Hi, Gang.
My nephew, Matthew, in Buffalo NY has ‘tagged’ me with a challenge to complete the following lists. Here goes.
5 Things I’m Thankful For.
- The security of having my family around me again after spending two months living by myself in a spare bedroom.
- The ability to take some time away from work to support my wife’s goal of living near her mother.
- My girls’ capabilities in meeting the challenges of moving to a new place and sorting out all of the social and emotional challenges that presented.
- Cool mornings that take the edge off of hot afternoons.
- Relatively good health and the physical ability to be active when it suits me.
7 Things About Me
- I sometimes have very vivid ‘deja-vu’, which I have a hard time rationalizing to myself.
- I’m building a dog house that has morphed into the freakin’ Taj Mahal.
- I have yet to develop a goal for this phase of my life.
- I have a compulsive need to read the news every day, from several sources, even though I no longer care to follow most of what’s going on in the outside world – and a lot of it really depresses/annoys/disgusts me.
- Sometimes I wonder if I am beginning to lose my hearing – and I wonder what to do about it.
- I’m really glad that we’ve been able to bring Jane back to her home town, but I’m even more glad that it’s not my home town – even though I’d enjoy living near my folks again, I don’t think I’d enjoy doing it in Bridgeport and I’m just as happy not renewing acquaintances with old high school buddies. (Does that make me a bad person?)
- I have no idea who else to ‘Tag’ because I don’t read anyone else’s Blog – and even if I did know who, I don’t think I know how. (OK, that’s not news to anyone out there, but I ran out of things you don’t know about me, so I cheated.)
So – there. Feel free to compile your own lists and post them in the comments below or on your own Blog and send me the link. Or just comment snarkily on the lameness of my list. Any response is welcome.
October 7, 2008 at 6:12 pm |
[...] Mike tagged me, and I tagged Uncle Jeff. He responds eloquently, as usual. Go read his lists, and then read all of his other posts, too. Good stuff, as those of [...]
October 7, 2008 at 6:21 pm |
Familiar as I am with your informationally voracious nature, I find myself rather surprised to find out you don’t read any other blogs (which I translated to “many” internally, as I’m assuming you do read the occasional blog post). You, dear uncle, should definitely become friends with Google Reader, and let the blogs pile up. I’ve got 83 subscriptions currently, and in the absence of a truly fulfilling job, they help make me feel less out of it, generally.
Of course, I don’t actually “read” all of the updates in their entirety; rather, I skim titles and pick & choose what seems most interesting at the time (a habit that is, I know, symptomatic of a generation largely devoid of attention spans).
At the very least, it might make your compulsion to read the news as you do a little more palatable, to the extent you are able to add subscriptions that color the news to your taste (though not necessarily to your worldview, narrowing as our own eyes can be).
Good lists, though, Jeff.
October 7, 2008 at 9:20 pm |
OK, I admit that I read a few Blog posts – I even subscribe to a couple of web-comics and their blogs (Check out “Sheldon” at http://www.sheldoncomics.com, the story of a Billionaire and his talking duck). And there’s Dave Barry, I check in with his blog pretty regularly. But I didn’t think any of them would play.
And (if I can say this without sounding like I’m reprimanding you) I think the third paragraph of your reply is exactly why so much news is so depressing/annoying/disgusting. “Spin” is in – and we can all find someone who cherry-picks ‘facts’ to our taste. What’s hard to find is a reputable source who will relay information straight out – without spin – and also without the need for ‘balancing voices’ who have no integrity (“some sources outside the museum reply that the Holocaust never, in fact, happened”).
I think you agree with me, as you make a distinction between ‘taste’ and ‘worldview’, but I’m not sure you’re not splitting hairs. Most Americans today hear what reinforces their opinions, and they like it that way – and that’s what sells advertising which is what truly makes the information world go ’round.
In any case – my problems are my own (or maybe my generation’s.) The communication style we live with is the one we have, not the one we want (to paraphrase a recent Secretary of Defense) and thus it always shall be. I encourage you to always maintain a shrewd ‘BS-meter’ and to know the difference between thinking for yourself and harboring delusions.
October 8, 2008 at 1:17 pm |
Interesting comment on the comment. I don’t read any other blogs (at least regularly – I’ve only been acquainted with one ro two other people who do blog; is that a generation thing?) I read emails from people who want a pound of flesh! At least the work emails do…
October 8, 2008 at 5:15 pm |
Jeff, Your point is more than fair. I will elaborate on my own blog subscription habits, as I think that will help a bit.
Truth be told, very little of my reader is concerned with “news”, so-called. I have several categories of feeds, including blogs that are sports-related, poetry/writing blogs, webcomics & miscellaneous humor, library blogs, personal acquaintance blogs, etc. The closest I ever got to reading feeds containing actual “news” is a category I called “thought & culture”, which has basically disappeared, because I got tired of the excessive opining of the blogs once contained therein.
The news I do read is currently a combination of 3 sources: CNN, BBC, and Google News, the headlines from all three of which I see on Twitter. I do my best to get a sense of what is actually happening without subjecting myself to too much unnecessary opinion, but that task, as you know, is a daunting one, and holding that up as a goal is probably something akin to saying I read Playboy for the articles. I’m not sure how possible it is to avoid the spin that is so “in”, as you say. In fact, I might even tweak your statement thus: all we can find is sources who cherry-picks ‘facts’ to their/our taste. That’s why I read a lot about lit & the arts, libraries, technology, sports, environmental issues (which I would rather think of as stewardship) and diversionary things like webcomics, while reading (relatively) very little actual “news”. All of the former contain at least their fair share of opinion and polemics, but at least they’re usually considerably less depressing.
I keep my BS-meter as shrewd as I possibly can, I assure you. I do wish it were possible to more easily find the so-called “spin-free” source of information (if it exists), but I have long since resigned myself to a position of being IN the informational world but not OF it, as it were. I took more than enough philosophy & communication in college to realize that after taking in any information/argument, you must first dig through the additives as best you can, removing the inconsequential, and digest what remains. All speech & conveyed information is rhetorical anyway, and the “reality” behind them is a slippery thing; it’s all we can do, much of the time, to try to set our mental spin factor to something as closely approximating the opposite that of any given source as possible.
I may be splitting hairs, but I’m not sure there’s much choice. I’d like a spin-free source, as would you, but as unlikely as that seems, I’ll stick with trying to find sources that can give me information (and the unavoidable opining) without too much unnecessary attitude, and I’ll trust that my brain (and experience and heart) can sort things out well enough. It’s a learning process, to be sure.
“Taste” and “worldview” is cutting it close, I suppose, but they are different enough, to me. Again, without a spin-free source, the best I know how to do is cut down on the unnecessary attitude to which I’m subjected and instead choose sources based on things like the quality of writing & willingness to change mind when presented with new information.
Perhaps, then, all this technology (especially search) will prove helpful in this regard: in filtering news/info. down to the particulars, we might find ourselves somehow freed from the grip of spin (though I have a feeling money will ruin that avenue, as well).
It’s a learning process.
(That was much, much longer than necessary. I didn’t actually think you were reprimanding me, though I imagined you saw my subscription practices as somewhat suspect, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to explain them in more detail. Plus, I’m not one to shy away from interesting, intellectual conversation and tend to get rather long winded in the same.)
October 14, 2008 at 7:27 pm |
Wow.
I hope you don’t mind that I’m surprised by the level of thought you’ve given this.
There probably has never been a ’spin-free’ news source, but I think keeping an ear to the international voices such as BBC can help keep things in perspective.
The largest role media used to play was that of arbiter of what was ‘news’. Admittedly, these decisions can skew our view of reality, but at least there was some filter on what we filled our nightmares with, rather than the modern avalanche of dross dropped into our mailboxes each day from which we must try to ferret out the important stuff.
I enjoy a weekly news magazine called The Week. It distills literally hundreds of sources from around the world into about 30 pages of real information. If you’d like to get it, let me know – the first year will be on me.
See you in December.
JB
October 16, 2008 at 3:25 pm |
“I hope you don’t mind that I’m surprised by the level of thought you’ve given this.”
Not at all. My wife often expresses amusement & surprise at things I may have thought about a bit more than necessary. With some things, I guess I just can’t help it; and with my penchant for trying to understand the current and future status of information storage/flow, rss and what not is right in my wheelhouse, so far as time spent in thought is concerned. I can’t pretend to think I’m right about it all, but perhaps I can settle on being rather aware of myself and the trends when it comes to these things, and perhaps more so than people rightly expect
(Even that, I think, was a bit much.)
As you say, I agree that a spin-free source is probably non-existent, and the best way to stay more balance does seem to be by maintaining multiple sources from widely varied locations. I like the BBC for that: it gives me an idea of what people on a different continent are concerned with. After all, our news is not the only news. Perspectives are wonderful things.
I will have to think about your generous offer. I currently receive the New Yorker, but its value to me on a regular basis is dwindling, if only because it is so dense. The website has at least as much as I can get through in a week, so that subscription might be not much longer for my world. In which case, The Week might be a refreshing change. I’ll keep an eye on its website for a few days and see if the physical version strikes me as something I would value. If a slight delay in my response is acceptable, I’ll let you know soon enough.
Looking forward to seeing you guys at Christmas in Bport!
December 2, 2008 at 11:23 pm |
“I don’t think I’d enjoy doing it in Bridgeport and I’m just as happy not renewing acquaintances with old high school buddies. (Does that make me a bad person?)”
We wouldn’t want to do it in B’port again either!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is not a BAD feeling.