More things, June 1, 2011
Rupert Murdoch - A Portrait of Satan by Adam Curtis (journalism)
Rupert Murdoch doesn’t like the BBC And sometimes the BBC doesn’t seem to like Rupert Murdoch either. Following the principle that you should know your enemy, the BBC has assiduously recorded the relentless rise of Rupert Murdoch and his assault on the old “decadent” elites of Britain. And I thought it would be interesting to put up some of the high points.
I don’t care if you read this article by Dave Pell(rant)
The Internet measures everything. And I am a slave to those measurements. After so many years of pushing much of my life through this screen, I’ve started measuring my experiences and my sense of self-worth using the same metrics as the Internet uses to measure success. I check my stats relentlessly. The sad truth is that I spend more time measuring than I spend doing.
FOX News Turned me into a TV Slut by Meghan Keane (journalism)
When I looked in the mirror, I could sort of recognize that I was still there underneath all that makeup, but I was pretty surprised to see how I had completely transformed into a Fox News babe. I was even more surprised when I got into the holding room where guests waited to be called up. I was greeted by another young woman who looked surprisingly similar to the girl who had been escorting me around the building. She was excited to see us both, and while a male producer began explaining to me the format of the show and when I’d go on, I noticed that the two of them were chatting about their outfits and started applying more makeup to their already very done up faces.
Reading Readiness—A Little Bit on A Lot by Frank Chimero (zen)
My shelf is full of books for which I am not yet ready, but this is the benefit of the format of a book. The form itself denotes weight; the thickness lets you know what a book asks. What is being asked is laid bare, so no one skims Ulysses—if a reader were to consider skimming an option for literature, they wouldn’t start reading Joyce. The greater the task, the more futile these shortcuts seem.
Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have ‘Nothing to Hide’ by Daniel J. Solove(journalism)
On the surface, it seems easy to dismiss the nothing-to-hide argument. Everybody probably has something to hide from somebody. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn declared, “Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is.” Likewise, in Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s novella “Traps,” which involves a seemingly innocent man put on trial by a group of retired lawyers in a mock-trial game, the man inquires what his crime shall be. “An altogether minor matter,” replies the prosecutor. “A crime can always be found.”