Archive for the ‘curiosities’ Category
Write news based only on Facebook and Twitter?
In our “Writing for Community” class yesterday we discussed the difference between blogging and journalism. It’s getting harder draw a firm line between who is doing what, but the code of ethics about fact-finding and fact-checking remain key differentiators.
Stan Schroeder at Mashable offers the story of five French journalists who lock themselves in a farmhouse in France for five days and “write news based only on what they read in Twitter and Facebook.”
The success of their news gathering and sifting for facts will require great ingenuity. But I’m reminded of Thomas Merton, the Trappist Monk whose influential writings about current events were based largely on letters he received rather than rapt attention to media.
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Entering an Ancient Text
Our small group is reading an ancient text together. It’s reproduced in a contemporary volume and to my eye looks like the same English words and punctuation I might find in today’s StarTribune. But the prophet Amos is writing from a very different time and place. He was a shepherd back in the B.C.’s when kings ruled the peoples. And though he was (again) just a shepherd, he spoke a message that came from the God whose roar could wither a mountaintop and drop a pasture into mourning.
The text works on the reader
John Walton, in his introduction to “The Lost World of Genesis One” (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009) writes that understanding an ancient text is not a matter of translating the culture but entering that ancient culture—as much as possible. I picked up Walton’s book because I am fascinated by the huge task taken on by the writer of Genesis 1 and mirrored in John’s Gospel (John 1). Who doesn’t wonder how everything began? And this: what do those deep roots say about life today?
Entering into Amos’ ancient culture will be our task. We’ll do it as a group. We’ll bring supporting sources and texts that point us toward that ancient culture as we walk through those nine chapters. We’ll look at how the author uses his words, what he repeats, what he emphasizes. How he frames his argument. We’ll take a bunch of conversational stabs at understanding the text and I expect to be deeply challenged about the ephemerals I fixate on.
And…I’m expecting God to show up. I’m listening for that roar.
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Google’s Nexus One and Voice Commands
My relationship with stuff is changing.
I look forward to the promise of voice commands on every field in my smart phone, which is noteworthy in the Nexus One. I’ve just discovered that my AT&T Tilt responds to voice commands. Sorta. It’s true there is a feature that allows me to talk at the phone. I can get it to recognize most of my family’s names, though my son’s name always starts a Latin Jazz tune from the Columbian band Sidestepper (preloaded on my phone). Annoying. Does my phone purposefully misunderstand me? Even when I use my best clipped public speaker voice, my “Call Mike Flannigan” never results in anything but contact information for Mark Whalen. I may say “New Appointment” and, well, nothing happens. I can lower my voice. I can slow my voice. I can speak closer to the microphone. But…do I need to work on persuading my telephone to do my bidding?
Most of our rhetorical situations involve people. Usually a speaker and an audience. As a copywriter, I’m most often thinking about persuading some target audience with a written medium—but you see the point: people persuading people. Aristotle wrote about the elements of persuasion and talked about using pathos (emotion), ethos (character) and logos (logic) to get attention (and buy-in). All of these are available when we interact with fellow humans. But which of these is needed for telling my telephone what to do? My phone can’t judge my character (or…can it?). I know it relies on logic, especially when I tell my Tilt to do things it was never programmed to do. But pathos…. Do I need to speak kindly to my telephone? What kind of relationship am I about to have with my telephone?
My wife travelled with a friend not too long ago. The friend called her son using a voice command. Though weaving through traffic at highway speeds, she spoke his name in a low, calm, soothing way. She spoke slowly and got through with her practiced recitation. She knew exactly what her phone would respond to. And that’s what she gave it. Once connected, she went back to her higher, quick-moving manner (which her son knew all too well) and persuaded him of something in short order.
We’ll adjust to new technology. We’ll learn to use voice commands to accomplish stuff. But I am starting to notice the relationships I have with non-human stuff: my phone. My computer. The lamp in my office. Is there a limit to the number of relationships I can have? Do my relationships with stuff crowd out my relationships with people?
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Dylan’s “Forever Young”
I’m certain each age holds fresh delights, but I still hold a certain nostalgia for Dylan’s “Forever Young.” Check out Lance Strate’s blog and all the different versions that have been done over the years. All sound pretty good, but the Pepsi commercial is especially so. Does that sound like a copywriter talking?
Seems like a fitting tune for this beginning day.
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Is Print the New Luxury Buy?
Wow—You Own a “Copy”?
As I write another check for the rapidly-shrinking StarTribune, I’m reminded how our lives will be diminished by the absence of the printed daily news. I see this day coming. I look at news aggregators all day on my computer and I am thankful for the information. But there’s something about settling into a chair at the end of the day with the funnies—a computer screen just doesn’t duplicate the experience. A Pocket PC screen certainly doesn’t come close. Makes me sad.
I was showing the gorgeous San Francisco Panorama to a journalism professor recently. It is a kind of newspaper on steroids. Fabulous writers. Intriguing topics. Big old art and photos. It will be big (broadsheet: 15 by 22 inches), full (380+ pages) and pricey (I thought I read it was $35, but now I can’t find the reference).
In short: a luxury. Kind of like The New Yorker (which I ordered recently only because I had a gift card), only more so and originating from a different coast.
Was print always a luxury? Maybe. But the daily paper never really felt that way. It was always the way we saw what was going on in the world, even if we understood it was as subjective as anything touched by humans. That’s all changing. I suppose there will come a point where the newsprint dropped on our porch at 5:30am every day will just not be worth it. I’m hanging on, but it’s feeling like a luxury, which binds it to the question: “Do we need this?”
So far the answer is still “Yes.”
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Don’t Hold Your Breath for an “FDA-Approved” Logo for Your Medical Device Social Media Efforts
Can "trust" enter our discussion?
The lock in the corner of your browser indicates the website is legit. Go ahead and transact business with your credit card number and personal information—your information is secure. All is well. That is, until it isn’t. If it hasn’t happened already, that little lock can be duplicated and put to nefarious uses.
Same thing with an FDA seal of approval logo to place on your blog or website. Pharmaceutical companies are suggesting such a graphic as a way to set their audiences (and their corporate lawyers and the teams of regulators, their board members and shareholders) at ease. Seeing a logo would be an admission that the contents included are all good to go.
That’ll never happen.
That‘s because while the FDA may approve a device or drug for market, they work hard at not becoming responsible for the results the product. And for a set of folks who want to read every word in a document before it hits the street—people who care about the font size of your disclaimers (5 pt? Too small! 6 pt? OK.)—granting a seal of approval to the wild west of social media would be like arming the inmates and locking the prison doors behind them as you shoo them out (may I mix metaphors?). Aside from the fact that even a word-guy can duplicate a logo and affix it to anything, there is simply no way the FDA will be responsible for watching all the dialogue that must—and will—take place. Hiring staff for such Big Brother activity would break the bank (wait—banks are already broken).
Somewhere in the future, the dusty notion of “trust” may well rise up again. I know it seems quaint, like a whiff from centuries past, but it simply is not possible to regulate every part of dialogue. Just ask East Germany. Or watch “The Lives of Others.”
Dialogue is not about guarantees. It is about exploring. Perhaps the best we can do is to voluntarily adhere to a growing body of disclosure best practices.
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Is It Time To Start A New Magazine?
What's old is new.
Um…no. Or would that be, yes? In a world where old is suddenly new, the correct answer is: Maybe.
Gordon Atkinson (Real Live Preacher) talks about Generate, a “yummy beautiful” magazine to which he actually—yes—subscribed (sounds like he purchased it with cash money, right?). Glancing through the sample pages he shows made me think, “Hmm. Yes. I want to look at that.”
And that is just the way with old stuff that comes around again with a post-modern twist. Sort of like Pink Martini, old music from my parent’s generation recast for today (or maybe tomorrow). I listen to be reminded of melodies and words long forgotten. But I also listen because I get the joke: it’s old but there is something of today happening in the connective tissue of the music. And I listen because no one sings like China Forbes.
In the writing classes I teach at Northwestern College, we’ve been talking about how old communication vehicles can suddenly become extremely effective when composed today with a vigorous nod to today’s aesthetic. Pamphlets are finding their way back as a short form of communication. Brochures and Slim Jims can be repurposed so they suddenly don’t fit the category you thought they did when you picked them up—possibly resulting in not a small amount of delight. And who can keep from actually reading through a personal letter delivered by the postman (I don’t mean that generically—ours really is a guy).
Starting a magazine when most are dying doesn’t sound like a winning endeavor. On the other hand, one of the lessons of social media is that audiences can be found and they can find our project if it is repurposed to become ”yummy beautiful.”
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A Beautiful Bit of Honesty: Butte’s Berkeley Pit
ago we passed through Butte, Montana and paid the two bucks required to go out to see the Berkeley Pit, one of the larger collections of toxic waste that also functions as a tourist magnet.The Berkeley Pit is an open pit mine on the edge of Butte that had gobbled up neighborhood after neighborhood for years. In 1982 the mine ceased operation and began filling with water. But not just filling with clean swimming pool water. The water in the pit is highly acidic and so full of minerals that today it (yes, the water itself) is “mined” for copper. It may be a myth that migrating birds die instantly if they land in the water, but vigorous hazing activities include a houseboat that moves around the lake to get birds off the water and to collect those appearing to suffer ill effects (they dump the birds in an on-board five-gallon barrel of fresh water and release them from fresh-water).
- Enjoy the view.
Standing on the viewing platform, the scale of the pit is amazing. And the chamber of commerce runs a brave Orwellian soundtrack complete with patriotic, upbeat music that describes all that is going on to clean up the mess and how nobody needs to worry about the toxins seeping into the ground water for a variety of reasons. So just enjoy the view. [Addendum: The level of the water in the pit is carefully monitored so the toxic mess does not seep into the groundwater. The number of people and groups watching the pit is quite amazing. ]
The beautiful bit of honesty came from a resident I spoke with. What was her impression of the Berkeley pit and what did other residents think of it?
“We know we live next to a lake of battery acid.”
No spin. No soundtrack or patriotic music. Just winsome honesty. And let’s get on with life.
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conversation is an engine 