I am weary of listening to the longest running death rattle ever that’s been coming out of the movie theatre industry since televisions became popular in the 1950s. Then it was VCRs, then the Internet, then DVDs, then high speed Internet. Each one of these was supposed to wipe theatres off the face of the earth. None have.

True, 2005 was the third consecutive year that ticket sales were in decline. Hence, the 2006 Academy Awards were basically about fellating movie theatres. Sid Ganis, President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a man with no gag reflex, said at the awards presentation:

I bet none of the artists nominated tonight have ever finished a shot for a movie, stood back and said, ‘That’s going to look great on the DVD!’ Because there is nothing like the experience of watching a movie in a darkened theatre, looking at images on an eye-enveloping screen with sound coming at you from all directions, sharing the experience with total strangers who have been brought together by the story they are seeing.

This irritates me more than a little. See, I love movies. Our home DVD collection is prodigious, and we subscribe to every movie channel our cable provider offers. I do not like being told that I’m not watching them correctly. Those in the industry who want to expand rather than narrow the interval between theatrical and DVD release dates are artificially trying to dampen the effects of what Sid Ganis knows the actual problem to be, but couldn’t exactly talk about at the Oscars:

Because there is nothing like the experience of handing over 10 bucks to freeze your ass off for 2 hours watching trailers, commercials and the latest remake emanating from an out-of-focus projector with audio about 20 decibels too high blasting at you from all directions, sharing the experience with some jackass loudly discussing a calf birth on his cell phone.

Attendance is down because of what people are expected to put up with when they go to the movies (notwithstanding the quality of the fare), and the theatres are actually starting to get that. Because Americans simply cannot be trusted with public courtesy, the National Association of Theatre Owners is lobbying for legislation making it legal to jam cell phones. Combine that with better equipment maintenance and perhaps some value-added amenities like valet parking (or whatever) – things that movie theatres have control over, unlike the quality of the content – and attendance numbers will come back up. People won’t even mind paying the obnoxious markup on concessions, because that, too, is part of the experience.

John Gilmore recently lost an appeal on his lawsuit against the United States Government for the right to fly without presenting identification.

The one good thing to come out of this was that the Transportation Safety Administration stated to the 9th Circuit Court that the reason that Mr. Gilmore was not allowed to board a plane without ID was because he additionally refused to submit to a secondary screening in lieu of presenting ID. The court’s ruling is here (166KB Acrobat pdf). Since the rules governing what is and what is not allowed with respect to air travel are secret (how I wish I were joking), it took Mr. Gilmore more than three years of winding his way through our legal system for the TSA to cough up this fact.

Hm.

The Identity Project wants to put the TSA’s claim to the test. They are asking people to decline to present ID during some or all of their air travel, and report their experiences back to them. I don’t travel by air very often, but I certainly intend to provide them feedback at my next opportunity. Here’s why.

In cases such as air travel, using identification as a security measure is ineffective at stopping bad people, while being unnecessarily invasive to honest people. For those of you who don’t care about showing your ID for every silly little thing, that’s fine. I would simply ask for you to consider that each person has hus own threshold when it comes to privacy, that mine is different from yours, and that this wonderfully diverse arrangement where you get to be you and I get to be me is protected by our Bill of Rights.

A few things to consider:

• Even if we could with 100% confidence authenticate the identity of every single person boarding a plane, authenticating an individual is not the same thing as understanding that individual’s intent.
• Terror organizations capable of attacks of the sophistication and scale as those perpetrated on September 11, 2001 are not deterred by these kinds of measures.
• Every time a practice like this is imposed, citizens have to work a little harder to exercise their rights. In other words, the focus continues to shift from “Show me where it says I can’t,” to “Show us where it says you can.”

There are several reasons that the TSA gets away with these sorts of things:

Reason 1: Many Americans don’t know their own rights. A recent survey (231KB Acrobat pdf) shows that while only 28% Americans can name more than one freedom guaranteed them by the First Amendment, 41% can name more than one judge on American Idol, and 52% can name at least two characters from The Simpsons. About one in five stated that among the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment is the right to own pets.

John Gilmore’s arguments went to the First and Fourth Amendments. For the record, here they are:

Amendment I:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment IV:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Gilmore argued that his First Amendment right to assemble was violated by the government inhibiting his movements. Additionally, he stated that the government violated his Fourth Amendment protection against search and seizure without probable cause.

Reason 2: I think it’s fair to assert that most of us want to feel safe. For some, presenting ID is a reassuring ritual that lets them know that there are People In Charge. That’s fine, as long as it’s not at the price of rights I hold dear, and not when there is no hard security value complementing the warm-fuzzy.

Reason 3: It’s simply easier to comply. Couple that with fear of being hauled off for non-compliance (how far gone are we when we’re afraid of getting backroomed by our own government for hazy reasons?) and it’s easy to see why most people go along.

My good friend Gokmop once told me that one way to determine the right thing to do is that it’s frequently the harder choice. Challenging authority (for me anyway) is hard but it gets a little easier each time. I live in a country that was founded on the principle that citizens should be suspicious of their own government, and I think that’s amazing. Challenging these kinds of wrong-headed, worthless practices is my form of patriotism.

I have Caller ID, Anonymous Call Rejection, and I’m on the National Do Not Call Registry. Nevertheless, occasionally, telemarketers get through. Contrary to what you may have heard, I am by nature a polite person. Unfortunately, telemarketers are trained to take advantage of good manners. They use scripted run-on sentences so you cannot get a word in edgewise until they get out their spiel. They employ emotionally manipulative language. They use decision tree software that provides them with responses to every customer objection ever documented, to keep you on the line until they make the sale.

Clearly these tactics are impolite, and this playing field is not level. Today a thought popped into my head as to how I could even things up a little, and in an amusing way.

Nonsense.

Telemarketer: So how many ElastaGyms can I sign you up for?

Me: Magnetic banjo monkey nozzle.

Telemarketer: Pardon?

Me: Steering wheel mandible banana meter.

Telemarketer: …

Me: Hello?

Telemarketer: Uh…yes, sir. I was just asking –

Me: Veal shank kaleidoscope phenomenon.

Telemarketer: Thank you for your time. Goodbye.

Me: Mambo.

What I like about this idea is that it doesn’t involve being rude. By speaking nonsense to the telemarketer you’re opting out of the call, not meaningfully participating in their data acquisition of objections, and having a little fun in the process.

Keep a list of fun phrases by the phone. If speaking nonsense is too strange for you, try reading from a children’s book. I recommend Goodnight Moon.

“Virginia is for Lovers” was introduced in 1969 and has enjoyed enduring popularity and global recognition, but legislation before the 2006 General Assembly proposes to replace it with “Biting the Hand that Feeds.” The proposal is attached to SB 648, which would ban smoking in most public areas, including restaurants.

Virginia is the third largest tobacco grower in the country, tobacco is one of Virginia’s most profitable crops, and Philip Morris’ Richmond factory produces approximately 700 million cigarettes per day. In 2004, Virginia increased the state tax per pack from 2.5 cents to 30 cents (HB 5018). Prior to the increase, annual tax revenue from cigarettes was $15 million. The tax increase is projected to yield Virginia an additional $130 million annually.

Competing bills for the slogan’s replacement include HB 2044: “Do As I Say, Not As I Do,” and SB 1026: “Virginia is for Hypocritical Dickheads.”

For those who don’t know, a mint julep is bourbon, simple syrup, fresh mint and shaved ice. Prepare one properly and you will see the face of God.

Yesterday I invented the poor man’s mint julep by drinking bourbon right after brushing my teeth. I didn’t see the face of God, but when I squinted really hard I swear that I could see Tom Waits.

Through various channels, I have followed the development and deployment of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology for a couple of years now and finally decided to write something about it. Let me start by stating that my position is one of passionate opposition to the use of this technology in specific applications.

RFID technology consists of tags (a chip, antenna and possibly a power source), and readers (handheld, mobile or stationary). Reading distance varies primarily due to whether or not the tag is powered, and the radio frequency used. Unpowered (passive) tags receive power from the radio signal of the reader. Their read ranges vary from 2 millimeters to several meters. Powered (semi-passive or active) tags currently have a maximum read range measuring tens of meters. When a tag comes into proximity of a reader, it transmits a unique identifier. The current EPCGlobal standard (1.6MB pdf) for RFID uses a 96-bit identifier, which is a large enough number to identify uniquely every consumer object in the world for the next 1,000 years.

That’s all most RFID tags do – transmit a number. What makes RFID technology so powerful are the databases that store information related to that number.

The PR line coming out of most corporations engaged in RFID projects enthusiastically extols heretofore unrealized efficiencies in the supply chain. The implication is that businesses will have a better, cheaper handle on their stuff as it moves from manufacturer to distributor to retail destination. This will result in the products you want being in stock, and cost savings that companies will no doubt pass on to consumers. Another frequently touted consumer advantage is automated checkouts – you won’t even need to take your purchases out of the cart.

The only cost to the consumer is the total elimination of privacy, and a ready-made infrastructure for a global surveillance society.

I am not exaggerating.

Privacy

Once tags become cheap enough (the target is 5 or fewer cents per tag) the goal of corporations is to tag merchandise at the item level. Every needle, no. Every package of needles, yes. Today’s bar codes uniquely identify classes of products. A bar code can identify a box of Cheerios as such, but cannot distinguish one specific box of Cheerios from another. RFID can, because of the size of the number used. In addition, a bar code requires unobstructed line of sight. Radio waves can be read through shopping bags, shelves, walls and floors.

The greatest benefit that item-level RFID tags offers businesses is the pinpoint insight it gives into the lives of consumers.

Try this on for size:

Sandra Soccermom (38 years old, divorced, 2 children, income bracket 40K to 50K) entered SuperMegaMart #1418 (the SuperMegaMart location she frequents 95% of the time, 2.5 miles from her residence) at 5:42pm EST 1/4/2006. At 5:44pm she removed a 20-pack box of Tampax Super Absorbent tampons from the shelf for 11.2 seconds, replaced it and picked up 20-pack box of Tampax Super Plus Absorbent tampons and placed them in her cart. At 5:46pm she removed a pint of Haagen-Dazs mocha almond fudge ice cream and placed it in her cart. Prior transactions show a high correlation between Sandra Soccermom’s purchase of feminine sanitary products and ice cream. Recommend marking up ice cream in 5% increments when feminine sanitary products are detected in cart, until price tolerance threshold for this consumer is determined. At 5:49pm she checked out, paid cash and used her SuperMegaMart Savings Club Card. The Tampax box was identified during a streetside garbage scan on 1/10/2006, suggesting use by an additional member of the household.

– A Brief Glimpse into MrPikes’ Fevered Imagination

This scenario is 100% realistic when one combines RFID with demographic information readily available from companies like Acxiom, ChoicePoint and LexisNexis, who are in the business of aggregating data from a variety of sources, then reselling it to businesses and the United States Government.

The garbage scanning part of the scenario is where most people end up backing away from me with nervous smiles. Please to note, the Supremes ruled that individuals have no reasonable expectation to privacy when it comes to garbage they have placed out for collection, and that police can search it without a warrant (see California v. Greenwood). Data collected from searching trash is something that marketers already pay for. RFID just makes it easy to hire some schmuck with a car-mounted reader to drive slowly through neighborhoods on garbage day for $6.00 an hour.

In the United States, data collected about you does not belong to you, it belongs to the entity that collected it. It can be purchased by anyone to whom the collector chooses to sell it. That includes your employer, or potential employer.

Several companies have successfully banned their employees from smoking, on or off company property. The reason cited most is the cost of health insurance. Imagine if the company for whom you work banned not only smoking, but eating certain foods or drinking alcohol (all legal activities, incidentally), using the same argument. The data collection that RFID enables makes it that much easier to enforce such policies. As for the argument that an employee is free to work someplace else, that argument only works if there are companies out there that do not have such bans today, or decide to implement them tomorrow.

RFID’s appeal to marketers is huge, the increase to the corporate bottom line is significant, and the benefit to consumers is entirely negotiable.

Of course, if Renfields like RFID Journal are to be believed, RFID not only offers big benefits to the consumer, it’s also necessary to preserve National Security. The following comes from their FAQ:

Are there any consumer benefits to RFID? Or do all the benefits go to the companies that use it?

There are many consumer benefits. Greater efficiency in the supply chain will reduce costs and improve efficiencies. Companies will pass some of these savings on to consumers to try to gain market share from less efficient competitors. RFID could be used by retailers to expedite returns and by manufacturers to manage warrantee claims and improve after-sales support of items such as computers and DVD players. RFID could also reduce the counterfeiting of pharmaceutical drugs and insure the integrity of products purchased by consumers. And RFID could be used to secure the food supply and prevent terrorists from sneaking weapons of mass destruction into a country through shipping containers.

Is it just me, or does playing the terrorist card this early in the game just stink of desperation?

The only attempt made to pacify privacy concerns (besides the empty promises of corporate shills) is a component of the RFID standard itself. The current protocol calls for readers to be able to issue tags a “kill” command. Once a tag is told to “die” it will no longer respond to interrogation from subsequent readers. This technological solution to the privacy issue is problematic for several reasons. Even stipulating that a killed tag can never be brought back from the dead, killing a tag runs counter to interests of business. It is therefore reasonable to expect that businesses will offer incentives to consumers to leave tags alive, or make it highly inconvenient to do otherwise (like inextricably linking tags to returns and warranties). In addition, killing tags at the point of sale does not address the data collected prior to checkout. Last, once RFID is deployed globally, any government at any time could make it illegal to kill tags (more on this in the Surveillance section).

Just as you can tell a lot about a given consumer from hus garbage, you can tell a lot about a corporation by examining its patent applications. IBM’s “Identification and Tracking of Persons Using RFID-Tagged Items” (USPTO patent pending 20020165758) says a lot about the less-publicized intentions for RFID. BellSouth’s “Radio-Frequency Tags for Sorting Post-Consumption Items” (USPTO patent pending 20040133484) deals with, that’s right, scanning your trash.

Surveillance

Ubiquitous RFID will effectively eliminate anonymity once and for all.

The data trail that people leave behind as they go about their lives grows as technology becomes more pervasive. It is already possible to track an individual’s movements via hus credit cards, transit cards (such as New York’s MetroCard or RFID-based automatic toll collection devices), cell phone, access control card (swipe or proximity cards that open doors), and publicly placed cameras.

There is a long list of criminal investigations that have effectively used evidence from all of these sources. An interesting example can be found here. I take no issue with accessing personal data, with a warrant, to prove a suspect’s whereabouts at the time a crime was committed.

Imagine that you have RFID tags embedded in the soles of your shoes. I’ll even stipulate that they were put there by a business strictly for the supply chain benefits. However, you paid for the shoes with a credit card, or you used a valued customer card, or you subsequently walked into a store wearing those shoes, and then purchased something in a way that identifies you. There is now a record in a database connecting your identity with those shoes. Now imagine an RFID reader at every highway onramp/offramp, tollbooth, subway entrance/exit and connected to every stoplight camera.

The hard part of putting any new technology infrastructure in place is running power and communications. With the exception of onramps and offramps, the power and communications for this is already there.

Federal agencies, per the 1974 Privacy Act, cannot legally collect or share data on individuals who are not suspected of a crime, or connected to an investigation, except to provide services like Social Security. However, there is nothing in the current law stopping them from hoovering up personal data from aggregators like Acxiom, ChoicePoint and LexisNexis (as mentioned in the Privacy section) by the terabyte.

When RFID is implemented in passports, driver’s licenses and state-issued identity cards, the whole public sector/private sector data collection loophole will be moot anyway. Backing away from me with a nervous smile? Save it for the homeless guy waving the broken bottle and go here.

The availability of this kind of data will chill Freedom of Assembly. This is a good right to have when meeting with friends to organize things like overthrowing your government because they’re a bunch of assholes.

So? Show up to your government overthrow meeting without any ID. That works fine until carrying identification is legally mandated. Okay, break the law. Well, you had better scan everything you wear to the meeting with a tag reader, lest your necktie rat you out. Did you buy that necktie with cash? Assuming that RFID hasn’t already been put into cash by the time that you bought the necktie, the FBI or whoever can still identify the necktie as being present at a subversive (i.e., terrorist) meeting. So the FBI starts a file on the necktie or, more likely, beret. It shows up the next time you walk through the door of your local 7-11 at 3am on a burrito run. The only transaction logged 15 minutes before or after the initial scan is from your debit card.

We enjoy some fantastic freedoms in this great nation that we, perhaps, take for granted because we’ve never known it any other way. Imagine having to go through a federal checkpoint when crossing from one state to another. Now, imagine being denied passage.

Conclusion

The fundamental argument against RFID is this:

Data that does not exist cannot be abused. Data that exists will eventually be abused. Any other discussion is about scope, and RFID’s scope is terrifying.

I encourage you to write to your government representatives about the RFID Right To Know Act. It calls for all RFID-chipped goods to be identified as such, which is about all we can hope to get out of a government that has a vested interest in seeing RFID deployed.

Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre have written a fantastic book on RFID called Spychips : How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID. This important book has caught some flak for using allegedly sensational, alarmist language. In fact, such criticism kept me from reading it for several months. All I can say is that I found the subject matter plenty alarming and the writers’ style engaging and witty. Keep up-to-date on www.spychips.com. Katherine and Liz sure are.

I’ve been reading and listening to individual reactions to the Wiretap Scandal (which was recently reported to go a lot deeper than the White House initially disclosed). I want to address a particularly dangerous argument that people are trotting out yet again to justify the actions of a government that spies on its own citizens.

If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

This argument has been around for a long, long time and it implies that:

1. Citizens have no inherent right to privacy
2. Surveillance only affects the guilty

Addressing the first implication, the closest the United States Constitution comes to identifying a right to privacy is in Amendment IV of the Bill of Rights:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The key idea here is the government needs to have a compelling reason to look into your life and, in order to check abuse, two branches of government (Executive and Judicial) must be involved.

When discussing the Constitution, it is sometimes necessary to remind people of one incredibly important fact – the Constitution does not enumerate what citizens can do, it enumerates what the federal government can do. The Bill of Rights (the first 10 Amendments) specifically addresses some things that the federal government cannot do. What’s more, Amendment X states that any power not specified in the Constitution rests with the States or with the People.

Therefore, from the correct perspective, the question isn’t “Where in the Constitution does it state that citizens have a right to privacy?”, the question is “Where in the Constitution does it state that citizens do not?”

At the heart of our Constitution is the simple idea that people need protection from their own government. It’s an amazing, wonderfully subversive idea that is unfortunately not understood by most Americans. Digressing, I think it would be a very interesting experiment to reword and repackage our own Constitution as a Manifesto written by boogeyman Osama Bin Laden and then gauge public reaction to it.

To the second implication of the “if you have nothing to hide” argument, we all have something to hide. Embarrassing medical conditions, sexual proclivities, unpopular opinions, past lapses in judgement, financial information – all things we would prefer to disclose at our sole discretion. All things that a government with unchecked surveillance powers could disclose to discredit us or, by threat of disclosure, influence us.

The whole reason for checks and balances is because power corrupts. Why even debate the Patriot Act, why have a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court if the Executive branch can bypass laws and procedures at will? If the current president finds certain laws inconvenient, isn’t the solution to go through the process to change the laws, publicly and transparently? You know, like we were a representative democracy?

It is still in our best interests to be very, very careful about the laws we allow, especially when granting additional powers to the government. America’s legal history is littered with laws passed with specific intentions that are subsequently used to justify activities which the laws were never meant to address. The necessity for the careful wording of laws is not unlike the care one should take when making wishes to genies or monkey’s paws. As a recent Onion horoscope advised:

The wheelchair and the indignity will be bad enough, but the worst part is going to be explaining to your wife exactly what you said to the genie to make him take off your legs like that.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (co-author of the seminal 1890 article The Right to Privacy) wrote in his famous Olmstead dissent (related to Elliott Ness and his Untouchables wiretapping bootleggers):

If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

The precedent we are about to set is incredibly important. If we say that this president is above the law, we are saying that all future presidents are, too. Pick your least favorite politician and then picture hume as president. Are you still okay with the president being above the law?

With the sheer volume of reports spewing from mainstream news agencies, blogs (Schneier, The Ape Man) and bearded weirdos on street corners regarding the recent revelation that our President admits with pride and conviction that he authorized (some 30 times) the National Security Agency to spy on American citizens without warrant, you may well ask, “Et tu, MrPikes?”

Yep, and here’s why: There simply isn’t enough outrage. The last one was impeached by the United States Congress for lying about a blowjob. This one is responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanistanis, mismanaging the federal response to a natural disaster, systematically laying the foundation for a police state (USA PATRIOT Act, Real ID, secret prisons, Gitmo, torture), spending the country into massive debt, further eroding the wall between Church and State, committing egregious acts of the worst kinds of cronyism (here, here, and here), and now openly admits to committing repeated criminal violations of Section 1809 of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Section 1809 reads as follows:

(a) Prohibited activities
A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally—
(1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute; or
(2) discloses or uses information obtained under color of law by electronic surveillance, knowing or having reason to know that the information was obtained through electronic surveillance not authorized by statute.

(b) Defense
It is a defense to a prosecution under subsection (a) of this section that the defendant was a law enforcement or investigative officer engaged in the course of his official duties and the electronic surveillance was authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order of a court of competent jurisdiction.

(c) Penalties
An offense described in this section is punishable by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both.

(d) Federal jurisdiction
There is Federal jurisdiction over an offense under this section if the person committing the offense was an officer or employee of the United States at the time the offense was committed.

FISA was specifically put in place in the wake of abuses committed by Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and the FBI (COINTELPRO). The powers of the oversight body (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) are broadly defined and shadowy as hell, but the entity at least ensures some degree of independent oversight.

The argument put forth by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice for President Bush circumventing the law is that the process was too cumbersome to keep up with today’s go-go terrorists. FISA specifically permits retroactive warrants to be obtained 72 hours after the fact, if an emergency exists. What FISA does not permit are expansive fishing expeditions without probable cause. Incidentally, FISC Judge James Robertson has resigned over this. When the judge of a secretive organization with broad powers resigns because the president has gone too far, it’s time to start paying attention.

President Bush broke the law. Further, he states that he has no intention of stopping. It’s okay though, because he’s the President.

He’s the most serious kind of asshole and he needs to go. Nothing I write here can possibly express how much damage this man has done to this once-great nation’s world stature, or how far his actions have gone to making the United States an even bigger target for terrorist attacks than before.

Enough already. Fire this man. We sort-of elected him *twice*, and we can go a long way to showing the rest of the world that we’ve come to our senses if we take positive action to remove this menace rather than allowing his term simply to peter out. Okay, so we get President Cheney (or what’s left of him) for the next three years. All I can say is that he will be placed so firmly in the category of ‘damaged goods’ as to weaken the Executive branch’s influence to the point of non-existence.

For those who are fearful that such an action will make us more vulnerable because we will be perceived as weak, don’t forget, approximately half of those who participated in the 2000 and 2004 elections voted for this disaster. Demonstrating to the entire world that we will no longer be complicit to this would-be dictator’s destruction of our proud national identity is hardly a weaker position than passively continuing to endorse him.

My pal Gokmop (who is way more prolific than me) has published an article on Wikipedia about snowclones. “Snowclone” is an Internet meme that can be simply defined as inserting a new word or phrase into an old idiom. For example, substituting the word “laptop” for “dime” in the expression “Brother, can you spare a dime?”, resulting in “Brother, can you spare a laptop?”

“Snowclone” is most often used in a derogatory context, pointing out the laziness of some writers and journalists. The example above probably even made you think of the headline to some pablum that passes for the Fourth Estate these days.

Gokmop’s material always makes for good reading, so check out his article and, if you’re game, contribute to the ever-growing List of Snowclones.

Last, if you’re not already among the converted, do yourself a favor and get to know Wikipedia.