G20 Red Reaper

G20 Summit, London, G20 London, G20 Protests, G20 Demonstrations

Originally uploaded by G20London2009

Impressive photos rolling out of the G20 summit on Flickr, such as this one. Big Ben looms as a silent witness to the giant blood-red reaper, surely slaying tiny, plump bankers, fleeing in the streets.

It’s certainly has a more profound visual effect than these jackasses, currently in constant rotation on US/UK TV news outlets. The same jackasses at any of these world summits, always in the front row, ecstatic they have a way better excuse to randomly raise shit and bust skulls than Arsenal’s loss to Man U. last week, in turn de-legitimizing the real, well-meaning protesters further back (some making the unfortunate choice to sport bongos), beyond SKY/CNN’s aperture and interest.

Eat more money

As the framing of the recession comes at us with all the subtlety of a jackhammer via CNN and the like (Witness covergae of the townsfolk with their torches, cornering AIG like Frankenstein), sometimes an image tells the story best. Boing Boing reminded me of this this morning in their shout out to Slate’s ‘Shoot the Recession.’

It’s a photo pool Slate has created on Flickr. Here the online magazine’s users continually upload myriad sad, stark, absurd and beautiful frozen moments in time, powerfully conveying through individual eyes how the crises is reshaping American society.

A nice break from the talking heads.

Beware the echo chamber

Good article yesterday by NY Times columnist Nicolas Kristof on the consequences of the mass eyeball shift away from old media to the web.

It makes me think of my friend’s open-ended question the other night at the pub: has the Internet made us better or worse? (The inspired answer I can come up? A little from column A and a Little from column B, as Homer Simpson once put it.)

Every amazing web innovation has its unintended consequences. In the context of news, Twitter, RSS feeds, Digg, iPhones and the Goog have given us an instant and irresistible supply of access to events and publications from around the world, often presented in amazing ways previously unimaginable in the era of print – ever used Google Earth’s news layer to get caught up on world events? Check out how web developers can now legally ‘weave’ the Guardian’s content within their own sites and present straightforward articles and data in myriad new mashed up formats and applications.

Print media in particular can’t compete with news instantly distributed wherever, whenever and however we like want. Advertisers know it too, as they taketh from the print marketing budget and giveth to the growing online pile. But without the content traditional print news organizations provide, how potent is the online wizardry? Phantom, online versions of the Seattle PI and San Francisco Chronicle (RIP) can’t provide the quantity and quality of objective news coverage their venerable print counterparts did, at least not for some time to come as yet-to-be determine business models come to fruition for online news outlets.

In stealing old media’s eggs, the Web may be killing the golden goose.

The Web’s also made us our own editors as Kristof points out in his column. We customize our home pages with all the news we – or our circle of friends – feel is fit, not what the Grey Old Lady decides. We’re empowered to vote stories above the fold with a click of thumb, J. Jonah Jameson be damned.

But see that’s also the flip side. As our own editors, we pick news based on our personal interests and biases. Mayor Miller tweets to the choir, the Huffington Post confirms our belief all Republicans are evil, Miley Cyrus trumps Congo genocide any day of the week at the top of news websites’ ‘most popular’ sections. In becoming our own news room, we avoid the messy or complicated gray areas and context which newspapers and news magazines generally do a far better job providing with capable hands at the helm.

Of course biased print outlets that serve at the pleasure of their political and corporate masters have existed since Gutenberg in spades. And the fact that the Web gives us access to so many dissenting opinions and the power speak back to the rags and their masters in a two-way conversation is an incredible evolution in democracy. Where would Obama be without the web?

The problem is that most of us don’t seek out those other opinions on a regualr basis online, but gravitate to those which confirm our existing world view; the wonderful technology behind the Web has made doing so just that convenient. We still need widespread access to old media institutions and for them to exist in a meaningful way, online and offline, providing the depth of news we need, and not just what we seek.

You have failed us 03/16/09

Ok, so today I had the pleasure of going to my Yahoo home page and reading about fathers fathering daughters’ daughters, friends eating friends, and our economy sinking faster than the Star Sputtered Bungle.

I give Monday, March 16th, 2009 1,781 thumbs down and 47 F minuses. You are a creepy, pathetic, abject failure Monday, March 16th 2009. A sewer-sucking loser in a year chalk-full of 89-pound weaklings.

You are the 2008 Detroit Lions, Bill Buckner, Ziggy and Jeffery Dahmer all rolled into one Monday, March 16th, 2009.

Take a cold, hard look at yourself Monday, March 16th, 2009:

see more pwn and owned pictures

Favourite pic I never meant to take

I really like this pic I took from my little digi. Of the dozens of images I recently downloaded off the camera, it’s of course the one mistake… sort of. I was following Lucy around in her ballet class and the flash kicked in about 5 seconds after I meant to take the pic. I’m fairly confident that falls in the category of the unintentional. This happens a lot I find - the best shots are ones you didn’t consciously know were there, especially images with movement.

ballet

Obama figures out YouTube inside 2 weeks…

Bush, 3 years and counting.

If you’re interrupting, get out of the way

Found this Wired blog, distinguishing advertising-world fact from fiction as it’s presented in the show ‘Mad Men’.

I found these 2 quotes from the agency head interviewed in the entry interesting. The first about Mad Men fictional agency Sterling Cooper’s pursuit of a piece of the the Space Race in the early 60s, and how advertising scored a seat at the adult table of man’s next great leap. Seems even more true today then in the 60s; consider the current US and Canadian election campaigns.

‘Marketers’ in one shape or another (the press, pr included) have of course always had a hand in shaping historical moments and figures into mythical and unifying cultural stories. It seems in this day and age, though, it’s become harder for the legend makers to control the myth, with the means of distributing  the intended message now also in the hands of the mashup-happy chattering class. A double-edged sword for sure, sustaining the hero narrative is important and healthy for society. Think Neil Armstrong and Don Drysdale or Trudeau. Hitler not so much. Anyway, the quotes:

‘It used to be that advertising and politics were a lot more intertwined. Advertisers and politicians basically invented a new hero with the space race — it’s like they just invented baseball. When you introduce a new category of mass interest and entertainment, you increase the business opportunities for everyone.’

The other was this, it could apply well beyond advertising:

‘The internet has made it so that if you make genuinely interesting stuff, people will see it — no matter what the size of the company is. It’s going to put agencies out of a job that are only good at interrupting people on TV. In the age of “Mad Men” — basically, you could do advertising that wasn’t very good if you just repeated your message over and over and had good buys.’

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/10/real-ad-men-tal.html

Don’t forsake me good blog

Yes, I left you for the entire summer. But I had many pressing concerns on my mind , such as the purchasing, demolishing and patching up of the new house. This, along my young, go-go, family and quandries as to the next stage in my career left little room for blogging.

But I’m back, the rainy summer has turned to a crisp, sunny fall, and pigskin reigns supreme in my universe again. I’m totally obsessed with my yahoo! fantasy league pool. I spend hours weekly tinkering with my lineup for Sunday… leading to a 1-3 record so far. Tinkering, my achilles heel. tinkering leads to brilliant plans to remove Andre Johnson and Eli Manning from your lineup for Ike Hilliard and John Kitna. My kid’s favourite sock puppet, Mr. Blinkers, could have made a better knee-jerk call.

Other obessions:  Odd career aspirations at the moment: 1) Tinkerer (no!) 2) Sheperd 3) Zen Master 4) NFL wide receiver 5) Exlporer. Problem is these just aren’t popping up in my Monster alerts. Must expand my net…. 6) Rodeo clown 7) Spy Barker 9) Bee keeper 10) Mentalist….

Any thing missing on that list?

Home, sweet demolished home

peek if you dare, this national tragedy reveals why renos are spooky.

http://flickr.com/photos/carpendium/sets/72157605500515256/

National Honky League teams vie for Stickleby Cup

NHL playoffs on flatscreen with HD PVR – beauty distraction from that ever-present 8-headed hydra of a home renovation o’ mine.

I absolutely love watching the Pens in particualr; nothing like witnessing a new dynasty emerge one period at a time. Hockey enters uncharted combined speed and skill terrain when Crosby, Malkin and Hossa unite in jaw-dropping fashion for achingly brief periods on the power play.

But of course nobody is watching outside of Pennsylvania and Michigan south of the 49th. Nothing new to report there. So when i saw this fantastic Onion article, riffing on America and their media’s complete lack of interest in the coolest game on Earth, it took me aback that anyone in States even had a decent reference point on the lowly stature of the NHL necessary for the bang-on satire (yes, even the Onion) that follows …

Stackley Cup Playoffs Underway

NEW YORK—The 2008 Stackley Cup Playoffs, a set of
odd-number-of-games series that will determine the champion of the
National Huckie League, are well underway, NHL Commissioner Gary
Bettman confirmed Monday.

At press time, the four hackley teams in contention for the
Stickleby Cup were the Detroit Red Wings, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the
Pittsburgh Flyers, and a team from Dallas, TX. The Red Wings, one of
the NHL’s Original Four Teams, and the Penguins, who feature one of
hinky’s rising young stars in Sidney Crossberry, are leading their
respective series and are expected to advance to the championship
round, or Storkaley Cup Finallys.

Hucklebee, which is played on ice by stick-wielding six-man teams
who attempt to strike the hokey puck or “ball” into the opposing goal,
is naturally a cold-weather sport. For this reason, hooky is believed
to have originated in Canada. This will be the first year since 2003
that no Canadian team will make it to the Shaklee Cup Finals, and no
Canadian team has won the Cup since 2003.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/stackley_cup_playoffs_underway