tests, and advance in the world. But widespread sexism can make this confidence very difficult to come by.

Lead researcher Lin Bian is a doctoral researcher at the University of Illinois. “Our society tends to associate brilliance with men more than with women, and this notion pushes women away from jobs that are perceived to require brilliance,” Bian said in a statement. “We wanted to know whether young children also endorse these stereotypes.”

The research team recruited 400 children between the ages of 5 and 7 for a series of four experiments. In the first, the kids were told a story about someone who was “really, really smart” and were told about four different people, two men and two women. In the second study, they simply had to guess which of the four people was “really, really smart.”

The 5-year-olds were quite equitable-minded, believing that either gender could be the story’s “really, really smart” protagonist. But by age 6, girls were far less likely to guess that women could be “really, really smart.”

In the third experiment, the researchers showed some of the 6- and 7-year-old kids two very similar games. One was labeled for “children who are really, really smart” and the other for “children who try really, really hard.” Then each kid was asked which game interested them more. Girls and boys were equally interested in the game for hard-working children. The game for smart children was significantly less popular among the girls.

Kids in the last study were shown a game “for smart children,” then asked if they were interested in playing. The 5-year-old girls were all for it, but 6-year-old girls had substantially less interest than the boys.

Co-author Sarah-Jane Leslie studies philosophy at Princeton University. “In earlier work,” she said, “we found that adult women were less likely to receive higher degrees in fields thought to require ‘brilliance,’ and these new findings show that these stereotypes begin to impact girls’ choices at a heartbreakingly young age.”

Johnny Brennan and Kamal Ahmed bonded over a dummy. It was the 1970s, and a teenaged Brennan had dressed a human-shaped sack in a football helmet and jersey before launching it off the roof of his parents’ Queens home and in front of oncoming traffic. Panic-stricken, drivers would swerve to avoid a collision while Brennan was in hysterics.

Ahmed, who was several years younger, found that he shared his neighbor’s questionable taste in humor. With Ahmed as a co-conspirator, Brennan would spend much of the 1980s and ’90s making prank phone calls to businesses in various character guises, insulting employees or owners with belligerent requests for work. Though it started as a lark, The Jerky Boys would go on to sell millions of albums, star in a movie, and inspire a future generation of comedic talent like director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) and Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy). Spin magazine once declared them the “Hall & Oates of crank calling.”

There’s just one problem with that comparison: Hall & Oates stayed together.

Although phony phone calls have probably been around for as long as the telephone itself, it wasn’t until the 1960s that entertainers began using them as a premise for comedy. Jerry Lewis made calls using an expensive recording system he had Paramount build for him, releasing the back-and-forth on his albums. Steve Allen did the same, with compilations that came from his late-night talk show.

But it wasn’t until Jim Davidson and John Elmo, better known as the Bum Bar Bastards, decided to prank a salty old bar owner named Louis “Red” Deutsch in the mid-1970s that crank calls morphed into a raw, underground sensation. The two would call Deutsch at the Tube Bar and ask to speak to “Ben Dover” or another sophomoric patron.

Red, who seemed to have a zero-tolerance policy for humor, would escalate the situation rapidly.

“I’ll put a few bullets into you, yo muddaf*ckin’ bum!” he rasped. “Come over here and say these things!” Davidson and Elmo did not, but they did keep calling Red almost every weekend for two years straight.

The “Tube Bar tapes” proved there was an appetite for a garage-band level of prank callers. In 1986, Brennan started breaking up the monotony of his construction job by coming home and pranking New York businesses with a tape recorder running. Honing characters like the brusque Frank Rizzo or the withdrawn Sol Rosenberg, Brennan would rope unsuspecting civilians into his audio sketches, prompting outbursts of anger or resignation; Ahmed would sometimes whisper jokes into his ear.

Ahmed, who worked as a bouncer, gave one of their tapes to a club patron. Before long, the calls were being dubbed and circulated through small-press music ‘zines like Factsheet Five and aired on morning shows. Howard Stern started to recap the machinations of Frank Rizzo.

Calling an auto mechanic, “Rizzo” made his case for an open position.

“Are you applying for a job?”

“That’s right, tough guy. I’ve worked on race cars for 18 years … right now I had to leave an old job because of problems with my boss … I’ll come down there with my tools and start work tomorrow!”

“I have to hire you first, guy.”

“Well, I’m the best!”

Sensing opportunity, Brennan and Ahmed began selling their tapes through a 900 number. Their continued popularity got them signed for a full-fledged record release in 1993.

At the time, the team still didn’t have a name. When Brennan told his mother about the album deal, she suggested they call themselves The Jerky Boys.

Bolstered by airtime—and as a consequence, free advertising—on national radio programs, The Jerky Boys went double platinum, selling 500,000 copies. The Jerky Boys 2 followed in 1994, and sold the same number in its first two weeks of release. Brennan and Ahmed quit their day jobs, hired a manager, and devoted themselves full-time to the business of annoying people.

The boys didn’t bother with any legal details early on. Once success hit and the potential for lawsuits loomed, a crank call would typically be followed by a more reserved phone call from their manager, who would try to convince the offended party to sign a release form. Most would: Brennan once recalled that only one suit was ever filed as a result of his years as a telephone harassment specialist.

The success of the albums drew the attention of Hollywood. The kids of singer Tom Jones were reported to be big fans. In 1994, Brennan and Ahmed were courted by actors Tony Danza and Emilio Estevez, who executive produced The Jerky Boys movie in 1995. The film—in which the two played fictionalized versions of themselves—gave them unprecedented visibility but savage reviews. An unimpressed critic from The New York Times noted that:

“As telephone guerrillas puncturing institutional defenses with their rude crank phone calls, the Jerky Boys have touched a nerve. The comic flailings of these self-described ‘lowlifes from Queens’ are comic cries of anger from a social stratum that looks ahead and sees only dead ends. Adopting funny voices and taping phone calls that make fools of their frequently snippy recipients is as efficient a way as any of momentarily leveling the social landscape.”

Undeterred, the Boys released several more albums before Ahmed decided to call it quits to pursue a filmmaking career. The split seemed less than amicable, with Ahmed chastising Brennan for continuing what he felt was a juvenile pursuit and Brennan downplaying Ahmed’s contributions.

Brennan released two more albums in 2001 and 2007, but stayed largely silent. He told Rolling Stone in 2014 that the death of his father in 2000 diluted his passion for pranking: His dad had been an inspiration for the rough-hewn Frank Rizzo character.

While Brennan wasn’t producing much new material, his library of classics endured. Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy, credited Brennan with helping to shape his sense of humor; so did Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig, who felt inspired to commit to what people might consider “lowbrow” comedy in films like Bridesmaids.

Today, the 53-year-old Brennan operates The Jerky Boys’s official website, which is home to sporadic new calls and a small line of gourmet foods. Although Ahmed is still absent, his business is still plural: Brennan has explained that the “Boys” of the name refers to his characters, not themselves.

Even professional writers will let slip the occasional typo or misspelling. And your spell-checker won’t catch the difference between very and vary, or tell you that you have a stray comma stuck in that paragraph. Grammarly, a web and desktop app, can.

It checks spelling and usage, highlighting your grammar mistakes. When you click on one of those red underlines, a pop-up will tell you exactly what the app thinks is wrong, whether it’s unnecessary punctuation, the wrong “its,” or a verb-noun agreement issue. It will help you find a synonym, too. It’s like your elementary school teacher, automated.

You can either upload your text to the Grammarly website, download the desktop app, or use the in-browser extension, which will check your emails, Facebook posts, and anything else you’re writing on the web. Banish your writing mistakes for good and get the Chrome extension here or the desktop app (for Mac only) here. If you use Windows, there’s a Microsoft Office version, too.

Starting a new hobby often requires time and money—but if you don’t have much of either, you can skip the expensive in-person classes or tutorials, download one of the free or low-cost apps below, and explore an intriguing side interest on your own schedule.

1. GUITAR WORLD LESSONS

Aspiring rock stars can download Guitar World Lessons, an app that provides users with hundreds of downloadable video tutorials for the guitar and bass, plus PDF documents of the corresponding music and tablature. Professional guitarists—including some of Guitar World magazine’s editors—serve as instructors; their classes range from beginner to advanced, and explore genres including blues, metal, bluegrass, and jazz.

You can download Guitar World Lessons for free, but you’ll have to purchase the lessons individually for $1 to $3, or in a package for $15. Each instructional video series includes one free introductory lesson.

Find it: iOS

2. DUOLINGO

 
Free online language-learning platform Duolingo has a (similarly free) app that lets you learn more than 20 languages on the go. Interactive games, exercises, and casual text conversations with a chatbot help users hone their skills. To advance to more difficult lessons, you have to pass a test evaluating your progress. If competition motivates you more than the sheer love of learning does, optional social clubs let users share a newsfeed of their accomplishments with their friends and compare their achievements. A companion flashcard app, Tinycards, is also available for iOS.

Find it: iOS, Android

3. HOW TO DRAW

 
You don’t have to be a natural artist to learn how to draw (although it certainly helps). Artfonica‘s How to Draw offers 70 step-by-step tutorials that teach amateur Picassos how to sketch cartoons, animals, anime figures, and more.

Find it: iOS, Android.

4. VOICE TUTOR

 
The Voice Tutor app is a virtual vocal coach that helps users develop and improve their singing voices. It evaluates vocal weaknesses with a diagnostic test and provides special training exercises to conquer them, complete with a pitch meter that checks and analyzes your pitch as you sing. There’s also a full vocal warm-up section, special breathing exercises, and a fun “Riff ‘n Run” option that teaches you how to do some fancy vocal gymnastics.

Voice Tutor costs $5. If the app isn’t cutting it and you’re willing to shell out the cash for one-on-one lessons, you can personally contact one of the app’s studios and work with their teachers over the phone or Skype.

Find it: iOS

5. ELEMENTS OF PHOTOGRAPHY (EOP)

 
Elements of Photography (EoP) teaches users basic concepts of photography, ranging from the fundamentals—composition, depth of field, aperture, shutter speed, etc.—to more advanced topics like metering, exposure triangle, and flash photography. It also provides tools like a depth of field calculator, technical tips for different types of photo ops, and quizzes to reinforce what you’ve learned. EoP is free to download, but you’ll only be able to view its “Basics 1” introductory chapter. To gain access to the app’s full array of contents, you can purchase it for $3.

Find it: iOS, Android

6. iYOGA+

 
Yoga newbies can squeeze in a workout at home or on the go with iYoga+. The app comes with eight 30-minute videos, all of which feature an instructor performing a full sequence so viewers can learn how to transition between different poses. Workouts include energizing “morning lessons” and calming “evening lessons,” along with hatha yoga or other specialized classes, all tailored to individual fitness levels. iYoga+ is free for download, but individual lessons cost $1 to $2.

Find it: iOS

7. iBIRD LITE FREE GUIDE

 
Budding birders can expand their knowledge of North America’s and Hawaii’s feathered creatures with the iBird Lite Free Guide. It includes a database of 50 birds and helps users identify species by appearance, location, song, and other unique traits. Serious nature lovers can purchase an upgraded version of the app, the iBird Pro Guide, which costs $30 and has a database of over 900 bird species.

Find it: iOS, Android

From constellations to rescued canines, there has been no shortage of public tributes to the late David Bowie. Now, The Guardian reports, the UK’s Royal Mail postal service will honor the legendary artist with a special edition stamp collection, slated for release on March 14, 2017.

In the past, the Royal Mail has released stamp sets that pay tribute to music groups like Pink Floyd and The Beatles, but the Bowie collection marks the first time they’ve ever dedicated an entire stamp issue to a single musician or cultural figure.

“For five decades David Bowie was at the forefront of contemporary culture, and has influenced successive generations of musicians, artists, designers, and writers,” Philip Parker, Royal Mail’s head of stamp strategy, said in a statement. “Royal Mail’s stamp issue celebrates this unique figure and some of his many celebrated personas.”

The collection’s 10 stamps feature cover art from six albums, including Hunky Dory (1971), Aladdin Sane (1973), Let’s Dance (1983), and Blackstar (2016), along with images of Bowie performing live on tour. They’re currently available for pre-order online, and some even come with special edition souvenirs.

[h/t The Guardian]