

Thomas Friedman Op-Ed Generator - josscrowcroft
http://thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/

======
skannamalai
This is terrific. Especially if you share Matt Taibbi's opinion that
Friedman's writing is a bloviated mess of half-baked ideas and nonsensical
metaphors.

[http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/04/23/tom-friedman-
stri...](http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/04/23/tom-friedman-strikes-
again/)

However, I am surprised by the several posters here who feel this is a great
approximation _and yet also_ that Friedman is a great author. I am curious how
a predictably impenetrable and meandering style is worth reading.

~~~
scarmig
Another Taibbi contra Friedman classic:

<http://rolocroz.com/junk/friedman.html>

Sure, it's catnip, but we all deserve catnip sometime. Living life without
catnip is like a trout driving a car without a steering wheel, which leads you
to a oval world pretty quickly.

~~~
mitchi
contra or contre?

~~~
scarmig
I believe contra is Latin, contre francais?

------
bmmayer1
Hey all--Brian here, I built this little ditty. To answer some questions: Yes,
it is a template engine, and there are only two templates. The foreign policy
one was written by Michael Ward with some modifications, and the domestic
policy one written by a friend of mine. Coded in PHP/MySQL. All articles have
permalinks. That's basically it...probably could have done it a better way but
it was literally two hours of fun work a couple months ago and until today, I
had forgotten about it. Thanks for the kudos and support!

~~~
josscrowcroft
Congrats! Had my sides aching for a good long while. Wonder who else you could
do?

I bet there's an opening for a Charlie Brooker Guardian column generator, and
a "Danny Wallace humorous anecdotal garbage about modern man and parenting"
generator

~~~
bmmayer1
I'd personally like to do a Paul Krugman generator. But I don't have the CPU
power to crank out that level of bullshit.

------
ghshephard
As a frequent reader of Friedman - I was blown away the first couple times by
how clever it was...until I got to articles #3,4,5 (#6 was good) - and then
#7,8,9 were basically repeats as well.

It's basically just a template engine, in which (as far as I could tell) there
are only a few article written, and they just substitute appropriate
Countries, Sayings, Nouns, Names, Topics in the appropriate places.

It's one of those things that _looks_ amazing, until you realize how it's
done.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
That sounds like it nails the Friedman op-ed experience ;)

------
anonfunction
Thomas Friedman is one of my favorite authors but I've never got into reading
his column in The New York Times. This is a really good spoofjob though, I
actually thought he wrote most of this.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
What is it about Friedman that you find ... has value? I'm genuinely curious.

~~~
scarmig
His intrepid quest to justify elite opinion by searching through every city in
the world to find a cabbie willing to say it.

------
sfaruque
The About page, <http://thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/about.php>, doesn't
say much on how this was done. So far, I see a pattern in the writing style
with a lot of:

 _An interesting thought occurred to me today—what if X_Profession sat down
with ordinary people like you and me and ironed out some real solutions to our
Y_Issue crisis?_

But does anyone know how the rest of it was generated?

~~~
AdamTReineke
From the "content from Michael Ward" link at the bottom of the article.
[http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/create-your-own-thomas-
fr...](http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/create-your-own-thomas-friedman-op-
ed-column)

------
kunle
The rough part about seeing this is, it really could be him! Well played sir.

------
specialist
Nicely done. Add two dashes of unrepentant war mongering and no one would know
the difference.

~~~
scarmig
Suck on this, as they say.

And by they, I mean Thomas Friedman, when it comes to justifying wars that
cost hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.

------
akanet
In the very same vein, behold: The Krugman Times - The NY Times by its only
columnist

<http://krugmantimes.com/>

My site takes the current view of the NYT and replaces all the material using
text extraction. This op-ed generator appears to use mad-libs with defined
templates.

------
droithomme
Wow, this is super impressive. It maintains a consistent theme throughout the
article.

------
anigbrowl
akanet, I think you're hellbanned. Which is a pity, because that link is
hilarious.

~~~
ksherlock
Could you repost the link please?

~~~
scarmig
<http://krugmantimes.com/>

Can't say I love the implementation.

------
ayushgta
Nicely done!

