Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

In an act of compassionate brilliance, United State Congress ordered blood transfusions from steroid using baseball players into the brain-damaged Terry Schiavo. “It is the American Way, and darned good sportsmanship too, for the super strong to care for the super weak,” declared a congressman from New Mexico.

In a related story, weakened by high fuel prices, SUV owners stood vigil and prayed for government passage of a large oil transfusion from the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge.

Steven Levy’s recent Newsweek article covering a Harvard conference on blogs points out a quote attributed to Keith Jenkins. Jenkins wrote, “My fear is that the overwhelmingly white and male American blogosphere… will return us to a day where the dialogue about issues was a predominantly white-only one.” Additonal fears were expressed by female bloggers. I suppose Harvard will always be the target of these kind of slings, until there is no longer is a Harvard.

I am relatively new to blogging, and not a big media player, so I do not share Jenkin’s concerns. My own first discovery in exploring blogging was Beccary, which turns out to be a wonderful young Asian woman’s web site. I enjoy her work and what she communicates, period. Nothing to do with race or gender.

Dragging race and gender preference into blogging stinks of professional paranoia and the claims of ownership that are the lifeblood of professional organizations and associations. Jenkins is a professional photojournalist. In a world where everyone is a photographer and more and more are bloggers, most likely defending territory is part of his survival story.

There’s too much goooogling on these days. A few days ago I attended the first Google AdSense Forum at Google’s Mountain View headquarters. I got overstimulated by meeting fellow Google AdSense webmasters, enthused presenters and smart Google team members, and liked it! Jennifer Slegg was one of three presenters, and she has dutifully written the Forum up in greater detail at her blog, Jensense. Another panelist, Chris Pirillo founder of Lockergnome.com gushed all over Google AdSense arousing curiousity and laughter. The next few days I’ve spent furiously tweaking parts of mediaspin.com to reflect improvements and techniques discussed at the meeting.

Did I mention that I am moving and will be off-line for almost a week? Does anyone care? I for one care, and will write to Congress to have them act immediately to prevent me from being unplugged, and becoming a brain dead demonic monster, or worse. More on this political hot potato topic later…

I’ve got a feeling in my bones. What do my bones tell me? Do I trust my bones? Kay Cordell Whitaker knows about Bone Throwing and their ability to predict for 2005. Worth a look. Of course there are cyber shaman bone throwers. Levitated, also worth a roll. Trust your bones.

Hey kids! Wanna do some cool Digital Effects on Spider-Man 3 or Stuart Little 3? Great! Well, get the air out of your heads and listen up punks! Your colossal boss will be a bean-counting professional, much like Digital Domain’s Scott Ross, quoted in the Phil LoPiccolo’s editorial in Computer Graphics World, “Making movies is an art, but it’s also a business,” he adds. “I tell my people, if you want to be Vincent van Gogh, go cut off your ear and live in the South of France.”

Is Scott still feeling his lumps from Titanic’s near suicidal artistic excesses? And folks, if you catch Boss Ross’s drift, be ready to work long hours at Van Gogh-ish salaries. Or move to Singapore. What wuz ya thinkin’… this is ‘spose to be fun? Fuggetaboutit!

Got to admit, I like monkeys. So, I was shocked by the grisly news story about a chimp loving couple who were bitten and mauled by two escaped monkeys at an animal sanctuary. The highly trained and restrained Mike Tyson was unavailable for comment. A wild wake-up call, as Siegfried and Roy got, that animals are mysterious, unpredictable, and not fully understood.
There are good and bad monkeys. Having more fun than a barrel full of monkeys, might end up as a horrific human blender. Yet we still identify with the affable ape, such as 9622.net, and Monkey Vortex. Can you trust these cute chimps? Roll over the photo above and see.

An obvious trick photograph on the cover of the current Newsweet magazine, portrays soon to be released from prison Martha Stewart sweetly, as they imagined we’d like to see her: comfortable, relaxed and in good shape. Reality is sour and distasteful, and we applaud big media and politicians for sweetening it up for us.

P.S. I gave Martha a demo of interactive technology back when we both worked in the Time-Life building. She really is a smart cookie.