“First, the public should be aware—warned, so to be speak—that its interests and those of the business press may not be in perfect alignment. The business press exists within the Wall Street and corporate subculture and understandably must adopt its idioms and customs, the better to translate them for the rest of us. Still, it relies on those institutions for its stories. Burning a bridge is hard. It is far easier for news bureaucracies to accept ever-narrowing frames of discourse, frames forcefully pushed by industry, even if those frames marginalize and eventually exclude the business press’s own great investigative traditions.”
“Second, there’s a difference between reporting from an investor’s perspective and from a citizen’s. The business press is better at the former than the latter, and the gap has only been growing. I would only caution that what’s good for investors in the short and medium terms may not be good for anyone over the long haul.”
via Power Problem : CJR.
Did financial journalism do its job? No. Dean Starkman lays it out.
I’ve spent the last two days not feeling so great, formatting my hard drive and re-installing Windows on my computer (what a big pain in the ass that is!). So to help ease the time and boredom while installing drivers and software and trying to figure out how the hell to reconnect to my WiFi router I’ve finally listened to 1 of the 4 (!!) commentary tracks on The Fellowship of the Ring. I’ve only owned this DVD for 6 1/2 years.
The first track is by co-writer/director/producer Peter Jackson, co-writer Philippa Boyens and co-writer Fran Walsh. Among the usual blather about the actors, technical aspects of shooting particular scenes and adapting the novel, I learned some surprising facts about the FX. Many things that I always thought were brilliantly executed CGI were actually miniatures. Of course the film is loaded with CGI and although I thought at the time and still believe today that it’s among the best CGI I’ve seen in a live-action film, many of the seams are still visible.
But it’s the use of miniatures that pleases me so.
Read more »
“Lessons From the Barbary Pirate Wars”, By Jeffrey Gettleman in NY Times 4 /12/09 states:
“…[A]ny effort to wipe out Somali pirate dens like Xarardheere or Eyl immediately conjures up the ghost of “Black Hawk Down,” the episode in 1993 when clan militiamen in flip-flops killed 18 American soldiers. Until America can get over that, and until the world can put Somalia together as a nation, another solution suggests itself: just steer clear — way clear, like 500 miles plus — of Somalia’s seas.”
This conclusion to the current piracy situation, and we are all familiar with what is going on, suggests that Americans have become cowards unworthy of World Power. Just to make one point: 100 Americans died at the Battle of Bunker (actually Breeds) Hill.
Where has our sense of proportion gone? What we should have done, if we were a genuine power, after the ‘Black Hawk Down’ episode, would have been to have our air force flatten the entire area of the country where our soldiers were killed. Instead, we pulled out ran like rabbits. Read more »
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