Quick note to fellow Americans: I voted. Did you?
Archive for the “Etcetera” Category
Traditional journalists, and traditional journalism educators, remain pretty suspicious of blogging in lots of places. But if what I heard in two days of conferencing in Athens and Thessaloniki (the latter is Greece’s second-largest city) is an indication of the overall situation, there’s a larger-than-usual gulf between older and newer media in the land where inquiry and reason helped shape Western culture. The problems people see with blogging and other conversational/social media were high on other speakers’ topic lists. In particular, worries about anonymous (or pseudonymous) online attacks came up again and again. It’s a real issue. But it’s part of the larger issue of how we help consumers of news and information be better at separating what’s reliable and what isn’t. Here’s a slide I showed in my talk:
In fact, when it comes to anonymous or pseudonymous personal attacks, the default position should be to actively disbelieve what we’ve read or heard. We should not give the cowards who post such things any slack at all. There are exceptions, but rare ones. Like students everywhere, the ones I met at Aristotle University’s Department of Journalism and Mass Communication were bright and eager to figure out their future. They are heading into a journalism market dominated by what sounds to me like something of a cartel at the pro-journalism level. But Greece isn’t immune from economic realities, and it’s a reasonable bet that what’s happening to Greek media companies will look, in the end, like what’s happening in the U.S. So, as I told them, I hope they’ll consider inventing their own jobs. Craig Wherlock, a Brit teaching English in Greece, blogged about the day in Thessaloniki here. He points to other coverage, mostly in Greek: - Τα ΓΙΑΤΙ και τα ΔΙΟΤΙ των ΗΜΕΡΙΔΩΝ και των ΣΥΝΕΔΡΙΩΝ Off topic: I was lucky enough to visit the royal tombs in Vergina, not far from Thessaloniki. The director of the museum there gave several of us a private tour (including a look — no photos allowed — at Philip II’s bones) of a site that makes the word “history” come truly into focus. I can’t wait to go back for a longer visit. Apparently my spam protection captcha isn’t working right. Apologies to those who’ve tried posting and failed. I’ve turned it off briefly while I work on it, so feel free to comment. The NY Times’ Joe Nocera, asks, “Shouldn’t We Rescue Housing?”
Through no fault of their own? Let’s unpack this. If you borrowed to buy a house in one of the rapidly inflating markets during the past few years, you were playing the bubble game, too. If you borrowed against the value of the house for a second mortgage for any reason at all, you were playing the bubble game. If you are a long-term owner and were counting on the appreciation to finance your retirement or your bail-out to a place where homes were more affordable, you were playing the bubble. His plan, which many others have floated in recent days, is designed to put our kids on the hook for the prolificacy of people who were encouraged to be spendthrifts. But it’s a direct slap in the face to a huge group of other people. If you are a renter who didn’t jump into the market because you understood that to do so would be reckless, you are, in Nocera’s world, a dupe. You’ve been overpaying for your rent due to inflated home values, and while you waited for sanity to return so you might be able to afford to borrow to buy a home, you now learn that you’re still out of luck. This plan would freeze in place a system that encouraged greed, and penalize those of us who waited for markets to become more sane. It turns out that being responsible in this insane nation is to be naive. That message will penetrate throughout the culture as the scope of all these bailouts — which exempt people who did the right thing — becomes clear. Patrick Leahy, Democratic senator from Vermont, complains that he and his colleagues have been “Kept in the Dark” by the Bush administration on torture. Well, no kidding. Congress has served mostly as a doormat in the past 8 years. What will Leahy do about this latest administration insult? A safe prediction is nothing — these lawmakers still haven’t recovered their spines.
I have a simple fix for noisy mobile callers. I listen carefully to their conversations — making clear that I’m listening. If that doesn’t work, I start taking notes. You would be amazed (or maybe not) how quickly this technique works to get people to hang up and shut up, or at least talk so quietly that it’s no longer a bother.
We haven’t seen the bottom in prices, not by a long shot, in most places. I’d still be very, very cautious about buying in any of these markets. |
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