Good Reputation Sleeping

Ghost Story

Ghosts in the Machines - New York Times.

Technology does nothing to dispel the shadows at the edge of things. The ghost-story world still hovers at the limits of vision, making things stranger, darker, more magical, just as it always has ...." - Neil Gaiman, NYT

Why Print Still Matters, Part Deux

Don't Give Up the Flagship - washingtonpost.com.

"Here's why this is important for those of us who don't want to stop reading (or, in my case, writing) in-depth, analytical news pieces: A significant number of the stories you read on the Web are created by the staff members at the dead-tree versions of newspapers.

....If the (New York) Times' Web site -- or any newspaper Web site -- were forced to hire a staff and fill its pages with only the revenue it made, it would look a lot like the Web site your daughter made for a class project. Except not as impressive." - Frank Ahrens, TWP

A nice follow to my previous post, Why Print Still Matters.

The Faces of Alzheimer's

Self-Portraits Chronicle a Descent Into Alzheimer’s - New York Times.

The paintings starkly reveal the artist’s descent into dementia, as his world began to tilt, perspectives flattened and details melted away. His wife and his doctors said he seemed aware at times that technical flaws had crept into his work, but he could not figure out how to correct them.

“The spatial sense kept slipping, and I think he knew,” Professor Utermohlen said. A psychoanalyst wrote that the paintings depicted sadness, anxiety, resignation and feelings of feebleness and shame. - Denise Grady, NYT

I just got off the phone with my parents, after stumbling across this article and having it stop me in my tracks. My mom just turned 80 and just as quickly was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She was devastated, having seen two close friends slip away into not knowingness; she does not want that future for herself.

My mom is a fighter, however, and is coming to terms with her future and working to do everything she can to hold it off. She has always been my center and my guiding light, and I will work to help her remain here, in the present, with us.

Looking at these faces, however, I can't help but see my future - a future of knowing that my mother will not know who I am, and that one day, I also may no longer recognize my own children.

The Beginning of the End

YouTube - Olbermann: the beginning of the end of America.

YouTube Nation

The New Yorker: It Should Happen To You.

The New Yorker tracks the YouTube phenom via the video posts of litlleloca.

"The Oscar was delivered rather unceremoniously—not in March, at the Academy Awards, but in August, three and a half minutes into a sketch Ryan was filming, while she was still in character as Cynthia, an eighteen-year-old Latina from East L.A. who is better known as Little Loca, after the handle Ryan uses when she uploads some of her homemade sketches onto the video-sharing site YouTube. This was about the fortieth in a series of short Little Loca videos that had by then attracted over a million viewings, thanks to Loca’s “big old mouth” (both literally—her heavily outlined lips command attention—and figuratively) and her irreverent putdowns (“You better watch out, fool, because God’s gonna come around and strike you down with some lightning if you don’t be careful”). Loca was wearing a bandanna and hoop earrings, and sitting on a sofa, against a plain white wall, between two women who were known to regular viewers as Smiley (a friend of Ryan’s) and Silent Girl (Ryan’s cousin). Rap music was playing in the background."

“Damn, this shit is heavy,” Loca said, in a pronounced Hispanic accent, after accepting the gold statuette from Smiley and waving it around. “I could knock somebody out with this.” Then she launched into an earnest acceptance speech. “I want to thank YouTube,” she said. “You’re so important in my life right now. And without YouTube there’s no way in hell Loca could have, you know, got something like this.” - Ben McGrath, The New Yorker

To see how life imitates art, check out 2003's William Gibson novel Pattern Recognition. Viral video as uber-marketing tool. Sound familiar?

Rob Curley and the Old, New Media

Hyper-Local Hero.

"The irony is that Curley is teaching newspapers to do the very thing they did so well for so long: cover the local community. "I don't think I'm new media," he says. "I'm old school. I think newspapers lost their way and started focusing on big investigative stuff and forgot to cover the prom or 10-year-olds playing baseball." Not the Daily News. It's running a yearlong series exploring the lack of affordable housing in the area, including an online database of 100,000 home sales during the past three years. And it's "covering Little Leaguers like the New York Yankees," says Curley." - Chuck Salter, fast company

Photography 2.0 on the Radio

I had an interesting time on Christopher Lydon's Open Source Radio show last week. It was wonderful to share the mic with Heather Champ, one of the pioneers of Photography 2.0 with the Mirror Project, who now is Community Manager for Flickr. It was a bit strange, however, to hear the comments of Fred Ritchin, who seemed to want to cling to the 'top down' media hierarchy of we tell you what you should be interested in.

I was also surprised at his reluctance to give the amateur photo community its due by insisting that they shouldn't be spoken of in the same context as photo great Henri Cartier-Bresson. What was Cartier-Bresson before the fame? An amateur named Henri who liked taking photos with that new, small camera called a Leica.

And why don't we like the self-portraits? Why is it art when Lee Friedlander does it and not when the photographer is Solea?

I thought most of us in the main stream media had come to realize that it is better to embrace, understand and get on board, rather than to try and stand in front of the 21st century media train. Technology and the internet are changing photography just as they have changed society; how we choose to use our new tools is the only question worth asking.

To hear the show, follow the Open Source link above, or click here for the mp3.

The Art of Battlestar Galactica

If art imitates life, then you should be watching the art of Battlestar Galactica.

This art touches a nerve and scratches an itch that is beneath the skin.

It will leave you bleeding.

If the world confuses you, BSG will help you survive.