I do agree that Facebook takes all of the honor out of remembering your friends’ birthdays. But it also averts all of the drama of forgetting them. So … net win. Post a review of the Prelinger film. And if you get to speak to Rick Prelinger, tell him he better put that sucker up on archive.org under a Creative Commons license. And it better be better than this.
For your birthday, I’m getting you a Facebook gift.
Question: Is anybody else on board with the notion that the Atlantic‘s blogs have outpaced the mag itself for interestingness? Last month’s issue had a ton of interesting stuff, so I picked it up, and enjoyed it, but kept finding myself going to the respective authors’ spots online to read what they and their commenters wrote about the article. Is it just me?
In case you missed the comments to this thread, we’re soliciting your nods and votes for the best interviews and speeches of ’08.
I started to post this on Newsless, but I think it might be more Snark-appropriate.
I’m trying to articulate some of the values and expectations I bring to my media consumption. I wonder whether my tendencies are typical, or how I might benefit from cultivating different values and expectations.
When I visit most local news sites, I have this sense that the editors of the site are trying to foster a sort of “ambient awareness.” That is, there’s not really an organizing purpose behind the information they provide. I suspect they don’t typically expect me to do anything with this information, but they just thought I should be aware of it, or that I might find it interesting.
Although I care about Minneapolis, I don’t really have a strong desire to be ambiently aware about it. Having very shallow information on a vast range of Minneapolis-related topics actually makes me a little crazy. I’m not sure if this makes me a bad citizen or an idiosyncratic news consumer or what. But it’s a filter I find myself employing when I read a local news site.
There are many domains in which I value ambient awareness. I think that’s what I get out of my New Yorker subscription, for example — not particularly deep knowledge on any given subject, but a sort of conversational familiarity with a well-curated variety of current affairs. I like to think of myself as ambiently aware of what’s happening in things like video games and Web development and gay culture and Minneapolis arts.
But in the domain of local news, I seem to value information that makes me “functionally aware” — that might actually affect my behavior or circumstances. So I’d pass over a headline like “City likely to OK $5.3M for Target Center green roof”, but “Paperless boarding passes coming to MSP” interests me.
Besides local news, I seek functional awareness in a few more specific contexts, such as Web design and health and nutrition. I read publications on those topics that keep me informed of products or practices or developments that might affect me.
And then there are a select few topics on which I’m looking for what I might call “expert awareness.” Online journalism, for example. And at this level, communities, not publications, are my highest priority.
I think my tendencies might be unique in several regards, but I wonder how many folks are like me. Is there a generational thrust to this sort of thing? And if everyone were like me, how would we draw attention to boring-but-important stories?
The Blagojevich scandal presents a familiar tableau: embattled man defends corrupt behavior.
Why is it so rarely a woman?
Replaying political scandals over the past year, tons of names come to mind: Rod Blagojevich, Tony Rezko, Jack Abramoff, John Edwards, Larry Craig, Elliot Spitzer, Alberto Gonzalez, Ted Stevens, David Vitter … I could go on. Off the top of my head, I can think of three female names: Sarah Palin, Monica Goodling, and Rachel Paulose. (And men figured prominently in all three of their scandals as well.)
Of course, there are a few instant provisos here:
But these caveats aside, there are reasons to suppose women might make for less corrupt politicians. Women tend to be more responsible stewards of household money. Partially as a result of that, efforts to deliver financial support to women in poverty tend to have a more uplifting effect than supporting men. Studies seem to indicate that women perform more altruistically in group situations.
I was able to find three studies that addressed gender disparities in political corruption. Two — Dollar, Fisman and Gatti (1999); and Swamy, Lee, Azfar and Knack (also 1999) — found that women are less prone to public corruption. However, a follow-up study in 2003, by Hung En-Sung, suggested that the correlation between more women and less corruption was essentially a happy accident.
And even if we were to prove conclusively that having more women does lead to cleaner government, where does that get us? What course of action does that suggest? Already, I think most of us inclined to trust such a study are strong advocates for better representation of women in politics. Should we institute a quota system, like Rwanda?
Of course, I think diversity in the political system is a valuable goal in itself. A more representative and heterogeneous political body would probably be less corrupt for all sorts of reasons.
But as these scandals parade before us, this will linger in the back of my mind.
Ta-Nehisi Coates recommends a profile of an ultimate fighter and dagnabit, you gotta read that profile of an ultimate fighter.
Kottke plugs The Millions’ annual Year in Reading list, a collection of (not necessarily timely) awesome-book nominations from interesting Web people. I’ve actually wanted to read most of the books they recommend, which separates this list from most others.
From Infocult: The Economist’s annual predictions for the year ahead. They’re blogging about the world in 2009 as well.
All posted by Ezra Klein at some point or another:
