[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
But first, the news.
Had a story picked up for a national NPR newscast today. First time. It’s part of the second item, beginning 23 seconds in.
Ephemera, miscellany and other big words by Brian Mackey.
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2012-03-19
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2012-03-17
The power of silence.
In this week’s episode of This American Life, Ira Glass challenges Mike Daisey on his exaggerations and fabrications about the Chinese factories where Apple products are made.
There are many painful, cringe-worthy moments in the interviews with Daisey. But nothing is as powerful as when the show seems to let long pauses — awkward silences — play out in real time.
The waveform you see above begins at 28:55. Glass says, “… but instead, you lied further and you said — you wrote, ‘The workers were from Wintek, not Foxconn.’ Why not just tell us what really happened at that point?”
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi …
Thirteen seconds. Eternity.
Finally: “I think I was terrified.”
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2012-03-14
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]At his farewell speech, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich finally reveals his administration’s motto.
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2012-02-23
Who cares if a politician buys a newspaper?
Jack Shafer:
In his 2004 book, The Vanishing Newspaper, Philip Meyer calls the conversion of a newspaper’s assets, including the goodwill embodied in its good name, “slow liquidation.” A proprietor simply cuts circulation, cuts pages, sells the presses and outsources printing, and cuts labor costs by dumping staff until one day — poof! — the paper vanishes.
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2012-02-18
Well-written obits of lives lived well
The New York Times’ obituary of John Fairfax is making the rounds this weekend. There’s nothing like reading tight copy about an interesting person you’ve never heard of. It seemed like a good occasion to share a few of my favorite obits from the past few years.
Fairfax is best known for rowing across the Atlantic Ocean alone, and for rowing across the Pacific with his girlfriend. The latter seems the far greater accomplishment, and not just because crossing the Pacific took a year to the Atlantic’s six months. (“The couple survived the voyage, and so, for quite some time, did their romance,” the Times reports.)
What’s catching people’s attention in Mr. Fairfax’s obit are the tidbits about his early adventures: “At 20, he attempted suicide-by-jaguar. Afterward he was apprenticed to a pirate.” Suicide-by-jaguar? Sounds like The Most Interesting Man in the World.
There was another great obit last year, when we learned of the death of Nancy Wake, a “proud spy and Nazi foe.” The Times:
By her own account she once killed a German sentry with her bare hands, and ordered the execution of a woman she believed to be a German spy.
But my favorite is an obituary from 2010, on the death of Knut Haugland. He was a sailor on the Kon-Tiki expedition across the Pacific Ocean by raft, but it was his exploits during World War II that caught my eye:
As a radio engineer, Mr. Haugland had fought the invading Nazis at the battle of Narvik in 1940 and then, while pretending to be a typical worker at an Oslo radio factory, took a leading role in the anti-Nazi resistance, training radio operators and setting up secret transmitters.
Twice he was captured and escaped, once by back-flipping over a snow bank and running off into the woods before his guards could use their weapons. A third time, surrounded by the Gestapo at a maternity hospital in Oslo where he had set up a transmitter in a chimney, he shot his way to freedom with a pistol.I’ve wasted my life. -
2012-01-28
While liberals’ gazes tended to fall upon the pleasant images, such as a beach ball or a bunny rabbit, conservatives clearly focused on the negative images — of an open wound, a crashed car or a dirty toilet, for example.
— Fascinating study on the biology of political orientation.
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2012-01-23
People disclose the phone numbers that they dial or text to their cellular providers; the URLs that they visit and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond to their Internet service providers; and the books, groceries, and medications they purchase to online retailers. […] I for one doubt that people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the Government of a list of every Web site they had visited in the last week, or month, or year.
— Justice Sonia Sotomayor, concurring in U.S. v. Jones (read the NYT story or full opinion)
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2012-01-06
Moonrise at sunset. (Taken with Instagram at Illinois State Capitol)
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2011-12-29
What Roger Ebert said
Roger Ebert has a few hypotheses on why movie revenue dropped in 2011, when theater audiences were the smallest since 1995. His final point is the lack of choice at most multiplexes:
Box-office tracking shows that the bright spot in 2011 was the performance of indie, foreign or documentary films. On many weekends, one or more of those titles captures first-place in per-screen average receipts. Yet most moviegoers outside large urban centers can’t find those titles in their local gigantiplex. Instead, all the shopping center compounds seem to be showing the same few overhyped disappointments. Those films open with big ad campaigns, play a couple of weeks, and disappear.
The myth that small-town moviegoers don’t like “art movies” is undercut by Netflix’s viewing results; the third most popular movie on Dec. 28 on Netflix was Certified Copy, by the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. You’ve heard of him? In fourth place — French director Alain Corneau’s Love Crime. In fifth, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — but the subtitled Swedish version.
This calls to mind a point I made in a recent column assessing AMC Theatres’ programming in Springfield:
This is a city that supports its own Route 66 Film Festival, two monthly movie clubs (Movie Geeks Club and Liberty Brew & View), the Springfield Art Association’s film series and the Foreign & Independent Film Series at the University of Illinois Springfield.
One wonders if AMC’s Kansas City-based programmers underestimate the local taste for ambitious cinema.
The list of recent art, indie and foreign movies that have not opened in Springfield includes The Artist, Melancholia, Like Crazy, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Margin Call and Into the Abyss. There are many others, but don’t hold your breath waiting for them to open here.
Today, you can see My Week With Marilyn and Young Adult at a theater near you. The best way to let AMC and Hollywood studios know you want more indie films here is to vote with your wallet. They’ve got to try something different — instead of returning to the same pricey wells of blockbusters, 3-D surcharges and ginormous tubs-o-popcorn, why not try a little diversity in programming?
Then again, maybe the shareholders are OK with declining revenue.
Source: news.ycombinator.com
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2011-12-08
FDR, rewriter:
Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in
world historyinfamy, the United State of America wassimultaneouslysuddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japanwithout warning.What a difference two words make.
(via todaysdocument)
Source: research.archives.gov
