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Today's Topics:
1. Pop-Culture Evolution (Monty Solomon)
2. Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?
(Monty Solomon)
3. Gay by Design, or a Lifestyle Choice? (Monty Solomon)
4. The World Since 9/11, in Detail and Sorrow (Monty Solomon)
5. Are mobile phones wiping out our bees? (Greg Williams)
6. Barry Nelson, the first onscreen James Bond, dies aged 89
(Greg Williams)
7. New art, serialized plot startle fans of Archie Comics
(Greg Williams)
8. For some, vinyl still scratches the surface (Greg Williams)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 00:23:15 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Pop-Culture Evolution
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
CONSUMED
Pop-Culture Evolution
By ROB WALKER
April 15, 2007
The Geico Cavemen
The recent news that ABC was willing to entertain the possibility of
a sitcom starring the Geico cavemen seemed a sort of watershed. Here
were characters dreamed up as part of an advertising campaign,
potentially crossing over into a venerable form of mainstream,
pop-culture entertainment. While that sounds momentous, it misses a
larger point. As characters in a successful advertising campaign, the
cavemen are already part of mainstream pop culture. More so, in fact,
than the characters in most current sitcoms.
If you've somehow managed to avoid them, here's a primer. Since 2004,
Geico, the car-insurance company, has been running spots that involve
cavemen. In the first, a Geico spokesman brightly tells the camera
that the company's Web site is so easy to use, "a caveman could do
it." At which point the camera pulls back and we realize that the
boom-microphone handler is, in fact, a caveman. He stalks off the
set, offended. Since then, Geico cavemen have returned in various
commercials - and a Web site and carefully strategized public
appearances - invariably expressing frustration and disgust at the
ignorance and bigotry they face.
The campaign is strange. And this probably is largely responsible for
the pop-culture status it has achieved.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15wwlnconsumed.t.html
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 00:25:38 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative
Advantage?
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
IDEA LAB
Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?
By DUNCAN J. WATTS
April 15, 2007
As anyone who follows the business of culture is aware, the profits
of cultural industries depend disproportionately on the occasional
outsize success - a blockbuster movie, a best-selling book or a
superstar artist - to offset the many investments that fail dismally.
What may be less clear to casual observers is why professional
editors, studio executives and talent managers, many of whom have a
lifetime of experience in their businesses, are so bad at predicting
which of their many potential projects will make it big. How could it
be that industry executives rejected, passed over or even disparaged
smash hits like "Star Wars," "Harry Potter" and the Beatles, even as
many of their most confident bets turned out to be flops? It may be
true, in other words, that "nobody knows anything," as the
screenwriter William Goldman once said about Hollywood. But why? Of
course, the experts may simply not be as smart as they would like us
to believe. Recent research, however, suggests that reliable hit
prediction is impossible no matter how much you know - a result that
has implications not only for our understanding of best-seller lists
but for business and politics as well.
Conventional marketing wisdom holds that predicting success in
cultural markets is mostly a matter of anticipating the preferences
of the millions of individual people who participate in them. From
this common-sense observation, it follows that if the experts could
only figure out what it was about, say, the music, songwriting and
packaging of Norah Jones that appealed to so many fans, they ought to
be able to replicate it at will. And indeed that's pretty much what
they try to do. That they fail so frequently implies either that they
aren't studying their own successes carefully enough or that they are
not paying sufficiently close attention to the changing preferences
of their audience.
The common-sense view, however, makes a big assumption: that when
people make decisions about what they like, they do so independently
of one another. But people almost never make decisions independently
- in part because the world abounds with so many choices that we have
little hope of ever finding what we want on our own; in part because
we are never really sure what we want anyway; and in part because
what we often want is not so much to experience the "best" of
everything as it is to experience the same things as other people and
thereby also experience the benefits of sharing.
There's nothing wrong with these tendencies. Ultimately, we're all
social beings, and without one another to rely on, life would be not
only intolerable but meaningless. Yet our mutual dependence has
unexpected consequences, one of which is that if people do not make
decisions independently - if even in part they like things because
other people like them - then predicting hits is not only difficult
but actually impossible, no matter how much you know about individual
tastes.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15wwlnidealab.t.html
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 00:48:45 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Gay by Design, or a Lifestyle Choice?
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Gay by Design, or a Lifestyle Choice?
By ALEX WILLIAMS
April 12, 2007
RON GEREN, an actor in Los Angeles, commutes to auditions and jobs
throughout Southern California in a sleek black Mazda MX-5 Miata
convertible. But for a recent date with a woman, he rented a Cadillac
Escalade because he was so used to friends saying his Miata is "gay."
"Guys say, 'Hey, that's cute,' " Mr. Geren, 40, said, adding that the
comments come from gay as well as straight men. "You have to fend off
that perception."
A few years ago, Meghan Daum, an op-ed contributor to The Los Angeles
Times, wrote about a promising first date with a man that never led
to a second one because, she later learned, the guy saw that she
drove a Subaru Outback station wagon and concluded she must be a
lesbian.
And when Joe LaMuraglia, the founder of Gaywheels.com, an
informational site modeled on the likes of Autoweb.com, told his
partner he wanted to buy a Mini Cooper convertible, the boyfriend
joked that he would not be seen in it because the couple "would look
like such a gay clich?," Mr. LaMuraglia said.
Cars are no more straight or gay than cellphones, office chairs or
weed whackers. But in recent years that truism has not stopped a
perception among some motorists that certain cars can, in the right
context, be statements about a driver's sexual orientation.
At a time when car makers are marketing aggressively to gay consumers
and mainstream culture has become more literate about stereotypically
gay tastes through television shows like "Will & Grace" and "The L
Word" (on which one of the main characters, Alice, drove a Mini
Cooper), it may not be surprising that some people make such
assumptions about motorists based on their cars.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/fashion/12cars.html?ex=1334030400&en=d2e81da5fa3509dd&ei=5090
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 00:51:16 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] The World Since 9/11, in Detail and Sorrow
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
TELEVISION REVIEW | 'AMERICA AT A CROSSROADS'
The World Since 9/11, in Detail and Sorrow
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
April 14, 2007
Apparently, a church dance in Greeley, Colo., led to 9/11.
In 1948 Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian writer who became the father of the
radical Islamist movement, was sent to the United States to temper
his contempt for the West. What he saw over two years - postwar
consumerism, suburban lawns, men and women dancing "breast to breast"
- only further inflamed his conviction that the West was the enemy of
Islam and doomed.
Mr. Qutb went on to work up a pseudospiritual justification of
Islamic terrorism that inspired and emboldened many, including Osama
bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri. And that modest Colorado
mixer - back then, Greeley was a dry town - was Mr. Qutb's "epiphanic
moment," as Malise Ruthven, a Middle East expert, puts it in "Jihad:
The Men and Ideas Behind Al Qaeda," the first documentary in the
weeklong, 11-part PBS series "America at a Crossroads."
The title alone suggests the series's ambition: "Crossroads" is an
attempt to look at the post-9/11 world as broadly and deeply as
possible. It's a worthy and worthwhile examination of the clash
between Islam and the West, but it's also the kind of sorrowful,
all-knowing look backward that makes viewers wonder why all these
journalists, experts, scholars and former government officials were
not more outspoken about the impending crisis before it blew up the
twin towers and drove the Bush administration to invade Iraq.
Probably they were less sure, and we weren't listening anyway.
The Washington PBS station WETA guided and oversaw the series, but
each documentary is made by a different filmmaker tackling a
different but interrelated chapter: it's a "Naked Came the Stranger"
for Middle East scholars.
"Jihad," tomorrow night, is a two-hour premiere that examines the
origins of the Muslim Brotherhood and Muslim fundamentalism to
explain that the Koran was hijacked by extremists seeking a religious
justification for all-out war against the West and secularized Arab
states, even ones that say they are Muslim.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/arts/television/14stan.html?ex=1334203200&en=6b96ec7b7f830408&ei=5090
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 01:08:53 -0400
From: Greg Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?
To: medianews@twiar.org
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?
Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious
'colony collapse' of bees
By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross
Published: 15 April 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece
It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But
some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause
massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.
They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile
phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more
bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt
disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some
bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then
spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.
The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees'
navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from
finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there
is now evidence to back this up.
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly
disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so
many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought
to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that
normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies,
refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.
The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all
American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of
its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.
CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and
Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers,
announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.
Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west
England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."
The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops
depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the
bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".
No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides,
global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.
German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power
lines.
Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to
return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen
Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible
cause.
Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and
mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I
am convinced the possibility is real."
The case against handsets
Evidence of dangers to people from mobile phones is increasing. But
proof is still lacking, largely because many of the biggest perils, such
as cancer, take decades to show up.
Most research on cancer has so far proved inconclusive. But an official
Finnish study found that people who used the phones for more than 10
years were 40 per cent more likely to get a brain tumour on the same
side as they held the handset.
Equally alarming, blue-chip Swedish research revealed that radiation
from mobile phones killed off brain cells, suggesting that today's
teenagers could go senile in the prime of their lives.
Studies in India and the US have raised the possibility that men who use
mobile phones heavily have reduced sperm counts. And, more prosaically,
doctors have identified the condition of "text thumb", a form of RSI
from constant texting.
Professor Sir William Stewart, who has headed two official inquiries,
warned that children under eight should not use mobiles and made a
series of safety recommendations, largely ignored by ministers.
--
Greg Williams
K4HSM
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.twiar.org
http://www.etskywarn.net
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 04:38:59 -0400
From: Greg Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Barry Nelson, the first onscreen James Bond, dies
aged 89
To: medianews@twiar.org
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Barry Nelson, the first onscreen James Bond, dies aged 89
http://www.mi6.co.uk/news/index.php?itemid=4934
Barry Nelson, an MGM contract player during the 1940s who later had a
prolific theater career and was the first actor to play James Bond on
screen, has died. He was 89 - reports Associated Press.
Nelson died on April 7 while traveling in Bucks County, Pa., his wife,
Nansi Nelson, said Friday. The cause of death was not immediately known,
she said.
After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1941,
Nelson was signed to MGM after being spotted by a talent scout. He
appeared in a number of films for the studio in 1942, including "Shadow
of the Thin Man," "Johnny Eager" and "Dr. Kildare's Victory." He also
landed the leading role in "A Yank on the Burma Road," playing a cab
driver who decides to lead a convoy of trucks for the Chinese government.
Nelson entered the Army during World War II and went on the road with
other actors performing the wartime play "Winged Victory," which was
later made into a movie starring Red Buttons, George Reeves and Nelson.
After the war, Nelson starred in a string of movies, including
"Undercover Maisie," "Time to Kill" and "Tenth Avenue Angel."
He is the answer to the trivia question: Who was the first actor to play
James Bond? Before Sean Connery was tapped to play the British agent on
the big screen in 1962's "Dr. No," Nelson played Bond in a one-hour TV
adaptation of "Casino Royale" in 1954.
Nelson switched to the stage during the 1960s and 1970s, appearing on
Broadway in "Seascape" "Mary, Mary" and "Cactus Flower." He earned a
Tony nomination in 1978 for his role in "The Act," which also starred
Liza Minnelli.
"He was a very naturalistic, believable actor," said his agent, Francis
Delduca. "He was good at both comedy and the serious stuff."
Among his other film credits were "Airport" and "The Shining," and he
also appeared on such TV shows as "Murder, She Wrote," "Dallas" and
"Magnum P.I."
More recently, Nelson and his second wife (they married in 1992) spent a
lot of time traveling. He planned to write a couple of books about his
time on stage and in Hollywood.
Nelson is survived by his wife. He did not have any children from either
marriage.
Funeral arrangements were pending.
--
Greg Williams
K4HSM
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.twiar.org
http://www.etskywarn.net
------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 04:43:11 -0400
From: Greg Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] New art, serialized plot startle fans of Archie
Comics
To: medianews@twiar.org
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
New art, serialized plot startle fans of Archie Comics
By BILL RADFORD - The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
http://www.macon.com/231/story/17179.html
You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind -- and
apparently you don't mess with Archie Andrews and the gang.
In December, Archie Comics announced that a new "dynamic art style" was
coming for its classic characters.
Fans were not pleased, managing editor Victor Gorelick says. "Most of
the readers were `How can you give them this new look?'" Gorelick said.
"'I've read Archie all my life and now you're changing him.'"
But the largely negative reaction stemmed from a misunderstanding,
Gorelick said in a phone interview from Archie Comics' offices in
Mamaroneck, N.Y.
"People thought we were going to change the entire line, which wasn't
so," he said. The change, coming in May's "Betty & Veronica Double
Digest" No. 151, applies only to a four-part story running in that title.
While Gorelick doesn't rule out the new look eventually showing up
elsewhere, there is no plan for sweeping changes in the classic Archie
look set by artist Dan DeCarlo more than 40 years ago.
The story in "Betty & Veronica Double Digest" finds Veronica smitten
with a new guy in town. "He's kind of a tough guy, rides a motorcycle, a
bit of a rebel," Gorelick said.
The serialized story -- a change from Archie's usual short reads -- and
the accompanying new art style are meant to attract a slightly older
readership, Gorelick said.
"Most of our readers are between 7 and 12 or 13 years old, and mostly
girls. Once these girls finish reading Archie Comics, they'll usually go
on to chapter books and a little bit more detailed stories. We want to
try to keep that audience a little bit longer. So we're trying out this
new look and seeing what the response is going to be."
The longer story also offers an opportunity for Archie Comics to enter
the booming graphic-novel market by eventually gathering the story into
a single book.
Though the story, titled "Bad Boy Trouble," is more involved than usual,
there's nothing inappropriate for young girls, Gorelick said -- "nothing
out of the Archie code of decency, so to speak."
The art is by Steven Butler, who has worked for several years on Archie
Comics' "Sonic the Hedgehog" but had never before drawn Archie and friends.
"The guidelines basically were to make them more realistic, more of a
romance-style comic," Butler said.
That job was more challenging with some characters than others --
Jughead, for example, with his long nose and crown.
"It would be kind of hard to do Jughead without that nose and without
that hat," Butler said. His version of Jughead includes a slightly
larger hat, tilted more to one side, and a goatee. Plus, Butler said, "I
gave him a kind of a Bob Hope nose."
Butler hopes readers will give the new look a chance. "I look at the
negativity as something that spurs me on to do even better work to prove
to them that I'm not just hacking this stuff out, that I really do care
about what I'm doing."
--
Greg Williams
K4HSM
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.twiar.org
http://www.etskywarn.net
------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2007 12:00:10 -0400
From: Greg Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] For some, vinyl still scratches the surface
To: medianews@twiar.org
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
For some, vinyl still scratches the surface
http://www.herald-mail.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=163166&format=print
By TIFFANY ARNOLD
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
In an era when CDs are losing their foothold in the music industry,
there are music fans who don't care, and it's not because these fans are
downloading music.
They are sticking to vinyl.
"A CD player? What am I going to do with that?" asked Judy Kell, 55, of
Chambersburg, Pa., who collects vinyl records.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that CD music sales have
sharply declined. Despite the decline in the more up-to-date way to
listen to music, old-school vinyl records are still hanging on to a
small fan base: collectors and older music enthusiasts who don't see the
point in switching music platforms.
They are people like Judy Kell, who still listens to records and just
recently stopped listening to eight-track tapes.
"They're just so hard to find anymore," Kell said. "At one point, all we
could find was Christmas music."
Another reason Kell ditched the eight-tracks was because she and her
family recently replaced their 1978 Buick Electra, equipped with a
functional eight-track player, with a '90s-model car that came with a CD
player.
Kell is married to Richard Kell, who owns Record City in Chambersburg.
They admit that they are behind the times when it comes to technology.
"She still has cassette tapes," 20-year-old Mary Kell said of her mother.
Judy and Richard Kell have nary a cell phone or MP3 player between them,
and they rarely if ever use e-mail. But they see their children using
the technology.
"One night our daughter was sitting on the couch playing songs from her
laptop. It was just like a jukebox," Richard Kell said. "Our son is the
same way. That's how they do it now."
Judy Kell said she doubts she'll be like her children and start swapping
her records for online downloads.
"I get tired of changing. I don't need to. What's the point?" she said.
"If you have (the music) at your fingertips all the time, it's not a
treat."
------------------------------
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