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Because I am old and ADD, I endorse Barney Frank’s insta-news stance, as reported by John Hudson on the Atlantic Wire:
I don’t get news on my phone. I don’t use Facebook or Twitter. I want substance. I’m not betting on stocks. I don’t deal in emergencies and I don’t know CPR. There’s enough possibility of misunderstanding as it is without 140 character tweets. Of course, when you’re talking about somebody getting shot, tweets have been good. But generally, I want more than you can get on a phone.
(ETA: Thanks to commentor Kdaug)
Arclite
What, no Manic Monday? Given that this is a Sunday night thread, I thought that would be a no-brainer…
Comrade Kevin
So, what are the chances that Susanna Hoffs couldn’t find Liverpool on a map when that was recorded?
burnspbesq
Just got home from seeing Buffalo Springfield. A fine time was had by all. Stills’ voice is shot, but he can still play. Furay and Young can both still deliver the goods. A couple of really interesting rearrangements (“Bluebird” and “Sad Memory”). “Kind Woman,” “Mr. Soul,” and “I Am a Child” were highlights. The only non-Springfield song was the last encore, a fabulous extended workout on “Rockin’ in the Free World.”
Glad I went.
burnspbesq
@Comrade Kevin:
Why is it that so many guys who should know better seem to think that cute and smart are mutually exclusive? FWIW, Hoffs has a degree from Cal.
Arclite
Also, too, is there a musician alive that doesn’t know the Beatles’ hometown?
James E. Powell
@burnspbesq:
It’s also near certain that Hoffs, like everyone else who picked up a guitar and sang in a band back in the day, knew quite a bit about Liverpool long before college.
James E. Powell
@Arclite:
Got me by one minute.
Arclite
@James E. Powell:
=D
Well, it was fish in a barrel…
JGabriel
@Arclite:
Not to mention that Hoffs was born in 1959 — which puts Beatlemania, starting in ’64, well within her personal memory.
.
Jenny
Hard to believe Hoffs is over 50. Where did the time go!?!
Yutsano
Just watched The Secret of Kells. It definitely is a movie that you should take as it is and resist comparing it to, well, anything. It’s very luminous and lush, and the spirit of the tale carries it more than the actual story itself does. Definitely worth a watch.
Amir_Khalid
@Comrade Kevin:
Going down to Liverpool (i.e. southward) presumably means starting your journey somewhere in Scotland, since Liverpool is in northern England.
The urgency of getting news right away is greatly oversold, methinks. How many people really need to know something at once, unless they are journalists or first responders or holders of high political office (who learn of these things through non-news channels) or stock market traders? The regular news at the beginning or end of the workday is quite timely enough for most of us.
The kind of news you can read on your phone, or in a tweet, is a short one-sentence story like “PM of Freedonia shot, killed” or “Earthquake in Latveria, 50 missing”. That kind of bite-sized news doesn’t lend itself to giving the event in any kind of context. Barney Frank is right on.
Yutsano
@Amir_Khalid:
Those used to occupy a niche in news once upon a time. They were called “headlines”. In other words, they were an extremely brief synopsis to tell you in very basic terms what the actual body of the story was supposed to be about. Now it seems like everything either had to be a headline or a catchphrase or it might as well not exist. My country has a massive case of ADD.
James E. Powell
@Amir_Khalid:
Absolutely. Consider how often some “controversy” (real or fabricated) consists of nothing more than the same five or ten seconds of video, repeated over and over all day for several days. Or how often “breaking news” is nothing more than a reporter standing in front of a building repeating, verbatim, a press release issued to the entire world by an agency or person that has an office in the building.
kdaug
Hrm, Anne Laurie, appears we have similar tastes in music. Seems I’m batting 3-0 on music vids posted in comments that end up on the front page (so far this year, aim to make it 6 before 2012).
ETA: I would attribute it to the Spock thing, but the first one was Pink on New Year’s Day, so I’m racking it up to impeccable taste in music.
Amir_Khalid
@Yutsano:
Not just your country, alas. It’s a global phenomenon. Remember that Asia tech companies and consumers have been a big part of this all along. News (and not just news but also entertainment and other kinds of info) delivered through phones, iPads and other digital whatsits encourage a culture of faster access, not for any real reason but, you know, just because. So that people can kill the time more efficiently, I suppose.
As a journalist I watched news stories are get shorter and shorter, at the editors’ insistence. “People don’t have time to read long stories!” Pretty soon news stories will be not much more than a headline and a 15-second video clip. (Said the old fogey.)
hg
Huh, I’m actually depressed after seeing this ad: http://lockerz.com/s/108026654
magurakurin
@hg:
fuck it, dude. I’m over it. The photos of the little Israeli girls painting flowers on artillery shells bound for Lebanon did it for me. Of course the video of Israeli jets spraying whiskey pete all over city streets in Gaza more or less sealed the deal. They’ve lost the plot and history isn’t going to be kind to them in the end.
kdaug
Seriously, you didn’t have to. Just admirin’ your taste in music.
gene108
Homework sucks.
I think we need a Matrix-like solution to learning, where you can just plug into a computer and have information dumped into your brain.
I’ve gone back to school (again) and I really am getting tired of homework.
Also, too, I’m glad I don’t have kids, because right now I’d side with them, if they ever complained about not wanting to do homework.
gene108
Is Leonard Nimoy the chauffeur in the Bangles video? Looks a lot like him.
kdaug
@gene108: Yurp.
RossInDetroit
@gene108:
Absolutely Nimoy.
I’m Susanna Hoffs age so I remember this song well, though I’ve never seen the video. I really like The Bangles but this was rather an unusual choice.
One factoid bubbling to the top of my sleep addled brain: I seem to recall that Prince wrote Manic Monday. Can anyone confirm?
RossInDetroit
Looking at the video, I’d bet that the car is Susanna Hoffs age as well. From the front it looks like a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz.
MikeJ
@RossInDetroit: Yep, His purpleness did write Manic Monday. Better than that though, Kim Rew wrote this song after the Soft Boys broke up. One of the most underrated bands ever.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Arclite:
good lord there should be.
geg6
Perhaps it’s just my little corner of Western PA, but even the kids around here have no use for Twitter. Facebook is a whole other topic, but none of the kids on our campus use Twitter much, if at all. I had a conversation with a few of them about this very subject a week or two ago and they all had no use for Twitter. They love Facebook and use it constantly. But we, the campus that is, are probably going to discontinue our Twitter feed as it is not used by our kids. But our Facebook pages (campus, departmental, and personal) are accessed constantly, all day long. It heartens me that they find Twitter too superficial. The kids are all right.
Gin & Tonic
@geg6: Two years ago I was at a Cisco tech conference, where their CTO recalled a story about talking with her teenage kids about something having to do with Twitter, and they told her “Twitter is for old people.”
RossInDetroit
I went to a high school graduation yesterday. There were numerous references in speeches to technology and information but none to the effects on the culture and society of young people of the instantaneous flow of data. I’m around that school a lot, and to my eye the character of teenagers hasn’t changed. Some things happen faster now, but how is that significant?
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@geg6:
if you use it right, twitter can replace a news feed, or a news reader, many news outlets post links to stories on twitter.
i have to respectfully evangelize the twitters, it can be used for many things, including linking to facebook, though i personally find facebook to be the godawful mess people claim twitter is.
grillo
Of course, I am reading this comment thread on my phone.
But yeah. The thing is, even the long form news is content reduced, these days.
arguingwithsignposts
@geg6: Interestingly, even within my dept., different faculty use different tools. I have no use for facepalmbook or linkedin, but several others use it constantly. They don’t use Twitter. I am often using Twitter. I have also noticed some grads who become much heavier twitter users after they leave school.
Exurban Mom
Interesting that Nimoy apparently specializes in appearing in music videos where he is, well, doing nothing, as in :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dULOjT9GYdQ
The Dude Abides
This song and video basically introduced the Bangles to the public. I had never heard of them, and marveled at the gorgeous little brunette who sang backing vocals for the blonde drummer.
burnspbesq
The Bangles’ cover of “September Gurls” probably made more money for Alex Chilton than any of his own records.
Origuy
@Amir_Khalid:
Not that far north; Manchester, Newcastle, and York are all north of Liverpool.
grandpajohn
@Gin & Tonic: Well of course, can you imagine a teenager restricting themselves to so few words
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Hard to believe Hoffs is over 50.
However, these timeless words of wisdom remain true.
Steeplejack
@burnspbesq:
Thanks for the review. I was wondering how that went down.