interesting things
Moody’s said it could downgrade the U.S. government’s credit rating next year if steps aren’t taken to tackle the rising debt, in the latest reminder of the tense fiscal negotiations looming for Congress and the White House.
via WSJ.com: What's News US http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444017504577645310593048338.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us
Scientists and military experts working for the National Research Council are critical of the Obama administration’s strategy and suggest changes to the United States’ antimissile system.
via NYT > Most Recent Headlines http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/12/science/us-missile-defense-protections-are-called-vulnerable.html
Display copy in American broadsheets is oppressively boring — and reflective of a deeper attitude that contributes to their declining fortunes.
On road trips, including the one I took recently between Tampa, Florida, and Charlotte, North Carolina, I habitually buy a local newspaper every time I stop to buy gas, food, or coffee. As my colleague Garance Franke-Ruta can attest, the result is frustrated muttering about the product. For various reasons, I think local newspapers remain important to American democracy, and that their waning readership and influence is likely to coincide with more corruption, absent steps to mitigate their decline that aren’t being taken. On the other hand, look at the headlines.
Why are they so oppressively boring?
The banality on display won’t be apparent if your notion of newspaper heds comes from The New York Times. Elite broadsheets turn out some good display copy. But neither is my frustration aimed at obscure newspapers in tiny towns largely unknown to the broader world. Each day, the Newseum updates its Web site with images of the front pages from 800 newspapers worldwide. Perusing them, here are a selection of front page headlines from September 10, 2012.
I defy anyone to get through these without skimming:
You’re having trouble already, aren’t you?
And these are A1 stories. Here are some more:
These are but a small sample of boring headlines from a single day in this country.
The question isn’t whether you’d pay 50 cents to read those stories; it’s whether you’d agree to slog through them if paid $15. Yes, there are reasons why some of these headlines aren’t better. Some of the stories just aren’t very interesting. And ink on paper imposes space constraints.
But the reasons don’t ultimately matter when there are alternatives available. Most newspaper readers formed the habit of buying them before Web headlines,Twitter teases, Facebook likes, and other ways to discover content. What are the chances anyone else would buy a newspaper on the strength of headlines like the ones I listed? I’d put them at approaching zero.
Boring headlines are just one of many problems afflicting newspapers. Still, they seem symptomatic of a broader attitude that makes much of the content contained in their pages needlessly dull. The writers are often capable of writing better copy. The photographers almost always get more interesting images than make it into print. But the prevailing ethos combines a suicidal insistence on staid neutrality with an aversion to anything provocative even within those bounds.
Please, broadsheet editors, free your staffs to be more interesting! A different feel might cost you a few stodgy longtime readers. But let’s be honest, you’re going to lose them to the grave soon anyway.
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via Politics : The Atlantic http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/09/an-exasperated-plea-to-newspapers-more-exciting-headlines-please/262188/
IDAHO PLANE THAT CRASHED WAS DROPPING TOILET PAPER ON GOP EVENT…
via DrudgeSiren.com – All Stories http://www.drudgesiren.com/allhl.php?id=148505&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+drudgesiren%2FoGpG+%28DrudgeSiren.com+-+All+Stories%29#h148505
“Swimming in the social stream.”
“Crowdsourcing app discovery-platform.”
“Can you talk about getting conceptual liftoff?”
“What’s your current go-to-market strategy?”
“Now, let’s talk about disrupting the disruptors.”
“We’re iterating our butts off, dude.”
“Looks like it’s searching for a use case.”
“We’re all about glocal right now.”
“Collaborative consumption is truly a revolution.”
“Plat-Ag.” (As in “Platform-Agnostic.”)
“You did one of the great pivots of all-time.”
“We don’t measure our success by financial results.”
Read more posts by Kevin Roose
Filed Under:
tech conference jargon
,silicon valley
,tech
,techcrunch disrupt
,burn it all down and let’s start over
via Daily Intel http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/techcrunch-jargon.html
Apple’s debut of its redesigned iPhone will again test its high-stakes strategy of once-a-year upgrades for a product that accounts for about 70% of the company’s profits.
via Advertising Age – Homepage http://adage.com/article/digital/apple-s-iphone-5-selling-10-million-weeks/237128/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+adage%2Fhomepage+%28Advertising+Age+-+Homepage%29
Seth Stevenson subjected himself to 45 hours of Ohio TV advertising, which at this point largely consists of campaign ads:
Something happens when you’ve been exposed to the same short video clip 21 times; your mind untethers, shifting its focus from the script to the symbols. I began to dissect Romney’s body language. Why, I wondered, was this spot so intent on establishing a side-by-side spatial relationship between Mitt and the viewer? Mitt chauffeurs us, gripping the wheel, looking at the road, throwing sidelong glances as he lists his accomplishments. “Aha,” I exclaimed: a classically male, shoulder-to-shoulder, barstool conversational alignment—in tune with Romney’s big advantage among male voters. By contrast, President Obama is usually gazing directly into the camera lens, locking in eye contact as though he and the viewer are on a promising first date.
Relatedly, a reader in Colorado reacts to Romney’s big post-convention ad buy:
As a resident of Denver, I’ve been experiencing the avalanche for many months. It’s worst from 4-6 during local news and national network news, when we routinely get 4, 5, 6 back-to-back ads at every commercial break. One or two will be from Obama, with the rest from Romney and his super-PACs. Like many others here, I jut hit the mute button when they start. I hear friends joke that they now watch everything via DVR, so they can fast-forward through the commercials.
I loathe and fear Citizens United as much as anybody, but I do believe there is a law of diminishing returns with the onslaught of ads.
I lived in California in 2010 when a flood of outside money and money from wealthy candidates blanketed TV for months supporting the Republican statewide candidates, especially Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina. It was as relentless as the Romney avalanche is now. Yet the Democrats won every statewide office, largely, I believe, because the Republican “brand” is so toxic in California.
The Obama campaign has blanketed Colorado with field offices and young, energetic organizers who are busy canvassing, registering voters and getting the word out with friends and neighbors. My only complaint is that they stopped airing a very effective response to the welfare-work lies, and I hope that ad reappears soon. The election will be close, but I’m confident Colorado will stay blue this fall.
via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/09/ad-overdose.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Daily+Dish%29
The way Rob Lowe pronounces the word “literally†on Parks and Recreation is nothing short of magic. It’s not like when people say nuke-u-ler when they mean nuclear; that just makes us stabby. When Chris Traeger says LIT-ruh-lee, it takes on great importance, underscoring just how excited he is about literally everything. (“Every time I cleanse, I can literally feel the toxins leaving my body!â€) So how did this signature word come to pass? We cornered Lowe during a recent visit to the Parks and Rec set to demand his origin story.
“I think I just leaned into that word really hard a couple of times and it made [showrunner Mike Schur] laugh,†said Lowe. “The next thing you know it just became one of Chris’s things, but it was never designed that way. It was merely a word in a sentence. I think I just took a really big, probably very embarrassing swing at it and it stuck.†And did he know specifically what he had done differently? That, in fact, he was ignoring the “e†entirely? “It’s funny, I have no idea what I’m doing when I’m doing it … But it’s very exciting to be so far down the road in this business and to finally have a catchphrase. It’s one thing I can tick off my career to-do list. I don’t think it’s as good as ‘What’chu talkin’ ’bout, Willis,’ but it’s up there.†Lowe knows it’s made it into the lexicon because people won’t stop saying it to him. “They point at me and they say their full name. They say ‘Literally!’ They say ‘Ann Perkins!’†he said. “I dropped my son off at college back East this week and every person that came up to me, they didn’t want to talk about The West Wing or Austin Powers or Tommy Boy. Every single one wanted to talk about Chris Traeger. I figured out who’s watching Parks and they’re all in college. We own the campus.â€
Of course he’s become a bit sensitive about using the word when he’s not in character. “I find myself going, ‘I’m telling you, that guy is li— … absolutely the worst person I’ve ever seen.’ I’ve tried to banish it from my personal vocabulary for a while,†he says. It seems to require some real effort. When we asked about his new Lifetime movie, this one about Casey Anthony, Lowe said: “It’s not what you expect. It is lit— … did you see what I did there? Did you? I’ve developed a mid-life stutter!â€
Read more posts by Denise Martin
Filed Under:
rob lowe
,parks and recreaton
,tv
,creation myths
via Vulture http://www.vulture.com/2012/09/rob-lowe-literally-parks-and-recreation.html
A while ago, members of the Velvet Underground filed a lawsuit against the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for using their iconic album cover’s Warhol banana on schwag, among other complaints. They were particularly unsettled by the extensive licensing the foundation had planned for a series of Apple accessories. A federal judge has just dismissed the banana bit of the lawsuit, but the lawsuit goes on.
Sure, the ripe yellow fruit “became a symbol, truly an icon, of the Velvet Underground†for generations of fans and revivalists, but the Velvet Underground never officially copyrighted the banana. Neither did Andy Warhol. It was up for grabs. The Foundation, in turn, never sued the Velvet Underground for their peddling of the banana, but now our well-aged cultural heroes will have to live with their fruit garlanding iPhones and iPads.
So… really. Whose banana? Who’s more famous? Who will Nico come to avenge-haunt these days?
The post The Velvet Underground Loses Banana Lawsuit To The Warhol Foundation appeared first on ANIMAL.
