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legionnaire

New Hope, PA

Member Since 2003

Followers 71 Following 44

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Tuesday Jan 06, 2004

Jan 6, 2004
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I am a lazy sack of shit. That's all there is to it. It's now 2:30pm and I've gotten pretty much nothing at all done today. Nor did I get anything done yesterday. I had a whole bunch of cells prepared for electrophysiological recordings, and they all died. Sucks. And I can't prepare any more until next week, so I'm back to writing again. Which effectively means that I'm spending all of my time here. Oh well.

I finally got a haircut, which Irishlibra can attest is probably a good thing, so now I actually resemble my profile picture. And I got a bunch of silly little errands done this morning that I've been meaning to do. But other than that, there's very little exciting going on in my life.

So I figured I would write a little bit about this book that I've started reading. It's called "Media Unlimited: How the torrent of images and sounds overwhelms our lives" by Todd Gitlin, whom you've probably seen quoted in any article that tries to talk about the media. It's a really interesting book - basically Gitlin starts out by saying that it's not going to be an exhaustive study of all of the primary literature detailing how the media effects people, but rather a compilation of observations, some of which are semi-quantitative but most of which are anecdotal, describing how the media has become such an integral part of our lives.

I'm only about halfway through, but it's been fascinating so far. He talks about how the notion of speed changed over the last thousand years to go from meaning "hasty" to coming to mean "expedient," and how being hurried has gone from a negative to a positive thing in people's lives.

He attributes this change, which itself is apparently accelerating, to the decreasing attention span of people (especially Americans) and shows how this is mirrored in hollywood and television. How movies in the 30's and 40's often featured long (by our standards) single camera-angle scenes full of expository dialogue, but how in modern movies any shot lasting more than about 30 seconds it considered to be too long. Also in how stories progress, the example being that you used to have to show someone leaving the train station, hailing a cab, getting in the lab, driving to their apartment, going into the building, opening the door and then entering. Now you show a person leaving the train station and the next shot is them walking into their apartment - the director believes that people can make the logical leap without any assistance, thus speeding up the flow of information and the pace of the film.

It's an interesting idea, and it makes you wonder how much our perceptions of the pace of life have changed over the last century or so, and how well we might be able to relate to people living in the 18th century. Certainly when I read War and Peace it seemed surprising that none of the Russian aristocracy ever did anything socially except go over to each other's houses and talk.

Gitlin is right not to assume that a slower paced life is necessarily better or worse than a faster paced one - just different. There are certainly some negative aspects associated with fewer words - especially in politics, where it can sometimes force candidates to reduce complex arguments to overly simplistic "sound bites" but I suppose it's a tradeoff.

Edited to say: One of my friends gave me the awesomest belated christmas gift - the DVD of "Big Trouble in Little China," one of the best movies ever made. I'm going to watch it now.
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
poopoohead:
Sorry about your cells dying. I hope you don't get attached to them.

Big Trouble in Little China? Yes, I have owned this DVD for a long, long time now. It truely is a great movie. I am now watching something called FireFly on DVD. A friend of mine loaned it to me. It's one of the shows that had 13 episodes on Fox before being cancelled. Created by the guy who created Buffy.

I have to say, DVD is one of the best things to happen to TV. I haven't had TV in over 3 years now. I hate it with a passion. But to watch my favorite shows without commercials...there's just something so right about that!
Jan 7, 2004
rockzombie:
well, questions are a smart mans water...but anyway, i dont know that much about reptiles, only a bit. i know about what i have as pets.

i am going to post a pic of all of them as soon as my bf brings my digital camera home. flapjack is soooodamn cute! aside from what i have already mentioned though i have 2 ball pythons and a rat as well.

do you have any pets?
Jan 7, 2004

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