Exit, Pursued by a Bear

NOT YOUR GRANDPA'S SIREN

At deadprogrammer.com: how an earthy 15-century siren ended up as the discreet Starbucks maiden we've come to know.

Rowan Williams on the media

The Archbishop of Canterbury has a long piece of wide-ranging media criticism in the Guardian today.

I don’t completely agree with all of it - the clergy, like the media, have the problem of having to try to engage an audience that is free to ignore them, so you would think he would be more sympathetic to our attempts to do so, for example.

He doesn't seem to acknowledge how the choice and presentation of a story is dictated by the advantages and limitations of a particular medium (though he comes frustatingly close in the section below).

Also, some of what he has to say is opaque without practical examples. Williams is, I have to say, a fairly opaque writer in general, which I find frustrating, because he often writes about things I find interesting.

On the other hand, he echoes a lot of journalists’ criticisms of journalism, generally speaking.

The Grauniad’s editorial responding to him is here, and their story, by way of context, is here.

… We need to deflate some of the rhetoric about the media as guardians and nurturers of democracy simply by virtue of the constant exposure of 'information', and we need to be cautious about a use of 'public interest' language that ignores the complexity and, often, artificiality of our ideas of 'the public'. We need to recognise that there is a difference between concealment that is corrupt and designed to exclude or disadvantage those who have a legitimate interest, and boundaries that are properly patrolled by professional systems of accountability and gain nothing from being opened to universal - potentially demagogic - scrutiny. It is a very difficult discrimination - it can be used easily enough as an excuse for avoiding proper questioning - but it helps simply to acknowledge that there is a discussion to be had, and that 'public interest' is not too readily to be identified with the majority prejudice of a particular readership. And finally under this head, we need a form of self-regulation that admits provisionality and provides means of assessment. We need journalistic work that equips its own critics.

The difficulty that surrounds these matters is compounded by a world of communication in which uninterrupted and instantaneous information flow is the norm. 'Breaking news' we read at the bottom of the screen, and we know that someone is being made ready to produce an instant reaction. When the pace of events slows, but the situation remains critical, there is a real practical problem (the last days of Pope John Paul): uninterrupted coverage with no significant change for long periods. But the point is about how the media constructs and manages time. Urgency is all; and when urgency is an inappropriate or inadequate response to a situation, the risk is either distortion for the sake of a quick story or of attention being shifted because a process is not moving at media pace. This in fact relates to a point touched upon briefly earlier on. We learn significant things in varieties of overlapping communities; and we learn them at different paces.
Some things can be mastered quickly, almost instantaneously, some take significant time.

And I suspect that the difficulty most of the modern media finds in handling religion is not simply some sort of hostile bias to belief as such, but the extreme difficulty of representing in an 'urgent' medium experience or awareness that is apprehended in common practice over time.

full text here.

Mr. Kunstler’s vacation

Mr. James Howard Kunstler, seething Ezekiel of the modern economy, took a trip to California. And Seattle. Now, he’s home. Did you have a good time, Mr. Kunstler? (And is ‘decrepitating’ a word?)

Clematis success

After three-odd years of trying, and an ill-timed setback involving a malignant squirrel, I have a clematis blooming in the front garden. I think it's 'President'.

click on image

Flash lessons

In other news, an animated short film, by me.

It's about a rectangle that wanted to be an oval, and another oval that
wanted to be its friend. I think. Length: two seconds.

(I'm learning Flash.)

somebody's tax dollars hard at work

Good clean fun, of the holiday-weekend-traffic-ticket-roundup sort: police in the Lower Mainland fit out bait cars, all ready to be stolen, with a GPS unit, a gadget that shuts off the engine by remote control - and a hidden camera.

The results are predictable, but entertaining:

click on image for link

(The site is a collaboration between several police forces and a company called Vicious Bunny Creative. I’m just sayin’.)

Other news: Shoot him if you must, but his intentions were honourable. Or at least odder than anybody might imagine.

Saved by the bell

A post at psychogeography.ca raises the question: does anybody answer the door to random people who ring the bell? I don’t: after years of living in a dense urban neighbourhood, I still find that nobody rings my doorbell except people I’m already expecting, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the energy scam from a couple of years ago. (‘I’ll need to see a copy of your gas bill.’) If it’s a package, I can always hear an engine idling outside.

If I’m not expecting it, it’s always some sort of scam or imposition, be it spiritual or temporal, and I say that as somebody who likes to think he has a broad-minded tolerance of other humans.

Did people in urban neighbourhoods once open their doors to more or less anybody? Or do they do it still, and I’ve grown into a knuckle-dragging misanthrope without knowing it?

I wouldn’t know – I grew up on a rural concession road.