Archive for January, 2010 | Monthly archive page
The state of the media
Oh, this is very funny … a true spoof. The cliches fall like autumn leaves. (Pwah!) I have a serious book somewhere called Bending Reality: The state of the media (James Curran) which, among other things, discusses the compromises and distortions those in the news media routinely can and do make in the effort to ‘package’ […]
RIP JD Salinger
“There is a marvelous peace in not publishing,” J.D. Salinger told The New York Times in 1974. “Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.” Farewell. The New Yorker has made his stories available. Good on them.
iPad? Yeah. OK, probably. Why not?
Yes, I’ll probably get one of these. It looks useful, and some of the applications seem like an improvement. Apple does lead the world in industrial design (the ‘cool’ factor), and this shows it again. An e-book reader should have a high quality colour screen, in my opinion. Is it a ‘game-changer’, as pundits are […]
Unintended consequences
A fair minded person seeks to put themselves in the other person’s shoes … I find myself doing that more and more. (… and I’m not saying, ‘Aren’t I wonderful?’ by that comment, I assure you.) I would hate for some of the things I’ve said about the activities and behaviour of others to be […]
Talking with Dave: thoughts about media blur
I’m part way through an online conversation with Dave, who I like, about hyperbolic opinion pieces masquerading as news (what I call the Glenn Beck/Fox News effect). We’re discussing Dave’s frustration with the “blur” between news and opinion. Dave said: I wouldn’t mind if the media did genuinely report as an opinion piece. At least […]
Nothing new under the sun…
Apparently Scarlett Johansson is playing ‘Black Widow’ in the movie sequel to Iron Man. Cool. Of course, she’s very Emma Peel from The Avengers isn’t she? All good clean fun.
Slave to ‘consistency’
One of my favourite ‘let me off the hook’ quotes expressing wisdom is this: Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) ‘Song of Myself’ — Walt Whitman, US poet (1819 – 1892) I have at various times, to my cost, roasted myself on a bed of […]
Google grows some
“We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn” A new approach to China 1/12/2010 03:00:00 PM Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from […]
Cosmos
I post this as a response to some of the wonderful imagery of the cosmos contained in Chowbok’s post on death: Beyond the planets — the blackness is not an empty void — but a sea of trillions and trillions of cosmic particles bouncing and playing their special dance across the expanse of time. Lit […]
How bloody awful
Bob Drogin in the LA Times wrote a ghastly true crime story about the [alleged] murder of a scientist who suffered from panic attacks and paranoia. Whatever the opposite of edifying is, this story is that. Nasty. It’s bad to know such cold people walk the streets. Read it here, if you want. (You have […]
This week’s panic
Reading an article in the latest Audi magazine in a chocolate factory cafe yesterday, I came across a quote from Audi chairman Rupert Stadler talking about his time working for the firm as head of Finance & HR in Spain: “And that was during the crisis of the 90s.” Reading it, I wasn’t sure exactly […]
W. Eugene Smith
The legacy of W. Eugene Smith… W. Eugene Smith learned the hard way that photography could be too easy, a matter of making expert images of interesting subjects. He set himself to learn the truth – about himself as well as his subjects. In the process, he produced a series of photographic essays, for LIFE […]
‘Bounced around like dragonflies’ – Internet addiction & Writing
One of my heroes, Garrison Keillor had some more good and insightful things to say about writing, including the benefits of solitude and the malison of the ‘always-connected’ data-overloaded life: The Internet and Google have their usefulness, God knows. I mean, how would we live without them? But you know, for young people with tremendously […]
A Hospital Story
There was a woman who was dying in a hospital; a double organ transplant gone wrong. Six months now her body had wasted away. Eighty pounds in weight now and her entire lifetime allotment of anti-rejection shock-drug therapy used up. After four exploratory surgeries to untangle this and untie that, everybody was at a loss. […]
