Cue the jokes about popping some popcorn and sitting back to see what happens.
No, seriously. Am I the only one who thinks that the hysteria over the closing this weekend of the stretch of the 405 freeway between the 101 and the 10 through Sepulveda Pass is just a little overblown?
Now, before you tell me that I don't understand because I'm not in Southern California, let me say this: I grew up in Southern California. I learned to drive on the freeways in L.A. I know how much Southern Californians love their cars and depend on them. Really. I know all that. And I know how common it is to hop in the car and drive across the county to go to dinner or to Disneyland or just to take a drive. I'm sure that still goes on, even with the soaring price of gasoline.
I'm not sure, however, why it seems so difficult for people who don't have to work to just stay in their neighborhoods for the weekend. Shop in a local store. Eat in a local restaurant. Play in a local park. It's not that hard.
Or is it all the media? Are the people fine with this, calm about it, ready to have a relaxing weekend at home? I suspect that's a lot of it, but i worry about the lookyloos, people who are hearing all this hype and will feel compelled to go out looking for the traffic jams and end up creating them. I know people like that, and I know that there are people like that in Southern California. Maybe more than the usual number. Goodness knows, it's kind of a regional passtime to be Where It's Happening
There are some people I feel sorry for. At the top of the list is people who planned their vacation in L.A. before carmageddon started getting so much time in the media and who couldn't cancel either because they coudn't get another time off from work or they'd already paid for tickets and lodging and couldn't get their money back. Especially the ones who have never been to Southern California.
The other folks I feel sorry for are the ones who have to get to LAX during the weekend, either because they are traveling themselves or because they are picking up or dropping someone off at the airport. Offhand, I can't think of a way to get to LAX without driving on the 405 or intersecting it. Getting into the airport isn't always horrible, but it can be and I suspect it will be this weekend.
I hope it all turns out well. It isn't as if there haven't been freeway closures in Los Angeles before. Parts of the 5 at the 14, the 10 and the 118 were all closed for various periods of time (but definitely longer than a weekend) in the aftermath of the Northridge Earthquake in 1994. That wasn't the first closure of the interchange of the 5 and the 14; it collapsed first in the 1971 Sylmar quake.
All in all, as much as I love Southern California, I'm glad I'll be watching this one from a safe distance. Fresno is a safe distance, right? But I'll be honest. I'll be checking the news from time to time, just to check on the number of Sig Alerts issued during the weekend.
Don't know what a Sig Alert is? Go look it up.
And yes, I deliberately didn't leave a link. Do you want me to do all your work for you?
Friday, July 15, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
In which I demonstrate one of the reasons for the name of this blog...
I'm trying to write a book. It's non-fiction, so there is a certain amount of research involved. The conventional wisdom is that at some point you need to stop researching and start writing. I'm getting better at that. Well, I'm getting better at writing as I research, which is a start, I suppose.
Anyway, I had to run some errands day before yesterday, and while I was out I needed to have lunch. I had suspected that this might end up being the case, so I took a book along, one that I'm reading, or re-reading, actually, as research. And so as I ate (a pizza, Canadian bacon and pineapple; it was very good), I read.
Well, I tried to read. You see, when I'm reading something really interesting, I tend to read a little and then think a lot about what I've read. I often make marginal notes, and make notes in my current writer's notebook besides. And sometimes, I indulge in a bit of Tangents 101. Which means I read three or four pages and ended up with four pages of my notebook filled with notes that really have very little to do with what I'm writing about. Or, at least, they demonstrate the John Muir saying about how everything in the universe is connected to everything else.
Sometimes the connection is very tenuous. Other times it is clearly identifiable but no especially relevant to what I'm supposed to be doing.
The book in question is Kenneth Miller's Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution (Perennial, 1999). It's a really good book which, as I indicated above, I've read before. A couple of times. I'm reading it this time because I'm writing about anthropology, and evolution is a key concept within the field, especially within biological anthropology. So, it is on-topic in a number of ways. In other ways, not so much.
Today's problem was that I got to page 38, and Miller was writing about the origins and early evolution of life. Specifically, he was discussing the long period of time between the time of the first, prokaryotic cells (cells without nuclei), and the appearance of eukaryotic cells (those are cells that have nuclei), and the long period thereafter between those cells and the appearance of the first multi-celled organisms. Now, all of this is a subject of infinite fascination for me. And so I made some notes about how much I'm interested in this, in beginnings of all kinds. Who knows, I might want to write about it at some point.
Somehow, from the beginnings of life I ended up at the beginning of the universe, and how difficult a subject that is for me for various philosophical reasons. Difficult, but also fascinating. I also ended up at how questions of the beginning of the universe and of life are subjects that tread all over both science and religion.
But that isn't all.
Miller also gets into, on the same page, the questions science has concerning whether or not the earliest multi-cellular organisms there is evidence of (from Australia, in the Ediacaran Hills, he says, although there has probably been further research since he wrote in 1999) are or are not directly related to organisms alive today, or whether all life on earth today is descended from other organisms that came into being separately, somewhere else. This is another idea that really tickles my imagination, and I spent some time on that as well.
Yeah. I was in the restaurant for a full hour after I had finished eating, playing around with these ideas. Didn't really make any progress in the research toward what I'm trying to write. Made myself want to go off and read about the origin of life and the origin of the universe and the geological history of the Earth
All of which also goes to explain why it takes me so long to read a book sometimes.
Anyway, I had to run some errands day before yesterday, and while I was out I needed to have lunch. I had suspected that this might end up being the case, so I took a book along, one that I'm reading, or re-reading, actually, as research. And so as I ate (a pizza, Canadian bacon and pineapple; it was very good), I read.
Well, I tried to read. You see, when I'm reading something really interesting, I tend to read a little and then think a lot about what I've read. I often make marginal notes, and make notes in my current writer's notebook besides. And sometimes, I indulge in a bit of Tangents 101. Which means I read three or four pages and ended up with four pages of my notebook filled with notes that really have very little to do with what I'm writing about. Or, at least, they demonstrate the John Muir saying about how everything in the universe is connected to everything else.
Sometimes the connection is very tenuous. Other times it is clearly identifiable but no especially relevant to what I'm supposed to be doing.
The book in question is Kenneth Miller's Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution (Perennial, 1999). It's a really good book which, as I indicated above, I've read before. A couple of times. I'm reading it this time because I'm writing about anthropology, and evolution is a key concept within the field, especially within biological anthropology. So, it is on-topic in a number of ways. In other ways, not so much.
Today's problem was that I got to page 38, and Miller was writing about the origins and early evolution of life. Specifically, he was discussing the long period of time between the time of the first, prokaryotic cells (cells without nuclei), and the appearance of eukaryotic cells (those are cells that have nuclei), and the long period thereafter between those cells and the appearance of the first multi-celled organisms. Now, all of this is a subject of infinite fascination for me. And so I made some notes about how much I'm interested in this, in beginnings of all kinds. Who knows, I might want to write about it at some point.
Somehow, from the beginnings of life I ended up at the beginning of the universe, and how difficult a subject that is for me for various philosophical reasons. Difficult, but also fascinating. I also ended up at how questions of the beginning of the universe and of life are subjects that tread all over both science and religion.
But that isn't all.
Miller also gets into, on the same page, the questions science has concerning whether or not the earliest multi-cellular organisms there is evidence of (from Australia, in the Ediacaran Hills, he says, although there has probably been further research since he wrote in 1999) are or are not directly related to organisms alive today, or whether all life on earth today is descended from other organisms that came into being separately, somewhere else. This is another idea that really tickles my imagination, and I spent some time on that as well.
Yeah. I was in the restaurant for a full hour after I had finished eating, playing around with these ideas. Didn't really make any progress in the research toward what I'm trying to write. Made myself want to go off and read about the origin of life and the origin of the universe and the geological history of the Earth
All of which also goes to explain why it takes me so long to read a book sometimes.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
I'm so confused...or, That's a really stupid attitude
Question for you all: When you're listening to the radio in the car, do you ever get so angry and what you are hearing that you nearly have to pull over and stop?
Happened to me today, on the way to the grocery store and on the way home as well. I was listening to a local "classic rock" (in quotations, because some of what they play isn't especially classic in my opinion, but whatever), and the DJ was on about The (former) Governator (that would be Arnold Schwarzneggar for all of you non-Californians) and his recently-revealed behavior. Was the DJ criticizing Ah-nold for having an affair? No. Was he congratulating him in that way some males have sometimes, for "getting some"? Not that, either.
No. He was raking the former governor over the coals for having had an affair with a woman who was uglier than his wife.
Yeah. You read that correctly. This guy was getting lots of jaw mileage over the fact that Arnold Schwarzneggar had sex, and even conceived a child with, a woman who was not sufficiently beautiful. And, by extension, criticizing the woman for being ugly, and implying that only those who are movie-star beautiful should expect to get to have sex. Or anyway, that sure sounded to me like the subtext of his remarks.
This isn't the only place I've heard comment of one sort or another about the looks of the woman in question. I was half-watching The View yesterday while I was working, and when they showed a photo of this woman, half the audience gasped, as if to say, "He had sex with her?" Whoopi Goldberg offered a critique of that attitude, but the fact remains that a certain (probably fairly high) percentage of the American people have the attitude that a woman who is less than young and beautiful has no business having sex, and that anyone who would have sex with such a woman has something wrong with them, and a big movie star like Arnold S. (because he does have a long-ass last name, and I'm tired of typing it out) has even something more wrong with him if he does so.
This isn't new. We heard the same thing when Bill Clinton's affair, or whatever it was, with Monica Lewinsky was revealed. There were lot of comments such as, "But she's fat" and "She's not very pretty". Clinton was a powerful man; why would he stoop to having sex with a non-beautiful woman?
What it all goes back to is how women are marginalized, and how women who are not-young, not-pretty and not-thin are marginalized even more. I suppose what surprised me was that this guy on the radio was trying to marginalize Arnold for being with an already marginalized woman. And, in the question he was asking his audience, and soliciting comment about, was "Why would a man have an affair with a woman who was uglier than his wife?" Which, of course, was also a comment on Maria Shriver's looks.
I don't know. I guess the question that I'm really trying to get to is, Why does it even matter what a person looks like? I'm not saying that I don't notice good-looking me, and don't trade comments about who's hot and who's not. But, as a practical matter, in interpersonal relationships, why does it even matter to people outside the relationship, what the parties to the relationship look like? It is vastly more important to me what a person is like. Are they nice, are they funny, are they smart? If they're good-looking as well, well, that's bonus. But looks are not the starting point and the stopping point in deciding whether I want to be friends, or lovers, for that matter, with a man.
Ah, well. This has turned into a rant. Sorry. But it is just one of those situations that occasionally makes me wonder if I was sent to the wrong planet when I was born.
Because I just don't understand.
Happened to me today, on the way to the grocery store and on the way home as well. I was listening to a local "classic rock" (in quotations, because some of what they play isn't especially classic in my opinion, but whatever), and the DJ was on about The (former) Governator (that would be Arnold Schwarzneggar for all of you non-Californians) and his recently-revealed behavior. Was the DJ criticizing Ah-nold for having an affair? No. Was he congratulating him in that way some males have sometimes, for "getting some"? Not that, either.
No. He was raking the former governor over the coals for having had an affair with a woman who was uglier than his wife.
Yeah. You read that correctly. This guy was getting lots of jaw mileage over the fact that Arnold Schwarzneggar had sex, and even conceived a child with, a woman who was not sufficiently beautiful. And, by extension, criticizing the woman for being ugly, and implying that only those who are movie-star beautiful should expect to get to have sex. Or anyway, that sure sounded to me like the subtext of his remarks.
This isn't the only place I've heard comment of one sort or another about the looks of the woman in question. I was half-watching The View yesterday while I was working, and when they showed a photo of this woman, half the audience gasped, as if to say, "He had sex with her?" Whoopi Goldberg offered a critique of that attitude, but the fact remains that a certain (probably fairly high) percentage of the American people have the attitude that a woman who is less than young and beautiful has no business having sex, and that anyone who would have sex with such a woman has something wrong with them, and a big movie star like Arnold S. (because he does have a long-ass last name, and I'm tired of typing it out) has even something more wrong with him if he does so.
This isn't new. We heard the same thing when Bill Clinton's affair, or whatever it was, with Monica Lewinsky was revealed. There were lot of comments such as, "But she's fat" and "She's not very pretty". Clinton was a powerful man; why would he stoop to having sex with a non-beautiful woman?
What it all goes back to is how women are marginalized, and how women who are not-young, not-pretty and not-thin are marginalized even more. I suppose what surprised me was that this guy on the radio was trying to marginalize Arnold for being with an already marginalized woman. And, in the question he was asking his audience, and soliciting comment about, was "Why would a man have an affair with a woman who was uglier than his wife?" Which, of course, was also a comment on Maria Shriver's looks.
I don't know. I guess the question that I'm really trying to get to is, Why does it even matter what a person looks like? I'm not saying that I don't notice good-looking me, and don't trade comments about who's hot and who's not. But, as a practical matter, in interpersonal relationships, why does it even matter to people outside the relationship, what the parties to the relationship look like? It is vastly more important to me what a person is like. Are they nice, are they funny, are they smart? If they're good-looking as well, well, that's bonus. But looks are not the starting point and the stopping point in deciding whether I want to be friends, or lovers, for that matter, with a man.
Ah, well. This has turned into a rant. Sorry. But it is just one of those situations that occasionally makes me wonder if I was sent to the wrong planet when I was born.
Because I just don't understand.
Friday, April 22, 2011
The tirade I've been trying to protect you from, dear readers...
I'm still here.
I've thought to post several times recently, but each time I was so riled up about something or other that I decided I'd spare you all the tirade.
I think I'm going to have to stop watching and reading the news entirely. "Hell in a handbasket" comes to mind whenever I do pay attention, and I find it just all so depressing, whether it's politics or the world situation or the things that the media chooses to focus on.
The idea of not paying attention to the news goes very much against my grain; I'm a news junkie from way, way back. But the more I pay attention, the more cynical I become. News isn't news anymore; it's more like "let's see who can shout the loudest and get the most attention". Facts don't seem to matter any more as politicians (from every part of the spectrum, sad to say) seem to beleive that saying something makes it so, no matter if what they are saying has any basis in reality or not.
There is one example in particular that I'm thinking of right now. I can't recall the politician's name at the moment, but he made a statement recently that government funding to Planned Parenthood because "90 percent" of their money is made through providing abortions. Or somthing like that. Which is, as far as I know, not really the case at all. I'm not taking issue so much with the fact that he said this, but with his staff's behavior afterward. When he was called on his statistic by others, his staff put out a statement that he did not intend for his statement to be factual.
Huh? Did they really come right out and say that he lied deliberately, and that it was really okay that he lied? I'm really not sure what to do with that, other than to suggest that this sort of thing is exactly why people answer the question, "How do you know when a politician is lying?" with, "When his or her lips are moving."
But...it's a nice day, so I really don't want to dwell on this sort of negative. So, I'm going to go read a book or something, and look forward to going out with friends tonight.
Have a nice Easter weekend, everyone.
I've thought to post several times recently, but each time I was so riled up about something or other that I decided I'd spare you all the tirade.
I think I'm going to have to stop watching and reading the news entirely. "Hell in a handbasket" comes to mind whenever I do pay attention, and I find it just all so depressing, whether it's politics or the world situation or the things that the media chooses to focus on.
The idea of not paying attention to the news goes very much against my grain; I'm a news junkie from way, way back. But the more I pay attention, the more cynical I become. News isn't news anymore; it's more like "let's see who can shout the loudest and get the most attention". Facts don't seem to matter any more as politicians (from every part of the spectrum, sad to say) seem to beleive that saying something makes it so, no matter if what they are saying has any basis in reality or not.
There is one example in particular that I'm thinking of right now. I can't recall the politician's name at the moment, but he made a statement recently that government funding to Planned Parenthood because "90 percent" of their money is made through providing abortions. Or somthing like that. Which is, as far as I know, not really the case at all. I'm not taking issue so much with the fact that he said this, but with his staff's behavior afterward. When he was called on his statistic by others, his staff put out a statement that he did not intend for his statement to be factual.
Huh? Did they really come right out and say that he lied deliberately, and that it was really okay that he lied? I'm really not sure what to do with that, other than to suggest that this sort of thing is exactly why people answer the question, "How do you know when a politician is lying?" with, "When his or her lips are moving."
But...it's a nice day, so I really don't want to dwell on this sort of negative. So, I'm going to go read a book or something, and look forward to going out with friends tonight.
Have a nice Easter weekend, everyone.
Monday, March 07, 2011
Time flies (and it's also wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey)...
Okay. Where did the time go?
Oh. That's right. There's work, and knitting, and reading, and SCA and the real world (which keeps interfering with all the fun stuff). You know how it goes.
Also, there's the very real issue that I've just been in a cranky mood, and I really don't want to make this the "LMA only blogs when she's pissed off about something" blog. That just doesn't make for good reading. Once in awhile, yes. Not as a steady thing.
I've also been dealing with the books and reading blog I started just before the beginning of the year. I have been posting over there, so I haven't been completely absent from the blogosphere. You should come over there and visit, and see what a reading geek I am.
Oh. That's right. There's work, and knitting, and reading, and SCA and the real world (which keeps interfering with all the fun stuff). You know how it goes.
Also, there's the very real issue that I've just been in a cranky mood, and I really don't want to make this the "LMA only blogs when she's pissed off about something" blog. That just doesn't make for good reading. Once in awhile, yes. Not as a steady thing.
I've also been dealing with the books and reading blog I started just before the beginning of the year. I have been posting over there, so I haven't been completely absent from the blogosphere. You should come over there and visit, and see what a reading geek I am.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
I've been knitting...
I've been busy knitting recently. This is one of the projects I completed earlier this month. Just thought I'd share something colorful on this gray Sunday morning.
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Violent political rhetoric and the First Amendment
I keep thinking that I need to write something about what happened in Tuscon yesterday, but I'm not sure exactly what to say, except that this sort of thing has to stop.
I think it was interesting that during a news conference late yesterday afternoon, the Sheriff of the county Tuscon is in (sorry, I'm winging this and I don't know the name of the county and I want to get this out before I forget what I want to say, so I'm not going to stop to look it up) called out the "vitriolic rhetoric" of some radio and television broadcasters as contributing to a climate which can inflame those with "mental issues" (which is how he described the young man in custody for the shootings), that they are "more susceptible" to the influence of such things Nevada candidate Sharron Angle's statements about "Second Amendment solutions" and a map posted around the Internet that marked with firearm crosshairs the districts of congressmen and women that some on the right want to see defeated.
Well, this morning on some of the Sunday morning political talk shows, some were taking issue with the Sheriff's comments and suggetion that the nation needs to do some soul-searching about the character of some recent political rhetoric. There were complaints that since we don't know the shooting suspect's motivations, the comments by the Sheriff were premature and inappropriate. They also seemed to be trying to say that to complain about what some candidates and pundits have said that could be construed as promoting violence against some other candidates is tantamount to violating the First Amendment.
First of all, I don't think that what ends up being identified as the shooter's motive has anything to do with the question. Even if he was just a "lone nut" (something the Sheriff said yesterday afternoon that his department was not at all convinced was the case) whose motivation was not so much political as pathological, his obvious target was a member of Congress, one who had been threatened by those on the right before and who had been targeted on the list that accompanied that map with the crosshairs on it. That alone, regardless of motivation, makes the discussion of recent political rhetoric appropriate.
Second, but no less important, I beleive it is settled law that the First Amendment does not cover speech and actions that can be interpreted as incitements to riot or violence. You can't get up in front of a crowd and urge them to run amok. And you can't say things about using "Second Amendment remedies" with a wink and a nod. In saying that, you might well be speaking metaphorically (although sometimes, I don't think those who say those things are being metaphorical at all). The problem is, some of the people who are hearing you say it might believe you mean what you say literally, and take it upon themselves to act on it. What you say might not even be actionable, in terms of being charged as an accomplice in an act like the shootings in Tuscon. But my position is that those who say such things don't have entirely clean hands when such events do occur.
This does not mean that I'm advocating that there should not be discussions in which political differences are aired. Not at all. Those disucssions are fully covered by the First Amendment. You can't stop someone saying that they don't agree with another person or with a government policy. You can't stop someone speculating about events, even about dire conspiracies that are mostly in the minds of those who believe in them. They are protected by the First Amendment. But threatening harm to someone who does not agree with you, or who you think is doing something politically nefarious, is most assuredly not covered by the amendment, just like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater is not covered by free speech guarantees.
I think the bottom line in all of this is that our society (and I mean that globally) needs to get over the idea of some people that just because they are angry about something, they have the right to go out and kill who they are angry at and maybe a bunch more people, just because they are angry. Because it isn't just political. We see it all the time these days, sadly, in workplace shootings, in school rampages, and in personal relationships gone bad.
It's madness (but not, in most cases, clinical insanity). And it has to stop.
I think it was interesting that during a news conference late yesterday afternoon, the Sheriff of the county Tuscon is in (sorry, I'm winging this and I don't know the name of the county and I want to get this out before I forget what I want to say, so I'm not going to stop to look it up) called out the "vitriolic rhetoric" of some radio and television broadcasters as contributing to a climate which can inflame those with "mental issues" (which is how he described the young man in custody for the shootings), that they are "more susceptible" to the influence of such things Nevada candidate Sharron Angle's statements about "Second Amendment solutions" and a map posted around the Internet that marked with firearm crosshairs the districts of congressmen and women that some on the right want to see defeated.
Well, this morning on some of the Sunday morning political talk shows, some were taking issue with the Sheriff's comments and suggetion that the nation needs to do some soul-searching about the character of some recent political rhetoric. There were complaints that since we don't know the shooting suspect's motivations, the comments by the Sheriff were premature and inappropriate. They also seemed to be trying to say that to complain about what some candidates and pundits have said that could be construed as promoting violence against some other candidates is tantamount to violating the First Amendment.
First of all, I don't think that what ends up being identified as the shooter's motive has anything to do with the question. Even if he was just a "lone nut" (something the Sheriff said yesterday afternoon that his department was not at all convinced was the case) whose motivation was not so much political as pathological, his obvious target was a member of Congress, one who had been threatened by those on the right before and who had been targeted on the list that accompanied that map with the crosshairs on it. That alone, regardless of motivation, makes the discussion of recent political rhetoric appropriate.
Second, but no less important, I beleive it is settled law that the First Amendment does not cover speech and actions that can be interpreted as incitements to riot or violence. You can't get up in front of a crowd and urge them to run amok. And you can't say things about using "Second Amendment remedies" with a wink and a nod. In saying that, you might well be speaking metaphorically (although sometimes, I don't think those who say those things are being metaphorical at all). The problem is, some of the people who are hearing you say it might believe you mean what you say literally, and take it upon themselves to act on it. What you say might not even be actionable, in terms of being charged as an accomplice in an act like the shootings in Tuscon. But my position is that those who say such things don't have entirely clean hands when such events do occur.
This does not mean that I'm advocating that there should not be discussions in which political differences are aired. Not at all. Those disucssions are fully covered by the First Amendment. You can't stop someone saying that they don't agree with another person or with a government policy. You can't stop someone speculating about events, even about dire conspiracies that are mostly in the minds of those who believe in them. They are protected by the First Amendment. But threatening harm to someone who does not agree with you, or who you think is doing something politically nefarious, is most assuredly not covered by the amendment, just like yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater is not covered by free speech guarantees.
I think the bottom line in all of this is that our society (and I mean that globally) needs to get over the idea of some people that just because they are angry about something, they have the right to go out and kill who they are angry at and maybe a bunch more people, just because they are angry. Because it isn't just political. We see it all the time these days, sadly, in workplace shootings, in school rampages, and in personal relationships gone bad.
It's madness (but not, in most cases, clinical insanity). And it has to stop.
Saturday, January 01, 2011
Resolutions, anyone?
I don't usually do New Year's Resolutions.
Having said that, however, here are my resolutions for 2011:
1. Read more. I have always been a reader, ever since I learned to read right about the time I turned three years old. Yes. That's very early. But I was an only child and there were no nearby neighbors to play with, so I had to do something with my time. Anyway, for the past few years, first with taking care of my mother, and then after she died, trying to keep my head above water both emotionally and economically, I just didn't have the time or feel the inclination to read as much. Part of it was that I often just couldn't find books I wanted to read that badly. I probably picked up ten or fifteen books and then didn't finish them for every book I read all the way through. Well, my intention with this resolution is to read more, to finish more of what I start to read, and to tell everyone all about it over on my new reading blog, Reading With (an) Attitude.
2. Write more. I write for a living. I like my job a lot, but I want to do much more with my talent, such as it is, than write about the financial markets. Last year, I got a good start on a novel, but then between running into some issues with how I wanted to frame the story and just plain getting too busy with other things so that writing the novel got lost in the shuffle of daily events, my work on it dwindled down to practically nothing. The goal here is to resume work on the novel, with a more specific goal of having a decent first draft finished by the end of the year. That goal should really probably be to have the draft done by the middle of the year, but I do have other obligations, so I'm attempting to not burn myself out by pushing too hard.
3. Walk more. I've got arthritis. It hurts to walk sometimes. But, since I'm now without car, I've got to get over it and get moving. This is not an effort to lose weight, although that would be good too. It is simply an effort to be able to get around and get the things I need to do, done.
4. Knit more. And learn to crochet. I already knit quite a bit. I should actually be working on finishing a project now, since it needs to be done in the next couple of days. But, it's New Year's Day, it's raining outside and I feel lazy. And, it will get done. But, I need to advance in my knitting this year, so that I can make more, and more complicated projects. Specifically, I need to master enough lace knitting to make a shawl this year, and I need to make a sweater this year, just to prove that I can do it. As for the crochet...I can crochet enough to edge a blanket. I need to be able to do more than that, well, just because I need to.
5. Spend more time on the internet forum where I am a moderator. I've been woefully inadequate in that recently, and I need to get back there for that reason, and just because I miss my friends there. If this involves setting up a time management schedule and specifically scheduling time to be there during the week, I'll do that.
And now, my question to you is, what are your resolutions for the New Year? Or, if you didn't make any, why do you choose not to make resolutions?
Happy New Year!
Having said that, however, here are my resolutions for 2011:
1. Read more. I have always been a reader, ever since I learned to read right about the time I turned three years old. Yes. That's very early. But I was an only child and there were no nearby neighbors to play with, so I had to do something with my time. Anyway, for the past few years, first with taking care of my mother, and then after she died, trying to keep my head above water both emotionally and economically, I just didn't have the time or feel the inclination to read as much. Part of it was that I often just couldn't find books I wanted to read that badly. I probably picked up ten or fifteen books and then didn't finish them for every book I read all the way through. Well, my intention with this resolution is to read more, to finish more of what I start to read, and to tell everyone all about it over on my new reading blog, Reading With (an) Attitude.
2. Write more. I write for a living. I like my job a lot, but I want to do much more with my talent, such as it is, than write about the financial markets. Last year, I got a good start on a novel, but then between running into some issues with how I wanted to frame the story and just plain getting too busy with other things so that writing the novel got lost in the shuffle of daily events, my work on it dwindled down to practically nothing. The goal here is to resume work on the novel, with a more specific goal of having a decent first draft finished by the end of the year. That goal should really probably be to have the draft done by the middle of the year, but I do have other obligations, so I'm attempting to not burn myself out by pushing too hard.
3. Walk more. I've got arthritis. It hurts to walk sometimes. But, since I'm now without car, I've got to get over it and get moving. This is not an effort to lose weight, although that would be good too. It is simply an effort to be able to get around and get the things I need to do, done.
4. Knit more. And learn to crochet. I already knit quite a bit. I should actually be working on finishing a project now, since it needs to be done in the next couple of days. But, it's New Year's Day, it's raining outside and I feel lazy. And, it will get done. But, I need to advance in my knitting this year, so that I can make more, and more complicated projects. Specifically, I need to master enough lace knitting to make a shawl this year, and I need to make a sweater this year, just to prove that I can do it. As for the crochet...I can crochet enough to edge a blanket. I need to be able to do more than that, well, just because I need to.
5. Spend more time on the internet forum where I am a moderator. I've been woefully inadequate in that recently, and I need to get back there for that reason, and just because I miss my friends there. If this involves setting up a time management schedule and specifically scheduling time to be there during the week, I'll do that.
And now, my question to you is, what are your resolutions for the New Year? Or, if you didn't make any, why do you choose not to make resolutions?
Happy New Year!
Friday, December 31, 2010
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year, everyone.
In some parts of the world, it has already been 2011 for awhile. Here in California, we've still got a bit over seven hours until another year hits the history books for good.
I'm staying in and hiding from all the partiers myself. If you've yet to go out and greet the New Year at a party, have fun and be safe. And if you've already been out and the celebration is over, I hope you had fun and that the New Year holds only wonderful things for you.
In some parts of the world, it has already been 2011 for awhile. Here in California, we've still got a bit over seven hours until another year hits the history books for good.
I'm staying in and hiding from all the partiers myself. If you've yet to go out and greet the New Year at a party, have fun and be safe. And if you've already been out and the celebration is over, I hope you had fun and that the New Year holds only wonderful things for you.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
I've been busy...
I tend to get restless during the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. It's a week that tends to make me feel like I'm sitting, holding my breath and waitin for something to happen. It is not my favorite week of the year.
Well, this year I put some of that restless energy to work and started a brand new blog. It isn't meant to take the place of this one, mind you. It's just that I've noticed that recently I've been posting a lot of book reviews here, and I've been reading a lot more again. So, the new blog, which is called Reading With (an) Attitude, is now up and running, which means that I can get back to the various and sundry things I write about over here from time to time.
If you've a mind to, click on the title of the new blog in the paragraph above or click here, and come over and see what I've been up to.
Well, this year I put some of that restless energy to work and started a brand new blog. It isn't meant to take the place of this one, mind you. It's just that I've noticed that recently I've been posting a lot of book reviews here, and I've been reading a lot more again. So, the new blog, which is called Reading With (an) Attitude, is now up and running, which means that I can get back to the various and sundry things I write about over here from time to time.
If you've a mind to, click on the title of the new blog in the paragraph above or click here, and come over and see what I've been up to.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Merry, Happy, Joyful, Wonderful, Excellent Holidays...
Merry Christmas, everyone.
The presents are open, dinner is in the oven, the (visitng) dog keeps coming by for tummy rubs, and I got to sleep in until 10:30 this morning. The latter is a good thing, since all of us adults in the house were up until 4 in the morning playing cards.
I hope all of your holidays, whichever ones you celebrate, have been and continue to be safe and jolly and full of love and laughter.
The presents are open, dinner is in the oven, the (visitng) dog keeps coming by for tummy rubs, and I got to sleep in until 10:30 this morning. The latter is a good thing, since all of us adults in the house were up until 4 in the morning playing cards.
I hope all of your holidays, whichever ones you celebrate, have been and continue to be safe and jolly and full of love and laughter.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
It isn't necessarily true that two heads are better than one...
Do you remember when, a little while ago, I wrote about how an auction house in Los Angeles is in the process of selling Lee Harvey Oswald’s original casket and then asked why anyone would buy the thing?
Well, that seems positively normal compared to a Reuters report I read on Yahoo! News today.
It seems that researchers have found the embalmed head of King Henri IV of France. It was probably, says the article, lost during the French Revolution, when being dead was not a guarantee of being left alone by the revolutionaries if you were an aristocrat. It seem that the graves of French royalty were broken into in 1793, and the remains were desecrated and scattered, with few of the pieces ever recovered.
The head has been radiocarbon dated to around the time of Henri’s death by assassination, but its features also are said to match the known characteristics of his appearance as well as his appearance in portraits.
As someone interested in history, I find this fascinating. The article points out that the head will be reburied next year in the cathedral where it was presumably stolen from. This is as it should be.
However…
There is one thing in the story that really makes me wonder what some people are thinking. Regarding the whereabouts of the head for all these years, the article says, at one point, that the head had been “passed down over the centuries by private collectors”.
Really? Who collects heads? I can’t be the only one who can’t quite get my head (excuse the pun, it is entirely intended) around the idea that people kept a human head as a collector’s item.
Then again, there are persistent stories that someone has Napoleon’s penis out there somewhere. So, who knows.
Well, that seems positively normal compared to a Reuters report I read on Yahoo! News today.
It seems that researchers have found the embalmed head of King Henri IV of France. It was probably, says the article, lost during the French Revolution, when being dead was not a guarantee of being left alone by the revolutionaries if you were an aristocrat. It seem that the graves of French royalty were broken into in 1793, and the remains were desecrated and scattered, with few of the pieces ever recovered.
The head has been radiocarbon dated to around the time of Henri’s death by assassination, but its features also are said to match the known characteristics of his appearance as well as his appearance in portraits.
As someone interested in history, I find this fascinating. The article points out that the head will be reburied next year in the cathedral where it was presumably stolen from. This is as it should be.
However…
There is one thing in the story that really makes me wonder what some people are thinking. Regarding the whereabouts of the head for all these years, the article says, at one point, that the head had been “passed down over the centuries by private collectors”.
Really? Who collects heads? I can’t be the only one who can’t quite get my head (excuse the pun, it is entirely intended) around the idea that people kept a human head as a collector’s item.
Then again, there are persistent stories that someone has Napoleon’s penis out there somewhere. So, who knows.
Thursday, December 09, 2010
Book Review: "Blowing My Cover", by Lindsay Moran
Near the end of her memoir, Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2005), Lindsay Moran describes what the CIA does as “A little boys’ game that men continue to play as adults”, and then writes: “The CIA was, and still is, made up of men who are loath to give up playing their game.”
These were her thoughts near the end of her CIA career, which lasted only a few years, in the wake of 9/11 and as she tried to figure out why the United States didn’t know that the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. were coming. They were somber reflections for a somber time, and were part of what led her to resign as a CIA case officer after working in Eastern Europe for several years.
They were appropriate thoughts assessing a career that she had never been completely convinced that she should enter. After filling out her first application to work at the spy agency, she decided not to sent it in and only actually submitted an application a few years later. Even as she was undergoing training to be a case officer - those are the folks who work in other countries and attempt to recruit the real “CIA agents”, what they call assets, who they then encourage to discover and sell their own nation’s secrets, sometimes for a lot of money. She questioned, she says, why she should ask someone else to do something, betray their own country, that she was not willing to do herself. She doubted what she would be doing seriously enough that she discussed with her agency mentor the possibility for working for the agency in another capacity.
But if you expect to find only deep, soul-searching contemplation in Moran’s book, you’ll be disappointed or surprised, depending on your disposition, to find that Moran’s memoir has its share of comic moments, especially as she describes the long course of training she and her cohorts endured on their way to being spies. She spends more than half the book on the training period, which lasted over a year. For example, did you know that CIA trainees hold practice cocktail parties, where they try to recruit their instructors as spies. They also learn extreme driving, how to know when they’re being followed, and cross-country path finding, among many other skills. All of which make more sense to me than cocktail party practice, to be honest.
There were also things in the book that, quite frankly bothered me. One was the confirmation of the idea I’ve had for a long time that at least a certain segment of the CIA community seem to see their activities as a game, something that makes me uncomfortable when you consider that this “game” of theirs sometimes costs real people their lives. And then there the story she told about one of the assets she tried to recruit near the end of her time in Eastern Europe, an individual who had previously been friends with some folks that most likely had ties to al Qaeda. After the 9/11 attacks, she thought it would be helpful to get information from people who knew terrorists and might be able to report on their activities.
In the instance, however, headquarters refused her request and ordered her to cut off contact with the individual she was trying to recruit because he “may at one time have had terrorist ties.” As she asked a colleague, “And how are we going to find anything out if we avoid all the people with terrorist ties?” Which was exactly what I was thinking as I read that her request had been denied. Perhaps if the CIA really didn’t have any intelligence pointing to the attacks, that was the problem. Certainly, she had a point considering some of the people her superiors at the CIA wanted her to keep a relationship with, who clearly didn’t know anything of value and stood little chance of learning such information.
To be honest, I picked Moran’s book up off the shelf at the library primarily because the title interested me. That is, in fact, the way I’ve found some of the best books I’ve ever read. I didn’t really expect much of it, but found that it is compulsively readable. Moran is a good writer and balances the serious and comic aspects of her experience well. It probably isn’t a book that I would be inclined to re-read, but I’m glad I read it.
*****************
You know, I haven't meant to turn this into a book review site, and I don't intend to now. But I've been reading some good books lately and feel like sharing. I hope you all don't mind. I'm just glad that I've finally started finding books again that I'm interested in reading. For several months, I went through a period in which I started more books than I can recall and couldn't think of a good reason to finish any of them. Fortunately, I don't feel the need to finish a book I don't like just because I've started reading it.
My question to you is, do you feel free to put a book that you aren't enjoying down? Or do you feel obligated to finish a book once you start it?
These were her thoughts near the end of her CIA career, which lasted only a few years, in the wake of 9/11 and as she tried to figure out why the United States didn’t know that the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. were coming. They were somber reflections for a somber time, and were part of what led her to resign as a CIA case officer after working in Eastern Europe for several years.
They were appropriate thoughts assessing a career that she had never been completely convinced that she should enter. After filling out her first application to work at the spy agency, she decided not to sent it in and only actually submitted an application a few years later. Even as she was undergoing training to be a case officer - those are the folks who work in other countries and attempt to recruit the real “CIA agents”, what they call assets, who they then encourage to discover and sell their own nation’s secrets, sometimes for a lot of money. She questioned, she says, why she should ask someone else to do something, betray their own country, that she was not willing to do herself. She doubted what she would be doing seriously enough that she discussed with her agency mentor the possibility for working for the agency in another capacity.
But if you expect to find only deep, soul-searching contemplation in Moran’s book, you’ll be disappointed or surprised, depending on your disposition, to find that Moran’s memoir has its share of comic moments, especially as she describes the long course of training she and her cohorts endured on their way to being spies. She spends more than half the book on the training period, which lasted over a year. For example, did you know that CIA trainees hold practice cocktail parties, where they try to recruit their instructors as spies. They also learn extreme driving, how to know when they’re being followed, and cross-country path finding, among many other skills. All of which make more sense to me than cocktail party practice, to be honest.
There were also things in the book that, quite frankly bothered me. One was the confirmation of the idea I’ve had for a long time that at least a certain segment of the CIA community seem to see their activities as a game, something that makes me uncomfortable when you consider that this “game” of theirs sometimes costs real people their lives. And then there the story she told about one of the assets she tried to recruit near the end of her time in Eastern Europe, an individual who had previously been friends with some folks that most likely had ties to al Qaeda. After the 9/11 attacks, she thought it would be helpful to get information from people who knew terrorists and might be able to report on their activities.
In the instance, however, headquarters refused her request and ordered her to cut off contact with the individual she was trying to recruit because he “may at one time have had terrorist ties.” As she asked a colleague, “And how are we going to find anything out if we avoid all the people with terrorist ties?” Which was exactly what I was thinking as I read that her request had been denied. Perhaps if the CIA really didn’t have any intelligence pointing to the attacks, that was the problem. Certainly, she had a point considering some of the people her superiors at the CIA wanted her to keep a relationship with, who clearly didn’t know anything of value and stood little chance of learning such information.
To be honest, I picked Moran’s book up off the shelf at the library primarily because the title interested me. That is, in fact, the way I’ve found some of the best books I’ve ever read. I didn’t really expect much of it, but found that it is compulsively readable. Moran is a good writer and balances the serious and comic aspects of her experience well. It probably isn’t a book that I would be inclined to re-read, but I’m glad I read it.
*****************
You know, I haven't meant to turn this into a book review site, and I don't intend to now. But I've been reading some good books lately and feel like sharing. I hope you all don't mind. I'm just glad that I've finally started finding books again that I'm interested in reading. For several months, I went through a period in which I started more books than I can recall and couldn't think of a good reason to finish any of them. Fortunately, I don't feel the need to finish a book I don't like just because I've started reading it.
My question to you is, do you feel free to put a book that you aren't enjoying down? Or do you feel obligated to finish a book once you start it?
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Book Review: "Laurel Canyon", by Michael Walker
I’ve been trying for several days to write a review of Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood (Faber and Faber, 2006), by Michael Walker, but nothing I’ve written has been anything I’ve wanted to put out into cyberspace for all of you to read. I think I’ve finally figured out why this is so: I haven’t been able to decide whether I liked it or not.
I think I finally have the answer. I mostly liked it, but I think that Walker came to some conclusions about why the Laurel Canyon neighborhood went from singer/songwriter heaven to infamy of a sort that are glib but way too simplistic. Basically, he blames Charlie Manson and the switch in drugs of choice from marijuana and LSD to cocaine. And I’m sure that both those factors had something to do with why the area transformed from a hippie-nirvana party central that was essentially open to all comers to something else entirely. But there were other factors, as well, some of them sociopolitical, some cultural, and some personal, starting with the fact that many of the artists who lived in the area in the sixties and early seventies got ambitious, then got rich, and then moved out for higher-rent areas of Los Angeles, literally and figuratively.
This isn’t the first book I’ve read about Laurel Canyon and its central role in the Los Angeles music scene in the 1960s and early 1970s. It is a place that fascinates me, and not only because I’m a fan of so much of the music that came out of that time and place. I’m also interested in it because all that happened just 35 miles (less, after my family moved from Ventura County to L.A. County) from my doorstep, without my ever realizing it. I have always been attracted to the concept of how things of note can happen so close to a place I know and yet be completely unknown to me as they are happening. That is probably exacerbated by the fact that I grew up in Southern California, where lots of things of note, good and bad, seem to go on.
One of the things Walker does well in his book is to convey a sense of the geography of Laurel Canyon, probably because he lives there himself, and that it was, surprisingly, a neighborhood in the old-fashioned sense of the word, where pretty much everyone knew everyone and managed to remain on more or less friendly terms. In that place and at that time (late ‘60s/early ‘70s), the sometimes mythical idea that the creative and the famous know each other, hang out together, and are friends, wasn’t quite so much a myth. Walker tells stories such as the one about how David Crosby, Graham Nash, and Stephen Stills became Crosby, Stills and Nash because Cass Elliot brought them together because she knew them all from the Canyon.
That is the level at which I liked Walker’s book. He tells good, interesting stories that are reasonably accurate when compared with what I’ve read and heard elsewhere about the Canyon. I think my favorite story is the one about how Jim Morrison was horrible and rude (he was apparently already drunk) to a waitress at one of bars near the Canyon that was frequented by the area’s musical community. She had had enough, and came close to beating the crap out of him with her tray. She stopped herself from hitting him only because she saw what she described as “terror” in his eyes. He demanded that she be fired and she was. However, six months later she got a call from him at her new job. It turned out that he had been looking for her all that time to apologize to her for what he had done. She read him the riot act about the crap that he had been up to, and then, apparently, they became friends. Which makes a certain amount of sense in light of other things I’ve read about Morrison.
The thing that I don’t like so much about Walker’s book, though, is the way he tries to explain how those years of sex, peace, drugs, and rock and roll in Laurel Canyon fell apart. As I said, he blamed it - after a stop at a comparison between Woodstock and the Altamont Speedway free concert by the Rolling Stones and others (some of them residents of Laurel Canyon), and how those two events a few months and a continent apart symbolized the end of the sixties and the beginning of a more violent and cynical time - on the murders ordered by Charlie Manson and on the change in the drug of choice among those in the music industry, which introduced the cocaine trade into the Canyon, culminating in bloody and violent murder on Wonderland Avenue in the Canyon (which event itself has been chronicled on film).
I’m sure that those factors had an effect on the changes that came to Laurel Canyon. I know, for example, that the level of paranoia in the wake of the murders of Sharon Tate and others by Charlie Manson’s followers went way up in Southern California. It did in my neighborhood, only a few miles from the Spahn Ranch, where Charlie and his minions were living at the time of the murders. Considering the fact that Charlie was at some of those parties in Laurel Canyon as part of his efforts to secure a recording contract, I can imagine that the revelation of who had committed the murders ratcheted tensions up there, as well, as it became harder to know who to trust and who to be suspicious of.
I leave it to you to decide whether Laurel Canyon is worth a read. If you are at all interested in the Los Angeles music scene in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, I would recommend it as worth the time it took to read the book. If you are looking for a sociological analysis of that time and place, the book is probably not as valuable. While Walker makes a bit of a point of the fact that he lives in Laurel Canyon, he also admits that he didn’t move there until the early 1990s, long after most of the events in the book took place.
I think I finally have the answer. I mostly liked it, but I think that Walker came to some conclusions about why the Laurel Canyon neighborhood went from singer/songwriter heaven to infamy of a sort that are glib but way too simplistic. Basically, he blames Charlie Manson and the switch in drugs of choice from marijuana and LSD to cocaine. And I’m sure that both those factors had something to do with why the area transformed from a hippie-nirvana party central that was essentially open to all comers to something else entirely. But there were other factors, as well, some of them sociopolitical, some cultural, and some personal, starting with the fact that many of the artists who lived in the area in the sixties and early seventies got ambitious, then got rich, and then moved out for higher-rent areas of Los Angeles, literally and figuratively.
This isn’t the first book I’ve read about Laurel Canyon and its central role in the Los Angeles music scene in the 1960s and early 1970s. It is a place that fascinates me, and not only because I’m a fan of so much of the music that came out of that time and place. I’m also interested in it because all that happened just 35 miles (less, after my family moved from Ventura County to L.A. County) from my doorstep, without my ever realizing it. I have always been attracted to the concept of how things of note can happen so close to a place I know and yet be completely unknown to me as they are happening. That is probably exacerbated by the fact that I grew up in Southern California, where lots of things of note, good and bad, seem to go on.
One of the things Walker does well in his book is to convey a sense of the geography of Laurel Canyon, probably because he lives there himself, and that it was, surprisingly, a neighborhood in the old-fashioned sense of the word, where pretty much everyone knew everyone and managed to remain on more or less friendly terms. In that place and at that time (late ‘60s/early ‘70s), the sometimes mythical idea that the creative and the famous know each other, hang out together, and are friends, wasn’t quite so much a myth. Walker tells stories such as the one about how David Crosby, Graham Nash, and Stephen Stills became Crosby, Stills and Nash because Cass Elliot brought them together because she knew them all from the Canyon.
That is the level at which I liked Walker’s book. He tells good, interesting stories that are reasonably accurate when compared with what I’ve read and heard elsewhere about the Canyon. I think my favorite story is the one about how Jim Morrison was horrible and rude (he was apparently already drunk) to a waitress at one of bars near the Canyon that was frequented by the area’s musical community. She had had enough, and came close to beating the crap out of him with her tray. She stopped herself from hitting him only because she saw what she described as “terror” in his eyes. He demanded that she be fired and she was. However, six months later she got a call from him at her new job. It turned out that he had been looking for her all that time to apologize to her for what he had done. She read him the riot act about the crap that he had been up to, and then, apparently, they became friends. Which makes a certain amount of sense in light of other things I’ve read about Morrison.
The thing that I don’t like so much about Walker’s book, though, is the way he tries to explain how those years of sex, peace, drugs, and rock and roll in Laurel Canyon fell apart. As I said, he blamed it - after a stop at a comparison between Woodstock and the Altamont Speedway free concert by the Rolling Stones and others (some of them residents of Laurel Canyon), and how those two events a few months and a continent apart symbolized the end of the sixties and the beginning of a more violent and cynical time - on the murders ordered by Charlie Manson and on the change in the drug of choice among those in the music industry, which introduced the cocaine trade into the Canyon, culminating in bloody and violent murder on Wonderland Avenue in the Canyon (which event itself has been chronicled on film).
I’m sure that those factors had an effect on the changes that came to Laurel Canyon. I know, for example, that the level of paranoia in the wake of the murders of Sharon Tate and others by Charlie Manson’s followers went way up in Southern California. It did in my neighborhood, only a few miles from the Spahn Ranch, where Charlie and his minions were living at the time of the murders. Considering the fact that Charlie was at some of those parties in Laurel Canyon as part of his efforts to secure a recording contract, I can imagine that the revelation of who had committed the murders ratcheted tensions up there, as well, as it became harder to know who to trust and who to be suspicious of.
I leave it to you to decide whether Laurel Canyon is worth a read. If you are at all interested in the Los Angeles music scene in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, I would recommend it as worth the time it took to read the book. If you are looking for a sociological analysis of that time and place, the book is probably not as valuable. While Walker makes a bit of a point of the fact that he lives in Laurel Canyon, he also admits that he didn’t move there until the early 1990s, long after most of the events in the book took place.
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
You said you're going to buy what?!?
File this under, “People mystify me sometimes”.
I came across a brief news story on Yahoo!News today (which I won’t bother to link because their links are sometimes very transitory) which explains that Lee Harvey Oswald’s original coffin is about to be auctioned by an auction house in Los Angeles. Bids are already underway, and are now at $1000 for the plain pine casket.
The coffin became available when Oswald, the assassin of President John F. Kennedy, was exhumed in 1981 in order to put to rest a rumor that a look-alike was buried in his place after he was shot by Jack Ruby just two days after JFK’s killing. When Oswald was reburied after testing apparently showed that it really was his body, and not that of an imposter or a look-alike, a new coffin was used.
A representative of the auction house said that the coffin, which was underground for about 18 years, is in “worn condition” and not all in one piece, but that “it would be easy to restore.”
Cool. I guess.
But I really wish someone would explain to me just what kind of a person would buy a used coffin? I understand the historical significance and all. I really do. But the idea of buying a coffin in which a body…any body…had been in for nearly two decades is really beyond my comprehension.
I do understand that there are people who put great value on anything someone famous…or infamous, as in Oswald’s case…owned or had contact with. But a coffin. That someone was buried in. No. Just, no.
If you disagree, I’d really like to hear from you about why you think something like that would be on anyone’s to-buy list. What would you do with it? Turn it into a coffee table? Use it as a hope chest? Sleep in it? I suppose a museum might buy it and display it as an historical curiosity, but I tend to doubt that will happen.
As an afterward, and along these lines, if you’re interested in a meditation on the idea of items that have been possessed by famous people or that were involved in historical events gain extra value just by virtue of having those connections, you might be interested in reading The Man in the High Castle, a science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. There are some interesting thoughts about this idea that come up in the course of the story.
I came across a brief news story on Yahoo!News today (which I won’t bother to link because their links are sometimes very transitory) which explains that Lee Harvey Oswald’s original coffin is about to be auctioned by an auction house in Los Angeles. Bids are already underway, and are now at $1000 for the plain pine casket.
The coffin became available when Oswald, the assassin of President John F. Kennedy, was exhumed in 1981 in order to put to rest a rumor that a look-alike was buried in his place after he was shot by Jack Ruby just two days after JFK’s killing. When Oswald was reburied after testing apparently showed that it really was his body, and not that of an imposter or a look-alike, a new coffin was used.
A representative of the auction house said that the coffin, which was underground for about 18 years, is in “worn condition” and not all in one piece, but that “it would be easy to restore.”
Cool. I guess.
But I really wish someone would explain to me just what kind of a person would buy a used coffin? I understand the historical significance and all. I really do. But the idea of buying a coffin in which a body…any body…had been in for nearly two decades is really beyond my comprehension.
I do understand that there are people who put great value on anything someone famous…or infamous, as in Oswald’s case…owned or had contact with. But a coffin. That someone was buried in. No. Just, no.
If you disagree, I’d really like to hear from you about why you think something like that would be on anyone’s to-buy list. What would you do with it? Turn it into a coffee table? Use it as a hope chest? Sleep in it? I suppose a museum might buy it and display it as an historical curiosity, but I tend to doubt that will happen.
As an afterward, and along these lines, if you’re interested in a meditation on the idea of items that have been possessed by famous people or that were involved in historical events gain extra value just by virtue of having those connections, you might be interested in reading The Man in the High Castle, a science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. There are some interesting thoughts about this idea that come up in the course of the story.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Tis the season...movies and more movies
I apparently spent part of the past week contributing to the success of the two biggest money-making films of the weekend. Which means either that my tastes have gotten way more mainstream lately, or that my sometimes quirky taste in movies is spreading.
Although, it truth, I didn’t choose either movie, relying on friends to make the choices. As it turns out, both choices were very, very good.
On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, we went to see the newest Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I’ve seen the previous films in the series, but I’m not nearly as big a fan as the friends I went to the movie with, and this is the first of the films I’ve seen in a theater since the first one came out several years ago. I went in expecting to like the film, but not to like it as much as I did.
The main actors are growing into adults, and into really good performers. The effects were very nice, and the story was involving (with the exception of the first of J. Rowling’s novels, I have not yet read the books, so I did not go in knowing already what was going to happen). I think the franchise went in the right direction with this film after a couple of missteps with earlier episodes. While the subject matter in the films keeps getting darker and darker, for example, the photography in this most recent film is significantly lighter than in the previous one, which was so dark sometimes that there was nearly nothing visible on-screen. I don’t like films that I can’t actually see. There were also more outdoor scenes in this film, which (possible spoiler alert, but only for those who don‘t know much of anything about the films) has Harry, Ron and Hermione on the run from You-Know-Who, which helped with the lighting issue. And even in the indoor scenes, the film seemed considerably more open than the previous films, which took place largely at Hogwarts School.
Then, on Thanksgiving Day, some of us went to see Tangled. Tangled is a Disney animated film (according to a card at the beginning of the film, the 50th animated film from the studio), targeted squarely at a younger audience, that retells the story of Rapunzel with some significant twists. Those of us who went to see the film ranged in age from 30 to 54, much older than the intended audience. But you know what? We all liked the film a lot. For one thing, it continues the new tradition of Disney heroines who find their power rather than just being traditionally submissive women. That is all to the good. Yes, there is a love story, and a fairly syrupy ending that will not, in the end, leave the kiddies traumatized…although Mother Gothel, the character who has locked Rapunzel in her tower, is farily scary, and I expect her to take her place in the pantheon of Disney villains. Still in all, Rapunzel does not have to sell out her newfound power and confidence in order to get her happy ending.
A very good indication of how good Tangled is, is the fact that in an audience made up largely of kids below the age of ten, there was no talking, no running about. There were essentially none of the usual signs that there were a lot of children in the theater. The film held their attention for the entire 92 minute running time of the film, a significant achievement in a time when kids’ attention spans seem to get shorter and shorter with each passing year.
Just a word about the animation in Tangled: This is not traditional Disney animation. I expected that to bother me, because I love traditional animation. Instead, this animation is in a sort of 3-D, in that it rounds characters and landscape out rather than being a series of moving flat drawings. But it isn’t the kind of 3-D that throws things out of the screen at the audience, nor does it require any kind of glasses to view correctly. And it works quite nicely. Although I really wouldn’t like to see Disney abandon traditional animation completely.
Anyway, for those of you who are interested in such things, the preliminary reports for the weekend box office at US theatres reports that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came in in first place, earning an estimated $50.3 million dollars over the weekend, while Tangled came in a close second at $49.1 million. In third place, another animated film, Megamind, took in an estimated $12.9 million. Cher’s new film, Burlesque, came fourth with estimated earnings of $11.8 million, and Unstoppable (about which I know absolutely nothing), made around $11.75 million.
In sixth through tenth place, Love & Other Drugs made $9.9 million, Faster took in around $8.7 million, Due Date made $7.3 million, The Next Three Days took in $4.8 million, and Morning Glory made an estimated $4 million.
Although, it truth, I didn’t choose either movie, relying on friends to make the choices. As it turns out, both choices were very, very good.
On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, we went to see the newest Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I’ve seen the previous films in the series, but I’m not nearly as big a fan as the friends I went to the movie with, and this is the first of the films I’ve seen in a theater since the first one came out several years ago. I went in expecting to like the film, but not to like it as much as I did.
The main actors are growing into adults, and into really good performers. The effects were very nice, and the story was involving (with the exception of the first of J. Rowling’s novels, I have not yet read the books, so I did not go in knowing already what was going to happen). I think the franchise went in the right direction with this film after a couple of missteps with earlier episodes. While the subject matter in the films keeps getting darker and darker, for example, the photography in this most recent film is significantly lighter than in the previous one, which was so dark sometimes that there was nearly nothing visible on-screen. I don’t like films that I can’t actually see. There were also more outdoor scenes in this film, which (possible spoiler alert, but only for those who don‘t know much of anything about the films) has Harry, Ron and Hermione on the run from You-Know-Who, which helped with the lighting issue. And even in the indoor scenes, the film seemed considerably more open than the previous films, which took place largely at Hogwarts School.
Then, on Thanksgiving Day, some of us went to see Tangled. Tangled is a Disney animated film (according to a card at the beginning of the film, the 50th animated film from the studio), targeted squarely at a younger audience, that retells the story of Rapunzel with some significant twists. Those of us who went to see the film ranged in age from 30 to 54, much older than the intended audience. But you know what? We all liked the film a lot. For one thing, it continues the new tradition of Disney heroines who find their power rather than just being traditionally submissive women. That is all to the good. Yes, there is a love story, and a fairly syrupy ending that will not, in the end, leave the kiddies traumatized…although Mother Gothel, the character who has locked Rapunzel in her tower, is farily scary, and I expect her to take her place in the pantheon of Disney villains. Still in all, Rapunzel does not have to sell out her newfound power and confidence in order to get her happy ending.
A very good indication of how good Tangled is, is the fact that in an audience made up largely of kids below the age of ten, there was no talking, no running about. There were essentially none of the usual signs that there were a lot of children in the theater. The film held their attention for the entire 92 minute running time of the film, a significant achievement in a time when kids’ attention spans seem to get shorter and shorter with each passing year.
Just a word about the animation in Tangled: This is not traditional Disney animation. I expected that to bother me, because I love traditional animation. Instead, this animation is in a sort of 3-D, in that it rounds characters and landscape out rather than being a series of moving flat drawings. But it isn’t the kind of 3-D that throws things out of the screen at the audience, nor does it require any kind of glasses to view correctly. And it works quite nicely. Although I really wouldn’t like to see Disney abandon traditional animation completely.
Anyway, for those of you who are interested in such things, the preliminary reports for the weekend box office at US theatres reports that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came in in first place, earning an estimated $50.3 million dollars over the weekend, while Tangled came in a close second at $49.1 million. In third place, another animated film, Megamind, took in an estimated $12.9 million. Cher’s new film, Burlesque, came fourth with estimated earnings of $11.8 million, and Unstoppable (about which I know absolutely nothing), made around $11.75 million.
In sixth through tenth place, Love & Other Drugs made $9.9 million, Faster took in around $8.7 million, Due Date made $7.3 million, The Next Three Days took in $4.8 million, and Morning Glory made an estimated $4 million.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
My weird week...holiday edition, including mishies and Christmas carols
It’s been kind of a weird week around here.
First, I haven’t been feeling completely up to par. Nothing serious, I think, just a combination of lingering allergies, the change in the weather, and my internal clock trying to catch up to the time change.
Maybe the weirdest thing that happened during the week was having the Mormon missionaries come knocking on my door at 7:30 (pretty much on the dot) the other night. First of all, what are they doing knocking on people’s doors after dark? Where I come from, that’s kind of rude. And then they seemed to be bothered by the fact that I didn’t just open the door wide at their knock, but left it closed and asked who was there. I don’t live in the worst neighborhood in town, but it isn’t exactly the best, either.
When they answered that it was the missionaries. Not, I might add, what kind of missionaries, just “The Missionaries”. I don’t live in the Corridor (that would be the Mormon Corridor of Utah, Idaho and parts of Arizona, for my non-Mormon readers), and so I thought that more of an explanation might have been in order.
Of course, when I answered (still before opening the door) that I wasn’t interested, that didn’t stop them for even a second. The conversation through the door continued and I said I wasn’t interested several more time before they revealed that they had my name. Yes, folks, they had tracked me down. I moved house in February and didn’t let anyone Mormon know where I was going, hoping they’d just leave me alone. But I received a letter from Salt Lake City a couple of months ago asking me if I was who I am, so that they could direct my records accordingly.
I didn’t answer the letter, hoping they’d take that hint. But they apparently sent my records along to the ward (congregation) that goes along with the address they had for me. Because, you know, Mormons can’t just go to any Mormon church they’d like to. They must attend the one they are assigned based on their residence.
Anyway, when I heard that they had my name, I did open the door. Just a crack. Just so they could see my face when I told them, once again, that I wasn’t interested. I expanded that to explain that I had long ago asked for no contact from the church, that I was no longer a member. Not exactly true, from their point of view, since I haven’t ever sent a letter in asking for my name to be removed from the church’s membership rolls. But it’s close enough, since I don’t believe that I have to ask them for their permission to quit. I quit, I’m out, and they don’t have anything to say about it. That is the way most Christian religious organizations work, anyway.
Well, they explained, the bishop (leader of the ward) had sent them out to check to see if I really didn’t want to be contacted. Which made me roll my eyes, because by that time I was wondering what part of “no contact” they didn’t understand. I assured them that I did not want any contact from the church, at which point they asked me if I was “all right” and if there was anything they could do for me. I was very polite and didn’t scream “Yes. Leave me the hell alone.” I said, no, I was fine, that I didn’t need anything, and that I really, really, really mean by “no contact” that I don’t want any contact from the church.
I guess I kind of made the missionary closest to the door angry at me when I would not shake his hand as they were leaving. Which kind of almost made me feel bad for them. They were actually quite polite, and I don’t blame them, really, for coming to my door. They were just doing what they were told to do. But still, no contact means no contact. It doesn’t mean, keep asking every few months if I really mean it. If I were ever to change my mind, which will happen only when pigs grow wings and fly off into the sunset and when the sun rises in the west and sets in the north, I know how to find a church.
I guess I’m going to have to finish that letter and send it off to Salt Lake after all. Just to make the bean counters happy.
The good news about all of this is that, when the next weird thing happened, it didn’t seem so very weird at all. That was when my roommate and I were going out the door on Friday night to take some DVDs back to the Red Box and make a Taco Bell run, only to discover that the gentleman who lives in the front apartment, along with his son, were putting up their Christmas lights. The first hint I had, as I was out the door last, was hearing my roommate say something about, “…because Santa Claus hasn’t gone by Macy’s yet.” When I got out there, the lights were mostly up and already on, in all their glory.
They’re pretty lights, really. But it isn’t Thanksgiving yet. I don’t do Christmas until the Thanksgiving turkey is consumed and there is no more pumpkin pie and whipped topping left.
Which begs the question: Why, at our SCA Barony’s pre-Thanksgiving feast last night (which was very, very good, by the way, and did not involve turkey at all), I didn’t mind when the host and hostess’s little boy started asking for Christmas songs, and some of us sang a few.
Weird.
First, I haven’t been feeling completely up to par. Nothing serious, I think, just a combination of lingering allergies, the change in the weather, and my internal clock trying to catch up to the time change.
Maybe the weirdest thing that happened during the week was having the Mormon missionaries come knocking on my door at 7:30 (pretty much on the dot) the other night. First of all, what are they doing knocking on people’s doors after dark? Where I come from, that’s kind of rude. And then they seemed to be bothered by the fact that I didn’t just open the door wide at their knock, but left it closed and asked who was there. I don’t live in the worst neighborhood in town, but it isn’t exactly the best, either.
When they answered that it was the missionaries. Not, I might add, what kind of missionaries, just “The Missionaries”. I don’t live in the Corridor (that would be the Mormon Corridor of Utah, Idaho and parts of Arizona, for my non-Mormon readers), and so I thought that more of an explanation might have been in order.
Of course, when I answered (still before opening the door) that I wasn’t interested, that didn’t stop them for even a second. The conversation through the door continued and I said I wasn’t interested several more time before they revealed that they had my name. Yes, folks, they had tracked me down. I moved house in February and didn’t let anyone Mormon know where I was going, hoping they’d just leave me alone. But I received a letter from Salt Lake City a couple of months ago asking me if I was who I am, so that they could direct my records accordingly.
I didn’t answer the letter, hoping they’d take that hint. But they apparently sent my records along to the ward (congregation) that goes along with the address they had for me. Because, you know, Mormons can’t just go to any Mormon church they’d like to. They must attend the one they are assigned based on their residence.
Anyway, when I heard that they had my name, I did open the door. Just a crack. Just so they could see my face when I told them, once again, that I wasn’t interested. I expanded that to explain that I had long ago asked for no contact from the church, that I was no longer a member. Not exactly true, from their point of view, since I haven’t ever sent a letter in asking for my name to be removed from the church’s membership rolls. But it’s close enough, since I don’t believe that I have to ask them for their permission to quit. I quit, I’m out, and they don’t have anything to say about it. That is the way most Christian religious organizations work, anyway.
Well, they explained, the bishop (leader of the ward) had sent them out to check to see if I really didn’t want to be contacted. Which made me roll my eyes, because by that time I was wondering what part of “no contact” they didn’t understand. I assured them that I did not want any contact from the church, at which point they asked me if I was “all right” and if there was anything they could do for me. I was very polite and didn’t scream “Yes. Leave me the hell alone.” I said, no, I was fine, that I didn’t need anything, and that I really, really, really mean by “no contact” that I don’t want any contact from the church.
I guess I kind of made the missionary closest to the door angry at me when I would not shake his hand as they were leaving. Which kind of almost made me feel bad for them. They were actually quite polite, and I don’t blame them, really, for coming to my door. They were just doing what they were told to do. But still, no contact means no contact. It doesn’t mean, keep asking every few months if I really mean it. If I were ever to change my mind, which will happen only when pigs grow wings and fly off into the sunset and when the sun rises in the west and sets in the north, I know how to find a church.
I guess I’m going to have to finish that letter and send it off to Salt Lake after all. Just to make the bean counters happy.
The good news about all of this is that, when the next weird thing happened, it didn’t seem so very weird at all. That was when my roommate and I were going out the door on Friday night to take some DVDs back to the Red Box and make a Taco Bell run, only to discover that the gentleman who lives in the front apartment, along with his son, were putting up their Christmas lights. The first hint I had, as I was out the door last, was hearing my roommate say something about, “…because Santa Claus hasn’t gone by Macy’s yet.” When I got out there, the lights were mostly up and already on, in all their glory.
They’re pretty lights, really. But it isn’t Thanksgiving yet. I don’t do Christmas until the Thanksgiving turkey is consumed and there is no more pumpkin pie and whipped topping left.
Which begs the question: Why, at our SCA Barony’s pre-Thanksgiving feast last night (which was very, very good, by the way, and did not involve turkey at all), I didn’t mind when the host and hostess’s little boy started asking for Christmas songs, and some of us sang a few.
Weird.
Saturday, November 06, 2010
Review: "The First Human", by Ann Gibbons
The First Human, by Ann Gibbons (Doubleday, 2006; 306 pages) is a well-written, interesting review of the race (and, make no mistake, that’s how some of the participants regard it) to find evidence of the last common ancestor between humans and apes.
Gibbons outlines the march forward in time and backward in history from early discoveries of fossils of various human ancestors by pioneers like Louis S.B. Leakey and his wife, Mary in Olduvai Gorge; Eugene Dubois in Indonesia; Davidson Black in China and Raymond Dart and Robert Broom in South Africa to more recent discoveries that go back further in time by Richard Leakey and his wife, Meave (Louis and Mary’s son and daughter-in-law); Donald Johanson, Tim White and many others.
But Gibbons doesn’t just talk about the fossils. She also explores the personalities of the (mostly) men who look for the fossils, the arguments they get into over the interpretations of their finds and, sometimes, even the tactics some of them have stooped to, to make sure they and not their competitors get access to the best sites and the oldest fossils. She also looks at the controversial subject of determining the pace and direction of human evolution using DNA markers instead of, or in concert with, the fossils.
For someone like myself, who is fascinated by the history of paleoanthropology as well as the information that the study of human and prehuman fossils reveals, this book is a must-read by the head writer on human evolution for the journal Science. She has access to the people who have participated in the search for and study of the fossils, and she interviewed pretty much every actor in the drama who is still living. She tells the story of the past few decades of research with frankness but without an overabundance of finger-pointing, in a manner that is readable for those who already know something about paleoanthropology and for those who don’t know anything about the subject.
Gibbons’ book proves that while the fossils that have been found and studied might be dry and dead, the information they carry and the people who search for and analyze them are anything but.
Gibbons outlines the march forward in time and backward in history from early discoveries of fossils of various human ancestors by pioneers like Louis S.B. Leakey and his wife, Mary in Olduvai Gorge; Eugene Dubois in Indonesia; Davidson Black in China and Raymond Dart and Robert Broom in South Africa to more recent discoveries that go back further in time by Richard Leakey and his wife, Meave (Louis and Mary’s son and daughter-in-law); Donald Johanson, Tim White and many others.
But Gibbons doesn’t just talk about the fossils. She also explores the personalities of the (mostly) men who look for the fossils, the arguments they get into over the interpretations of their finds and, sometimes, even the tactics some of them have stooped to, to make sure they and not their competitors get access to the best sites and the oldest fossils. She also looks at the controversial subject of determining the pace and direction of human evolution using DNA markers instead of, or in concert with, the fossils.
For someone like myself, who is fascinated by the history of paleoanthropology as well as the information that the study of human and prehuman fossils reveals, this book is a must-read by the head writer on human evolution for the journal Science. She has access to the people who have participated in the search for and study of the fossils, and she interviewed pretty much every actor in the drama who is still living. She tells the story of the past few decades of research with frankness but without an overabundance of finger-pointing, in a manner that is readable for those who already know something about paleoanthropology and for those who don’t know anything about the subject.
Gibbons’ book proves that while the fossils that have been found and studied might be dry and dead, the information they carry and the people who search for and analyze them are anything but.
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
GO VOTE
It's Election Day in the United States.
If you've voted already, congratulations. You have your license to complain until the next election.
If you haven't voted yet, go do it.
It doesn't matter who you vote for, or whether or not you support the same candidates and issues I do. What does matter, if you are eligible to vote, that you go out there and be a good citizen and exercise the franchise.
That is all. :D
If you've voted already, congratulations. You have your license to complain until the next election.
If you haven't voted yet, go do it.
It doesn't matter who you vote for, or whether or not you support the same candidates and issues I do. What does matter, if you are eligible to vote, that you go out there and be a good citizen and exercise the franchise.
That is all. :D
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
In which I become delusional and expect the news to actually be news
You know, I was brought up to believe that keeping up with the news is a person’s responsibility, because you can’t be a good citizen if you aren’t an informed citizen. And I do believe that.
However (bet you knew there was going to be a “however” coming up), it has gotten to the point where I can hardly stand to read or watch the news these days.
Part of that has to do with what passes for news in the 21st century. Half of it seems to consist of items about so-called celebrities, half of whom I’ve never heard of and all of which is none of my damn business, or the scare story of the day over either terrorism or how unhealthy this or that thing is for me. And another part of it has to do with the fact that most political “news” consists of partisan pundits (on all sides) trying to pass off their own beliefs as actual truth.
I must be getting old, because I remember when personal opinion used to be labeled as such in broadcast news. I used to hate George Putnam’s right wing commentaries on the old channel 11 news in Los Angeles when I was growing up. But at least he kept it out of hard news stories he was reading and called his op-ed pieces “One Reporter’s Opinion”.
It irritates the crap out of me that news readers, especially, seem to think their audience needs to be told how to feel about each story, and I’ve nearly given up on television news. I really don’t need to be told that every traffic accident and other mishap is “tragic”. I’m thinking we need to ban that word from hard news for awhile. That, and the chat between news stories, where the news readers share how they feel about a story. I don’t care that Nancy Newsgirl thinks that Paris Hilton (for example) is a slut or that Rob Reporter thinks that the husband did it or that Steve Sportscaster seems to need to share with me that he believes the reports of this or that athlete’s misbehavior.
What I want to know is, whatever happened to “who, what, when, where, why, and how”. Back when I was taking journalism classes and working on the student newspaper in college, we were taught that the lead of any news story, be it in print or broadcast media, needed to include what happened to whom, when and where, and why and how it happened. I hardly ever see that in broadcast news any more, and less and less often in written news stories. It seems like nearly every story, even hard news items, have been turned into feature stories that go through some long, supposedly artistic introduction before we find out what actually happened.
In my work now, writing finance news for several internet outlets, I really try to stick to the facts and to put the essential information in the lead. I probably don’t always succeed, but at least I make the attempt. It seems like fewer and fewer news writers even try any more.
I don’t suppose I will ever completely give up reading the news. It would be too much against my nature and upbringing. But I don’t have to like the state of reporting, and it is likely that I will continue to complain about how sloppy and unprofessional journalism has become in the twenty-first century.
However (bet you knew there was going to be a “however” coming up), it has gotten to the point where I can hardly stand to read or watch the news these days.
Part of that has to do with what passes for news in the 21st century. Half of it seems to consist of items about so-called celebrities, half of whom I’ve never heard of and all of which is none of my damn business, or the scare story of the day over either terrorism or how unhealthy this or that thing is for me. And another part of it has to do with the fact that most political “news” consists of partisan pundits (on all sides) trying to pass off their own beliefs as actual truth.
I must be getting old, because I remember when personal opinion used to be labeled as such in broadcast news. I used to hate George Putnam’s right wing commentaries on the old channel 11 news in Los Angeles when I was growing up. But at least he kept it out of hard news stories he was reading and called his op-ed pieces “One Reporter’s Opinion”.
It irritates the crap out of me that news readers, especially, seem to think their audience needs to be told how to feel about each story, and I’ve nearly given up on television news. I really don’t need to be told that every traffic accident and other mishap is “tragic”. I’m thinking we need to ban that word from hard news for awhile. That, and the chat between news stories, where the news readers share how they feel about a story. I don’t care that Nancy Newsgirl thinks that Paris Hilton (for example) is a slut or that Rob Reporter thinks that the husband did it or that Steve Sportscaster seems to need to share with me that he believes the reports of this or that athlete’s misbehavior.
What I want to know is, whatever happened to “who, what, when, where, why, and how”. Back when I was taking journalism classes and working on the student newspaper in college, we were taught that the lead of any news story, be it in print or broadcast media, needed to include what happened to whom, when and where, and why and how it happened. I hardly ever see that in broadcast news any more, and less and less often in written news stories. It seems like nearly every story, even hard news items, have been turned into feature stories that go through some long, supposedly artistic introduction before we find out what actually happened.
In my work now, writing finance news for several internet outlets, I really try to stick to the facts and to put the essential information in the lead. I probably don’t always succeed, but at least I make the attempt. It seems like fewer and fewer news writers even try any more.
I don’t suppose I will ever completely give up reading the news. It would be too much against my nature and upbringing. But I don’t have to like the state of reporting, and it is likely that I will continue to complain about how sloppy and unprofessional journalism has become in the twenty-first century.
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