The Morgan Library has posted a short video on Jane Austen's talent, skill, and impact, The Divine Jane, in connection with their exhibit A Woman's Wit: Jane Austen's Life and Legacy. Actors, writers, even a philosopher tell what they appreciate about Austen. Interesting to speculate on what Austen could have achieved in a medium like television, but we probably wouldn't have wound up with the same problems we experience today.
From Kris Broughton at Big Think
“We as a nation are television watchers. Not only do we learn about politics by watching television, but we are television watchers; who we are as humans is in part defined by the attention that we pay to the television.”
Roderick Hart
It led me to conclude that if a person is prone to base all of his or her political opinions on the information they get from television, then they are usually forming their outlook with data that is often colored by the broadcast medium itself. The need for television networks to inject their own sense of drama into the fractious debates surrounding healthcare, war and global warming can often create a political narrative that is more melodramatic than the actual events.
Most of the kinds of things that make for great TV moments -- asking the president if he thinks Afghanistan will be another Vietnam, making references to unofficial communications between the White House and the Senate Majority leadership, or describing President Obama “bursting into a meeting” during the Copenhagen emissions conclave -- don’t really convey enough useful information for the average citizen to make well-informed decisions.
From @FredericBrussat at Twitter:
Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.
- Corrie ten Boom
Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update sideswiped iPhone network problems last night, the latest in a series of mainstream reporting on the issue:
“It was reported this week that Google would soon launch its own cellphone as a challenge to the iPhone. Also a challenge to the iPhone? Making phone calls.”
Whether AT&T is to blame, or some combination of how AT&T’s network and the iPhone work together, we don’t know. While AT&T was content to increase data revenue while decreasing infrastructure investment all in the name of shareholder value, it’s perversely harder to ignore bad publicity than it is unhappy customers.
Silly video; telling comment. I was surprised, shocked that the NYT seemed to be on the AT&T bandwagon last Sunday with its article claiming it was the iPhone, not the AT&T network that was the cause of such crummy coverage. Follow the link for short entertaining clip from SNL.
You could Tweet all the highlights of 2009 and still have time for dithering. But to catalog the lingo? It would be like one long torture memo. We need to impose a timetable. Let’s get right to our full plate.
The list of buzzwords for 2009 from the Times. Not working any more has made me miss more of these than I could otherwise imagine. Strange to feel so far out of touch.