Bob has got a lot going for him, the way I see it:
In all fairness, I should follow up my March post offering helpful tips for pedestrians by noting one critically important tip for drivers: Do not — I repeat, not — paint your fingernails while driving.
I’d say the same also probably goes for painting your toenails.
Things that no longer aggravate me:
Things that still aggravate me:
And, of course, there are plenty of things that I find disturbing, deeply saddening or incomprehensible — murder-suicide, child abuse, racism, homophobia, etc. — but that don’t aggravate me, per se, in the sense that I don’t get worked up about them.
So I’ve been playing around with a couple of new Web 2.0 services and they seem to fall prey to a problem I’ve seen elsewhere — a total lack of consistency about how or whether to capitalize Web site or service names.
You can check out my new profiles at the online music-sharing site Blip.fm and the social media aggregator FriendFeed. Or wait — is that how I should capitalize their names?
Note the logos. Blip.fm uses mixed capitalization and FriendFeed lowercases the whole thing, despite how the name appears in their Web site copy. I know that for Web companies there’s a special complication in that the name always appears lowercase in the address bar no matter what the company’s official style is. For that reason I’ve chosen, for example, to call this site kboreilly.com, instead of KBOReilly.com.
Web firms are far from being alone in engaging in this regrettable practice, though they seem to be especially prone to it. Lots of companies do it; why, even think tanks do it. A long-time offender:
I guess the blame really lies with the folks who design the logos, who apparently cannot find a way to make mixed-case look good or at least deceive themselves into believing it does in order to appease style Nazis such as myself.
Photo by misternils (CC 2.0)
The red hand means don’t walk. I know, I know. If you squint hard enough it kind of looks like it’s waving you forward, but do not let your eyes deceive you. Wait for the little walking figure. I know it looks like he’s frozen in place and not really walking. You probably think it applies only to those sick people from the movie “Awakenings.”
Or, you think, “Well, the hand is not really red, it’s kind of orangeish and, gee, who knows what the heck that means? I’ll just dart into traffic.”
No. No. No. Just think of that old dance routine the Supremes did when singing “Stop! In the Name of Love.” You remember it, don’t you? When they said, “Stop!” they put their hands up. No, their hands weren’t orangey-red, I’ll give you that much. But still, it was the same basic gesture as what’s displayed on the sign and I feel safe in saying that it was not meant to secretly indicate, “Please walk toward me, putting yourself and drivers in serious danger.”
And another thing: You know those white lines that are usually at each intersection? They are there for a reason. They are called “crosswalks” and you are supposed to use them to “walk across” the street. I know, I know. It sounds complicated. But just as we figured out the red hand thing we can do this too. Now, you might think, “But, the place I want to go is in the middle of the street — so I’ll just cross right here.” But here’s the thing. Despite all your mentalist efforts, there are no temporary magical crosswalks painted around you as you jaywalk.
In fact, drivers do not expect you to be there. And they may hit you. And when they do, you will be seriously hurt or killed and some poor schlub of a driver will have to live with the guilt for the rest of his life. “Aha!” you say. “But I’m a Very Important Person who will use the 30 seconds I save by crossing against the light or jaywalking to cure cancer.” Uh-huh. And yet you haven’t. And the odds are you’ll get hit by a car before you do. Jackass.
So, let’s say you’re Kirk Ellis — the guy who got the chance to turn David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning, popular biography of American founder John Adams into a top-shelf, seven-part HBO miniseries. You could stick to the facts of Adams’ life, which are more than dramatic enough, in telling a gripping tale.
Or you could construct a totally bogus subplot about how Adams’ son, Thomas, drank himself to death due to resentment over his father’s (inaccurately represented) long absences from home. That is just one of the many, many needless and pointless inaccuracies, not to mention egregious distortions, in the miniseries. After all, what better way to honor a national hero than to lie relentlessly about his life and family?
Look, screenwriters: If you want to make stuff up, write fictional screenplays. If you want to write “fact-based tales,” then stick to the facts as opposed to, say, conveying the notion that Adams’ daughter Nabby’s husband deserted her and her family when in reality he did not. Whatever. I keep telling myself I will stop getting worked up about this sort of thing, but I am compelled to watch these biopics and then discover how brutally and stupidly they disort the truth.
Information overload — news overload, to be more precise — can be a problem, though it is a wonderful problem to have.
The main reason people read “the news” — is to satisfy a general sense of obligation to “know what’s going on.” It is to avoid that terrible sense of embarrassment you might feel if you had no idea what a co-worker was talking about when she asked, “Can you believe what those monsters did in Mumbai?”
This need, as well as the desire to follow news of deep personal interest such as how your favorite stock or sports team is doing, used to be easily satisfied by reading the daily newspaper. Now that you could probably spend hours a day researching your stock or your sports team, the question of when enough is enough is highly pertinent. Each new link seems to ask, “Do you want more information?” How do you think about answering that question? How can news organizations help you decide the answer to that question?
Daniel Luzer attempts to take on the issue in a piece for the Columbia Journalism Review called “Linked Out.” The gist:
In mid-October, I decided to spend a day following the news through hyperlinks only. I followed every link I could find. I stuffed myself full of news to understand the potential and problems of the hyperlink. How much does the hyperlink matter? Is it an incidental addition to news, or does it actually change the way people consume information?
To describe this approach as conceptually stillborn would be polite. To describe it as idiotic and moronic would be impolite, but perhaps more apt. The methodology is akin to studying urban sprawl by randomly taking every highway off ramp for a day or consumerism by walking into every store on a street. It is a pointless gimmick that does not in any way resemble how real people behave, or tell us anything useful about the subject at hand.
So, I’ve come to your Web site. Looks interesting. No, I’m not going to bookmark it, because then I’d have to remember (1) where I bookmarked it and (2) to click on the bookmark. What I’d love to do is add your RSS feed to my news aggregator of choice. But why do so many news sites make that a daunting prospect?
For example, I’ve heard good things about the pro-am/citizen journalism Web site, Chi-Town Daily News. But check out the RSS page. There are more than 20 feed options, and not a one of them is a general site feed or “top news” or “top headlines” or “front page” or whatever. And worse, many of the feeds carry vague titles such as “Thesis 11” and “Reality of my surroundings.” So, which feed do I subscribe to?
Gapers Block is another Chicago news site guilty of the same sin. No general or “top news” or “main” feed. And would you have guessed the “Mechanics” feed covers politics, not auto repair? Yeah, me neither. (That should not be confused, of course, with “Transmission,” which covers music.) Site editor Andrew Huff says there is some sort of technical hurdle to providing a general site feed. I take him at his word, but that doesn’t make it any less irritating.
Don’t get me wrong: I love the fact that I can subscribe to the Boston Globe’s Celtics and Red Sox coverage without getting the rest of its news content. But check out how logical the Globe’s RSS feeds page is. There are ways of doing this well.
Sites should make syndication quick, easy and intuitive. Is that too much to ask?
By the way, Russ Smith’s new Web site, Splice Today, does something I find odd for this Web day and age. It prominently asks users to “make Splice your home page.” Isn’t that awfully presumptuous for a brand new Web site? Most users are already attached to a page that’s been their starting site for a while, often years. It’s sort of like someone proposing marriage on the first date.
Update: Chi-Town Daily News head honcho Geoff Dougherty tells me the all-news feed shows up in the “subscribe to this page” option now available in many Web browsers’ URL bars (not mine, however). Nevertheless, the RSS feeds page still could use some clarity given that many users are interested in drilling down to more specific syndication options.
Unlike some people, I adore each element of the traditional Thanksgiving meal. I wish I could have Thanksgiving dinner all year ’round. How about a theme restaurant where every day is Thanksgiving? All the great fixings without any of the hassle — or in-laws.
Call it … Thanks!
You know, waiters in pilgrim outfits, waitresses dressed like Indians wearing feathers in their hair. Breakfast is turkey omelettes with a side of stuffing. Lunch is “leftover” turkey sandwiches. TVs showing the Detroit Lions losing on a loop. Have a section of the menu with 1621-style offerings.
Some taglines:
This started in my mind as a joke, but now it’s developed into a half-baked idea.
As some of you may already know, Karen and I got divorced last month after two and a half years of separation and more than six years of marriage. I’m not sure what explication I’m willing — or able, really — to provide on the matter.
I can say that we are still on very good terms. Indeed, we carpool together to work on those mornings I manage to get myself out of bed on time.
It was 10 years ago this fall that Karen and I met online, back when that was an oddity. Despite the turn of our tale, I think it’s appropriate to note — on this Thanksgiving Day — how grateful I am, and how grateful I always will be, that Karen came into my life.
Ever see an ad on TV and think, “Oh, that’s a cool-sounding song that I would like to illegally download?” In the past, you’d google perform a search using Google for something like “[product name] tv ad song” and hope someone had blogged about it or something.
No longer. With splendAd.com you can find out, “What’s the song in the rollerskating Diet Coke ad?” Now you know exactly which up-and-coming band has “sold out” early.
How good is Google? Good enough to know the nickname of your favorite newspaper or magazine. Try the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button with any of these and you’ll go straight to that pub’s home page. Now will this save you a bunch of time compared to typing out the whole thing in the address bar? Probably not. Still, I’m impressed.
I guess enough people are linking to NYT, etc. to make these work:
That’s what I got as a result of watching Cho Seung-Hui’s “multimedia manifesto” that NBC decided to air widely and repeatedly yesterday, and which other news outlets also broadcast. But the icky feeling I got surely cannot compare to the horror and agony the families of the victims must have felt upon seeing this material, not to mention the folks who came face to face with Cho and lived to tell about it.
Could you imagine being in the hospital recovery room as your multiple bullet wounds heal and then you see Cho pop up on the screen with two guns menacingly pointed at the camera? Shudder.
Airing this evil killer’s self-aggrandizing rants did not aid public understanding of the Virginia Tech tragedy; it only aided NBC’s ratings. And it was not as though this was necessarily a binary choice between disclosure and nondisclosure, which NBC executives seem to have realized by dictating that the Cho material would not be aired for more than six minutes per hour on MSNBC.
NBC tried to be cautious — or attempted to portray itself as being concerned about their complicity in glorifying a mass murderer — in how they handled this vile, disgusting stuff but they still fell short. The story could have been just as well advanced by describing the package of materials and quoting from it judiciously. Viewers could then have been directed to a dedicated link on MSNBC to find more.
Instead, readers saw this photo adorning the MSNBC home page.
So why does it matter? If those closest to the tragedy really are sensitive about news coverage, presumably they have their TV sets off, right? Perhaps, except there is a lot of other worthwhile news related to the mass murder still trickling out that one might want to be aware of without having Cho’s pompous multimedia “Song of Myself” suddenly thrust into your consciousness.
Also, there is the prety well documented copycat effect of over-the-top media coverage of suicides and mass shootings. Again, presumably the wannabe Chos out there could find the material online even if NBC and other outlets had been more judicious in how they chose to publicize it. But considering that the killer’s manifesto added close to zero news value, why push it up front? The story could still be told while minimizing the potential copycat effect.
The victims’ families, surprisingly, have now pushed back on this and it’s apparent that both due to declining news value (though it’s a small drop from “almost none” to begin with) of the video and public and media criticism that news outlets are dialing back the exposure even further.
NBC displayed really poor judgment. It’s not the end of the world, and of course I agree with Brian that they’ve the right to do whatever they want. But I second the “scum” label.
(Originally posted to Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog.)
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