3D will never fly

Walter Murch is a badass. One of the best film editors on Earth (Apocalypse Now, Cold Mountain), great sound editor, oscar winner, smart guy. And guy whose experience in a classical radio station library still blows my mind. [28 minutes into that linked podcast.]

He thinks 3D movies will never work. (And he edited Captain Eo, one of the best 3D short movies.) His point is that in real life, our eyes point at objects AND focus on them. But in 3D movies, 3D tricks us to point at things that aren't there, but we have to focus on a screen that's further away than the illusory object our eyes are pointing at.

3D just breaks the way we see, and will never, no matter how good the technology, be a convincing way to see things. It's an interesting trick, but will never displace 2D screens.

Nintendo and others hope he's wrong, but I think he's right. 3D TV and movies are like the internet refrigerator and the video telephone. We don't want it because it doesn't align with who we are.

Jaywalking is discriminatory

Well, Tom Vanderbilt makes the case that the media are prejudiced against pedestrians.

I wonder if it's as bad in Portland, where we have lots of political support for urban planning and walkable neighborhoods.

Media doesn't have that much power

A day after Thomas Friedman warned that the right wing crazies are creating a violent, dangerous climate, David Brooks argues that talk radio doesn't wield true power. He points out that when they tell people to actually vote for or against stuff, they have no effect. Beck, O'Reilly, even Limbaugh: when they told their listeners to get out and vote for Mitt Romney, they ignored the radio hosts and voted for Huckabee or McCain.

I think the massive "tea bag" events point out a gap between Brooks' case and reality, but it's reassuring to note that while a fringe is very loud, they are not changing minds. Just making life unpleasant for everyone else.

The future of journalism

As people try to figure out how to fund journalism going forward, some are suggesting placing limits on free speech.

While I value journalism for keeping those in power honest and revealing abuses of power, I think putting a limit on free speech like banning paraphrasing news accounts or linking to articles on news sites is way too far to go. There has to be a way to fund journalism without making it illegal for me to muse about an event for 24 hours. That sort of restriction could be used for evil way too easily.

Moral panics

The media likes to tell us stories that scare the crap out of us. Even if they're not true.

One commmon trope that they use is a moral panic, specifically that our children aren't as innocent as we were when we were kids. Ignoring the fact that kids today are plenty innocent, and our memory of our own innocence is extremely faulty.

I'm all in favor of protecting kids from things they aren't ready to deal with. Educating them at the level they're at, and not showing them too much about the horrors of the world. (The fact that lots of children live in the horrors of the world is a whole other speech.) But the media takes this reasonable intention and whips it up into a frenetic lather of panic with no basis in reality.

We're just not well adapted to having TV news from around the world.

Voice

Having finally seen Juno, I see why the media was abuzz about this movie. It earned its screenplay Oscar.

As much as I really enjoyed the movie, its unique voice did not extend to giving the different characters personalities. All the characters in the movie were are really the same person, or different aspects of the same authorial voice. Which isn't necessarily a flaw. I think Shakespeare does that, too. (Of course, so does Edison Lee, a "comic" strip whose "humor" allegedly comes from a precocious child, but the child is just an old person in a child's body, talking to other old people. Vomit. I'm glad my local paper finally stopped carrying it.)

I look forward to Diablo Cody's next project. I'm curious to see what else she'll write. And I wonder whether her writing will evolve so that more than one voice will present itself in her stories.

Stupid Media and their overarching narrative

Stories are powerful. Our human minds need stories to make sense of things.

However, sometimes we cling to a good story even though it isn't true. And even when it matters. And unfortunately, that's often done by journalists.

Take the idea that
Clinton supporters will vote for McCain. Turns out, according to that article I linked to, that Obama is polling way, way better than McCain with women. Far better than Gore or Kerry. And yet the media have a few old polls, and a few people willing to appear on TV, who were Clinton supporters who are voting for McCain.

Those few individuals may be completely truthful, but that doesn't a trend make.

Like the media's bias for conflict, the bias for narrative is dangerous. It means that Bush is president, because they freaked out when their standard election night narrative was disrupted in 2000. It means we're at war, because the Bush administration did a very skilled job of playing into the media's standard storyline about a nation going to war.

I wish there were an example I could think of where the story tendency cravenly advanced an agenda I agreed with, but I have a blind spot towards what I consider success.

Video Games don't kill people. Period.

Mark Chen linked to a fantastic article by an MIT professor who says what I've always believed.

Video games aren't dangerous.

Every time a kid shoots up his school, TV news blames video games. Even though 99.999 percent of video game players don't do that. The most conclusive any studies have gotten is that there is a weak correlation between violent entertainment and actual violence. But it's just as likely that people who grow up in violent, abusive environments and have violent lives prefer violent entertainment.

Given past studies that show violent movies actually result in a decrease in violence, and evidence (Brazil's recent experiment, for one) that access to guns is a much more relevant factor in violent crime, I wish TV news would get it together. But that's a much bigger issue.

Maybe I should put together some visually compelling footage of how destructive guns are, blowing up pumpkins, watermelons, etc. with firearms. But I'm too lazy.

"Um" in Chinese

On last week's On the Media, I learned about a book titled "Um".

Not only does this book catalog the fascinating linguistic phenomenon of filler words, but it clarifies something I heard in China. I frequently heard people say a Chinese phrase, which it turns out means "this or that", and which is apparently the Chinese equivalent of "um".

It sounds astonishingly like "nigga". It really sticks out to the American ear, but it is harmless, in fact signifying nothing. Wow.

Using copyright for evil

Two stories from On the Media:

An astonishing power grab by record publishers. They want to be able to declare that you can't buy a CD, then sell it to someone else. Or give it to someone else. Imagine if you couldn't sell a used book. Or a used DVD.

They're not just saying you can't burn copies of a CD for your friends. They're saying you can't give the original. After destroying any copies you might have made.

They should lose their lawsuit. Because the consequences if they win are horrible. Libraries would be shut down, if they can't legally lend copies of books to people.
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In the other story, about prisoners at Guantanamo being subjected to loud music, they report that a lawyer wants to sue the government for copyright infringement. The Army didn't get permission to play the songs from ASCAP/BMI, and certainly not from the artists. Rage Against the Machine has explicitly asked the government not to use its music to torture people.

I'm horrified to realize that some bands would be happy to have their music used to torture. But I do wonder where this novel legal theory would end. Does the state need to get permission from a rope manufacturer to use it to hang someone? (Not that I support capital punishment.) Does a tannery need to give permission for leather to be made into a holster?

On the Media rocks

On the Media has a great interview with the reporter who broke the story about our faulty memories.

You see, not only do we not remember negatives, but there are evil people in the world who use this to their advantage. If I want to spread a lie, whether it's "Saddam Hussein 9/11" or "Moon landing fake", you can't destroy my lie by saying I'm lying.
As I've seen many times at OMSI, if you repeat a message multiple times, it sticks. And people apparently can't remember the difference between hearing something from multiple sources, or hearing it multiple times from one liar.
The best way to destroy a lie/myth is to counter with an affirmative truth that ignores and negates the lie.
"9/11 was the sole work of Osama bin Laden" and "The US achieved a historic milestone by landing the first human being on the moon, Neil Armstrong". And then, you've got to repeat the truth incessantly, framing the question in a way that favors the truth.

We don't remember so well

It turns out that we don't remember stuff that well. Well, we remember in very particular ways. If something is repeated a bunch, we remember it. Except we don't remember negatives. Which leads to problems when websites have Myth Vs. Fact quizzes. We don't remember which one is true, and which one is false.

Which reminds me that getting your news from radio is better than TV. Doesn't surprise me at all. Radio is a verbal medium, one of thoughts. TV is a visual medium, one of emotions. In order, people know more facts if they use radio, then print, then TV. With one strong exception: The Daily Show/Colbert Report. What's up with that? Are our satirists better journalists? Or does their unvarnished honesty cut through the repeated messages of our politicians to the facts?

Racism in Advertising

Yes, Slate has a review of racist advertising in history, spurred in no small part by Uncle Ben's promotion to CEO of his company.

On the Media has great coverage of the story. Sound clips of some awful racist mascots from the 70s.

Reminds me of the actual ads that played in CSA: Confederate States of America. It's an interesting movie, asking what if the South had won, and we still had slavery today. It would benefit from just a little more polish, that is, a higher budget. But it's good as it is.

Locked out cell phones

As presented by On the Media, researcher Tim Wu observes that cell phone service providers force manufacturers to cripple their phones.

The industry rep gives a crap answer that "competition" and "the market" will solve everything in a world of puppies and rainbows. Or something like that.

Editorial power

I'd wondered whether several stock photos of leaders existed. Often during a campaign, stupid smiley pictures of people appear next to really bad news.

But of course they have different pictures of presidents for different "moods".