May 11 2013
My knowledge of TV talking heads is somewhat scattershot, largely dependent on the video clips that come my way when I am surfing the web, usually in relation to news stories. I was vaguely familiar with the name Nancy Grace as a former lawyer as a legal analyst on cable news, but that was about …
May 10 2013
A few days ago, I came across an amusing news item. Cable news teams had all rushed to Phoenix, Arizona to cover the impending verdict in the Jodi Arias murder trial which had inexplicably become a national obsession, when the sensational news from Cleveland about the dramatic rescue of the three kidnapped women and the …
May 09 2013
As police release more and more information on the decade-long captivity of the three women in Cleveland, the story has, as was feared, got uglier and uglier. I cannot bear to read the stories beyond the headlines, except to wonder yet again what it says about us that such a thing could happen for so …
Apr 27 2013
Today is when the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner is held, when the cozy and incestuous relationship between the political and media class is on public display. The curtain that normally hides this and enables the media to portray itself as watchdogs of politicians is stripped away and we see that they are actually …
Apr 18 2013
Yesterday CNN had a terrible news day, first reporting that a suspect had been arrested in connection with the Boston marathon bombings and then having to retract the story. You can see the time sequence of the CNN debacle here.
Apr 10 2013
I had to eat alone at a restaurant on Monday and so took along something to read while waiting for my food. But as is the annoying custom these days, they had a TV on in a corner of the room, which can be a huge distraction. Fortunately the TV was far enough away that …
Apr 02 2013
Yvonne Brill died recently. She was a highly respected rocket scientist who received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2011 from president Obama and was noteworthy enough to merit an obituary in the New York Times. Also noteworthy was the fact that the obituary also focused on her sterling qualities as a mother, …
Mar 28 2013
Noam Chomsky is one of the world’s great public intellectuals. Growing up in Sri Lanka, I would find his articles and essays in the mainstream media quite regularly. But when I first came to the US in 1975, I found him completely absent from the major print and TV media and discovered that his writings …
Mar 23 2013
Readers may recall that about a month or so ago I expressed my extreme annoyance with those who pretended to have a spectacular fall in supermarkets, breaking gallon jugs of milk and juice and other things, creating a mess, spattering people nearby, and making fools of the people who expressed concern that they might be …
Mar 10 2013
George Orwell’s classic 1946 essay Politics and the English Language makes the case that politics degrades language because when politicians want to look truthful while telling lies they do so by making their language convoluted and using big words so that the listener is not aware of what the speaker is actually saying. Orwell says …
:)
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