Archive for April, 2006
End-of-Week Notes
- Oh my God! They killed Nnenna! Bastards!
- Chris Daughtry’s performance of “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman” on American Idol this week was incredible. It a) made me not hate that song, and b) made me push Chris to the top of my favorites list, even ahead of my beloved Paris.
- Check it: Journerdism.com, from ’05 Poynter summer fellow Will Sullivan.
- So you wanna blog? LaFry breaks it down.
- Why didn’t anyone tell me Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson’s blog is really awesome?
Someone on the Scene
Quite unintentionally, Ted Koppel explains the logic of citizen journalism:
If something happens in [a foreign country], I heard a former network news president say other day, we can always jet someone in. That is a profoundly telling statement. Instead of investing in someone on the scene who is familiar with the political and cultural landscape, who can give us all a sense of what’s going to happen, and who can provide us with a sense of context when it does, news is being re-defined as “that which has happened most recently” and which may pique the interest of a particular demographic group.
I’m talking CJ-of-the-far-future, of course. We’re not there yet, not by a long shot.
Peacemakers for Hire
Whoah! Dystopian foreign policy idea of the week: Forget U.N. blue helmets in Darfur. Why not send in a private mercenary army to keep the peace?
Probably because it’s hella Snow Crash, per Matt Yglesias. I mean come on: These are companies with names like “Blackwater”… “Aegis”… “Dyncorp” (!?)… and “Executive Outcomes” (!!?). Let’s leave this plotline to the novelists.
But! — it is probably worth thinking about new ways to protect people in screwed-up regions. Cool anecdote from The New Republic about an organization called the Genocide Intervention Network:
GI-Net quickly concluded that going with mercenaries was a bad idea. But, as their search dragged on, the group’s members became increasingly frustrated that they were sitting on a pile of money when, seemingly every day, there was some new horror in Darfur. Finally, in January, GI-Net had a breakthrough. An African NGO was willing to take GI-Net’s money and, in tandem with the AU, train a contingent of female escorts to protect Darfurian women when they leave their refugee camps to search for firewood. This week, Smith is in Addis Ababa putting the finishing touches on the deal.
Turns Out the Eyepatch is A-OK
Unlike Dustin, I was going to post this the moment I heard the opening chords. It’s a Flickr song.
Adorkable?
Saturday was the immortal Minnesota Geek Prom. (Full disclosure: Because I’m rumored to occasionally contribute to a so-called “Weblog,” I was given free VIP admission for me and a guest. I took my buddy Nathan, but I would totally have taken you if you’d asked.)
Observations:
- I wish I’d been cool enough in high school to be friends with the girl who wears leather to the prom and sneaks in a flask of bourbon. That made the 10-year-old Omnimax movie infinitely more entertaining.
- Actually, now that I think about it, I did go to my high school “prom”* with a badass, leather-wearing girl. And I was, if anything, slightly geekier then than I was at the actual Geek Prom. So the whole experience was kinda dejà vu.
- As Alexis notes, I was not crowned prom king, nor was she crowned prom queen, despite the honest-to-goodness Klingon tattoo on her chest, and despite my Buffy thesis and singing of the score to Evita.
- Chuck Olsen’s hott MNStories video story will give you the best taste of the exuberant mood that reigned o’er the evening. (Look for me very briefly at about 5:04.)
- Alexis’ photos will give you the best taste of my adorkableness. (Note: there’s also some XXX NSFW geek ass on display. Not mine, though.)
- While there was an ironic sheen on all of this, there also seemed to be unspoken widespread understanding that yes, most of us present truly were geeks. And we were embracing it. And it was awesome. I’m totally going next year. And I will be King of the Geeks.
* Because I went to a fundamentalist Christian high school, we did not have an actual “prom” with actual “dancing.” Instead, we had the Bible-rific “Junior/Senior Banquet,” typically held at schools like Bob Jones University.
Faking It
Jonathan Grubb blogs eight ways to fake it. Number one:
Count to five before answering any question.
I learned this from my friend Matt. When someone asks you a question, especially in an interview/work type situation, look off into the distance and count to five then answer the question as usual. You will seem thoughtful and deep. This trick works way, way better than it should.
Brilliant!
ScaryFeed
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