i just wanna mcfly

After Fort Hood, another example of how ‘citizen journalists’ can’t handle the truth

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:04:06 -0500

After Fort Hood, another example of how ‘citizen journalists’ can’t handle the truth :

fascinating and frighting article on social media and the fort hood shooting

Paul Carr’s weekly column about social media strikes a chord this week. He tackles the lack of humanity of people ‘reporting’ the news.

Citizen Journalism most certainly has its place in the world today, but when viewed in the extremes, I think we must absolutely question its value.

I’m reminded of a story a professor told me in my freshman year of J-school:

In the 80s, we had a camera man at the station. He’d seen a lot of horrifying things in his long career, as most journalists do. I don’t know if cynics are born out of journalism or if they’re simply attracted to it, but this man’s story is the reason why we need thoughtful journalists.

There was a missing child report in a nearby town. The little boy was 3 years old. He’d gone missing near his family’s lake cabin and was feared drowned.

The police brought out the blood hounds and our reporters followed, as they always do.

Near the lake, there was a steep, sandy dropoff. It appeared to have recently eroded, like a miniature mudslide. The camera man focused on a piece of land where officers were digging and the dogs were going nuts.

Through his camera lens, he saw the boys hand peak through the dirt. Cold, blue, lifeless.

That was the moment he walked away from the job. He didn’t even edit the film. When he got back to the station, he turned in his footage and left.

It’s simple to forget your humanity when you’re a journalist, shockingly simple. Had this man stayed in the field, I think he’d have made the greatest journalist I’d ever seen…or it would ruin him. Most people in this business burn out quickly. There’s no middle ground.

Temporarily forgetting your humanity to report the news, whether you are a professional journalist or not is not a position of strength. It is not a good thing. It’s terrifying.

I agree with Carr that censorship is not the answer. The answer is in media literacy. As frustrating as it sometimes is, most journalists work along ethical guidelines meant to protect them from the mistakes others have made in the past. Those guidelines aren’t necessarily known to the public. They should be.

Mozart- Rondo in A Minor (performed by Ning An) We’ve been...

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:26:05 -0500

Mozart- Rondo in A Minor (performed by Ning An)

We’ve been studying this piece in form and analysis— quite beautiful, and surprisingly chromatic! could easily be a chopin at times.

i’d love to meet this guy! he really knows his...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:48:56 -0500

i’d love to meet this guy! he really knows his soda.

willw:

Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA. I can’t believe I missed this!

(via justin)

Video

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:58:14 -0500

"Religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality. And the protections that we have for religion —..."

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:24:46 -0500

““Religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality. And the protections that we have for religion — we protect religion. And talk about a lifestyle choice — that is absolutely a choice… It’s a travesty that people have forced someone who is gay to have to make their case that they deserve the same basic rights as someone else…””

- Jon Stewart (via adayinboston) (via soupsoup)

Drunk Ewok Moonwalks & Molests Al Roker on Today Show my...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:24:00 -0500

Drunk Ewok Moonwalks & Molests Al Roker on Today Show

my roommate just shows this to me…

funniest video I’ve seen in a while!

(via Jeff)

david: Coolest shit ever. Seeing if they have this at...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:26:12 -0500

david:

Coolest shit ever. Seeing if they have this at Toys-R-Us on my way home. Thanks, Erik!

whaaaaat, i gotta check this out sometime!

optimisto: oceanofmind: proofmathisbeautiful: lickystickypick...

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:05:24 -0400

optimisto:

oceanofmind:

proofmathisbeautiful:

lickystickypickyme:

Physicists discover that the structure of a brain cell is the same as the entire universe.

One is only micrometers wide. The other is billions of light-years across. One shows neurons in a mouse brain. The other is a simulated image of the universe. Together they suggest the surprisingly similar patterns found in vastly different natural phenomena. (David Constantine)

more here

Centuries ago, most of the lawgivers saw God’s hand in nature’s laws…. Because the laws of nature provide a framework in which to explore the nature of reality, and because laws allow scientists to make predictions about the universe, the discoveries of the laws are among humanity’s greatest noetic, or intellectual, achievements….

this brings me back to my trigger happy TV days. love...

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:51:23 -0400

this brings me back to my trigger happy TV days. love it

thethingy:

thedailywhat:

Urban Prank of the Day: French Fakester Rémi Gaillard takes to the streets dressed up like a giant bat, proceeds to scare the living bejeezus out of passers-by.

[via.]

"There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting. Consider this..."

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:50:18 -0400

“There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting. Consider this utterly commonplace situation: a man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically he slows down. Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himself from a thing still too close to him in time. In existential mathematics, that experience takes the form of two basic equations: the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”

- Milan Kundera, Slowness. (via mills) (via musicbrain)

i was seriously hoping this inspired his (non-existent)...

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:57:29 -0400

i was seriously hoping this inspired his (non-existent) journey

soupsoup:

livesophia:

Best.

jesus...

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:18:00 -0400

jesus...

the who- my generation (infamous live clip with explosives) i...

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:29:04 -0400

the who- my generation (infamous live clip with explosives)

i love the banter between the smothers brother and the band at the beginning

the kinks- waterloo sunset

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:25:30 -0400

the kinks- waterloo sunset

please say this doesn’t mean skafunkrastapunk.com is dead!

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:35:00 -0400

please say this doesn’t mean skafunkrastapunk.com is dead!

"My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are..."

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:34:14 -0400

“My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.”

- Be lucky - it’s an easy skill to learn - Telegraph (via bijan) (via soupsoup)

i love when you find things on youtube that you would’ve...

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:35:28 -0400

i love when you find things on youtube that you would’ve killed to see a few years ago. this is one of those videos— i was really into this pavement cover album by james carter/cyrus chestnut/etc called ‘gold sounds’. its amazing now to now see the actual session..

The Limits of Self-Knowledge (The Frontal Cortex)

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:25:12 -0400

The Limits of Self-Knowledge (The Frontal Cortex):

psychotherapy:

Over at the BPS Research Digest, a number of researchers respond to a very interesting question: “What’s one nagging thing you still don’t understand about yourself?” All of the replies are intriguing, but my favorites answers concerned the limitations of self-knowledge. Here, for instance, is David Buss:

One nagging thing that I still don’t understand about myself is why I often succumb to well-documented psychological biases, even though I’m acutely aware of these biases. One example is my failure at affective forecasting, such as believing that I will be happy for a long time after some accomplishment (e.g. publishing a new book), when in fact the happiness dissipates more quickly than anticipated. Another is succumbing to the male sexual overperception bias, misperceiving a woman’s friendliness as sexual interest. A third is undue optimism about how quickly I can complete work projects, despite many years of experience in underestimating the time actually required. One would think that explicit knowledge of these well-documented psychological biases and years of experience with them would allow a person to cognitively override the biases. But they don’t.

And it’s not just psychologists who experience the limitations of self-knowledge. Just consider Harry Markowitz, a Nobel Prize winning economist who practically invented the field of investment portfolio theory. In the early 1950’s, while working at the RAND Corporation, Markowitz became intrigued by a practical financial problem: how much of his savings should he invest in the stock market? Markowitz’s breakthrough was to derive a complicated mathematical equation that could calculate the optimal mix of assets. He had come up with a rational solution to the old problem of risk versus reward.

But Markowitz was incapable of using his own equation. When he divided up his investment portfolio, he ignored the investment advice that had won him the Nobel Prize. Instead of relying on the math, he fell into the familiar trap of loss aversion - this leads people to reject investments that might lead to losses - and he split his portfolio equally between stocks and bonds. Markowitz was so worried about the possibility of losing his savings that he failed to optimize his own retirement account.

Or look at self-control. Dieters are intimately aware that self-control is a feeble mental muscle, easily overwhelmed by the smell of french fries. But does this knowledge lead to improved dieting performance? Most of the time, the answer is no: McDonald’s is just too tasty. And so we end up like Saint Augustine, praying for chastity and continence, but not quite yet.

My own unfixable flaw concerns “paralysis by analysis,” or thinking about decisions that I know shouldn’t be consciously deliberated. Although I’ve written about Tim Wilson’s work with strawberry jam, and know a bit about the information processing powers of the unconscious, I still find myself spending far too much time in the supermarket, debating the merits of various jams. It turns out that writing a book about decision-making doesn’t make you a master decider - it simply allows you to have more precise names for your mistakes.

speaking piano!!! damn…this is just baffling…

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:23:00 -0400

speaking piano!!!

damn…this is just baffling…

optimisto: intrepidwanderer: Nature is mathematical. Math is...

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:52:13 -0400

optimisto:

intrepidwanderer:

Nature is mathematical.
Math is natural