Shedding light on dark matters
posted 1-9-2009 - 7:33 am

 
I started my day yesterday by reading through my usual selection of news sources, then skipped over to check my e-mail, where I was presented with yet more headlines, and ran across a science story in Time magazine that piqued my interest. I ended up pissed off at the reporter, the Nobel prize committee, and academia in general. And thus, a rant developed, but not without cause.

Let me back up a bit here and give you the name of the article first:

The Milky Way: Bigger, Faster, Better Understood
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1870049,00.html

The first thing that struck me was the rather middling handling the reporter gave the story; nothing grossly wrong, just not much in the way of putting this item in perspective so that I know why it's important for me to know any of this. Besides, I've read far better science reporting than this mediocre little bit. The second thing that struck me was that Mark Reid, the Harvard astronomer she interviewed, is really just tweaking the kind of work Vera Rubin has been doing for more than 40 years — and without half as much fanfare and very little public credit.

Who's Vera Rubin, you ask? Ahhhhhhhhhh, here we come to it.

Guillotining the press
posted 12-4-2008 - 10:50 pm

 
[Editor's note: this item was written just days before the Tribune Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection (reorganization, not liquidation; but given Mr. Zell's ineptitude, it could yet convert to the latter; one hopes for the sake of the employees and readers that it doesn't). Moreover, Conde Nast's Portfolio magazine, cited below, is now itself in a financial bind and may only survive as an online-only publication.]

So today we read about yet another round of firings — what else can you call them? Not layoffs, because those laid off are presumably rehired in time — at the Chicago Tribune. I ran across this bit of news while simultaneously looking at something else on Huffington Post and perusing my e-mail. The mail included the daily post from Gorkana.com, which lets journalists know where their colleagues have taken new positions. We use it to keep tabs on each other; but lately, it's become less a source of information than an exercise in envy and permanently diminished expectations for what David Brooks recently called "The Formerly Middle Class."

Films we love/hate:  Waiting for Hollywood to catch up to the 21st century
posted 8-12-2008 - 7:18 am

 
Last Friday, USA Today reporter Susan Wloszczyna went looking for influential women in the film business to get their take on what the future holds for women in Hollywood. Too bad some of them still have no idea about what real women want to see at the movies. Perhaps they've spent too much time with male colleagues who make juvenile films for other overgrown teenagers to realize that a female equivalent of The Pineapple Express isn't what we're looking for. And like Freud, maybe they should just ask us instead of making silly assumptions and even sillier films.

Movie producer Nancy Juvonen has made 10 films to date with partner Drew Barrymore. Juvonen is right when she says women are picky about which films they see and "want a guarantee for their time," i.e., to walk out satisfied and smiling afterwards. Women don't automatically rush out to see every new 'chick' flick – they want to know a film is worth the effort to see it at the theater. It doesn't necessarily hurt for a film to be more realistic, either. But Juvonen is dead wrong when she asserts that "Knocked Up and The Break-Up are more appealing than 'One day my prince will come.'" Bad choices there: they make a fairy tale, even a grim one, sound good.

Pitiful performance, part 2
or: What the hell were they thinking??
posted 4-20-2008 - 5:15 pm

 
So I get home very late Wednesday night, well after midnight, and I turn on the TV to review what I've taped. Included in what's on the VCR is Wednesday night's debate between the presidential candidates, hosted by ABC. I've seen loads of debates before. Given that this one wasn't hosted by PBS, I wasn't expecting much but the usual tame stuff with maybe one or two legit 'gotchas' on accidentally pertinent subjects. After all, David Brinkley and Ted Koppel are gone, and I couldn't think of anyone at ABC who'd ask much in the way of incisive questions; but you never know. Perhaps one of their Washington-based correspondents would come up with a decent question or two.

Let's just say it right up front: egregiously bad. Terminally stupid questions. Unquestionably the worst debate since presidential debates were first televised. An embarrassment to journalists everywhere. I felt personally offended and insulted by the moderators' blithering inanity.

Shows I love: Battlestar Galactica
posted 4-19-2008 - 10:04 pm

 
WELL. Only three episodes into the new season, and Battlestar Galactica has gotten even stranger than usual.

Everyone and everything seems to be unraveling in its own way. The four newly revealed human-looking Cylons, aka 'skin jobs', the relationships among the key Galactica players, and, interestingly, even the Cylons themsevles are comping apart. As convoluted as things already are, they manage to get even more complicated. Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice. This is indeed a human diaspora through the looking glass.

At the end of last season, four of the five remaining skin-job Cylons were revealed to be key Galactica players — Tigh, Tyrol, Torie, and Sam — who are in critical positions attached to other key Galactica players. They're all stunned by the realization that they're been secret Cylons all their lives and have pledged to each other to collectively keep the secret; but that's getting increasingly harder to do. Even more shocking is the return of the presumed-dead Starbuck, whose fighter plane exploded as it spiraled down into the atmosphere of a gas giant and who claims to have been to Earth. No one is more stunned than she is to learn that she's been gone for two months, not the mere hours that it appeared to her. As glad as some are to see her, they all suspect she's a Cylon — how else could she have cheated death?